politics would lead you back again exactly to the place you started
from. You would be Whigs under a different name. Monarchy, House of
Lords, pensions, standing army, and the rest of it, are only supports
to the present social system--the PRIVILEGE based on the wages and
capital system of production--and are worth nothing except as
supports to it. If you are determined to support that system,
therefore, you had better leave these things alone. The real masters
of Society, the real tyrants of the people, are the Landlords and
Capitalists, whom your political triumph would not interfere with.

Then, as now, there would be a proletariat and a moneyed class.
Then, as now, it would be possible sometimes for a diligent,
energetic man, with his mind set wholly on such success, to climb out
of the proletariat into the moneyed class, there to sweat as he once
was sweated; which, my friends, is, if you will excuse the word, your
ridiculous idea of freedom of contract.

The sole and utmost success of your policy would be that it might
raise up a strong opposition to the condition of things which it
would be your function to uphold; but most probably such opposition
would still be outside Parliament, and not in it; you would have made
a revolution, probably not without bloodshed, only to show people the
necessity for another revolution the very next day.

Will you think the example of America too trite? Anyhow, consider
it! A country with universal suffrage, no king, no House of Lords,
no privilege as you fondly think; only a little standing army,
chiefly used for the murder of red-skins; a democracy after your
model; and with all that, a society corrupt to the core, and at this
moment engaged in suppressing freedom with just the same reckless