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How unfair, at least unwise, it is to judge the individual action of the proletaire, when he is made for action in the mass." This vague philosophy and transcendental ethics pass naturally enough, at times, into the feeling of violent revolution, where bomb-throwing, if not advocated, is emotionally sympathetic.
Why is it not seen that these ideas are mutually repellent, and that, if, by some impossibility, the proletaire could reach a certain degree of intelligence, he would make use of it in the first place to revolutionize society and change all civil and industrial relations? And what I say is no vain exaggeration.
Equality of conditions is a natural law upon which public economy and jurisprudence are based. The right to labor, and the principle of equal distribution of wealth, cannot give way to the anxieties of power. It is not for the proletaire to reconcile the contradictions of the codes, still less to suffer for the errors of the government.
"I do not need your services," replies the proprietor, showing the end of his pike or the barrel of his gun. "Lower my rent at least." "I need my income to live upon." "How can I pay you, when I can get no work?" "That is your business." Then the unfortunate proletaire abandons himself to the waves; or, if he attempts to land upon the shore of property, the proprietor takes aim, and kills him.
"A man of your years does not lightly forsake the traditions of his Caste, and the usages of his ancestors; and what can patricians like General Laurance hope to secure by stooping to the borders of proletaire?" "The woman whom he loves. To you I will confess, that never until within the past six or eight months have I really comprehended the power of genuine love.
The sympathy which we feel for the proletaire is like that with which animals inspire us; delicacy of organs, dread of misery, pride in separating ourselves from all suffering, it is these shifts of egoism that prompt our charity. And socialists, rebuking Christianity, dare to talk to us of love!
He must, in other words, prove himself as virtuous, whenever public demonstration demands, as the Frankenstein platitudes proclaim him to be. The Puritanism of the nation, remorselessly upheld by its laws and its public factotums is an extraneous and artificial pose into which the blundering proletaire has tricked itself. There are innumerable consequences.
He wrote: "That toiling humanity the labour movement to me is a thing so vast, that whatever other movements try to exclude themselves from it, they must be swallowed up in it. All other things are but the shadows cast behind or before the ever-marching phalanx of the unconquerable, the imperishable proletaire. This is the hope which sends its thrill through us when nothing else can.
Possibly the painter expressed too unreservedly his views in these respects. A prince may be permitted to masquerade as a prolétaire; but for a bystander to talk red republicanism to a royal heir-apparent is rather doubtful taste, to say the least of it. By-and-by wild Prince Hal came to power, and shrunk from his old associates.
Terry, in his very different way, wrote on the same subject: "I never knew a sincere, not to say honest, labour leader, from business agent up. Poor proletaire! forever crucified between two sets of thieves one rioting on his rights, the other carousing on his wrongs. Labour plods while plunder plays, thus runs the world away.
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