The electronic edition is
a part of the UNC-CH
digitization project, Documenting the
American South, or, The Southern Experience in
19th-century America.
Any hyphens occurring in
line breaks
have been removed,
and the trailing part of a word has been joined to the
preceding line.
All quotation marks and
ampersand have been transcribed as
entity references.
All double right and left
quotation marks are encoded
as " and "
respectively.
All single right and left
quotation marks are encoded
as ' and ' respectively.
Indentation in lines has
not been preserved.
Running titles have not
been preserved.
Spell-check and
verification made against printed text
using Author/Editor (SoftQuad) and Microsoft Word spell
check programs.
Library of Congress Subject Headings, 21st
edition, 1998
BY
Entered according to Act of Congress,
in the year 1857, by
ADOLPHUS MORRIS,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of
the United States
for the Eastern District of Virginia.
C. H. WYNNE, PRINTER, RICHMOND.
Virginia should have her centres of Thought at her Colleges and her University, centres of Trade and Manufactures at her Seaboard and Western towns, and centres of Fashion at her Mineral Springs.
I agree with you, too, that State strength and State independence are the best guarantees of State rights; and that policy the wisest which most promotes the growth of State strength and independence.
Weakness invites aggression; strength commands respect; hence, the Union is safest when its separate members are best able to repel injury, or to live independently.
Your attachment to Virginia has not lessened your love for the Union. In urging forward to completion such works as the Covington and Ohio Road, you are trying to add to the wealth, the glory and the strength of our own State, whilst you would add equally to the wealth, the strength and perpetuity of the Union.
I cannot commit you to all the doctrines of my book, for you will not see it until it is published.
With very great respect,
Your obedient servant,
GEO. FITZHUGH.
Port
Royal, Aug. 22, 1856.
I have endeavored, in this work, to treat the subjects of Liberty and Slavery in a more rigidly analytical manner than in "Sociology for the South;" and, at the same time, to furnish the reader with abundance of facts, authorities and admissions, whereby to test the truth of my views.
My chief aim has been to shew, that Labor makes values, and Wit exploitates and accumulates them; and hence to deduce the conclusion that the unrestricted exploitation of so-called free society, is more oppressive to the laborer than domestic slavery.
In making a distinct onslaught on the popular doctrines of Modern Ethics, I must share the credit or censure with my corresponding acquaintance and friend, Professor H. of Virginia.
Our acquaintance commenced by his congratulating me, by letter, on the announcement that I was occupied
with a treatise vindicating the institution of Slavery in the abstract, and by his suggestion, that he foresaw, from what he had read of my communications to the papers, that I should be compelled to make a general assault on the prevalent political and moral philosophy. This letter, and others subsequent to it, together with the reception of my Book by the Southern Public, have induced me in the present work to avow the full breadth and scope of my purpose. I am sure it will be easier to convince the world that the customary theories of our Modern Ethical Philosophy, whether utilitarian or sentimental, are so fallacious or so false in their premises and their deductions as to deserve rejection, than to persuade it that the social forms under which it lives, and attempts to justify and approve, are equally erroneous, and should be re-placed by others founded on a broader philosophical system and more Christian principles.
Yet, I believe that, under the banners of Socialism and more dangerous, because more delusive, Semi-Socialism, society is insensibly, and often unconsciously, marching to the utter abandonment of the most essential institutions - religion, family ties, property, and the restraints of justice. The present profession is, indeed, to stop at the half-way house of No-Government and Free Love; but we are sure that it cannot halt and encamp
in such quarters. Society will work out erroneous doctrines to their logical consequences, and detect error only by the experience of mischief. The world will only fall back on domestic slavery when all other social forms have failed and been exhausted. That hour may not be far off.
Mr. H. will not see this work before its publication, and would dissent from many of its details, from the unrestricted latitude of its positions, and from its want of precise definition. The time has not yet arrived, in my opinion, for such precision, nor will it arrive until the present philosophy is seen to be untenable, and we begin to look about us for a loftier and more enlightened substitute.
and much prefers, the highest ground of defence. We have no peculiar fitness for the work we are engaged in, except the confidence that we address a public predisposed to approve our doctrines, however bold or novel. Heretofore the great difficulty in defending Slavery has arisen from the fear that the public would take offence at assaults on its long- cherished political axioms; which, nevertheless, stood in the way of that defence. It is now evident that those axioms have outlived their day - for no one, either North or South, has complained of our rather ferocious assault on them - much less attempted to reply to or refute our arguments and objections. All men begin very clearly to perceive, that the state of revolution is politically and socially abnormal and exceptional, and that the principles that would justify it are true in the particular, false in the general. "A recurrence to fundamental principles," by an oppressed people, is treason if it fails; the noblest of heroism if it eventuates in successful revolution. But a "frequent recurrence to fundamental principles" is at war with the continued existence of all government, and is a doctrine fit to be sported only by the Isms of the North and the Red Republicans of Europe. With them no principles are considered established and sacred, nor will ever be. When, in time of revolution, society is partially disbanded, disintegrated and dissolved, the
doctrine of Human Equality may have a hearing, and may be useful in stimulating rebellion; but it is practically impossible, and directly conflicts with all government, all separate property, and all social existence. We cite these two examples, as instances, to shew how the wisest and best of men are sure to deduce, as general principles, what is only true as to themselves and their peculiar circumstances. Never were people blessed with such wise and noble Institutions as we; for they combine most that was good in those of Rome and Greece, of Judea, and of Mediaeval England. But the mischievous absurdity of our political axioms and principles quite equals the wisdom and conservatism of our political practices. The ready appreciation by the public of such doctrines as these, encourages us to persevere in writing. The silence of the North is far more encouraging, however, than the approbation of the South. Piqued and taunted for two years, by many Southern Presses of high standing, to deny the proposition that Free Society in Western Europe is a failure, and that it betrays premonitory symptoms of failure, even in America, the North is silent, and thus tacitly admits the charge. Challenged to compare and weigh the advantages and disadvantages of our domestic slavery with their slavery of the masses to capital and skill, it is mute, and neither accepts nor declines our challenge.
The comparative evils of Slave Society and of Free Society, of slavery to human Masters and of slavery to Capital, are the issues which the South now presents, and which the North avoids. And she avoids them, because the Abolitionists, the only assailants of Southern Slavery, have, we believe, to a man, asserted the entire failure of their own social system, proposed its subversion, and suggested an approximating millenium, or some system of Free Love, Communism, or Socialism, as a substitute.
The alarming extent of this state of public opinion, or, to speak more accurately, the absence of any public opinion, or common faith and conviction about anything, is not dreamed of at the South, nor fully and properly realized, even at the North. We cannot believe what is so entirely different from all our experience and observation, and they have become familiarized and inattentive to the infected social atmosphere they continually inhale. Besides, living in the midst of the isms, their situation is not favorable for comprehensive observation or calm generalization. More than a year since, we made a short trip to the North, and whilst there only associated with distinguished Abolitionists. We have corresponded much with them, before and since, and read many of their books, lectures, essays and speeches. We have neither seen nor heard any denial by them of the failure of their own social system; but, on the contrary, found that they
all concurred in the necessity of radical social changes. 'Tis true, in conversation, they will say, "Our system of society is bad, but yours of the South is worse; the cause of social science is advancing, and we are ready to institute a system better than either." We could give many private anecdotes, and quote thousands of authorities, to prove that such is the exact state of opinion with the multitudinous isms of the North. The correctness of our statement will not be denied. If it is, any one may satisfy himself of its truth by reading any Abolition or Infidel paper at the North for a single month. The Liberator, of Boston, their ablest paper, gives continually the fullest expose of their opinions, and of their wholesale destructiveness of purpose.
The neglect of the North to take issue with us, or with the Southern Press, in the new positions which we have assumed, our own observations of the working of Northern society, the alarming increase of Socialism, as evinced by its control of many Northern State Legislatures, and its majority in the lower house of Congress, are all new proofs of the truth of our doctrine. The character of that majority in Congress is displayed in full relief, by the single fact, which we saw stated in a Northern Abolition paper, that "there are a hundred Spiritual Rappers in Congress." A Northern member of Congress made a similar remark to us a few days
since. 'Tis but a copy of the Hiss Legislature of Massachusetts, or the Praise-God-Barebones Parliament of England. Further study, too, of Western European Society, which has been engaged in continual revolution for twenty years, has satisfied us that Free Society every where begets isms, and that isms soon beget bloody revolutions. Until our trip to the North, we did not justly appreciate the passage which we are about to quote from Mr. Carlyle's "Latter-Day Pamphlets." Now it seems to us as if Boston, New Haven, or Western New York, had set for the picture:
"To rectify the relation that exists between two men, is there no method, then, but that of ending it? The old relation has become unsuitable, obsolete, perhaps unjust; and the remedy is, abolish it; let there henceforth be no relation at all. From the 'sacrament of marriage' downwards, human beings used to be manifoldly related one to another, and each to all; and there was no relation among human beings, just or unjust, that had not its grievances and its difficulties, its necessities on both sides to bear and forbear. But henceforth, be it known, we have changed all that by favor of Heaven; the 'voluntary principle' has come up, which will itself do the business for us; and now let a new sacrament, that of Divorce, which we call emancipation, and spout of on our platforms, be universally the order of the day! Have men considered whither all this is tending, and what it certainly enough betokens? Cut every human relation that
has any where grown uneasy sheer asunder; reduce whatsoever was compulsory to voluntary, whatsoever was permanent among us to the condition of the nomadic; in other words, LOOSEN BY ASSIDUOUS WEDGES, in every joint, the whole fabrice of social existence, stone from stone, till at last, all lie now quite loose enough, it can, as we already see in most countries, be overset by sudden outburst of revolutionary rage; and lying as mere mountains of anarchic rubbish, solicit you to sing Fraternity, &c. over it, and rejoice in the now remarkable era of human progress we have arrived at."
Now we plant ourselves on this passage from Carlyle. We say that, as far as it goes, 'tis a faithful picture of the isms of the North. But the restraints of Law and Public Opinion are less at the North than in Europe. The isms on each side the Atlantic are equally busy with "assiduous wedges," in "loosening in every joint the whole fabric of social existence;" but whilst they dare invoke Anarchy in Europe, they dare not inaugurate New York Free Love, and Oneida Incest, and Mormon Polygamy. The moral, religious, and social heresies of the North, are more monstrous than those of Europe. The pupil has surpassed the master, unaided by the stimulants of poverty, hunger and nakedness, which urge the master forward.
Society need not fail in the North-east until the whole West is settled, and a refluent population, or excess of
immigration, overstocks permanently the labor market on the Atlantic board. Till then, the despotism of skill and capital, in forcing emigration to the West, makes proprietors of those emigrants, benefits them, peoples the West, and by their return trade, enriches the East. The social forms of the North and the South are, for the present, equally promotive of growth and prosperity at home, and equally beneficial to mankind at large, by affording asylums to the oppressed, and by furnishing food and clothing to all. Northern society is a partial failure, but only because it generates isms which threaten it with overthrow and impede its progress. Despite of appearing vain and egotistical, we cannot refrain from mentioning another circumstance that encourages us to write. At the very time when we were writing our pamphlet entitled "Slavery Justified," in which we took ground that Free Society had failed, Mr. Carlyle began to write his "Latter Day Pamphlets," whose very title is the assertion of the failure of Free Society. The proof derived from this coincidence becomes the stronger, when it is perceived that an ordinary man on this side the Atlantic discovered and was exposing the same social phenomena that an extraordinary one had discovered and was exposing on the other. The very titles of our works are synonymous - for the "Latter Day" is the "Failure of Society."
Mr. Carlyle, and Miss Fanny Wright (in her England the Civilizer) vindicate Slavery by shewing that each of its apparent relaxations in England has injured the laboring class. They were fully and ably represented in Parliament by their ancient masters, the Barons. Since the Throne, and the Church, and the Nobility, have been stripped of their power, and a House of Commons, representing lands and money, rules despotically, the masses have become outlawed. They labor under all the disadvantages of slavery, and have none of the rights of slaves. This is the true history of the English Constitution, and one which we intend, in the sequel, more fully to expound. This presents another reason why we again appear before the public. Blackstone, which is read by most American gentlemen, teaches a doctrine the exact reverse of this, and that doctrine we shall try to refute.
Returning from the North, we procured in New York a copy of Aristotle's "Politics and Economics." To our surprise, we found that our theory of the origin of society was identical with his, and that we had employed not only the same illustrations, but the very same words. We saw at once that the true vindication of slavery must be founded on his theory of man's social nature, as opposed to Locke's theory of the Social Contract, on which
latter Free Society rests for support. 'Tis true we had broached this doctrine; but with the world at large our authority was merely repulsive, whilst the same doctrine, coming from Aristotle, had, besides his name, two thousand years of human approval and concurrence in its favor; for, without that concurrence and approval, his book would have long since perished.
In addition to all this, we think we have discovered that Moses has anticipated the Socialists, and that in prohibiting "usury of money, and of victuals, and of all things that are lent on usury," and in denouncing "increase" he was far wiser than Aristotle, and saw that other capital or property did not "breed" any more than money, and that its profits were unjust exactions levied from the laboring man. The Socialists proclaim this as a discovery of their own. We think Moses discovered and proclaimed it more than three thousand years ago - and that it is the only true theory of capital and labor, the only adequate theoretical defence of Slavery - for it proves that the profits which capital exacts from labor makes free laborers slaves, without the rights, privileges or advantages of domestic slaves, and capitalists their masters, with all the advantages, and none of the burdens and obligations of the ordinary owners of slaves.
The scientific title of this work would be best expressed by the conventional French term "Exploitation."
We endeavor to translate by the double periphrases of "Cannibals All; or, Slaves without Masters."
We have been imprudent enough to write our Introduction first, and may fail to satisfy the expectations which we excite. Our excess of candor must, in that event, in part supply our deficiency of ability.
only boast that the White Slave Trade is more exacting and fraudulent (in fact, though not in intention,) than Black Slavery; but we also boast, that it is more cruel, in leaving the laborer to take care of himself and family out of the pittance which skill or capital have allowed him to retain. When the day's labor is ended, he is free, but is overburdened with the cares of family and household, which make his freedom an empty and delusive mockery. But his employer is really free, and may enjoy the profits made by others' labor, without a care, or a trouble, as to their well-being. The negro slave is free, too, when the labors of the day are over, and free in mind as well as body; for the master provides food, raiment, house, fuel, and everything else necessary to the physical well-being of himself and family. The master's labors commence just when the slave's end. No wonder men should prefer white slavery to capital, to negro slavery, since it is more profitable, and is free from all the cares and labors of black slave-holding.
Now, reader, if you wish to know yourself - to "descant on your own deformity" - read on. But if you would cherish self-conceit, self-esteem, or self- appreciation, throw down our book; for we will dispel illusions which have promoted your happiness, and shew you that what you have considered and practiced as virtue, is little better than moral Cannibalism. But you will find yourself in numerous
and respectable company; for all good and respectable people are "Cannibals all," who do not labor, or who are successfully trying to live without labor, on the unrequited labor of other people: - Whilst low, bad, and disreputable people, are those who labor to support themselves, and to support said respectable people besides. Throwing the negro slaves out of the account, and society is divided in Christendom into four classes: The rich, or independent respectable people, who live well and labor not at all; the professional and skillful respectable people, who do a little light work, for enormous wages; the poor hard-working people, who support every body, and starve themselves; and the poor thieves, swindlers and sturdy beggars, who live like gentlemen, without labor, on the labor of other people. The gentlemen exploitate, which being done on a large scale, and requiring a great many victims, is highly respectable - whilst the rogues and beggars take so little from others, that they fare little better than those who labor.
But, reader, we do not wish to fire into the flock. "Thou art the man!" You are a Cannibal! and if a successful one, pride yourself on the number of your victims, quite as much as any Feejee chieftain, who breakfasts, dines and sups on human flesh. - And your conscience smites you, if you have failed to succeed, quite as much as his, when he returns from an unsuccessful foray.
Probably, you are a lawyer, or a merchant, or a doctor, who have made by your business fifty thousand dollars, and retired to live on your capital. But, mark! not to spend your capital. That would be vulgar, disreputable, criminal. That would be, to live by your own labor; for your capital is your amassed labor. That would be, to do as common working men do; for they take the pittance which their employers leave them, to live on. They live by labor; for they exchange the results of their own labor for the products of other people's labor. It is, no doubt, an honest, vulgar way of living; but not at all a respectable way. The respectable way of living is, to make other people work for you, and to pay them nothing for so doing - and to have no concern about them after their work is done. Hence, white slave-holding is much more respectable than negro slavery - for the master works nearly as hard for the negro, as he for the master. But you, my virtuous, respectable reader, exact three thousand dollars per annum from white labor, (for your income is the product of white labor,) and make not one cent of return in any form. You retain your capital, and never labor, and yet live in luxury on the labor of others. Capital commands labor, as the master does the slave. Neither pays for labor; but the master permits the slave to retain a larger allowance from the proceeds of his own labor, and hence "free labor is cheaper
than slave labor." You, with the command over labor which your capital gives you, are a slave owner - a master, without the obligations of a master. They who work for you, who create your income, are slaves, without the rights of slaves. Slaves without a master! Whilst you were engaged in amassing your capital, in seeking to become independent, you were in the White Slave Trade. To become independent, is to be able to make other people support you, without being obliged to labor for them. Now, what man in society is not seeking to attain this situation? He who attains it, is a slave owner, in the worst sense. He who is in pursuit of it, is engaged in the slave trade. You, reader, belong to the one or other class. The men without property, in free society, are theoretically in a worse condition than slaves. Practically, their condition corresponds with this theory, as history and statistics every where demonstrate. The capitalists, in free society, live in ten times the luxury and show that Southern masters do, because the slaves to capital work harder and cost less, than negro slaves.
The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the world. The children and the aged and infirm work not at all, and yet have all the comforts and necessaries of life provided for them. They enjoy liberty, because they are oppressed neither by care nor labor.
The women do little hard work, and are protected from the despotism of their husbands by their masters. The negro men and stout boys work, on the average, in good weather, not more than nine hours a day. The balance of their time is spent in perfect abandon Besides, they have their Sabbaths and holidays. White men, with so much of license and liberty, would die of ennui; but negroes luxuriate in corporeal and mental repose. With their faces upturned to the sun, they can sleep at any hour; and quiet sleep is the greatest of human enjoyments. "Blessed be the man who invented sleep." 'Tis happiness in itself - and results from contentment with the present, and confident assurance of the future. We do not know whether free laborers ever sleep. They are fools to do so; for, whilst they sleep, the wily and watchful capitalist is devising means to ensnare and exploitate them. The free laborer must work or starve. He is more of a slave than the negro, because he works longer and harder for less allowance than the slave, and has no holiday, because the cares of life with him begin when its labors end. He has no liberty, and not a single right. We know, 'tis often said, air and water, are common property, which all have equal right to participate and enjoy; but this is utterly false. The appropriation of the lands carries with it the appropriation of all on or above the lands, usque ad coelumm aut ad inferos. A man
cannot breathe the air, without a place to breathe it from, and all places are appropriated. All water is private property "to the middle of the stream," except the ocean, and that is not fit to drink.
Free laborers have not a thousandth part of the rights and liberties of negro slaves. Indeed, they have not a single right or a single liberty, unless it be the right or liberty to die. But the reader may think that he and other capitalists and employers are freer than negro slaves. Your capital would soon vanish, if you dared indulge in the liberty and abandon of negroes. You hold your wealth and position by the tenure of constant watchfulness, care and circumspection. You never labor; but you are never free.
Where a few own the soil, they have unlimited power over the balance of society, until domestic slavery comes in, to compel them to permit this balance of society to draw a sufficient and comfortable living from "terra mater." Free society, asserts the right of a few to the earth - slavery, maintains that it belongs, in different degrees, to all.
But, reader, well may you follow the slave trade. It is the only trade worth following, and slaves the only property worth owning. All other is worthless, a mere caput mortuum, except in so far as it vests the owner with the power to command the labors of others - to enslave them. Give you a palace, ten thousand acres of land, sumptuous
clothes, equipage and every other luxury; and with your artificial wants, you are poorer than Robinson Crusoe, or the lowest working man, if you have no slaves to capital, or domestic slaves. Your capital will not bring you an income of a cent, nor supply one of your wants, without labor. Labor is indispensable to give value to property, and if you owned every thing else, and did not own labor, you would be poor. But fifty thousand dollars means, and is, fifty thousand dollars worth of slaves. You can command, without touching on that capital, three thousand dollars' worth of labor per annum. You could do no more were you to buy slaves with it, and then you would be cumbered with the cares of governing and providing for them. You are a slaveholder now, to the amount of fifty thousand dollars, with all the advantages, and none of the cares and responsibilities of a master.
"Property in man" is what all are struggling to obtain. Why should they not be obliged to take care of man, their property, as they do of their horses and their hounds, their cattle and their sheep. Now, under the delusive name of liberty, you work him, "from morn to dewy eve" - from infancy to old age - then turn him out to starve. You treat your horses and hounds better. Capital is a cruel master. The free slave trade, the commonest, yet the cruellest of trades.
was not only a bad master, but an intolerable one, were treated as wicked visionaries. After the French and other revolutions in Western Europe in 1830, all men suddenly discovered that the social relations of men were false, and that social, not political, revolutions were needed. Since that period, almost the whole literature of free society is but a voice proclaiming its absolute and total failure. Hence the works of the socialists contain the true defence of slavery.
Most of the active intellect of Christendom has for the last twenty years been engaged in analyzing, detecting and exposing the existing relations of labor, skill and capital, and in vain efforts to rectify those relations. The philosophers of Europe, who have been thus engaged, have excelled all the moral philosophers that preceded them, in the former part of their pursuit, but suggested nothing but puerile absurdities, in the latter. Their destructive philosophy is profound, demonstrative, and unanswerable - their constructive theories, wild, visionary and chimerical on paper, and failures in practice. Each one of them proves clearly enough, that the present edifice of European society is out of all rule and proportion, and must soon tumble to pieces - but no two agree as to how it is to be re-built "We must (say they all) have a new world, if we are to have any world at all!" and each has a little model Utopia or Phalanstery, for this new and better world,
which, having already failed on a small experimental scale, the inventor assures us, is, therefore, the very thing to succeed on a large one. We allude to the socialists and communists, who have more or less tinged all modern literature with their doctrines. In analyzing society; in detecting, exposing, and generalizing its operations and its various phenomena, they are but grammarians or anatomists, confining philosophy to its proper sphere, and employing it for useful purposes. When they attempt to go further - and having found the present social system to be fatally diseased, propose to originate and build up another in its stead - they are as presumptuous as the anatomist, who should attempt to create a man. Social bodies, like human bodies, are the works of God, which man may dissect, and sometimes heal, but which he cannot create. Society was not always thus diseased, or socialism would have been as common in the past as it is now. We think these presumptuous philosophers had best compare it in its healthy state with what it is now, and supply deficiencies or lop off excrescencies, as the comparison may suggest. But our present business is to call attention to some valuable discoveries in the terra firma of social science, which these socialists have made in their vain voyages in search of an ever receding and illusory Utopia. Like the alchymists, although they have signally failed in the objects of their pursuits, they
have incidentally hit upon truths, unregarded and unprized by themselves, which will be valuable in the hands of more practical and less sanguine men. It is remarkable, that the political economists, who generally assume labor to be the most just and correct measure of value, should not have discovered that the profits of capital represent no labor at all. To be consistent, the political economists should denounce as unjust all interests, rents, dividends and other profits of capital. We mean by rents, that portion of the rent which is strictly income. The amount annually required for repairs and ultimately to rebuild the house, is not profit. Four per cent. will do this. A rent of ten per cent. is in such case a profit of six per cent. The four per cent. is but a return to the builder of his labor and capital spent in building. "The use of a thing is only a fair subject of change, in so far as the article used is consumed in the use; for such consumption is the consumption of the labor or capital of the owner, and is but the exchange of equivalent amounts of labor."
These socialists, having discovered that skill and capital, by means of free competition, exercise an undue mastery over labor, propose to do away with skill, capital, and free competition, altogether. They would heal the diseases of society by destroying its most vital functions. Having laid down the broad proposition, that equal amounts
of labor, or their results, should be exchanged for each other, they get at the conclusion that as the profits of capital are not the results of labor, the capitalist shall be denied all interest or rents, or other profits on his capital, and be compelled in all cases to exchange a part of the capital itself, for labor, or its results. This would prevent accumulation, or at least limit it to the procurement of the coarsest necessaries of life. They say, "the lawyer and the artist do not work so hard and continuously as the ploughman, and should receive less wages than he - a bushel of wheat represents as much labor as a speech or portrait, and should be exchanged for the one or the other." Such a system of trade and exchange would equalize conditions, but would banish civilization. Yet do these men show, that, by means of the taxation and oppression, which capital and skill exercise over labor, the rich, the professional, the trading and skillful part of society, have become the masters of the laboring masses: whose condition, already intolerable, is daily becoming worse. They point out distinctly the character of the disease under which the patient is laboring, but see no way of curing the disease except by killing the patient.
In the preceding chapter, we illustrated their theory of capital by a single example. We might give hundreds of illustrations, and yet the subject is so difficult that few readers will take the trouble
to understand it. Let us take two well known historical instances: England became possessed of two fine islands, Ireland and Jamaica. Englishmen took away, or defrauded, from the Irish, their lands; but professed to leave the people free. The people, however, must have the use of land, or starve. The English charged them, in rent, so much, that their allowance, after deducting that rent, was not half that of Jamaica slaves. They were compelled to labor for their landlords, by the fear of hunger and death - forces stronger than the overseer's lash. They worked more, and did not get half so much pay or allowance as the Jamaica negroes. All the reports to the French and British Parliaments show that the physical wants of the West India slaves were well supplied. The Irish became the subject of capital - slaves, with no masters obliged by law, self-interest or domestic affections, to provide for them. The freest people in the world, in the loose and common sense of words, their condition, moral, physical and religious, was far worse than that of civilized slaves ever has been or ever can be - for at length, after centuries of slow starvation, three hundred thousand perished in a single season, for want of food. Englishmen took the lands of Jamaica also, but introduced negro slaves, whom they were compelled to support at all seasons, and at any cost. The negroes were comfortable, until philanthropy taxed the poor of England and Ireland
a hundred millions to free them. Now, they enjoy Irish liberty, whilst the English hold all the good lands. They are destitute and savage, and in all respects worse off than when in slavery.
Public opinion unites with self-interest, domestic affection and municipal law to protect the slave. The man who maltreats the weak and dependent, who abuses his authority over wife, children or slaves, is universally detested. That same public opinion, which shields and protects the slave, encourages the oppression of free laborers - for it is considered more honorable and praiseworthy to obtain large fees than small ones, to make good bargains than bad ones, (and all fees and profits come ultimately from common laborers) - to live without work, by the exactions of accumulated capital, than to labor at the plough or the spade, for one's living. It is the interest of the capitalist and the skillful to allow free laborers the least possible portion of the fruits of their own labor; for all capital is created by labor, and the smaller the allowance of the free laborer, the greater the gains of his employer. To treat free laborers badly and unfairly, is universally inculcated as a moral duty, and the selfishness of man's nature prompts him to the most rigorous performance of this cannibalish duty. We appeal to political economy; the ethical, social, political and economic philosophy of free society, to prove the truth of our doctrines. As an ethical and social
guide, that philosophy teaches, that social, individual and national competition, is a moral duty, and we have attempted to prove all competition is but the effort to enslave others, without being encumbered with their support. As a political guide, it would simply have government 'keep the peace;' or, to define its doctrine more exactly, it teaches "that it is the whole duty of government to hold the weak whilst the strong rob them" - for it punishes crimes accompanied with force, which none but the weak-minded commit; but encourages the war of the wits, in which the strong and astute are sure to succeed, in stripping the weak and ignorant.
It is time, high time, that political economy was banished from our schools. But what would this avail in free society, where men's antagonistic relations suggest to each one, without a teacher, that "he can only be just to himself, by doing wrong to others." Aristotle, and most other ancient philosophers and statesmen, held the doctrine, "that as money would not breed, interest should not be allowed." Moses, no doubt, saw as the modern socialists do, that all other capital stood on the same grounds with money. None of it is self-creative, or will "breed." The language employed about "usury" and "increase" in 25th Leviticus, and 23d Deuteronomy, is quite broad enough to embrace and prohibit all profits of capital. Such interest or
"increase," or profits, might be charged to the Heathen, but not to the Jews. The whole arrangements of Moses were obviously intended to prevent competition in the dealings of the Jews with one another, and to beget permanent equality of condition and fraternal feelings.
The socialists have done one great good. They enable us to understand and appreciate the institutions of Moses, and to see, that none but Divinity could have originated them. * The situation of Judea was, in many respects, anomalous, and we are not to suppose that its political and social relations were intended to be universal. Yet, here it is distinctly asserted, that under certain circumstances, all profits on capital are wrong.
The reformers of the present day are all teetotalists,
and attempt to banish evil altogether, not
"And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty. Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy wine-press: of that wherewith the Lord thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him."
People without property exposed to the unrestricted exactions of capital are infinitely worse off after emancipation than before. Moses prevented the exactions of capital by providing property for the new free man.
to lessen or restrict it. It would be wiser to assume that there is nothing, in its essence, evil, in the moral or physical world, but only rendered so by the wrongful applications which men make of them. Science is every day discovering that the most fatal poisons, when properly employed, become the most efficacious medicines. So, what appear to be the evil passions and propensities of men, and of societies, under proper regulation, may be made to minister to the wisest and best of purposes. Civilized society has never been found without that competition begotten by man's desire to throw most of the burdens of life on others, and to enjoy the fruits of their labors without exchanging equivalent labor of his own. In all such societies, (outside the Bible,) such selfish and grasping appropriation is inculcated as a moral duty; and he who succeeds best, either by the exercise of professional skill, or by accumulation of capital, in appropriating the labor of others, without laboring in return, is considered most meritorious. It would be unfair, in treating of the relations of capital and labor, not to consider its poor-house system, the ultimate resort of the poor.
The taxes or poor rates which support this system of relief, like all other taxes and values, are derived from the labor of the poor. The able-bodied, industrious poor are compelled by the rich and skillful to support the weak, and too often, the idle poor. In addition to defraying the necessary
expenses and the wanton luxuries of the rich, to supporting government, and supporting themselves, capital compels them to support its poor houses. In collection of the poor rates, in their distribution, and in the administration of the poor-house system, probably half the tax raised for the poor is exhausted. Of the remainder, possibly another half is expended on unworthy objects. Masters, in like manner, support the sick, infant and aged slaves from the labor of the strong and healthy. But nothing is wasted in collection and administration, and nothing given to unworthy objects. The master having the control of the objects of his bounty, takes care that they shall not become burdensome by their own crimes and idleness. It is contrary to all human customs and legal analogies, that those who are dependent, or are likely to become so, should not be controlled. The duty of protecting the weak involves the necessity of enslaving them - hence, in all countries, women and children, wards and apprentices, have been essentially slaves, controlled, not by law, but by the will of a superior. This is a fatal defect in the poor-house system. Many men become paupers from their own improvidence or misconduct, and masters alone can prevent such misconduct and improvidence. Masters treat their sick, infant and helpless slaves well, not only from feeling and affection, but from motives of self-interest. Good treatment renders them more valuable.
All poor houses, are administered on the penitentiary system, in order to deter the poor from resorting to them. Besides, masters are always in place to render needful aid to the unfortunate and helpless slaves. Thousands of the poor starve our of reach of the poor house, or other public charity.
A common charge preferred against slavery is, that it induces idleness with the masters. The trouble, care and labor, of providing for wife, children and slaves, and of properly governing and administering the whole affairs of the farm, is usually borne on small estates by the master. On larger ones, he is aided by an overseer or manager If they do their duty, their time is fully occupied. If they do not, the estate goes to ruin. The mistress, on Southern farms, is usually more busily, usefully and benevolently occupied than any one on the farm. She unites in her person, the offices of wife, mother, mistress, housekeeper, and sister of charity. And she fulfills all these offices admirably well. The rich men, in free society, may, if they please, lounge about town, visit clubs, attend the theatre, and have no other trouble than that of collecting rents, interest and dividends of stock. In a well constituted slave society, there should be no idlers. But we cannot divine how the capitalists in free society are to be put to work. The master labors for the slave, they exchange industrial value. But the capitalist, living on his income, gives
nothing to his subjects. He lives by mere exploitation.
It is objected that slavery permits or induces immorality. This is a mistake. The intercourse of the house-servants with the white familiar, assimilates, in some degree, their state of information, and their moral conduct, to that of the whites. The house-servants, by their intercourse with the field hands, impart their knowledge to them. The master enforces decent morality in all. Negroes are never ignorant of the truths of Christianity, all speak intelligible English, and are posted up in the ordinary occurrences of the times. The reports to the British Parliament shew, that the agricultural and mining poor of England scarce know the existence of God, do not speak intelligible English, and are generally depraved and ignorant. They learn nothing by intercourse with their superiors, as negroes do. They abuse wives and children, because they have no masters to control them, and the men are often dissipated and idle, leaving all the labor to be done by the women and children - for the want of this same control.
Slavery, by separating the mass of the ignorant from each other, and bringing them in contact and daily intercourse with the well-informed, becomes an admirable educational system - no doubt a necessary one. By subjecting them to the constant control and supervision of their superiors, interested
in enforcing morality, it becomes the best and most efficient police system; so efficient, that the ancient Romans had scarcely any criminal code whatever.
The great objections to the colonial slavery of the latter Romans, to serfdom, and all forms of praedial slavery, are: that the slaves are subjected to the cares as well as the labors of life; that the masters become idlers; that want of intercourse destroys the affectionate relations between master and slave, throws the mass of ignorant slaves into no other association but that with the ignorant; and deprives them, as well of the instruction, as the government, of superiors living on the same farm. Southern slavery is becoming the best form of slavery of which we have any history, except that of the Jews. The Jews owned but few slaves, and with them the relation of master and slave was truly affectionate, protective and patriarchal. The master, wife and children were in constant intercourse with the slaves, and formed, in practice as well as theory, affectionate, well-ordered families.
As modern civilization advances, slavery becomes daily more necessary, because its tendency is to accumulate all capital in a few hands, cuts off the masses from the soil, lessens their wages and their chances of employment, and increases the necessity for a means of certain subsistence, which slavery alone can furnish, when a few own all the lands and other capital.
Christian morality can find little practical foothold in a community so constituted, that to "love our neighbor as ourself," or "to do unto others as we would they should do unto us," would be acts of suicidal self-sacrifice. Christian morality, however, was not preached to free competitive society, but to slave society, where it is neither very difficult nor unnatural to practice it. In the various family relations of husband, wife, parent, child, master and slave, the observance of these Christian precepts is often practiced, and almost always promotes the temporal well being of those who observe it. The interests of the various members of the family circle, correctly understood, concur and harmonize, and each member best promotes his own selfish interest by ministering to the wants and interests of the rest. Two great stumbling blocks are removed from the acceptance of Scripture, when it is proved that slavery, which it recognizes, approves and enjoins, is promotive of men's happiness and well-being, and that the morality, which it inculcates, although wholly impracticable in free society, is readily practised in that form of society to which it was addressed.
We do not conceive that there can be any other moral law in free society, than that which teaches "that he is most meritorious who most wrongs his fellow beings:" for any other law would make men martyrs to their own virtues. We see thousands of
good men vainly struggling against the evil necessities of their situation, and aggravating by their charities the evils which they would cure, for charity in free society is but the tax which skill and capital levy from the working poor, too often, to bestow on the less deserving and idle poor. We know a man at the North who owns millions of dollars, and would throw every cent into the ocean to benefit mankind. But it is capital, and, place it where he will, it becomes an engine to tax and oppress the laboring poor.
It is impossible to place labor and capital in harmonious or friendly relations, except by the means of slavery, which identifies their interests. Would that gentleman lay his capital out in land and negroes, he might be sure, in whatever hands it came, that it would be employed to protect laborers, not to oppress them; for when slaves are worth near a thousand dollars a head, they will be carefully and well provided for. In any other investment he may make of it, it will be used as an engine to squeeze the largest amount of labor from the poor, for the least amount of allowance. We say allowance, not wages; for neither slaves nor free laborers get wages, in the popular sense of the term: that is, the employer or capitalist pays them from nothing of his own, but allows them a part, generally a very small part, of the proceeds of their own labor. Free laborers pay one another, for labor creates all values,
and capital, after taking the lion's share by its taxing power, but pays the so-called wages of one laborer from the proceeds of the labor of another. Capital does not breed, yet remains undiminished. Its profits are but its taxing power. Men seek to become-independent, in order to cease to pay labor; in order to become masters, without the cares, duties and responsibilities of masters. Capital exercises a more perfect compulsion over free laborers, than human masters over slaves: for free laborers must at all times work or starve, and slaves are supported whether they work or not. Free laborers have less liberty than slaves, are worse paid and provided for, and have no valuable rights. Slaves, with more of actual practical liberty, with ampler allowance, and constant protection, are secure in the enjoyment of all the rights, which provide for their physical comfort at all times and under all circumstances. The free laborer must be employed or starve, yet no one is obliged to employ him. The slave is taken care of, whether employed or not. Though each free laborer has no particular master, his wants and other men's capital, make him a slave without a master, or with too many masters, which is as bad as none. It were often better that he had an ascertained master, instead of an irresponsible and unascertained one.
There are some startling social phenomena connected with this subject of labor and capital, which
will probably be new to most of our readers. Legislators and philosophers often puzzle their own and other people's brains, in vain discussions as to how the taxes shall be laid, so as to fall on the rich rather than the poor. It results from our theory, that as labor creates all values, laborers pay all taxes, and the rich, in the words of Gerrit Smith, "are but the conduits that pass them over to government."
Again, since labor alone creates and pays the profits of capital; increase and accumulation of capital but increase the labor of the poor, and lessen their remuneration. Thus the poor are continually forging new chains for themselves. Proudhon cites a familiar instance to prove and illustrate this theory: A tenant improves a farm or house, and enhances their rents; his labor thus becomes the means of increasing the tax, which he or some one else must pay to the capitalist. What is true in this instance, is true of the aggregate capital of the world: its increase is but an increased tax on labor. A., by trade or speculation, gets hold of an additional million of dollars, to the capital already in existence. Now his million of dollars will yield no profit, unless a number of pauper laborers, sufficient to pay its profits, are at the same time brought into existence. After supporting their families, it will require a thousand of laborers to pay the interest or profits of a million of dollars. It may, therefore,
be generally assumed as true, that where a country has gained a millionaire, it has by the same process gained a thousand pauper laborers: Provided it has been made by profits on foreign trade, or by new values created at home - that is, if it be an addition of a million to the capital of the nation.
A nation borrows a hundred millions, at six per cent., for a hundred years. During that time it pays, in way of tax, called interest, six times the capital loaned, and then returns the capital itself. During all this time, to the amount of the interest, the people of this nation have been slaves to the lender. He has commanded, not paid, for their labor; for his capital is returned intact. In the abstract, and according to equity, "the use of an article is only a proper subject of charge, when the article is consumed in the use; for this consumption is the consumption of the labor of the lender or hirer, and is the exchange of equal amounts of labor for each other.
A., as a merchant, a lawyer, or doctor, makes twenty dollars a day; that is, exchanges each day of his own labor for twenty days of the labor of common working men, assuming that they work at a dollar a day. In twenty years, he amasses fifty thousand dollars, invests it, and settles it on his family. Without any labor, he and his heirs, retaining all this capital, continue, by its means, to levy a tax of three thousand dollars from common
laborers. He his heirs now pay nothing for labor, but command it. They have nothing to pay except their capital, and that they retain. (This is the exploitation or despotism of capital, which has taken the place of domestic slavery, and is, in fact, a much worse kind of slavery. Hence arises socialism, which proposes to reconstruct society.) Now, this capitalist is considered highly meritorious for so doing, and the poor, self-sacrificing laborers, who really created his capital, and who pay its profits, are thought contemptible, if not criminal. In the general, those men are considered the most meritorious who live in greatest splendor, with the least, or with no labor, and they most contemptible, who labor most for others, and least for themselves. In the abstract, however, that dealing appears most correct, where men exchange equal amounts of labor, bear equal burdens for others, with those that they impose on them. Such is the golden rule of Scripture, but not the approved practice of mankind.
"The worth of a thing is just what it will bring," is the common trading principle of mankind. Yet men revolt at the extreme applications of their own principle, and denunciate any gross and palpable advantage taken of the wants, position and necessities of others as swindling. But we should recollect, that in all instances where unequal amounts of labor are exchanged at par, advantage
is really taken by him who gets in exchange the larger amount of labor, of the wants, position and necessities of him who receives the smaller amount.
We have said that laborers pay all taxes, but labor being, capital in slave society, the laborers or slaves are not injured by increased taxes; and the capitalist or master has to retrench his own expenses to meet the additional tax. Capital is not taxed in free society, but is taxed in slave society, because, in such society, labor is capital.
The capitalists and the professional can, and do, by increased profits arid fees, throw the whole burden of taxation on the laboring class. Slaveholders cannot do so; for diminished allowance to their slaves, would impair their value and lessen their own capital.
Our expose of what the socialists term the exploitation of skill and capital, will not, we know, be satisfactory to slaveholders even; for, although there be much less of such exploitation, or unjust exaction, in slave society; still, too much of it remains to be agreeable to contemplate. Besides, our analysis of human nature and human pursuits, is too dark and sombre to meet with ready acceptance. We should be rejoiced to see our theory refuted. We are sure, however, that it never can be; but equally sure, that it is subject to many modifications and limitations that have not occurred to
us. We have this consolation, that in rejecting as false and noxious all systems of moral philosophy, we are thrown upon the Bible, as containing the only true system of morals. We have attempted already to adduce three instances, in which the justification of slavery furnished new and additional evidence of the truth of Christianity. We will now add others.
It is notorious that infidelity appeared in the world, on an extensive scale, only cotemporaneously with the abolition of slavery, and that it is now limited to countries where no domestic slavery exists. Besides, abolitionists are commonly infidels, their speeches, conventions, and papers daily evince. Where there is no slavery, the minds of men are unsettled on all subjects, and there is, emphatically, faith and conviction about nothing. Their moral and social world is in a chaotic and anarchical state. Order, subordination and adaptation have vanished; and with them, the belief in a Deity, the author of all order. It had often been urged, that the order observable in the moral and physical world, furnished strong evidence of a Deity, the author of that order. How vastly is this argument now strengthened, by the new fact, now first developed, that the destruction of social order generates universal scepticism. Mere political revolutions affect social order but little, and generate but little infidelity. It
remained for social revolutions, like those in Europe in 1848, to bring on an infidel age; for, outside of slave society, such is the age in which we live.
If we prove that domestic slavery is, in the general, a natural and necessary institution, we remove the greatest stumbling block to belief in the Bible; for whilst texts, detached and torn from their context, may be found for any other purpose, none can be found that even militates against slavery. The distorted and forced construction of certain passages, for this purpose, by abolitionists, if employed as a common rule of construction, would reduce the Bible to a mere allegory, to be interpreted to suit every vicious taste and wicked purpose.
But we have been looking merely to one side of human nature, and to that side rendered darker by the false, antagonistic and competitive relations in which so-called liberty and equality place man.
Man is, by nature, the most social and gregarious, and, therefore, the least selfish of animals. Within the family there is little room, opportunity or temptation to selfishness - and slavery leaves but little of the world without the family. Man loves that nearest to him best. First his wife, children and parents, then his slaves, next his neighbors and fellow-countrymen. But his unselfishness does not stop here. He is ready and anxious to relieve a famine in Ireland, and shudders when he reads of a murder at the antipodes. He feels deeply for the
sufferings of domestic animals, is rendered happy by witnessing the enjoyments of the flocks, and herds, and carroling birds that surround him. He sympathizes with all external nature. A parched field distresses him, and he rejoices as he sees the groves, and the gardens, and the plains flourishing, and blooming, and smiling about him. All men are philanthropists, and would benefit their fellow-men if they could. But we cannot be sure of benefiting those whom we cannot control. Hence, all actively good men are ambitious, and would be masters, in all save the name.
Benevolence, the love of what is without, and the disposition to incur pain or inconvenience to advance the happiness and well-being of what is without self, is as universal a motive of human conduct, as mere selfishness - which is the disposition to sacrifice the good of others to our own good.
The prevalent philosophy of the day takes cognizance of but half of human nature - and that the worst half. Our happiness is so involved in the happiness and well-being of everything around us, that a mere selfish philosophy, like political economy, is a very unsafe and delusive guide.
We employ the term Benevolence to express our outward affections, sympathies, tastes and feelings; but it is inadequate to express our meaning; it is not the opposite of selfishness, and unselfishness would be too negative for our purpose. Philosophy
has been so busy with the worst feature of human nature, that it has not even found a name for this, its better feature. We must fall back on Christianity, which embraces man's whole nature, and though not a code of philosophy, is something better; for it proposes to lead us through the trials and intricacies of life, not by the mere cool calculations of the head, but by the unerring instincts of a pure and regenerate heart. The problem of the Moral World is too vast and complex for the human mind to comprehend; yet the pure heart will, safely and quietly, feel its way through the mazes that confound the head.
more honorable and respectable. The more honorable, because they were contented with their situation and their profits, and not seeking to exploitate, by exchanging one day of their labor for many of other people's. To be exploitated, ought to be more creditable than to exploitate. They were "slaves without masters;" the little fish, who were food for all the larger. They stood disgraced, because they would not practice cannibalism; rise in the world by more lucrative, less useful and less laborious pursuits, and live by exploitation rather than labor. He, by practicing cannibalism more successfully than others, had acquired fame and fortune. 'Twas the old tune - "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands." The more scalps we can shew, the more honored we are.
We told him he had made his fortune by the exploitation of skill, and was now living by the still worse exploitation of capital. Whilst working, he made thirty dollars a day - that is, exploitated or appropriated the labor of thirty common working men, and gave in exchange his own labor, intrinsically less worthy, than any one of theirs. But now he was doing worse. He was using his capital as a power to compel others to work for him - for whom he did not work at all. The white laborers who made his income, or interests and dividends, were wholly neglected by him, because he did not know
even who they were. He treated his negro slaves much better. It was true, he appropriated or exploitated much of the results of their labor, but governed them and provided for them, with almost parental affection. Some of them we knew, who feigned to be unfit for labor, he was boarding expensively. Our friend at first ridiculed our theory. But by degrees began to see its truth, and being sensitively conscientious, was disposed to fret whenever the subject was introduced.
One day he met us, with a face beaming with smiles, and said, "I can explain and justify that new theory of yours. This oppression and exaction of skill and capital which we see continually practiced, and which is too natural to man ever to cease, is necessary in order to disperse and diffuse population over the globe. Half the good lands of the world are unappropriated and invite settlement and cultivation. Most men who choose can become proprietors by change of residence. They are too much crowded in many countries, and exploitation that disperses them is a blessing It will be time enough to discuss your theory of the despotism of skill and capital, when all the world is densely settled, and the men without property can no longer escape from the exactions of those who hold property."
Our friend's theory is certainly ingenious and novel, and goes far to prove that exploitation is not
an unmitigated evil. Under exceptional circumstances, its good effects on human happiness and well-being, may greatly over-balance its evil influences. Such, probably, is the case at the North. There, free competition, and the consequent oppressions of skill and capital are fiercer and more active than in any other country. But in forty- eight hours, laborers may escape to the West, and become proprietors. It is a blessing to them to be thus expelled, and a blessing to those who expel them. The emigration to the West rids the East of a surplus population, and enriches it by the interchanges of trade and commerce which the emigration immediately begets. As an exceptional form of society, we begin to think that at the North highly useful. It will continue to be good and useful until the North-west is peopled. Then, and not till then, it will be time for Mr. Greely to build phalansteries, and for Gerrit Smith to divide all the lands. We find that we shall have to defend the North as well as the South against the assaults of the abolitionist - still, we cannot abate a jot or tittle of our theory: "Slavery is the natural and normal condition of society." The situation of the North is abnormal and anomalous. So in desert or mountainous regions, where only small patches of land can be cultivated, the father, wife and children are sufficient for the purpose, and slavery would be superfluous.
In order to make sure that our reader shall comprehend our theory, we will give a long extract from the "Science of Society," by Stephen Pearle Andrews of New York. He is, we think, far the ablest writer on moral science that America has produced. Though an abolitionist, he has not a very bad opinion of slavery. We verily believe, there is not one intelligent abolitionist at the North who does not believe that slavery to capital in free society is worse than Southern negro slavery; but like Mr. Andrews, they are all perfectionists, with a Utopia in full view:
I. Suppose I am a wheelwright in a small village, and the only one of my trade. You are travelling with certain valuables in your carriage, which breaks down opposite my shop. It will take an hour of my time to mend the carriage. You can get no other means of conveyance, and the loss to you, if you fail to arrive at the neighboring town in season for the sailing of a certain vessel, will be $500, which fact you mention to me, in good faith, in order to quicken my exertions. I give one hour of my work and mend the carriage. What am I in equity entitled to charge - what should be the limit of price upon my labor?
Let us apply the different measures, and see how they will operate. If Value is the limit of price, then the price of the hour's labor should be $500. That is the equivalent of the value of the labor to you. If cost the limit of price then you should pay me a commodity,
or commodities, or a representative in currency, which will procure me commodities having in them one hour's labor equally as hard as the mending of the carriage, without the slightest reference to the degree of benefit which that labor has bestowed on you; or, putting the illustration in money, thus: assuming the twenty-five cents to be an equivalent for an hour's labor of an artizan in that particular trade, then, according to the Cost Principle, I should be justified in asking only twenty-five cents, but according to the Value Principle, I should be justified in asking $500.
