EN ANGLETERRE. LXVII

» du socialisme; c’est son chant du coucou. D’ardents » esprits ont répété au monde, assez souvent pour ne » plus l’étonner, qu’ils avaient un plan pour rendre » chaque homme heureux et riche. Par malheur on a » pu reconnaître depuis longtemps, et à plus d’un signe,

their hopcs so clearly as the Spectator, — evidently look upon an extension of the franchise as the means to something like the same ends. What they want is not liberty for the people, but greater forces of compulsion against them. Il is « compulsory éducation » , compulsory hygiene, compulsory providence, compulsory every thing. Liberty cannot be trusted. Liberty has brought ail our ills. More government is the cry, as iftheworld has notbeen governed enough, and government had always, whether of a democracy or a tyranny, proved itself incapable of making people prospérous, happy, intelligent. At a moment when Germany is throwing ofT those fetters ol over government which she regards as the cause of her long minorily, when in every one of her States her ablest mon are asking that the action of the administration shall be more and more curtailed, when ail the whole intelligence of France, is struggling to throw off what it déclarés to be the real gag upon the development of na tional prosperity, our English Radicals are clamouring for more government, and are diligently picking up for home use the cast off trammels ofour neighbours. Government may do something to assis- 1 people to rise out of pauperism and ignorance, but it can no more extinguish them than it can stay the course of the forces of nature. It may take away the property of the rich and distribute it among the poor, but that will not extinguish but extend pauperism. How M. Cobden’s friend ami admirer, Bastiat, would be startled, if he could return to life, to ftnd that in England, the privileged land of common sense, the socialism he combated so deeply tinctured the whole programme of English Libérais, and especially possessed the men who were wont to worship M. Cobden as a deity. Foreign observers of our political life, already déclaré themselves startled by the favour which the doctrines they thought generally exploded are obtaining in England, which, once the land of self-government, seems in a paroxysm of weakness to be falling into a belief that the State can and ought to do everything.