putting our civil service—federal, state, and municipal—on a sound moral basis. The fourth condition: “Pretensions of the lower classes in consequence of a democratic constitution. Communism is the logically not inconsistent exaggeration of the principle of equality.” If you reflect upon it, you will perceive that political equality, in the course of time, very naturally leads to thoughts of economic equality—equality in the enjoyment of spiritual and material goods. The fifth condition: “A general decay of religion and morality in the people. When every one regards wealth as a sacred trust or office, coming from God, and poverty as a divine dispensation, intended to educate and develop those afflicted thereby, and considers all men as brothers, and this earthly life only as a preparation for eternity, even extreme differences of property lose their irritating and demoralizing power. On the other hand, the atheist and materialist becomes only too readily a mammonist, and the poor mammonist falls only too easily into that despair which would gladly kindle a universal conflagration, in order either to plunder or lose his own life.” The maxim of the materialist, sunk in poverty and despair, is, as is noticed, not that noble one of our fathers, “Give me liberty or give me death,” but “Give me pleasure, enjoyment in this life, or let me die in my misery.” “The rich mammonist aggravates this sad condition of things when he casts suspicion on all wealth by the immorality of the means he takes to acquire it and the sinfulness of his enjoyments.”[196] Turning to the internal history of social democracy after Lassalle’s death, we have first to notice the condition of the “Universal German Laborers’ Union” since that event. It was controlled for some time by the Countess von Hatzfeldt. Her former connection with Lassalle and the possession of large financial resources enabled her for some time to maintain her position as its leading spirit. She interested herself in politics, however, more on account of Lassalle than for the sake of the laborers. She wished to honor his memory and promote the cause which had been dear to him.