h he has himself drawn from those
principles, they are not as far as we know contradicted by facts.
The case of the United States is not in point. In a country where the
necessaries of life are cheap and the wages of labour high, where a man
who has no capital but his legs and arms may expect to become rich by
industry and frugality, it is not very decidedly even for the immediate
advantage of the poor to plunder the rich; and the punishment of doing
so would very speedily follow the offence. But in countries in which
the great majority live from hand to mouth, and in which vast masses of
wealth have been accumulated by a comparatively small number, the case
is widely different. The immediate want is, at particular seasons,
craving, imperious, irresistible. In our own time it has steeled men
to the fear of the gallows, and urged them on the point of the bayonet.
And, if these men had at their command that gallows and those bayonets
which now scarcely restrain them, what is to be expected? Nor is this
state of things one which can exist only under a bad government. If
there be the least truth in the doctrines of the school to which Mr
Mill belongs, the increase of population will necessarily produce it
everywhere. The increase of population is accelerated by good and cheap
government. Therefore, the better the government, the greater is the
inequality of conditions: and the greater the inequality of conditions,
the stronger are the motives which impel the populace to spoliation. As
for America, we appeal to the twentieth century.

It is scarcely necessary to discuss the effects which a general
spoliation of the rich would produce. It may indeed happen that, where
a legal and political system full of abuses is inseparably bound up with
the institution of property, a nation may gain by a single convulsion,
in which both perish together. The price is fearful. But if, when the
shock is over, a new order of things should arise under which property
may enjoy security, the industry of individuals will soon repair the
devastation. Thus we entertain no doubt that the Revolution was, on the
whole, a most salutary event for France. But would France have gained
if, ever since the year 1793, she had been governed by a democratic
convention? If Mr Mill's principles be sound, we say that almost her
whole capital would by this time have been annihilated. As soon as the
first explosion was beginning to be forgotten, as soon as wealth agai