Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/180

must forcibly be either corrupters or corrupted; because, where every man can aspire to become Cesar, or by his vote to create Cesar, or by his approval to con- firm the power of Cesar, there all men must either be Cesars or pretors. Therefore, every society which falls under the domination of this school dies the same death they all die of gangrene. Kings corrupt their ministers, promising them a permanence of power; and the ministers corrupt the kings, promising to augment their prerogatives; and they also pervert the representatives of the people, by placing at their disposal all the state preferments, to gain which the assemblies give their votes to the ministers. The elected traffic with their power, the electors with their influence. All combine to bribe the people with their promises, and the people, in turn, intimidate every one by their clamors and threats.

To resume the thread of this argument—when the socialist schools deny the existence of God, which the liberal school affirms, they are more logical and consist- ent than the liberal school; yet they are far from being as consistent within their limits as the Catholic school is with itself. The Catholic school affirms the existence of God, and all his attributes, with a dogmatical and supreme affirmation. The socialists, on the contrary, although in reality they deny God, do not deny him in the same way, or for the same reasons, nor do they deny him boldly. The reason is this, that the most intrepid man is seized with terror when he seeks to affirm posi- tively that there is no God. It would seem as if man feared that, if he made such an assertion, he would be de- prived of the power ever to utter another word, and that such a blasphemy would cause the heavens to fall upon