The Value Principle, in some form of expression, is, as I have said, the only recognized principle of trade throughout the world. "A thing is worth what it will bring in the market." Still, if I were to charge you $500, or a fourth part of that sum, and, taking advantage of your necessities, force you to pay it, everybody would denounce me, the poor wheelwright, as an extortioner and a scoundrel. Why? Simply because this is an unusual application of the principle. Wheelwrights seldom have a chance to make such a "speculation," and therefore it is not according to the "established usages of trade." Hence its manifest injustice shocks, in such a case, the common sense of right. Meanwhile you, a wealthy merchant, are daily rolling up an immense fortune by doing business upon the same principle which you condemn in the wheelwright, and nobody finds fault. At every scarcity in the market, you immediately raise the price of every article you hold. It is your business to take advantage of the necessities of those with whom you deal, by selling to them according
to the Value to them, and not according to the Cost to you. You go further. You, by every means in your power, create those necessities, by buying up particular articles and holding them out of the market until the demand becomes pressing, by circulating false reports of short crops, and by other similar tricks known to the trade. This is the same in principle, as if the wheelwright had first dug the rut in which your carriage upset, and then charged you the $500.
Yet hitherto no one has thought of seriously questioning the principle, namely, that "Value is the limit of price," or, in other words, that it is right to take for a thing what it is worth." It is upon this principle or maxim, that all honorable trade professes now to be conducted, until instances arise in which its oppressive operation is so glaring and repugnant to the moral sense of mankind, that those who carry it out are denounced as rogues and cheats. In this manner a sort of conventional limit is placed upon the application of a principle which is equally the principle of every swindling transaction, and of what is called legitimate commerce. The discovery has not hitherto been made, that the principle itself is essentially vicious, and that in its infinite and all-pervading variety of applications, this vicious principle is the source of the injustice, inequality of condition, and frightful pauperism and wretchedness which characterize the existing state of our so-called civilization. Still less has the discovery been made, that there is another simple principle of traffic which, once understood and applied in practice, will effectually rectify all those monstrous evils, and introduce into human society the
reign of absolute equity in all property relations, while it will lay the foundations of universal harmony in the social and moral relations as well.
II. Suppose it costs me ten minutes' labor to concoct a pill which will save your life when nothing else will; and suppose, at the same time, to render the case simple, that the knowledge of the ingredients came to me by accident, without labor or cost. It is clear that your life is worth to you more than your fortune. Am I, then, entitled to demand of you for the nostrum the whole of your property, more or less? Clearly so, if it is right to take for a thing what it is worth, which is theoretically the highest ethics of trade.
Forced, on the one hand, by the impossibility, existing in the nature of things, of ascertaining and measuring positive values, or of determining, in other words, what a thing is really worth, and rendered partially conscious by the obvious hardship and injustice of every unusual or extreme application of the principle that it is either no rule or a bad one, and not guided by the knowledge of any true principle out of the labyrinth of conflicting rights into which the false principle conducts, the world has practically abandoned the attempt to combine Equity with Commerce, and lowered its standard of morality to the inverse statement of the formula, namely, that, "A thing is worth what it will bring;" or, in other words, that it is fitting and proper to take for a thing when sold whatever can be got for it. This, then, is what is denominated the Market Value of an article, as distinguished from its actual value. Without being more equitable as a measure of price, it certainly has a great
practical advantage over the more decent theoretical statement, in the fact that it is possible to as ascertain by experiment how much you can force people, thorough their necessities, to give. The principle, in this form, measures the price by the degree of want on the part of the purchaser, that is, by what he supposes will prove to be the value or benefit to him of the commodity purchased, in comparison with that of the one with which he parts in the transaction. Hence it becomes immediately and continually the interest of the seller to place the purchaser in a condition of as much want as possible, "to corner" him, as the phrase is in Wall street, and force him to buy at the dearest rate. If he is unable to increase his actual necessity, he resorts to every means of creating an imaginary want by false praises bestowed upon the qualities and uses of his goods. Hence the usages of forestalling the market, of confusing the public knowledge of Supply and Demand, of advertising and puffing worthless commodities, and the like, which constitute the existing commercial system - a system which, in our age, is ripening into putrefaction, and coming to offend the nostrils of good taste no less than the innate sense of right, which, dreadfully vitiating as it is, it has failed wholly to extinguish.
The Value Principle in this form, as in the other, is therefore felt, without being distinctly understood, to essentially diabolical, and hence it undergoes again a kind of sentimental modification wherever the sentiment for honesty is most potent This last and highest expression of the doctrine of honesty, as now known in the world, may be stated in the form of the hortatory precept,
"Don't be too bad," or, "Don't gouge too deep." No Political Economist, Financier, Moralist, or Religionist, has any more definite standard of right in commercial transactions than that. It is not too much to affirm that neither Political Economist, Financier, Moralist, nor Religionist knows at this day, nor ever has known, what it is to be honest The religious teacher, who exhorts his hearers from Sabbath to Sabbath to be fair in their dealings with each other and with the outside world, does not know, and could not for his life tell, how much he is, in fair dealing or equity, bound to pay his washerwoman or his housekeeper for any service whatever which they may render. The sentiment of honesty exists, but the science of honesty is wanting. The sentiment is first in order. The science must be an outgrowth, a consequential development of the sentiment. The precepts of Christian Morality deal properly with that which is the soul of the other, leaving to intellectual investigation the discovery of its scientific complement.
It follows from what has been said, that the Value Principle is the commercial embodiment of the essential element of conquest and war - war transferred from the battle-field to the counter - none the less opposed, however, to the spirit of Christian Morality, or the sentiment of human brotherhood. In bodily conflict, the physically strong conquer and subject the physically weak. In the conflict of trade, the intellectually astute and powerful conquer and subject those who are intellectually feeble, or whose intellectual development is not of the precise kind to fit them for the conflict of wits in the matter of trade. With the progress of civilization and development
we have ceased to think that superior physical strength gives the right of conquest and subjugation. We have graduated, in idea, out of the period of physical dominion. We remain, however, as yet in the period of intellectual conquest or plunder. It has been questioned hitherto, as a general proposition, that the man who has superior intellectual endowments to others, has a right resulting therefrom to profit thereby at the cost of others. In the extreme applications of admission only is the conclusion ever denied. In the whole field of what are denominated the legitimate operations of trade, there is no other law recognized than the relative "smartness" or shrewdness of the parties, modified at most by the sentimental precept stated above.
The intrinsic wrongfulness of the principal axioms and practice of existing commerce will appear to every reflecting mind from the preceding analysis. It will be proper, however, before dismissing the consideration of the Value Principle, to trace out a little more in detail some of its specific results.
The principle itself being essentially iniquitous, the fruits of the principle are necessarily pernicious.
Among the consequences which flow from it are the following:
I. It renders falsehood and hypocrisy a necessary concomitant of trade. Where the object is to buy cheap and sell dear, the parties find their interest in mutual deception. It is taught, in theory, that "honesty is the best policy," in the long run; but in practice the merchant discovers speedily that he must starve if he acts upon the precept - in the short run. Honesty - even as
much honesty as can be arrived at - is not the best policy under the present unscientific system of commerce; if by the best policy is meant that which tends to success in business. Professional merchants are sharp to distinguish their true policy for that end, and they do not find it in a full exposition of the truth. Intelligent merchants know the fact well, and conscientious merchants deplore it; but they see no remedy. The theory of trade taught to innocent youths in the retired family, or the Sunday school, would ruin any clerk, if adhered to behind the counter, in a fortnight. Hence it is uniformly abandoned, and a new system of morality acquired the moment a practical application is to be made of the instruction. A frank disclosure, by the merchant, of all the secret advantages in his possession, would destroy his reputation for sagacity as effectually as it would that of the gambler among his associates. Both commerce and gambling, as professions, are systems of strategy. It is the business of both parties to a trade to over-reach each other - a fact which finds its unblushing announcement in the maxim of the Common Law, Caveat emptor, (let the purchaser take care.)
II. It makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. - Trade being, under this system, the intellectual correspondence to the occupation of the cut-throat or conqueror under the reign of physical force - the stronger consequently accumulating more than his share at the cost of the destruction of the weaker - the consequence of the principle is that the occupation of trade, for those who possess intellectual superiority, with other favorable conditions, enables them to accumulate more than their
share of wealth, while it reduces those whose intellectual development - of the precise kind requisite for this species of contest - and whose material conditions are less favorable - to wretchedness and poverty.
III. It creates trade for trade's sake, and augments the number of non-producers, whose support is chargeable upon Labor. As trade under the operation of this principle, offers the temptation of illicit gains and rapid wealth at the expense of others, it creates trade where there is no necessity for trade - not as a beneficent interchange of commodities between producers and consumers, but as a means of speculation. Hence thousands are withdrawn from actual production and thrust unnecessarily into the business of exchanging, mutually devouring each other by competition, and drawing their subsistence and their wealth from the producing classes, without rendering any equivalent service. Hence the interminable range of intermediates between the producer and consumer, the total defeat of organization and economy in the distribution of products, and the intolerable burden of the unproductive classes upon labor, together with a host of the frightful results of pauperism and crime.
IV. It degrades the dignity of Labor. Inasmuch as trade, under the operation of this principle, is more profitable, or at any rate is liable to be, promises to be, and in a portion of cases is more profitable than productive labor, it follows that the road to wealth and social distinction lies in that direction. Hence "Commerce is King," Hence, again, productive labor is depreciated and contemned. It holds the same relation to commerce in this age - under the reign of intellectual superiority -
that commerce itself held a few generations since - under the reign of physical force - to military achievement, personal or hereditary. Thus the degradation of labor, and all the innumerable evils which follow in its train, in our existing civilization, find their efficient cause in this same false principle of exchanging products. The next stage of progress will be the inauguration of Equity - equality in the results of every species of industry according to burdens, and the consequent accession of labor to the highest rank of human estimation. Commerce will then sink to a mere brokerage, paid, like any other species of labor, according to its repugnance, as the army is now sinking to a mere police force. It will be reduced to the simplest and most direct methods of exchange, and made to be the merest servant of production, which will come, in its turn, to be regarded as conferring the only true patents of nobility.
V. It prevents the possibility of a scientific Adjustment of Supply to Demand. It has been already shown that speculation is the cause why there has never been, and cannot now be any scientific Adaptation of Supply to Demand. It has also been partially shown, at various points, that speculation, or trading in chances and fluctuations in the market has its root in the Value Principle, and that the Cost Principle extinguishes speculation. It will be proper, however, in this connection to define exactly the limits of speculation, and to point out more specifically how the Value Principle creates it, and how the Cost Principle extinguishes it.
By speculation is meant, in the ordinary language of
trade, risky and unusual enterprises entered upon for the sake of more than ordinary profits, and in that sense there is attached to it, among merchants, a slight shade of imputation of dishonesty or disreputable conduct. As we are seeking now, however, to employ language in an exact and scientific way, we must find a more precise definition of the term. The line between ordinary and more than ordinary profits is too vague for a scientific treatise. At one extremity of the long succession of chance-dealing and advantage-taking transactions stands gambling, which is denounced by the common verdict of mankind as merely a more specious form of robbery. It holds the same relation to robbery itself that duelling holds to murder. Where is the other end of this succession? At what point does a man begin to take an undue advantage of his fellow man in a commercial transaction? It clearly appears, from all that has been shown, that he does so from the moment that he receives from him more than an exact equivalent of cost. But it is the constant endeavor of every trader, upon any other than the Cost Principle, to do that. The business of the merchant is profit-making. Profit signifies, etymologically, something made over and above, that is, something beyond an equivalent, or, in its simplest expression, something for nothing.
It is clear, then, that there is no difference between profit- making in its mildest form, speculation in its opprobrious sense as the middle term, and gambling as the ultimate, except in degree. There is simply the bad gradation of rank which there is between the slaveholder,
the driver on the slave plantation, and the slave dealer, or between the man of pleasure, the harlot, and the pimp.
The philanthropy of the age is moving heaven and earth to the overthrow of the institution of slavery. But slavery has no scientific definition. It is thought to consist in the feature of chattelism; but an ingenious lawyer would run his pen through every statute upon slavery in existence, and expunge that fiction of the law, and yet leave slavery, for all practical purposes, precisely what it is now. It needs only to appropriate the services of the man by operation of law, instead of the man himself The only distinction, then, left between his condition and that of the laborer who is robbed by the operation of a false commercial principle, would be in the fact of the oppression being more tangible and undisguisedly degrading to his manhood.
If, in any transaction, I get from you some portion of your earnings without an equivalent, I begin to make you my slave - to confiscate you to my uses; if I get a larger portion of your services without an equivalent, I make you still further my slave; and, finally, if I obtain the whole of your services without an equivalent - except the means of keeping you in working condition for my own sake, I make you completely my slave. Slavery is merely one development of a general system of human oppression, for which we have no comprehensive term in English, but which the French Socialists denominate exploitation - the abstraction, directly or indirectly, from the working classes of the fruits of their labor. In the case of the slave, the instrument of that abstraction is
force and legal enactments. In the case of the laborer, generally, it is speculation in the large sense, or profit- making. The slaveholder will be found, therefore, upon a scientific analysis, to hold the same relation to the trader which the freebooter holds to the blackleg. It is a question of taste which to admire most, the dare-devil boldness of the one, or the oily and intriguing propensities and performances of the other.
England lends, say, five hundred millions of dollars to governments and individuals in America. In a hundred years, she will have withdrawn from us, in interest, six times the amount loaned or advanced, and at the expiration of that time she withdraws the principal itself. We pay England a tax of at least three thousand million of dollars in a century; for her loans to us are probably even larger than the amount assumed. She commands the results of our labor to that extent, and gives us not a cent of the results of her labor in return - for her principal loaned represents her labor, and that we return to her intact. We are, to that extent, her slaves, - "slaves without masters;" for she commands and enjoys our labor, and is under none of the obligations
of a master - to protect, defend and provide for us.
Her superior skill in the mechanic arts, by means of free trade, taxes or exploitates us quite as much as her capital. She exchanges her comparatively light and skillful labor, for our hard, exposed and unintellectual labor; and, in the general, compels us to labor three hours for her, when she labors one for us. Thus, after deducting the cost of the material, a yard of her cloth will exchange for an amount of our cotton, corn or meat, that cost three times as much labor to produce as her yard of cloth.
As in society, the skillful and professional tax or exploitate the common laborer, by exchanging one hour of their light labor for many of the common workingman's hard labor; as lawyers, doctors, merchants and mechanics deal with day laborers, so England and New England treat us of the South. This theory, and this alone, accounts for England's ability to pay the interest on her national debt, and yet increase her wealth. She effects it all by the immense profits of the exploitation of her skill and capital; by the power which they give her to command labor, and appropriate its results, without consideration, or for a very partial consideration. She trades with the world, and exploitates it all, except France. France sets the fashion, and this enables her to exploitate England. England, in her trade
with France, has to pay for French fashions as well as French labor. In other words, France possesses superior skill, and exploitates England by means of it. Labor, not skill, is the just and equitable measure of values.
America sends her cotton, her surplus grain and meats, and other agricultural products, and her California gold, to England, and gets worse than nothing in return; for if she were compelled to produce at home what she procures from England, she must cultivate a thousand skillful and intellectual pursuits, instead of being, as she too much is, confined to the coarse drudgery of common labor. The Southern States of this Union are exploitated of their labor and their brains, in their trade with England and New England. They produce nothing which we had not better produce at home. Northern trade exploitates us. Trade further South would enrich us and enlighten us; for we would manufacture for the far South. We should become exploitators, instead of being exploitated.
When we were in New Haven, a distinguished abolitionist boasted to us that mechanics received two dollars per day for their labor, and, by their China trade, exchanged the products of one day's labor for twenty days' labor of the Chinese, who worked for ten cents a day. The New England mechanic was thus the master of twenty Chinese laborers, whose labor he commanded for one of his
own day's labor. Here was an instance of individual, not of national exploitation. Well might China dread free trade. It gives her task-masters, who impoverish her people and depress her civilization; for they, by their machinery and superior skill, withdraw her people from a thousand mechanical pursuits that promoted civilization.
In Sociology, we explained this subject synthetically: we have tried now to expound it analytically.
economic science. The philosophy is partially true, because selfishness, as a rule of action and guide of conduct, is necessary to the existence of man, and of all other animals. But it should not be, with man especially, the only rule and guide; for he is, by nature, eminently social and gregarious. His wants, his weakness, his appetites, his affections, compel him to look without, and beyond self, in order to sustain self. The eagle and the owl, the lion and the tiger, are not gregarious, but solitary and self-supporting. They practice political economy, because 'tis adapted to their natures. But men and beavers, herds, bees, and ants, require a different philosophy, another guide of conduct. The Bible, (independent of its authority,) is far man's best guide, even in this world. Next to it, we would place Aristotle. But all books written four hundred or more years ago, are apt to yield useful instruction, whilst those written since that time will generally mislead. We mean, of course, books on moral science. We should not be far out in saying, that no book on physics, written more than four hundred years ago, is worth reading, and none on morals written within that time. The Reformation, which effected much of practical good, gave birth to a false philosophy, which has beer increasing and ramifying until our day, and now threatens the overthrow of all social institutions The right of Private Judgment led to the doctrine
of Human Individuality, and a Social Contract to restrict that individuality. Hence, also, arose the doctrines of Laissez-faire, free competition, human equality, freedom of religion, of speech and of the press, and universal liberty. The right of Private Judgment, naturally enough, leads to the right to act on that judgment, to the supreme sovereignty of the individual, and the abnegation of all government. No doubt the Reformation resulted from the relaxation of feudalism and the increased liberties of mind and body which men had begun to relish and enjoy. We have no quarrel with the Reformation, as such, for reform was needed; nor with all of the philosophy that has been deduced from it; but it is the excess of reform, and the excessive applications of that philosophy, to which we object. Man is selfish, as well as social; he is born a part and member of society, born and lives a slave of society; but he has also natural individual rights and liberties. What are his obligations to society, what his individual rights, what position he is entitled to, what duties he should fulfill, depend upon a thousand ever-changing circumstances, in the wants and capacities of the individual, and in the necessities and well-being of the society to which he belongs. Modern philosophy treats of men only as separate monads or individuals; it is, therefore, always partly false and partly true; because, whilst man is always a limb or member of
the Being, Society, he is also a Being himself, and does not bear to society the mere relation which the hand or the foot does to the human body. We shall propose no new philosophy, no universal and unerring principles or guide, in place of those which we assail. A Moral Pathology, which feels its way in life, and adapts itself to circumstances, as they present themselves, is the nearest approach to philosophy, which it is either safe or wise to attempt. All the rest must be left to Religion, to Faith, and to Providence. This inadequacy of philosophy has, in all ages and nations, driven men to lean on religious faith for support. Though assailing all common theories, we are but giving bold and candid expression to the commonest of thoughts. The universal admiration of the passages we are about to cite, proves the truth of our theory, whilst it debars us of all claim to originality:
SOLOMON, melancholy, gloomy, dissatisfied, and tossed upon a sea of endless doubt and speculation, exclaims, "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; all is vanity." But, at length, he finds rest from the stormy ocean of philosophy, in the calm haven of faith. How beautiful and consoling, and how natural, too, his parting words:
"Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man."
"For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil."
In his Tenth, or Golden Satire, JUVENAL comes to a like conclusion, after having indulged in like speculations:
Nil
ergò optabunt homines? Si consilium vis,
Permittes
ipsis expendere numinibus, quid
Conveniat
nobis, rebusque sit utile nostris.
Nam
pro jucundis aptissama quæque dabunt diis
Carior
est illis homo, quàm sibi.
The Epicurean HORACE, in his first Satire, sees the same difficulty, but gives a less satisfactory solution:
Est
modus in rebus; sunt certi denique fines,
Quos
ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum.
BURKE'S beautiful words, "What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!" convey the same thought, without attempting a solution.
SHAKSPEARE employs the profoundest philosophy, to assail all philosophy:
"There
are more things in heaven and earth,
Horatio,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
The infidel, VOLTAIRE, admits that "philosophy had ascertained few truths, done little good;" and
when he sums up that little, satisfies the reader that it has done nothing - unless it be to perplex and mislead.
He, Voltaire, also, in another connection, exclaims, mournfully:
"I now repeat this confession, still more emphatically, since the more I read, the more I meditate, and the more I acquire, the more I am enabled to affirm, that I know nothing." NEWTON, admitting his own ignorance, is a standing monument of the inadequacy and futility of moral researches and speculations.
PINDAR -
Man,
the frail being of a day,
Uncertain
shadow of a dream,
Illumined
by the heavenly beam,
Flutters
his airy life away.
AESCHYLUS -
Vain
thy ardor, vain thy grace,
They,
nor force, nor aid repay;
Like
a dream, man's feeble race,
Short-lived
reptiles of a day.
SOPHOCLES -
'Tis
sad to think, but me the farce of life persuades,
That
men are only spectral forms, or hollow shades.
ARISTOPHANES -
Come
now, ye host of fading lives, like the race of withering
leaves,
Who
live a day, creatures of clay, tribes that flit like shadows
away;
Ephemeral,
wingless insects, dreamy shapes, that death expects
Soon
to bind in phantom sheaves.
We will conclude our citations, which we might continue to the crack of doom, (for all who have written well and much, have indulged similar reflections,) with Doctor Johnson's Rasselas, which is intended to expand and apply what others had concisely and tersely stated. The Doctor's is an elaborate failure.
Philosophy can neither account for the past, comprehend the present, nor foresee and provide for the future. "I'll none of it."
forth its millionaire, and every day its thousands of new paupers. New York and London grow richer rapidly on the fruits of a trade that robs the less commercial and skillful people who traffic with them.
But the worst effect of free trade is, that it begets centres of opinion, thought and fashions, robs men of their nationality, and impairs their patriotism by teaching them to ape foreign manners, affect foreign dress and opinions, and despise what is domestic. Paris, as the centre of thought and fashion, wields as much power, and makes almost as much money as London, by being the centre of trade and capital. An American or Englishman will give five prices for an article because it is made in Paris. Thus the want of true self-respect in America and England, makes labor produce more in Paris than elsewhere. A Virginian thinks it a disgrace to be dressed in home-spun, because home-spun is unfashionable. The Frenchman prides himself on being a Frenchman; all other people affect the cosmopolitan.
The tendency of all this is to transfer all wealth to London, New York and Paris, and reduce the civilization of Christendom to a miserable copy of French civilization, itself an indifferent copy of Roman civilization, which was an imitation, but a falling off from that of Greece.
We pay millions monthly for French silks, French
wines, French brandy, and French trinkets, though we can and do make as comfortable articles for dress, and as good liquors, at home. But we despise ourselves, and admire the French, and give four hours of American labor for one of French labor, just to be in the fashion. And what is our fashion ? To treat whatever is American with contempt. People who thus act are in a fair way to deserve and meet with from others, that contempt which they feel for themselves. The little States of Greece each had its dialect, and cultivated it, and took pride in it. Now, dialects are vulgar and provincial. We shall have no men like the Greeks, till the manners, dress, and dialect of gentlemen, betray, like the wines of Europe, the very neighborhood whence they come. So thought Mr. Calhoun, and talked South Carolina dialect in Senate. But for all that, it was the best English of the day. Its smack of provincialism gave it a higher flavor.
We of the South teach political economy, because it is taught in Europe. Yet political economy, and all other systems of moral science, which we derive from Europe, are tainted with abolition, and at war with our institutions. We must build up centres of trade, of thought and fashion at home. We must become national, nay, provincial, cease to be imitative cosmopolitans. We must
especially, have good colleges and universities, where young men may learn to admire their homes, not to despise them.
The South feels the truth of all this, and after a while will begin to understand it. She has been for years earnestly and actively engaged in promoting the exclusive and protective policy, and preaching free trade, non-interference of government and 'let alone.' But she does not let alone. She builds roads and canals, encourages education, endows schools and colleges, improves river navigation, excludes, or taxes heavily foreign show-men, foreign pedlars, sellers of clocks, &c. tries to build up by legislation Southern commerce, and by State legislation to multiply and encourage industrial pursuits. Protection by the State Government is her established policy - and that is the only expedient or constitutional protection. It is time for her to avow her change of policy and opinion, and to throw Adam Smith, Say, Ricardo & Co., in the fire.
We want American customs, habits, manners, dress, manufactures, modes of thought, modes of expression, and language. We should encourage national and even State peculiarities; for there are peculiarities and differences in the wants and situations of all people, that require provincial and national, not cosmopolitan, institutions and productions. Take language, for instance. It is a thing
of natural growth and development, and adapts itself naturally to the changes of time and circumstance. It is never ungrammatical as spoken by children, but always expressive, practical and natural. Nature is always grammatical, and language, the child of nature, would continue so, but for the grammarians, who, with their Procrustean rules, disturb its proportions, destroy its variety and adaptation, and retard its growth. They are to language what dentists are to teeth: they more often injure it than improve it.
Grammar, lexicography, and rhetoric, applied to language, destroy its growth, variety and adaptability - stereotype it, make it at once essentially a dead language, and unfit for future use; for new localities, and changes of time and circumstances, beget new ideas, and require new words and new combinations of words. Centralization and cosmopolitanism have precisely the same effect They would furnish a common language from the centre, which is only fully expressive and comprehensive at that centre. Walking and talking are equally natural, and talking masters and walking masters equally useless. Neither can foresee and provide for the thousands of new circumstances which make change of language, or varieties of movement necessary. Nature is never at a loss, and is the only reliable dancing master and grammar teacher. She is always graceful and
appropriate, and always ready to adapt herself to changes of time, situation and circumstances.
Paris is becoming the universal model and grammar of Christendom; nothing is right unless it be a la Parisienne. Now, in truth, nothing can be right, natural, appropriate, or in good taste, outside of Paris, that is Parisienne. When will our monkey imitative world cease to sacrifice millions of money, cease to show its want of good sense and propriety, and cease to render itself ridiculous by aping, what, in the nature of things, is unsuitable, inappropriate, and unnatural? Fashion, aided by free trade and centralization, is subjecting us to the dominion of Parisian thought; and commerce, by means of the same agencies, makes us tributaries to London. Trade and fashion conquer faster than arms.
After the Romans had conquered Greece, Athens became the school and centre of thought for the civilized world. Men had but one set of ideas, but one set of models to imitate, in the whole range of the fine arts. Inventiveness and originality ceased, and genius was subdued. The rule of Horace, "Nullius addictus in verba magistri jurare," was versed, and men ceased to think for themselves, but looked to the common fountain of thought at Athens; where the teachers of mankind borrowed all their ideas from the past. Improvement and progress ceased, and imitation, chaining the
present to the car of the past, soon induced rapid retrogression. Thus, we think centralization of thought occasioned the decline of civilization . Northern invaders introduced new ideas, broke up centralization, arrested imitation, and begot originality and inventiveness. Thus a start was given to a new and Christian civilization. Now, a centralization occasioned by commerce and fashion, threatens the overthrow of our civilization, as arms and conquest overthrew the ancient.
The ill effect of centralization of thought, whether its centre be the past, or some locality of the present, is apparent in the arts and literature of the Latin nations of Europe. France, Spain and Italy, though possessed of more genius, have displayed less originality than England and Germany. French art is a mere re-hash of Roman art, and very inferior to its original. The natural growth, changes and adaptation of language, are admirably described by Horace in his De Arte Poetica. makes a great blunder in advising the forming and compounding words from the Greek, however; for the very want that occasions new words, shows that they cannot be supplied from the past. In the passage we are about to quote, he seems to have seen and deplored the advent of that age of rule and criticism that was to stereotype language, thought, art itself, prevent progress, and inaugurate decline. From Horace's day, criticism ruled,
language and art were stereotyped, and the world declined:
"Dixeris
egregiè, notum si callida verbum,
Reddiderit
junctura novum: si fortè necesse est
Indiciis
monstrare recentibus abdita rerum,
Fingere
cinctutis non exaudita Cethegis
Continget;
dabiturque licentia sumpta pudenter;
Et
nova fictaque nuper habebunt verba fidem, si
Græco
fonte cadent, parcè detorta. Quid autem
Caecilio,
Plantoque dabit Romanus, ademptum
Virgilio,
Varioque? ego cur acquirere pauca
Si
possum, invideor; cùm lingua Catonis et Enni
Sermonem
patrium ditaverit, et nova rerum
Nomina
protulerit? Licuit, semperque licebit
Signatum
præsente notâ procudere nomen.
Ut
silvæ foliis pronos mutantur in annos,
Prima
cadunt; ita verborum vetus interit ætas,
Et
juvenum ritu florent modò nata, vigentque."
Italy, of the middle ages, imbibed more of the Christian and chivalric element, threw off for a while imitation and subserviency to the past, and shone forth with brilliant originality in all the works of art. But she, like France, has relapsed into imitation of the antique, and falls far below either Roman or mediæval art. With the age of Cervantes, Spanish genius expired. His happy ridicule expelled the absurdities of Knight Errantry, but unfortunately expelled, at the same time, the new elements of thought which Christianity and Chivalry had introduced into modern literature. They were its only progressive elements, in the
Latin nations of Europe, who in all else were mere Romans.
Fenelon's Telemaque is a servile imitation of Virgil's Æneid, and that is an equally servile imitation of Homer. Each copy falls below the original.
Nothing shows so strongly the want of originality and want of independence of taste and thought among these Latin nations, as their contempt for Shakspeare. He violates all the rules of Greek and Roman art, and erects a higher art of his own; but Frenchmen, Italians, and Spaniards, have no tastes and no ideas differing from, or in advance of, the ancients, and can neither understand nor appreciate the genius of Shakspeare. In Germany, is almost as much read and admired as in England.
Imitation, grammar and slavery suit the masses. Liberty and Laissez faire, the men of genius, and the men born to command. Genius, in her erratic flights, represents a higher Grammar than Dr. Blair or Lindlay Murray - the grammar of progressive nature. To secure true progress, we must unfetter genius, and chain down mediocrity. Liberty for the few - Slavery, in every form, for the mass!
The rules of art destroy art. Homer never could have produced the Iliad, had he learned grammar and rhetoric and criticism. 'Tis well for the world, he lived before Longinus. Euripides,
Sophocles,, and Aristophanes, and the Greek Masters in Sculpture and Painting, knew nothing of the rules of art and canons of criticism. Without the modern helps to art, Grecian art so far excelled ours, that it is a popular theory that they possessed an Ideal that has been lost. Early in the days of the Roman Empire, the rhetoricians, by attempting to teach eloquence by rule, so corrupted it, that the Emperors found it necessary to banish them from Rome.
We are no doubt indebted to the ignorance of the ancients for the invention of Gothic architecture. No one taught to reverence Greek architecture, would have violated its rules by imitating the Gothic.
When about the time of the Reformation, the study of the ancients was revived, each Gothic spire stopped half way in its course towards heaven. Mediaeval art expired: - and now the world has no art, but basely copies the past.
Had Shakspeare been as learned as Ben Jonson, he would have written no better than Ben Jonson. The lofty genius of Milton would have created a glorious English epic, had he not travelled too much abroad, and dwelt too much with the past. The Paradise Lost is a splendid piece of Mosaic, made up of bits of Greek and Roman mythology, Hebrew theology, Christian morality,
Mediaeval romance, set in the purest Anglo-Saxon, twisted into Latin collocation. 'Tis the song of the mocking-bird.
What, then? Shall we not in boyhood sojourn and linger at Athens and at Rome, nor in manhood travel into :France and Italy?
Est modus in rebus. Study the past, but be careful not to copy it, and never travel abroad until age has matured your love and respect for your native land.
Whether with reason or with instinct blest,
All enjoy that power that suits them best;
Order is Heaven's first law, and this confessed,
Some are, and must be greater than the rest -
More rich, more wise; but who infers from hence
That such are happier, shocks all common sense.
Heaven to mankind impartial, we confess,
If all are equal in their happiness;
But mutual wants this happiness increase,
All nature's difference, keeps all nature's peace:
Condition, circumstance, is not the thing;
Bliss is the same, in subject, or in king!
POPE.
Mobs, secret associations, insurance companies, and social and communistic experiments, are striking features and characteristics of our day, outside of slave society. They are all attempting to supply the defects of regular governments, which have carried the "Let alone" practice so far, that one-third of mankind are let alone to indulge in such criminal immoralities as they please, and another third to starve. Mobs (vide California) supply the deficiencies of a defective police, and insurance companies and voluntary unions and associations
afford that security and protection which government, under the lead of political economy, has ceased to render.
A lady remarked to us, a few days since, "that society was like an army, in which the inferior officers were as necessary as the commander in chief. Demoralization and insubordination ensue if you dispense with sergeants and corporals in an army, and the same effects result from dispensing with guardians, masters and heads of families in society." We don't know whether she included the ladies in her ideas of the heads of families; protesting against such construction of her language, we accept and thank her for her illustration. Rev'd Nehemiah Adams. has a similar thought in his admirable work, "A Southside View of Slavery," which we regret is not before us. On some public occasion in Charleston, he was struck with the good order and absence of all dissipation, and very naively asked where was their mob. He was informed that "they were at work." He immediately perceived that slavery was an admirable police institution, and moralizes very wisely on the occasion. Slavery is an indispensable police institution; - especially so, to check the cruelty and tyranny of vicious and depraved husbands and parents. Husbands and parents have, in theory and practice, a power over their subjects more despotic than kings; and the ignorant and vicious exercise
their power more oppressively than kings. Every man is not fit to be king, yet all must have wives and children. Put a master over them to check their power, and we need not resort to the unnatural remedies of woman's rights, limited marriages, voluntary divorces, and free love, as proposed by the abolitionists.
Mr. Carlyle says, "Among practical men the idea prevails that government can do nothing but 'keep the peace.' They say all higher tasks are unsafe for it, impossible for it, and, in fine, not necessary for it or for us. Truly, it is high time that same beautiful notion of No-Government should take itself away. The world is daily rushing towards wreck whilst it lasts. If your government is to be a constituted anarchy, what issue can it have ? Our own interest in such government is, that it would be kind enough to cease and go its way before the inevitable wreck."
The reader will excuse us for so often introducing the thoughts and words of others. We do so not only for the sake of their authority, but because they express our own thoughts better than we can express them ourselves. In truth, we deal out our thoughts, facts and arguments in that irregular and desultory way in which we acquired them. We are no regular built scholar - have pursued no "royal road to mathematics," nor to anything else.
We have, by observation and desultory reading, picked up our information by the wayside, and endeavored to arrange, generalize and digest it for ourselves. To learn "to forget," is almost the only thing we have labored to learn. We have been so bored through life by friends with dyspeptic memories, who never digest what they read, because they never forget it, who retain on their intellectual stomachs in gross, crude, undigested, and unassimilated form, every thing that they read, and retail and repeat it in that undigested form to every good-natured listener: we repeat, that we have been so bored by friends with good memories, that we have resolved to endeavor to express what was useful out of facts, and then to throw the facts away. A great memory is a disease of the mind, which we are surprised no medical writer has noticed. The lunatic asylum should make provision for those affected with this disease; for, though less dangerous, they are far more troublesome and annoying than any other class of lunatics. Learning, observation, reading, are only useful in the general, as they add to the growth of the mind. Undigested and unforgotten, they can no more have this effect, than undigested food on the stomach of a dyspeptic can add to his physical stature. We thought once this thing was original with us, but find that Say pursued this plan in writing his Political Economy.
He first read all the books he could get hold of on this subject, and then took time to forget them, before he began to write.
We will not trouble the reader further, for the present, with our egotisms or our arguments, but refer him to the whole of Carlyle's "Latter Day Pamphlets," to prove that "the world is too little governed," and, therefore, is going to wreck. We say, to the whole of those pamphlets, for that is their one, great leading idea. We also add an extract from the speech of Ulysses, in the play of Troilus and Cressida, that beautifully illustrates and enforces our thought. We give the extract because it is a play that few read, it being, on the whole, far inferior to Shakspeare's other plays, and by few considered as wholly, if at all, his work:
"The
heavens themselves, the planets and this
centre,
Observe
degree, priority, and place,
Insisture,
course, proportion, season, form,
Office
and custom, in all line of order:
And,
therefore, is the glorious planet, Sol,
In
nobler eminence enthron'd and spher'd
Amidst
the other; whose med'cinable eye
Corrects
the ill aspects of planets evil,
And
posts, like the commandment of a king,
Sans
check, to good and bad: But, when the planets,
In
evil mixture, to disorder wander,
What
plagues, and what portents? what mutiny?
What
raging of the sea? shaking of earth?
Commotion
in the winds? frights changes, horrors,
Divert
and crack, rend and deracinate,
The
unity and married calm of states
Quite
from their fixture? O, when degree is shak'd,
Which
is the ladder of all high designs,
The
enterprise is sick! How could communities,
Degrees
in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful
commerce from dividable shores,
The
primogenitive and due of birth,
Prerogative
of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But
by degree, stand in authentic place?
Take
but degree away, untune that string,
And,
hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In
mere oppugnancy: The bounded waters
Should
lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And
make a sop of all this solid globe:
Strength
should be lord of imbecility,
And
the rude son should strike his father dead:
Force
should be right; or, rather, right and wrong.
(Between
whose endless jar justice resides,)
Should
lose their names, and so should justice too.
We promised to write no more in this chapter; but, like Parthos, when "we have an idea," we want to give others the benefit of it. We agree with Mr. Jefferson, that all men have natural and inalienable rights. To violate or disregard such rights, is to oppose the designs and plans of Providence, and cannot "come to good." The order and subordination observable in the physical, animal and human world, show that some are formed for higher, others for lower stations - the few to command, the many to obey. We conclude that about nineteen out of every twenty individuals have "a natural and inalienable right" to be taken care of and
protected; to have guardians, trustees, husbands, or masters; in other words, they have a natural and inalienable right to be slaves. The one in twenty are as clearly born or educated, or some way fitted for command and liberty. Not to make them rulers or masters, is as great a violation of natural right, as not to make slaves of the mass. A very little individuality is useful and necessary to society, - much of it begets discord, chaos and anarchy.
NOTE. - Since writing this chapter, we have received our copy of Mr. Adams's work. We congratulate ourselves on our success in "learning to forget." Here is the passage to which we refer:
"One consequence of the disposal of the colored people, as to individual control, is the absence of mobs. That fearful element in society, an irresponsible and low class, is diminished at the South. Street brawls and conflicts between two races of laboring people, or the ignorant and more excitable portions of different religious denominations, are mostly unknown within the bounds of slavery. Our great source of disturbance at the North, jealousy and collisions between Protestant and Irish Roman Catholic laborers, is obviated there.
"When the remains of Mr. Calhoun were brought to Charleston, a gentleman from a free State in the procession said to a southern gentleman, "Where is your underswell?" referring to the motley crowd of men and boys of all nations which gather in most of our large places on
public occasions. He was surprised to learn that those respectable, well-dressed, well-behaved colored men and boys on the sidewalks, were a substitute for that class of population which he had elsewhere been accustomed to see with repugnant feelings on public occasions."
As we are on the subject of Mr. Adams's book, we will give another extract from it, confirmatory of our doctrines:
"There is another striking peculiarity of Southern society which is attributable to slavery, and is very interesting to a Northerner at the present day. While the colored people are superstitious and excitable, popular delusions and fanaticisms do not prevail among them. That class of society among us in which these things get root, has a substitute in the colored population. Spiritual rappings, biology, second-adventism, Mormonism, and the whole spawn of errors which infest us, do not find subjects at the South. There is far more faith in the South, taken as a whole, than with us. Many things which we feel called to preach against here are confined to the boundaries of the Free States; yet the white population are readers of books, though not of newspapers, perhaps more generally than we. That vast amount of active but uninstructed mind with us, which seizes every new thing, and follows brilliant or specious error, and erects a folly into a doctrine with a sect annexed, and so infuses doubt or contempt of things sacred into many minds, is no element in Southern life. This is one reason why there is more faith, less infidelity, at the South, than at the
North. The opinions of a lower class on moral and religious subjects, have a powerful effect on the classes above them; more than is generally acknowledged; and hence we derive an argument in favor of general education, in which moral and religious principles shall have their important place."
Effugit
imago,
Par
livibus ventis, volucri que simillima somno.
It seems to us that the vain attempts to define liberty in theory, or to secure its enjoyment in practice, proceed from the fact that man is naturally a social and gregarious animal, subject, not by contract or agreement, as Locke and his followers assume, but by birth and nature, to those restrictions of liberty which are expedient or necessary to secure the good of the human hive, to which he may belong. There is no such thing as natural human liberty, because it is unnatural for man to live alone and without the pale and government of society. Birds, and beasts of prey, who are not gregarious, are naturally free. Bees and herds are naturally subjects or slaves of society. Such is the theory of Aristotle, promulged more than two thousand years ago, generally considered true for two thousand years, and destined, we hope, soon again to be accepted as the only true theory of government and society.
Modern social reformers, except Mr. Carlyle,
proceeding upon the theory of Locke, which is the opposite of Aristotle, propose to dissolve and disintegrate society; falsely supposing that they thereby follow nature. There is not a human tie that binds man to man, that they do not propose to cut "sheer asunder." 'Tis true, after their work of destruction is finished, they see the necessity of society; but instead of that natural and historical society, which has usually existed in the world, with its gradations of rank and power, its families and its slaves, they propose wholly to disregard the natural relations of mankind, and profanely to build up states, like Fourierite Phalansteries, or Mormon and Oneida villages, where religion shall be banished, and in which property, wife and children shall be held somewhat in common. These social establishments, under a self-elected despotism like that of Joe Smith, or Brigham Young, become patriarchal, and succeed, so long as such despotism lasts. That is, when the association loses the character intended by its founders, and acquires a despotic head like other family associations, it works well, because it works naturally. But this success can only be temporary, for nothing but the strong rule of a Cromwell or Joe Smith can keep a society together, that wants the elements of cohesion, in the natural ties that bind man to man: and Cromwells and Joe Smiths are not to be found every day.
'Tis an historical fact, that this family association, this patriarchal government, for purposes of defence against enemies from without, gradually merges into larger associations of men under a common government or ruler. This latter is the almost universal, and we may thence infer, natural and normal condition of civilized man. In this state of society there is no liberty for the masses. Liberty has been exchanged by nature for security.
What is falsely called Free Society, is a very recent invention. It proposes to make the weak, ignorant and poor, free, by turning them loose in a world owned exclusively by the few (whom nature and education have made strong, and whom property has made stronger,) to get a living. In the fanciful state of nature, where property is unappropriated, the strong have no weapons but superior physical and mental power with which to oppress the weak. Their power of oppression is increased a thousand fold, when they become the exclusive owners of the earth and all the things thereon. They are masters without the obligations of masters, and the poor are slaves without the rights of slaves.
It is generally conceded, even by abolitionists, that the serfs of Europe were liberated because the multitude of laborers, and their competition as free men to get employment, had rendered free labor cheaper than slave labor. But, strange to say, few
seem to have seen that this is in fact asserting that they were less free after emancipation than before. Their obligation to labor was increased; for they were compelled to labor more than before to obtain a livelihood, else their free labor would not have been cheaper than their labor as slaves. They lost something in liberty, and everything in rights - for emancipation liberated or released the masters from all their burdens, cares and liabilities, whilst it increased both the labors and the cares of the liberated serf. In our chapter on the Decay of English Liberty, we show that the whole struggle in England has been to oppress the working man, pull down the powers, privileges and prerogatives of the throne, the nobility, and the church, and to elevate the property-holding class. The extracts from the Era and Northern Churchman, in another chapter, will further elucidate this subject. We promised to confirm our doctrine of the illusory and undefinable character of liberty and slavery, by extracts from standard authors.
PALEY on Civil Liberty:
"To do what we will, is natural liberty: to do what we will, consistently with the interest of the community to which we belong, is civil liberty; that is to say, the only liberty to be desired in a state of civil society.
I should wish, no doubt, to be allowed to act, in every
instance, as I pleased; but I reflect, that the rest also of mankind would then do the same; in which state of universal independence and self-direction, I should meet with so many checks and obstacles to my own will, from the interference and opposition of other men's, that not only my happiness, but my liberty, would be less than whilst the whole community were subject to the dominion of equal laws.
The boasted liberty of a state of nature exists only in a state of solitude. In every kind and degree of union and intercourse with his species, it is possible that the liberty of the individual may be augmented by the very laws which restrain it; because he may gain more from the limitation of other men's freedom than he suffers by the diminution of his own. Natural liberty is the right of common upon a waste; civil liberty is the safe, exclusive, unmolested enjoyment of a cultivated enclosure.
The definitions which have been framed of civil liberty, and which have become the subject of much unnecessary altercation, are most of them adapted to this idea. Thus, one political writer makes the essence of the subject's liberty to consist in his being governed by no laws but those to which he hath actually consented; another is satisfied with an indirect and virtual consent; another, again, places civil liberty in the separation of the legislative and executive offices of government; another in the being governed by law; that is, by known, preconstituted, inflexible rules of action and adjudication; a fifth, in the exclusive right of the people to tax themselves by their own representatives; a sixth, in freedom and purity of elections of representatives; a
seventh, in the control which the democratic part of the constitution possesses over the military establishment."
MONTESQUIEU on Liberty:
"There is no word that has admitted of more various significations, and has made more different impressions on human minds, than that of liberty. Some have taken it for a faculty of deposing a person on whom they had conferred a tyrannical authority; others, for the power of choosing a person whom they are obliged to obey; others, for the right of bearing arms, and of being thereby enabled to use violence; others, for the privilege of being governed by a native of their own country, or by their own laws. A certain nation for a long time thought that liberty consisted in the privilege of wearing a long beard.
Some have annexed this name to one form of government, in exclusion of others; those who had a republican taste applied it to this government; those who liked a monarchical state, gave it to monarchies. Thus, they all have applied the name of liberty to the government most conformable to their own customs and inclinations and as in a republic, people have not so constant and so present a view of the institutions they complain of, and likewise as the laws there seem to speak more, and the executors of the laws least, it is generally attributed to republics, and denied to monarchies. In fine, as in democracies, the people seem to do very near whatever they please, liberty has been placed in this sort of
government, and the power of the people has been confounded with their liberty.
It is true, that in democracies the people seem to do what they please; but political liberty does not consist in an unrestrained freedom. In governments, that is, in societies directed by laws, liberty can consist only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to will.
We must have continually present to our minds the difference between independence and liberty. Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permit; and if a citizen could do what they forbid, he would no longer be possessed of liberty, because all his fellow citizens would have the same power."
BLACKSTONE on Liberty:
"The absolute right of man, considered as a free agent, endowed with discernment to know good from evil, and with power of choosing those measures which appear to him to be most desirable, are usually summed up in one general appellation, and denominated the natural liberty of mankind.
This natural liberty consists properly in a power of acting as one thinks fit, without any restraint or control, unless by the law of nature; being a right inherent us by birth, and one of the gifts of God to man at creation, when he endued him with the faculty o of will. But every man, when he enters into society, gives up a part of his natural liberty, as the price of so valuable a purchase; and, in consideration of receiving advantages of mutual commerce, obliges himself to
form to those laws which the community has thought proper to establish. And this species of legal obedience and conformity is infinitely more desirable than that wild and savage liberty which is sacrificed to obtain it. For no man that considers a moment, would wish to retain the absolute, uncontrolled power of doing what he pleases; the consequence of which is, that every other man would also have the same power; and then there would be no security to individuals in any of the enjoyments of life. Political, therefore, or civil liberty, which is that of a member of society, is no other than natural liberty, so far restrained by human laws, (and no farther,) as is necessary and expedient for the general advantage of the public. Hence, we may collect that the law, which restrains a man from doing mischief to his fellow citizens, though it diminishes the natural, increases the civil liberty of mankind; but that every wanton and causeless restraint of the will of the subject whether practiced by a monarch, a nobility, or a popular assembly, is a degree of tyranny: nay, that even laws themselves, whether made with or without our consent, if they regulate and constrain our conduct in matters of mere indifference, without any good end in view, are regulations destructive of liberty; whereas, if any public advantage can arise from observing such precepts, the control of our private inclinations, in one or two particular points, will conduce to preserve our general freedom in others of more importance, by supporting that state of society which can alone secure our independence. Thus the statute of King Edward IV, which forbade the fine gentlemen of those times (under the degree of a lord)
to wear pikes upon their shoes or boots of more than two inches in length, was a law that savored of oppression; because, however ridiculous the fashion then in use might appear, the restraining it by pecuniary penalties, could serve no purpose of common utility. But the statute of King Charles II, which prescribes a thing seemingly as indifferent, (a dress for the dead, who are all ordered to be buried in woollen,) is a law consistent with public liberty; for it encourages the staple trade, on which, in great measure, depends the universal good of the nation. So that laws, when prudently framed, are by no means subversive, but rather introductive of liberty; for, (as Mr. Locke has well observed,) where there is no law, there is no freedom. But then, on the other hand, that constitution or frame of government - that system of laws, is alone calculated to maintain civil liberty, which leaves the subject entire master of his own conduct, except in those points wherein the public good requires some direction or restraint.
The idea and practice of this political or civil liberty, flourish in their highest vigor in those kingdoms where it falls little short of perfection, and can only be lost or destroyed by the folly or demerits of its owner: the legislature, and of course the laws of England, being peculiarly adapted to the preservation of this inestimable blessing even in the meanest subject.
Very different from the modern constitutions of other States on the continent of Europe, and from the genius of the imperial law, which, in general, are calculated to vest an arbitrary and despotic power of controlling the actions of the subject, in the prince or in a few grandees.
And this spirit of liberty is so deeply implanted in our constitution, and rooted even in our very soil, that a slave, or a negro, the moment he lands in England, falls under the protection of the laws, and so far becomes a freeman, though the master's right to his service may possibly still continue.
Next to personal security, the law of England regards, asserts and preserves the personal liberty of individuals. This personal liberty consists in the power of locomotion, of changing situation, or removing one's person to whatever place one's inclinations may direct, without imprisonment or restraint, unless by due course of law. Concerning which, we may make the same observations as upon the preceding article; that it is a right strictly natural; that the laws of England have never abridged it without sufficient cause; and, that in this kingdom, it can never be abridged at the mere discretion of the magistrate, without the explicit permission of the laws."
