Our Paris Letter.

Manawatu Herald, 17 July 1894, Page 3

Our Paris Letter.

(fbom our own correspondent.)

Paris, 15th May, 1894. The propagators and champions of Frenoh Socialism are perfectly aware that, however much they may control the impecunious and idle portion of the urban working classes, they can do nothing effectively, unless they can succeed in attracting to their standard the rural population. They therefore endeavour to persuade the rural population, that their interests were completely over-, looked during the great Social upheaval— the French Revolution. But even assuming for the sake of argument, that such was the case, it is difficult to perceive, how the rural population is to be benefitted by the confiscation of landed property by the State, as proposed by Socialists. The peasant proprietor would lose the few acres of land he now possesses, and an invincible barrier would be erected against his acquiring any increase of the property he now hold 3. Modern investigation has conclusively proved, that the beneficiares under the confiscation acts of the first French Revolution, were principally the jacobin officials of the period, who not only bought the land for worthless assiquats, but who used the conferred upon them by the Republican Convention, to terrorize and scare away all would-be purchasers. The Chamber of Deputies authorised a few days ago the Government to prosecute M. Toussaint Deputy by 291 votes to 220, for insulting "language indulged in by that Socialist Deputy during the recent strike at St. Nazaire. What is required is a law forbidding Deputies to interfere in strikes or in any other gathering of the discontented where the Executive is brought into collision with the disturbers of the public peace. The place of the Deputies is in their Chamber, and, as they make the laws, they ought to set an example in respecting them. The idea of the omnipotence of the State is deeply rooted in the French mind, and has been very little affected by the successive revolutions through which France has passed during a century. The ignorant miners and workmen, -when on strike, imagine, that the Deputies exhorting them, adorned -with medals and tricoloured scarfs, are the Government, and that they are obeying it in resisting the police. The same idea was prevalent prior to the First French Revolution, namely tbat the Eing had authorized the burning of the houses of the nobility.