Page:Studies in socialism 1906.djvu/148

98 that a vigorous push can shake into life. There are everywhere centres of force which would quickly become centres of resistance and points of reaction, if they were not moving gradually in the direction of the new society of their own accord.

In the second place, the transformation of property that Socialism wishes and ought to accomplish is much vaster, more far-reaching, and much more subtle than that accomplished one hundred and ten years ago by the revolutionary middle class.

In 1789 the Revolution struck at a form of property marked out by narrow limits. When the possessions of the Church were nationalised it was a corporate property very clearly defined that was being absorbed. Outside of the Church and of the regular and secular clergy, not a single person who owned property had to fear that the law of expropriation which had been decreed against the Church would react on him. The Abbé Maury tried in vain to spread a panic: the bourgeois and peasant-proprietors knew too well that the property of the Church was clearly defined, and that expropriation would not go beyond those limits.

In the same way, when the Revolution abolished feudal rights, that too was a definite measure, with results known beforehand and limited in scope. There were undoubtedly some cases of