Excerpt from The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 9: A Monthly Review; January-June, 1881 These matters, it is true, all lie on the surface, and are possibly susceptible of arrangement by mutual compromise or by general dis armament. But there Is no appearance of this at present, and mean while the social danger which underlies and intensifies the political is becoming more difficult of solution each day. Those schemes for the reorganisation of society which Fourier, Saint Simon, Owen, Lassalle, Marx, and others propounded are no longer the mere dreams of impracticable theorists or the hopeless experiments of mis guided enthusiasts; they have been taken down from the closet of the Utopian investigator into the street, and move vast masses of men to almost religious exasperation against their fellows. Ever and anon some accident shows what men are really thinking of; an elec tion, a strike, a prohibited meeting give the opportunity, and we see what manner of difficulties those are which have to be faced by foreign statesmen, and which we in our turn may have to deal with here. For the questions now being discussed by hundreds of thou sands on the Continent go to the very foundation of all social arrange ments. It is no longer a mere barren argument about the rights of man to political representation: it is a determined Struggle to change the basis of agreements which have hitherto been considered abso lutely essential to the prevention of anarchy. What is more, those who hold these Opinions are gaining in numbers and in strength each day, though the fear felt and expressed of their doctrines compels them to more or less of secrecy in the propaganda which they steadily carry on. Ideas which a few years ago would have caused laughter or contempt, now arouse fear and indignation, and to-morrow will stir up hatred and ferocity; for events move fast in these days, and alike in Germany, France, Italy, and Russia, not to speak of other countries, we can now see clearly that a large portion of the urban population are being surely if slowly indoctrinated with notions that cannot be put in practice save at the expense of those above and around them. Though the ideas vary with race and climate, the principle is everywhere the same, and it is one which, if pressed to its logical conclusions, must shake the whole structure of modern society. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.