Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/275

LIBERALISM, AND SOCIALISM.

fortunate, and consequently more arrogant than the rest, exclaimed, All the glory is ours, for with us the title of republican is a family inheritance, and has been transmitted to us by blood,-what was this but the entire adoption of aristocratic sentiments by republicanism?

If we examine in succession all the revolutionary schools, we shall find them all disputing with each other for a family predominance, and attempting to trace a noble ancestry. The chief of one group is the illustrious St. Simon; of another, the distinguished Fourier; of a third, the patriot Babeuf. All have a patrimony, a glory, and a mission in common, and all are united with each other by the tie of a close solidarity. They all seek in past ages some personality so noble, high, and exalted that they may find in him a yet closer bond and common center. Some among them have chosen Plato as the glorious personification of ancient wisdom. The greater number, carried away by their mad ambition to the height of blasphemy, have not feared thus to profane the holy name of the Redeemer of mankind. As one poor and abandoned, they would deny him; humble, they would despise him; but their insolent pride has not forgotten that in his poverty, isolation and humility, he was a king, and that the blood of kings flowed in his veins. As to Mr. Proudhon, he is the perfect type of socialist pride, which is, in its turn, the extreme concentration of human arrogance. His vanity carries him to the most remote ages in search of an ancestry, which he traces with presumption up to the times almost contemporaneous with the creation, when the Hebrews flourished under the Mosaic institutions. We shall embrace a more favorable opportunity to show clearly that the title of Mr. Proudhon to nobility