Now, let the reader examine and study these definitions of Liberty by Paley, Montesquieu and Blackstone, and he will see that they are in pursuit of an ignis fatuus that eludes their grasp. He will see more, that their liberty is a mere modification of slavery. That each of them proposes that degree of restraint, restriction and control, that will redound to the general good. That each is in pursuit of good government, not liberty. Government pre-supposes that liberty is surrendered as the price of security. The degree of government must
depend on the moral and intellectual condition of those to be governed. Take, for instance, Blackstone's definition of civil liberty, and our negro slaves enjoy liberty, because the restrictions on their free will and free agency not only redound to public good, but are really necessary to the protection and government of themselves. We mean to involve ourselves in no such absurdities. Negroes, according to Blackstone, Paley and Montesquieu, although slaves, are free, because their liberty is only so far restricted as the public interest and their own good require. Our theory is, that they are not free, because God and nature, and the general good and their own good, intended them for slaves. They enjoy all the rights calculated to promote their own interests, or the public good. They are, at the South, well governed and well protected. These are the aims of all social institutions, and of all governments. There can be no liberty where there is government; but there may be security for good government. This the slave has in the selfish interest of the master and in his domestic affection. The free laborer has no such securities. It is the interest of employers to kill them off as fast possible; and they never fail to do it.
We do not mean to say that the negro slave enjoys liberty. But we do say that he is well and properly governed, so as best to promote his own good and that of society. We do mean to say further,
that what we have quoted from these great authors, is all fudge and nonsense. Liberty is unattainable; and if attainable, not desirable.
Liberty of locomotion, which Blackstone boasts of as one of the rights of Englishmen, belongs to the mass of them less than to other people. For five hundred years the poor laws-have confined the poor to their parishes, denied them the right to bargain for their own wages, and as late as 1725, set them up in stalls and shambles for hire, like cattle. Liberty in England, as in Rome and Greece, has been, and is now, the privilege of the few - not the right of the many. But in Rome, Greece, and the Southern States of America, the many have gained in protection what they lost in liberty. In England, the masses have neither liberty nor protection. They are slaves without masters. This right of locomotion, of choosing or changing their domicile, is not only denied to the mass of the poor, but in all countries as well as in England, to wives, to children, to wards, apprentices, soldiers, sailors, convicts, lunatics and idiots. Take, then, this test of liberty, and how little of it is there in England! But, in fact, there is a very large nomadic class of beggars, rogues, and journeymen workmen, who are always wandering, and yet, who are the most wretched members of society and its greatest pests. So much for locomotion.
Great as the difficulty is to determine what is
Liberty, to ascertain and agree on what constitutes Slavery is still greater. Slavery, in its technical form, has been almost universal, yet not exactly alike in all its circumstances and all its regulations in any two ages, or in any two countries. In very many ancient States, the power of life and death was vested in the master. In most countries, the slave cannot acquire or hold property legally In all, he holds more or less by the permission. In many, his legal right to separate property is protected by law. Even in Cuba, he can compel his master to emancipate him, upon offering an adequate price; and in some cases of irreconcilable disagreement, force his master to sell him to another master. It is remarkable at first view, that in Cuba, where the law attempts to secure mild treatment to the slave, he is inhumanly treated; and in Virginia, where there is scarce any law to protect him, he is very humanely governed and provided for. In Cuba, many of the slaves are savages, and do not elicit the domestic affection of the master, who sees in them little more than brutes. The master is, besides, often an absentee, and tho' overseers be far more humane than Irish rent-collectors, they have neither the interests nor feelings of resident masters. But the most efficient cause of cruelty and neglect, is the African slave trade, which makes it cheaper to buy than to rear slaves In Virginia, the slaves have advanced much in morality
religion and intelligence, and their masters and mistresses, living on the farm with them, naturally become attached to them. Self-interest, however, is everywhere the strongest motive to human conduct. Negroes are immensely valuable, and increase rapidly in value and in numbers when well treated The law of self-interest secures kind and humane treatment to Southern slaves. All the legislative ingenuity in the world will never enact so efficient a law in behalf of free laborers.
During the decline of the Roman Empire, slavery became colonial or praedial. The slaves occupied the place of tenants or serfs, were "adscripti soli," and could only be sold with the farm. Many antiquarians consider the colonial slavery of the Romans as the true origin of the feudal system. This kind of slavery was universal in Europe till a few centuries since, and now prevails to a great extent. The serfs of Russia, Poland, Turkey, and Hungary, are happier and better provided for than the free laborers of Western Europe. They have homes, and lands to cultivate. They work but little, because their wants are few and simple. They are not over-worked and under-fed, as are the free laborers of Western Europe. Hence, they never rise in riots and insurrections, burn houses, commit strikes, - nor do they emigrate.
This form of slavery, however, makes the master an idle absentee, depriving the slaves of his
guardianship, his government, and his protection. By throwing large masses of the ignorant into exclusive association with each other, it promotes and increases ignorance, negligence and idleness. Men will not improve their condition who have no examples to emulate and no teachers to instruct. Were their farms conducted as ours of the South , the wealthy would have ample employment, and the slaves or serfs find in their masters examples, governors, teachers and protectors.
The right to sell one's children, or one's self, into slavery has been very common, and is now practiced in China. The ancient Germans used to even stake their liberty at games of hazard. This would never have been done, nor would the laws have permitted it, if the situation of the slave had been greatly inferior to that of the free. But how shall we class wives, children, wards, apprentices, prisoners, soldiers and sailors? They are not free, because their personal liberty is controlled by the will of a superior; not by mere law. They are liable to confinement and punishment by their superiors, whose will stands in place of law as to them. They have no right of locomotion like that enjoyed by the free. They have no liberty secured by law; - they are not free. Are they, therefore, slaves?
Paley defines slavery to be, "An obligation to labor for the benefit of the master, without the
contract or consent of the servant." The sick, the superannuated, the infirm, and the infant slaves are under no such obligation in theory or practice. The master is under an obligation, legally, theoretically and practically, to labor for them. Therefore, the master of twenty slaves is always a slave himself. If he be a good man, he is the happier for performing his duties as slave to those classes of his slaves. But what becomes of that slavery of the ancients and of China, where the slave, by actual contract, sells himself? This is not slavery according to Paley.
The great and glaring defect, however, of Paley's definition is, that he omits the obligation on the master to provide for and protect the slave. 'Tis but half of a definition, and that half false. It does often happen that the obligations of the master are more onerous than those of the slave. Yet Paley omits those obligations altogether. The slave, when capable to do so, must work for the master; but the master, at all times, must provide for the slave. If incapable of doing so, the law gives the slave a new master and protector. His situation is less honorable, but far more secure than that of the master. Definitions are perilous attempts. We never read one that a seventy-four with all sail set might not drive through. We shall define nothing ourselves, for we know that this is the
business of Omnipotence, that alone knows "all things in heaven and on earth."
We proceed to examine the attempted definitions of Montesquieu and Blackstone. Blackstone objects to the right to sell one's self, that the consideration enures to the buyer. This may or may not be so, according to the laws of the State where the contract is made. It is not a necessary feature of slavery, and cannot fairly be employed as an objection to it. In fact, the slaves of the South, in their houses, gardens, fruit, vegetables, pigs and fowls, hold more property than the peasantry of Europe, and are far better secured in its possession by their masters, that that peasantry is by the law. He further objects, that in case of absolute slavery, not only the liberty, but the life of the slave is at the master's disposal. This objection is false and puerile. In no civilized country has the master the right to kill his slave.
The protection or support to which the slave is entitled, would be an ample consideration of itself for the sale of his liberty. A much larger one than the capitalists of Europe would be willing to give; for they all say that free labor is cheapest.
Montesquieu thus defines slavery: - "Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another, as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune." This is French liberty under the rule of the republican Bonapartes, and English liberty under
Cromwell - not Southern slavery. France is always happy and prosperous with a master, and the masses in England look back to the Protectorate with fond regret. These despots played the part of Southern masters. They forced the strong to support the weak, the rich to take care of the poor. The nations became two farms or families. Western Europe will soon have to choose between domestic slavery and universal slavery.
Democracy and liberty are antagonistic; for liberty permits and encourages the weak to oppress the strong, whilst democracy proposes, so far as possible, to equalize advantages, by fairly dividing the burdens of life, and rigidly enforcing the performance of every social duty by every member of society, according to his capacity and ability.
He saw and said, that capital paid labor nothing, yet discovered no iniquity in the transaction . He saw that labor produced every thing - capital nothing, and "all that the capitalist does is, to distribute what others produce." He should have added, after retaining the "lion's share" himself. Our whole theory is to be found in a single paragraph of Paley, and if there be nothing strange or monstrous in his theory, there can be nothing of the kind in ours; for our theories are identical. Chapter 2, Book 3d of his philosophy, under the head of "The treatment of our domestics and dependants," he employs the following language: "Another reflection of a like tendency with the former is, that our obligation to them is much
greater than theirs to us. It is a mistake to suppose that the rich man maintains his servants, tradesmen, tenants and laborers: the truth is, they maintain him. It is their industry which supplies his table, furnishes his wardrobe, builds his houses, adorns his equipage provides his amusements. It is not the estate, but the labor employed on it, that pays his rents. All that he does is, to distribute what others produce; which is the least part of the business." He should have added, "but far the most profitable part."
A few additional truths, and this paragraph of Paley's would be an admirable description of "Cannibals" above, and "Slaves without Masters," below.
His servants are obliged to work as our slaves, not for pay, but for an allowance out of the proceeds of their own labor. His employers, like our masters, only distribute something of their earnings to the laborers, giving them far less than masters give to slaves, retaining more to themselves - and hence "free labor is cheaper than slave labor."
But Paley did not comprehend what he wrote. We, aided by the Socialists, will try to make it understood by others.
Philosophy cannot justify the relation between the free laborer, and the idle, irresponsible employer. But, 'tis easy to justify that between master and slave. Their obligations are mutual and
equal; and if the master will superintend and provide for the slave in sickness, in health, infancy and old age - if he will feed and clothe, and house him properly, guard his morals, and treat him kindly and humanely, he will make his slaves happy and profitable, and be himself a worthy, useful and conscientious man.
I
think few worth damnation, save their kings;
And
these but as a kind of quit-rent, to
Assert
my right as lord.
VISION
OF JUDGMENT.
We intend this chapter as our trump card, and have kept it in reserve, because it is rash to "lead trumps." We could produce a cloud of witnesses, but should only protract the trial thereby. We call into court Horace Greely, Wm. Goodell, Gerrit Smith, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, and Stephen Pearle Andrews, and propose to prove by them (the actual leaders and faithful exponents of abolition,) that their object, and that of their entire party, is not only to abolish Southern slavery, but to abolish also, or greatly to modify, the relations of husband and wife, parent and child, the institution of private property of all kinds, but especially separate ownership of lands, and the institution of Christian churches as now existing in America. We further charge, that whilst actively engaged in attempts to abolish Southern slavery, they are busy, with equal activity and more promise of success, in attempts
to upset and reorganize society at the North.
In convening these gentlemen as witnesses, and also arraigning them on trial, we are actuated by no feelings of personal ill will or disrespect. We admire them all, and have had kindly intercourse and correspondence with some of them. They are historical characters, who would seek notoriety in order to further their schemes of setting the world to rights. We have no doubt of their sincere philanthropy, and as little doubt, that they are only "paving hell with good intentions." We speak figuratively. We shall try their cause in the most calm and judicial temper. We would address each of them in language borrowed from Lord Byron:
Why,
My
good old friend, for such I deem you,
Though
our different parties make us fight so shy,
I
ne'er mistake you for a personal foe;
Our
difference is political, and I
Trust
that whatever may occur,
You
know my great respect for you, and this
Makes
me regret whatever you do amiss.
Indeed, we should be ungrateful and discourteous in the extreme, if we did not entertain kindly remembrance and make gentlemanly return for the generous reception and treatment we received, especially from leading abolitionists, when we went north to personate Satan by defending Slavery.
Though none agreed with us, none were made converts by us:
Yet
still between his darkness and his brightness,
There
passed a mutual glance of great politeness.
We will first call Mr. Wm. Goodell to the stand. His position as one of the most active leaders of the Gerrit Smith or Syracuse wing of abolition, would entitle his admissions and assertions of the failure of his own society to the greatest credence, since such admissions and assertions weaken his assaults on the South, and must be reluctantly drawn from him; but, independent of his peculiar position, his high character as a man, and his distinction as an author, should enlist attention and command respect for what he says. In his Democracy of Christianity, vol. 2d, page 197, he thus writes:
"And what is this pride of wealth, after all, growing up into the aristocracy of wealth, the usurpations of wealth, the oppressions of wealth, grinding the masses of humanity into the dust to-day, throughout our modern Christendom, in the middle of our nineteenth century civilization and progress, with a hoof more flinty, more swinish, and MORE MURDEROUS (capitals ours) than that of semi-barbarous feudalism in its bloodiest days."
He understands the intolerable exploitation of capital better than we do, for he lives in a country where slavery has not stepped in to shield the laborer.
He, the laborer, is a "slave without a master," and his oppressors, "cannibals all."
Mr. G's. book appears to us to carry the doctrine of human equality to a length utterly inconsistent with the power and control which ordinary Christian marriage gives to the husband over the wife; yet he assures us he is the unflinching friend of Christian marriage. The purity of his sentiments revolt at the conclusions to which his abstract doctrines inevitably lead. Yet his idea of Christian marriage may differ, so far as the power of the husband is concerned, widely from ours. We are sure he would do nothing, designedly, to impair the purity and sacredness of the relation.
Mr. G. is a Christian socialist, and looks to a proximate millenium to rectify the false relations of men and property, in his own society, and to the arm of the Federal Government to set things right in the South. Why not leave all to Providence, especially since the right of the Government to abolish Southern slavery is denied by all respectable authority outside of abolition; and also by the Garrisonians, who are the most thorough-going of all abolitionists, and of all disorganizers. Mr. Goodell's plan of "rectifying human relations" at the North, by millennium, is quite as common as that of Mr. Greely, Andrews and Owen, each of whom has discovered a new social science that they are sure will fit the world, because it wont fit a village.
We really think that a man of Mr. Goodell's nice sense of justice and propriety, should have hesitated long ere he invoked a God to do that which he would be ashamed to do himself. If it be wrong to strip the rich of their possessions, why hope or expect that God will perpetrate a wrong at which human conscience revolts, when it is proposed to be done by human agency.
After an elaborate argument, to prove the advent of a millennial state of society, through the instrumentality of Christianity, Mr. Goodell, on page 510, vol. II, of his Democracy of Christianity, thus sums up and concludes:
"Glance over, again, the items included in these predictions: - The general and permanent prevalence of peace, - the result of justice, equity, SECURITY, and-the actual possession, [italics his] by each and every one of 'his vine and fig tree' - that is, of soil sufficient to produce the needful fruits of the earth, or, in some way, a supply for his physical wants.
"Add to this, the general diffusion and great increase of knowledge, especially moral and religious knowledge, which includes the knowledge of social relations, duties and rights, - the knowledge that implies 'wisdom,' and that wisdom which begins with 'the fear of the Lord.' Next the application of all this knowledge, wisdom and fear of the Lord, to the concerns of civil government, insomuch that 'the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of Christ,' and the dominion be given to THE
PEOPLE, who at that period, shall have become purified and instructed by him, - who shall all be righteous, who 'shall all know the Lord, from the least to the greatest,' and even 'the feeble among them shall be as David.' To this, add general contentment and enjoyment, facilities of social and international intercourse, the general prevalence of the spirit of benevolence and brotherly love, and the absence of those maddening and satanic temptations, delusions and prejudices, that have so long deceived, enslaved and embroiled the nations; - all this cemented by the true spiritual worship, protection and love of the Common Father of all men.
"Is any thing wanting to complete the picture, and to ratify the assurance of a state of liberty, equality, common brotherhood, common interests, common sympathy, and common participancy in social rights, immunities, privileges and arrangements? Must we need be told in addition to all this, that 'the thrones of despotism shall be cast down,' that the 'beast' of civil and ecclesiastical tyranny and usurpation, the persecutor 'of the holy apostles ties and people,' shall be given 'to the burning flames,' that the yoke of domination 'shall be dashed into pieces as a potter's vessel,' that 'subversion' shall tread upon the heels of subversion, and one despotism overturn another till He, 'whose right it is, shall rule.' That the masses shall be elevated, the exclusives brought low, that the 'lofty' shall be 'humbled,' and the 'haughty bowed down' - in such a period of general possession, general justice, equality and contentment as has been already and previously described?"
Now, Mr. Goodell deplores that the condition of his society is so bad, that it becomes necessary to upset and reverse it by a millennium. Is not this, considering his high position and authority, strong evidence to prove "the failure of Free Society." We should add, that his whole book teems with evidence of his uncompromising hostility to existing Church institutions, and the existing Priesthood, as abuses and interpolations that have been engrafted improperly on Christianity. He obviously belongs, in faith, to those early Christians, who resembled the Essenes in their social relations, and who daily expected the advent of the millennium. Their error in the last respect, shows that it is the Bible, and not their construction of it, that should be our rule of faith and guide of conduct.
The next witness we call up, is Gerrit Smith, a man who has a national reputation as an orator, a philanthropist and a gentleman; who writes better than he speaks, and whose active charity and benevolence are only exceeded in the greatness of their amount by the grossness of their misapplication. He is a zealous Christian, yet edits, or did edit, the Progressive Christian, which proposed to abolish Christianity as now understood. He builds churches to keep out the clergy, and heads Christian conventions to put down Christian institutions, and agrees with Wendell Phillips, that the pulpit of
the North stands in the way of reform - et delenda est Carthago - the pulpit should be destroyed!
Like Mr. Goodell, he seems to look to an approaching millenium. But he is a man of restless activity and energy, and of incalculable daring, and would put his shoulder to the wheel, and inaugurate the millenium at once. He assumes the responsibility; declares continually in speeches, lectures and essays, that land monopoly is an intolerable evil; that lands should be as common and as free for use to all, as air and water; and proposes to divide them at once. He is one of the largest owners of real estate at the North, and yet the most uncompromising agrarian in the world. His disinterestedness is only exceeded by his rashness and destructiveness:
"The
mildest-manner'd man,
That
ever cut a throat or scuttled ship."
His amiableness of disposition and evenness of temper never desert him, because he has not to "screw his courage to the sticking-place." 'Tis always there. The "red right arm of Thundering Jove" could not shake his tenacity of purpose; and, in a case of conscience, he would let the world or the Union slide with equal equanimity:
"Si
fractus illabitur orbis,
Impavidnm
ferient
ruinoe!"
He gives a forty thousand or so to Kansas emigrants from the North, because, as a gentleman, he feels it his duty to stick to his country, right or wrong; and abolitionists are his country. His gross eccentricities and intellectual aberrations are but the natural out-growth of the social system which surrounds him, and which reminds him and every other ingenuous and candid mind,
"That whatever is, is wrong!"
He is only seemingly eccentric and erratic. He feels the difficulty of disposing of his immense wealth, without making it an engine of oppression and exaction. He understands the theory of capital and labor, as his speeches show; - knows that labor produces every thing, and that capital is the whip that forces it to work, and also the exploitator that robs it of most of the proceeds of its industry. "La proprieté c'est le vol!" he sees is true, save in the impurity of motive, which it seems to attribute to its owners. If he endows colleges, or gives his money in large sums to individuals, in the one case it is used to rear up exploitators, who rob labor by professional skill; and in the other, to those who use it at once as an engine of exaction and oppression. If he gives it in smaller sums to the poor, he is generally giving to the idle the labor of the industrious, and offering a premium to continued idleness;
for he can neither control the conduct nor expenditure of his beneficiaries. He is too good, and too proud, to spend his income in pomp and luxury. Too good thus to waste the proceeds of labor, (as all public or private luxury does,) and thus increase the burdens of the working class. Too proud to derive reflected importance and standing from extraneous glitter and costly show and equipage. He has (no doubt, in vain,) attempted to ameliorate the condition of a great many slaves, by purchasing them and emancipating them. Could he retain them as slaves, he might see that his charity was not misapplied, by educating them and controlling their conduct. To us, it occurs that a large capital can only be safely invested in slaves and lands, if the owner wishes to be sure that it shall not be used as an engine of oppression, or as a persuasive to idleness and dissipation.
We should do injustice to Mr. Smith were we not to add, that he is quite as busy in abducting negroes as in buying them. The underground railroad is one of his favorite pets and beneficiaries. His restless energy is not satisfied with the slow proceedings of this road, and hence he buys negroes , as well as aids the abducting of them. He has been severely censured for buying them, by those whom he supplies with the means to steal them, or whom he rescues from the fangs of the
law, when caught in abortive efforts to abduct them.
He had the education and has the feelings and bearing of the Southerner. His father owned slaves, and a territory full of Indians, and he was reared as playmate and prince in their midst; hence, he has the proud humility of the Southerner, not the exacting and supercilious arrogance of the Northerner. He does not demand deference and respect, because it has, from boyhood, been yielded to him, as his due, by admitted inferiors.
The value of his testimony, establishing, if true, the utter and entire failure of free society, cannot be over estimated. He is learned, candid, honest, well-informed, and has always lived in free society. Its subversion, which he proposes, and actively attempts, would strip him of millions of wealth. He is the leading champion of slave abolition, and, by admitting the failure of free society, blunts and neutralizes all his arguments against slavery. In every way, then, pride of opinion, seeming consistency, and pecuniary interest, tempt him to extol, not to condemn free society. It is true, he thinks slavery also a failure, and a greater failure; but he knows little practically about slave society, and cannot admit for us, although he may for himself and his section. - En passant, we would say to him, that air and water are the subjects of more exclusive appropriation in free society than land. - He is
a lawyer, and knows that the ownership of the soil carries with it the ownership of every thing, ad inferos, et usque ad coelum. In fact, in cities where the poor most do congregate, their food and raiment differ not half so much from that of the rich, as their enjoyment of pure air and water. Men must get a place to breathe and drink from; and all places are appropriated.
Yes, Mr. Smith, you are vainly trying to grasp The Right! The Right is connected with, affected by, and affects all the Past, all the Present, and all the Future. God knows the Right - man only the Expedient.
Our next witness is Horace Greely, Editor of the Tribune, and Napoleon of the Press. His first distinction was won by his espousing and elaborately propagating the Social Philosophy of Charles Casimir Fourier. This he did, some twenty years since, in a long controversy with the Courier & Enquirer: the latter paper sustaining the conservative side. The correspondence was afterwards published in book form, and we regret that we have not been able to possess ourselves of a copy. The whole edition, we learn, was burnt at the Harpers. Consigned by Providence, not by a human Censor, to the flames. Should we misrepresent our witness, it will be because we have tried in vain to get this book. We think he was the first, in America, to assert, and maintain by arguments and proofs, the
inadequacy and injustice of the whole social and governmental organization at the North. He, not ourselves, is the American author of the theory of the Failure of Free Society. His remedies, though not as radical and scientific as those of Proudhon and Mr. Andrews, did very well for a beginning. He, we think, proposed at once to coop mankind up in Phalansteries, where, in a few generations, all the distinctions of separate property, and of separate wives and children, would be obliterated and lost, and society would gradually and gently be fused and crystalized into a system of pure and perfect Communism. The Tribune has to minister to a variety of tastes, all agreeing in their destructive tendencies, but differing widely as to the manner in which they shall attain their conclusions; hence, it is hard to deduce any well defined system of philosophy from its columns. Mr. Andrews intimates, that our witness is no philosopher at all. Be it so. Yet all must admit that no man of the age has the organ or faculty of Destructiveness so fully developed. The Tribune has been, from the time of the controversy of which we have spoken, to the present day, the great Organ of Socialism, of Free Love, and of all the other isms which propose to overthrow and rebuild society and government, or to dispense with them altogether. Steadily pursuing this destructive course, the Tribune has for years become the most popular paper in the North,
and, 'tis said, has more readers in Europe and America than any paper in the world; and yet its only peculiar thought, its whole intellectual, moral, social and political stock in trade, consists of the one idea, variously expressed, illustrated and enforced, "The Failure of Free Society;" or, as Carlyle phrases it, "We must have a new world, we are to have any world at all."
What a striking illustration of our theory, that "a mere verbal formula often distinguishes a truism from a paradox." We assert a theory bluntly and plainly, and attempt to prove it by facts and arguments, and the world is ready to exclaim, "Oh, what shocking heresy." Mr. Greely, for twenty years, maintains the same theory, in different language, and elicits the admiration and gratitude the world. Oh, Le Pauvre Peuple! how long will it permit its flatterers to deceive and betray it! Mr. Greely and ourselves agree in our destructive philosophy, but are wide asunder as the poles in what is constructive. Each proposes to protect the weak. He promises "protection without control or abridgment of liberty." We tell those who ask or require protection and support, that "they must submit to be controlled, for that the price of security has ever been, and ever will be, the loss of liberty."
The popularity of the Tribune shews that the world is prepared to upset existing social systems.
When that is done, it will have to choose between Free Love and Slavery; between more of government and no government. We think, like Carlyle, more of government is needed. We, too, are a Socialist, (for free society,) but we would screw up the strings of society, not further relax them, much less cut them "sheer asunder!"
We wish to display the truth, and nothing but truth, to the public, on the subjects of Abolition and Socialism; and, for fear of misrepresentation, have written letters to Mr. Greely and Mr. Garrison, copies of which we shall append to this chapter. Should they be silent, the letters will at least show our solicitude to arrive at truth.
We have written enough about Mr. Andrews, and quoted enough from his book already, to show that he is the great philosopher of his party, and the comprehensive and truthful expositor of its doctrines, its tendencies, and ultimate results. His co-laborers, less scientific and far-sighted than he, might be ready to exclaim, on reading his book, "Thinkest thou thy servant a dog, that he shall do this thing!" But Mr. Andrews is right. To this complexion must they come at last. A plunge into the soft and sensual waters of the lake of Free Love - then a sudden and violent exit into the keen and shivering atmosphere of despotism.
We know less of Mr. Garrison than of either of the other gentlemen. He heads the extreme wing
of the Socialist, Infidel, Woman's Right, Agrarian and Abolition party, who are called Garrisonians. He edits the Liberator, which is conducted with an ability worthy of a better cause. He and his followers seem to admit that the Bible and the Constitution recognize and guarantee Slavery, and therefore denounce both, and propose disunion and no priests or churches, as measures to attain abolition. Mr. Garrison usually presides at their meetings, and we infer, in part, their principles and doctrines, from the materials that compose those meetings. A Wise-Woman will rise and utter a philipic against Marriage, the Bible, and the Constitution, - and will be followed by negro Remond, who "spits upon Washington," and complains of the invidious distinction of calling whites Anglo-Saxons, and negroes Africans. And now, Phillips arises,
"Armed with hell-flames and fury,"
and gently begins, in tones more dulcet, and with action more graceful than Belial, to
"Pour
the sweet milk of concord into hell!
Uproar
the universal peace -
Destroy
all unity on earth."
Then Mr. Parker will edify the meeting by stirring up to bloody deeds in Kansas or in Boston - in which, as becomes his cloth, he takes no part - and ends by denouncing things in general, and the
churches and parsons in particular. And, probably, the whole will conclude with a general indulgence and remission of sins, from Mr. Andrews, who assumes, for the nonce, the character of Father Confessor, and assures the tender conscience that it is right and incumbent to take the oath to sustain the Constitution, with the deliberate purpose of violating it, because such oaths are taken under moral duress. These Garrisonians are as intellectual men as any in the nation. They lead the Black Republican party, and control the politicians. Yet are they deadly enemies of Northern as well as of Southern institutions.
Now, gentlemen, all of you are philosophers, and most zealous philanthropists, and have for years been roaring, at the top of your voice, to the Oi Polloi rats, that the old crazy edifice of society, in which they live, is no longer fit for human dwelling, and is imminently dangerous. The rats have taken you at your word, and are rushing headlong, with the haste and panic of a "sauve que peut," into every hole that promises shelter - into "any port in a storm." Some join the Rappists and Shakers, thousands find a temporary shelter in Mr. Greely's Fourierite Phalansteries; many more follow Mr. Andrews to Trialville, to villages in the far West, or to Modern Times; and a select few to the salons of Free Love; and hundreds of thousands
find shelter with Brigham Young, in Utah; whilst others, still more frightened, go to consult the Spiritual Telegraph, that raps hourly at the doors of heaven and of hell, or quietly put on their ascension robes to accompany Parson Miller in his upward flight. But the greater number are waiting (very impatiently) for Mr. Andrews to establish his New and Better World, or for Mr. Garrison and Mr. Goodell to inaugurate their Millenium.
Why, Gentlemen! none of these worse than Cassandra vaticinations - why none of this panic, confusion and flight, in Slave Society? Are we suffering, and yet contented? Is our house tumbling about our heads, and we sitting in conscious security amidst the impending ruin? No! No! Our edifice is one that never did fall, and never will fall; for Nature's plastic hand reared it, supports it, and will forever sustain it.
Have we not shewn, in this single chapter, that the North has as much to apprehend from abolition as the South, and that it is time for conservatives every where to unite in efforts to suppress and extinguish it?
We add hereto a letter we addressed to the public as to "Our Trip to the North," and our reply to a Mr. Hogeboom, a New York abolitionist. Also, letters to Garrison and Greely. We do this shew that intend not to mislead, misrepresent or
deceive. In truth, the leading Abolitionists are our pets and favorites. We have an inveterate and perverse penchant of finding out good qualities in bad fellows. Robespierre and Milton's Satan are our particular friends.
To the Editors of the Enquirer:
GENTLEMEN,
- I hesitated long before resolving to
address you this letter. I feel that I shall be amenable
to the charge of egotism; but I have written a book, in
which I undertake to defend and justify Slavery, and
to advise the South as to its future policy. In that I am
egotistical, as every one is who writes a book. I have
"stepped in so far, that returning were more
tedious than go o'er." I will not do things by halves.
When I wrote that book, I believed that Government,
Law, Religion, and Marriage, were victims bound and
filleted for sacrifice by Northern abolition. What was
then matter of doubtful opinion, inference and
speculation, has become, since my trip to the North,
subject of fixed faith and conviction. I enjoyed the
warm and elegant hospitality of some of the
Liberty party of the North. I was in social intercourse
with many of them. I have received many pamphlets,
books and speeches from them. I have no private
confidences to betray, because I heard no secrets.
This party is conscientious, believes itself right, and
courts discussion and notoriety. I, besides,
conversed freely with strangers, in public conveyances and
at hotels. I think, with my previous study on the subject of
Slavery and Abolition, I may be able to make some useful
suggestions to the South and the North.
It seemed to me, that in attempting to prove "Free
Society a failure," in my lecture at New Haven, I was "but
carrying coals to New Castle." The Liberty party, at least,
discovered that long before I did, and are as intent on
subverting and re-constructing society at home,
as on abolishing slavery with us. A part of them, I will not
undertake to say how large a portion, are infidels, who find
the Bible no impediment to their schemes of social reform,
because they assert that it is false. This wing of the Liberty
party is in daily expectation of discovering a new
Social Science, that will remedy all the ills that human flesh is
heir to. They belong to the schools of Owen, Louis Blanc,
Fourier, Comte, and the German and French Socialists and
Communists. The other wing, and probably the most
numerous wing of the party, is composed of the Millenial
Christians - men who expect Christ, either in the flesh or in
the spirit, soon to reign on earth; the lion to lie down with
the lamb; every man to sit down under his own vine and fig
tree; all to have an interest in lands; marrying and giving in
marriage to cease; war to be abolished, and peace and
good will to reign among men. They are as intent on
abolishing all Church government and authority, as the
infidels. They would, equally with them, trample on all law
and government, because "liberty is," say they, "an
inalienable right," and law, religion, and government
continue to protect slavery. Marriage,
Christian marriage, which requires the obedience of the
wife, is slavery; and they would modify it, or destroy it.
Land monopoly, they say, gives to property or capital a
greater power over labor than masters have over slaves;
hence, they very wisely and logically conclude, that land,
like air and water, should be common property.
The Liberty party is composed of very able men - of
philosophers and philanthropists. They have demonstrated,
beyond a doubt, that slavery is necessary, unless they can
get up a Millenium, or discover a new Social Science. The
increasing crime and poverty of mankind, and the utter failure
of all social experiments like those of Owen and others,
indicate neither the advent of the one, nor the discovery of
the other.
This Liberty party are the best allies of the South, because
they admit, and continually expose, the utter failure of Free
Society.
One of the most distinguished of this party thus writes to
Wendell Phillips, Esq.:
"I cannot refrain from expressing, in this connection, my
grief that many abolitionists have allowed their faith in the
Bible to be shaken."
In my short trip to the
North, I was struck with nothing
so much as the avowed infidelity of many, and the
Christianity melting into
infidelty, of the great mass of the
balance with whom I conversed. I have no doubt, however,
that although such a state of things is too common at the
North, yet my peculiar associations made the evil appear
greater than it really is. The religious and conservative, like
the lily of the valley, are silent and
secluded. As a specimen of this religion melting, as I think,
into infidelity, I will give another extract from the letter to
Wendell Phillips:
"You have been much censured for holding that the
anti-slavery cause can reach success only over the ruins of the
American government and the American church. Nevertheless,
you are right. The religion which tolerates - nay,
sanctifies - slavery, must necessarily be conquered ere the
devotees and dupes of that religion will suffer slavery to be
abolished. Again, so long as the actual government is on the
side of slavery, the bloodless abolition of slavery is
impracticable."
The author of the letter from which I quote, and Mr.
Phillips to whom it is addressed, are gentlemen, scholars and
christians. They are, besides, historical characters. We violate
no privacy in holding up their opinions to public view and
general criticism. Is their's not Christianity melting into
infidelity? I have lately received a book, in two volumes,
entitled "The Democracy of Christianity," from its
author - William Goodell of New York, a
member of the Liberty Party. The author evinces much
ability, ingenuity and research. He is one of the millenial
Christians - obviously pious and sincere. He sees no exodus
from the appalling evils of Free Society, except that state of
perfect equality, peace, happiness and security, that he, like
the men of Cromwell's day, thinks is promised and predicted
in the Bible. I cite the following passage from the conclusion
of his work:
"Glance over again the items included in these predictions:
- The general and permanent prevalence of peace - the result
of justice, equity, security, and the actual possession, by
each and every one, of 'his vine and fig
tree,' i. e. of soil sufficient to produce the needful fruits
of the earth, or in some way, a supply of his physical wants."
If this state of things ever occur, God will bring it about
without the help of abolitionists.
We do not deem it necessary to quote from the infidel
agrarians and abolitionists, because their splendid promises
and bloody and disastrous failures, have been matters of
every day's history and of every day's occurrence from the
times of Marat and the guillotine to those of Lamartine and
Cavaignac.
The Proletariat of France, the nomadic pauper banditti of
England, the starving tenantry of Ireland, the Lazzaroni of
Italy, and the half-savages of Hayti, are the admitted results of
practical abolition. But, say the Liberty party, abolition has
stopped half-way; abolish churches, law, government,
marriage, and separate property in lands, and then the scheme
will work charmingly Well, possibly it will; but as we are very
happy, comfortable and contented in slave society, suppose
you try the "experimentum in vile corpus." Begin at home,
and if the experiment works well, we of the South will follow
your example. You have a little Eden now near Lake Oneida.
Some hundreds of Oneida perfectionists living in primitive
simplicity, among whom there is no "marrying or giving in
marriage," no separate property, all things enjoyed in common;
and we suppose, neither priest nor officer to disturb or mar
the harmony of millenial society. "We but tell the tale as 'twas
told to us." Does it work well? If so, why not form all your
institutions on that model?
You of the Liberty party seem to think that "passional
attraction" and "attractive labor" will keep all men up to their
duties, and dispense with the necessity of Church and State,
Law and Religion, Priest and Officer. You think you follow
nature, but in truth you are superficial observers of nature.
Man, it is true, is a social and gregarious animal, but like all
animals of that kind, he is, by nature, law-making and
law-abiding. The ants and bees are ruled by despotic and exacting
governments, and by laws and regulations, wise and less
changeable than those of the Medes and Persians. But man
is not only a law-making animal, but a religious one also. In
remitting him to a state of anarchy and infidelity, you would
not remit him to a state of nature, but one of continuous,
exterminating warfare, such as France witnessed during the
reign of terror.
I find, Messrs. Editors, that I am somewhat wandering
from the subject with which I commenced and will conclude--
for the present, at least.
Very respectfully, your ob't serv't.
Port
Royal, Va.,
Jan. 14th, 1856.
TO A. HOGEBOOM, Esq., Sheds Corners, Madison county, N.Y.
DEAR SIR: - Your letter
reached this office during my
absence from home. I embrace the earliest opportunity
of replying to it, because I rejoice that public attention
at the North may, by this means, be excited to the subject
of my book. I am sure I should not have been honored
with your correspondence had you read the book and known
its subject. That subject is the "Failure of Free Society." You
have only read extracts from it, you say, in the Northern
papers. Those papers will be slow to notice the facts,
authorities and admissions which it cites, to prove the
failure of their form of society. I send you the book and refer
you particularly to the preface, to the second and third
chapters, and to the "summing up" in the concluding chapter.
If this does not satisfy you that free society is a cruel
failure, read the history of the English Poor laws, and you will
find that the laboring class of England have, every day since
the emancipation of the villeins, been in a worse condition,
morally and physically, than any slaves ever were. Read, also,
two articles, the one in the North British Review, and the
other in Blackwood for December, depicting the demoralized
and starving condition of the whole laboring class of Great
Britain. Read, also, Carlyle's Latter Day Pamphlets. If this
does not convince you that the Little Experiment, (for it is a
very little one, both in time and space,) is a disastrous and
cruel failure, look at home! How comes it that your
distinguished neighbor, Gerrit Smith, proposes to make land
as free for the enjoyment of all as air and water? Confessedly,
because the despotism of capital over labor is intolerable.
Confessedly, because your form of society is found to be a
failure in practice! Why does another distinguished
abolitionist, Mr. Goodell, of New York, in his book, on the
Democracy of Christianity, declare, that wealth now is more
cruel,
oppressive and murderous, than Feudal masters? Why does
Mr. Greely advocate the doctrines of Fourier, and propose to
subvert your society and reconstruct it from top to bottom,
making a sort of common property of men and children, as
well as of lands and houses? Why does, much your ablest
philosopher, Stephen Pearle Andrews, propose plans of
reform still more sweeping? And, why are his doctrines
popular with the "higher classes" in New York? Why, in fine,
are the larger number of the abolitionists, millenial Christians,
in daily expectation of the advent of Christ, who is to divide
all property equally, and give to each one his "vine and fig
tree." And why are the others, Atheists, like Owen and
Fourier, attempting to invent new and better forms of society?
Why have you Bloomer's and Women's
Right's men, and
strong-minded women, and Mormons, and anti-renters, and
"vote myself a farm" men, Millerites, and Spiritual Rappers,
and Shakers, and Widow Wakemanites, and Agrarians, and
Grahamites, and a thousand other superstitious and infidel
isms at the North ? Why is there faith in nothing, speculation
about everything? Why is this unsettled, half demented state
of the human man mind co-extensive in time and space, with
free society? Why is Western Europe now starving? and why
has it been fighting and starving for seventy years? Why all
this, except that free society is a failure ? Slave society
needs no defence till some other permanent practicable form of
society has been discovered. None such has been discovered.
Nobody at the North who reads my book will attempt to
reply to it; for all the
learned abolitionists had unconsciously discovered and
proclaimed the failure of free society long before I did.
I am indebted for the honor of your correspondence, to
your ignorance of what my book contains. I reply through
the Press, because I intend to use your letter merely as an
occasion to challenge the North, to dispute or deny my
assertion that "free society is a failure!"
In conclusion, I propose to you, and through you to the
whole North, these questions.
Do not the past history and present condition of Free
Society in Western Europe (where alone the experiment has
been fully tried,) prove that it is attended with greater evils,
moral and physical, than Slave Society?
Do not the late writers on society in Western Europe, and
in our free States, generally admit that those evils are
intolerable, and that Free Society requires total subversion
and re-organization?
Should you not, therefore, abolish your form of society,
and adopt ours, until Mr. Greely, or Brigham Young, or Mr.
Andrews, or Mr. Goodell, or some other socialist of Europe
or America, invents and puts into successful practice, a social
organization better than either, or until the millenium does
actually arrive?
With the assurance that I am quite as intent on abolishing
Free Society, as you are on abolishing slavery, and with the
confidence that all of divine authority, and almost all of
human authority, is on my side, I remain, your co-philanthropist,
and
Obedient servant,
Port
Royal, Va., July 18, 1856.
DEAR SIR
- I am about to publish a work, entitled
"Cannibals All; or, Slaves Without Masters." I shall,
in effect, say, in the course of my argument, that every
theoretical abolitionist at the North is a Socialist or
Communist, and proposes or approves radical changes in the
organization of society. I shall cite Mr. Greely, Mr. Goodell,
S. P. Andrews, Gerrit Smith, yourself, and other
distinguished and leading abolitionists, of both sexes, as proof
of my assertion. I shall also endeavor to show that all the
literary mind of Western Europe concurs with you. You, I
perceive, have read a work already written by me, and will
not mistake my object. We live in a dangerous crisis, and
every patriot and philanthropist should set aside all false
delicacy in the earnest pursuit of truth. I believe Slavery
natural, necessary, indispensable. You think it inexpedient,
immoral and criminal. Neither of us should withhold any facts
that will enable the public to form correct opinions. Should
you not reply to this letter, I shall publish a copy of it in my
book, and insist that your silence is an admission of the truth
of my charges. I regret that your very able paper reaches me
irregularly.
Your obedient servant,
LOYD GARRISON, Esq., Boston, Mass.
Port
Royal, Va., July 20, 1856.
DEAR SIR
- I am writing a work, entitled, "Cannibals All;
or, Slaves Without Masters." I shall state, as a matter of
fact, that all theoretical abolitionists assert the failure
of free society, and each proposes some plan for its
re-organization I shall cite particularly yourself, Gerrit
Smith, S. P. Andrews, Mr. Goodell and Mr. Garrison. I shall
rely on your discussion with the Courier and Enquirer, which
has been burnt, chiefly as my proof of your opinion.
I wish to afford you, and other distinguished gentlemen, an
opportunity of correcting me if I have come to erroneous
conclusions. I have, therefore, written to Mr. Garrison, and I
now write to you, to afford you an opportunity to correct
me if I am wrong. I know you all think our society a greater
failure than your own; but you can admit for yourselves, not
for us. I shall publish a copy of this letter in my book, if
you do not reply, (and possibly if you reply,) both this
letter and your answer.
'Tis not possible that our two forms of society can long
co-exist. All Christendom is one republic, has one religion,
belongs to one race, and is governed by one public opinion.
Social systems, formed on opposite principles, cannot
co-endure.
With much respect,
Now we were the first to discover and proclaim that Free
Society alone had failed; and failed because it was free.
We occupied vantage ground, a good stand-point, saw both
forms of society, and thus discovered what our masters
had overlooked. Every body sees it now, and gives us no
more credit for the discovery, than his cotemporaries
gave Columbus - "At mihi plaudo!"
ITALIAM!
primus conclamat Achates;
He holds that the appearance of the House of Commons,
about the reign of Henry the Third, was the dawn of
approaching liberty. We contend that it was the origin
of the capitalist and moneyed interest government,
destined finally to swallow up all other powers in the
State, and to bring about the most selfish, exacting
and unfeeling class, despotism. He thinks the
emancipation of the serfs was another advance towards
equality of rights and conditions. We think it
aggravated inequality of conditions, and divested the
liberated class of every valuable, social and political
right. A short history of the English Poor Laws, which
we shall annex, will enable the reader to decide between
us on
this head. He thinks the Reformation increased the
liberties of the subject. We think that, in destroying
the noblest charity fund in the world, the church lands,
and abolishing a priesthood, the efficient and zealous
friends of the poor, the Reformation tended to diminish
the liberty of the mass of the peoples and to impair their
moral, social and physical well-being. He thinks that
the Revolution, by increasing the power of the House
of Commons, and lessening the prerogative of the
Crown, and the influence of the Church, promoted
liberty. We think the Crown and the Church the natural
friends, allies and guardians of the laboring class; the
House of Commons, a moneyed firm, their natural
enemies; and that the Revolution was a marked epoch in
the steady decay of British liberty.
He thinks that the settlement of 1688 that successfully
asserted in theory the supreme sovereignty of Parliament,
but particularly the supreme sovereignty of the House of
Commons, was the consummation or perfection of British
liberty. We are sure, that that settlement, and the
chartering of the Bank of England, which soon succeeded
it, united the landed and moneyed interests, placed all
the powers of government in their hands, and deprived
the great laboring class of every valuable right and
liberty. The nobility, the church, the king, were now
powerless; and the mass of the
people, wholly unrepresented in the government, found
themselves exposed to the grinding and pitiless
despotism of their natural and hereditary enemies. Mr.
Charles Dickens, who pities the condition of the negro
slaves, thus sums up, in a late speech, the worse
condition of the "Slaves without Masters," in Great
Britain: "Beneath all this, is a heaving mass of
poverty, ignorance and crime." Such is English liberty
for the masses. Thirty thousand men own the lands of
England, three thousand those of Scotland, and fewer
still those of Ireland. The great mass of the people
are cut off from the soil, have no certain means of
subsistence, and are trespassers upon the earth,
without a single valuable or available right. Contrast
their situations with that of the old villeins, and see
then whether our theory of British liberty and the
British constitution be true, or that of Blackstone.
All writers agree there were no beggars or paupers in
England until the liberation of the serfs; and moreover
admit that slaves, in all ages and in all countries, have
had all their physical wants sufficiently supplied. They
also concur in stating, that crime was multiplied by
turning loose on society a class of men who had been
accustomed to and still needed the control of masters.
Until the liberation of the villeins, every man in
England had his appropriate situation and duties, and
a mutual and adequate interest in the
soil. Practically the lands of England were the common
property of the people of England. The old Barons were
not the representatives of particular classes in
Parliament, but the friends, and faithful and able
representatives of all classes; for the interests of
all classes were identified. Monteil, a recent French
author, who has written the most accurate and graphic
description of social conditions during the Feudal
ages, describes the serfs as the especial pets and
favorites of the Barons. They were the most dependent,
obedient, and useful members of the feudal society,
and like younger children , became favorites. The same
class now constitute the Proletariat, the Lazzaroni,
the Gypsies, the Parias, and the "pauper banditti" of
Western Europe, and the Leperos of Mexico. As slaves,
they were loved and protected; as pretended freemen,
they were execrated and persecuted.
Mr. Lester, a New York abolitionist, after a long and
careful observation and study of the present condition
of the English laboring class, solemnly avers, in his
"Glory and Shame of England," that he would sooner subject
his child to Southern slavery, than have him to be a
free laborer of England.
But it is the early history of the English Poor Laws,
that proves most conclusively that the liberation of
the villeins was a sham and a pretence, and that their
situation has been worse, their rights
fewer, and their liberties less, since emancipation than
before. The Poor Laws, from the time of Edward the Third
to that of Elizabeth, were laws to punish the poor, and
to keep them at work for low wages. Not till late in the
reign of Elizabeth, was any charitable provision made
for them. Then, most of them would have starved, as the
confiscation and sales of the church lands had deprived
them of their only refuge, but for the new system of
charity. The rich must have labor, and could not afford
to let them all starve, although they were ready to
attempt the most stringent means to prevent their increase.
In the Edinburgh Review, October, 1841, on Poor
Law Reform, we find the following admirable history
and synopsis of the English Poor Laws:
The great experiment of Poor Law amendment, which
has now for seven years been in progress among our
southern neighbors, appears to us to have been
insufficiently attended to, and therefore to have been
imperfectly understood in this part of the island. We
do not believe that many of our Scottish readers are
fully aware of the origin of the English Poor Laws, of
the changes which they underwent, of the abuses
which they created of the remedy which has been
applied; or of the obstacles which have diminished the
success of that great measure, and now threaten its
efficiency. And yet these are subjects of the deepest
interest, even to those who study legislation merely as
a science. A series of laws
are exhibited, persevered in for centuries, by a nation
always eminent for practical wisdom, of which the result
has almost invariably been failure, or worse than failure;
which in scarcely a single instance have attained their
objects, and in most cases have produced effects precisely
opposite to the intentions of their framers; - have
aggravated whatever they were intended to diminish, and
produced whatever they were intended to prevent. From
us, as Scotchmen, they merit peculiar attention, not only
from the resemblance of our poor laws to the earlier English
statutes; but from the probability that, as the connection
between the two count countries becomes more intimate, we
shall at no distant period follow the example, whatever it
may be, of the larger country to which we are united; and
participate in the evils and advantages of the system which
she may finally adopt. This fate already threatens Ireland.
It is scarcely probable that Scotland can avoid it.
Each of the subjects to which we have alluded, would
require a volume for its complete development; but we are
constrained to give to them such consideration as is
admissible within the limits of an article of moderate length.
The Committee of the House of Commons which considered
the Poor Laws in 1817, commence their able Report by
stating, that "the principle of a compulsory provision
for the impotent, and for setting to work the able-bodied,
originated, without doubt, in motives of the purest
humanity." From this statement, plausible as it is, we
utterly dissent. We believe that the English poor laws
originated in selfishness, ignorance, and pride.
