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Library of Congress Subject Headings, 21st
edition, 1998
BY
THE THING THAT HAS BEEN, IT IS THAT WHICH SHALL BE; AND THAT WHICH IS DONE IS THAT WHICH SHALL BE DONE; AND THERE IS NO NEW THING UNDER THE SUN. - ECC. 1:9.
Naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret.---Horace.
Entered according to an act
of Congress, in the year 1854, by
GEORGE FITZHUGH,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for
the Eastern District of Virginia.
C.H. WYNNE, PRINTER, RICHMOND.
From some peculiarity of taste, we have for many years been watching closely the perturbed workings of free society. Its crimes, its revolutions, its sufferings and its beggary, have led us to investigate its past history, as well as to speculate on its future destiny. This pamphlet has been hastily written, but is the result of long observation, some research and much reflection. Should it contain suggestions that will enlist abler pens to show that free society is a failure and its philosophy false, our highest ambition will be gratified. Believing our positions on these subjects to be true, we feel sanguine they are destined to final vindication and triumph. We should have written a larger work, had not our inexperience in authorship warned
us that we had better await the reception of this. We may again appear in the character of writer before the public; but we shall not intrude, and would prefer that others should finish the work which we have begun. Treating subjects novel and difficult of comprehension, we have designedly indulged in iteration; for we preferred offending the ear and the taste of the readers to confounding or confusing him by insufficient elaboration. In truth, fine finish and rotundity are not easily attained in what is merely argumentative and controversial.
On all subjects of social science, Southern men, from their position, possess peculiar advantages when they undertake discussion. History, past and cotemporaneous, informs them of all the phenomena of other forms of society, and they see every day around them the peculiarities and characteristics of slave society, of which little is to be learned from books. The ancients took it for granted that slavery was right, and never attempted to justify it. The moderns assume that it is wrong, and forthwith proceed to denounce it. The South can lose nothing, and may gain, by the discussion. She has, up to this time, been condemned without a hearing.
With respect, your fellow-citizen,
GEO. FITZHUGH.
unknown amongst us. But as our book is intended to prove that we are indebted to domestic slavery for our happy exemption from the social afflictions that have originated this philosophy, it became necessary and appropriate that we should employ this new word in our title. The fact that, before the institution of Free Society, there was no such term, and that it is not in use in slave countries, now, shows pretty clearly that Slave Society, ancient and modern, has ever been in so happy a condition, so exempt from ailments, that no doctors have arisen to treat it of its complaints, or to propose remedies for their cure. The term, therefore, is not only appropriate to the subject and the occasion, but pregnantly suggestive of facts and arguments that sustain our theory.
who deal with little of the world and see less of it. Such men judge of mankind, their progress and their happiness, by the few specimens subjected to the narrow range of their experience and observation. After the abolition of feudalism and Catholicism, an immense amount of unfettered talent, genius, industry and capital, was brought into the field of free competition. The immediate result was, that all those who possessed either of those advantages prospered as they had never prospered before, and rose in social position and intelligence. At the same time, and from the same causes, the aggregate wealth of society, and probably its aggregate intelligence, were rapidly increased. Such was no doubt part of the effects of unfettering the limbs, the minds and consciences of men. It was the only part of those effects that scholars and philosophers saw or heeded. Here was something new under the sun, which refuted and rebuked the wisdom of Solomon. Up to this time, one-half of mankind had been little better than chattels belonging to the other half. A central power, with branches radiating throughout the civilized world, had trammeled men’s consciences, dictated their religious faith, and prescribed the forms and modes of worship. All this was done away with, and the new world just started into existence was certainly making rapid progress, and seemed to the ordinary observer
to be very happy. About such a world, nothing was to be found in books. Its social, its industrial and its moral phenomena, seemed to be as beautiful as they were novel. They needed, however, description, classification and arrangement. Men's social relations and moral duties were quite different under a system of universal liberty and equality of rights, from what they had been in a state of subordination and dependence on the one side, and of power, authority and protection on the other. The reciprocal duties and obligations of master and slave, of lord and vassal, of priest and layman, to each other, were altogether unlike those that should be practiced between the free and equal citizens of regenerated society. Men needed a moral guide, a new philosophy of ethics; for neither the sages of the Gentiles, nor the Apostles of Christianity, had foreseen or provided for the great light which was now to burst upon the world. Moses, and Solomon, and Paul, were silent as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, as to this social Millenium, and the moral duties and obligations it would bring in its train.
