of the price of commodities. I know nothing more deplorable than this fact. What sensations must it cause in those poor men who, with all they hold dear, are day after day at the mercy of the accidents of market price? That is the slave market of our Liberal Europe, fashioned after the model of our humanist, rationalistic, anti-Christian Liberalism, and freemasonry." The bishop never spares an opportunity of attacking "heathen humanist Liberalism," which he says has pushed the labouring man into the water, and now stands on the bank spinning fine theories about his freedom, but calmly seeing him drown. After this it might be expected that Ketteler would be all for abolishing industrial freedom, and for restoring a _régime_ of compulsory guilds and corporations; but he is not. He acknowledges that the old system of guilds had its advantages; it was a kind of assured understanding between the workman and society, according to which the former adjusted his work and the latter his wages. But it was the abuses of the compulsory powers of the guilds that led to industrial freedom; and, on the other hand, industrial freedom has great countervailing advantages of its own which he scruples to give up. It has immensely increased production and cheapened commodities, and so enabled the lower classes to enjoy means of life and enjoyment they had not before. Nor does Ketteler approve of Lassalle's scheme of establishing productive associations of working men upon capital supplied by the State. Not that he objects to productive associations; on the contrary, he declares them to be a glorious idea, and thinks them the true solution of the problem. But he objects to supplying their capital by the State, as involving a direct violation of the law of property. The Catholic Church, he says, has never maintained an absolute right of property. Her divines have unanimously taught that the right of property cannot avail against a neighbour who is in extreme need, because God alone is absolute proprietor, and no man is more than a limited vassal, holding under God, and on the conditions which He imposes; and one of these conditions is that any man in extremities is entitled to satisfy his necessity where and how he pleases.[1] In such a case, according to Catholic doctrine, it is not the man in distress that is the thief, but the proprietor who would gainsay and stop him. The distressed have a positive right to succour, and the State may therefore, without violating any of the rights of property, tax the parishes, or the proprietors, for the relief of the poor. But beyond this the State has no title to go. It may legitimately tax people for the purpose of saving working men from extremities, but not for the purpose of bettering their normal position.