Page:Diary of a Pilgrimage (1891).pdf/264

262 which it had existed before they came, the world had been going on all wrong, and how, in the course of the next few years or so, they meant to put it right.

Equality of all mankind was their watchword—perfect equality in all things—equality in possessions, and equality in position and influence, and equality in duties, resulting in equality in happiness and contentment.

The world belonged to all alike, and must be equally divided. Each man's labour was the property, not of himself, but of the State which fed and clothed him, and must be applied, not to his own aggrandisement, but to the enrichment of the race.

Individual wealth—the social chain with which the few had bound the many, the bandit's pistol by which a small gang of robbers had thieved from the whole community the fruits of its labours—must be taken from the hands that too long had held it.

Social distinctions—the barriers by which the rising tide of humanity had hitherto been fretted and restrained—must be for ever swept aside. The human race must press onward to its destiny (whatever that might be), not as at present, a scattered horde, scrambling, each man for himself, over the broken ground of unequal birth and fortune—the soft sward reserved for the feet of the pampered, the cruel stones left for the feet of the cursed,—but an ordered army, marching side by side over the level plain of equity and equality.

The great bosom of our Mother Earth should nourish all her children, like and like; none should be hungry, none should have too much. The strong man should not grasp more than the weak; the clever should not scheme to seize more than the simple. The earth was man's, and the fulness thereof; and among all mankind it should be