Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/244

less we consider it as the result of an hereditary transmission. On the other hand, an hereditary monarchy, considered as a fundamental institution of state, is a contradictory and absurd institution, if we deny the virtue of transmission by blood, which is the constitutive principle of all the historic aristocracies. Finally, the rationalist liberal school, in its repulsive materialism, attributes to riches, which are transferable, the virtue which it denies to blood, which is transmitted. The power of the rich appears more lawful to this school than the power of the noble. After this ephemeral and contradictory school come the socialist schools, which, while they accept all the principles of the liberals, at the same time deny all the consequences they deduce from them. The socialist schools adopt from the rationalist liberal school the negation of the solidarity of humanity, in the political and in the religious order; and, after having denied with this school the transmission of sin and of penalty in the religious order, they also deny, in opposition to it, the existence of sin and of penalty. After having, in the political order, affirmed with this school the principle of the legitimate aptitude of all men to fill all the functions and dignities of the state, they go still further, and assert that this principle logically brings with it the suppression of an hereditary monarchy, and consequently involves the destruction of the monarchy itself, which, in ceasing to be hereditary, becomes a dangerous and useless institution. After this, it is not difficult for them to prove, the native equality of man once granted, that this equality brings with it the suppression of all aristocratic distinctions, and consequently the suppression of the electoral census, in which they cannot recog