brutality and blind ignorance as the Czar of all the Russias uses.
{4}

But it will be said, and certainly with much truth, that not all the
Democrats are for mere political reform. I say that I believe that
this is true, and it is a very important truth too. I will go
farther, and will say that all those Democrats who can be
distinguished from Whigs do intend social reforms which they hope
will somewhat alter the relations of the classes towards each other;
and there is, generally speaking, amongst Democrats a leaning towards
a kind of limited State-Socialism, and it is through that that they
hope to bring about a peaceful revolution, which, if it does not
introduce a condition of equality, will at least make the workers
better off and contented with their lot.

They hope to get a body of representatives elected to Parliament, and
by them to get measure after measure passed which will tend towards
this goal; nor would some of them, perhaps most of them, be
discontented if by this means we could glide into complete State-
Socialism. I think that the present Democrats are widely tinged with
this idea, and to me it is a matter of hope that it is so; whatever
of error there is in it, it means advance beyond the complete
barrenness of the mere political programme.

Yet I must point out to these semi-Socialist Democrats that in the
first place they will be made the cat's-paw of some of the wilier of
the Whigs. There are several of these measures which look to some
Socialistic, as, for instance, the allotments scheme, and other
schemes tending toward peasant proprietorship, co-operation, and the
like, but which after all, in spite of their benevolent appearance,