Until now, industry had been controlled and directed by a few minds. Monopoly in its every form had been rife. Men were suddenly called on to walk alone, to act and work for themselves without guide, advice or control from superior
authority. In the past, nothing like it had occurred; hence no assistance could be derived from books. The prophets themselves had overlooked or omitted to tell of the advent of this golden era, and were no better guides than the historians and philosophers. Philosophy that should guide and direct industry was equally needed with a philosophy of morals. The occasion found and made the man. For writing a one-sided philosophy, no man was better fitted than Adam Smith. He possessed extraordinary powers of abstraction, analysis and generalization. He was absent, secluded and unobservant. He saw only that prosperous and progressive portion of society whom liberty or free competition benefitted, and mistook its effects on them for its effects on the world. He had probably never heard the old English adage, "Every man for himself, and Devil take the hindmost." This saying comprehends the whole philosophy, moral and economical, of the "Wealth of Nations." But he and the political economists who have succeeded him, seem never to have dreamed that there would have been any "hindmost." There can never be a wise moral philosopher, or a sound philosophy, till some one arises who sees and comprehends all the "things in heaven and earth." Philosophers are the most abstracted, secluded, and least observant of men. Their premises are always false, because they see
but few facts; and hence their conclusions must also be false. Plato and Aristotle have to-day as many believers as Smith, Paley or Locke, and between their times a hundred systems have arisen, flourished for a time, and been rejected. There is not a true moral philosophy, and from the nature of things there never can be. Such a philosophy has to discover first causes and ultimate effects, to grasp infinitude, to deal with eternity at both ends. Human presumption will often attempt this, but human intellect can never achieve it. We shall build up no system, attempt to account for nothing, but simply point out what is natural and universal, and humbly try to justify the ways of God to man.
Adam Smith's philosophy is simple and comprehensive, (teres et rotundus.) Its leading and almost its only doctrine is, that individual well-being and social and national wealth and prosperity will be best promoted by each man's eagerly pursuing his own selfish welfare unfettered and unrestricted by legal regulations, or governmental prohibitions, farther than such regulations may be necessary to prevent positive crime. That some qualifications of this doctrine will not be found in his book, we shall not deny; but this is his system. It is obvious enough that such a governmental policy as this doctrine would result in, would stimulate energy, excite invention and
industry, and bring into livelier action, genius, skill and talent. It had done so before Smith wrote, and it was no doubt the observation of those effects that suggested the theory. His friends and acquaintances were of that class, who, in the war of the wits to which free competition invited, were sure to come off victors. His country, too, England and Scotland, in the arts of trade and in manufacturing skill, was an over-match for the rest of the world. International free trade would benefit his country as much as social free trade would benefit his friends. This was his world, and had it been the only world his philosophy would have been true. But there was another and much larger world, whose misfortunes, under his system, were to make the fortunes of his friends and his country. A part of that world, far more numerous than his friends and acquaintance was at his door, they were the unemployed poor, the weak in mind or body, the simple and unsuspicious, the prodigal, the dissipated, the improvident and the vicious. Laissez-faire and pas trop gouverner suited not them; one portion of them needed support and protection; the other, much and rigorous government. Still they were fine subjects out of which the astute and designing, the provident and avaricious, the cunning, the prudent and the industrious might make fortunes in the field of free
competition. Another portion of the world which Smith overlooked, were the countries with which England traded, covering a space many hundred times larger than England herself. She was daily growing richer, more powerful and intellectual, by her trade, and the countries with which she traded poorer, weaker, and more ignorant. Since the vast extension of trade, consequent on the discoveries of Columbus and Vasco de Gama, the civilized countries of Europe which carried on this trade had greatly prospered, but the savages and barbarians with whom they traded had become more savage and barbarous or been exterminated. Trade is a war of the wits, in which the stronger witted are as sure to succeed as the stronger armed in a war with swords. Strength of wit has this great advantage over strength of arm, that it never tires, for it gathers new strength by appropriating to itself the spoils of the vanquished. And thus, whether between nations or individuals, the war of free trade is constantly widening the relative abilities of the weak and the strong. It has been justly observed that under this system the rich are continually growing richer and the poor poorer. The remark is true as well between nations as between individuals. Free trade, when the American gives a bottle of whiskey to the Indian for valuable furs, or the Englishman exchanges with the African
blue-beads for diamonds, gold and slaves, is a fair specimen of all free trade when unequals meet. Free trade between England and Ireland furnishes the latter an excellent market for her beef and potatoes, in exchange for English manufactures. The labor employed in manufacturing pays much better than that engaged in rearing beeves and potatoes. On the average, one hour of English labor pays for two of Irish. Again, manufacturing requires and encourages skill and intelligence; grazing and farming require none. But far the worst evils of this free trade remain to be told. Irish pursuits depressing education and refinement, England becomes a market for the wealth, the intellect, the talent, energy and enterprise of Ireland. All men possessing any of these advantages or qualities retreat to England to spend their incomes, to enter the church, the navy, or the army, to distinguish themselves as authors, to engage in mechanic or manufacturing pursuits. Thus is Ireland robbed of her very life's blood, and thus do our Northern States rob the Southern.
