rt of the work, the PRESENT, a study of Catholic
society as it now exists. Here Pierre had painted a frightful picture of
the misery of the poor, the misery of a great city, which he knew so well
and bled for, through having laid his hands upon its poisonous wounds.
The present-day injustice could no longer be tolerated, charity was
becoming powerless, and so frightful was the suffering that all hope was
dying away from the hearts of the people. And was it not the monstrous
spectacle presented by Christendom, whose abominations corrupted the
people, and maddened it with hatred and vengeance, that had largely
destroyed its faith? However, after this picture of rotting and crumbling
society, Pierre returned to history, to the period of the French
Revolution, to the mighty hope with which the idea of freedom had filled
the world. The middle classes, the great Liberal party, on attaining
power had undertaken to bring happiness to one and all. But after a
century's experience it really seemed that liberty had failed to bring
any happiness whatever to the outcasts. In the political sphere illusions
were departing. At all events, if the reigning third estate declares
itself satisfied, the fourth estate, that of the toilers,* still suffers
and continues to demand its share of fortune. The working classes have
been proclaimed free; political equality has been granted them, but the
gift has been valueless, for economically they are still bound to
servitude, and only enjoy, as they did formerly, the liberty of dying of
hunger. All the socialist revendications have come from that; between
labour and capital rests the terrifying problem, the solution of which
threatens to sweep away society. When slavery disappeared from the olden
world to be succeeded by salaried employment the revolution was immense,
and certainly the Christian principle was one of the great factors in the
destruction of slavery. Nowadays, therefore, when the question is to
replace salaried employment by something else, possibly by the
participation of the workman in the profits of his work, why should not
Christianity again seek a new principle of action? The fatal and
proximate accession of the democracy means the beginning of another phase
in human history, the creation of the society of to-morrow. And Rome
cannot keep away from the arena; the papacy must take part in the quarrel
if it does not desire to disappear from the world like a piece of
mechanism that has