,
their furniture, and a few other trifles. The land was owned by fewer
than 400,000 proprietors. Those who possessed movable wealth may have
numbered thrice as many. Political and social power was in the hands
of the owners of property, and of those, generally connected with them
by birth or marriage, who were at any rate not dependent on manual
labour for their bread. But among these there were divisions and
factions on various questions more or less trivial, none of them
approaching in importance or interest to the fundamental and
irreconcilable conflict sure one day to arise between those who had
accumulated wealth and those who had not. To gain their ends in one or
another of these frivolous quarrels, each party in turn admitted to
political influence section after section of what you call the
proletariat; till in the year 3278 universal suffrage was granted,
every man and woman over the age of twelve years [6] being entitled to
a single and equal vote.

About the same time the change in opinion of which I have spoken had
taken general effect, and the vast majority of the men, at any rate,
had ceased to believe in a future life wherein the inequalities and
iniquities of this might be redressed. It followed that they were
fiercely impatient of hardships and suffering, especially such as they
thought might be redressed by political and social changes. The
leaders of the multitude, for the most part men belonging to the
propertied classes who had either wasted their wealth or never
possessed any, demanded the abolition of private ownership, first of
land, then of movable wealth; a demand which fiercely excited the
passions of those who possessed neither, and as bitterly provoked the
anger and alarm of those who did. The struggle raged for some
generations and ended by an appeal to the sword; in which, since the
force of the State was by law in the hands of the majority, the
intelligent, thrifty, careful owners of property with their adherents
were signally defeated. Universal communism was established in 3412,
none being permitted to own, or even to claim, the exclusive use of
any portion of the planet's surface, or of any other property except
the share of food and clothing allotted to him. One only privilege was
allowed to certain sectaries who still clung to the habits of the
past, to the permanence and privacy of family life. They were
permitted to have houses or portions of houses to themselves, and to
live the