Under the system of free trade a fertile soil, with good rivers and roads as outlets, becomes the greatest evil with which a country can be afflicted. The richness of soil invites to agriculture, and the roads and rivers carry off the crops, to be exchanged for the manufactures of
poorer regions, where are situated the centres of trade, of capital and manufactures. In a few centuries or less time the consumption abroad of the crops impoverishes the soil where they are made. No cities or manufactories arise in the country with this fertile soil, because there is no occasion. No pursuits are carried on requiring intelligence or skill; the population is of necessity sparse, ignorant and illiterate; universal absenteeism prevails; the rich go off for pleasure and education, the enterprising poor for employment. An intelligent friend suggests that, left to nature, the evil will cure itself. So it may when the country is ruined, if the people, like those of Georgia, are of high character, and betake themselves to other pursuits than mere agriculture, and totally repudiate free trade doctrines. Our friends’ objection only proves the truth of our theory. We are very sure that the wit of man can devise no means so effectual to impoverish a country as exclusive agriculture. The ravages of war, pestilence and famine are soon effaced; centuries are required to restore an exhausted soil. The more rapidly money is made in such a country, enjoying free trade, the faster it is impoverished, for the draft on the soil is greater, and those who make good crops spend them abroad; those who make small ones, at home. In the absence of free trade, this rich
region must manufacture for itself, build cities, erect schools and colleges, and carry on all the pursuits and provide for all the common wants of civilized man. Thus the money made at home would be spent and invested at home; the crops would be consumed at home, and each town and village would furnish manure to fertilize the soil around it. We believe it is a common theory that, without this domestic consumption, no soil can be kept permanently rich. A dense population would arise, because it would be required; the rich would have no further occasion to leave home for pleasure, nor the poor for employment.
The valley of the Great Salt Lake is cut off by mountains from the rest of the world, except for travel. Suppose it to continue so cut off, and to be settled by a virtuous, enlightened people. Every trade, every art, every science, must be taught and practiced within a small compass and by a small population, in order to gratify their wants and their tastes. The highest, most diffused and intense civilization, with great accumulation of wealth, would be the necessary result. But let a river like the Mississippi pass through it. Let its inhabitants become merely agricultural, and exchange their products for the manufactures of Europe and the fruits of Asia, and would not that civilization soon disappear, and with it
the wealth and capital of the country? Mere agriculture requires no skill or education, few and cheap houses, and no permanent outlay of capital in the construction of the thousand edifices needed in a manufacturing country. Besides, the consumption of the crops abroad would be cheating their lands of that manure which nature intended for them. Soon the rich and enlightened, who owned property there, would, like Irish landlords, live and spend their incomes elsewhere.
The profits of exclusive agriculture are not more than one-third of those realized from commerce and manufactures. The ordinary and average wages of laborers employed in manufactures and mechanic trades are about double those of agricultural laborers; but, moreover, women and children get good wages in manufacturing countries, whose labor is lost in agricultural ones. But this consideration, great as it is, shrinks to insignificance compared with the intellectual superiority of all other pursuits over agriculture.
