Page:The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery.djvu/19

 their posterity have become our modern Bourgeois; the less fortunate and more numerous have become our modern Proletarians. These latter are what the French call le Prolétariat de l'Europe; and this Prolétariat their Guizots and doctrinaires now divide into the four following classes, which we pray all true democrats to mark, learn, and inwardly digest:—1, les Ouvriers; 2, les Mendians; 3, les Voleurs; and 4, les Filles Publiques: that is to say, 1, Workmen; 2, Beggars; 3, Robbers; and 4, Prostitutes!—a classification which must be highly flattering to the operative class, and enamour them vastly of royal and doctrinaire governments.

These several divisions of the Prolétariat are thus defined by the doctrinaires:—

"A workman is a Proletarian who works for wages in order to live.

"A beggar is a Proletarian who will not or cannot work, and who begs in order to live.

"A robber is a Proletarian who will neither work nor beg, but who robs or steals in order to live.

"A public woman is a Proletarian who will neither work nor beg nor steal, but who prostitutes herself in order to live."

Such is the classification by which the vast majority of civilized society is nowadays distinguished by writers of the first eminence! Such is the classification they justify and would uphold! Nay, as we shall show, they offer it to us as the legitimate development of civilization, and as a just and righteous inheritance purchased for us by the blood of our Redeemer, and bequeathed to us through eighteen centuries of Gospel propagandism!!!