Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/254

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS approve. So much is understood, the question is open, we shall discuss it as fully as you please; in the meantime I wish to brand the sophism upon which you have founded your right of expropriation. You have shown us both extreme wealth and extreme poverty; you have promised us that in six months you would find the means to remedy the evil you point out, and you have concluded: "Would not this society be better, juster, humaner? Reply, ere we launch the anathema!"

M. Jaurès, there are more than two hypotheses to submit to this Chamber; between the society of to-day and yours there are an infinite number of social conceptions which may be developed. You underestimate the task. Admitting even that your criticisms are well founded, that present society is as bad as you say it is (and I am not of those who pretend that it is very good, as you well know); admitting further that the society which you have conceived is actually realizable, you have still omitted a point which is worth the trouble of considering, and that is that we have not alone to choose between the society which you promise and society as it is. There are an infinite number of other hypotheses, and when I shall later on speak to you of the projects of social order which this much-abused middle-class Republic has nevertheless brought to success, I shall show you without difficulty that the social regime of to-day is not the social régime of twenty years ago, and that it is in truth founded upon absolutely different principles. 218