The teachings of Rousseau, which logically resulted in the French revolution, wherein the confiscation of property was the prime purpose, is compared with some of the teachings of today. History that should constitute an ample warning is cited.

We have been sowing what Rousseau was permitted to sow and from which was reaped the French revolution. The “Social Contract” taught that property as understood today did not exist. The citizen simply held it in trust for society. For under the “Social Contract” each “surrenders himself up absolutely, just as he actually stands, he and all his resources, of which his property forms a part.” The next logical step in the revolution was to discharge or recall the trustee, and thus vest the property again in society itself. That was done. George W. Hinman in “Can We Learn Anything from History?” summarizes this recall of trusteeships as follows: “Society proceeded to recall its trustees as fast as ‘Society’ needed the property. It recalled the trusteeships of all the church property, $800,000,000; of all the property of exiles, $600,000,000; of all the property of the guillotined and condemned, $200,000,000; of all the property of hospitals and charitable institutions, $200,000,000; of all the state domains sold and rented in the last three hundred years, $400,000,000; of all the gold and silver vessels and specie, $100,000,000; of all the property of other institutions, valuables and common goods, $700,000,000. Then it recalled the trusteeships of coats and trousers, growing crops, pots, kettles, pans and mattresses. In one town it recalled the trusteeship of ten thousand pairs of shoes from ten thousand pairs of feet, and thus condemned ten thousand former custodians of this property to go about their tasks barefooted in the snow.”

Not only this but the government extended confiscation by means of income tax until the whole of every income in excess of six hundred dollars was to be taken. Taine, the historian, summarizes thus: “Whatever the grand terms of liberty, equality and fraternity may be, with which the revolution graces itself, it is in its essence a transfer of property. In this alone consists its chief support, its enduring energy, its primary impulse and its historical significance.”

Hinman summarizes thus: “The people in a body is infallible; unlike individuals it can make no mistakes. Therefore we should not trust government to individual representatives or agents but to the pure and direct democracy. But we cannot have direct democracy at its purest without equality of condition. To get equality of condition we must get equality of property. To get equality of property we must correct the inequalities of the past and present. Therefore to correct these inequalities we invent the theory of trusteeship of property, recall the trustees, and take possession of all unequal properties in the name of society.

“That is the whole cycle; that is the great revolution! Twenty-five years in preparation, eleven years in actual practice, fourteen years in immediate consequences; fifty years all told and that is sum, substance and essence from the beginning to the end, a transfer of property! A transfer of property without compensation! A confiscation of property beyond appeal and beyond recall! There were movements also against the church, and against the family, but the transfer of property far surpassed them both in size and in significance.

“That the convulsions attending the movement were more spectacular than the movement itself; that a million persons were stabbed, drowned, shot, beheaded and hunted to death within the borders of the nation; that wars were started that strewed Europe with 5,000,000 dead; that the oppression was far more ferocious than under Louis XIV, that the waste of government was arithmetically four times greater than under the most wasteful monarchy; that a whole nation was bathed in blood, bankrupted in morals, and rotted in character to the core—all of these things, hideous and appalling as they may be, distracting and absorbing as they may be, are still but as colossal incidents. The chief movement through this sea of blood and wilderness of death was the transfer of property.”

Nevertheless, Robespierre—the bloodiest man who had ever lived, the bloodiest man who ever has lived outside of Russia, and the bloodiest man who ever will live unless socialism gets control in the United States—was an idealist. He resigned the bench rather than pronounce sentence of death upon a convicted criminal. He read Rousseau’s “Social Contract” every day. He was the leader in the “uplift” movement of the age in which he lived and sought to produce Utopian conditions of “liberty, equality and fraternity” throughout France. While an Internationalist he sought to reform and transform France before extending his field of influence.

But being self-willed as well as self-opinionated, at the first appearance of opposition he threw down the challenge. There was “some fight in him and he liked it.” He appealed directly to the people and condemned to the guillotine everyone who had the temerity to resist his efforts to ameliorate human conditions. While seeking everywhere for property to confiscate, and heads to guillotine, he made the most elaborate speech of his career:

“Our purpose is to substitute morality for egotism, honesty for honor, principles for customs, duties for proprieties, the empire of reason for the tyranny of habit, contempt of vice for indifference to misfortune, dignity for insolence, nobility for vanity, love of glory for love of money, good people for society, merit for intrigue, genius for intellectual brilliancy, the charm of contentment for the satiety of pleasure, the majesty of man for the high breeding of the great, a magnanimous, powerful and happy people for amiable, frivolous and wretched people; that is to say, every virtue and miracle of the republic in the place of the vices and absurdities of the monarchy.”

I submit that is pretty good rhetoric and excellent diction. Though it means absolutely nothing it must have sounded well to the proletariat. The people idolized Robespierre for a while at least, as they always idolize an orator who has great command of indefinite and high-sounding language. Idolizing an idealist they followed him and were led to the extremes of democracy. The whole population of France was transformed into an organized mob, doing everything that a mob can do but, in the main, preserving the forms of law.