·4 aucy depended. The middle class at once •accepted as a dyke to dam up the popular torrent. The priestly crew hastened to sanctify it, to save their ba:rk from foundering ·amid the brea.k- ~1 &. ~. Finally the people received it as an improvem:rnt upon the arbitrary .authority and violence of the past. To understand this, we must transport ourselves in imagination into the eighteenth century. Our hearts,must have ached at the story of the a.trocities committed by the all-pQwerful' nobles of that time upon the men and women of the people, before we can understand what must have been the magic fotiuence. upon the peasant's mind of the words, "·Equality before the law, obedience to the law without distinction of birth or fortune." }le, who until theri, had been treated more cruelly tha,n a beast, he who had never ·ha-d any rights, he who had· never obtained justice against the most revolting actions on the part of a noble, unless in revenge he killed him and was hanged -he saw himself recognised ·by this maxim, at least in theory, at least with regard to his personal rights, as the equal of his lord. Whateve1· this law might be, it promised to affect lord ~ and peasant alike; it proclaimed the equality of rich and poor lrefore the judge. 'I'he promise was { lie, and to-day we kno,., it; but at that period it was an advance, a: homage to justice, as hypocrisy is a homage rendered t-0 truth. This is the roasoa that when the ~aviours of the menaced middle class (the Robespierres and the Dantons) took their s~a1Hlupon the writings of the Rousseaus and the Voltaires, and proclaimed "respect for law, the same for every man," the people accepted the compromise; for their revolutionary impetus had already spent its force i~ the contest with a foe whose ra.nks drew closer day by day, they bowed their neck beneath the yoke oC law to save themselves fr.om the arbitrary power of their lords. The :Middle Class has ever since.continued t.o make the most of this maxim, which with another principle, that of representative government, sums up the whole philosophy of the bourgeois' age, the XIX century .. It has preached this doctrine in its schools, it has propagated it in its writings, it has moulded its a.rt and science to the same purpose, it hai,_thrust its beliefs into every hole and corner-like a pious Englishwoman, who Elips :r< Biblioteca Gino Bianco -
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