Better motives, without doubt, though misdirected by almost
equal ignorance, dictated the changes which were made in
those laws during the 18th century - the fourth which
elapsed from their commencement; but we are convinced that
their origin was an attempt substantially to restore the
expiring system of slavery. The evils of slavery are now
understood; it is admitted that it destroys all the nobler
virtues, both moral and intellectual; that it leaves the slave
without energy, without truth, without honesty, without
industry, without providence; in short, without any of the
qualities which fit men to be respected or even esteemed. But
mischievous as slavery is, it has many plausible advantages,
and freedom many apparent dangers. The subsistence of a
slave is safe; he cannot suffer from insufficient wages, or
from want of employment; he has not to save for sickness or
old age; he has not to provide for his family; he cannot
waste in drunkenness the wages by which they were to be
supported; his idleness or dishonesty cannot reduce them to
misery; they suffer neither from his faults nor his follies. We
believe that there are few of our Highland parishes in which
there is not more suffering from poverty than would be found
in an equal Russian population. Again, the master thinks that
he gains by being able to proportion the slave's subsistence
to his wants. In a state of freedom, average wages are always
enough to support, with more or less comfort, but still to
support, an average family. The unmarried slave receives
merely his own maintenance. A freeman makes a bargain; he
asks whatever his master can afford to pay. The competition
among employers forces them to submit to these terms; and
the highly paid workman often wastes his extra wages in
idleness and debauchery. And when employment is abundant;
that is, when his services are most wanted, he often tries
to better himself by quitting his master. All this is
disagreeable to masters who have been accustomed to the
apparent economy of servile labor, and to its lethargic
obedience.
The great motive of the framers of the earlier English
poor laws was to remedy the latter class of inconveniences;
those which affect, or appear to affect the master. The
motive of the framers of the later acts again, beginning with
George I., was to remedy the first class of evils: those which
affect the free laborer and his family.
The first set of laws were barbarous and unskillful, and
their failure is evident from their constant re-enactment or
amendment, with different provisions and severer penalties.
The second set had a different fate - they ultimately
succeeded, in many districts, in giving to the laborer and
to his family the security of servitude. They succeeded in
relieving him and those who, in a state of real freedom,
would have been dependent on him, from
many of the penalties imposed by nature on idleness and
misconduct. And by doing this they in a great measure
effected, though certainly against the intentions of the
legislature, the object which had been vainly attempted by
the earlier laws. They confined the laborer to his parish;
they dictated to him who should be his master; and they
proportioned his wages, not to his services, but to his
wants. Before the poor law
amendment act, nothing but the power of arbitrary
punishment was wanting in the pauperized parishes to a
complete system of praedial slavery.
Our limits will not allow us to do more than to state very
briefly the material parts of the numerous statutes,
beginning by the statute of laborers, 23d Edward III.,
(1349,) and ending by the 39th Eliz. cap. 4, (1597,) which
were passed for the supposed benefit of masters.
The 23d Ed. III. requires all servants to accept the wages
which were usually given five or six years before, and to
serve by the year, not by the day; it fixes a positive
rate of wages in many employments; forbids persons to quit
the places in which they had dwelt in the winter, and search
employment elsewhere in the summer; or to remove, in order
to evade the act, from one county to another. A few years
after, in 1360, the 34th Ed. III. confirmed the previous
statute, and added to the penalties, which it imposed on
laborers or artificers absenting themselves from their
services, that they should be branded on the forehead
with the letter F. It imposed also a fine of £10 on the
mayor and bailiffs of a town which did not deliver up a
laborer or artificer who had left his service.
Twenty-eight years after, in 1388, was passed the 12th
Rich. II., which has generally been considered as the origin
of the English poor laws. By that act the acts of Ed. III.
are confirmed - laborers are prohibited, on pain of
imprisonment, from quitting their residences in search of
work, unless provided with testimonials stating the cause of
their absence, and the time of their returning, to be issued by
justices of the peace at their discretion.
And, "because laborers will not, nor, for a long season, would
not, serve without extrageous and excessive hire," prices are
fixed for their labor; and punishment awarded against the
laborer who receives more, and the master who gives more.
Persons who have been employed in husbandry until twelve
years of age, are prohibited becoming artisans. Able-bodied
beggars are to be treated as laborers wandering without
passports. Impotent beggars are to remain where they are
at the time of the proclamation of the act; or, if those places
are unwilling or unable to support them, they are, within
forty days, to repair to the places where they were born,
and there dwell during their lives.
We have said that this act has been treated as the origin
of the English poor laws. It has been so considered in
consequence of the last clause, which is the first enactment
recognizing the existence of the impotent poor. But this
enactment makes no provision for them: though, by requiring
them to be stationary in a given spot for the rest of
their lives, it seems to assume that they would be supported
there. It gives then, however, no claim, nor is there a clause
in the whole act intended to benefit any persons except
the employers of labor, and principally of agricultural
labor - that is to say, the landowners who made the law.
If the provisions of the act could have been enforced, the
agricultural laborers, and they formed probably four-fifths
of the population of England, though nominally free,
would have been as effectually
ascripti glebæ as any
Polish serf. And, to make a nearer approximation to slavery,
in the next year
(1389), the 13th Rich II. was passed; which directs the
justices of every county to make proclamation every half
year, at their discretion, according to the price of food, what
wages every artificer and laborer shall receive by the day.
This act, with some intervals, during which the legislature
attempted itself to fix the prices of labor, remained
substantially in force until the present century. A further
attempt to reduce husbandry laborers to a hereditary caste of
serfs, was made by the 7th Hen. IV. cap. 17, (1405,) which,
after reciting that the provisions of the former acts were
evaded by persons apprenticing their children to crafts in
towns - so that there is such a scarcity of husbandry
laborers that gentlemen are impoverished - forbids persons not
having 20s. a-year in land to do so, under penalty of a year's
imprisonment.
It appears, however, that the laborers did not readily
submit to the villenage to which the law strove to reduce
them; for from this time the English statute book is
deformed by the enactments against able-bodied persons
leaving their homes, or refusing to work at the wages offered
to them, or loitering, (that is to say, professing to be out of
work,) which, to use the words of Dr. Burn, "make this part
of English history look like the history of the savages in
America. Almost all the severities have been inflicted, except
scalping."
* A new class of
criminals, designated by the
terms "sturdy rogues" and "vagabonds," was created.
Among these were included idle and suspect persons, living
suspiciously.
** Persons
having no land or craft whereby they get their living.
*
Idle persons calling themselves serving-men, having no
masters. Persons who, after having been sent home, absent
themselves from such labor as they shall be appointed to.
**
Able-bodied poor persons who do not apply themselves to
some honest labor or other; or serve even for meat and drink,
if nothing more is to be obtained.
*** Persons
able to labor,
not having land or master, nor using any lawful employment.
Laborers using loitering, and refusing to work for reasonable
wages.****
The first attempt on the
part of a person dependent on his
labor for his support to assert free agency, by changing his
abode, or by making a bargain for his services, or even by
refusing to work for "bare meat and drink," rendered him
liable to be whipped and sent back to his place of birth,
or last residence, for three years; or, according to some
statutes, for one year, there to be at the disposal of the
local authorities. The second attempt subjected him, at one
time, to slavery for life, "to be on bread and water and
refuse meat, and caused to work by beating, chaining, or
otherwise;" and for the third, he was to suffer death as a
felon.
We have seen that the 12th Rich. II. required the impotent
poor to remain for life where they were found at the
proclamation of the act, or at the places of their birth.
The subsequent statutes require them to proceed
either to their places of birth, or last places of residence,
for three years. The law assumed, as we have already
remarked, that they would be supported there by voluntary
alms, and as respects the able-bodied, it assumed that
an able-bodied slave, for such the laborer given up to the
local authorities was, could always be made worth his
maintenance; that maintenance being, of course, the lowest
that could keep him in working order. It appears, however,
that casual alms were found an insufficient, or an
inconvenient provision for the impotent; that the local
authorities were not sufficiently severe taskmasters of
the able-bodied; and that the keeping them at work required
some fund, by way of capital. The 27th Hen. VIII. cap. 25,
(1536,) therefore, requires the parishes to which the
able-bodied should be sent, "to keep them to continual
labor in such wise that they may get their own living by
the continual labor of their own hands;" on pain that
every parish making default shall forfeit twenty shillings
a-month. It directs the church-wardens, and two others of
every parish, to collect alms and broken meat, to be
employed in supporting the impotent poor, and "setting
and keeping to work the sturdy vagabonds;" and forbids
other almsgiving, on pain of forfeiting ten times the
amount. This is the first attempt at making charity legal
and systematic; and it was obviously a part of the scheme
for confining the laboring population to their own parishes.
It seems to have been supposed that voluntary alms,
systematically distributed, would provide wholly for the
impotent, and form a fund which, aided by the fruits of
their forced labor; would
support the "sturdy vagabonds;" and, therefore, that one
could have an excuse for changing his residence. In the
early part of Elizabeth's reign was passed a statute, 5th
Eliz. cap. 2, (1562,) inflicting the usual penalties, whipping,
slavery, and death, on sturdy vagabonds; that is to say, on
those who, having no property but their labor, presumed to
act as if they had a right to dispose of it; and containing the
usual provisions for confining the impotent poor to their
parishes. In one respect, however, it was a great step in
advance; for it contains for the first time a provision enabling
the justices to tax, at their discretion, those who refused to
contribute to the relief of the impotent and the keeping at
work the able-bodied. Concurrently with this statute, and
indeed as part of it, for it is the next chapter on the roll
of parliament, was passed the 5th Eliz. cap. 4. This statute
requires all persons brought up to certain specified trades,
at that time the principal trades of the country, and
not possessed of property, or employed in husbandry, or a
gentleman's service, to continue to serve in such trades;
and orders that all other persons, between twelve years old
and sixty, not being gentlemen, or students in school or
university, or entitled to property, and not engaged in
maritime or mining operations, be compelled to serve in
husbandry with any person that will require such person to
serve, within the same county. Females, in corporate towns,
between the ages of twelve and forty, and unmarried, are
to be disposed of in service by corporate authorities, at such
wages, and in such sort and manner, as the authorities think
meet. The hours of work are fixed by the statute; and the
justices are, twice
a-year, after "conferring together respecting the plenty
or scarcity of the time," to fix the wages. Persons directly or
indirectly paying more, are to be punished by imprisonment
and fine; persons receiving more, by imprisonment. No person
is to depart from one parish to another, or from one hundred
or county to serve in another hundred or county, without a
license from the local authorities.
When we recollect that disobedience to these enactments
exposed a man or a woman to be included in the proscribed
class of vagabonds, punishable by whipping, branding,
slavery, and death, it must be admitted that, whatever might
be the practice, the law gave little freedom to the laboring
classes.
The 11th Eliz. cap. 5, (1572,) carried on the same
legislation against the able-bodied, merely aggravating the
penalty, by subjecting the offenders (that is, all persons who
would not work for what the justices should think reasonable
wages) to whipping and burning for the first offence, and to
the penalties of felony for the second. It made a further
approach to the present system, by directing the fund "for
setting to work the rogues and vagabonds," and relieving the
impotent, to be raised by a general assessment.
Twenty-five years afterwards, the two acts of the 39th Eliz.
cap. 3 and 4, were passed, which for the first time divided
into separate statutes the punishment of the able-bodied, and
the relief of the impotent. By the second of these acts,
vagabonds (including, we repeat, persons able to labor,
having no lord or master, not using any lawful employments,
and laborers refusing to work for common wages) are to be
whipped, but not branded,
and sent back to their parishes: if they appear to be such as
will not be reformed, they are to be transported or adjudged
perpetually to the galleys.
The other act, the 39th Eliz. cap. 3, differs so slightly
from the 43d Eliz. cap. 2, that it requires no further
attention.
The 43d of Eliz. directs, that the churchwardens and two
or more householders, to be appointed by the justices, shall
take order, with the consent of the justices, for setting
to work children, and all persons having no means to maintain
themselves, and using no ordinary or daily trade of life to
get their living by; and to raise a fund by taxation of the
inhabitants for such setting to work, and for the necessary
relief of the lame, impotent, old, and blind poor not able
to work. And the justices are directed to send to the House
of Correction, or common jail, "such as shall not employ
themselves to work, being appointed thereunto as aforesaid."
It appears from this statement, that the 43d of Elizabeth
deserves neither the praise nor the blame which have been
lavished on it. So far from having been prompted by
benevolence, it was a necessary link in one of the heaviest
chains in which a people calling itself free has been bound.
It was part of a scheme prosecuted for centuries, in defiance
of reason, justice, and humanity, to reduce the laboring
classes to serfs, to imprison them in their parishes, and to
dictate to them their employments and their wages. Of course,
persons confined to certain districts by penalties of whipping,
mutilation, and death, must be supported; and, if they
were capable of labor, it was obvious that they ought to be made
to contribute to the expense of their maintenance.
Thence arose the provisions for relieving the impotent, and
setting to work the able-bodied. But these provisions do
not, on the other hand, deserve the censure passed on them
by the Committee of the House of Commons in 1817. They were
not of a nature to induce the industrious to relax their
efforts. They held out no temptations to idleness. The
able-bodied, who were the objects of the 43d Elizabeth, were
those "who, having no means to maintain themselves, used no
ordinary and daily trade of life to get their living by;" such
persons were, by the previous acts, criminals; the work to
which they were to be put was forced work; and if they did
not employ themselves in it, "being thereunto appointed as
aforesaid," the justices were to commit them to jail. The
industrious laborer was not within the spirit or the words of
the act. This was, indeed, the complaint of Lord Hale: "The
plaster," says his Lordship, "is not so large as the sore.
There are many poor who are able to work if they had it, and
had it at reasonable wages, whereby they might support
themselves and their families. These are not within the
provisions of the law."
*
And it was long before
the legislature assented to any
extension of the 43d Elizabeth. The 8th and 9th Will. III.
cap. 30, passed nearly a century afterwards, "To the intent
that the money raised only for the relief of such as are
impotent as well as poor, may not be misapplied," requires
all persons receiving relief, and their families, to wear a
badge, containing a large Roman P. and the
first letter of the name of the parish from which they
received relief; the object being not, as has been supposed,
to degrade the pauper, but to afford an easy means of
detecting the overseer who had relieved an able bodied person.
The oppressive legislation of the Plantagenets and Tudors
was unsuccessful. The provisions on which its efficacy
depended, namely, the regulation of wages by the justices, the
punishment of those who refused to work for such wages, or
who paid more than such wages, and the punishment of those
who left their parishes without license, became gradually
obsolete. Legally considered, they remained in force until
the present century. Sir Frederic Eden has collected
regulations of wages by the justices, from the 35th of Eliz.
(1593) down to 1725. And the last which he gives, that
regulating wages for the county of Lancaster in 1725,
contains an exposition of the law by the justices, in the
spirit of the times of Henry VIII. or Elizabeth: "That the
transgressors may be inexcusable when punished, we, the said
justices, publish these denunciations, penalties, punishments,
and forfeitures which the statutes impose. No servant that
hath been in service before, ought to be retained without a
testimonial that he or she is legally licensed to depart,
and at liberty to serve elsewhere, to be registered with the
minister of the parish whence the servant departs. The master
retaining a servant without such testimonial forfeits five
pounds. The person wanting such testimonial shall be
imprisoned till he procure it. If he do not produce one
within twenty-one days, to be whipped as a vagabond. The
person that gives more wages than is
appointed by the justices shall forfeit five pounds, and be
imprisoned ten days; the servant that takes more to be
imprisoned twenty-one days. Every promise or gift whatever
to the contrary shall be void. We, the said justices, shall
make strict enquiries, and see the defaults against these
ancient and useful statutes severely corrected and punished."
Free society is a recent and small experiment. The English
Poor Laws and the English poor, constitute its only history;
for only in England has the experiment been made on a large
scale for several centuries. If we have not proved its total
and disastrous failure in England, in our Sociology, and
in this chapter, we are resolved to prove it before we have
done.
It is a favorite political maxim of Englishmen, that
taxation and representation should go hand in hand; and
that none shall be taxed without their own consent. Yet
in Great Britain, the working men, who pay every cent of
tax, are not represented at all, have no vote in elections,
and are taxed without and against their own consent; whilst
the capitalist class, who pay no taxes, but, as Gerrit Smith
truly says, are the mere conduits, that pass them from the
laborers to the government. This vampire capitalist class
impose all the taxes, and pay none. Alas! poor human nature!
It is ever grasping at truth and hugging itself.
for thousands of extortioners. Never did so vast a moral,
intellectual and social movement arise so suddenly,
and spread so rapidly. The thing became the rage and
fashion. Even in America, our Northern folks affected a
disease, which they did not feel, just as Alexander's
courtiers aped his wry neck; and anti-rentism and land
monopoly became the constant theme of conversation,
lectures, speeches, books and essays. In France and in
England, prior to 1830, there had been a few Socialists,
such as Fourier and St. Simon, Owen and Fanny Wright -
but they were little heeded, and generally considered
about half crazy. Immediately thereafter, by far the
greater portion of the literary mind of Europe imbibed,
in whole or in part, the doctrines of these early
Socialists. The infection soon reached the lower classes,
and occasioned revolution, intended to be social as
well as political, throughout Western Europe. The
Provisional Government in France, which immediately
succeeded to the expulsion of Louis Philippe, was
composed entirely of Socialists, and its programme and
attempted measures were thoroughly socialistic.
The subject of the condition of the laboring classes
in Europe, and especially in France, was handled with
an accuracy of detail and a breadth of scientific
expression in a review of our own work in the Literary
Messenger of March, 1855, of which we are incapable.
The author, Professor
H. of Virginia, is our corresponding acquaintance only.
Informed by letter that he would review us, and that he
concurred in the general truth of our theory, we suggested
to him in reply, that he should, from his vast stores of
learning, strengthen our main positions. He thought the
suggestion a good one, and fulfilled our request, with an
ability and learning, that no other man, on so short a notice,
could have done. As we have prompted, if not caused his
toil, we make no apology for appropriating so much of his
review as seems to be a reply to our suggestion:
From the principles as laid down in theory and
exemplified in practice, we proceed to the effects. That
religion has been undermined, morals contaminated, crime
increased, misery extended, deepened and multiplied, want
and starvation augmented, society agitated, and orderly
government endangered by the progress of the so-called
prosperity of the free labor system, is evident, without
further proof, to any one who reads contemporary
literature, who pays attention to the statements of
newspapers, and of Poor Law Reports, who notes the cases
brought before the police or criminal courts, or is cognizant
from any source of information, of the actual condition of
the multitude and of the poor in England, Scotland, Ireland,
France, Germany, Prussia, and parts of Switzerland, and in
New England and the Northern States. The connection of the
results with the causes, is ably traced by Mr. Fitzhugh, but
not with sufficient
care, minuteness and precision; and the actual character and
enormity of the results is exhibited by him, and by an
indefinite array of the most various and unexceptionable
testimony. The History of the Working Classes, by Robert du
Var. which we have joined with the Sociology for the South,
as the text for the present observations, is full of evidence to
this effect with regard to France; and for the other countries
specified, ample testimony many be easily obtained. The
Boston papers will suffice to illustrate the wretchedness of
the laboring classes in New England: the New Stork Herald
and Tribune, the works of Stephen Pearl Andrews, and of
Greeley himself, will render the same service for the other
Northern States: Alton Locke, Mary Barton, Mayhew's
London Labor and the London Poor, the debates in
Parliament, the Reports of the Poor Law Commissioners, and
the English Reviews, will amply illustrate the condition of
Great Britain and Ireland; and for Germany, reference may be
made to Hacklander's Europarsches Sclavenleben, a work
which has followed the example of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and
portrayed the condition of the inferior classes in Europe,
as a much more legitimate object of European sympathy and
consideration than American Slavery. Where the evidence is so
abundant and voluminous, selection would be as
unnecessary as it would be tedious. It is within the reach of
every one who desires to consult it; and we need not load our
pages with extracts to prove what has been frequently and
sufficiently proved before, and what is so notoriously true as
to be undeniable. A few quotations to illustrate the condition
of free labor societies we may
indeed quote at a later period, in connection with a different
division of the argument; but they are wholly unnecessary to
confirm the allegation of the wretchedness and depravity
which are consuming the vitals of the principal free societies
of the Nineteenth Century. They are rendered still more
unnecessary by the fact that the acceptability of Socialism
in all of those communities, betrays the extent of both the
misery and the social disease to be cured; and the
confession of the multitude of recent writers on social topics,
admits not merely the evils which we have specified, and
their dependence on the theory and practice of free societies,
but acknowledges also the truth of the general conclusion,
that the free societies enumerated have unquestionably failed,
they have not produced the permanent or general blessings
anticipated from them, they have produced overwhelming
social disaster, multiplied indefinitely the woes and the vices
of the poor, threatened all society and government and national
existence in those communities, and announced a future so
dark that little more than its gloom and spectral shapes can be
distinctly recognized.
We regard Mr. Fitzhugh's employment of these admissions by
European writers and Northern reformers, as constituting
the most important position of his argument, and the most
characteristic novelty in his defence of the South. The
testimonies which he adduces are very strong and pointed,
but they may be easily multiplied, and will gain an
accession of strength from such multiplications. For
years we have carefully collected similar acknowledgments
from foreign writers, and cheerfully contribute them to the
cause of the South, and the
fortification of Mr. Fitzhugh's position. And let it be
remembered, that neither in the Sociology for the South, nor
in the quotations which will be shortly introduced here, is the
sole or principal obligation due to Chartists, Socialists,
Communists, or Agrarians of any sort. From such authors
some admissions have been received, but the chief
contributions are derived from those who have been the most
strenuous supporters of past social arrangements, and who,
notwithstanding a great diversity of views, abilities, studies,
and opportunities of knowledge,
stlil represent the sober
conservative sense of their respective communities. We regret
that Mr. Fitzhugh should have extended so much countenance
to the Socialists, and should have partially identified
Socialism and Slavery, but the strongest part of his
testimonies to the failure of free societies, is derived from
other declarations than theirs, and we shall imitate his
example.
We begin, however, with a Socialist, but almost the only
one whom we shall summon to the stand:
"The French Revolution was an abortion. The trading
classes (la bourgeoisie) organized themselves in the name of
capital, and, instead of becoming a man, the serf became a
prolétaire. What then was his situation? The most painful of
all, the most intolerable which can be conceived. Like all
the prolétaires, the trading classes had shouted: 'Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity.' The result has been that every thing
which was prolétaire - that is to say, all those who have no
capital, groan under the most cruel usage (exploitation.)
They cannot be freemen, nor brothers, nor equals. Not free,
because their daily bread depends on a thousand accidents
produced
and engendered by the competition of capitalists among
themselves; not brothers, because, with hearts crushed and
lacerated by the evils which overwhelm them, they cannot
love those whose creed is so fatal to them; not equals,
because capital being the supreme law, it is only through it
that any participation or concurrence in social power is
possible." *
An apology is due for not attempting to translate the term
prolétaires in the above passage, but every one familiar with
the condition of modern free societies, is aware that it is
absolutely untranslateable. It is an indispensable word in
modern times, and the impossibility of avoiding its use is a
stronger proof of the failure of free societies, than the
invention of the phrase Sociology, which Mr. Fitzhugh
regards in this light. It ought to be unhesitatingly introduced
into the English language; it can boast of a very respectable
Latin descent; it occurs in the XII Tables, and originally
signified a person of the lowest class, too poor to pay taxes,
and unable to serve the State otherwise than by raising
children and thus increasing the population
** - a very
doubtful service in modern Europe.
We return to Mr. Robert du Var:
"It must be remarked, that what is called pauperism, this
sore, this ulcer, which infests, and more and more consumes
the body social, could not exist in the same degree amongst
the nations of antiquity. It is a phenomenon
which could only arise as the consequence of the
transformation of slavery into serfdom, and of serfdom into
free labor (prolétariat.) * * * In antiquity, every one,
whether free or not, citizen or slave, was always connected
with some centre which ensured at least his material
support." *
"As a result of the individual liberty, independent of any
central power, proclaimed by Christianity, favored and
developed by the instincts of the Northern barbarians,
legitimated and transformed into a social doctrine by the
institution of Communes, was formed and agglomerated
throughout Europe an innumerable population, having no
material connection with the regular society, and having for
itself nothing but the most naked liberty, that is to say,
misery, poverty, isolation. Thence issued the poor, the
beggars, the thieves - in one word, parias of every
description, with whom society was compelled to compound,
willingly or reluctantly, by the foundation of establishments
intended to palliate the bleeding wound of the pauperism
which had been engendered by liberty."
**
"From whatever point the modern system is regarded, it
seems impossible not to recognize that the Politico-
economical rule of free competition is the negation, as its
name indicates, of all ties and communion of interests between
the members of society. Free competition is a
free field open to every individual, provided or not with the
elements necessary and indispensable to its manifestations;
free competition, in a word, is liberty, but liberty without
other rule than the material and moral force, of which each one
may be able to dispose in the presence of the thousand causes
which produce a difference in the position of individuals."
*
"But, we say that a system which thus arms, morally, the
poor against each other, is a barbarous system, and contrary
to civilization: it is barbarous, inasmuch as it
developes all
the bad tendencies of the human heart: it is contrary to
civilization, because, instead of facilitating harmonious
relations among men, it inclines them to mutual repulsion and
hostility."
**
This is a sufficient sample of M. Robert du Var's testimony.
The greater part of his work is to the same effect: and
there is a singular accordance between his censures of
Political Economy,
*** and
those uttered by Mr. Fitzhugh.
They merit especial attention.
We will cite another
Socialist, M. Vidal:
"The ox, the horse,
the hog eat according to their hunger:
their desires are even anticipated: they have their
subsistence assured. It is the same thing in the case of the
slave. For the ox, the horse, the hog, the slave, belong to a
master, and their loss is the loss of the owner: res perit
domino, says the Digest. But with the hired laborer it is
different! He belongs to himself.
His death is the loss of his family whom he maintained, and
who will no longer find the means of living. What matter to
an employer is the death of a hired laborer? Are there not
every where millions of arms always ready to offer themselves
at reduced wages?"
*
Let us turn to evidence of a different character. Here is Sir
Robert Peel's testimony to the condition of Ireland before
1844, previous to the potato-rot and the famine:
"It may be assured that the fourth class of houses,
(according to the census,) are generally unfit for human
habitation; and yet it would appear that in the best
circumstanced county, in this respect, the county of Down,
24.7 per cent., or one-fourth of the population, live in
houses of this class: while in Kerry, the population is
66.7 per cent., or about two-thirds of the whole; and,
taking the average of the whole population of Ireland, as
given by the census commissioner, we find that in the
rural districts about 43 per cent. of the families, and in
the civic districts, about 36 per cent. inhabit houses of
the fourth class. * * *
"The lowest, or fourth class, remember, comprises all mud
cabins, having but one room."
**
Mr. Kay, from whom the foregoing remarks of Sir Robert
Peel are quoted, thus comments upon a murder committed
in open day in Ireland. The two murderers had escaped:
"Why," he asks, "were not these men apprehended? Because
the rottenness that there is in the state of society in
these districts; because of the sympathy which there is on
the part of the great bulk of the population with those
who, by these dreadful acts of vengeance, are supposed
to be the conservators of the rights of the tenant, and
supposed to give him that protection which imperial
legislation has denied. The first thing that ever called my
attention to the condition of Ireland, was the reading an
account of one of these outrages. I thought of it for a
moment, but the truth struck me at once: and all I have
seen since confirms it. When law refuses its duty - when
government denies the right of a people - when competition
is so fierce for the little land, which the monopolists
grant to cultivation in Ireland - when, in fact, for a
bare potato, millions are scrambling, these people are
driven back from law and from the usages of civilization
to that which is termed the law of nature, and, if not of
the strongest, the law of the vindictive; and in this case
the people of Ireland believe, to my certain knowledge,
that it is only by these acts of vengeance, periodically
committed, that they can hold in suspense the arm of the
proprietor and the agent, who, in too many cases, if he
dared, would exterminate them."*
A pretty result, this, for free labor and free competition,
and abolitionism, to have arrived at. But Ireland was always
esteemed un mauvais sujet. Let us cross St. George's Channel:
"The English peasant is thus deprived of almost every
motive to practice economy, and self-denial, beyond what
suffices to provide his family with food and clothing.
Once a peasant in England, and a man cannot hope that be
himself, or his children, will ever be anything better,
than a mere laborer for weekly hire.
"This unhappy feature of an English peasant's life was
most powerfully, and only too justly depicted in those
articles of 'The Times,' to which I have referred above. It
was there shown that during the last half century, every thing
has been done to deprive the peasant of any interest in the
preservation of public order; of any wish to maintain the
existing constitution of society; of all hope of raising himself
in the world, or of improving his condition of life; of all
attachment to his country; of all feelings of there really
existing any community of interest between himself and the
higher ranks of society; and of all consciousness that he has
anything to lose by political changes; and that every thing has
been done to render him dissatisfied with his condition,
envious of the richer classes and discontented with the
existing order of things." *
This, too, is a pretty picture, which is not relieved by the
further information that,
"In the year 1770, there were, it is said, in England alone,
250,000 freehold estates in the hands of 250,000 different
families. In the year 1815, at the close of the revolutionary
war, the whole of the lands of England
were concentrated in the hands of only 32,000
proprietors."*
"What is the result? The labor market in the manufacturing
towns is constantly overstocked; the laborers and shopkeepers
find new and eager competitors constantly added to the list;
competition in the towns is rendered unnaturally intense;
profits and wages are both unnaturally reduced; the town
work-houses and the town gaols are crowded with inmates;
the inhabitants are overburthened with rates; and the towns
swarm with paupers and misery.
"I know not what others may think, but to me it is a sad
and grievous spectacle, to see the enormous amount of vice
and degraded misery which our towns exhibit, and then to
think, that we are doing all we can to foster and stimulate the
growth and extension of this state of things, by that system
of laws, which drives so many of the peasants of both
England and Ireland to the towns, and increases the already
vast mass of misery by so doing.
"I speak with deliberation, when I say, that I know of no
spectacle so degraded, and if I may be allowed to use a
strong word, so horrible, as the back streets and suburbs of
English and Irish towns, with their filthy inhabitants; with
their crowds of half-clad, filthy, and degraded children,
playing in the dirty kennels; with their numerous gin-palaces,
filled with people, whose hands and faces show how their
flesh is, so to speak,
impregnated with spirituous liquors - the only solaces, poor
creatures, that they have! - and with poor young girls,
whom a want of religious training in their infancy, and
misery, has driven to the most degraded and pitiful of all
pursuits." *
"Of 1600, [pauper children in London,] who were examined,
162 confessed that they had been in prison, not merely once,
nor even twice, but some of them several times; 116 had run
away from their homes; 170 slept in the "lodging-houses;"
253 had lived altogether by beggary; 216 had neither shoes
nor stockings; 280 had no hat or cap, or covering for the
head; 101 had no linen; 349 had never slept in a bed; many
had no recollection of ever having been in a bed; 68 were
the children of convicts." **
"The further we examine, the more painful, disgusting and
incredible does the tale become.
"We see on every hand stately palaces, to which no country
in the world offers any parallel. The houses of our rich
are more gorgeous and more luxurious than those of any other
land. Every clime is ransacked to adorn or furnish them.
The soft carpets, the heavy rich curtains, the luxuriously
easy couches, the beds of down, the services of plate, the
numerous servants, the splendid equipages, and all the
expensive objects of literature, science, and the arts, which
crowd the palaces of England, form but items in an ensemble
of refinement and
magnificence, which was never imagined or approached,
in all the splendor of the ancient empires.
"But look beneath all this display and luxury, and what
do we see there? A pauperized and suffering people.
"To maintain a show, we have degraded the masses, until
we have created an evil so vast, that we now despair of
ever finding a remedy." *
We may now dismiss Mr. Kay - this testimony is sufficiently
direct and sufficiently ample: and yet it would have been
easy to have introduced many more and stronger statements
made by him, which have been omitted because they were
too long to be quoted. Mr. Kay is neither Chartist nor
Socialist. He is a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge,
a Barrister-at-law, and has traveled over Europe for
eight years, under an appointment from the Senate of
the University of Cambridge, as Traveling Bachelor of
the University, commissioned "to travel through Western
Europe in order to examine the social condition of the
poorer classes of the different countries."
** The
evidence
of such a man should be authoritative, but we will
continue our quotations:
"It is undeniable that morality has decline in our days
with the progress of knowledge." ***
"One word more, and we have done. On many questions of
practical duty, men are now affecting to be wiser
and better than the Bible. Plans of social progress and
improvement are rife, that have an air of transcendental
refinement about them, unknown to the homely morality of
the Word of God. We are becoming too sentimental to endure
that even the murderer shall be put to death. And now we are
for bettering God's ordinance of marriage itself; and we see
a fine, romantic, tender charm in an alliance of brothers
and sisters, on which God has stamped his curse. What may
such things betoken? Are they ominous of such unbridled
lawlessness and lust as marked the days before the Flood?
Are they signs of the days not unlike these that are to
precede the coming of the Son of Man?"
*
"The task of restoring health and soundness to a society
so fearfully diseased as ours unquestionably is, is on
all hands acknowledged to be at once the noblest and the
most imperative to which citizens or statesmen can now
direct their energies."
**
"Society, such as it now is in England, will not continue to
endure, &c."
***
"The last battle of civilization is the severest: the last
problem the knottiest to solve. Out of all the multitudinous
ingredients and influences of the past; out of the conquest of
nature, and the victory of freedom; out of the blending and
intermixture of all previous forms
of polity and modifications of humanity, has arisen a
complex order of society, of which the disorders and
anomalies are as complex as its own structure. We are now
summoned to the combat, not with material difficulties,
nor yet with oppressors nor with priests, but with an
imperfect and diseased condition of that social world
of which we form a part; with pains and evils appalling
in their magnitude, baffling in their subtlety, perplexing
in their complication, and demanding far more clear insight
and unerring judgment, than even purity of purpose, or
commanding energy of will. This conflict may be said to
date from the first French Revolution; and it has been
increasing in intensity ever since, till it has reached
to a vividness and solemnity of interest, which surpasses
and overshadows the attractions of all other topics, &c. &c."
*
"England's rapidly accelerating decline is a very remarkable
and mournful phenomenon; it is a mortal sickness for which
there is no remedy. I liken the English of the present day
to the Romans of the third century after Christ."
**
The analogy might be extended to nearly all of modern
civilization.
"Tremendous catastrophes have come to pass, and there
is no resistance; not a semblance of great men, no joy or
enthusiasm, no hopes for the future, except that the time
will one day come, when by means of mutual instruction
every peasant boy shall be able to read. The
truth of the thing is the unveiled destitution of the
populace, who are resolved to bear it no longer, and
this again paves the way for a revision of property;
which is not, indeed, something new under the sun, but
has been unheard of for centuries past, and even now
seems quite inconceivable to our politicians, who have
set property, in the place of God, in the Holiest of
Holies, &c, &c." *
We cannot venture to extend our extracts, though we have
the materials before us to increase them ten - nay,
twenty-fold. We contribute these merely as a confirmation
of Mr. Fitzhugh's position, that, really and confessedly, Free
Society has proved a calamitous and irremediable failure in
the principal communities of Christendom.
thousand useful reforms by recurrence to and
comparison with the past, and by cautious
experimentation.
Common sense sometimes errs by excess of
conservation; but it is better to err with Pope, who
thought "Whatever is, is right," than with Jefferson,
whose every act and word proves that he held that
"Whatever is, is wrong.
The Reformation was not the thought and the act of
Luther, Calvin, Cranmer and Erasmus; but the thought
and the act of society - the vox Populi, vox Dei. Popes
and cardinals are not infallible, but society is. Its
harmony is its health; and to differ with it is heresy or
treason, because social discord inflicts individual
misery; and what disturbs and disarranges society,
impairs the happiness and well-being of its members.
This doctrine of the infallibility of society, is
suggested, though not expressed, in the maxim - Salus
populi, est suprema lex. The Puritans, in the early days
of New England, acted it out; and if they hung a few
troublesome old women, the good that they achieved
was more than compensated for by any errors they may
have committed. Liberty of the press, liberty of speech,
freedom of religion, or rather freedom from religion, and
the unlimited right of private judgment, have borne no
good fruits, and many bad ones. Infidels, Skeptics,
Millerites, Mormons, Agrarians, Spiritual Rappers,
Wakemanites, Free Negroes and Bloomers, disturb
the peace of society, threaten the security of
property, offend the public sense of decency, assail
religion, and invoke anarchy. Society has the right,
and is in duty bound, to take care of itself; and
when public opinion becomes powerless, law should
intervene, and punish all acts, words, or opinions,
which have become criminal by becoming dangerous
or injurious.
We would rejoice to see intolerance of error
revived in New England. Laxity of rule and laxity of
public opinion is sin of itself, and leads to thousands
of sins. New England is culpable for permitting
Parker and Beecher to stir up civil discord and
domestic broils from the pulpit. These men deserve
punishment, for they have instigated and occasioned
a thousand murders in Kansas; yet they did nothing
more than carry into practice the right of private
judgment, liberty of speech, freedom of the press
and of religion. These boasted privileges have become
far more dangerous to the lives, the property and the
peace of the people of this Union, than all the robbers
and murderers and malefactors put together.
The Reformation was but an effort of Nature - the
vis medicatrix naturae - throwing off what was false,
vicious, or superfluous, and retaining, what was
good.
The great men of the day but show larger
portions of the common thought. Men, and all other
social and gregarious animals, have a community of
thought, of motions, instincts and intuitions. The social
body is of itself a thinking, acting, sentient being. This
is eminently observable with the lower animals. Bees and
herds perform their evolutions with too much rapidity
and precision, to leave any doubt but that one mind
and one feeling, either from within or without, directs
their movements. The great error of modern philosophy
is the ignorance or forgetfulness of this fact. The first
departure from it was not the Reformation - for that
was preeminently a social idea and a social
movement; - but the doctrine of the right of private
judgment, which speculative philosophers and vain
schismatics attempted to engraft upon it, or deduce
from it. Human equality, the social contract, the
let-alone and selfish doctrines of political economy,
universal liberty, freedom of speech, of the press, and
of religion, spring directly from this doctrine, or are
only new modes of expressing it. Agrarianism, Free
Love, and No Government, are its logical sequences:
for the right to judge for ourself implies the right to act
upon our judgments, and that can never be done in a
world where the private appropriation of all capital, and
the interference of government, restricts our free
agency, and paralyzes our action on all sides.
We sometimes think the burning of the
Alexandrian Library was a providential purification,
just as the fictitious burning, by Cervantes, of Don
Quixote's library ridded the world of the useless
rubbish of the Middle Ages, by the ridicule so
successfully attached to it. Sure we are, that a fire
that would consume all the theological and other
philosophical speculations of the last two centuries,
would be a happy God-send.
Our Revolution, so wise in its conception and so
glorious in its execution, was the mere assertion by
adults of the rights of adults, and had nothing more to
do with philosophy than the weaning of a calf. It was
the act of a people seeking national independence,
not the Utopian scheme of speculative philosophers,
seeking to establish human equality and social
perfection.
But the philosophers seized upon it, as they had
upon the Reformation, and made it the unwilling and
unnatural parent of the largest and most hideous brood
of ills that had ever appeared at one birth, since the
opening of the box of Pandora. Bills of Rights, Acts of
Religious Freedom and Constitutions, besprinkled with
doctrines directly at war with all stable government,
seem to be the basis on which our institutions rest. But
only seem to be; for, in truth, our laws and government
are either old Anglo-Saxon prescriptive arrangements,
or else the gradual accretions of time, circumstance and
necessity. Throw our paper platforms, preambles
and resolutions, guaranties and constitutions,
into the fire, and we should be none the worse off,
provided we retained our institutions - and the
necessities that begat, and have, so far, continued
them.
All government proceeds ab extra. Neither individuals
nor societies can govern themselves, any more than the
mouse can live in the exhausted receiver, or the clown
lift himself by the lappel of his pantaloons. The South is
governed by the necessity of keeping its negroes in
order, which preserves a healthy conservative public
opinion. Had the negroes votes, the necessity would be
removed, because the interest of the governing class
would cease to be conservative. The necessity, the
governing power ab extra, would be removed. The little
republics of ancient Greece were able to preserve the
most artificial social arrangements, under the necessities
which slavery and foreign hostile pressure from without
begat. They were afraid of change, because insurrection
was dangerous.
If government on paper were really useless and
harmless, we should say nothing about it. But it is
fraught with danger, first because we are apt to rely on
it for safety and security of rights, and secondly
because it rarely suits the occasion. Men and societies
are endowed by Providence generally with sufficient
knowledge and judgment to act
correctly or prudently under circumstances as they
arise; but they cannot foresee or provide for the future,
nor lay down rules for other people's conduct. All
platforms, resolutions, bills of rights and constitutions,
are true in the particular, false in the general. Hence all
legislation should be repealable, and those instruments
are but laws. Fundamental principles, or the higher law,
are secrets of nature which God keeps to himself. The
vain attempt of "frequent recurrence to them," is but
the act of the child who builds card houses, for the
pleasure of knocking them down. Recurrence to
fundamental principles and appeals to the higher law,
are but the tocsin of revolution that may upset
everything, but which will establish nothing, because
no two men are agreed as to what the higher law, alias
"fundamental principles," is.
Moses, and Lycurgus, and Solon, and Numa, built
their institutions to last, enjoined it on the people
never to change them, and threw around them the
sanctity of religion, to ward off the sacrilegious hand
of future innovation. "A frequent recurrence to
fundamental principles," and the kicking down of card
houses, was not part of their science of government.
We have often thought that of all the lost arts, the art
of government was the only one whose loss we would
deplore, or whose recovery is worth the pains of study
and research.
To us it seems that "first causes," "fundamental
principles," and the "higher law," mean one and the
same thing: An "ignis fatuus," that it is dangerous to
pursue, and hopeless to overtake.
We may be doing Mr. Jefferson injustice, in
assuming that his "fundamental principles" and Mr.
Seward's "higher law," mean the same thing; but the
injustice can be very little, as they both mean just
nothing at all, unless it be a determination to inaugurate
anarchy, and to do all sorts of mischief. We refer the
reader to the chapter on the Declaration of
Independence," &c., in our Sociology, for a further
dissertation on the fundamental powdercask
abstractions, on which our glorious institutions affect to
repose. We say affect, because we are sure neither their
repose nor their permanence would be disturbed by
the removal of the counterfeit foundation.
The true greatness of Mr. Jefferson was his fitness
for revolution. He was the genius of innovation, the
architect of ruin, the inaugurator of anarchy. His
mission was to pull down, not to build up. He thought
everything false as well in the physical, as in the moral
world. He fed his horses on potatoes, and defended
harbors with gun-boats, because it was contrary to
human experience and human opinion. He proposed to
govern boys without the authority of masters or the
control of religion,
supplying their places with Laissez-faire philosophy,
and morality from the pages of Lawrence Sterne. His
character, like his philosophy, is exceptional - invaluable
in urging on revolution, but useless, if not dangerous, in
quiet times.
We would not restrict, control, or take away a single
human right or liberty, which experience showed was
already sufficiently governed and restricted by public
opinion. But we do believe that the slaveholding
South is the only country on the globe, that can safely
tolerate the rights and liberties which we have
discussed.
The annals of revolutionary Virginia were illustrated
by three great and useful men. The mighty mind of
Jefferson, fitted to pull down; the plastic hand
of Madison to build up, and the powerful arm of
Washington to defend, sustain and conserve.
We are the friend of popular government, but only
so long as conservatism is the interest of the
governing class. At the South, the interests and
feelings of many non-property holders, are identified
with those of a comparatively few property holders.
It is not necessary to the security of property, that a
majority of voters should own property; but where the
pauper majority becomes so large as to disconnect the
mass of them in feeling and interest from the property
holding class, revolution and agrarianism are
inevitable. We will not undertake to say that
events are tending this way at the North. The absence
of laws of entail and primogeniture may prevent it; yet
we fear the worst; for, despite the laws of equal
inheritance and distribution, wealth is accumulating in
few hands, and pauperism is increasing. We shall
attempt hereafter to show that a system of very small
entails might correct this tendency.
If this diluvies of society is by nature vicious,
nomadic and incapable of any self-control, it is
obvious they should be enslaved. If emancipation of
their ancestors and the throwing them upon the world
without property or other means of support, made
them and their posterity, from necessity, beggars,
Pariahs and Ishmaelites, they should be restored to
slavery, unless some better disposition of them can be
discovered.
North British Review, "Literature and Labor
Question," February No. 1851. The passage we quote
is from a work of Mr. Mayhew:
"That we, like the Hottentots, Kaffirs, and Fins, are
surrounded by wandering hordes, the 'sonquas' and
'fingons' of this country, paupers, beggars and
outcasts, possessing nothing but what they acquire by
depredation from the industrious, provident and
civilized portion of the community; that the heads of
these nomads are remarkable for a greater development
of the jaws and cheek bones, than of the skull, and that
they have a secret language of their own - an English
'cuzecat,' or 'slang,' as it is called, for the concealment of
their designs; these are points of coincidence so striking,
that, when placed before the mind, they make us marvel
why the analogy has been so long unobserved. The
resemblance once discovered, however, becomes of
great service in enabling us to use the moral
characteristics of the nomadic races of other countries,
as a means of comprehending more readily those of the
vagabonds and outcasts of our own. * * * The nomad
there is distinguished from the civilized man by his
repugnance to regular and continuous labor - by his
want of providence in laying up a store for the future;
by his inability to perceive consequences ever so
slightly removed from immediate apprehension; by his
passion for stultifying herbs and roots, and when
possible, for intoxicating fermented liquors; for his
extraordinary powers of enduring privation; by his
comparative insensibility to pain; by an immoderate
love of gaming; frequently risking his own personal
liberty on a single cast; by his love of libidinous
dances; by the pleasure which he experiences in witnessing
the sufferings of sentient creatures; by his delight in
warfare and all perilous sports; by his desire for vengeance;
by the looseness of his notions as to property; by the
absence of chastity among his women, and his disregard of
female honor; and lastly by his vague sense of religion, his
rude idea of a Creator, and utter absence of all appreciation
of the mercy of the Divine Spirit.
"The nomadic races of England are of many distinct kinds
- from the habitual vagrant, half beggar, half thief,
sleeping in barns, tents, and casual wards, to the mechanic
on the tramp, obtaining his bed and supper from the trade
societies in the different towns on his way to seek work.
Between these two extremes, there are several mediate
varieties, consisting of pedlars, showmen, harvest men, and
all that large class who live by neither selling, showing, or
doing something through the country. There are, so to speak,
the rural nomads - not confining their wanderings to any one
particular locality, but ranging often from one end of the
land to the other. Besides these, there are urban and suburban
travellers, or those who follow some itinerant occupation in
and about the large towns. Such are in the metropolis more
particularly the pickpockets, the beggars, the prostitutes,
the street sellers, the street performers, the cab-men, the
coachmen, the watermen, the sailors, and such like. In each
of these classes, according as they partake more or less of
the family vagabond, doing nothing whatever for their
living, but moving from place to place, preying upon the
earnings of the more industrious part of the
community - so will the attributes of the nomad tribe be
found to be more or less marked."
To the same effect, read the following from July No 1852,
of Edinburgh Review, in article on "Mendicity; its causes
and statistics :"
There live, then, in the midst and about all the English
population, a distinct population, fearful in numbers,
constantly and rapidly increasing, having a language,
manners, and customs of its own - living, in nine cases out
of ten, in a course of life the most immoral and profligate;
and yet so living, and so increasing, in spite of the laws,
in spite of the municipal arrangements of the last few years,
so favorable to their detection and punishment; in spite of
the new poor-law arrangements; and in spite of the general
feeling that the poor-rates and the union ought to provide for
all real cases of destitution and misery. This population has
its signs, free-masonry, its terms of art, its correspondence,
its halting-houses, its barns still kept open, and even well-
strawed by farmers and country gentlemen; its public-houses,
its well-known and even recognized lodging houses; and its
manifold plans to extract or extort, to win or to scold, out
of its reluctant but deceived victims, sums amounting, we are
inclined to believe, to not less than £1,375,300; being
one-third of the total amount of poor-rates! This sum may at
first appear utterly extravagant; but it will not be found to
be so when it is remembered, that on an average each begging
family extorts £55 per annum from the public. The annual
poor law expenditure for the year ending in March, 1840,
in England, was, in round numbers, £4,300,000. In England,
including the three ridings of Yorkshire, there are forty-two
counties. The population of counties is nearly fifteen
millions. If we take at this moment a rough and general,
though a tolerably correct estimate of that population, with
its dense misery in towns and cities, and its diffused but not
less individually intense misery in the agricultural districts,
we may fairly calculate that one out of every one hundred is a
beggar or lives in a state of practical vagrancy - looking in
one form or other, to alms for support. The one-hundredth
part of the population is 150,000; and if each begging family,
raising £55 per annum from the public by alms, be estimated
as consisting of six, we shall have 25,000 English begging
families, raising £55 per annum each, or the total sum of
£1,375,000. But we believe that we have underrated, instead
of overstated the facts of the case in these calculations.
In London alone and its vicinity, in spite of all the efforts
of the police, a very large part of that sum is extorted; and
we have not taken into consideration the wholesale mendicity
which is now deplorably manifest in the larger English
manufacturing towns. We have also omitted all Irish mendicants;
and yet they are nearly in the proportion of one to three in
the English agricultural districts. Naturally anxious as we
are to avoid even the appearance of exaggeration, we are still
bound to state, that the estimate we have made is greatly
deficient, and that we have understated the real statistics.
The begging population of England, existing and
increasing in spite of municipal police, and nothwithstanding
the penalties of the vagrant act, is divided into several
classes; and we now propose to draw upon a little pamphlet,
mentioned at the head of this article, which has been
recently published at Birmingham, and which contains very
accurate details of the mendicant population - written by
one who long frequented the haunts of the vagrant community.
The portion of the community to which his details extend,
belong principally to the hereditary and professional class
of beggars.
The writer of this family thus proceeds with his descriptive
details:
'In order fully to explain each individual character, I shall
begin with those vagrants who generally obtain the most, and
are considered of the first class, and are by some termed
'Silver Beggars,' but by travelers LURKERS.
'LURKERS are persons who go about with briefs, containing
false statements of losses by fire, shipwrecks, accidents,
&c. The seals and signatures of two or more magistrates are
affixed to those briefs, and they are so well written, that
thousands of persons are daily imposed upon by them. As there
are so many different ways used by these persons, it will be
necessary to explain each of them separately.'