The centralizing effects of free trade alone would be sufficient to condemn it. The decline of civilization under the Roman Empire was owing solely to centralization. If political science has at all advanced since the earliest annals of history, that advance is the discovery that each small section knows best its own interests,
and should be endowed with the most of the functions of government. The ancients, in the days of Herodotus, when the country around the Levant and the Islands in the Mediterranean were cut up into hundreds of little highly enlightened independent States, seem to have understood the evils of centralization quite as well a the moderns. At least their practice was wiser than ours, whatever may have been their theory. Political independence is not worth a fig without commercial independence. The tribute which the centres of trade, of capital, and of mechanical and artistic skill, such as England and the North exact from the nations they trade with, is more onerous and more destructive of civilization than that exacted from conquered provinces. Its effects everywhere are too obvious to need the citation of proofs and instances. Social centralization arises from the laissez-faire system just as national centralization. A few individuals possessed of capital and cunning acquire a power to employ the laboring class on such terms as they please, and they seldom fail to use that power. Hence, the numbers and destitution of the poor in free society are daily increasing, the numbers of the middle or independent class diminishing, and the few rich men growing hourly richer.
Free trade occasions a vast and useless, probably a very noxious waste of capital and labor,
in exchanging the productions of different and distant climes and regions. Furs and oils are not needed at the South, and the fruits of the tropics are tasteless and insipid at the North. Providence has wonderfully adapted the productions of each section to the wants of man and other animals inhabiting those sections. It is probable, if the subject were scientifically investigated, it would be found that the productions of one clime when used in another are injurious and deleterious. The intercourse of travel and the interchange of ideas it occasions advances civilization. The intercourse of trade, by accustoming barbarous, savage and agricultural countries to depend daily more and more on the centres of trade and manufactures for their supplies of every thing requiring skill or science for its production, rapidly depresses civilization. On the whole subject of civilization there is a prevalent error. Man's necessities civilize him, or rather the labor, invention and ingenuity needed to supply them. Relieve him of the necessity to exert those qualities by supplying through trade or other means his wants, and he at once begins to sink into barbarism. Wars are fine civilizers, for all men dread violent death; hence, among barbarians, the implements of warfare are far superior to any other of their manufactures, but they lead the way to other improvements. The
old adage, that "necessity is the mother of invention," contains our theory; for invention alone begets civilization. Civilization is no foreign hotbed exotic brought from distant climes. but a hardy plant of indigenous birth and growth. There never was yet found a nation of white savages; their wants and their wits combine to elevate them above the savage state. Nature, that imposed more wants on them, has kindly endowed them with superior intelligence to supply those wants.
Political economy is quite as objectionable, viewed as a rule of morals, as when viewed as a system of economy. Its authors never seem to be aware that they are writing an ethical as well as an economical code; yet it is probable that no writings, since the promulgation of the Christian dispensation, have exercised so controlling an influence on human conduct as the writings of these authors. The morality which they teach is one of simple and unadulterated selfishness. The public good, the welfare of society, the prosperity of one's neighbors, is, according to them, best promoted by each man's looking solely to the advancement of his own pecuniary interests. They maintain that national wealth, happiness and prosperity being but the aggregate of individual wealth, happiness and prosperity, if each man pursues exclusively his own selfish good, he
is doing the most he can to promote the general good. They seem to forget that men eager in the pursuit of wealth are never satisfied with the fair earnings of their own bodily labor, but find their wits and cunning employed in overreaching others much more profitable than their hands. Laissez-faire, free competition begets a war of the wits, which these economists encourage, quite as destructive to the weak, simple and guileless, as the war of the sword.
In a book on society, evincing much power and originality of thought, by Stephen Pearl Andrews, this subject is well handled. We annex a short extract: "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 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 not 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 the admission only is the conclusion denied. (That is, as he had before said, 'You must not be too bad.' 'Don't gouge too deep.') 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."
