The working classes have been proclaimed free; political equality has been granted them, but the gift has been valueless, for economically they are still bound to servitude, and only enjoy, as they did formerly, the liberty of dying of hunger.

All the socialist revendications have come from that; between labour and capital rests the terrifying problem, the solution of which threatens to sweep away society.

When slavery disappeared from the olden world to be succeeded by salaried employment the revolution was immense, and certainly the Christian principle was one of the great factors in the destruction of slavery.

Nowadays, therefore, when the question is to replace salaried employment by something else, possibly by the participation of the workman in the profits of his work, why should not Christianity again seek a new principle of action?
The fatal and proximate accession of the democracy means the beginning of another phase in human history, the creation of the society of to-morrow.

And Rome cannot keep away from the arena; the papacy must take part in the quarrel if it does not desire to disappear from the world like a piece of mechanism that has become altogether useless.
* In England we call the press the fourth estate, but in France and elsewhere the term is applied to the working classes, and in that sense must be taken here .-- Trans.
Hence it followed that Catholic socialism was legitimate.