The writer then enters into details as to 'the Fire Lurkers,'
or those, 'who go about begging for loss by fire.' They have
false briefs, pretended to be signed by two magistrates and
the clergyman of the place where the fire is alleged to have
taken place. The documents are accompanied by a sham
subscription-book, and the brief is called, in the mendicant's
parlance, 'a sham,' whilst the subscription-book they name 'a
delicate.'
With this 'sham and delicate' the 'lurkers,' or beggars,
proceed all over the country; and the author states that
one man, with whom he was acquainted, 'had been a
fire-lurker for fourteen years, and had travelled through
every county in England' and the greater part of Wales.
Then there is,
'The Shipwrecked Sailor's Lurk. - Persons who go on this
lurk, generally represent themselves as captains or
masters of merchant ships, which have been wrecked, and
they have, of course, lost all their property; and their
pretended loss always amounts to many hundred pounds,
sometimes even to thousands. This class of imposters are
very respectably dressed, having moustaches, gold chains,
&c. they have either a well-written brief, or one partly
printed and filled up with writing and the seals and
signatures of two or three magistrates are placed at the
bottom. I have seen briefs of this description from almost
every part of the kingdom.'
He goes on to say, that one named Captain Johnstone
had 'followed the lurk of a shipwrecked captain for many
years, had been over every county in England and Wales
many times, and obtained not only hundreds, but thousands
of pounds.' He relates various anecdotes of the most
successful 'Lurkers' in this department.
'The Foreigner's Lurk. - Considerable numbers proceed
on this lurk, representing themselves as foreigners in
distress.... Of late years, by far the greatest number
have represented themselves as Polish noblemen or
gentlemen, who had been driven by the tyranny of Russia
from their native country to seek a refuge.... Their
briefs have the names and seals of two magistrates
attached, and are always well written. Whenever they
present their briefs, they affect not to be able to speak
a word of English, and the few words they utter are
spoken
in broken accent.... One of these lurkers, known among
mendicants by the nickname of 'Lord Dundas,' had often got
several pounds in a day.... There are also many females who
go on the foreigner's lurk.... I knew a female who went on the
foreigner's lurk, who dressed very well; she had a boy with
her, and often succeeded in getting two or three pounds in a
day. When she called on any one, she pattered (spoke) in
French, and affected not to be able to converse in the
English language.'
4. 'The Accident Lurk. - Lurkers of this description have a
sham and delicate, (brief and book,) and the sham states, that
by some dreadful accident the bearer has lost all, or at least
the greater part of his property, sometimes by storm, and at
other times by a flood, or in some other way: but, in
whatever way the accident has happened, the bearer has
always suffered a very considerable loss, and is deprived of
the means of supporting himself and family. The sums raised
vary from five shillings to a pound per day.'
5. 'The Sick Lurk. - This is worked in so many different
ways, that it will be necessary to say a little on each. It
would seem, 1st, That a common method of imposing upon
the public is, by applying blistering ointment to the arms,
causing them to have the appearance of having been badly
scalded. 2d, That others go about with hands and arms tied
up, said to be injured by lightning, or by some other
deplorable accident. 3d, Others affect fits. 4th, Others affect
pregnancy and destitution. 5th, Others obtain alms by the
husband remaining at home and affecting indisposition, in
case any one should visit his lodgings to examine into the
merits of the case, whilst the wife goes out begging for wine,
rags, clothes, &c., for the sham invalid. 6th, Others pretend
to have had wounds, and beg for linen rags and small bottles
to contain medicine necessary for their cure. - I saw a man
who got, in one day, by this means, thirteen pounds' weight
of white rags, and more than five dozen of phial bottles. Rags
and bottles sell well. 7th, Others affect
to have children confined with scarlet fever, &c. &c., &c.,
and beg for them. They state that they have obtained a note
to take their children to an infirmary or to an hospital,
and want a few clothes and a little money.'
6. 'The Deaf and Dumb Lurk. - I have known many persons
of both sexes, who have acted as if deaf and dumb, and
by this means succeeded very well in obtaining money, food,
&c. Many of them pretend to tell fortunes, and frequently
get something considerable by such practices. They carry
a slate and pencil with them, to write questions and answers.'
It would appear from the pamphlet before us, that sometimes
these deaf and dumb lurkers affect even in the lodging houses
to be thus afflicted; but in such cases they are generally
found out by their fellow vagrants.
7. 'The Servants' Lurk. - There are considerable numbers
who go on the servants' lurk, or as servants out place; and
both males and females frequently succeed well in imposing
on servants and others by false statements and tales of
distress.... The greater part of those who go on this lurk
are neatly dressed, and have exactly the appearance of
servants in gentlemen's families... Many of them have the
Court Guide, which, as it contains a list of the nobility
and gentry, enables them to do the thing completely.'
8. 'Collier's Lurk. - This is followed by thousands
who were never in a coal-pit, and numbers of such are
daily imposing upon the public as colliers out of employ.
They generally say they have been thrown out of work
by some accident, such as the flooding of the works or
the falling in of the pit..... They often go in parties
from two to seven or eight. Others have printed papers,
which are left at each house, and called for again in a
few hours.... Others have written statements of the
pretended masters of the accidents, and the supposed
signatures of the works are affixed to them.
....Some of these obtain as much as fourteen or
fifteen shillings per diem.'
'The Weaver's Lurk. - There are at the present time
great numbers who go on this lurk, many of them having
printed papers or small handbills, and leave one at each
house, and then call again for them, and to receive what
persons are disposed to give.... I have seen men who
represented themselves as weavers of every kind, and from
all the manufacturing parts of the kingdom - men who I
well knew had never been near a loom, but had been born
and bred vagrants.'
10. 'The Cotton Spinner's Lurk. - There are many going on
this lurk with printed papers or small handbills also....
Some who go on this lurk carry sewing cotton for sale,
alleged to be their own spinning.... One man I know, who
travels on this lurk, has been doing so for twelve years.
He sometimes obtains as much as from twelve to fifteen
shillings in one day.'
11. 'The Calenderer's Lurk. - Those who go on this lurk
represent themselves as calenderer's out of employ, through
the depression of trade and improvement in machinery. They,
like sham weavers and colliers, have false papers, which
are printed, some in poetry.'
The sums raised by these descriptions of 'lurks' must be
immense, especially where the individuals have a good
address, and can explain and enforce the written and
printed appeals they take with them.
'HIGH-FLIERS,' or begging letter writers, are, it would
seem, the next in order of importance, after the Lurkers.
'These begging letter-writers scribble false statements of
their having been unfortunate in business, or suffered
great losses, which have reduced them to a state of extreme
distress. In London, but especially in the watering and
sea-bathing places, these letters procure as much from five
to one pound per day.'
'SHALLOW COVES' are 'impostors begging through the
country as shipwrecked sailors. They generally choose
winter, and always go nearly naked. Their object in doing
so is to obtain left off clothes.... They have a long,
pitiful got-up tale of pretended distress, which they shout
through the streets, of having been shipwrecked, &c....
Shallow Coves generally go in companies, (or, technically
speaking, in school) of from two to ten. There is generally
one selected to be the spokesman. ....As Shallow Coves
only call at respectable houses, they often obtain a great
deal of money.'
'Shallow Motts' are females who, like the Shallow Coves,
go nearly naked. They also adopt that mode of begging in
order to obtain wearing apparel.... They plead long and
severe sickness, but only ask for clothes. The clothes
are disposed of as soon as possible, none being ever kept
for their own use.... I knew one of these who in ten days
obtained at Kingston-upon-Thames between seven and eight
pounds' worth of clothes.
'CADGERS' are those who make begging their trade, and
depend upon it for their support. Cadgers on the downright
are those who beg from door to door, and Cadgers on the
fly are those who beg as they pass along the, tober, (road.)
Cadging on the fly is a profitable occupation in the
vicinity of bathing-places and large towns, A person of this
description generally gets many shillings in the course
of the day. Cadging on the downright (from door to door)
is like all other trades, getting worse; but still thousands
do very well at it, and frequently get more food than they
can consume.... I have often seen food, which many working
people would gladly have eaten, shamefully and wantonly wasted.
'CADGERS CHILDREN' (kiddies) 'are so well instructed in the
arts of imposition by their parents, that they frequently
obtain more in money and food than grown-up cadgers.'
'Cadgers' Screeving. - There are many cadgers who write
short sentences with chalk on the flags, and some of them
can do it remarkably well; these are called screevers. I
have seen the following sentences frequently
written by them in places where there were numbers passing
by, and where they thought it would be likely to get plenty
of half-pence, (browns,) and now and then a tanner or a bob,
(sixpence or a shilling,)
"Hunger
is a sharp thorn, and biteth keen."
I have known them by
this means obtain seven shillings a
day.
'Cadgers' Sitting
Pad. - Whenever cadgers stand or sit,
either in towns or by the road side, to beg, they call it
sitting or standing pad; and this often proves a very
profitable method. Some of them affect blindness; whilst
others represent themselves as unable to follow any
employment, in consequence of being subject to fits. Some
cadgers save very considerable sums of money; but these
are very few, compared with the great number who live by
this trade of beggary.
'Match-sellers' never entirely depend upon selling matches,
for they cadge as well; in fact, they only carry matches as
a cloak for begging, and never offer them at any house where
they expect to get more without them. ....Match-sellers, as
well as all other cadgers, often get what they call 'a back-door
cant;' that is, anything they can carry off where they beg,
or offer their matches for sale.'
'CROSS COVES,' though they beg their bread, can tell a
long story about being out of employ through the badness
of trade, &c., yet get what they call on the cross, (by
theft.) .. One of their chief modes of getting things on the
cross is by shoplifting, (called grabbing,) ....Another method
is to star the glaze, (i. e. break or cut the window.)
'Prigs (or pickpockets) are another cross of vagrants and
they frequent races, fairs, and prize-fights.... Like cross
coves, they are generally young men who have been trained
to vagrancy, and have been taught the arts of their
profession in their childhood.'
'Palmers are another description of beggars, who visit
shops under presence of collecting harp half-pence
and to induce shopkeepers to search for them, they offer
thirteen-pence for a shilling's worth, when many persons are
silly enough to empty a large quantity of copper on their
counters to search for the half-pence wanted. The palmer is
sure to have his hand amongst it; and while he pretends to
search for the harps, he contrives to conceal as many as
possible in the palm of his hand, and whenever he removes
his hand from the coppers on the counter, always holds his
fingers out straight, so that the shopkeeper has not the least
suspicion that he is being robbed. Sums varying from five to
fifteen shillings per diem are frequently got in this way, by
characters of that description.'
Extract from Edinburgh Review, Jan. No. 1844:
refused to participate in their outrages, are deliberately
assassinated in the open day; and sometimes the unoffending
members of a family are indiscriminately murdered by burning
the. habitation." A state in which even those best able to
protect themselves, the gentry, are forced to build up all
their lower windows with stone and mortar; to admit light
only into one sitting-room, and not into all the windows of
that room, to fortify every other inlet by bullet proof
barricadoes; to station sentinels around during all the night,
and the greater pert of the day; and to keep fire-arms in all
the bedrooms, and even on the side-table at breakfast and
dinner time. Well might even Bishop Doyle exclaim - "I do
not blame the absentees; I would be an absentee myself if I
could."
"The wildness into which some of these children in the more
solitary parts of the country, grow, (recollect this is in
Lancashire, near the great city of Manchester,) is, I imagine,
not to be surpassed in any of the back settlements of
America. On the 5th July, 1836, the day of that remarkable
thunder-storm which visited a great part of the kingdom with
much fury, being driven into a cottage at the foot of Pendle
by the coming on of this storm, and while standing at the
door watching its progress, I observed the head of some
human creature, carefully protruded from the doorway of an
adjacent shed, and as suddenly withdrawn on being observed.
To ascertain what sort of a person it belonged to, I went
into the shed, but at first found it too dark to enable me
to discover anything. Presently, however, as objects became
visible, I saw a little creature, apparently a girl about
ten years old, reared very erectly against the opposite
wall. On accosting her in a kind tone, and telling
her to come forward and not be afraid, she advanced from the
wall, and behold ! there stood another little creature, about the
head shorter, whom she had been concealing. I asked the elder
child, whether this younger one were a girl. She answered,
'Ne'a.' 'Was it a boy?' 'Ne'a.' 'What! neither boy nor girl? Was
she a girl herself?' 'Ne'a.' 'What! was it a boy I was speaking
to?' 'Ne'a.' 'What in the name of wonder were they then?'
'We are childer.' 'Childer! and was the woman in the house
their mother?' 'Ne'a.' 'Who was she, then?' 'Ar mam.' 'O! your
mam! and do you keep cows in this shed?' 'Ne'a, - bee-as.' In
short, common English was quite unintelligible to these poor
little creatures, and their appearance was as wild as their
speech. They were two fine young creatures, nevertheless, -
especially the elder, whose form and face were full of that
symmetry and fine grace that are sometimes the growth of
unrestrained Nature, and would have delighted the sculptor
or painter. Their only clothing was a sort of little
boddice with skirts, made of a reddish stuff, and rendered
more picturesque by sundry patches of scarlet cloth, no
doubt from their mother's old cloak. Their heads, bosoms,
and legs to the knees, were bare to all the influences of
earth and heaven; and on giving each of them a penny, they
bounded off with the fleetness and elasticity of young roes.
No doubt the hills and the heaths, the wild flowers of
summer, and the swift waters of the glens, were the only live
long day companions of these children, who came home only
to their oatmeal dinner and a bed as simple as their garments.
Imagine the violent
change of life by the sudden capture and confinement of
these little English savages in the night-and-day noise,
labor, and foul atmosphere of the cotton purgatories!
"In the immediate neighborhood of towns, many of the
swelling ranges of hills present a much more cultivated
aspect, and delight the eye with their smooth, green and
flowing outlines; and the valleys, almost everywhere, are
woody, watered with clear, rapid streams, and in short, are
beautiful. But along the rise of the tall chimneys of vast and
innumerable factories, and even while looking on the places
of the master manufactories, with their woods, and gardens,
and shrubbery lawns around them, one cannot help thinking of
the horrors detailed before the committee of the House of
Commons, respecting the Factory System; of the parentless
and friendless wretches, sent by wagon loads from distant
work-houses to these prisons of labor and despair; of the
young frames crushed to the dust by incessant labor; of the
beds into which one set of children got, as another set got
out, so that they were said never to be cold the whole year
round, till contagious fires burnt out and swept away by
hundreds these little victims of Mammon's ever-urging
never-ceasing wheel. Beautiful as are many of these wild
recesses, where, before the introduction of steam, the dashing
rivulet invited the cotton-spinners to erect their mills; and
curious as the remains of those simple original factories are,
with their one great water wheel, which turned their spindles
while there was water, but during the drought of summer quite
as often stood still; yet one is haunted even there, among the
shadows of the fine old trees that throw their arms athwart
streams dashing down their beds of solid rock, by the
memory of little tender children, that never knew pity or
kindness, but labored on and on, through noon and through
midnight, till they slept and yet mechanically worked, and
were often awaked only by the horrid machinery rending off
their limbs. In places like these, where now the old factories
and large houses of the proprietors, stand deserted, or are
inhabited by troops of poor creatures, whose poverty only
makes them appear the more desolate. We are told by such
men as Mr. Fielden, of Oldham, once a factory child himself,
and now a great manufacturer, who dares to reveal the secrets
of the prison-house, that little children have even committed
suicide to escape from a life worse than ten depths. And what
a mighty system is this now become? What a perpetual and vast
supply of human energy and human life it requires, with all
the facilities of improved machinery, with all the developed
power of steam, and with all the glowing thirst of wealth to
urge it on! We are told that the state of the factories is
improved, and I trust they are; but if there be any truth in
the evidence given before the Parliamentary committees, there
is need of great amelioration yet; and it is, when we recollect
these things, how completely the laboring class has, in
these districts, been regarded as mere machinery for the
accumulation of enormous capitals, that we cease to wonder
at their uncouth and degraded aspect, and at the neglect in
which they are suffered to swarm over these hills, like the
very weeds of humanity, cast out into disregarded
places, and left to spread and increase in rank
and deleterious luxuriance."
What is so poetically and graphically described by
Mr. Howitt, is verified in its minutest details in the
"Glory and Shame of England," a very interesting work
by C. Edwards Lester, an abolitionist of New York.
noise of the heaving volcano, that threatens and precedes
a social eruption greater than the world has yet
witnessed. But let us give the language of the Reviewer:
"The question of human misery - its causes and their
removal, is at the bottom of the movement which is now
convulsing Europe, and which threatens to agitate it for
some time to come. Could some practicable scheme of relief,
generally acceptable to all classes and adequate to cope with
the magnitude of the evil, be but suggested, what a load of
anxiety would be taken from the mind of many a Minister of
State! - what comfort would be offered to many a
desponding philanthropist!
"Human misery has at last found tongues and pens to make
itself heard and felt. It appeals to our feelings and our
understandings, to our sympathies and fears. Its wails melt
us to pity, its ravings terrify us, its woes sicken us. It
will no longer hide itself. We must either remove it, or
submit to have it constantly exposed to our gaze in all its
horrid deformity.
"Hitherto the comfortable classes have virtually answered
the bitter complaints of the uncomfortable classes in some
such terms as these: 'Poor people! we are very sorry for
your suffering - we really feel for you - take this trifle -
it will be some relief. We wish we could do more; - and now
pray be quiet - don't distress us with your writhings and
agonies - resign yourselves to the will of Providence, and
bear hunger and cold in peace and seclusion; - above all,
attempt no violence, or we must use violence to keep you
quiet.' The answer of the uncomfortable
classes to such admonitions, day by day becoming more
unmistakable, is: 'Relieve us, relieve us! Make us
comfortable, or show us how we may make ourselves
comfortable: otherwise we must make you uncomfortable.
We will be comfortable or uncomfortable together.'
" 'Vivre en travaillant, ou mourir en combatant.' In our
last number, we ventured to offer a few indications as to
what we considered a part, an important part, of the remedial
measures to be resorted to for the prevention of human
misery. We were then dealing with that question as a whole.
We now propose to address ourselves to miseries of a
class.
"The sufferings of the distressed needle-woman have
obtained an infamous notoriety - they are a scandal to our
age and a reproach to our boasted civilization. They have
been clothed in language at once truthful and impressive,
full of pathos and yet free from exaggeration. Well known
as Hood's immortal lines may be, we reproduce them here,
because no narrative, no statistics of ours, could be more
true nor half so much to the purpose:
"With
fingers weary and worn,
"Work
- work - work!
"Work
- work - work!
"O!
men, with sisters dear!
"But
why do I talk of death?
"Work
- work - work!
"Work
- work - work!
"Work
- work - work!
"Oh!
but to breathe the breath
"Oh,
but for one short hour!
"With
fingers weary and worn,
Whoever is unprepared
to cast aside not only his
prejudices, but many of what may be considered well-formed
opinions, had better not attempt to peruse the following
few pages. I must demand of my reader that he come to the
perusal, the beau ideal of a juryman. No information
that be has gained elsewhere, no feelings that he has
cherished as virtues, no sentiments that he has cultivated as
noble, and no opinions that he may have formed as infallible,
must interfere with his purely and simply receiving the
following arguments on their own cogency and truth alone.
The writer considers he has made a great discovery in
moral and political science; and elevated by his subject
above all personal influences, he commits it to be worked
out by others, without the ostentation of recording his
name, or deeming that the applause of present or of future
generations can add to his sublime delight, in discovering
and applying a "panacea" to the varied and bitter ills that
beset three-fourths of the poor inhabitants of the "United
Kingdom."
As some account of the means by which a great discovery has
been arrived at is necessary, in order to prepare the mind
for its reception with due respect, I shall give a brief
outline of the process by which this all-important truth
was elicited.
Born with natural sensibilities, I early learnt to shrink
from pain endured by others, as if felt actually and bodily
by myself. Thus constituted, what a scene was displayed to me
hen I came into the great and moving society of mankind! What
mighty heaps of misery did I discern! What details did the
records of the various courts of justice disclose! What
regions of squalor, misery, and degradation did my travels
reveal to me in every city, and every hamlet, I visited! The
bent of my future avocation was soon fixed, and I became a
philanthropist by profession. Not to make a trade of it at
monster meetings, or fancy fairs, but as a pursuit to which I
felt myself called by a spiritual voice, as distinct, I should
say, as that which ever called a theologian from a curacy of
fifty pounds a year to a bishopric of twenty thousand.
It is not necessary to recapitulate the horrors I have
witnessed in the regions of poverty. It is said that the eras
of pestilence and famine are passed, but so will not those say
who have visited the dwellings of the operatives of our great
manufacturing towns, when the markets are glutted, and the
mills and manufactories are closed. Pestilence still
rages fiercely as ever, in the form of typhus, engendered by
want. In the mission I have called myself to, I have stood
upon the mud floor, over the corpse of the mother and the
new-born child - both the victims of want. I have seen a man
(God's image) stretched on straw, wrapped only in a mat,
resign his breath, from starvation, in the prime of age. I have
entered, on a sultry summer's night, a small house, situate on
the banks of a common sewer, wherein one hundred and
twenty-seven human beings, of both sexes and all ages,
were indiscriminately crowded. I have been in the pestilential
hovels of our great manufacturing cities, where life was
corrupted in every possible mode, from the malaria of the
sewer to the poison of the gin-bottle. I have been in sheds of
the peasant, worse than the hovel of the Russian, where eight
squalid, dirty, boorish creatures were to be kept alive by
eight shillings per week, irregularly paid. I have seen the
humanities of life desecrated in every way. I have seen
the father snatch the bread from his child, and the mother
offer the gin bottle
for the breast. I have seen, too, generous sacrifices and tender
considerations, to which the boasted chivalries of Sydney
and Edward were childish ostentation. I have found wrong so
exalted, and right so debased - I have seen and known of so
much misery, that the faith in good has shivered within me.
For a time, when I urged these things in the circles of the
comfortable, I received many various replies. By some it was
said that it was the lot of humanity - that it bad always been
so, and, therefore, always must. That to enlarge on the evil
was only to create discontent, and so injure "the better
classes." It was in vain I urged to these reasoners that for
hundreds, and, perhaps, thousands of years, creatures little
better than Calibans infested the morasses and forests of
Europe. That civilisation had an onward progress, and that
the history of the world proved the one great truth - that
man is the creature of circumstances. By some, the evils
were denied: by some few, deplored. By all, the discussion
was avoided; though the destruction that menaced the
Roman empire from the invasion of the barbarian world was
never so imminent, nor could the consequence be so dreadful,
as that which the wealthy, and civilization itself, would
sustain from the insurrection of outraged poverty.
I next tried the politicians. I devoted some years to
history and political economy. I even entered the senate. In
politics, I found no means of relief. The struggle there was
for the preponderance in power, and the reply, "Help us to
get into power, and then we will see
what we can do." The utmost was to institute inquiries;
and from the information thus gathered, has been collected
a record of misery, such as never was before displayed.
It is true, some steps have at last been taken in the right
direction; some few noble spirits have spoken out to the
"comfortable," the dreadful truths. That something
must be done, is now acknowledged by all who think. The
foolish, the careless, and the truculent, can no longer
avowedly declare the cries and groans of the miserable
multitude to be seditious discontent; nor ascribe their
sufferings to the results of retributive justice.
Baffled in every search for a remedy at home, I determined
to search foreign nations, and having carefully journeyed
through Europe, I sought successively the East and West,
until I had traversed the civilized countries of the world.
It was in the remote regions of the East and West that I
found a clue to my discovery. I here found mankind as
multitudinous as at home, but much more happy. Starvation,
except in cases of general famine, was unknown; and, on
the contrary, I hear the sounds of revelry and dancing,
of mirth and leisure, amongst the lowest classes. How
different to the ever-lasting toil of the superior
Englishman! "These, then, I said, "are the concomitants
of bondage!" Having thus struck out the idea, I followed
it up with logical severity, and enunciated the truth
that slavery and content, and liberty and discontent, are
natural results of each other. Applying this, then, to
the toil-worn, half-fed, pauperized population of England,
I found that the
only way to permanently and efficiently remedy the
complicated evils, would be to ENSLAVE the whole of the
people of England who have not property.
Of course, I expect a shout of execration and contempt at such
a bold proposition; but, as I have already said, I seek only to
gain the hearing, at first, of the impartial and the original
thinker. That I am disinterested, will at once be allowed,
when I declare I do not seek to be one of the enslaved. But
let us proceed to examine how this mighty benefit would
manifest itself. The first great advantage would be, that
the lower classes of society would be placed on an equality
with the domestic animals; and by becoming property, become
valuable and valued. At present there can be no doubt that a
horse that is worth fifty pounds is much more cared for than
a man who is worth nothing. We have lately seen a case where
a woman was allowed to expire in parturition, because no more
than eight shillings was allowed for the midwife's fee;
whereas, when a famous racing mare foaled, ten guineas were
not thought too great a sum to secure the attendance of a
first-rate veterinary surgeon. Now, had the woman been a
slave, her offspring would have been worth something, and,
of course, her safety secured.
Like all great discoveries, the ramifications of the
advantages are found to be endless, and, if once fully
entertained, would be irresistible. Entire and complete
slavery of the poor would put an end to all the discussions
of their rights, and clearly and definitely work out the
relative duties of all classes. We should have no more
occasion for vague special pleading, such as we find in Paley
and other moral philosophers, who endeavor to reconcile
dependence and independence, and liberty and obedience.
Sedition would be at once annihilated; where there was no
hope nor recognition of equality, there would be no attempt
to raise claims which were stifled before born. All vain
ambition, such as that now subsisting, between the potboy and
the peer, as manifested in Chesterfield's mosaic gold and
cigars, would be prevented. The potboy would be a contented
slave, and the peer left to his superiority in clothes,
trinkets, and sensualities.
It will of course be asserted that the people would not
be contented as slaves, but it is only to make a state
inevitable, and humanity is soon reconciled to it, as we
are to death, governments, and the income-tax. Besides,
what is liberty? a word now almost forgotten; a battle
sound used to juggle men in every age and country; in
Greece, Rome, and America, the war-cry of slaves to fight
for the liberty of slavery. Must we, then, ever remain
the tools of words; reject all the true advantages of
slavery because we cannot bear the name, and take its
evils, and more, because we wish to renounce the sound?
What are soldiers and sailors but bondsmen? Indeed, they
are a happy specimen of slavery; well fed, clad, and
tended; with plenty of leisure and repose. Why, then,
should they be happier than the peasant, who pines away
his dreary existence on bread and potatoes and water?
What is the convict but a slave, who by his crimes
has earned his right to be kept well and
safe from the elements and want? We reward the criminal
with slavery and competence, and leave the honest man
to liberty and want.
If, indeed, the old noble cry of "Liberty and Beer"
could be realized, then it were vain to urge my discovery;
but as Englishmen, in proportion as they have gained
their liberty, have lost their beer, it behooves us to see
whether they had not better hasten back to that state,
when inventoried with their master's swine they shared
also their superfluities.
* * * * * * *
blacks keeps equal pace. But we have no law of
impressment in the South to sever the family ties of
either blacks or whites. Nor have we any slavery half
so cruel as that to which the impressed England seaman
is subjected. The soldiers torn from their wives and
children, to suffer and to perish in every clime and on
every sea, excite not the sympathies of the Reviewer;
they are all reserved for imaginary cases of distress,
occasioned by the breaking up of families of Southern
negroes. The so-called slave trade of the South is no
evil, because the instances of the improper severing of
family ties are rare. Will some Yankee or Englishman, ere
the charge is repeated that slaves are bred to be sold
like horses, when they are old enough for market, point
out a single instance in the present, or the past, of
a Southerner's pursuing such a business? Yankees and
Englishmen kill their wives annually, yet it has not
occurred to Englishmen at all, and not to the Yankee
till very lately to abolish the marriage relation. When
Englishmen correct the thousand real and pressing evils
in their society, it will be time enough to call on us
to do away with the imaginary abuses of slavery. These
remarks have been elicited from us by an article on
Southern slavery, in the April number of the Edinburgh
Review, which is equally distinguished for the falsity
of its charges and the ill nature of its comments. As a
full justification for the indefinite
continuance of negro slavery, we give below an extract from
an able article from the same Review, in its January number,
1846, entitled "Legislation for the working classes." In
showing the many evils arising from emancipating the whites,
the Reviewer demonstrates, though not intending it, the
absurdity of emancipating negroes. If Irishmen, who are as
intellectual a race of men as any in all Europe, have lost
infinitely in physical comfort, and gained nothing in morals
or in mind by liberty, what will it avail negroes? Let Hayti
and Jamaica answer. But Frenchmen, Scotchmen and Englishmen,
we mean the masses, the proletariat, have lost as much by
emancipation as Irishmen. History and statistics, the jails,
the gallows, and the poor-house tell the same sad tale
everywhere. We would be willing, if necessary, to rest the
complete justification of negro slavery on this single
extract:
[From the Edinburgh Reviews, 1846.]
The moral and domestic feelings of the slave are sacrificed,
and his intellect is stunted; but in respect of his
physical condition he may be a gainer. "It is necessary,"
says Aristotle, in his celebrated justification of slavery,
"that those who cannot exist separately should live
together. He who is capable of foreseeing by his intellect,
is naturally a master; he who is able to execute with his
body what another contrives, is naturally a slave wherefore
the interest of the master and slave is one There is a
certain degree of force in this argument, if it
is limited to the economical relations of the two parties.
It is the interest of the master to maintain his slave in good
working order. In general, therefore, he is comparatively well
fed, clothed and lodged; his physical wants are provided for;
his food descends into his mouth like the manna in the
wilderness; he is clothed like the lilies of the field; he
has no thought or care for the morrow. Although complaints
were made of insufficient food and overwork, the arguments
against negro slavery in our West India colonies were
founded, mainly, on the necessity of constant punishment
- on the driving system, as it was called - and the cruelty
of the inflictions. The Report of the French Commission,
framed by the Duc de Broglie, which recommended the gradual
abolition of slavery, likewise bears testimony to the
excellent physical condition of the slaves in the French
colonies. It is on account of the advantages which may belong
to dependence upon a wealthy lord, as compared with a needy
independence, that the slave in Menander exclaims, that "it
is better to obtain a good master, than to live meanly and
wretchedly as a freeman." So the Rhetorician Libanus, who
lived in the fourth century, in a declamation entitled a
Vituperation of Poverty, after having enumerated the
privations and sufferings which fall to the lot of the poor
freeman, proceeds thus: - "None of these evils belong to
slavery. The slave sleeps at his cafe, being fed by the cares of
his master, and supplied with all the other things needful for
his body. But the poor freeman is constantly awake, seeking
the means of subsistence, and subjected to the severe
dominion of want which compels him to hunger." The
well-informed author of Haji Baba describes the astonishment
of the vizier of the Shah of Persia, on hearing from the
British ambassador that there is no slavery in England, and
that the king is using his influence to put it down in other
States. "Indeed!" said the vizier, "you surely cannot be so
cruel! What would become of the poor slaves if they were free?
Nothing can be happier than the lot of ours; but if they were
abandoned to their fate, they would starve and die. They are
our children, and form a part of our family."
A similar feeling is described by Mr. Kohl as existing
among the serfs in the Baltic provinces of Russia with
respect to their recent emancipation. The serf is now no
longer abscriptus glebæ; but it is not difficult for his
lord to find the means of detaining him on the estate if
he wishes so to do. Mr. Kohl continue thus: - "Though the
right which the peasant has thus obtained is so frequently
useless to him, the counter right of his master of banishing
him from his native place, is very offer turned against him.
Formerly, a noble could not, by any means, get rid of his
serfs; and, whenever they were in want, he was forced to
support and maintain them. At present, the moment a peasant
becomes useless and burdensome, it is easy to dismiss him;
on account of which the serfs, in some parts of the provinces,
would not accept of the emancipation offered, and bitterly
lamented the freedom, as it was called, which was forced
upon them. The serf often mournfully complains that he has
lost a father and kept a master, and his lord now often
refuses the little requests of his peasants, saying, 'You
know you are not my children now.' " A similar state of
feeling is likewise reported to exist among the serfs of
Russia Proper, who, in many cases, prefer the certainty of
slavery to the risks of emancipation. Mr. Featherstonhaugh,
in his Travels in the Slave States of North America,
relates that Mr. Madison, the ex-President, informed him
that he had once assembled all his numerous slaves, and
offered to manumit them immediately; "but they instantly
declined it, alleging that they had been born on his
estate, had always been provided for by him with raiment
and food, in sickness and in health, and, if they were
made free, they would have no home to go to, and no friend
to protect and care for them. They preferred, therefore, to
live and die as his slaves, who had always been a kind master
to them."
Slavery excludes the principle of competition, which
reduces the wages of the free laborer, increases his
hours of work, and sometimes deprives him of all means of
subsistence. The maintenance of slaves as one household, or
familia, likewise conduces to thrift; their supply on a
large scale is, or ought to be, less expensive than when
each laborer, as in a state of freedom, has a separate cottage
and family of his own. With slaves thus supported, there
is no more waste than with horses or cattle. There is none
of the loss or damage which arises from the drunkenness and
improvidence of the free laborer expending his own wages.
Again, the slave-master can regulate the number of his
workmen, and can in this manner control the amount of
population. The means may doubtless be harsh and cruel,
but they are effective for their end. In general, indeed,
slave classes show a disposition to diminish rather than
increase in number
and, where the slave trade has not been prohibited, the
number is kept up rather by new importation than by births.
Hence the evils of an abundant population never manifested
themselves while the mass of the people was in a servile
and semi-servile state. Moreover, it can scarcely be doubted,
that under certain circumstances industry may be promoted,
and the produce of the land increased, by the existence of
a slave class. Mr. M'Culloch, indeed, thinks that the tropical
countries can never be effectually cultivated by free labor.
"Were the slaves completely emancipated in the United States,
Cuba, and Brazil," says he, "it is all but certain that
the culture of sugar and cotton would be as completely
abandoned in them as in Hayti. And if the change were
accompanied by a considerable improvement in the condition
of the black population, the sacrifice might not, perhaps, be
deemed too great. But where is the ground for supposing that
such would be the case? Indeed, the fair presumption seems
to be the other way. Little, at all events, would be gained by
turning a laborious, well-fed slave, into an idle, improvident,
and perhaps beggarly freeman." If we look merely to the
present, and confine our views to economical results, Mr.
M'Culloch's arguments certainly appear strong. And
although it is true that all hope of future improvement, in
respect of his physical condition, is denied to the slave, yet
it must be admitted, that practically, and looking to the
actual generation, the absence of a power of rising in the
world is no severe privation to a peasant class. Neither in
England among the agricultural laborers, nor in the
Continental States among the small proprietors, are there
many instances of
a person quitting the condition in which he is born. Nor is
any slavery so
indellible (where the slaves have the same
colored skin as their masters) as to prevent frequent
emancipations of individual slaves from personal affection
and other causes. The freedmen formed a numerous class
among the Romans; and it is known to what important posts
slaves have risen in the Turkish empire.
After these remarks, (the intention of which cannot be
misunderstood by any reader of this Journal,) we can better
estimate the effects of the change from slavery to personal
freedom, upon the emancipated slave. He is relieved from the
liabilities and burdens, but he at the same time forfeits the
advantages of slavery. While the slave is exonerated from his
legal obligations to his master, the master is exonerated from
his legal and moral obligations towards his slave, and his
interest in the conservation and protection of his slave is at
an end. The slave (to use the common phrase) becomes his own
master. With the acquisition of this power, he incurs the
obligations of self-support. He becomes independent; and,
being so, he must provide for his self-defence. Self-dominion is
not an unmixed good to the work. It imports onerous duties. It
implies the necessity of providing for a man's own wants, and
those of his family. The freedman is no longer forced, by the
fear of corporal punishment, to do a prescribed task of work.
But he must work in order to earn wages; and, what is more,
he must find work for himself. He is no longer incapable of
acquiring property, or of reaping the fruits of his own industry.
But he is, in consideration of this power, bound to provide for
his own support. He is no longer incapable of contracting
a lawful marriage, or begetting free legitimate children.
But he is bound to maintain his wife and children by his
own exertions; and if he deserts them, allows them to
starve, he is subject to legal punishment. He is no longer
fed and maintained merely according his physical wants,
without reference to the value of his services; but, on the
other hand, he is delivered over the unchecked operation of
the principle of competition; and he must content himself
with the scanty pittance which the rivalry of the labor
market may assign him. He is no longer treated as a mere
animal or implement of production, without feeling, mind, or
moral character; does not follow the religion of his master,
and he voluntarily choose his own creed. But, in becoming
free moral agent, he accepts the responsibilities of that
condition; his path is open to virtue, but he is answerable
for his acts and their consequences if he deviates into
other ways; he can, by foresight, determine his lot, but
he must, in compensation, suffer the penalties of his own
improvidence.
When we contemplate the actual results of the change in
question, and compare the state of the working classes in
countries where they are free, with the state of a slave
class, we find that the only benefits of freedom, which
have been fully enjoyed by the laboring classes, are
negative ones, (such as exemption from bodily inflictions,
and other ill treatment;) but that the positive benefits
which they have hitherto derived from the social independence,
have been less prominent. The positive benefits - which
are economical and domestic - which consist in the acquisition,
enjoyment and transmission of wealth,
and in the development of the family affections - are more
remote, and depend on numerous preliminary conditions
which hitherto have rarely co-existed in any community.
The entire harvest of the change will not be reaped until
civilization has made further progress - until the providence,
industry, intelligence, and peaceableness of the working man
are such as to render him altogether fit for self-support,
and to protect society against the shocks arising from his
delusions and violence.
But, in proportion as the positive advantages are distant,
the disadvantages of the change make themselves sensibly
felt. As soon as slavery has ceased to exist, the freedom
of action for the working classes is complete; they are
masters of their own conduct, and their conduct determines
the condition of the great mass of the community. If, then,
their moral state is low, and they are exempt from all
legal compulsion, they are likely to make a bad use of
their liberty. Whenever the moral restraints are weak,
and the rights of the freeman are exercised without
limitation, and with an inward consciousness of power,
political or social dangers cannot be far off. A slave-class,
emancipated at once, affords the strongest example of the
evils arising under this influence. Their moral condition
is, at the best, like that of children; they have had no
experience of self-management; and the rights of freedom
are, from their novelty, prized most highly. Some countries,
however, from which slavery has long been banished, exhibit
a nearly similar state of things. Thus, in Ireland, the
freedom of the working classes has produced the smallest
amount of positive advantages, combined with the largest
amount of
disadvantages. The peasantry arc in the lowest physical
degradation; they derive the smallest possible quantum of
happiness from their power of disposing of themselves and
their families, and of acquiring property; while their rights
of citizenship are too frequently perverted to purposes
detrimental to themselves, and dangerous to the public
peace.
When the slavery of the working classes had been
gradually extinguished in Western Europe, it began to be
seen that the theory of personal freedom could not be
carried consistently into practical effect for the entire
community. A man might, in the eye of the law, be
presumed able and bound to maintain himself and his
family: but want of industry, or intelligence, or providence,
or the rapine of the strong, might reduce him to destitution
and helplessness. Accordingly, unless many of the laboring
class were to be permitted to die of hunger and neglect, it
was necessary to find some means of alleviating their
sufferings.
In further reply to the Edinburgh Reviewer, and to
illustrate by examples our theory of "Cannibals All; or,
Slaves without Masters," read the following from the
North British Review for November, 1855, on the
Rural Population of England:
* * * * * * *
Have we not come upon a very paradise of rural seclusion?
Is it not a spot to be chosen by those who are intending
to while away existence among the never tiring sweets of
a country life? But let us step on a little way,
and overtake the group of children that is just now crossing
the common. Alas! yet should we not refrain from expressing
the sad feelings which the first sight of these infant shadows
has awakened? feelings heightened by contrast; for lately we
were making our way through a fourth class street, where the
prime necessities of life are amply provided for. Besides, if
we look a second time at these shrunken forms - such is the
beneficence of the Creator - we see that childhood will have
its smiles, its laughs, its gambols, under conditions even the
most forlorn. Moreover, there is, notwithstanding that famished,
watery look - there is, taking the group altogether - there is
an air of pure rusticity - there is an innocence, comparatively,
and a modest propriety - there is a respectfulness in their
style and deportment which is greatly in their favor when
thought of in comparison with the bold, unreverential sauciness
of the infant Hercules of manufacturing towns.
But look at these unfortunates - the infant serfs of a
neglected rural district! Look at them physiologically
- observe their lank, colorless hair, screening the sunken
eye, and trailing upon the bony neck; look at the hollow
cheeks, the candle-like arms, and the unmuscular shanks
which serve the young urchins for legs! But are not these
children breathing a pure atmosphere? Are they not Nature's
own? Yes; but there is one thing wanting to then - one
ominous word clears up the mystery. Starvation! Not, indeed,
such starvation as brings the sorrows of a sad lot to a
speedy end; but such as drags its pining sufferings out,
through the overshadowed years of childhood and youth;
through those spasmodic years
of manhood during which the struggle to exist wears an
aspect of rugged rigor; and then through that residue of
early decrepitude, haggard, bent, idiot-like, which is
indeed an unblessed end of an unblessed existence. This rural
population does pretty well if the father be able-bodied and
sober, and the mother managing, through the summer season,
of wheat-hoeing, hay-making, and wheat harvest; that is to
say, when the labor of the mother and her children comes in
to swell a little the weekly wages. During these weeks
something of needed clothing is obtained, rent is paid up,
and a pittance of animal food, weekly, is added to the bread,
and the tea, and the potato of the seven months' diet.
It would be doing a wrong to our worthy farmer friends,
and to the rural sporting gentry, to affirm that these
miserables are actually dying of want. No, they are not
dying, so as inquests must be held before they may be
buried - would to God they were - they are the living -
they are living to show what eternities men, women and
children may endure, and yet not die; or what they hold
to be worse, not to betake themselves to "the union!"
But how do these same men, women and children pass five
months of the year? Gladly would one find them curled round
like hedgehogs, and hibernating in hollow trees; in rabbit
burrows, lost to consciousness. We should, indeed, count it
a miracle if, on a May morning, we were to see a group of
human beings start up alive from the sward, along with the
paiglus and the cowslips. But it is much less than a
miracle to see the people of a depressed rural district
stepping alive out of the winter months ! * * *
The instances are extremely rare in which those who were
born to the soil, and destined to the plow, rise above their
native level. Such instances - two, three, or five - might
be hunted up, if an agricultural county were ransacked for the
purpose; but the agricultural laborer, even if he had the brain
and the ambition requisite, and if otherwise he could effect it,
would seldom bring with him that which the social mass, into
which he might rise, especially needs, namely, a fully developed
and robust body. Meantime, what is it that is taking place in
hundreds of instances, and every day, throughout the entire area
of the manufacturing region? Men, well put together, and with
plenty of bone, and nerve, and brain, using with an intense
ardor those opportunities of advancement which abound in these
spheres of enterprise and of prosperous achievement - such
men are found to be making themselves heard of among their
betters, are seen well-dressed before they reconcile themselves
to the wearing of gloves; by rapid advances they are winning for
themselves a place in society - a place which, indeed, they well
deserve; and there they are doing what they had not thought
of - they are regenerating the mass within which they have been
received.
We extract the following from an article in the Edinburgh
Review on Juvenile and Female Labor, in its January No., 1844.
It is of the highest authority, being part of a report of
commissioners appointed by Parliament, and stands endorsed
as well by the action of Parliament as by the authority of
the Reviewer:
Our limits will not allow us to go through all the
employments reported upon in these volumes; but, as specimens,
we will give a short account of the condition of the
people engaged in Coal mines, Calico-printing, Metal
wares, Lace-making, and Millinery.
Coal Mines. - The number of children and young persons
employed in these mines is enormous; and they appear to
commence working, even underground, at an earlier age than
is recorded of any other occupation except lace-making. The
Commissioners report -
"That instances occur in which children are taken into
these mines to work as early as four years of age, sometimes
at five, not unfrequently between six and seven, and
often from seven to eight, while from eight to nine is
the ordinary age at which their employment commences.
...That a very large proportion of the persons employed
in these mines is under thirteen years of age; and a
still larger proportion between thirteen and eighteen.
That in several districts female children begin to
work in the mines as early as males.
"That the nature of the employment which is assigned
to the youngest children, generally that of 'trapping,'
requires that they should be in the pit as soon as the
work of the day commences, and, according to the present
system, that they should not leave the pit before the
work of the day is at an end.
"That although this employment scarcely deserves the
name of labor, yet, as the children engaged in it are
commonly excluded from light, and are always without
companions, it would, were it not for the passing and
repassing of the coal carriages, amount to solitary
confinement of the worst order.
"That in some districts they remain in solitude and
darkness during the whole time they are in the pit, and,
according to their own account, many of them never see
the light of day for weeks together during the greater
part of the winter season, excepting on those days in the
week when work is not going on, and on the Sundays.
"That at different ages, from six years old and upwards,
the hard work of pushing and dragging the carriages of
coal from the workings to the main ways or to the foot of
the shaft, begins: a labor which all classes of witnesses
concur in stating, requires the unremitting exertion of all
the physical power which the young workers possess.
"That, in the districts in which females are taken down
into the coal mines, both sexes are employed together
in precisely the same kind of labor, and work for the
same number of hours; that the girls and boys, and
the young men and the young women, and even married
women and women with child, commonly work almost
naked, and the men, in many mines, quite naked; and
that all classes of witnesses bear testimony to the
demoralizing influence of the employment of females
underground. *
"That, in the east of Scotland, a much larger proportion
of children and young persons are employed in these mines
than in other districts, many of whom are girls; and that
the chief part of their labor consists in carrying the
coals on their backs up steep ladders.
"That when the work-people are in full employment, the
regular hours of work for children and young persons are
rarely less than eleven; more often they are twelve; in
some districts they are thirteen; and in one district they
are generally fourteen and upwards.
"That in the great majority of these mines night-work is
a part of the ordinary system of labor, more or less
regularly carried on according to the demand for coals,
and one which the whole body of evidence shows to act
most injuriously both on the physical and moral
condition of the work-people, and more especially on
that of the children and young persons.
"That in many cases the children and young persons have
little cause of complaint in regard to the treatment
they receive, while in many mines the conduct of the
adult colliers to them is harsh and cruel; the persons in
authority who must be cognizant of this ill usage never
interfering to prevent it, and some of them distinctly
stating that they do not conceive they have a right to
do so. That with some exceptions little interest is taken
by the coal-owners in the children employed in their
works after the daily labor is over. . . . That in all
the coal-fields accidents of a fearful nature are extremely
frequent, and of the work-people who perish by such
accidents, the proportion of children and young persons
sometimes equals, and rarely falls much below that of
adults." - (First Report, p. 255-7.)
With respect to the general healthiness of the employment,
there is considerable discrepancy in the evidence adduced;
many witnesses stating that the colliers generally,
especially the adults, are a remarkably healthy race,
showing a very small average of sickness,
* and recovering
with unusual rapidity from the severest accidents; - a
peculiarity which the medical men reasonably enough
attribute to the uniform tenuperature of the mines, and
still more to the abundance of nutritious food which the
high wages of the work-people enable them to procure. The
great majority of the witnesses, however, give a very
different impression. Upwards of two hundred, whose
testimony is quoted, or referred to in the Report of the
Central Commissioners, testify to the extreme fatigue of
the children when they return home at night, and to the
injurious effect which this ultimately produces on their
constitution.
While the effect of such early and severe labor is, to cause
a peculiar and extraordinary degree of muscular development
in collier children, it also stunts their growth, and produces a
proportionate diminution of stature, as is shown by the
following comparison. - (Physical and Moral Condition of
Children, p. 55.)
10 Farmers' boys, between
12
and 14 years, measured, each, - - -
56.4 inches in height
10 Farmers' girls,
between 14
and 17 years, measured, each, - - - 60.5 inches in height.
51 Farmers' children, 10 years
old, measured, each, - - - - - - - - - -51. " "
49 Farmers' children, 15 1/2 years
old, measured, each, - - - 59. " "
Labor in coal mines is also stated, by a great number of
most respectable witnesses, to produce a crippled gait, and
a curvature of the spinal column, as well as a variety of
disorders - among which may be enumerated, affections
of the heart, rupture, asthma, rheumatism, and loss of
appetite; - and this not merely in a few cases, but as an
habitual, and almost inevitable result of their occupation.
"Of the effect of employment in the coal mines of the
East of Scotland in producing an early find irreparable
deterioration of the physical condition, the Sub-commissioner
thus reports: - 'In a state of society, such as has been
described, the condition of the children may be easily
imagined, and its baneful influence on the health cannot well
be exaggerated; and I am informed by very competent
authorities, that six months' labor in the mines is sufficient to
effect a very visible change in the physical condition of the
children: and indeed it is scarcely possible to conceive of
circumstances more calculated to sow the seeds of future
disease, and, to borrow the language of the instructions, to
prevent the organs from being developed, to enfeeble and
disorder their functions, and to subject the whole system
to injury, which cannot be repaired
at any subsequent stage of life.' - (Frank's Report, s. 68:
App. Pt. I, p 396.) In the West of Scotland, Dr. Thomson,
Ayr, says: - 'A collier at fifty generally has the appearance
of a man ten years older than he is.' "- (Evidence, No. 34;
App. Pt. I, p. 371,1. 58.)
If we turn to the testimony as to the moral, intellectual,
and spiritual state of the great mass of the collier population,
the picture is even darker and more appalling than that which
has been drawn of their physical condition. The means of
instruction to which they have access are scanty in the
extreme; - their readiness to avail themselves of such means,
if possible still scantier; and the real results of the instruction
they do obtain, scantiest of all - as the following extracts
will show: -
"As an example of the mental culture of the collier children
in the neighborhood of Halifax, the Sub-commissioner states,
that an examination of 219 children and young persons at the
bottom of one of the coal-pits, he found only 31 that could
read an easy book, not more than 15 that could write their
names, these latter having received instruction at some
day-school before they commenced colliery labor, and that the
whole of the remaining number were incapable of connecting
two syllables together " - (Scriven, Report, Mines: App. Pt.
