AN HISTORICAL WARNING
The teachings of Rousseau, which logically resulted in the
French revolution, wherein the confiscation of property was the
prime purpose, is compared with some of the teachings of today.
History that should constitute an ample warning is cited.
We have been sowing what Rousseau was permitted to sow and from which
was reaped the French revolution. The “Social Contract” taught that
property as understood today did not exist. The citizen simply held it
in trust for society. For under the “Social Contract” each “surrenders
himself up absolutely, just as he actually stands, he and all his
resources, of which his property forms a part.” The next logical step
in the revolution was to discharge or recall the trustee, and thus vest
the property again in society itself. That was done. George W. Hinman
in “Can We Learn Anything from History?” summarizes this recall of
trusteeships as follows: “Society proceeded to recall its trustees as
fast as ‘Society’ needed the property. It recalled the trusteeships of
all the church property, $800,000,000; of all the property of exiles,
$600,000,000; of all the property of the guillotined and condemned,
$200,000,000; of all the property of hospitals and charitable
institutions, $200,000,000; of all the state domains sold and rented in
the last three hundred years, $400,000,000; of all the gold and silver
vessels and specie, $100,000,000; of all the property of other
institutions, valuables and common goods, $700,000,000. Then it
recalled the trusteeships of coats and trousers, growing crops, pots,
kettles, pans and mattresses. In one town it recalled the trusteeship
of ten thousand pairs of shoes from ten thousand pairs of feet, and
thus condemned ten thousand former custodians of this property to go
about their tasks barefooted in the snow.”
Not only this but the government extended confiscation by means of
income tax until the whole of every income in excess of six hundred
dollars was to be taken. Taine, the historian, summarizes thus:
“Whatever the grand terms of liberty, equality and fraternity may be,
with which the revolution graces itself, it is in its essence a
transfer of property. In this alone consists its chief support, its
enduring energy, its primary impulse and its historical significance.”
Hinman summarizes thus: “The people in a body is infallible; unlike
individuals it can make no mistakes. Therefore we should not trust
government to individual representatives or agents but to the pure and
direct democracy. But we cannot have direct democracy at its purest
without equality of condition. To get equality of condition we must get
equality of property. To get equality of property we must correct the
inequalities of the past and present. Therefore to correct these
inequalities we invent the theory of trusteeship of property, recall
the trustees, and take possession of all unequal properties in the name
of society.
“That is the whole cycle; that is the great revolution! Twenty-five
years in preparation, eleven years in actual practice, fourteen years
in immediate consequences; fifty years all told and that is sum,
substance and essence from the beginning to the end, a transfer of
property! A transfer of property without compensation! A confiscation
of property beyond appeal and beyond recall! There were movements also
against the church, and against the family, but the transfer of
property far surpassed them both in size and in significance.
“That the convulsions attending the movement were more spectacular than
the movement itself; that a million persons were stabbed, drowned,
shot, beheaded and hunted to death within the borders of the nation;
that wars were started that strewed Europe with 5,000,000 dead; that
the oppression was far more ferocious than under Louis XIV, that the
waste of government was arithmetically four times greater than under
the most wasteful monarchy; that a whole nation was bathed in blood,
bankrupted in morals, and rotted in character to the core—all of these
things, hideous and appalling as they may be, distracting and absorbing
as they may be, are still but as colossal incidents. _The chief
movement through this sea of blood and wilderness of death was the
transfer of property._”
Nevertheless, Robespierre—the bloodiest man who had ever lived, the
bloodiest man who ever has lived outside of Russia, and the bloodiest
man who ever will live unless socialism gets control in the United
States—was an idealist. He resigned the bench rather than pronounce
sentence of death upon a convicted criminal. He read Rousseau’s “Social
Contract” every day. He was the leader in the “uplift” movement of the
age in which he lived and sought to produce Utopian conditions of
“liberty, equality and fraternity” throughout France. While an
Internationalist he sought to reform and transform France before
extending his field of influence.
But being self-willed as well as self-opinionated, at the first
appearance of opposition he threw down the challenge. There was “some
fight in him and he liked it.” He appealed directly to the people and
condemned to the guillotine everyone who had the temerity to resist his
efforts to ameliorate human conditions. While seeking everywhere for
property to confiscate, and heads to guillotine, he made the most
elaborate speech of his career:
“Our purpose is to substitute morality for egotism, honesty for honor,
principles for customs, duties for proprieties, the empire of reason
for the tyranny of habit, contempt of vice for indifference to
misfortune, dignity for insolence, nobility for vanity, love of glory
for love of money, good people for society, merit for intrigue, genius
for intellectual brilliancy, the charm of contentment for the satiety
of pleasure, the majesty of man for the high breeding of the great, a
magnanimous, powerful and happy people for amiable, frivolous and
wretched people; that is to say, every virtue and miracle of the
republic in the place of the vices and absurdities of the monarchy.”
I submit that is pretty good rhetoric and excellent diction. Though it
means absolutely nothing it must have sounded well to the proletariat.
The people idolized Robespierre for a while at least, as they always
idolize an orator who has great command of indefinite and high-sounding
language. Idolizing an idealist they followed him and were led to the
extremes of democracy. The whole population of France was transformed
into an organized mob, doing everything that a mob can do but, in the
main, preserving the forms of law.