While the socialist cause has been thus rather retreating in the south of Europe, it has been making some advances in the north. Of the three Scandinavian countries, Denmark alone gave any early response to the socialist agitation; but there are now socialist organizations in Sweden and Norway, and the movement in Denmark has assumed considerable dimensions. Attempts were made to introduce socialism into Norway as far back as 1873 by Danish emissaries, and the International also founded a small society of thirty-seven members in Christiania; but the society seems to have died, and nothing more was heard of socialism there till the commotion in favour of a Republic in 1883. A Social Democratic Club was then established in Christiania, and a Social Democratic Congress was held at Arendal in 1887; but even yet Norwegian social democracy is of so mild a character that it would be counted conservatism by Social Democrats elsewhere, for this Congress issued a programme for a new labour party without a word of socialism in it, and merely asking for a normal working day, for factory legislation and reform of taxation. In Sweden there is more appearance of agitation, because there is one very active agitator in the country, Palm, a tailor, who keeps socialism _en evidence_ by making stump speeches, or getting up street processions with the usual red flags, and sometimes--such was the easy indifference of the Government to his work at first--with a military band in full uniform at the head of them. The Swedish socialists had four newspapers in 1888, but three of them were confiscated by the Government in December of that year, and their editors arrested for offences against religion and the throne. In May, 1890, they held their first Congress at Stockholm, when delegates appeared from twenty-nine unions; but the movement is very unimportant in Sweden and Norway, and the chief conditions of success seem wanting to it in those countries. There is no class of labourers there without property; no town residuum, and no rural cottagers. There being few great manufacturers in the kingdom, only fifteen per cent. of the people altogether live in towns. The rest are spread sparsely over the rural districts on farms belonging to themselves, and in the absence of roads are obliged to make at home many of the ordinary articles of consumption. What with the produce of their small properties and their own general handiness, they are unusually independent and comfortable. M. de Laveleye considers them the happiest people in Europe.