Page:Ferdinand Lassalle - The Working Man's Programme - tr. Edward Peters (1884).djvu/46

 or leaflets written by authors "sans existence connue." The freedom of the press which was thus seized upon, was to be allowed therefore only to writers of known means of subsistence. Property appears therefore as the the condition of the freedom of the press, nay in fact of the morality of a writer! This naiveté of the first days of the rule of the Bourgeois, only expresses in an artless and open way, what has been attained by the ingenious contrivance of caution money and stamp duty in our day.

We must be satisfied gentlemen, with these great and characteristic facts, which corroborate the view we have taken of the Middle Ages.

We have now seen, gentlemen, two periods of the world, each of which is dominated by the ruling idea of a particular class of the community which impresses its own principle on all the social arrangements of its time.

First the idea of nobility, or of the possession of land which forms the ruling principle of the Middle Ages, and permeates all its institutions.

This period closed with the French Revolution, although you will understand that, especially in Germany, where the change was not brought about by the people, but by very gradual and incomplete reforms introduced by the Government, numerous and important extensions of that first period of history have occurred, which even at the present day greatly hamper the progress of the Bourgeoisie.

We saw in the next place the period of history which begins at the eighteenth century with the French