II, 73, s. 91.)
"Of the state of education in the coalfields of Lancashire,
the Sub-commissioner gives the following account: - 'It was
my intention to have laid before the Central Board evidence
of the effects of education, as shown by the comparative
value of educated and uneducated colliers and children
employed in coal mines, as workmen, and to have traced its
effects, as shown by the superior moral habits and generally
more exalted condition
of those who had received the benefits of education over
those who had not, which I had observed and proved to exist
in other branches of industry. I found, however that the case
was hopeless; there were so few, either of colliers or their
children, who had even received the first rudiments of
education, that it was impossible to institute a
comparison.' - (Kennedy, Report, Mines: App. Pt. II, p.
183, s. 268.)
"In the coalfields of North Lancashire examined by Mr.
Austin, it is stated that the education of the working-people
has been almost wholly neglected; that they have received
scarcely any instruction at all, either religious or secular;
that they cannot therefore be supposed to have any correct
conception of their moral duties, and that in fact their
intellects are as little enlightened as their places of
work - 'darkness reigns throughout.' - (Report, Mines:
App. Pt. II, p. 805, s. 26.)
"In the East of Scotland a marked inferiority in the collier
children to those of the town and manufacturing
population. Upwards of 100 heads of collier families, most
of whom leave their children to themselves - to ignorance
and irreligion." - (Ibid. p. 426, l. 42.) 'Many of the children
are not educated at all.' " - (Ibid. p. 428, 1. 30.)
It appears that, in the principal mining districts, few of
the colliers attend any place of worship; and of their entire
ignorance of the most elementary truths, either of secular or
religious knowledge, the following extracts will give some
idea:
"YORKSHIRE. - 'With respect even to the common
truths of Christianity and facts of Scripture,' says Mr.
Symons, 'I am confident that a majority are in a state of
heathen ignorance. I unhesitatingly affirm that the mining
children, as a body, are growing up in a state of absolute and
appalling ignorance; and I am sure that the
evidence I herewith transmit, alike from all classes -
clergymen, magistrates, masters, men, and children -
will fully substantiate and justify the strength of the
expressions which I have alone felt to be adequate to
characterize the mental condition of this benighted
community.'
" 'Throughout the whole district of the coal-field,' says
Mr. Scriven, 'the youthful population is in a state of
profaneness, and almost of mental imbecility.'
" 'The ignorance and the degraded state of the colliers
and their children,' says Mr. Kennedy, 'are proverbial
throughout this district. They are uneducated, ignorant,
and brutal; deteriorated as workmen and dangerous as
subjects.' "
But nothing can show their mental state in so striking a
manner, as the evidence derived from the examination of the
children themselves, by the Sub-commissioner: -
" 'A girl eighteen years old - I never learnt nought. I never
go to church or chapel. I have never heard that a good man
came into the world, who was God's Son, to save sinners. I
never heard of Christ at all. Nobody has ever told me about
him, nor have my father and mother ever taught me to pray.
I know no prayer: I never pray. I have been taught nothing
about such things.' - (Evidence, Mines, p. 252, 11, 35, 39.)
'The Lord sent Adam and Eve on earth to save sinners.' -
(Ibid. p. 245, l. 66.) 'I don't know who made the world;
I never heard about God.' - (Ibid. p. 228, 1. 17.) 'Jesus
Christ was a shepherd; he came a hundred years ago to
receive sin. I don't know who the Apostles were.' - (Ibid. p.
232, 1. 11.) 'Jesus Christ was born in heaven, but I don't
know what happened to him; he came on earth to commit
sin. Yes; to commit sin. Scotland is a country, but I don't
know where it is. I never heard of France' - (Ibid. p. 265, l.
17.) 'I don't know who Jesus Christ was; I never saw him,
but I've seen Foster, who prays about him.' - (Ibid. p. 291,
1. 63.) 'I have
been three years at a Sunday-school. I don't know who
the Apostles were. Jesus Christ died for his son to be
saved.' - (Ibid. 245, l. 10 ) Employer (to the Commissioner,)
'You have expressed surprise at Thomas Mitchell
(the preceding witness) not having heard of God. I judge
there are few colliers hereabouts that have.' " -
(Second Report, p. 156.)
The moral state of the collier population is represented
by the Sub-commissioners as deplorable in the extreme: -
"LANCASHIRE. - 'All that I have seen myself,' says
the Sub-commissioner, 'tends to the same conclusion as the
preceding evidence; namely, that the moral condition of
the colliers and their children in this district, is decidedly
amongst the lowest of any portion of the working-classes.'
- Ibid. Report, s. 278, et seq.)
"DURHAM and NORTHUMBERLAND. - The religious and
moral condition of the children, and more particularly of the
young persons employed in the collieries of North Durham
and Northumberland, is stated by clergymen and others,
witnesses, to be 'deplorable.' 'Their morals,' they say, 'are
bad, their education worse, their intellect very much
debased, and their carelessness, irreligion, and immorality'
exceeding any thing to be found in an agricultural
district." - (Leifchild, Report, Mines: Evidence, Nos. 795,
530, 500, 493, 668.)
Calico-Printing. - This employs a vast number of children
of both sexes, who have to mix and grind the colors
for the adult work-people, and are commonly called teerers.
They begin to work, according to the Report, sometimes
before five years of age, often between five and six, and
generally before nine. The usual hours of labor are twelve,
including meal-time; but as the children generally work the
same time as the adults, "it is by no means
uncommon in all the districts for children of five or six
years old; to be kept at work fourteen and even sixteen hours
consecutively." - (Second Report, p. 59.) In many instances,
however, it will be seen that even these hours are shamefully
exceeded, during a press of work.
"352. Thomas Sidbread, block-printer, after taking a
child who had already been at work all day to assist him as
a teerer through the night, says - 'We began to work
between eight and nine o'clock on the Wednesday night; but
the boy had been sweeping the shop from Wednesday
morning. You will scarcely believe it, but it is true - I never
left the shop till six o'clock on the Saturday morning;
and I had never stopped working all that time excepting
for an hour or two, and that boy with me all the time. I was
knocked up, and the boy was almost insensible.'
"353. Henry Richardson, block-printer, states - 'At four
o'clock I began to work, and worked all that day, all the
next night, and until ten the following day. I had only one
teerer during that time, and I dare say he would be about
twelve years old. I had to shout to him towards the second
night, as he got sleepy. I had one of my own children,
about ten years old, who was a teerer. He worked with
me at Messrs. Wilson & Crichton's, at Blakely.
We began to work together about two or three in the
morning, and left off at four or five in the afternoon.'
Night-work, too, with all its evil consequences, is
very common in this trade; - and of the general state of
education among the block-printers in Lancashire, the
Commissioners thus speak, (p. 172.)
"The evidence collected by Mr. Kennedy in the
Lancashire district, tends to show that the children
employed in this occupation are excluded from the
opportunities of
education; that this necessarily contributes to the growth of
an ignorant and vicious population; that the facility of
obtaining early employment for children in print-fields
empties the day-schools; that parents without hesitation
sacrifice the future welfare of their children through life for
the immediate advantage or gratification obtained by the
additional pittance derived from the child's earnings, and
that they imagine, or pretend, that they do not neglect their
children's education if they send them to Sunday day-schools."
Metal Wares. - The chief seats of manufactures in metal
are Birmingham, Wolverhampton, and Sheffield; but many
of the minor branches are carried on in different parts of
Scotland, and in Worcestershire and Lancashire. In the
various departments of this species of manufacture many
thousands of children of both sexes are employed. They
begin to work generally about their eighth year, as in
Birmingham and Sheffield, but often earlier; while in
pin-making, as carried on at Warrington, both boys and girls
commence when five years old, and work twelve hours
a-day, and sometimes, though rarely, even more. The hours
of work in most of the metal manufactures are very irregular,
generally from ten to thirteen a-day; but, especially in the
neighborhood of Wolverhampton, it is by no means
unfrequent to extend them to fifteen or sixteen for weeks
together. The places in which the occupations are carried
on are occasionally large, clean, and well ventilated; but
in the great majority of cases, a very different description
of them is given.
"In general the buildings are very old, and many of
them are in a dilapidated, ruinous, and even dangerous
condition.. Nothing is more common than to find many
of the windows broken; in some cases I observed more
broken than whole panes; great and just complaint is
made upon this point by those employed. The shops are
often dark and narrow; many of them, especially those
used for stamping, are from four to seven feet below the
level of the ground; these latter, which are cold and
damp, are justly complained of by the workers. From
defective construction all these old shops are liable to
become 'sufficatingly hot in summer (and also at night
when the gas is lighted) and very cold in winter. Efficient
ventillation is a thing unknown in these places.
The great majority of the shops are never whitewashed,
but there are many creditable exceptions to this statement.'
"It has been already stated, that although the whole
population of the town of Wolverhampton and the
neighborhood, of all ranks, are engaged in the different
manufactures of the place, yet that there are few manufactories
of large size, the work being commonly carried on in
small workshops. These workshops are usually situated
at the backs of the houses, there being very few in the
front of a street; so that the places where the children
and the great body of the operatives are employed are
completely out of sight, in narrow courts, unpaved yards,
and blind alleys. In the smaller and dirtier streets of
the town, in which the poorest of the working classes
reside, 'there are narrow passages, at intervals of every
eight or ten houses, and sometimes at every third or fourth
house. These narrow passages are also the general gutter,
which is by no means always confined to one side, but
often streaming all over the passage. Having made your
way through the passage, you find yourself in a space
varying in size with the number of houses, hutches, or
hovels it contains. They are nearly all proportionately
crowded. Out of this space there are other narrow
passages, sometimes leading to other similar hovels.
The workshops and houses are mostly built on a little
elevation sloping towards the passage.' " - (Second Report, p. 33.)
The most painful portions, however, of the Report on
the metal manufactures, are those which relate to the
treatment of the children and apprentices at Willenhall, near
Wolverhampton, and to the noxious influences of those
departments which are carried on at Sheffield. - (P. 83.)
"455. The district which requires special notice on
account of the general and almost incredible abuse of the
children, is that of Wolverhampton and the neighborhood. In
the town of Wolverhampton itself, among the large masters,
children are not punished with severity, and in some of the
trades, as among the japanners, they are not beaten at all;
but, on the other hand, in the nail and tip manufactories, in
some of the founderies, and among the very numerous class
of small masters generally, the punishments are harsh and
cruel; and in some cases they can only be designated as
ferocious.
"456. In Willenhall the children are shamefully and most
cruelly beaten with a horsewhip, strap, stick, hammer
handle, file, or whatever tool is nearest at hand, or are
struck with the clenched fist or kicked.
"457. In Sedgley they are sometimes struck with a red-hot
iron, and burnt and bruised simultaneously; sometimes
they have 'a flash of lightning' sent at them. 'When a bar of
iron is drawn white-hot from the forge it emits fiery
particles, which the man commonly flings in a shower
upon the ground by a swing of his arm before placing the
bar upon the anvil. This shower is sometimes directed at
the boy. It may come over his hands and face, his naked
arms, or on his breast. If his shirt be open in front, which
is usually the case, the red-hot particles are lodged therein,
and he has to shake them out as fast as he can.' ... 'His
master's name is ---, of Little London. There is another
apprentice besides him, who is treated just as bad.' ---,
aged fifteen, 'works at Knoblocks with ---. Is a
fellow-apprentice with ---. Lives in the house of his master.
Is beaten by his master, who hits him sometimes with
his fists, and sometimes with the file haft, and sometimes
with a stick - it's no matter what when he's a bit cross;
sometimes hits trim with the locks; has cut his head open
four or five times; so he has his fellow-apprentice's head.'
"466. The Rev. Isaac Clarkson, magistrate, vicar of
Wednesbury: 'In his capacity of magistrate complaints often
come before him, made by boys against masters, from
different places round about, such as Willenhall and
Darlaston, but he did not encourage them, as they should
more properly apply to the magistrates of Wolverhampton.
More complaints came before him from the mines than
from the manufactories; but sometimes there was very bad
usage in the latter. A boy from Darlaston has recently
been beaten most unmercifully with a red-hot piece of
iron. The boy was burnt - fairly burnt. Wished to cancel
the indentures; but the master had been to the board of
guardians, or to the clerk of the Stafford union, and
promised to behave better in future. Has had various
similar cases brought before him.' "
The following statements of the Commissioners demand
serious consideration. - (Second Report, p. 105.)
"581. But the chief disease is that produced by the
occupation of the grinder, which is the most pernicious of
any branch of manufacture in England. The inhalation of the
dust of the grindstone and of the steel of the knife, or
whatever he may be grinding, is so pernicious, that the life
of a dry grinder scarcely averages thirty-five years, whilst
that of a wet grinder is seldom prolonged to more than
forty-five years. The bent posture and pressure on the stomach
aggravate the evil. Fork-grinding is the most pernicious,
because it is done dry, and a great deal more of the steel has
to be ground off. Dr. Knight states that he cannot better
express how injurious grinding
is to the health than by stating, that 'they who are the
greatest drinkers among the grinders are sometimes the
longest lived, owing to their more frequent absence from
their work.'
"582. Dust flues, in the state of perfection to which
they have now been brought, appear to be capable of greatly
diminishing if not of entirely obviating the evil. The
Sheffield grinders cannot, however, be induced to avail
themselves of this security; they know that they are doomed
to an early death, yet they are absolutely unwilling that
the evil to which they are exposed should in any degree
be lessened; they regard every precaution to prolong life with
jealousy, as a means of increasing the supply of labor and
lowering wages; they are for 'a short life and a merry one,'
and hence, even when the masters are at the expense of
erecting the apparatus, these men refuse to use it, and
even frequently kick it down and break it under their
feet.'" - (Ibid. Evidence.)
As to the moral state of this class of work-people, the
Report speaks thus. - (Second Report, p. 176-178.)
"933. The moral and religious state of the children and
young persons employed in the trades and manufactures
of Birmingham, is described by the Sub-commissioner as
very unfavorable. The social and domestic duties and
affections are but little cultivated and practiced; great
numbers never attend any place of religious worship; and of
the state of juvenile crime some conception may be formed
from the statement, that of the total number of known or
suspected offenders in this town, during the last twelve
months, namely 1223, at least one-half were under fifteen
years of age.
"934. As to illicit sexual intercourse, it seems to prevail
almost universally, and from a very early period of life: to
this conclusion witnesses of every rank give testimony.
"936. WOLVERHAMPTON. - Of the moral condition of
the youthful population in the Wolverhampton district,
Mr. Horne says - 'Putting together all I elicited from
various witnesses and conversations with working people,
abroad and at home, and all that fell under my observation, I
am obliged to come to the conclusion, that the moral virtues
of the great majority of the children are as few in number
and as feeble in practice as can well be conceived of those
who are born in a civilized country, surrounded by religious
and educational institutions, and by individuals anxious for
the improvement of the condition of the working classes.'
He adds of Willenhall - 'A lower condition of morals, in the
fullest sense of the term, could not, I think, be found. I do
not mean by this that there are many more prominent vices
among them, but that moral feelings and sentiments do not
exist among them. They have no morals.'
"940. SHEFFIELD. - In all the Sheffield trades employing
large numbers of children, it is stated that there is a
much closer intermixture of the younger children with the
elder youths, and with the men, than is usual in the cotton,
woollen, and flax factories; and that the conversations to
which the children are compelled to listen would debase
their minds and blunt their moral feelings even if they had
been carefully and virtuously educated, but that of course
this result takes place more rapidly and completely in the
case of those who have had little or no religious culture, and
little but bad example before their eyes from their cradle
upwards.
"943. Habits of drinking are formed at a very early age,
malt liquor being generally introduced into the work-shops,
of which the youngest children are encouraged to partake.
'Very many,' say the police officers, 'frequent beer shops,
where they play at dominoes, bagatelle, &c., for money or
drink.' Early intemperance is assigned by the medical men as
one cause of the great mortality of Sheffield. 'There are
beer-houses,' says the Rev. Mr. Farish, 'attended by youths
exclusively, for the men will not have them in the same
houses with themselves. In
these beer-houses the youth of both sexes are encouraged
to meet, and scenes destructive of every vestige of virtue or
morality ensue.'
"945. But it is stated by all classes of witnesses, that 'the
most revolting feature of juvenile depravity in this town
is early contamination from the association of the sexes;'
that 'juvenile prostitution is exceedingly common.' 'The
evidence,' says the Sub-commissioner, 'might have been
doubled which attests the early commencement of sexual
and promiscuous intercourse among boys and girls.'
"953. SEDGLEY. - At Sedgley and the neighboring
villages, the number of girls employed in nail-making
considerably exceeds that of the boys. Of these girls Mr.
Horne reports - 'Their appearance, manners, habits, and
moral natures, (so far as the word moral can be applied to
them,) are in accordance with their half-civilized condition.
Constantly associating with ignorant and depraved adults
and young persons of the opposite sex, they naturally fall
into all their ways; and drink, smoke, swear, throw off all
restraint in word and act, and become as bad as a man. The
heat of the forge and the hardness of the work render few
clothes needful in winter; and in summer, the six or seven
individuals who are crowded into these little dens find the
heat almost suffocating. The men and boys are usually
naked, except a pair of trousers and an open shirt, though
very often they have no shirt; and the women and girls have
only a thin, ragged petti-coat, and an open shirt without
sleeves.' "
Lace-Making. - In this occupation it is proved, by
unquestionable evidence, that it is customary for children to
begin to work at the age of four, five, and six years; and
instances were found in which a child only two years old
was set to work by the side of its mother. The work is of
course very slight, but is trying to the eyes. The
Sub-commissioner, after detailing a case, says -
"58. In this case, if the statement of the mother be correct,
one of her children, four years of age, works twelve hours
a-day with only an interval of a quarter of an hour for each
meal, at breakfast, dinner, and tea, and never going out to
play: and two more of her children, one six and the other
eight years of age, work in summer from 6 a. m. till dusk,
and in winter from seven in the morning till ten at night,
fifteen hours.
"59. This family is singular only in the children being set
to work at the ages of two or three. It is common in this
district for children to commence work at four, five, and six;
the evidence renders this fact indubitable." - (Second
Report, p. 10.)
The following extracts relate to the hours of work in
the lace trade: -
"336. In the Nottingham, Leicester, and Derby districts,
partly from the causes just assigned, and partly from the
dissipated habits of the workmen, 'the hours of labor are so
extremely irregular that it is impossible to speak of them
with exact precision.' The hand-machines, especially the
wide machines, are usually double-handed; some very large
ones have three men each; the men work such machines by
'spells for shifts.' The most common time is sixteen,
eighteen, and occasionally twenty hours. 'However long,'
adds the Sub-commissioner, 'may be the hours during which
the machines are propelled, even for the whole twenty-four,
either by hand or power, there are scarcely ever two
complete sets of threaders.'
"341. Mr. William Hinde, aged twenty-nine, operative -
'Among the small masters, who have each one or two
machines, it is the custom for one set of children to
work for two or three masters. The masters often live a long
way from each other; children have often to go one or two
miles. They are always wanted when the machine comes
off, whatever may be the hour of the day or night; they are
required just as much by night as by day, unless
the men will accommodate the children, which is very rarely
done, especially when trade is good. When there has
been a good pattern, and the machine in constant use, the
children "have scarcely a bit of peace," they have no
regular time for meals, "no time for nothing;" when one
machine is off, another is on. Was himself formerly a
threader, and then a winder. Has often gone at six in the
morning, and has had no time to get any thing to eat, except
a mouthful now and then, till three or four in the afternoon.
It is the same now, when trade is good. The children have no
regular time for meals; they have their food sent to them,
and they eat when they can; some have nothing but a bit of
bread There is no more regular time for sleeping than for
eating; the children often lie down "in the middle of the shop
floor, when it is warm." Thinks hundreds have been sent to
the grave by this work. It is enough to kill the children, going
half fed and clothed to work in the night, at this time of the
year. (The thermometer last night was 102.') - (Second
Report, pp. 56-9.)
Of course, work of this nature, for such hours, and at
such an early age, cannot but be followed by deplorable
consequences to health in after life, as well as to moral
character. Accordingly the Commissioners report. - (II,
p. 109, 110, 181.)
"598. From the nature of their occupation, the long and
irregular hours of work, the frequency of night-work,
and the insufficient time allowed for meals - an evil of
the greatest magnitude in the case of growing children -
the constitution is frequently seriously impaired. 'The
majority of the children whom I saw,' says the
Sub-commissioner, 'were pale and unhealthy-looking,
and several were of diminutive stature. The health and
sight are often greatly impaired, especially among the
runners, who occasionally faint while at work; indeed,
there cannot be
an occupation which more seriously deteriorates the
constitution. Short-sightedness, amaurosis, distortion of
the spine, excessive constitutional debility, indigestion,
and derangement of the uterine functions, may be said
to be almost universal: all the evidence points to this
conclusion.'
" 'In the town of Nottingham,' says Mr. Grainger, 'all
parties, clergy, police, manufacturers, work-people, and
parents, agree that the present mode of employing children
and young persons as threaders and winders is a most
fertile source of immorality. There can, in fact, be
but few states more immediately leading to vice and
profligacy. Children of both sexes are called out of their
parents' houses at all hours of the night, and, as it is
quite uncertain how long they may be required, whether for
two hours or the whole night, a ready and unanswerable
excuse for staying out is furnished. - (No. 138.)
"The moral condition of the lace-makers in Northamptonshire,
Oxfordshire, Beds and Bucks, is stated by Major Burns to be
extremely low, and prostitution is rife among them, from their
scanty earnings, their love of finery, and the almost total
absence of early moral culture." - (Report: App. Pt. I, p. A. 12, s. 104.)
Millinery and Dressmaking. - The portion of these
instructive volumes which describes the condition of the
I young women employed as milliners and mantua-makers in
our great cities, and especially in London, is, however, that
which has left the most painful impression upon our minds -
not only because the work of these unfortunate girls is of all
the most severe and unremitting - nor because it is inflicted
exclusively upon the weaker sex, and at a period of life
the most susceptible of injury from overstrained exertion -
nor yet because the actual consequences which are shown
to ensue in thousands of cases are so peculiarly
deplorable - but because the excess of
labor (with all its pernicious and fatal results) is endured in
the service, and inflicted in execution of the orders, of a class
whose own exemption from toil and privation should make
them scrupulously careful not to increase, causelessly or
selfishly, the toils and privations of their less favored
fellow-creatures - a class, too, many of whom have been
conspicuously loud in denouncing the cruelties of far more
venial offenders, and in expresssing a somewhat clamorous
and overacted sympathy with sufferings which cannot for a
moment be compared in severity with those which are
every day inflicted on the helpless of their own sex, in
ministering to their own factitious and capricious wants. The
remark may appear harsh, but the evidence before us fully
warrants it - that probably in no occupation whatever - not
in the printing fields of Lancashire - not in the lace trade of
Nottingham - not in the collieries of Scotland - scarcely in
the workshops of Willenhall - most assuredly not in the
cotton factories of Manchester, (which a few years ago the
fashionable fair of London were so pathetic in
lamenting) - can any instances of cruelty be met with which
do not "whiten in the shade" of those which every spring
and autumn season sees practiced - unreprobated, and till
now nearly unknown - in the millinery establishments of the
metropolis.
The following extracts will show that we are guilty of
no exaggeration. - (II, p. 114-122.)
"622. It is estimated that there are in London, in the
millinery and dressmaking business, at least 1500
employers, and that the number of young people engaged
by each employer varies from two or three to twenty-five
or thirty-five - the average in each establishment being
about ten, making in the whole 15,000; but this does not
include journeywomen who work at their own houses, of
whom also there are great numbers.
"623. In some of what are considered the best regulated
establishments, during the fashionable season, occurring
about four months in the year, the regular hours of work
are fifteen, but on emergencies, which frequently recur,
these hours extend to eighteen. In many establishments
the hours of work, during the season, are unlimited, the
young women never getting more than six, often not
more than four, sometimes only three, and occasionally
not more than two hours for rest and sleep out of the
twenty-four; and very frequently they work all night.
"625. Miss O'Neil, Welbeck street, an employer, says
- 'In the spring season the hours of work are unlimited.
The common hours are from six a. m. till twelve at night
- sometimes from four a. m. till twelve. Has herself often
worked from six a. m. till twelve at night for two or three
months together. It is not at all uncommon, especially in
the dressmaking, to work all night; just in the 'drive of the
season,' the work is occasionally continued all night three
times a-week. Has worked herself twice in the week all night.
In some houses which profess to study the health of their
young people, they begin at four a. m. and leave off at eleven
p. m., never earlier. Has heard there are houses in London
which work on Sundays.
"628. Miss -- -- , manager - 'has been ten years a "first hand,"
which signifies the party who takes the superintendence of
the business, as overlooker of the young persons, cutter-out
of the work, &c. The common hours of business are from
eight a. m. till eleven p. m. in the winter; in the summer from
six or half-past six a. m. till twelve at night. During the
fashionable season, that is from April to the end of July, it
frequently happens that the ordinary hours are greatly
exceeded: if there is a drawing-room or grand fete, or
mourning to be made, it often happens that the work goes on
for twenty hours out of the twenty-four, occasionally all
night. Every season in at least half the houses of business, it
happens that the young persons occasionally work twenty
hours out of the twenty-four, twice or thrice a-week. On
special occasions, such as drawing rooms, general mournings,
and very frequently wedding orders, it is not uncommon to
work all night; has herself worked hours out of the
twenty-four for three months together; at that time she was
suffering from illness, and the medical attendant
remonstrated against the treatment she received. He wished
witness to remain in bed at least one day longer, which the
employer objected to, required her to get up, and dismissed
the surgeon. It frequently happened that the work was
carried on till seven o'clock on Sunday morning. If any
particular order was to be executed, as mournings or
weddings, and they left off on Saturday night at eleven, they
worked the whole of Sunday; thinks this happened fifteen
times in the two years. In consequence of working so late on
Sunday morning, or all that day occasionally, could very
rarely go to church; indeed it could not be thought of;
because they generally rested in bed.'
"639. The correctness of these representations is
confirmed, among others, by the following medical
witnesses: - Sir James Clark, Bart., Physician to the
Queen - 'I have found the mode of life of these poor girls
such as no constitution could long bear. Worked from six in
the morning till twelve at night, with the exception of the
short intervals allowed for their meals, in close rooms, and
passing the few hours allowed for rest in still more close and
crowded apartments - a mode of life more completely
calculated to destroy human health could scarcely be
contrived, and this at a period of life when exercise in the
open air, and a due proportion of rest, are essential to the
development of the system. Judging from what I have
observed and heard, I scarcely believed that the system
adopted in our worst-regulated manufactories can be so
destructive of health as the life of the young dress-maker.'
"647. 'The protracted labor described above,' says
the Sub-commissioner, 'is, I believe, quite unparalleled in
the history of manufacturing processes. I have looked
over a considerable portion of the Report of the Factory
Commission, and there is nothing in the accounts of the
worst-conducted factories to be compared with the facts
elicited in the present enquiry. Gentlemen who, from their
official situation, were well qualified to judge, have also
stated, in answer to my questions, that they knew of no
instance in which the hours of work were so long as those
above stated.'
"663. Of the general treatment and condition of these young
people, the Sub-commissioner reports: - 'The evidence of all
parties establishes the fact that there is no class of persons in
this country, living by their labor, whose happiness, health
and lives, are so unscrupulously sacrificed as those of the
young dressmakers. It may without exaggeration be stated,
that, in proportion to the numbers employed, there are no
occupations, with one or two questionable exceptions, such
as needle-grinding, in which so much disease is produced
as in dressmaking, or which present so fearful a catalogue
of distressing and frequently fatal maladies. It is a serious
aggravation of all this evil, that the unkindness of the employer
very frequently causes these young persons, when they become
unwell, to conceal their illness from the fear of being sent out
of the house; and in this manner, the disease often becomes
increased in severity, or is even rendered incurable. Some of
the principals are so cruel as to object to the young women
obtaining medical assistance." - (No. 626.)
"Our own West India Islands are fast relapsing into
primitive savageness. When the rich lands of Jamaica
are being yearly abandoned, and when in Trinidad and
Guiana cultivation has almost ceased, it is not likely
that England will care to extend her sovereignty further
over tropical territory, which can only be brought into
use by a system which has been solemnly condemned."
Now, let us rigidly examine and ascertain what is the
condemned system, what the approved system , that
has been generally adopted in its stead, and why this
system is approved, and the free negro system
condemned as a failure.
There is no doubt the writer alludes to the system of
domestic slavery, in the general, as the condemned
system; and especially, to that serfdom or villienage
which lately prevailed, but is now abolished
throughout Western Europe. In asserting that the
system of slavery has been condemned, and yet
admitting West India emancipation to be a failure, he
in effect maintains that the liberation of
the villiens has been no failure. He means that it has
been no failure, because the liberated villiens do work;
aye, just twice as hard and as long as their ancestors,
the serfs. He means it is no failure, because they not
only work harder and longer, but work for half the pay
or allowance of their servile ancestors. He means it is no
failure, because the once masters, now employers, get
their labor for half what it cost to support them as
slaves. He means it is no failure, because free labor in
England is more plentiful and far cheaper than slave
labor in America. He means it is no failure, because the
employers, besides getting cheaper and more abundant
labor, are relieved of all the cares and anxieties of
governing and providing for their laborers, in health
and in sickness, in old age and in infancy. In fine, he
means it is no failure, because the laborers of England
are not half so free now as before their pretended
emancipation. They have lost all their rights, half their
liberty (for they work harder than before,) and their
former masters have been relieved of all their legal
obligations and responsibilities. No - British
emancipation has not failed, if we look solely to the
selfish interests of the property class. And British
liberty, we shall show in another chapter, means the
unlimited right of the property class to oppress the
laboring class, uncoupled with the obligation to
provide for them. But this writer well knew, that looking
to the effect
of emancipation on the condition of the laboring class
in England, it has been a cruel and monstrous failure,
from first to last. They are almost as savage and
ignorant as West India negroes, know nothing of the
Bible, and live in a state of continued destitution,
hunger, and excessive labor, from generation to
generation - from infancy to old age.
West India emancipation was a blunder of swindling
philanthropy. People were told that the negroes, after
emancipation, would work harder, work for less, and
be more of slaves than before, just as had happened
with emancipated English. But philanthropy "hath
bad luck." It overlooked, or forgot, the few wants
and indolent habits of the negro, the abundance of
mountain lands, the fertile soil, the volunteer fruits and
mild climate of Jamaica. The negro is really free, and
luxuriates in sloth, ignorance and liberty, as none but a
negro can. The mistake and the failure consisted in
setting him really free, instead of nominally so. Hinc
illae lachrymæ!
What vile hypocrisy to shed crocodile tears over the
happy negro, and boast of British Liberty, which is
daily and hourly consuming, by poverty, and cold, and
foul air and water, and downright starvation, the lives
of ten millions of your white brethren and neighbors!
But this system, which carried to untimely graves three
hundred thousand Irishmen in a single season,
has not been condemned. No; it is profitable, to
the oppressors, and will not be condemned.
In all countries where a few own the property and
the population is tolerably dense, laborers relieved
from domestic slavery are remitted to the exploitation
of skill and capital, which renders them less free and
worse situated in all respects after emancipation than
before. To prove this great truth, is the chief object of
our present work. We know that the philosophy of the
subject is intricate and complex, and that we have the
prejudices, fanaticism and prepossessions of a world
to oppose and conquer. We therefore indulge in
frequent iteration, and adduce numerous proofs,
examples, and illustrations.
In old countries the white laborers are relatively
weak, because all property is closely appropriated,
and the capitalist class possess the means of
unlimited oppression. Everybody admits that in such
countries the poor need protection. But there can
be no efficient protection without enslavement of
some sort. In England, it has often been remarked, that
all the legislation for the poor is borrowed from the
system of domestic slavery.
Public and private charity is a fund created by the
labor of the industrious poor, and too often bestowed
on the idle or improvident. It is apt to aggravate the
evils which it intends to cure.
Those who give should have the power to control,
to some extent, the conduct and expenditure of the
objects of their charity. Not till then can they be sure
that their gifts will be promotive of good. But such
power of control would be slavery.
Can abolitionists solve these social problems?
Ambition has ever been considered the most noble of
human failings. It is, however, no failing, or crime, at
all. Ambition desires power, and without power there
can be no safe, prudent and active benevolence. The
selfish, the indolent, and the timid, are without
ambition, and eschew power, because of the trouble,
the expenses, and the responsibilities which it
imposes. The actively good are always ambitious,
and desire to possess power, in order that they may
control, in some measure, the conduct of those whom
they desire to benefit.
The best thing a philanthropist can do, is to buy
slaves, because then his power of control is
greatest - his ability to do practical good, most
perfect.
We take this occasion to correct an error into
which we had fallen as to Northern character. Benevolence
affection, generosity, and philanthropy, are equally
common North and South; and only differ in their
modes of manifestation. We are one people.
The daily and hourly exercise of these qualities is
elicited at the South, because it is safe, prudent and
expedient so to exercise them. The reverse is true at the
North: yet, "expel Nature and she will return again."
Man is social and philanthropic, and his affections,
dammed out in one direction, find vent and gush out
in another. The people of the North are far more
generous and munificent in the endowment of public
charities, and other public institutions, than we. This
correction of our error does not affect our theories - if
it be true, that you can only safely be charitable to
dependents whom you can control. But if it did or
does affect, neutralize and subvert them, it is due to
truth, - and if we advance the cause of truth, we are
ready for the sacrifice of all else.
"Our Trip to the North" excited doubts as to our
estimate of Northern character; and subsequent
observation, reading and reflection, have brought us
to the conclusion, which we now with pleasure avow.
We would rather be right than consistent.
parental authority, but adopts the philosophy and the
practices of Fourier, which promise gradually to purify
human nature, and fit it, in a few generations, for that
social millenium, into which the bolder and more
consistent Andrews urges society at once to plunge.
The Christian socialists are beautifully and
energetically co-laborating with the infidel socialists
and abolitionists to bring about this millenium. They
also are divided into two parties. The one would wait
upon Providence - only help it a little, like Mr.
Greeley - and permit our poor old effete world to pass
out of existence by gentle euthanasia. The other and
bolder party, feel themselves "called" as special
instruments, to give at once the coup de grace to the
old world, and to usher in the new golden age, of free
love and free lands, of free women and free negroes,
of free children and free men.
We like the Northern socialist theoretical
abolitionists - read their speeches, essays, lectures
and books, because they agree with us, that their own
form of society is a humbug and a failure; and in their
efforts, speculations and schemes to re-organize it,
afford the most beautiful, perfect and complete
specimen of the reductio ad absurdum. A lecture from
Mr. Andrews on No-government, an Oneida den of
incest, a Greeley phalanstery, or a New York free love
saloon, afford eternally good instances of this mode
of demonstration by the
absurdities which they exhibit, and equally good
proofs of the naturalness and necessity of slavery,
since such horrid abuses are everywhere the approved
and practiced outgrowth of free society. As all our
thoughts, arguments, proofs and demonstrations are
suggested by or borrowed from the abolitionists, it
seems to us we ought to dedicate to them. The Tribune
very properly remarked that our Sociology was the
first attempt of the kind at the South. It ridiculed our
ignorance, too, severely. It should have recollected
that were there no sickness there would be no
physicians. We assure the Tribune, we are quite a
prodigy in these matters for a Southern man. We have
no social diseases, and therefore no social doctors to
write about them or cure them. Such diseases have
been rare; for Aristotle complains that there are no
terms to express the relations of husband and wife, or
parent and child. These relations have worked so
smoothly in slave society to this day, that we in writing
have felt the same want of language of which Aristotle,
more than two thousand years ago, complained. You
should invent such terms at the North, if it be true, as
Mr. Andrews states in italics, that there are ten
fugitives from Northern matrimony to one from
Southern slavery - from which he seems to infer very
logically, that the necessity of abolishing the family at
the North, is ten times as great as that for abolishing
slavery at the
South. He and you are experts, and we know it is
presumptuous in us to dispute what you say about
your own society. Still we are dead against your
phalansteries and his love saloons. Gentlemen and
scholars, generally at the South, would as soon be
caught studying or practicing the black art, as in
reading Owen or Fourier, or in building phalansteries.
For ourselves, like the Bastard in King John, we learn
these things, "not to deceive, but to avoid deceit." We
have whole files of infidel and abolition papers, like the
Tribune, the Liberator and Investigator. Fanny Wright,
the Devil's Pulpit and the Devil's Parson, Tom Paine,
Owen, Voltaire, et id genus omne, are our daily
companions. Good people give our office a wide berth
as they pass it, and even the hens who loiter about it,
have caught the infection of Woman's Rights, for we
saw but a few days ago a Shanghai cock under its
eaves hovering a brood of twenty chickens,
whilstmadam hen was strutting about in as large a
liberty as any Bloomer or wise woman of the North.
Love and veneration for the family is with us not
only a principle, but probably a prejudice and a
weakness. We were never two weeks at a time
from under the family roof, until we had passed
middle life, and now that our years almost number
half a century, we have never been from home for
an interval of two months. And our historical
reading, as well as our habits of life, may have
unfitted us to appreciate the communist and fusion
theories of Fanny Wright, Owen and Mr. Greely. In
attempting to vindicate and justify the ways of God
and Nature, against the progressiveness of Black
Republicanism in America, and Red Republicanism in
Europe, we would forewarn the reader that we are a
prejudiced witness. We are the enthusiastic admirer of
the social relations exhibited in the histories of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The social relations
established in Deuteronomy; and 25th chapter
Leviticus, and as practiced by the Jews to this day,
elicit our unfeigned admiration and approval. Moses
is with us the Prince of Legislators, and the
twenty-fifth Leviticus the best of political platforms. The
purity of the family seems to be his paramount object.
Homer, too, especially in his Odyssey, charms and
enchains us with his beautiful descriptions of family
felicity and family purity. As conquest and commerce
introduced wealth and corrupted morals and manners,
the family was corrupted and disrupted, as it is now, at
the most commercial points in the North. But we have
only to pass over to Italy, and there, from the earliest
days of tradition until the extinction of liberty, began
by Sylla and Manus, and ended by Augustus, we find
the family a pure, a holy and sacred thing. From that
era till slavery arose in the South, the family never
resumed its dignity and importance. Feudalism did
something to correct the loose morality of the
Augustan Age, but it adopted its colonial slavery,
relaxed family ties, and never drew together in
sufficiently close connection and subordination, the
materials which nature dictates should form the human
hive or social circle.
Aristotle understood this subject thoroughly; and it
seems to have been generally so well comprehended
in his day, that he takes little trouble to explain and
expound it. He commences his treatise on Politics and
Economics with the family, and discourses first of the
slaves as a part of the family. He assumes that social
life is as natural to man as to bees and herds; and that
the family, including husband, wife, children, and
slaves, is the first and most natural development of
that social nature. As States are composed of families,
and as a sound and healthy whole cannot be formed
of rotten parts, he devotes much of his treatise to
family education and government. Would that modern
statesmen, philosophers and politicians, would
become practical like Aristotle, and not attempt to
build social and political edifices, until they were sure
of the soundness of the materials of which they would
construct them. As all human beings live for the
greatest part of their lives in families, it is all important
that they should look to the wise arrangement of this
old and universal institution.
We wish to prove that the great movement in
society, known under various names, as Communism,
Socialism, Abolitionism, Red Republicanism and Black
Republicanism, has one common object: the breaking
up of all law and government, and the inauguration
of anarchy, and that the destruction of the family is
one of the means in which they all concur to attain a
common end. We shall quote only from Stephen Pearle
Andrews, because he is by far the ablest and best
informed of American Socialists and Reformers, and
because he cites facts and authorities to show that he
presents truly the current thought and the general
intention. Mr. Andrews is a Massachusetts
gentleman, who has lived at the South. He has been an
Abolition Lecturer. He is the disciple of Warren, who
is the disciple of Owen of Lanark and New Harmony.
Owen and Warren are Socrates and Plato, and he is
the Great Stygarite, as far surpassing them, as
Aristotle surpassed Socrates and Plato. But it is not
merely his theories on which we rely; he cites
historical facts that show that the tendency and
terminus of all abolition is to the sovereignty of the
individual, the breaking up of families, and
no-government. He delivered a series of lectures to the
elite of New York on this subject, which met with
approbation, and from which we shall quote. He
established, or aided to establish, Free Love Villages,
and headed a Free Love Saloon in
the city of New York, patronized and approved by the
"Higher classes." He is indubitably the philosopher and true
exponent of Northern Abolitionism. With this assertion,
which none who read his Science of Society we think will
deny, we proceed to quote from his able and beautiful
lecture; embodied in a publication entitled "Science of
Society." Our first quotation is from his first lecture and
the first chapter of his work:
Every age is a remarkable one, no doubt, for those who
live in it. When immobility reigns most in human affairs,
there is still enough of movement to fix the attention,
and even to excite the wonder of those who are
immediately in proximity with it. This natural bias in favor
of the period with which we have most to do, is by no
means sufficient, however, to account for the growing
conviction, on all minds, that the present epoch is a marked
transition from an old to a new order of things. The scattered
rays of the gray dawn of the new era date back, indeed,
beyond the lifetime of the present generation. The first
streak of light that streamed through the dense darkness of
the old regime was the declaration by Martin Luther of the
right of private judgment in matters of conscience. The next,
which shed terror upon the old world, as a new portent of
impending revolutions, was the denial, by Hampden,
Sidney, Cromwell, and others, of the divine right of kings,
and the assertion of inherent political rights in the people
themselves. This was followed by the American Declaration
of Independence,
the establishment of a powerful Democratic Republic in
the western world upon the basis of that principle,
followed by the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror,
the Re-action, and the apparent death in Europe of the
Democratic idea. Finally, in our day, comes the red glare
of French Socialism, at which the world is still gazing
with uncertainty whether it be some lurid and meteoric
omen of fearful events, or whether it be not the actual
rising of the Sun of Righteousness, with healing in His
wings; for there are those who profoundly and
religiously believe that the solution of the social problem
will be the virtual descent of the New Jerusalem - the
installation of the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth.
First in the religious, then in the political, and finally in
the social relations of men, new doctrines have thus been
broached, which are full of promise to the hopeful, and
full of alarm and dismay to the timid and conservative.
This distinction marks the broadest division in the ranks of
mankind. In church, and state, and social life, the real parties
are the Progressionists and the Retrogressionists - those
whose most brilliant imaginings are linked with the future,
and those whose sweetest remembrances bind them in tender
associations to the past. Catholic and Protestant, Whig and
Democrat, Anti-Socialist and Socialist, are terms which, in
their origin, correspond to this generic division; but no sooner
does a new classification take place than the parties thus
formed are again subdivided on either hand, by the ever-
permeating tendency, on the one side toward freedom,
emancipation, and progress, and toward law, and order,
and immobility on the other.
Hitherto the struggle between conservatism and progress
has seemed doubtful. Victory has kissed the banner,
alternately, of either host. At length the serried ranks
of conservatism falter. Reform, so called, is becoming
confessedly more potent than its antagonist. The
admission is reluctantly forced from pallid lips that
revolutions - political, social and religious - constitute
the programme of the coming age. Reform, so called,
for weal or woe, but yet Reform, must rule the hour.
The older constitutions of society have outlived their
day. No truth commends itself more universally to the
minds of men now, than that thus set forth by Carlyle:
"There must be a new world if there is to be any world
at all. That human things in our Europe can ever return
to the old sorry routine, and proceed with any steadiness
or continuance there - this small hope is not now a
tenable one. These days of universal death must be days
of universal new birth, if the ruin is not to be total and
final! It is a time to make the dullest man consider and
ask himself, Whence he came? Whither he is bound? A
veritable 'New Era,' to the foolish as well as to the wise."
Nor is this state of things confined to Europe. The
agitations in America may be more peaceful, but they
are not less profound. The foundations of old beliefs
and habits of thought are breaking up. The old guarantees
of order are fast falling away. A veritable "new era" with
us, too, is alike impending and inevitable.
So much to show the width and scope of the social
revolution that is contemplated as well by destructives
as conservatives; for Mr. Carlyle is like ourselves,
and thinks society needs more government, screwing
up, instead of relaxing. He, too, is a socialist, but a
conservative socialist. He asserts, like Mr. Andrews,
that society has failed, but proposes a different mode
of reconstruction. At the very moment we in America
were announcing the Failure of Free Society, he in Europe
proclaimed the 'Latter Day' of that Society. It was but a
different mode of expressing the same thought. Now we
will show from this same lecture of Mr. Andrews, that
the annihilation of the Family is part of the programme
of Abolition. He says, page 31, in this same lecture:
Every variety of conscience, and every variety of deportment
in reference to this precise subject of love is already tolerated
among us. At one extreme of the scale stand the Shakers, who
abjure the connection of the sexes altogether. At the other
extremity stands the association of Perfectionists, at Oneida,
who hold and practice, and justify by the Scriptures, as a
religious dogma, what they denominate complex marriage, or
the freedom of love. We have, in this State, stringent laws
against adultery and fornication; but laws of that sort fall
powerless, in America, before the all-pervading sentiment of
Protestantism, which vindicates the freedom of conscience
to all persons and in all things, provided the
consequences fall upon the parties themselves. Hence the
Oneida Perfectionists live undisturbed and respected, in the
heart of the State of New York, and in the face of the world;
and the civil government, true to the Democratic principle,
which is only the same principle in another application, is
little anxious to interfere with this breach of its own
ordinances, so long as they cast none the consequences of
their conduct upon those who do not consent to bear them.
And, page 33, he says:
In general, however, Government still interferes with the
marriage and parental relations. Democracy in America
has always proceeded with due reference the prudential
motto, festina lente. In France, at the time of the first
Revolution, Democracy rushed with the explosive force
of escapement from centuries of compression, point
blank to the bull's eye of its final destiny, from which
it recoiled with such force that the stupid world has
dreamed, for half a century, that the vita principle of
Democracy was dead. As a logical sequence from
Democratic principle, the legal obligation of marriage was
sundered, and the Sovereignty of the Individual above the
institution was vindicated.
Page 42:
I must apologize as well for the incompleteness as for the
apparent dogmatism of any brief exposition of this subject.
I assert that it is not only possible and rationally
probable, but that it is rigidly consequential upon the right
understanding of the constitution of man, that
all government, in the sense of involuntary restraint upon
the Individual, or substantially all, must finally cease, and
along with it the whole complicated paraphernalia and
trumpery of Kings, Emperors, Presidents, Legislatures,
and Judiciary. I assert that the indicia of this result
abound in existing society, and that it is the instinctive
or intelligent perception of that fact by those who have
not bargained for so much, which gives origin and vital
energy to the re-action in church and state and social life.
I assert that the distance is less to-day forward from the
theory and practice of Government as it is in these
United States, to the total abrogation of all Government
above that of the Individual, than it is backward to the
theory and practice of Government as Government now
is in the despotic countries of the old world.
The reader will thus see that Abolition contemplates
the total overthrow of the Family and all other existing
social, moral, religious and governing institutions. We
quote Mr. Andrews because he is 'longo intervallo,' the
ablest Abolition Philosopher. Many volumes would be
needed to display and expose the opinions of all the
votaries of the New Philosophy. But every man who
sets to work honestly to discover truth, will find at
every step, that we have neither distorted nor
exaggerated. The Family is threatened, and all men
North or South who love and revere it, should be up
and a doing.
the almost universal practice of mankind - they turn
round and attempt to bolster up the cause of negro
slavery by these very exploded authorities. If we mean
not to repudiate all divine, and almost all human
authority in favor of slavery, we must vindicate that
institution in the abstract.
To insist that a status of society, which has been
almost universal, and which is expressly and
continually justified by Holy Writ, is its natural,
normal, and necessary status, under the ordinary
circumstances, is on its face a plausible and probable
proposition. To insist on less, is to yield our cause, and
to give up our religion; for if white slavery be morally
wrong, be a violation of natural rights, the Bible cannot
be true. Human and divine authority do seem in the
general to concur, in establishing the expediency of
having masters and slaves of different races. The
nominal servitude of the Jews to each other, in its
temporary character, and no doubt in its mild
character, more nearly resembled our wardship and
apprenticeship, than ordinary domestic slavery. In very
many nations of antiquity, and in some of modern
times, the law has permitted the native citizens to
become slaves to each other. But few take advantage
of such laws; and the infrequency of the practice,
establishes the general truth that master and slave
should be of different national descent. In some
respects, the wider the difference the better, as the
slave will feel less mortified by his position. In other
respects, it may be that too wide a difference hardens
the hearts and brutalizes the feelings of both master
and slave. The civilized man hates the savage, and the
savage returns the hatred with interest.. Hence, West
India slavery, of newly caught negroes, is not a very
humane, affectionate or civilizing institution. Virginia
negroes have become moral and intelligent. They love
their master and his family, and the attachment is
reciprocated. Still, we like the idle, but intelligent
house-servants, better than the hard-used, but stupid
outhands; and we like the mulatto better than the
negro; yet the negro is generally more affectionate,
contented and faithful.
The world at large looks on negro slavery as much
the worst form of slavery; because it is only
acquainted with West India slavery. Abolition never
arose till negro slavery was instituted; and now
abolition is only directed against negro slavery. There
is no philanthropic crusade attempting to set free the
white slaves of Eastern Europe and of Asia. The world,
then, is prepared for the defence of slavery in the
abstract - it is prejudiced only against negro slavery.
These prejudices were in their origin well founded. The
Slave Trade, the horrors of the Middle Passage, and
West India slavery, were enough to rouse the most
torpid philanthropy.
But our Southern slavery has become a benign and
protective institution, and our negroes are confessedly
better off than any free laboring population in the
world.
How can we contend that white slavery is wrong,
whilst all the great body of free laborers are starving;
and slaves, white or black, throughout the world, are
enjoying comfort?
