The Express.
London, England, 1849-01-01 00:00:00

LITERAI ORE.

Die Beacroung des Noe allusion, HrwaNismiu, end Demo-
cralisams enure,. Tam. BAIITSIX.
The Mosesm Ms of Socialites, Democracy, and Humanism
ill OW Thou. . . .

Whatever the ordinary reader may think of the in
trinsic worth of the above mini trinity of sciences, he
cannot but see that they have acquired a terrible in-
terest from the fact of their being the übjecte of study
to the millions of lvanan beings who compose the
lower classes of civilised Europe. They are the
sciences of the e,),-Itless Proletarians—those who iu
ancient times derived their name from the fact
of their contrilutang nothing to the state but their
children (poles,—and who now have nothing
but their labour as a means of subsistence, in
a world where ar: and science are day by day fight-
ing a battle against the labourers' bare arms. While
the upper classes fled it difficult to tempt their youth
to the study of the sciences of civilisation, the profes-
sors of these nesi theories may count their disciples by
thousands and tens of thousands—disciples, too, who

listen with hollow Meeks and flashing eyes, and burn-
ing hearts, and arc ready to turn theory into practice,
although society it ly be shattered into fragments
during their operations. What barren abstractions
must all other thearies appear to the eager prop tart'
when compared with those which prove to him, or
appear to prove, that there is a way by whic t he
may be elevated from his present degradation,
that the very fact of this degradation is a
proof of thu vicious organisation of society
that he is hungry and poor and naked because the
world in general is i4norant of these sciences of the
plor ! Political ec..t.iimy may prove the impractica
bility of socialism, crinurin sense may overturn the
absurdities of communism, history may bear testi-
mony to the evils of democracy, and religious phila-
I suphy may demolish the atheistic assumptions of
hunanism ; all and each of the doctrines asserted in
the demolished sciences may be without foundation,
but the questions of which they treat arc stern reali-
ties, and will ever generate new theories to explain
them.

It is this theoribirg on the question of poverty
which constitutes the peculiar feature of the modern
proletariat. The connexion, which the modern strife of
classes has with that which existed in the old world,
is but slight. It is one object of the work named at
the head of this article to show that the disturbed
state of modern society is a phenomenon of a like na-
ture with that which occaaienallf appeared in aristo-
cratic Sparta or in democratic Athens, or in It me at
the time of the Gracehi. The Jacquerie of the middle
ages is also supposed to be legitimately con..ected
with the troubles of Greece and Rome. In our
opinion, however, the difference which exists between
modern and ancient convulsions is one of kind. and
not of degree. All the be ancient struggles possesbed
ma their common distinguishin? feature the endeavour
to obtain from the rich acquisitions of which the poor
had been unjustly deprived. The Roman peasant,
when he returned from the wars, and found
his lands ravaged, not by the enemy abroad,
but by the enemy at home, when he found
that he could end., repair the loisea which the state
was in law and in equity bound to repair, by putting
himself under the uncontrolled authority of those
who had been the causes of his ruin, joined with tu-
multuous thousands in demanding of his oppre-sors
that the laws should be respected. He never dreamed
that the constitution of the society under which he
lived was bad, he oily saw that the rich were the
causes of his ruin by their systematic violation of
that constitution. Similar obeervati ins apply with
more or less f-ree to all the troubles of the ancient
world and of the middle ages. The modern Proletary,
on the contrary, is persuaded that he is starv-
ing, that his children are sharing his
starvation, and growing up stunted in body
and mind, because the machine of society is
badly constructed, because the upper clams are ut-
terly ignorant of the causes which "make men happy
sal keep them so." His quarrel with the rich man is,
that in his opinion the latter blindly and ignorantly
umiatains and defends s system which cannot produce
hapiincll3. He beholds in the rich man not only an op-
prt.4.or but a madmen. He is hounded on to insanity
himself by Imeg:ring that those who regulate the
springs of society are as ignorant of its true comp