It follows that the conservative has allotted to him the ungracious and invidious task of discouraging the hopes of a too eager philanthropy; he is compelled to show, of certain evils, that they are constantly to be contended against, but never can be eradicated. Society has been often compared to a pyramid; its broad basis on the earth, and towering high or not, according as circumstances were propitious to its formation; but always the broad basis lying on the earth. He accepts the ancient simile; he recognises the unalterable pyramid. Without aid of priest or legislator, society assumes this form; it crystallises thus; higher and higher, broader and broader, it rises, and extends, but still the lowest stratum is lying close upon the earth. Will you disguise the fact? It is fruitless, and the falsehood only recoils upon yourself, rendering what truth you utter weak and suspicious. Will you strive to make the pyramid stand upon its apex? It will _not_ stand; and what god or giant have you to hold it there? Or will you join the madman, who, because the lowest stratum cannot be made the highest, nor any other but the lowest, would level the whole pyramid to the ground, and make every part touch the earth? No; you will do all in your power for that lowest stratum, but you will not consent that, because all cannot be cultivated and refined, no one shall have a chance of becoming so. You accept the pyramid. When M. Prudhon criticises the laws which preside over the production and distribution of wealth, and shows their twofold and antagonistic influence, he is but illustrating the inevitable formation of our pyramid. Let us follow him in a few instances. _The Division of Labour._--This is the first topic on which our author descants--the first of our economic laws in which he finds his contradictions--his two poles of good and evil. On the advantages of the division of labour, we have but to call to mind the earlier chapters of Adam Smith, wherein these are so truthfully and vividly described. Indeed, the least reflection is sufficient to show that, if each man undertook by his own labour to provide for all his wants, it would be impossible for society to advance beyond the very rudest form of existence. One man must be tailor, another shoemaker, another agriculturist, another artist; and these trades or occupations, to be brought to perfection, must again be subdivided into different departments of industry--and one man makes the coat, and another weaves the cloth, one man makes the shoe, and another dresses the leather. It is needless to say that these departments are again divided into an almost infinite number of separate occupations; till, at length, we find that a man employs his whole day in turning one thread over another, or in manufacturing the eighteenth part of a pin.