The action of a majority composed of the ordinary type of convinced socialists could and would in a few years do more to make socialism impossible than could be accomplished by the best and most prolonged efforts of a majority of malignant anti-socialists.

The first French republicans made by their behavior another republic out of the question in France for almost sixty years; and the second republican majority did not do so very much better.

When the republic came in France it was founded by men who were not theoretical democrats, but who understood that a republic was for the time being the kind of government best adapted to the national French interest.

These theoretical monarchists, but practical republicans, were for the most part more able, more patriotic, and higher-minded men than the convinced republicans; and in all probability a third republic, started without their cooeperation, would also have ended in a dictatorship.

Any substantial advance toward social reorganization will in the same way be forced by considerations of public welfare on a majority of theoretical anti-socialists, because it is among this class that the most competent and best disciplined individuals are usually to be found.