He has become prosperous, and employs two or three hundred laborers. He owns, also, a valuable house in Leipsic. Some have objected that he was inconsistent in paying his employees just as other masters do and in living well himself. Those who do so cannot understand the social democrats. The very corner-stone of their belief is that the individual is not responsible for the present condition of things; that harmony can be secured only by the combined action of society—by a social, and not by an individual, regeneration. All that the individual can do, they hold, is to labor for the overthrow of existing society and the establishment of the people’s state, and in the meanwhile to live like other people. A change has taken place in German social democracy since the death of Lassalle, who was a patriot, and with whom it was national. He sought a basis in united Germany. Social democracy is now cosmopolitan and international in the sense of anti-national. It has approached more and more nearly to the most unqualified communism. Like French communism, it lays most stress on equality, and at times appears ready to sacrifice everything else to obtain that. The unity of interests (_solidarité_) and economic equality (_egalité_) are the watchwords of the leaders. Liebknecht says: “Human progress consists in the approach to equality; freedom is only a conventional phrase, which conceals all possible things.” It begins to be recognized that equality and liberty—as now understood, at any rate—are incompatible, and greater value is attached to the former. Most, in his lecture in Baltimore, to which reference has already been made, brought out vividly the gross, materialistic view the social democrats take of liberty. “You boast of your American liberty,” cried he, “but of what value is it? Has any one ever been able to clothe himself with it? to house himself in it? or to satisfy with it the cravings of his stomach?” Previous to the attempts to take the life of the German emperor, in 1878, the necessity of overthrowing existing institutions by violence was proclaimed with ever-increasing openness. Lassalle had spoken of a radical change brought about peacefully, which he called a peaceful revolution. The upper classes had the choice between yielding to the demands of the fourth estate and a violent overthrow of existing economic institutions. “I am persuaded,” said he, “that a revolution will take place. It will take place legally and with all the blessings of freedom if, before it is too late, our rulers become wise, determined, and courageous enough to lead it. Otherwise, after the lapse of a certain time, the goddess of revolution will force an entrance into our social structure, amid all the convulsions of violence, with wild, streaming locks and brazen sandals on her feet. In the one way or the other she will come; and when, forgetting the tumult of the day, I sink myself in history, I am able to hear from afar her heavy tread.”