“Boldly said,” remarked Signor Giovanni Urbini, a leader of young Italy, “but it is hardly wise. The people are not yet, especially in my country, prepared for it. They have so long been the slaves of power, and the tools of superstition, that they would be shocked at its bare announcement. They must have their Madonnas, their San Carlos, their San Felippos, and their capucin frati. But a thoroughgoing democratic revolution is no doubt needed, and such a revolution will necessarily result in a no less thorough and radical revolution in religion; but this last we had better leave to come of itself. You cannot work with purely negative ideas. You must have something positive, and that must be the positive idea of the age. Kings, princes, nobles, priests, religions in our times are at a discount, and the secret, silent, but irresistible tendency is to bring up the people. Assert, then, boldly everywhere people-king, people-pontiff, people-god. Fling out to the breeze the virgin banner of the people. Go forth to war in the name of the people, in the inspiration of the people, and always and everywhere shout THE PEOPLE, THE PEOPLE. Break the fetters which now bind the people, emancipate them from their present masters, assert their supremacy, and establish their power, which of course in the last analysis will be our power over them. They will then re-organize society, religion, and politics, and every thing else, after the best model, and in the way which will best meet our wishes.” “I am decidedly opposed to my friend Urbini’s doctrine,” frankly asserted M. Beaubien, from the sunny south of France, “I want no king-people, and if I must be tyrannized over, I prefer it should be by one man rather than the many-headed and capricious multitude. The evils under which society groans is individualism, which now exerts itself in universal competition, so highly prized by your foolish and stupid political economists. These evils can be removed by no political or religious revolution, neither by your Luthers nor your Robespierres. They can be removed only by the pacific organization of labor, and the arrangement of laborers in groups and series according to their special tastes and capacities, on the newly-discovered principle that ‘attractions are proportional to destiny.’” “A better plan,” suggested M. Icarie, also from la belle France, “is to abolish all private property, all private households, industry, and economy, and have the whole community supported, lodged, fed, clothed, feasted or nursed, and transported from place to place, from house to house, at the public expense.” “Admirable,” interposed Mr. Cotton, “but who will support the public, and whence will the public draw its funds?” “Singular questions,” replied M. Icarie. “The public will support itself, and draw the necessary funds from the public treasury, as a matter of course.”