ABSTRACT
Democratic institutions are always advantageous to aristocracies of every sort, for which reason these aristocracies must always defend them and prefer them to any other. The conflict between the democratic idea and the aspirations of the Socialists is so far invisible to superficial minds, and most people consider Socialism only as the necessary development and foreseen consequence of the democratic idea. In reality no two political conceptions are separated by deeper gulfs than Socialism and democracy. Democracy, favours the liberty and competition which of necessity lead to the triumph of the most capable, while Socialism, aims at the suppression of competition, the disappearance of liberty, and a general equalisation, so that there is evidently an insuperable opposition between the principles of Socialism and those of democracy. Democracy proposes as its fundamental principle the equality of the rights of all men and free competition.
