Page:Ferdinand Lassalle - The Working Man's Programme - tr. Edward Peters (1884).djvu/51

 classes were good and moral. In the new declaration of the rights of man issued by the French convention, that powerful constituent assembly of France, this was actually laid down by a special article, namely, article nineteen, which runs as follows, "Toute institution qui ne suppose le peuple bon, et le magistrat corruptible, est vicieuse." "Every institution which does not assume that the people are good and the magistracy contemptible is vicious." You see that this is exactly the opposite to the happy faith now required, according to which there is no greater sin than to doubt of the goodwill and the virtue of the Government, while it is taken for granted that the people are a sort of tiger and a sink of corruption.

At the time of which we are speaking the opposite dogma had advanced so far, that almost every one who had a whole coat on his back was thought to be a bad man, or at least an object of suspicion; and virtue, purity, and patriotic morality were thought to be possessed only by those who had no decent clothes. It was the period of sansculottism.

This view, gentlemen, is in fact founded on a truth, but it presents itself in an untrue and perverted form. Now there is nothing more dangerous than a truth which presents itself in an untrue perverted form. For in whatever way we deal with it, we are certain to go wrong. If we adopt such a truth in its untrue perverted form, it will lead at certain times to most pernicious destruction, as was the case with sansculottism. But if we regard the whole statement as untrue on account of its untrue perverted form, then we are much worse.