Page:Studies in socialism 1906.djvu/104

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54
Studies in Socialism

trade, create this or that industry, open this or that shop. The guilds themselves will cease to exist; and consequently the Church maintained as a public institution, like a guild, will no longer have a corporate existence. It will, then, no longer have corporate property. And the estates of the Church, the millions of acres of real estate that it holds, having no longer an owner, since the owning corporation is dissolved, will of right revert to the nation, with the reservation that the latter ensures public worship, education, and public charity.

It is true that the Revolution had to have recourse to force; the 14th of July and the 10th of August mark the Fall of the Bastille and the taking of the Tuileries. But—and this is a point that should be carefully noted—force was never employed to impose on the nation the will of a minority. On the contrary, force was employed to insure the almost unanimous will of the majority against the factious attacks of the minority. On the 14th of July it was in opposition to the royal coup d'état, on the 10th of August it was against the treachery of the King, that the people of Paris took up arms; and these acts represented the right of the nation, and were the expression of its will. It was not due to stupid submissiveness that all France welcomed the 14th of July with acclamations, that almost all France ratified the 10th of August. It was solely because the force of a part of the nation had put itself at the