We write in the cause of Truth and Humanity, and
will not play the advocate for master or for slave.
The aversion to negroes, the antipathy of race, is
much greater at the North than at the South; and it is
very probable that this antipathy to the person of the
negro, is confounded with or generates hatred of the
institution with which he is usually connected. Hatred
to slavery is very generally little more than hatred of
negroes.
There is one strong argument in favor of negro slavery
over all other slavery: that he, being unfitted for the
mechanic arts, for trade, and all skillful pursuits, leaves
those pursuits to be carried on by the whites; and does
not bring all industry into disrepute, as in Greece and
Rome, where the slaves were not only the artists and
mechanics, but also the merchants.
Whilst, as a general and abstract question, negro
slavery has no other claims over other forms of
slavery, except that from inferiority, or rather
peculiarity, of race, almost all negroes require masters,
whilst only the children, the women, the very weak,
poor, and ignorant, &c., among the whites, need
some protective and governing relation of this kind;
yet as a subject of temporary, but worldwide
importance, negro slavery has become the most
necessary of all human institutions.
The African slave trade to America commenced
three centuries and a half since. By the time of the
American Revolution, the supply of slaves had
exceeded the demand for slave labor, and the slave
holders, to get rid of a burden, and to prevent the
increase of a nuisance, became violent opponents of
the slave trade, and many of them abolitionists. New
England, Bristol, and Liverpool, who reaped the profits
of the trade, without suffering from the nuisance, stood
out for a long time against its abolition. Finally, laws
and treaties were made, and fleets fitted out to abolish
it; and after a while, the slaves of most of South
America, of the West Indies, and of Mexico were
liberated. In the meantime, cotton, rice, sugar, coffee,
tobacco, and other products of slave labor, came into
universal use as necessaries of life. The population of
Western Europe, sustained and stimulated by those
products, was trebled, and that of the North increased
ten fold. The products of slave labor became scarce
and dear, and famines frequent. Now, it is obvious that
to emancipate all the negroes would be to
starve Western Europe and our North. Not to extend
and increase negro slavery, pari passu, with the
extension and multiplication of free society, will
produce much suffering. If all South America, Mexico,
the West Indies, and our Union south of Mason and
Dixon's line, of the Ohio and Missouri, were
slaveholding, slave products would be abundant and
cheap in free society; and their market for their
merchandise, manufactures, commerce, &c., illimitable.
Free white laborers might live in comfort and luxury on
light work, but for the exacting and greedy landlords,
bosses and other capitalists.
We must confess, that overstock the world as you
will with comforts and with luxuries, we do not see how
to make capital relax its monopoly - how to do aught
but tantalize the hireling. Capital, irresponsible capital,
begets, and ever will beget, the "immedicabile vulnus"
of so-called Free Society. It invades every recess of
domestic life, infects its food, its clothing, its drink, its
very atmosphere, and pursues the hireling, from the
hovel to the poor-house, the prison and the grave. Do
what he will, go where he will, capital pursues and
persecutes him. "Hæret lateri lethalis arundo!"
Capital supports and protects the domestic slave;
taxes, oppresses and persecutes the free laborer.
It is pleasing, however, to turn from the world of
political economy, in which "might makes right," and
strength of mind and of body are employed to oppress
and exact from the weak, to the other and better, and
far more numerous world, in which weakness rules,
clad in the armor of affection and benevolence. It is
delightful to retire from the outer world, with its
competitions, rivalries, envyings, jealousies, and
selfish war of the wits, to the bosom of the family,
where the only tyrant is the infant - the greatest slave
the master of the house hold. You feel at once that you
have exchanged the keen air of selfishness, for the mild
atmosphere of benevolence. Each one prefers the good
of others to his own, and finds most happiness in
sacrificing selfish pleasures, and ministering to others'
enjoyments. The wife, the husband, the parent, the
child, the son, the brother and the sister,
usually act towards each other on scriptural
principles The infant, in its capricious dominion over
mother, father, brothers and sisters, exhibits, in
strongest colors, the "strength of weakness," the
power of affection. The wife and daughters are more
carefully attended by the father, than the sons,
because they are weaker and elicit more of his
affection.
The dependent exercise, because of their
dependence, as much control over their superiors, in
most things, as those superiors exercise over them.
Thus, and thus only, can conditions be equalized. This
constitutes practical equality of rights, enforced not
by human, but by divine law. Our hearts bleed at the
robbing of a bird's nest; and the little birds, because
they are weak, subdue our strength and command our
care. We love and cherish the rose, and sympathize
with the lily, which some wanton boy has bruised and
broken. Our faithful dog shares our affections, and we
will risk our lives to redress injustice done him.
Man is not all selfish. "Might does not always make
right." Within the family circle, the law of love
prevails, not that of selfishness.
But, besides wife and children, brothers and sisters,
dogs, horses, birds and flowers - slaves, also, belong
to the family circle. Does their common humanity,
their abject weakness and dependence, their great
value, their ministering to our wants in
childhood, manhood, sickness old age, cut them off
from that affection which everything else in the family
elicits? No; the interests of master and slave are
bound up together, and each in his appropriate sphere
naturally endeavers to promote the happiness of the
other.
The humble and obedient slave exercises more or
less control over the most brutal and hard-hearted
master. It is an invariable law of nature, that weakness
and dependence are elements of strength, and
generally sufficiently limit that universal despotism,
observable throughout human and animal nature.
The moral and physical world is but a series of
subordinations, and the more perfect the
subordination, the greater the harmony and the
happiness. Inferior and superior act and re-act on each
other through agencies and media too delicate and
subtle for human apprehensions; yet, looking to usual
results, man should be willing to leave to God what
God only can regulate. Human law cannot beget
benevolence, affection, maternal and paternal love;
nor can it supply their places; but it may, by breaking
up the ordinary relations of human beings, stop and
disturb the current of these finer feelings of our
nature. It may abolish slavery; but it can never create
between the capitalist and the laborer, between the
employer and employed, the kind and affectionate
relations that usually exist between master and slave.
family includes slaves, the aggregate use of money is greatly
restricted. This furnishes us with another argument to prove
that Christian morality is practicable, to a great extent, in
slave society - impracticable in free society.
The Socialists derive this idea of dispensing with or
restricting the use of money, from Sparta and other ancient
States; and to the same sources may be traced almost all
their schemes of social improvement. Plato, in his
philosophy, borrowed from those sources, and subsequent
Socialists have borrowed from him. We annex an interesting
article on this subject of money from Sir Thomas Moore's
Utopia:
divided that among themselves, with which all the rest might
have been well supplied, are far from that happiness that is
enjoyed by the Utopians; for the use as well as the desire of
money being extinguished, there is much anxiety and great
occasion of mischief cut off with it. And who does not see
that frauds, thefts, robberies, quarrels, tumults, contentions,
seditions, murders, treacheries and witchcrafts, that are
indeed rather punished than restricted by the severities of
the law, would fall off, if money were not any more valued
by the world. Their fears, solicitudes, cares, labors and
watchings would all perish in the same moment that the
value of money did sink."
In calling-attention, North and South, to opinions
openly and actively promulgated by such
distinguished men, which opinions are at war with all
existing institutions, we are rendering equal service to
all sections of our common country.
Mr. Smith says:
"Why should not this monopoly be broken up?
Because, says the objector, vested rights forbid it. But
there can be no vested rights against original and
natural rights. No claim of a part of the human family
to the whole earth can be valid against the claim of the
whole human family to it. No passing of papers or
parchments in former generations can foreclose the
rights of the present generation. No bargains and no
conventional titles
can avail in justice against the great title-deeds, by
which Nature grants and conveys herself to each
generation, as it comes upon the earth; and by which
she makes the living (simply because they are the
living, and not at all because of their relation to the
dead) the equal owners of her soil and seas, her light
and air. No arrangements, by which the six thousand,
who have monopolized the lands of Ireland, should
be allowed to overcome the title of the six millions to
it. If the natural and inherent right of the whole is not
paramount to that, which the fractions claim to have
acquired, then are the six millions born into the world
trespassers; and then is the Creator chargeable with
a lack of wisdom and goodness If it is right that the
mass of men should hold their standing-place on the
earth by mere sufferance, or upon terms dictated by
their fellows, then is it not true that God is an Impartial
Father - for then it is not true that he has given the
earth to all his children, but only to a select."
We, too, think Free Society a very bad thing, and a
decided failure, but not half so bad as Mr. Smith
paints it. There is a poor-house system in Ireland,
which, to some extent, recognizes the doctrine that
all men are entitled to live on the earth, and be
supported from it. In practice, the system does not
always work well; yet we are confident it works much
better for all parties, than would Mr. Smith's plan of
agrarianism.
But slavery does, in practice as well as in theory,
acknowledge and enforce the right of all to be
comfortably supported from the soil. There was, we
repeat, no pauperism in Europe till feudal slavery was
abolished.
It will be strange, indeed, if the voters in New York, a
majority of whom own no land, do not take Mr. Smith
at his word, and assert their superior claim, under his
Higher Law and "Fundamental Principles," to all the
land. 'Tis a concise and ingenious syllogism, to this
effect: "The earth belongs equally to all mankind,
under the Higher Law, or Law of God, which is superior
to all human laws; therefore, the lackland majority have
a better right to the soil than the present proprietors,
whose title is derived from mere human law."
It never did occur to us, that the paupers had the
best right to all the farms, until we saw this new
application of the Higher Law. But 'tis clear as
noon-day, if you grant the Higher Law, as expounded
by Mr. Seward; and we expect soon to hear that they
are bringing their titles into court. Anti-rentism looked
this way, and anti-rentism chose its own Governor
and Judges.
But Mr. Garrison outbids Mr. Smith all hollow for
the pauper vote. He promises not only to every one
his "vine and fig-tree," but a vine and fig-tree that will
bear fruit without culture. He is going to get up a
terrestrial paradise, in which there will be no jails, no
taxes, no labor, no want,
no sickness, no pain, no government - in fact, no
anything. But he shall speak for himself. We find the
following in the Liberator of 1st August:
"Indeed, properly speaking, there is but one
government, and that is not human, but divine; there
is but one law, and that is 'the Higher Law;' there is but
one ruler, and that one is God, 'in whom we live and
move, and have our being.' What is called human
government is usurpation, imposture, demagoguism,
peculation, swindling, and tyranny, more or less,
according to circumstances, and to the intellectual and
moral condition of the people. Unquestionably, every
existing government on earth is to be overthrown by
the growth of mind and moral regeneration of the
masses. Absolutism, limited monarchy,
democracy - all are sustained by the sword; all are
based upon the doctrine, that 'Might makes right;' all
are intrinsically inhuman, selfish, clannish, and
opposed to a recognition of the brotherhood of man.
They are to liberty, what whiskey, brandy and gin are
to temperance. They belong to the 'Kingdoms of this
World,' and in due time are to be destroyed by the
Brightness of the coming of Him, 'whose right it is to
reign;' and by the erection of a Kingdom which cannot
be shaken. They are not for the people, but make the
people their prey; they are hostile to all progress;
they resist to the utmost all radical changes. All
history shows that Liberty, Humanity, Justice and
Right have ever been in conflict with existing
governments, no matter what their theory or form."
Mr. Greely's Phalansteries, Mr. Andrews' Free
Love, Mr. Goodell's Millenium, and Mr. Smith's
Agrarianism, all pale before this Kingdom of Mr.
Garrison's. He is King of the Abolitionists, Great
Anarch of the North.
We cannot reconcile this millennial doctrine of Mr.
Garrison's with another doctrine, which we have
seen imputed to him in the Richmond Examiner,
to wit, that there is no God, because no beneficent
Creator would have so constituted mankind as to
have made slavery almost universal. Now, assume, as
he does, that slavery is a cruel, sinful and wicked
institution, destructive alike of human happiness and
well-being, and his conclusion is irresistible . To be
consistent, all anti-slavery men should be atheists.
Ere long, we suspect, the consistency will equal their
folly and profanity.
With us, who think slavery a benevolent institution,
equally necessary to protect the weak, and to
govern the wicked and the ignorant, its prevalence is
part of that order and adaptation of the universe that
"lifts the soul from Nature up to Nature's God."
Socialists, all lead to No-Government and Free Love.
'Tis probable they foresaw and intended this result, but
did not suggest or propose it to a world then too
wicked and unenlightened to appreciate its beatific
purity and loveliness. The materials, as well as the
proceedings of the infidel, woman's rights, negro's
rights, free-every thing and anti-every school, headed
and conducted in Boston, by Garrison, Parker, Phillips,
and -their associate women and negroes, show that
they too are busy with "assiduous wedges" in
loosening the whole frame of society, and preparing for
the glorious advent of Free Love and No-Government.
All the Infidel and Abolition papers in the North betray
a similar tendency. The Abolitionists of New York,
headed by Gerrit Smith and Wm. Goodell, are engaged
in precisely the same projects, but being Christians,
would dignify Free Love and No-Government with
the appellation of a Millenium. Probably half the
Abolitionists at the North expect a great social
revolution soon to occur by the advent of the
Millenium. If they would patiently await that event,
instead of attempting to get it up themselves, their
delusions, however ridiculous, might at least be
innocuous. But these progressive Christian Socialists
differ not at all from the Infidel Socialists of Boston.
They are equally intent and busy in pulling down the
priesthood, and abolishing or dividing all property - seeing
that whether the denouement be Free Love or a
Millenium, the destruction of all existing human
relations and human institutions is pre-requisite to their
full fruition.
Many thousand as have been of late years the social
experiments attempting to practice community of
property, of wives, children, &c., and numerous as the
books inculcating and approving such practices, yet the
existence and growth of Mormonism is of itself stronger
evidence than all other of the tendency of modern free
society towards No-Government and Free Love. In
the name of polygamy, it has practically removed all
restraints to the intercourse of sexes, and broken up
the Family. It promises, too, a qualified community of
property and a fraternal-association of labor. It beats
up monthly thousands of recruits from free society in
Europe and America, but makes not one convert in
the slaveholding South. Slavery is satisfied and
conservative. Abolition, finding that all existing legal,
religious, social and governmental institutions restrict
liberty and occasion a quasi slavery, is resolved not to
stop short of the subversion of all those institutions,
and the inauguration of Free Love and No-Government.
The only cure for all this is for free society sternly to
recognize slavery as right in principle, and necessary in
practice, with more or less of modification, to the very
existence of government, of property, of religion, and of
social existence.
We shall not attempt to reconcile the doctrines of the
Socialists, which propose to remove all legal restraints,
with their denunciations of Political Economy. Let Alone
is the essence of Political Economy and the whole creed
of most of the Socialists. The Political Economists, Let
Alone, for a fair fight, for universal rivalry, antagonism,
competition and cannibalism. They say, the eating up
the weaker members of society, the killing them out by
capital and competition, will improve the breed of men
and benefit society. They foresee the consequences of
their doctrine, and are consistent. Hobbes saw men
devouring one another, under their system, two
hundred years ago, and we all see them similarly
engaged now. The Socialists promise that when society
is wholy disintegrated and dissolved, by inculcating
good principles and "singing fraternity over it," all
men will co-operate, love, and help one another.
They place men in positions of equality, rivalry, and
antagonism, which must result in extreme selfishness
of conduct, and yet propose this system as a cure for
selfishness. To us their reasonings seem absurd.
Yet the doctrines so prevalent with Abolitionists
and Socialists, of Free Love and Free
Lands, Free Churches, Free Women and Free
Negroes - of No-Marriage, No-Religion, No-Private
Property, No-Law and No-Government, are legitimate
deductions, if not obvious corollaries from the leading
and distinctive axiom of political economy - Laissez
Faire, or let alone.
All the leading Socialists and Abolitionists of the
North, we think, agree with Fanny Wright, that the
gradual changes which have taken place in social
organization from domestic slavery to praedial serfdom
and thence to the present system of free and
competitive society, have been mere transitive states,
each placing the laborer in a worse condition than that
of absolute slavery, yet valuable as preparing the way
for a new and more perfect social state. They value the
present state of society the more highly because it is
intolerable, and must the sooner usher in a Millenium or
Utopia.
policy, and are most sensibly selfish when they seem
most unselfish. Especially, however, is it true with
slaves and masters, that to "do as they would be done
by" is mutually beneficial. Good treatment and proper
discipline renders the slave happier, healthier, more
valuable, grateful, and contented. Obedience, industry
and loyalty on the part of the slave, increases the
master's ability and disposition to protect and take care
of him. The interests of all the members of a natural
family, slaves included, are identical. Selfishness finds
no place, because nature, common feelings and
self-interest dictate to all that it is their true interest
"to love their neighbor as themselves," and "to do as they
would be done by," - at least, within the precincts of
the family. To throw off into the world wife, children,
and slaves, would injure, not benefit them. To neglect
to punish children or slaves when they deserved it,
would not be to do as we would be done by. Such
punishment is generally the highest reach of
self-abnegation and self-control. "'Tis easy and agreeable
to be indulgent and remiss - hard to exact and enforce
duty. Severe disciplinarians are the best officers,
teachers, parents, and masters, and most revered and
loved by their subordinates. They sacrifice their time
and their feelings to duty, and for the ultimate good of
others. Easy, lax, indulgent men are generally selfish
and sensual, and justly forfeit the respect and affection
of those whom they neglect to punish,
because to do so would disturb their Epicurean repose.
Christian morality is neither difficult nor unnatural
where dependent, family, and slave relations exist, and
Christian morality was preached and only intended for
such.
The whole moralé of free society is, "Every man,
woman and child for himself and herself." Slavery
in every form must be abolished. Wives must have
distinct, separate, and therefore antagonistic and
conflicting interests from their husbands, and children
must as soon as possible be remitted to the rights of
manhood. Is it not passing strange, wonderful, that
such men as Channing and Wayland did not see that
their world of universal liberty was a world of universal
selfishness, discord, competition, rivalry, and war of the
wits. Hobbes did see it, and supposing there was no
other world, said "a state of nature was a state of war."
But the family, including slaves, which the
Abolitionists would destroy, has been almost universal,
and is therefore natural. Christian morality is the natural
morality in slave society, and slave society is the only
natural society. Such society as that of the early
Patriarchs of Judea, under Moses and Joshua, and as
that of the South, would never beget a sceptic, a
Hobbes, a Wayland, nor a Channing. In such society it
is natural for men to love one another. The ordinary
relations of men are not competitive and antagonistic as
in free-society; and selfishness is not general, but
exceptionable. Duty to self is the
first of duties: free society makes it the only duty. Man
is not naturally selfish or bad, for he is naturally social.
Free society dissociates him, and makes him bad and
selfish from necessity.
It is said in Scripture, that it is harder for a rich man to
enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass
through the eye of a needle. We are no theologian; but
do know from history and observation that wealthy men
who are sincere and devout Christians in free society,
feel at a loss what to do with their wealth, so as not to
make it an instrument of oppression and wrong. Capital
and skill are powers exercised almost always to oppress
labor. If you endow colleges, you rear up cunning,
voracious exploitators to devour the poor. If you give it
to tradesmen or land owners, 'tis still an additional
instrument, always employed to oppress laborers. If you
give it to the really needy, you too often encourage
idleness, and increase the burdens of the working poor
who support every body. We cannot possibly see but
one safe way to invest wealth, and that is to buy slaves
with it, whose conduct you can control, and be sure
that your charity is not misapplied, and mischievous.
Is there any other safe way of investing wealth, or
bestowing charity? We regret that delicacy restrains
us from putting the question to a celebrated wealthy
philanthropist of the North, who is candid, bold,
experienced, and an Abolitionist to boot.
Now, at first view it elevates those whites; for it
makes them not the bottom of society, as at the
North - not the menials, the hired day laborer, the
work scavengers and scullions - but privileged
citizens, like Greek and Roman citizens, with a
numerous class far beneath them. In slave society,
one white man does not lord it over another; for all are
equal in privilege, if not in wealth; and the poorest
would not become a menial - hold your horse and then
extend his hand or his hat for a gratuity, were you to
proffer him the wealth of the Indies. The menial, the
exposed and laborious, and the disgraceful
occupations, are all filled by slaves. But filled they
must be by some one, and in free society, half of its
members are employed in occupations that are not
considered or treated as respectable. Our slaves till
the land, do the coarse and hard labor on our roads
and canals, sweep our
streets, cook our food, brush our boots, wait on our
tables, hold our horses, do all hard work, and fill all
menial offices. Your freemen at the North do the same
work and fill the same offices. The only difference is, we
love our slaves, and we are ready to defend, assist and
protect them; you hate and fear your white servants,
and never fail, as a moral duty, to screw down their
wages to the lowest, and to starve their families, if
possible, as evidence of your thrift, economy and
management - the only English and Yankee virtues.
In free society, miscalled freemen fulfill all the offices
of slaves for less wages than slaves, and are infinitely
less liked and cared for by their superiors than slaves.
Does this elevate them and render them happy?
The trades, the professions, the occupations that
pay well, and whose work is light, is reserved for
freemen in slave society. Does this depress them?
The doctor, the lawyer, the mechanic, the dentist, the
merchant, the overseer, every trade and profession, in
fact, live from the proceeds of slave labor at the South.
They divide the profits with the owner of the slaves. He
has nothing to pay them except what his slaves make.
But you Yankees and Englishmen more than divide the
profits - you take the lion's share. You make more
money from our cotton, and tobacco, and sugar, and
indigo, and wheat, and corn, and rice, than we make
ourselves. You live by slave labor - would perish
without it - yet you abuse it. Cut off England and New
England from the South American, East and West India
and our markets, from which to buy their food, and in
which to sell their manufactures, and they would starve
at once. You live by our slave labor. It elevates your
whites as well as ours, by confining them, in a great
degree, to skillful, well-paying, light and intellectual
employments - and it feeds and clothes them. Abolish
slavery, and you will suffer vastly more than we,
because we have all the lands of the South, and can
command labor as you do, and a genial soil and climate,
that require less labor. But while in the absence of
slavery, we could support ourselves, we should cease
to support you. We would neither send you food and
clothing, nor buy your worse than useless notions.
price he can -ill afford. He pays for the water which
he drinks, because it has ceased to be common
property. He is not free, because he has no where
that he may rightfully lay his head. Private property
has monopolized the earth, and destroyed both his
liberty and equality. He has no security for his life,
for he cannot live without employment and adequate
wages, and none are bound to employ him. If the
earth were in common, he could always enjoy not
only air and water, but by his industry might earn the
means of subsistence. His situation is theoretically
and practically desperate and intolerable. Were he
a slave, he would enjoy in fact as well as in legal
fiction, all necessary and essential rights. Pure air
and water, a house, sufficient food, fire, and clothing,
would be his at all times. Slavery is a form of
communism, and as the-Abolitionists and Socialists
have resolved to adopt a new social system, we
recommend it to their consideration. The manner in
which the change shall be made from the present form
of society to that system of communism which we
propose is very simple. Negro slaves are now worth
seven hundred dollars a-head. As whites work harder,
they are worth about a thousand. Make the man who
owns a thousand dollars of capital the guardian (the
term master is objectionable) of one white pauper of
average value; give the man who
is worth ten thousand dollars ten paupers, and the
millionaire a thousand. This would be an act of
simple mercy and justice; for the capitalists now live
entirely by the proceeds of poor men's labor, which
capital enables them to command; and they command
and enjoy it in almost the exact proportions which we
have designated. Thus, a family of poor laborers, men,
women and children, ten in number, can support
themselves, and make about six hundred dollars, for
their employer, which is the interest on ten thousand.
They would work no harder than they do now, would
be under no greater necessity to work, would be
relieved of most of the cares of life, and let into the
enjoyment of all valuable and necessary rights. What
would they lose in liberty and equality? Just nothing.
Having more rights, they would have more liberty than
now, and approach nearer to equality. It might be, that
their security and exemption from care would render
their situation preferable to that of their employers. We
suspect it would be easier to find wards or slaves than
guardians or masters - for the gain would be all on the
laborer s side, and the loss all on that of the capitalist.
Set your miscalled free laborers actually free, by
giving them enough property or capital to live on, and
then call on us at the South to free our negroes.
At present, you Abolitionists know our negro slaves
are much the freer of the two; and it would be a great
advance towards freeing your laborers, to give them
guardians, bound, like our masters, to take care of them,
and entitled, in consideration thereof, to the proceeds
of their labor.
law should compel them to do so; for that is the only
feasible system of agrarianism, the only practicable
way of letting in all men to a sufficient, if not equal,
enjoyment of terra matre. Here is his refutation of
himself, and confirmation of our theory, which he
thinks he is upsetting. We never take up an abolition
paper without finding doctrine like those of the Era,
and only adduce it as a specimen:
"Under despotic and corrupt governments, which
oppress the people with taxes, to support extravagant
misrule and unnecessary war - which debauch them by
evil example of those in high places, and discourage
education or render it impossible - the condition of the
poor and nominally free becomes truly deplorable. But
it is not Freedom which is their undoing - it is rather
the lack of it. It is their subjection, through ignorance,
to bad rulers, which keeps them in poverty. We know
that the claim laid by capital to the lion's share of profit
is itself, under any circumstances, a great obstruction to
the progress of the masses; but we believe that even that
obstacle will one day be removed - that problem in
political science be solved by civilization and Christianity.
We believe that the human intellect will never, with the
light of the Gospel to guide and inspire its efforts,
surrender to-the cold and heartless reign of capital over
labor. But, at any rate, one thing is certain, under the
worst form of government or the best, namely: when
Freedom becomes a burden and a curse to the poor,
Slavery - that is to say, the enslavement of the mass of
laborers, with responsibility on the part of the master for
their support - is no longer possible. When freemen are
unable to support themselves, among all the diversified
employments of free societies, it would he impossible for
them to find masters willing to take the responsibility.
The masses in Europe, in fact, owe their liberty to the
excessive supply of slave labor, which, when it becomes
a burden to the land, was cast aside as worthless. Who
believes that Irish landlords would take the responsibility
of supporting the peasantry, on the condition of their
becoming slaves? In fact, is it not notorious that they
help them to emigrate to America, and often pull down
their cabins and huts, in order to drive them off?"
In further proof of the agrarian doctrines of the
Abolitionists, we add an article from the Northern
Christian Advocate, a clever Methodist paper, edited
in the State of New York:
"FACTORY OPERATIVES. - There is a class of laborers,
consisting of men, women and children, whom we never
contemplate but with regret - we see them, at least, in
imagination, subsiding, in spite of all their care, into utter
dependence and poverty. Hence, we never look upon a
factory or large manufacturing establishment with unmingled
pleasure. The men and women, who ply its machinery,
are too apt to become identified with such establishments
in an improper degree. This process of assimilation and
identification goes on slowly, but surely, till at last the
individual and the factory are so blended
into one, that a separate existence is impossible. One or
two generations are required to bring about this state of
things. Pecuniary dependence, ignorance of other
employments, physical malformation, and the general
helplessness of a mere factory population, are not the
work of a day. Individuals cannot be detached from
other pursuits at once - cannot have manufacturing
knowledge and no other knowledge until they have had
time to drift away from other occupations. But however
retarded the effect, it is sure to follow, and consequently
every large mechanical establishment must be considered
as having certain malign tendencies, which are to be
carefully guarded against.
"The causes of the evil under consideration are very
obvious, as is also their appropriate remedy. We must set
down as the first and principal cause of injury, the fact
that the capital which sustains mechanical business is not
under the control of the operatives. The mills machines
may stop at any hour in spite of the wants or wishes of the
employees. Wages may be put down, little or much, with
or without notice. Operatives are not consulted in such cases.
The motive may be good bad - it may be to guard against
bankruptcy, or to amass wealth from the sinews of a
toiling, dependent race. But, whatever the motive and the
decision, the operative is helpless - he can control neither
the one nor the other. It is his to labor; others are charged
with the regulation of prices, and the only check in his
power is the precarious one of a strike. Strikes in business
are like insurrections in civil governments - a last, desperate
remedy, and as often fatal to the sufferer as protective of his
interests. The same is true of the farmer who does not own
the soil on which he labors, but is compelled to make terms
with a landlord. Hence, the well known insurmountable evils
of agricultural tenantry. In Europe, it has produced serfdom
and feudalism, besides a good deal of servitude and
degradation concealed under the mild name of peasant. It
matters not what the occupation may be, as soon as the
laborer becomes thoroughly dependent, and feels that
dependence, the system does him an incalculable injury. It is
for this reason that large landholders always deteriorate the
population, and society becomes worthless just in proportion
as the means of independent existence pass from the hands of
the many to the few. This difficulty is, and must be forever in
the way of conducting manufacturing establishments on the
present plan. Perhaps some means of diffusing capital among
operatives, or, what is the same, of giving the laborer
reasonable securities, may yet be discovered, but the change
would require to be radical. The monopoly of capital, is so
nearly like the monopoly of land, that we may readily see no
partial measures can ever affect a cure."
described are little felt at the South, men here would
as soon think of entering the lion's cage, as going into
one of their incestuous establishments. Mormonism
is only a monster development of the isms. They are
all essentially alike, and that the most successful,
because, so far, it has been socialism - plus the
overseer. The mantle of Joe Smith descended on
Brigham Young, and if he transmit to a true prophet,
there is no telling how long the thing may work.
Mormonism had its birth in Western New York, that
land fertile of isms - where also arose Spiritual
Rappings and Oneida Perfectionism - where Shakers,
and Millenarians, and Millerites abound, and all
heresies do most flourish. Mormonism now is daily
gathering thousands of recruits from free society in
Europe, Asia, Africa, and our North, and not one from
the South. It has no religion, but in place of it, a
sensual moral code, that shocks the common sense of
propriety. But it holds property somewhat in common,
draws men together in closer and more fraternal
relations, and promises (probably falsely) a safe retreat
and refuge from the isolated and inimical relations, the
killing competition and exploitation, of free society. All
the other isms do the same - but mal-administration,
or the want of a master, soon explodes them. We saw
last year an advertisement under the hammer, of the
last of fourteen phalansteries, established at the North
on the Greely-Fourierite
plan. The Shakers do better; but Mr. S. P. Andrews,
who is an expert, informs us that they, like the
Mormons, have a despotic head. Socialism, with
such despotic head, approaches very near to Southern
slavery, and gets along very well so long as the
despot lives. Mr. S. P. Andrew should enlighten the
public as to the progress of the Free Love villages of
Trialville, in Ohio, Modern Zion, on Long Island, &c.
"Self-elected despotism" is his theory of the perfection
of society. Has any Cromwell, or Napoleon, or Joe
Smith, seized the sceptre in those delightful villages,
which we hope will soon inspire the pen of some
Northern Bocaccio. Human opinion advances in
concentric circles. Abolition swallows up the little
isms, and Socialism swallows up Abolition. Socialism
long since attained the point of the circle most distant
from slavery, and is now rapidly coming round to the
point whence it started - that is, to slavery. Mr.
Andrews, who is no humbug, (except in so far as any
philosopher is a humbug,) Mr. Andrews, who is
probably the foremost thinker in America could, if he
would, prove to the Abolitionists and Socialists, that
after a furious day's drive, like that of Toby Lumpkin
and his mother, they are just about to haul up at the
horse pond, in a few yards of the place where they
started in the morning. The Socialists, Louis Napoleon
included, are trying to establish slavery, whilst
abusing the word.
allowance of it. On the Continent, the peasantry
generally live on fruits, nuts and olives, and other
things, which our slaves do not seek as food at all,
but as mere condiments to give a relish to their meat
and bread. Agriculture is the proper pursuit of slaves,
to be superintended and directed, however, by freemen,
Its profits are inadequate to the support of separate
families of laborers, especially of white laborers in
cold climates, whose wants are greater than those of
negroes at the South. The expenses of families are
greatly lessened where slavery associates a large
number under a common head, or master, and their
labor is rendered more efficient and productive.
This is the great idea of the Socialists, and it is a
truer one than the "every-man-for-himself" doctrine
of the political economists. Free society is in great
measure fed and clothed by slave society, which it
pays for in worthless baubles, fashionable trifles, and
deleterious luxuries; - without which, slave society
would do much better. Every one should study the
census of the Union, in order to see how. dependent
the North-east is on slave labor, and how trifling are
her agricultural products.
The profits of slave farming enure chiefly to the
advantage of Western Europe and our North. Practical
men, therefore, at the North, so far from going to work
to abolish slavery, are bringing daily a larger supply of
slaves into the slave market,
than ever was brought before. Add the Coolies of Asia
and apprentices from Africa to the old negro slave
trade, and the annual supply of new slaves exceeds by
far that of any other period.
The Abolitionists will probably succeed in dissolving
the Union, in involving us in civil and fratricidal war,
and in cutting off the North from its necessary supply
of food and clothing; but they should recollect that
whilst they are engaged in this labor of love, Northern
and English merchants are rapidly extending and
increasing slavery, by opening daily new markets for
the purchase and sale of Coolies, apprentices and
Africans.
The foreign slave trade is not necessary for the
supply of the slave markets. The increase of the
present slaves, if humanely treated, would suffice to
meet that demand. But Africans and Coolies cost less
than the rearing of slaves in America, and the trade in
them, whenever carried on, induces masters to work
their old slaves to death and buy new ones from
abroad.
The foreign slave trade, especially the Cooley trade,
is the most inhuman pursuit in which man ever
engaged. Equally inhuman to the victims which it
imports, and to the old slaves, whose treatment and
condition it renders intolerably cruel. By directing
philanthropy and public opinion in a false direction,
the Abolitionists have become the most efficient
propagandists of slavery and the slave trade. And
slavery, such as it exists in pursuance of the foreign
slave trade, shocks our sense of humanity quite as
much as that of the most sensitive Abolitionists.
Since writing thus far, we met with the following in
the Charleston Mercury:
"WHEAT IN MASSACHUSETTS. The deficiency in
the production of wheat in Massachusetts alone, in
1855, for the consumption of her inhabitants, was
3,915,550 bushels; and of Indian corn, 3,420,675
bushels, (without allowing any thing for the consumption
of corn by cattle.)
"In 1850, the deficiency in the production of wheat
in all the New England States, was equal to 1,691,502
barrels of flour; and to 3,464,675 bushels of corn,
(without allowing any thing for the consumption by cattle.)
"This is 327,185 barrels more than was exported of
domestic flour from all of the United States to foreign
countries during the year ending 30th June, 1855, and
87,000 more barrels than was exported both of domestic
and foreign flour from the United States for the same
period."
We conclude, from our examination of the census,
that the grain and potatoes made in New England
would about feed her cattle, horses, hogs and
sheep - leaving none for her inhabitants. We lately
compared carefully the census of Massachusetts and
North Carolina, and found, in round numbers, that
according. to population, North Carolina produced
annually ten times as much of human food as
Massachusetts, - but that Massachusetts balanced the
account by producing annually ten times as many
paupers and criminals as North Carolina. We also
discover that the want of food in the one State and its
abundance in the other, tells on the duration of human
life. The mortality in Massachusetts is nearly double
that in North Carolina. We infer that there is ten times
as much of human happiness in North Carolina as in
Massachusetts. The census gives no account of the
infidels and the isms - of them there are none in
North Carolina, and Massachusetts may boast that
she rivals Germany, France and Western New York
in their production.
Really, it is suicidal folly in New England to talk of
disunion and setting up for herself. She does not
possess the elements of separate nationality. She is
intelligent and wealthy; but her wealth is cosmopolitan
- her poverty indigenous. Her commerce, her
manufactures, and moneyed capital, constitute her
wealth. Disunion would make these useless and
unprofitable at home, and they would be transferred
immediately to other States and Nations.
North Carolina might well set up for herself, for she
can produce all the necessaries and comforts and
luxuries of life within herself, and has Virginia
between herself and danger on the one side,
and an inaccessible sea coast on the other. But we of
Virginia, being a border State, would be badly situated
in case of disunion, and mean to cling to it as long as
honor permits. Besides, Virginia loves her nearest
sister, Pennsylvania, and cannot bear the thought of
parting company with her.
Tecum
vivere amen!
We think we can dispose of this objection to
domestic slavery in a very few words.
Man is a social and gregarious animal, and all such
animals hold property in each other. Nature imposes
upon them slavery as a law and necessity of their
existence. They live together to aid each other, and are
slaves under Mr. Garrison's higher law. Slavery arises
under the higher law, and is, and ever must be, coëval
and coëxtensive with human nature.
We will enumerate a few of its ten thousand
modifications.
The husband has a legally recognized property in his
wife's services, and may legally control, in some
measure, her personal liberty. She is his property and
his slave.
The wife has also a legally recognized property in
the husband's services. He is her property, but not her
slave.
The father has property in the services and persons
of his children till they are twenty-one years of age.
They are his property and his slaves.
Children have property, during infancy, in the
services of each parent.
Infant negroes, sick, infirm and superannuated
negroes, hold most valuable property in the services
and capital of their masters. The masters hold no
property in such slaves, because, for the time, they are
of no value.
Owners and captains of vessels own property in the
services of sailors, and may control their personal
liberty. They (the sailors) are property, and slaves also.
The services and persons, lives and liberty of
soldiers and of officers, belong to the Government;
they are, whilst in service, both property and slaves.
Every white working man, be he clerk, carpenter,
mechanic, printer, common laborer, or what else, who
contracts to serve for a term of days, months, or years,
is, for such term, the property of his employer. He is
not a slave, like the wife, child, apprentice, sailor or
soldier, because, although the employer's right to his
services be equally perfect, his remedy to enforce such
right is very different. In the one case, he may resort to
force to compel compliance; in the other, he is driven to
a suit for damages.
Again: Every capitalist holds property in his fellow
men to the extent of the profits of his capital, or income.
The only income possibly resulting from capital, is the
result of the property which capital bestows on its
owners, in the labor of other people. In our first three
chapters we attempt to explain this.
All civilized society recognizes, and, in some
measure, performs the obligation to support and
provide for all human beings, whether natives or
foreigners, who are unable to provide for themselves.
Hence poor-houses, &c.
Hence all men hold valuable property, actual or
contingent, in the services of each other.
If, Mr. Garrison, this be the only difficulty to be
adjusted between North and South, we are sure that
your little pet, Disunion, "living will linger, and
lingering will die."
When Mr. Andrews and you have quite "expelled
human nature," dissolved and disintegrated society,
and reduced mankind to separate, independent, but
conflicting monads, or human atoms - then, and not
till then, will you establish the 'sovereignty of the
individual,' and destroy the property of man in man.
Were the population of England doubled, the labor
required to support that population would be lessened,
could all labor and expenses be supported alike;
because the association and division of labor might be
rendered more perfect, and the expenses of a single
family, or single individual, might be divided among and
borne by many. The Socialists and Abolitionists
understand this. When one family has to support its
own school, its own mill, its own mechanics, its own
doctor, parson, &c., living is expensive; but where these
and other expenses are divided among many, living
becomes cheap; hence it is far less laborious to live in a
densely settled country than in a sparsely settled one, if
labor and expenses can be equally divided. The soil of
England will readily support double its
population, if its products be not wasted in luxury, in
feeding deer, and game, and horses. England has not
attained that density of population which enables men
to live by the least amount of labor. Her laboring
population has been thinned and labor rendered dearer
and scarcer, by emigration, of late years, to America,
California and Australia - yet, in the winter of 1854,
there was a general outbreak and riot of her operatives,
because a fall in prices occasioned a large number of
her factories to stop work, and turn their hands out of
employment. This happens every day in free society,
from the bankruptcy of employers, or from the glut of
markets and fall of prices. We will add, that a meeting of
the working men of New York, in the Park, asserted that
there were 50,000 working men and women, in that city,
out of employment last winter.
The competitive system (so injurious to the laboring
class) is carried out with less exception or restriction
in America than in Europe. Hence, considering the
sparseness of our population, the laboring class are
worse off in New York, Philadelphia and Boston, than
in London, Manchester or Paris. And this begets more
Socialists in the higher classes, and more mobs, riots
and trade-unions, with the laborers, than in Europe.
Finally, if it be excess of numbers, or want of liberty,
that occasions the failure of free society,
why are our Abolitionists and Socialists so hot and so
active in upsetting and re-organizing society? They
have pronounced, with entire unanimity, that free
society is intolerable, whether a country be densely or
sparsely settled.
The Abolitionists boast, that lands are dearer and
labor cheaper in free than in slave society Either
proposition contains the admission that free laborers
work more for others and less for themselves
than slaves - in effect, that they are less free than
slaves. The profits of land are what the land-owner
appropriates of the results of work of the laborer. Where
he appropriates most, and leaves the laborer least, there
lands are dearest, labor cheapest, and laborers least
free. In Europe, lands sell much higher than at the
North; hence laborers are less free in fact than at the
North. In the North they sell higher than in the South,
because the slaves consume more of the results of their
own labor than laborers at the North, and leave less
profit to the land-owner. The high price of land is,
in the general, an unerring indication of the poverty
and actual slavery of the laboring class. Its low price,
equally proves that the laborers, whether called slaves
or freemen, work more for themselves, and less for the
land-owners, than where lands are dear. In settled
countries, where all the lands are appropriated, this
theory is undeniable and irrefutable.
As this is a short chapter, we take the opportunity to
apologize and account for our discursive, immethodical
and unartistic manner.
In the first place, the character of the enemy we have
to contend with prevents anything like regular warfare.
They are divided into hundreds of little guerrilla bands
of isms, each having its peculiar partizan tactics, and we
are compelled to vary our mode of attack from regular
cannonade to bush-fighting, to suit the occasion.
Again, we practiced as a jury lawyer for twenty-five
years, and thereby acquired an inveterate habit of
cumulation and iteration, and of various argument and
illustration. But, at the same time, we learned how "to
make out our case," and to know when it is "made out."
The lawyer who observed the Unities in an argument
before a jury would be sure to lose his cause; and now
the world is our jury, who are going to bring in a verdict
against free society of "guilty."
We admire not the pellucid rivulet, that murmurs and
meanders, in cramped and artificial current, through the
park and gardens of the nobleman; but we do admire the
flooded and swollen Mississippi, whose turbid waters,
in their majestic course, sweep along upon their bosom,
with equal composure, the occupants of the hen-roost
and the poultry yard, the flocks, the herds, the crops,
the uprooted forest, and the residences of man. The
Exhaustive,
not the Artistic, is what we would aspire to. And yet,
the Exhaustive may be the highest art of argument. The
best mode, we think, of writing, is that in which facts, and
argument, and rhetoric, and wit, and sarcasm, succeed
each other with rapid iteration.
Intonuere poll, et crebris micat ignibus aether!
Again, Artistic
execution is un-English. It neither
suits their minds nor their tastes. Discursiveness and
prurient exuberancy of thought and suggestion, they
often possess, but always fail when they attempt a
literary or other work of Art. Indeed, we have a strong
suspicion that Art went out of the world about the time
the Baconian Philosophy came in.
A continuous argument, without pause or break, on
a subject profoundly metaphysical, equally fatigues the
writer and the reader. Nobody likes it, and very few read
it. "Desipere in loco" is not only a very agreeable maxim
to the author, but a very wise and prudent one.
Lastly. Like Porthos, when "we have an idea," we are
at once seized with a feverish anxiety to communicate it,
and we think it better to break in on the regular thread
of our discourse, and do so at once, than to spoil our
whole discourse by having our minds occupied with
two subjects at a time.
Another idea strikes us. As yet we hardly
aspire to the dignity of authorship. We indulge in
abandon, because, as a writer, we have no reputation to
jeopard or to lose. But, should this book take, we will
mount the antithetical stilts of auctorial dignity - write a
book as stale and dry as "the remainder biscuit after a
long voyage," and as free from originality, wit, thought
or suggestiveness, as the Queen's Speech, the
President's Message, or a debate in the United States
Senate. We do not as yet bore the world with
"respectable stupidity," because our position does not
authorize it.
We think this theory false and pernicious, and the
more so because it is plausible.
All profit-bearing possessions or capital, tend to
exonerate their owners from labor, and to throw the
labor that supports society on a part only of its
members. Now, as almost all wealth is the product of
labor, this diminution of labor diminishes wealth, or, at
least, increases poverty, by placing heavier burdens on
the laboring class.
This, however, is a very small part of the evil effects
of individual wealth. Society requires it of the rich to
live according to their income, to fare sumptuously, to
have costly dress, furniture, equip age, houses, &c.,
and to keep many servants.
Their incomes are spent in luxuries, and thousand of
laborers are taken off from the production of
necessaries to produce those luxuries, or to wait on
their owners. Thus, the burden of the support of
society, so far as the ordinary comforts and necessaries
of life are concerned, are thrown on fewer and fewer,
as private wealth and luxury increase. It requires a
thousand pauper laborers to sustain one millionaire, and
without them his capital will produce no profit. This
accounts for the great numbers and excessive poverty
of the mass in England. Half the boasted capital of
England, probably two-thirds of it, is but a mortgage of
the bones and sinews of the laborers, now and forever,
to the capitalists. The national debt, stocks of all kinds,
money at interest, and indeed all debts, represent this
sort of private wealth, which is national poverty.
Sumptuous houses, parks, and all establishments
that are costly to sustain and keep up, and do not
facilitate, but check the production of necessaries, are
also part of private wealth, and of national poverty.
Four-fifths of the private wealth of England, and half of
that of our Northeast, is a severe tax on labor, and a
constant preventive of the accumulation of national
wealth.
Private wealth at the South consists chiefly in negro
laborers, and improvements of land, that increase its
productive capacities. Fine enclosures, improved stock,
good granaries, and machines and implements for
farming, comfortable negro cabins, good orchards, &c.,
are as strictly a part of national,
as of individual wealth. Not so with the costly
private dwellings in our Northern cities. The expense of
building, of repairing, of furnishing, and of keeping
servants for their owners or tenants, is a constant
drawback from productive industry, increases the
burdens of the laboring poor, and diminishes national
wealth. The poverty-stricken fields of New England
are the necessary consequence of the luxurious
expenditure in her cities. Yet that luxury is no part
of national wealth, but a constant tax on it, whilst
improved farms constitute almost three-fourths of all
her real wealth, for they feed and clothe mankind.
This is a most interesting subject; one which we
have not mastered, or, if we had, this work on which we
are engaged is not the proper one for its full discussion
and exposition. We merely throw out a few
suggestions for the consideration of the thinking and
ingenuous. If we are right, luxury is the greatest sin
against society; economy and industry, the chiefest of
social virtues.
be the result. Captains of ships are not appointed by
the consent of the crew, and never take their vote,
even in "doubling Cape Horn." If they did, the crew
would generally vote to get drunk, and the ship
would never weather the cape. Not even in the most
democratic countries are soldiers governed by their
consent, nor is their vote taken on the eve of battle.
They have some how lost (or never had) the
"inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness;" and, whether Americans or
Russians, are forced into battle, without and often
against their consent. The ancient republics were
governed by a small class of adult male citizens, who
assumed and exercised the government, without the
consent of the governed. The South is governed just
as those ancient republics were. In the county in which
we live, there are eighteen thousand souls, and only
twelve hundred voters. But we twelve hundred, the
governors, never asked and never intend to ask the
consent o the sixteen thousand eight hundred whom
we govern. Were we to do so, we should soon
have an "organized anarchy." The governments of
Europe could not exist a week without the positive
force of standing armies.
They are all governments of force, not of consent.
Even in our North, the women, children, and free
negroes, constitute four-fifths of the population; and
they are all governed without their consent. But
they mean to correct this gross and glaring iniquity at
the North. They hold that all men, women, and negroes,
and smart children, are equals, and entitled to equal
rights. The widows and free negroes begin to vote in
some of those States, and they will have to let all colors
and sexes and ages vote soon, or give up the glorious
principles of human equality and universal
emancipation.
The experiment which they will make, we fear, is
absurd in theory, and the symptoms of approaching
anarchy and agrarianism among them, leave no doubt
that its practical operation will be no better than its
theory. Anti-rentism, "vote-myself-a-farm" ism, and all
the other isms, are but the spattering drops that precede
a social deluge.
Abolition ultimates in "Consent Government;"
Consent Government in Anarchy, Free Love,
Agrarianism, &c., &c., and "Self-elected despotism,"
winds up the play.
If the interests of the governors, or governing class,
be not conservative, they certainly will not conserve
institutions injurious to their interests. There never was
and never can be an old society, in which the immediate
interests of a majority of human souls do not conflict
with all established order, all right of property, and all
existing institutions. Immediate interest is all the mass
look to; and they would be sure to revolutionize
government, as often as the situation of the majority was
worse than that of the minority. Divide all property
to-day, and a year hence the inequalities of property
would provoke a re-division.
In the South, the interest of the governing class is
eminently conservative, and the South is fast becoming
the most conservative of nations.
Already, at the North, government vibrates and
oscillates between Radicalism and Conservatism; at
present, Radicalism or Black Republicanism is in the
ascendant.
The number of paupers is rapidly increasing; radical
and agrarian doctrines are spreading; the women and
the children, and the negroes, will soon be let in to
vote; and then they will try the experiment of "Consent
Government and Constituted Anarchy."
It is falsely said, that revolutions never go
backwards. They always go backwards, and generally
farther back than where they started. The Social
Revolution now going on at the North, must some day
go backwards. Shall it do so now, ere it has perpetrated
an infinitude of mischief, shed oceans of blood, and
occasioned endless human misery; or will the
Conservatives of the North let it run the length of its
leather, inflict all these evils, and then rectify itself by
issuing into military despotism? We think that by a kind
of alliance, offensive and defensive, with the South,
Northern Conservatism may now arrest and turn back
the tide of Radicalism
and Agrarianism. We will not presume to point out
the whole means and modus operandi. They on the field
of action will best see what is necessary to be done.
Whilst we hold that all government is a matter of
force, we yet think the governing class should be
numerous enough to understand, and so situated as to
represent fairly, all interests. The Greek and Roman
masters were thus situated; so were the old Barons of
England, and so are the white citizens of the South. If
not all masters, like Greek and Roman citizens, they all
belong to the master race, have exclusive rights and
privileges of citizenship, and an interest not to see this
right of citizenship extended, disturbed, and rendered
worthless and contemptible.
