TO THE READER.
My readers may desire to know my reasons for pub- lishing Buonarroti's work. I will frankly explain. The motives that determined me are as follows : —
1st. Because Buonarroti's book contains one of the best expositions I have seen of those great political and social principles which I have so long advocated in the "Poor Man's Guardian* and other publications, and which I am still endeavouring to inculcate through the columns of " Hetherington's Twopenny Dispatch* The application of these principles I deem to be of paramount importance to the human race. Society has been hitherto constituted upon no fixed principles. The state in which we find it is the blind result of chance. Even its advocates do not claim for it any other origin. The jright of the strongest — the only rig ht arknowWorpd o n savage man — a ppe a rs to be still th e fundamental ch arter of all "civilized" state s. The wandering savage asks no other title to his neighbour's produce than his own superior strength or capacity to take it. The " civilized" man acts precisely, though disguisedly, on, the same prin- ciple. Their means are different, but the objects and end are the same. What the savage or uncivilized man does individually and directly, by the exercise of mere personal prowess, the civilized man (so called) does col- lectively and circuitously , by cunningly-designed in- stitutions. The effects of these institutions are well depicted by Buonarroti. Heuah ojys, with admirab le ability^ how, m trying tQ escape thfcjeSjs of savage life^jpan Jhaa U n-
consciously plunged into another state fa** mnro pflfo- ffitous — to wit^ the present, artificial atat^,, which ftp terms that of " false civiliza tion." He shows, that to c toejet the evug^o fjhis jatter state, without Jithe_same ^m£retrog^iin g to the former ; was th ft grand -ypftMPTin so ught to be resolv ed by the first French Revolution ; and, in diSCuSSmg the principles and Institutions deemed necessary to that end by the leaden of the Revolution,
