of removing class distinctions, you have merely
widened the mischief. In fact, from the people's point of view, the
right to live without working is in itself a privilege. The unproductive
consumer is a robber in their eyes. The only work that they understand
has palpable results; they set no value on intellectual labor--the
kind of labor which is the principal source of wealth to them. So by
multiplying causes of offence in this way, you extend the field of
battle; the social war would be waged on all points instead of being
confined within a limited circle; and when attack and resistance become
general, the ruin of a country is imminent. Because the rich will always
be fewer in number, the victory will be to the poor as soon as it comes
to actual fighting. I will throw the burden of proof on history.

"The institution of Senatorial Privilege enabled the Roman Republic to
conquer the world. The Senate preserved the tradition of authority. But
when the _equites_ and the _novi homines_ had extended the governing
classes by adding to the numbers of the Patricians, the State came to
ruin. In spite of Sylla, and after the time of Julius Caesar, Tiberius
raised it into the Roman Empire; the system was embodied in one man,
and all authority was centered in him, a measure which prolonged the
magnificent sway of the Roman for several centuries. The Emperor had
ceased to dwell in Rome when the Eternal City fell into the hands of
barbarians. When the conqueror invaded our country, the Franks who
divided the land among themselves invented feudal privilege as a
safeguard for property. The hundred or the thousand chiefs who owned
the country, established their institutions with a view to defending
the rights gained by conquest. The duration of the feudal system was
co-existent with the restriction of Privilege. But when the _leudes_
(an exact translation of the word _gentlemen_) from five hundred became
fifty thousand, there came a revolution. The governing power was too
widely diffused; it lacked force and concentration; and they had not
reckoned with the two powers, Money and Thought, that had set those free
who had been beneath their rule. So the victory over the monarchical
system, obtained by the middle classes with a view to extending the
number of the privileged class, will produce its natural effect--the
people will triumph in turn over the middle classes. If this trouble
comes to pass, the indiscriminate right of suffrage b