Whilst the governments of Europe are more
obviously kept alive and conducted by force than
at any other period, yet are they all, from necessity,
watchful and regardful of Public Opinion. Opinion
now rules the world, but not as expressed through
the ballot-box. Governments become more popular
as they become more forcible. A large governing
class is not apt to mistake or disregard opinion; and,
therefore, Republican institutions are best adapted
to the times. Under Monarchical forms, the governments
of Europe are daily becoming more Republican. The
fatal error committed in Western Europe is, the
wielding of government by
a class who govern, but do not represent, the masses.
Their interests and those the masses are antagonistic,
whilst those of masters and slaves are identical.
Looking to theory, to the examples of the Ancient
Republics, and to England under the Plantagenets, we
shall find that Southern institutions are far the best now
existing in the world.
We think speculations as to constructing governments
are little worth; for all government is the gradual
accretion of Nature, time and circumstances. Yet
these theories have occurred to us, and, as they are
conservative, we will suggest them. In slaveholding
countries all freemen should vote and govern, because
their interests are conservative. In free states, the
government should be in the hands of the land-owners,
who are also conservative. A system of primogeniture,
and entails of small parcels of land, might, in a great
measure, identify the interests of all; or, at least, those
who held no lands would generally be the children and
kinsmen of those who did, and be taken care of by
them. The frequent accumulation of large fortunes, and
consequent pauperism of the masses, is the greatest
evil of modern society. Would not small entails prevent
this? All cannot own lands, but as many should own
them as is consistent with good farming and advanced
civilization. The social institutions of the Jews, as
established by Moses and
Joshua, most nearly fulfill our ideas of perfect
government.
A word, at parting, to Northern Conservatives. A like
danger threatens North and South, proceeding from the
same source. Abolitionism is maturing what Political
Economy began. With inexorable sequence "Let Alone" is
made to usher in No-Government. North and South our
danger is the same, and our remedies, though differing in
degree, must in character be the same. "Let Alone" must
be repudiated, if we would have any Government. We
must, in all sections, act upon the principle that the world
is "too little governed." You of the North need not
institute negro slavery; far less reduce white men to the
state of negro slavery. But the masses require more of
protection, and the masses and philosophers equally
require more of control. Leave it to time and circumstances
to suggest the necessary legislation; but, rely upon it,
"Anarchy, plus the street constable,"
wont answer any
longer. The Vigilance Committee of California is but a
mob, rendered necessary by the inadequacy of the regular
government. It is the "vis medicatrix naturæ," vainly
attempting to discharge the office of physician. That
country is "too little governed," where the best and most
conservative citizens have to resolve themselves into
mobs and vigilance committees to protect rights which
government should, but does not, protect.
The element of force exists probably in too small a
degree in our Federal Government. It has neither
territory nor subjects. Kansas is better off; for she has
a few citizens and a large and fertile territory. She is
backing the Government out, if not whipping her.
Massachusetts, too, has nullified her laws. Utah
contemns her authority, and the Vigilance Committee
of California sets her at successful defiance. She is
an attempt at a paper consent government, without
territory or citizens. Considered and treated as a
league or treaty between separate States or Nations,
she may yet have a long and useful existence; for
then those Nations or States, seeing that she has
no means of self-enforcement, self-support, or
self-conservation, may, for their mutual interests,
combine to sustain and defend her. Heretofore, domestic
weakness and danger from foreign foes has combined
the States in sustaining the Union. Hereafter, the great
advantages of friendly and mutual intercourse, trade
and exchanges, may continue to produce a like result.
But the prospects are alarming, and it is well that all
patriots should know that the Union has little power to
sustain and perpetuate itself.
There are three kinds of force that occur to us will
sustain a government. First, "inside necessity," such
as slavery, that occasions a few to usurp power, and
to hold it forcibly, without consulting the many;
secondly, the force of foreign
pressure or aggression, which combines men and States
together for common defence; and thirdly, the inherent
force of a prescriptive or usurpative government, which
sustains itself by standing armies. Such are all the
governments of Western Europe. Not one of them could
exist forty-eight hours, but for the standing armies.
These standing armies became necessary and grew up as
slavery disappeared. The old Barons kept the Canaille,
the Proletariat, the Sans Culottes, the Nomadic Beggars,
in order, by lashing their backs and supplying their
wants. They must be fed and kept at work. Modern
society tries to effect this (but in vain) by moral suasion
and standing armies. Riots, mobs, strikes and
revolutions are daily occurring. The mass of mankind
cannot be governed by Law. More of despotic
discretion, and less of Law, is what the world wants. We
take our leave by saying, "THERE IS TOO MUCH OF
LAW AND TOO LITTLE OF GOVERNMENT IN THIS
WORLD."
Physical force, not moral suasion, governs the world.
The negro sees the driver's lash, becomes accustomed to
obedient, cheerful industry, and is not aware that the lash
is the force that impels him. The free citizen fulfills, "con
amore," his round of social, political and domestic duties,
and never dreams that the Law, with its fines and jails,
penitentiaries and halters, or Public Opinion, with its
ostracism, its mobs, and its tar and feathers, help
to keep him revolving in his orbit. Yet, remove these
physical forces, and how many good citizens would
shoot, like fiery comets, from their spheres, and disturb
society with their eccentricities and their crimes.
Government is the life of a nation, and as no one can
foresee the various future circumstances of social, any
more than of individual life, it is absurd to define on
paper, at the birth of either the nation or individual, what
they shall do and what not do. Broad construction of
constitutions is as good as no constitution, for it leaves
the nation to adapt itself to circumstances; but strict
construction will destroy any nation, for action is
necessary to national conservation, and constitution-
makers cannot foresee what action will be necessary. If
individual or social life were passed in mere passivity,
constitutions might answer. Not in a changing and
active world. Louisiana, Florida and Texas would have
been denied to the South under strict construction, and
she would have been ruined. A constitution, strictly
construed, is absolutely inconsistent with permanent
national existence.
Banquo
-
MACBETH.
The reader must have
remarked our propensity of
putting scraps of poetry at the head of our chapters, or
of interweaving them with the text. It answers as a sort
of chorus or refrain, and, when skillfully handled, has as
fine an effect as the fiddle at a feast, or the brass band
on the eve of an engagement. It nerves the author for
greater effort, and inspires the reader with resolution to
follow him in his most profound ratiocinations and
airiest speculations. We learnt it from "our Masters in
the art of war" when we carried their camp and their
whole park of artillery, (which we are now using with
such murderous effect against their own ranks.) We also
captured their camp equipage, books of military
strategy, &c. In them we found rules laid down for the
famous songs, which are so harmoniously blended with
the speeches at all Infidel and Abolition conventions,
and Women's Rights
and Free Love assemblages. They are intended to
inspire enthusiasm, confirm conviction, and to "screw
the courage to the sticking point." Besides, sometimes
they answer admirably the opposite purpose of a
sedative. Often, when Sister This One has, by her
imprudent speech, outraged decency, propriety, religion
and morality, and drawn down upon her head hisses
and cries of "Turn her out! Turn her out!" Brother That
One bursts forth in "strains of sweetest melody," and
like another Orpheus quells and quiets another hell.
Not that we intend by any means to intimate that
this musical brother would play Orpheus throughout,
and take as long and perilous a trip to rescue his sister
as Orpheus did for Eurydice. On the contrary, we
suspect in such contingency he would pray to Pluto to
double bar the gates, and bribe Cerberus to keep closer
watch. We derive this impression from the triangular
correspondence of Greeley, Andrews and James,
entitled "Love Marriage and Divorce;" and from the
actings and doings of the courts and legislature of
Massachusetts - who, from the number of the divorces
they grant, we should think could hardly find time to
send Hiss on a visit of purification to the Convents.
Now it may be, that sometimes, when we "have
gone it rather strong" (as we are very apt to do, and
offended the reader, our scraps of poetry may answer
the purpose of the Abolition songs, and
soothe and propitiate him. Besides, they afford a sort
of interlude or by-play, like that of Sancho where he
slipped off from the flying horse, Clavileno, just as he
and the Don had reached the constellation of the Goat,
and went to playing with the little goats to relieve the
giddiness of his head. I am sure, when we have, as we
often do, mounted with our reader into the highest
regions of metaphysics, that his head becomes a little
giddy, (at least ours does,) and that he is thankful for a
little poetry or a turn at play with our Abolition Goats.
"Goats, indeed!" quoth Mr. G-, "Lions, you had better
say." Well, be it lions! We are no more afraid of you
than if you were lambs; and you will no sooner dare to
attack us than you did the Knight of La Mancha when
he vainly challenged you to mortal combat.
Let not the reader suppose that we either emulate the
chivalry of the Don or the wisdom of his Squire. A
Northern clime has congealed the courage of our lions
and they are afraid of the "paper bullets of the brain;"
yet they are vastly fond of shooting them at others,
provided they are sure the shot will not be returned.
As for Sancho, we think him the wisest man we ever
read after, except Solomon. Indeed, in the world of
Fiction, all the wisdom issues from the mouths of fools
- as witness Shakspeare's Falstaff and his fools. There
is at least vraisemblance in all this; for, as in
the Real world, the philosophers (e.g. our Master in
the art of war) have monopolized all the folly, - where
so likely to find the wisdom as among the fools?
We fear our "Little Cannibals" are growing impatient,
and may be, a little jealous of our seeming
preference for our goats. They are young yet and
require nursing. But they are young Herculeses born
with teeth, and if any Abolition serpents attempt to
strangle them in the cradle, they'll be apt to get the
worst of it. The danger is, however that the
Abolitionists will steal and adopt them - for they are
vastly fond of young cannibals, and employ much of
their time in sewing and knitting and getting up
subscriptions, to send shirts and trowsers to the little
fellows away over in Africa, who as indignantly repel
them as old King Lear did when he stripped in the
storm and resolved to be his "unsophisticated self."
Now, seeing that the Abolitionists are so devoted to
the uncouth, dirty, naked little cannibals of Africa,
haven't we good reason to fear that they will run away
with and adopt ours, when they come forth neatly
dressed in black muslin and all shining with gold from
the master hands of Morris and Wynne? They will be
sure at least to captivate the hearts of the strong-minded
ladies, and if they will treat them well in infancy,
we don't know but what, if they will wait till they grow
up, we may spare them a husband or two from the
number.
Mr. Morris has promised they shall be black as
Erebus without, and white as "driven snow" within.
If they can get over the trying time of infancy - if the
critics don't smother them in the cradle, the boys will
make their own way in the world, and get a name famous
as Toussaint or Dessalines.
To be candid with the reader, we have learned lately
that the physique of a book is quite as important as its
metaphysique - the outside as the inside. Figure, size,
proportion, are all to be consulted: for books are now
used quite as much for centre table ornaments as for
reading. We have a marble one on our centre table that
answers the former purpose admirably, because nobody
can put puzzling questions about its contents. Now, we
must write the exact amount, and no more, to enable Mr.
Morris and Mr. Wynne to make our book appear
externally "comme il faut." We write this chapter in part
for that purpose. The reader would not object to a page,
or so, more or less of it, and Mr. Morris and Mr. Wynne
will know how to curtail or omit, for they are not only
masters of their own trades, but can render us valuable
assistance in ours.
We return to our Cannibals, with this single remark to
that morose and demure reader who is snarling at our
occasional levity - "You, sir, never throw off your
dignity; because you would be sure to uncover your
folly."
We warn the North, that every one of the leading
Abolitionists is agitating the negro slavery question
merely as a means to attain ulterior ends, and those
ends nearer home. They would not spend so much time
and money for the mere sake of the negro or his master,
about whom they care little. But they know that men
once fairly committed to negro slavery agitation - once
committed to the sweeping principle, "that man being a
moral agent, accountable to God for his actions, should
not have those actions controlled and directed by the
will of another," are, in effect, committed to Socialism
and Communism, to the most ultra doctrines of Garrison,
Goodell, Smith and Andrews - to no private property,
no church, no law, no government, - to free love, free
lands, free women and free churches.
There is no middle ground - not an inch of ground of
any sort, between the doctrines which we hold and
those which Mr. Garrison holds. If slavery, either white
or black, be wrong in principle or practice, then is Mr.
Garrison right - then is all human government wrong.
Socialism, not Abolition, is the real object of Black
Republicanism. The North, not the South, the true
battle-ground. Like Fanny Wright, the author of
American Socialism, the agitators of the North look
upon free society as a mere transition state to a better,
but untried, form of society. The
reader will not fully comprehend the ideas we would
convey, without reading "England the Civilizer," by
Miss Fanny Wright. It is worth reading, not only as far
the best history of the British constitution, but as the
most correct and perfect analysis and delineation of free
society - of that form of society which all Socialists
and all thinking men agree cannot stand as it is. The
Abolition school of Socialists like it because it is
intolerable - because they consider it a transition state
to a form of society without law or government. Miss
Wright has the honesty to admit, that a transition has
never taken place. No; and never will take place: be
cause the expulsion of human nature is a pre-requisite to
its occurrence.
But we solemnly warn the North, that what she calls
a transition, is what every leading Abolitionist is
moving heaven and earth to attain. This is their real
object - negro emancipation a mere gull-trap.
In the attempt to attain "transition" seas of gore
may be shed, until military despotism comes in to
restore peace and security.
We (for we are a Socialist) agree with Mr. Carlyle,
that the action of free society must be reversed. That,
instead of relaxing more and more the bonds that bind
man to man, you must screw them up more closely.
That, instead of no government, you must have more
government. And this
is eminently true in America, where from the nature of
things, as society becomes older and population more
dense, more of government will be required. To prevent
the attempt at transition, which would only usher in
revolution, you must begin to govern more vigorously.
But we will be asked, How is this to be effected? The
answer is easy. The means are at hand, and the work is
begun.
The Democratic party, purged of its radicalism and
largely recruited from the ranks of the old line Whigs,
has become eminently and actively conservative. It is
the antipodes of the Democratic party of the days of
Jefferson, in the grounds which it occupies and the
opinions which it holds, (what it professes to hold is
another thing.) Yet it has been a consistent party
throughout. Consistent, in wisely and boldly adapting
its action to the emergencies of the occasion. It is
pathological, and practices according to prevailing
symptoms. 'Tis true, it has a mighty Nosology in its
Declaration of Independence, Bills of Rights,
Constitutions, Platforms, and Preambles and
Resolutions; but, like a good physician, it watches the
state of the patient, and casts Nosology to the dogs
when the symptoms require it. When we entered the
party we were radicals, and half Abolitionists, and
found inscribed on its banner, "The world is too
much governed!" Now, we are sure the conviction
has fastened itself on the heart of every good citizen,
that "the world is too little governed."
The true and honorable distinction of the Democratic
party is, that it has but one unbending principle - "The
safety of the people is the supreme law." To this party
we think the Nation and the North may confidently
look for a happy exodus from our difficulties. It is pure,
honest, active and patriotic now, and will continue so as
long as the dark cloud of Abolition and Socialism lowers
and threatens at the North. Long and quiet possession
of power will be sure to corrupt it. It will be then time
to cast it aside. It is now able, and it alone is able, to
grapple with and strangle the treasons of the North.
"Times change, and men change with them."
Good and brave men are
proud, not ashamed, of such
changes. Let no false pride of seeming consistency
deter us from an avowal, which omitted, may trammel
and impede our action.
Our old Nosology is an effective arsenal and armory
for the most ultra Abolitionists, and the more effective,
because we have not formally repudiated it. Let "The
world is too little governed" be adopted as our motto,
inscribed upon our flag and run up to the mast-head.
NOTE - We learn that many of the old Federalists of
the North, and some of the South, are joining our ranks.
We welcome them. Their principles were wrong when they
adopted them, but (barring their consolidation doctrines) will
answer pretty well now. It was ever the misfortune of the old
Federal party and the lately deceased Whig party, to be right
at the wrong time. They were, as the doctors say, nosological
and not pathological in practice. The Whig party of England,
like the Democratic party of America, is eminently
pathological, active, observant and impressible.
Virginia,
Nov. 18, 1856. WM. LLOYD GARRISON, Esq.:
DEAR SIR - I have
observed so much fairness in the
manner in which slavery and other sociological questions
are treated in The Liberator, that it has occurred to me you
would not consider suggestions from an ultra pro-slavery
man obtrusive, and might deem them worth a place in
your columns. I shall not promise that the example of your
liberality will be followed at the South. It is a theory of mine,
that "recurrence to fundamental principles" is only treason
clothed in periphrastic phrase; and that the right of private
judgment, liberty of the press, freedom of speech, and
freedom of religion, are subordinate to these "principles," and
must not be allowed to assail them, - else there can be no
stability in government, or security of private rights. The
South thinks me heretical, but feels that I am right, and takes
care to trammel these sacred rights quite as efficiently by an
austere public opinion, as Louis Napoleon does by law or by
mere volition.
I entirely concur in a theory I heard Mr. Wendell
Phillips
* propound
in a lecture at New Haven. I shall not
attempt to give his eloquent words, for I am incapable of
doing justice to his language; but the amount of his theory
was, that governments are not formed by man, but are the
gradual accretions of time, circumstance, and human
exigencies; that they grow up like trees, and that man
may cultivate, train and aid their growth and development,
but cannot make them out and out. Now, I accept the
theory, and propose, in the first place, to deter men from
applying the axe to the root of our Southern institutions,
(that is, discussing or recurring to "fundamental principles,")
by moral suasion or monition; next, by tar and feathers,
and, that failing, by the halter. The worst institutions that
ever grew up in any country are better than the best that
philosophers or philanthropists ever devised. As for ours,
we deem them, since the days of Rome, Athens and Judea,
the crack institutions of the world.
With these preliminary remarks, I will make the following
suggestions or interrogations: -
Is not slavery to capital less tolerable than slavery to
human masters?
Where a few, as in England, Ireland and Scotland, own all
the lands, are not the mass, the common laborers,
who own no capital, and possess neither mechanical nor
professional skill, of necessity, the slaves to capital?
Was it not this slavery to capital that occasioned the great
Irish famine, and is it not this same slavery the keeps the
large majority of the laboring class in Western Europe in a
state of hereditary starvation?
In old societies, where the laborers are domestic slaves,
and exceed in number the demand for labor, would not
emancipating them subject them at once to a mastery, or
exacting despotism of capital, far more oppressive than
domestic slavery?
Did not the emancipation of European serfs, or villiens, in
all instances, injure their condition as a class?
In the event of the occurrence of such excess of domestic
slaves, would it not be more merciful to follow the Spartan
plan, and kill the surplus, than the abolition plan, which
sets them all free, to live on half allowance and to "make
free labor cheaper than slave labor," by this fierce
competition and underbidding to get employment?
Are there not fewer checks to superior wit, skill and
capital, and less of protection afforded to the weak, ignorant
and landless mass in Northern society, than in any other ever
devised by the wit of man?
Is not "laissez-faire," in English, "Every man for himself,
and devil take the hindmost," your whole theory and practice
of government?
When your society grows older, your population more
dense, and property, by your trading, speculating and
commercial habits, gets into a few hands, will not the
slavery to capital be more complete and unmitigated
than in any part of Europe, where a throne, a nobility
and established church, stand between the bosses,
bankers and landlords, and the oppressed masses?
Do not almost all well-informed men of a philosophical
turn of mind in Western Europe and our North, concur
in opinion that the whole framework of society, religious
ethical, economic, legal and political, requires radical
change?
Is not the absence of such opinion at the South, and
its prevalence in free society, conclusive proof of the
naturalness and necessity of domestic slavery?
Would not the North be willing to leave the
settlement of the slavery question in Kansas to the
public opinion of Christendom, (for it will be settled by
all Christendom, of whom not one in a hundred will be
slaveholders, ) if it were not sensible that public
opinion was about to decide in favor of negro slavery,
and, therefore, that must be forstalled by Federal
legislation?
A SOUTHERNER.
A comparison of opinions and of institutions between
North and South will lead to kinder and more pacific
relations. Hitherto, such comparisons
could not be made, because the South believed herself
wrong, weak and defenseless; and that Abolition was
but an attempt to apply the brand to the explosive
materials of her social edifice. She is now equally
confident of her justice and her strength, and believes
her social system more stable, as well as more
benevolent, equitable and natural, than that of the
North. Whilst she will never tolerate radical agitation
and demagoguical propagandism, she is ready for
philosophical argument and discussion, and for
historical and statistical comparison.
A Southerner employs the term "discussion," as
equivalent to agitation; for the South does not proscribe
the discussion of any subject, by proper persons, at
proper places, and on proper occasions. (Who are
proper persons, and what proper times and places, must
be left to a healthy, just and enlightened public opinion
to determine.) But men shall not lecture our children, in
the streets, on the beauties of infidelity; parsons shall
not preach politics from the pulpit; women shall not
crop the petticoat, mount the rostrum, and descant on
the purity of Free Love; incendiaries shall not make
speeches against the right of landholders, nor teach our
negroes the sacred doctrines of liberty and equality.
We are satisfied with our institutions, and are
not willing to submit them to the "experimentum in
vile corpus!" If the North thinks her own worthless, or
only valuable as subjects for anatomical dissection,
or chemical and phrenological experiments, she may
advance the cause of humanity, by treating her people
as philosophers do mice and hares and dead frogs. We
think her case not so desperate as to authorize such
reckless experimentation. Though her experiment has
failed, she is not yet dead. There is a way still open for
recovery.
As we are a Brother Socialist, we have a right to
prescribe for the patient; and our Consulting Brethren,
Messrs. Garrison, Greely, and others, should duly
consider the value of our opinion. Extremes meet - and
we and the leading Abolitionists differ but a
hairbreadth. We, like Carlyle, prescribe more of
government; they insist on No Government. Yet their
social institutions would make excellently conducted
Southern sugar and cotton farms, with a head to
govern them. Add a Virginia overseer to Mr. Greely's
Phalansteries, and Mr. Greely and we would have
little to quarrel about.
We have a lively expectation that when our Cannibals
make their entreé, "Our Masters in the art of War"
will greet them with applause, instead of hisses;
with a "feu de joie," or gratulatory
salute, instead of a murderous broadside. We want to
be friends with them and with all the world; and, as the
curtain is falling, we conclude with the valedictory and
invocation of the Roman actor - "Vos valete! et
plaudite!"
THE END.
Return to Menu Page for Cannibals All! by G. Fitzhugh Return to A Digitized Library of Southern Literature, Beginnings to 1920 Home Page Return to Documenting the American South Home PageMY TRIP TO THE NORTH.
Page 146
Page 147
Page 148
Page 149
Page 150
G. F."
LETTER TO MR. HOGEBOOM.
Page 151
Page 152
Page 153
GEO. FITZHUGH.
Page 154LETTER TO MR. GARRISON.
GEO. FITZHUGH
Page 155LETTER TO MR. GREELY.
Your obedient servant,
GEO. FITZHUGH.
Page 156
Italiam,
coeto socii clamore salutant.
Page 157CHAPTER XI.
DECAY OF ENGLISH LIBERTY, AND GROWTH
OF ENGLISH POOR LAWS.
Blackstone, whose Commentaries have been, for half
a century, a common school-book, and whose opinions
on the rise, growth and full development of British
liberty, are generally received as true, as well in America
as in Europe, maintains a theory the very opposite of
that for which we are about to contend.
Page 158
Page 159
Page 160
Page 161
Page 162
Page 163
Page 164
Page 165
Page 166
Page 167
* History of the Poor Laws, p. 120.
** 11 Hen. VII.
cap. 2.
Page 168
* 22 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.
** 27 Hen. VIII. cap. 25.
*** 1 Ed. VI. cap 3.
****
3 and 4 Ed. VI. cap. 16. 14 Eliz. cap. 5. 39 Eliz. cap.
4.
Page 169
Page 170
Page 171
Page 172
Page 173
* See Lord Hale's paper at length, in "Burn's History of the
Poor Laws," p. 144.
Page 174
Page 175
Page 176CHAPTER XII.
THE FRENCH LABORERS AND
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Each of the many French revolutions was occasioned
by destitution almost amounting to famine among the
laboring classes. Each was the insurrection of labor
against capital. But until the revolution of 1848,
the revolutionists were unconscious alike of their
motives and their objects. They believed, till then,
that political changes would remedy the evils which
oppressed them. After the revolution of 1830,
philosophers and statesmen, seeing the inadequacy of
change of dynasty or of political policy, to alleviate
the distresses of the great working classes, began to
search deeper for the causes of social embarrassment.
Suddenly the discovery was made, not only in France,
but throughout Western Europe, that the disease was
social, not political. That it was owing to the too
unequal distribution of capital, and to its exploitation
of labor. The ablest minds saw, as well in England as
in France, that in transferring the reins of government
from the hands of hereditary royalty and nobility, to
those of the capitalist class, that the people had
exchanged a few masters
Page 177
Page 178
Page 179
Page 180
Page 181
Page 182
* Robert (du Var.) Hist. de la Classe Ouvriere. Dedicace
aux Travailleurs. tome. I. p. X-XI.
** Aulus Gellius. Noct. Alt. lib. XVI, c. X.
Page 183
* Hist. de la Classe Ouvrière. liv. IX. chap. VII. tome.
III. p.
100.
** Hist. de la Classe Ouv. liv. IX. chap. VII. p. 102,
tome. III. p. 102.
Page 184
* Ibid. No. XIV. chap. I. tome. IV. p. 285-6.
** Ibid. No. XIII. chap. II. tome. IV. p. 247.
***Ibid No. XII. chap. III. tome. IV. p. 50-105.
Page 185
* Vidal Repartition des Richesses. ptie. II.
chap. III.
** The Social Condition and Education of the People of
England and Europe. By Joseph Kay, Esq., M. A. chap. I,
vol. I, p.314.
Page 186
* Kay, Social Condition, &, of England
and Europe. chap.
I, vol. I, p. 317-318.
Page 187
* Kay, chap. II, vol. 1, p. 361.
Page 188
* Kay, chap. II, 2nd vol., p. 370. citing
Rev. H. Worsley's
Essay on Juvenile Depravity, p. 53.
Page 189
* Kay, chap. I, vol. I, p. 372-3.
** Kay, chap I, vol. 1, p. 395.
Page 190
* Kay, chap. I, vol. I, p. 452-3.
** Kay, chap. I, vol. I, p. 4.
*** Saisset, Sur la Philosophie et la Religion du XIX.
Siecle. p.222.
Page 191
*North British Review, No. XXIV, Art. IX, Feb. 1850. p.
290-300. Am. Ed.
** Edingb. Rev. Oct. 1849. Art. VI, p. 497-8. Engl. Ed.
*** Chateaubriand. Essays on English Literature. Paris. 1838,
cited by Kay.
Page 192
* Westminster Review, No. CXI. Art. III. Jan.
9. 1852.
** Niebuhr. Life and Letters, p. 506.
Page 193
* Niebuhr, Ibid. p. 528. See also, p.
525.
Page 194CHAPTER XIII.
THE REFORMATION - THE RIGHT OF PRIVATE
JUDGMENT.
The Reformation, like the American Revolution was
originated and conducted to successful issue by wise,
good and practical men, whose intuitive judgments
and sagacious instincts enabled them to feel their way
through the difficulties that environed them. Wise
men know that there is too much of complexity in the
tangled web of human affairs, to justify the attempt
at once to practice and philosophise, to act and to
reason. Fools and philosophers too often mar the good
works of such men, by pretending to see clearly, and
to define accurately the principles of action which
have led to those works. A Washington, a Peel, or a
Wellington, never "writes himself down an ass" by
appealing to abstract principles to justify measures
which are rendered necessary by a thousand minute
and peculiar circumstances of the hour, which common
sense and experience instinctively appreciate, but
which philosophy in vain attempts to detect or to
generalize. Common sense never attempts "to expel
nature," but suggests and carries through a
Page 195
Page 196
Page 197
Page 198
Page 199
Page 200
Page 201
Page 202
Page 203
Page 204CHAPTER XIV.
THE NOMADIC BEGGARS AND PAUPER BANDITTI OF
ENGLAND.
Under various names, such as Proletariat in France,
Lazzaroni in Italy, Leperos in Mexico, and Gypsies
throughout all Europe, free society is disturbed and
rendered insecure, by the class, a description of which
we shall draw from the British writers. We do not
hesitate to assign to the Gypsies the same origin with
the rest. They are all the outgrowth of runaway and
emancipated serfs. The time of the appearance of the
Gypsies is coeval with the universal liberation and
escape of the villeins.
Page 205
Page 206
Page 207
Page 208
Page 209
Page 210
Page 211
Page 212
Page 213
Page 214
Page 215
"I
cannot get work, and to beg I am ashamed."
Page 216
IRISH PEASANTRY
It is obvious that the insecurity of a community in which
the bulk of the population form a conspiracy against the
law, must prevent the importation of capital; must occasion
much of what is accumulated there to be exported; and
must diminish the motives and the means of accumulation.
Who will send his property to a place where he cannot rely
on its being protected? Who will voluntarily establish
himself in a country which to-morrow may be in a state of
disturbance? A state in which, to use the words of Chief
Justice Bushe, 'houses, and barns, and granaries are
leveled, crops are laid waste, pasture lands are ploughed,
plantations are torn up, meadows are thrown open to cattle,
cattle are maimed, tortured, killed; persons are visited
by parties of bandits who inflict cruel torture, mutilate
their limbs, or beat them almost to death; men who have
in any way become obnoxious to the insurgents, or opposed
their system, or
Page 217
Page 218CHAPTER XV.
"RURAL LIFE OF ENGLAND."
From "Rural Life of England," by WM. H. HOWITT,
we take the following extract:
Page 219
Page 220
Page 221
Page 222
Page 223CHAPTER XVI.
THE DISTRESSED NEEDLE-WOMEN AND HOOD'S SONG
OF THE SHIRT.
We take what follows from the January No., 1849, of
the Westminster Review - we having nothing to
remark, except as to the line from the French song,
which has taken the place of the Marseilloise as the
great National Song, we should rather say, National
Dirge. It is the maddening cry of hunger for
employment and bread, and more resembles the howl of
the wolves of the Pyrennes, as they start in quest of
prey, than the Anthem of Liberty. It truly represents,
embodies and personifies the great Socialistic
movement of the day. Whilst statesmen and philosophers
speculate, the mass agitate, organize and threaten.
Winter before last, they took possession of the
streets of New York, and levied enforced charity.
This spring, they meet in the Park and resolve, "that
there were fifty thousand men and women in vain
seeking employment during the last inclement winter.
America echoes to France, "Vivre en travaillant; ou
mourir en combatant!" 'Tis the tocsin and the
watchword of free society. 'Tis the grumbling
Page 224
Page 225THE SONG OF THE SHIRT.
With
eyelids heavy and red,
A
woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying
her needle and thread.
Stitch
- stitch - stitch!
In
poverty, hunger, and dirt;
And
still, with a voice of dolorous pitch,
She
sang the 'Song of the Shirt!'
Page 226
While
the cock is crowing aloof!
And
work - work - work!
Till
the stars shine through the roof!
It's
O! to be a slave,
Along
with the barbarous Turk,
Where
woman has never a soul to save,
If
this is Christian work!
Till
the brain begins to swim;
Work
- work - work!
Till
the eyes are heavy and dim!
Seam
and gusset and band,
Band
and gusset and seam,
Till
o'er the buttons I fall asleep,
And
sew them on in a dream!
O!
men, with mothers and wives,
It
is not linen you're wearing out!
But
human creatures' lives!
Stitch
- stitch - stitch!
In
poverty, hunger, and dirt;
Sewing
at once, with a double thread,
A shroud as well as a shirt!
That
phantom of grisly bone?
I
hardly fear his terrible shape,
It
seems so like my own!
It
seems so like my own,
Because
of the fasts I keep -
Oh,
God! that bread should be so dear,
And
flesh and blood so cheap!
Page 227
My
labor never flags;
And
what are its wages? A bed of straw,
A
crust of bread, and - rags.
That
shatter'd roof, and this naked floor,
A
table - a broken chair;
And
a wall so blank, my shadow I thank
For
sometimes falling there!
From
weary chime to chime,
Work
- work -work,
As
prisoners work for crime!
Band
and gusset and seam,
Seam
and gusset and band,
Till
the heart is sick and the brain benumb'd,
As
well as weary hand.
In
dull December light,
And
work - work - work,
When
the weather is warm and bright -
While
underneath the eaves
The
brooding swallows cling,
As
if to show me their sunny backs
And
twit me with the Spring.
Of
the cowslip and primrose sweet -
With
the sky above my head,
And
the grass beneath my feet,
For
only one short hour -
To
feel as I used to feel,
Before
I knew the woes of want
And
the walk that costs a meal!
Page 228
A
respite however brief!
No
blessed leisure for Love or Hope,
But
only time for Grief!
A
little weeping would ease my heart -
But
in their briny bed
My
tears must stop, for every drop
Hinders
needle and thread!
With
eyelids heavy and red,
A
woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying
her needle and thread -
Stitch
- stitch - stitch!
In
poverty, hunger, and dirt,
Would
that its tone could reach the rich!
She
sang this 'Song of the Shirt!' "
SLAVERY.
THE ONLY REMEDY FOR THE MISERIES OF THE ENGLISH POOR.
BY A PHILANTHROPIST.
Page 229
Page 230
Page 231
Page 232
Page 233
Page 234
Page 235
Page 236CHAPTER XVII.
THE EDINBURGH REVIEW ON SOUTHERN SLAVERY.
The Edinburgh Review well knows that the white
laborers of England receive more blows than are
inflicted on Southern slaves. In the Navy, the Army,
and the Merchant service of England, there is more of
cruelty, more physical discomfort, than on all the farms
of the South. This Review, for twenty years, has been
a grand repository of the ignorance, the crimes, and
sufferings of the workers in mines and factories, of the
agricultural laborers, of the apprentices, and, in fine,
of the whole laboring class of England. We might appeal
to its pages almost passim to establish these facts. Half
the time of Parliament is consumed in vain efforts to
alleviate the condition of the cruelly-treated and
starving poor; and much of this Review is taken up in
chronicling the humane, but fruitless action of
Parliament. No man in the South, we are sure, ever bred
slaves for sale. They are always sold reluctantly, and
generally from necessity, or as a punishment for
misconduct. The South-West has been settled in great
part by farmers from the older slave States, removing
to them with their negroes. The breaking up of families
of whites and of
Page 237
Page 238
Page 239
Page 240
Page 241
Page 242
Page 243
Page 244
Page 245
Page 246
Page 247
Page 248
Page 249
Page 250
Page 251
* It is, however, but fair to state that many
competent and
most respectable observers declare that though the facts
stated by the Commissioners may be perfectly true, yet that
the tone and spirit of the Report bears token of material
exaggeration.
Page 252
* The colliers in the east of Scotland,
however, are
excepted.
Page 253
10 Colliers' boys, - - -
53.4 " "
Difference, - - - 3. " "
10 Colliers' girls, - - - 55.6 " "
Difference, - - - 4.9 " "
60 Colliers' children, - - - - - - - - - 48. " "
Difference, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -3." "
50 Colliers' children, - - - 53. " "
Difference. - - - 6. " "
*
* It is curious to contrast this with a
similar comparison
instituted by the Factory Commissioners, and embracing upwards
of 1000 children. - (Analysis of the Evidence taken before the
Factory Commissioners, p. 9.)
Boys not in factories averaged 55.56 inches.
Boys in factories, " 55.28 "
Difference, .28!
Girls not in factories, " 54.979 "
Girls in factories, " 54.951 "
Difference, .028!! "
Page 254
Page 255
Page 256
Page 257
Page 258
Page 259
Page 260
Page 261
Page 262
Page 263
Page 264
Page 265
Page 266
Page 267
Page 268
Page 269
Page 270
Page 271
Page 272
Page 273
Page 274CHAPTER XVIII.
THE LONDON GLOBE ON WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION.
We find the following frank and explicit admission
in the Globe of 10th July, 1856:
Page 275
Page 276
Page 277
Page 278CHAPTER XIX.
PROTECTION, AND CHARITY, TO THE WEAK.
A mere verbal formula often distinguishes a truism from a
paradox. "It is the duty of society to protect the weak;"
but protection cannot be efficient without the power of
control; therefore, "It is the duty of society to enslave the
weak." And it is a duty which no organized and civilized
society ever failed to perform. Parents, husbands,
guardians, teachers, committees, &c., are but masters
under another name, whose duty it is to protect the weak,
and whose right it is to control them. The blacks in America
are both positively and relatively weak. Positively so,
because they are too improvident to lay up for the
exigencies of sickness, of the seasons, or of old age.
Relatively so, because they are wholly unequal to the
whites among whom they live, in the war of the wits and free
competition, which universal liberty begets, and political
economy encourages.
Page 279
Page 280
Page 281CHAPTER XX.
THE FAMILY.
All modern philosophy converges to a single point
- the overthrow of all government, the substitution
of the untrammelled "Sovereignty of the Individual,"
for the Sovereignty of Society, and the inauguration
of anarchy. First domestic slavery, next religious
institutions, then separate property, then political
government, and, finally, family government and
family relations, are to be swept away. This is the
distinctly avowed programme of all able abolitionists and
socialists; and towards this end the doctrines and the
practices of the weakest and most timid among them tend.
Proudhon, and the French socialists generally, avow this
purpose in France, and Stephen Pearl Andrews re-echoes
it from America. The more numerous and timid class
are represented by Mr. Greeley and the Tribune, who
would not "at once rush," like French revolutionists,
"with the explosive force of escapement, point blank to
the bull's eye of its final destiny," but would inaugurate
social conditions, that would gradually bring about that
result. Mr. Greeley does not propose to do away at
once with marriage, religion, private property, political
government and
Page 282
Page 283
Page 284
Page 285
Page 286
Page 287
Page 288
Page 289
Page 290
Page 291
Page 292
Page 293
Page 294CHAPTER XXI.
NEGRO SLAVERY.
Until the lands of America are appropriated by a few,
population becomes dense, competition among
laborers active, employment uncertain, and wages low,
the personal liberty of all the whites will continue to
be a blessing. We has have vast unsettled territories;
population may cease to increase, or increase slowly,
as in most countries, and many centuries may elapse
before the question will be practically suggested,
whether slavery to capital be preferable to slavery to
human masters. But the negro has neither energy nor
enterprise, and, even in our sparser population, finds,
with his improvident habits, that his liberty is a curse
to himself, and a greater curse to the society around
him. These considerations, and others equally obvious,
have induced the South to attempt to defend negro
slavery as an exceptional institution, admitting, nay
asserting; that slavery, in the general or in the
abstract, is morally wrong, and against common right.
With singular inconsistency, after making this
admission, which admits away the authority of the
Bible, of profane history, and of
Page 295
Page 296
Page 297
Page 298
Page 299
Page 300CHAPTER XXII.
THE STRENGTH OF WEAKNESS.
An unexplored moral world stretches out before us,
and invites our investigation; but neither our time, our
abilities, nor the character of our work will permit us to
do more than glance at its loveliness.
Page 301
Page 302
Page 303CHAPTER XXIII.
MONEY.
From the days of Plato and Lycurgus to the present
times, Social Reformers have sought to restrict or
banish the use of money. We do not doubt that its
moderate use is essential-to civilization and promotive
of human happiness and well-being - and we entertain
as little doubt, that its excessive use is the most potent
of all causes of human inequality of condition, of
excessive wealth and luxury with the few, and of great
destitution and suffering with the many, and of general
effeminacy and corruption of morals. Money is the
great weapon in free, equal, and competitive society,
which skill and capital employ in the war of the wits, to
exploitate and oppress the poor, the improvident, and
weak-minded. Its evil effects are greatly aggravated by
the credit and banking systems, and by the facilities of
intercommunication and locomotion which the world
now possesses. Every bargain or exchange is more or
less a hostile encounter of wits. Money vastly
increases the number of bargains and exchanges, and
thus keep society involved, if not in war, at least in
unfriendly collision. Within the family, money is not
employed between its members. Where the
Page 304UTOPIA; OR, THE HAPPY REPUBLIC.
"Therefore, I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can
have no other notion of all the governments that I see or
know, than that they are a conspiracy of the richer sort,
who, on pretence of managing the public, do only pursue
their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts that they
can find out; first, that they may, without danger, preserve
all they have so ill acquired, and then, that they may engage
the former sort to toil and labor for them at as low rates as
possible, and oppress them as much as they please; and if
they can but prevail to get these contrivances established by
public authority, which is considered as the representative of
the whole people, then they are accounted laws; and yet
these wicked men, after they have, by a most insatiable
covetousness
Page 305
Page 306CHAPTER XXIV.
GERRIT SMITH ON LAND REFORM, AND WILLIAM
LOYD GARRISON ON NO-GOVERNMENT.
Within the last week, we have received the Land
Reformer, an agrarian paper, just started in New
York, in which we are sure we recognize the pen of
Gerrit Smith, the leader of the New York abolitionists;
and also a No. of the Liberator, in which Mr. Garrison,
the leader of the New England abolitionists, defines
his No-Government doctrines.
Page 307
Page 308
Page 309
Page 310
Page 311CHAPTER XXV.
IN WHAT ANTI-SLAVERY ENDS.
Mr. Carlyle very properly contends that abolition
and all the other social movements of the day,
propose little or no government as the moral
panacea that is to heal and save a suffering world.
Proudhon expressly advocates anarchy; and Stephen
Pearl Andrews, the ablest of American socialistic
and abolition philosophers, elaborately attacks
all existing social relations, and all legal and
governmental restraints, and proposes No-Government
as their substitute. He is the author of the Free
Love experiment in New York, and a co-laborer
and eulogist of similar experiments in villages or
settlements in Ohio, Long Island and other places
in the North and Northwest. He is a follower of
Josiah Warren, who was associated with Owen
of Lanark at New Harmony. We do not know
that there is any essential difference between his
system and that which has been for many years
past practically carried out in Oneida county, New
York, by the Perfectionists, who construe the Bible
into authority for the unrestrained indulgence of
every sensual appetite. The doctrines of Fourier,
of Owen and Fanny Wright, and the other early
Page 312
Page 313
Page 314
Page 315
Page 316CHAPTER XXVI.
CHRISTIAN MORALITY IMPRACTICABLE IN FREE
SOCIETY - BUT THE NATURAL MORALITY OF SLAVE
SOCIETY.
It is strange that theories, self-evidently true so
soon as suggested, remain undiscovered for centuries.
What more evident, obvious, and axiomatic, than that
equals must from necessity be rivals, antagonists,
competitors, and enemies. Self-preservation , the first
law of human and animal nature, makes this selfish
course of action essential to preserve existence.
It is almost equally obvious, that in the natural, social,
or family state, unselfishness, or the preference of
others' good and happiness, is the dictate of nature
and policy. Nature impels the father and husband
to self-abnegation and self-denial to promote the
happiness of wife and children, because his reflected
enjoyments will be a thousand times greater than
any direct pleasure he can derive by stinting or
maltreating them. Their misery and their complaints
do much more to render him wretched than what
he has denied them can compensate for. Wife
and children, too, see and feel that in denying
themselves and promoting the happiness of the
head of the family, they pursue true
Page 317
Page 318
Page 319
Page 320CHAPTER XXVII.
SLAVERY - ITS EFFECTS ON THE FREE.
Beaten at every other quarter, we learn that a
distinguished writer at the North, is about to be
put forward by the Abolitionists, to prove that the
influence of slavery is deleterious on the whites
who own no slaves.
Page 321
Page 322
Page 323CHAPTER XXVIII.
PRIVATE PROPERTY DESTROYS LIBERTY AND
EQUALITY.
The Abolitionists and Socialists, who, alone, have
explored the recesses of social science, well
understand that they can never establish their Utopia
until private property is abolished or equalized.
The man without property is theoretically, and, too
often, practically, without a single right. Air and
I water, 'tis generally believed, are the common
property of mankind; but nothing is falser in fact
as well as theory. The ownership of land gives to
the proprietor the exclusive right to every thing
above and beneath the soil. The lands are all
appropriated, and with them the air above them,
the waters on them, and the mines beneath them.
The pauper, to breathe the air or drink the waters,
must first find a place where he may rightfully
enjoy them. He can find, at all times, no such place,
and is compelled, by his necessities, to inhale the
close and putrid air of small rooms, damp cellars
and crowded factories, and to drink insufficient
quantities of impure water, furnished to him at a
Page 324
Page 325
Page 326
Page 327CHAPTER XXIX.
THE NATIONAL ERA AN EXCELLENT WITNESS.
In an article in the Era of August 16,1855, criticising
and denying our theory of the Failure of Free Society,
the writer begins by asserting, "We demonstrated, last
week, from history, that the condition of the poor of
England has greatly improved in modern times, as they
have become free from the restraints of feudal
bondage." He then goes on to criticise us, but, before
concluding, contradicts and refutes his work of the
week before, and adopts our theory in its fullest extent.
He admits the intolerable exploitation and oppression
of capital over labor, but looks forward to the day when
it will be corrected. He is, like all Abolitionists, agrarian.
He holds our doctrine, too, that the serfs were set free
to starve, not because liberty was a good or a boon. He
further holds, that the poor laborers could not get
masters if they wanted them, because the rich can get
their labor on better terms. Thus he distinctly shows
that Free Society has failed, and why it has failed. We
know very well the rich of Western Europe would not
willingly take the poor as slaves, but the
Page 328
Page 329
Page 330
Page 331
Page 332CHAPTER XXX.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ISMS -
SHEWING WHY
THEY
ABOUND AT THE NORTH, AND ARE
UNKNOWN AT THE SOUTH.
The exploitation, or unjust exactions of skill and
capital in free society, excite the learned and
philanthropic to devise schemes of escape, and
impel the laborers to adopt those schemes, however
chimerical, because they feel that their situation
cannot be worsted. They are already slaves without
masters, and that is the bathos of human misery.
Besides, universal liberty has disintegrated and
dissolved society, and placed men in isolated, selfish,
and antagonistic positions - in which each man is
compelled to wrong others, in order to be just
himself. But man's nature is social, not selfish, and
he longs and yearns to return to parental, fraternal
and associative relations. All the isms concur in
promising closer and more associative relations, in
establishing at least a qualified community property,
and in insuring the weak and unfortunate the
necessaries and comforts of life. Indeed, they all
promise to establish slavery - minus, the master and
the overseer. As the evils which we have
Page 333
Page 334
Page 335CHAPTER XXXI.
DEFICIENCY OF FOOD IN FREE SOCIETY.
The normal state of free society is a state of famine.
Agricultural labor is the most arduous, least
respectable, and worst paid of all labor. Nature and
philosophy teach all who can to avoid and escape from
it, and to pursue less laborious, more respectable, and
more lucrative employments. None work in the field
who can help it. Hence free society is in great measure
dependent for its food and clothing on slave society.
Western Europe and New England get their cotton,
sugar, and much of their bread and meat from the
South, from Cuba, Russia, Poland and Turkey. After
all, the mass of their population suffers continual
physical want. McCulloch informs us in his edition of
Adam Smith, "that the better sort of Irish laborers eat
meat once a month, or once in six months; the lowest
order never. The better class of English laborers eat
meat twice or three times a week.." Now no Southern
negro would believe this if you were to swear to it. Yet
it is a very favorable account of those laborers. The
Irish rarely eat bread, and the English peasantry have
wholly inadequate
Page 336
Page 337
Page 338
Page 339
Page 340
Tecum
obeam lubens!
Page 341CHAPTER XXXII.
MAN HAS PROPERTY IN MAN!
In the Liberator of the 19th December, we observe
that the editor narrows down the slavery con test to
the mere question, whether "Man may rightfully hold
property in man?"
Page 342
Page 343
Page 344CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE "COUP DE GRACE" TO ABOLITION.
The Abolitionists are all willing to admit that free
society has utterly failed in Europe, but will assign two
reasons for that failure - "Excess of population, and
want of equality and liberty."
Page 345
Page 346
Page 347
Page 348
Page 349
Page 350CHAPTER XXXIV.
NATIONAL WEALTH, INDIVIDUAL WEALTH, LUXURY
AND ECONOMY.
It is a common theory with political economists, that
national wealth is but the sum of individual wealth, and
that as individual wealth increases, national wealth
increases, pari passu.
Page 351
Page 352
Page 353CHAPTER XXXV.
GOVERNMENT A THING OF FORCE, NOT OF CONSENT.
We do not agree with the authors of the Declaration
of Independence, that governments "derive their just
powers from the consent of the governed." The
women, the children, the negroes, and but few of the
non-property holders were consulted, or consented
to the Revolution, or the governments that ensued
from its success. As to these, the new governments
were self-elected despotisms, and the governing class
self-elected despots. Those governments originated in
force, and have been continued by force. All governments
must originate in force, and be continued by force. The
very term, government, implies that it is carried on
against the consent of the governed. Fathers do not derive
their authority, as heads of families, from the consent
of wife and children, nor do they govern their families
by their consent. They never take the vote of the family
as to the labors to be performed, the moneys to be
expended, or as to anything else. Masters dare not take
the vote of slaves, as to their government. If they did,
constant holiday, dissipation and extravagance would
Page 354
Page 355
Page 356
Page 357
Page 358
Page 359
Page 360
Page 361
Page 362
Page 363CHAPTER XXXVI.
WARNING TO THE NORTH.
But
'tis strange:
And
oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The
instruments of darkness tell us truths;
Win
us with honest trifles, to betray us
In
deepest consequences.
Page 364
Page 365
Page 366
Page 367
Page 368
Page 369
Page 370
Page 371
Page 372
Page 373CHAPTER XXXVII.
ADDENDUM.
Page 374
* Mr. Phillips is, in private life, aside
from his abolition
and sectional prejudices, a worthy, accomplished gentleman.
He is the most eloquent and graceful speaker to whom we
ever listened. He seems to distill manna and ambrosia from his
lips, but is all the while firing whole broadsides of hot shot.
"He is his own antithesis" - an infernal machine set to
music.
Page 375
Page 376
Page 377
Page 378
Page 379