It begets another war in the bosom of society still more terrible than this. It arrays capital against labor. Every man is taught by political economy that it is meritorious to make the best bargains one can. In all old countries, labor is superabundant, employers less numerous than laborers; yet all the laborers must live by the wages they receive from the capitalists. The capitalist cheapens their wages; they compete with and underbid each other, for employed they must be on any terms. This war of the rich with the poor and the poor with one another, is
the morality which political economy inculcates. It is the only morality, save the Bible, recognized or acknowledged in free society, and is far more efficacious in directing worldly men's conduct than the Bible, for that teaches self-denial, not self-indulgence and aggrandizement. This process of underbidding each other by the poor, which universal liberty necessarily brings about, has well been compared by the author of Alton Locke to the prisoners in the Black Hole of Calcutta strangling one another. A beautiful system of ethics this, that places all mankind in antagonistic positions, and puts all society at war. What can such a war result in but the oppression and ultimate extermination of the weak? In such society the astute capitalist, who is very skilful and cunning, gets the advantage of every one with whom he competes or deals; the sensible man with moderate means gets the advantage of most with whom he has business, but the mass of the simple and poor are outwitted and cheated by everybody.
Woman fares worst when thrown into this warfare of competition. The delicacy of her sex and her nature prevents her exercising those coarse arts which men do in the vulgar and promiscuous jostle of life, and she is reduced to the necessity of getting less than half price for her work. To the eternal disgrace of human nature,
the men who employ her value themselves on the Adam Smith principle for their virtuous and sensible conduct. "Labor is worth what it will bring; they have given the poor woman more than any one else would, or she would not have taken the work." Yet she and her children are starving, and the employer is growing rich by giving her half what her work is worth. Thus does free competition, the creature of free society, throw the whole burden of the social fabric on the poor, the weak and ignorant. They produce every thing and enjoy nothing. They are "the muzzled ox that treadeth out the straw."
In free society none but the selfish virtues are in repute, because none other help a man in the race of competition. In such society virtue loses all her loveliness, because of her selfish aims. Good men and bad men have the same end in view: self-promotion, self-elevation. The good man is prudent, cautious, and cunning of fence; he knows well, the arts (the virtues, if you please) which enable him to advance his fortunes at the expense of those with whom he deals; he does not "cut too deep"; he does not cheat and swindle, he only makes good bargains and excellent profits. He gets more subjects by this course; everybody comes to him to be bled. He bides his time; takes advantage of the follies, the improvidence and vices of others, and makes his fortune out
of the follies and weaknesses of his fellow-men. The bad man is rash, hasty, unskilful and impolitic. He is equally selfish, but not half so prudent and cunning. Selfishness is almost the only motive of human conduct in free society, where every man is taught that it is his first duty to change and better his pecuniary situation.
The first principles of the science of political economy inculcate separate, individual action, and are calculated to prevent that association of labor without which nothing great can be achieved; for man isolated and individualized is the most helpless of animals. We think this error of the economists proceeded from their adopting Locke's theory of the social contract. We believe no heresy in moral science has been more pregnant of mischief than this theory of Locke. It lies at the bottom of all moral speculations, and if false, must infect with falsehood all theories built on it. Some animals are by nature gregarious and associative. Of this class are men, ants and bees. An isolated man is almost as helpless and ridiculous as a bee setting up for himself. Man is born a member of society, and does not form society. Nature, as in the cases of bees and ants, has it ready formed for him. He and society are congenital. Society is the being - he one of the members of that being. He has no rights whatever, as opposed to the interests of society;
and that society may very properly make any use of him that will redound to the public good. Whatever rights he has are subordinate to the good of the whole; and he has never ceded rights to it, for he was born its slave, and had no rights to cede.
Government is the creature of society, and may be said to derive its powers from the consent of the governed; but society does not owe its sovereign power to the separate consent, volition or agreement of its members. Like the hive, it is as much the work of nature as the individuals who compose it. Consequences; the very opposite of the doctrine of free trade, result from this doctrine of ours. It makes each society a band of brothers, working for the common good, instead of a bag of cats biting and worrying each other. The competitive system is a system of antagonism and war; ours of peace and fraternity. The first is the system of free society; the other that of slave society. The Greek, the Roman, Judaistic, Egyptian, and all ancient polities, were founded on our theory. The loftiest patrician in those days, valued himself not on selfish, cold individuality, but on being the most devoted servant of society and his country. In ancient times, the individual was considered nothing, the State every thing. And yet, under this system, the noblest individuality was evolved that the world has ever
seen. The prevalence of the doctrines of political economy has injured Southern character, for in the South those doctrines most prevail. Wealthy men, who are patterns of virtue in the discharge of their domestic duties, value themselves on never intermeddling in public matters. They forget that property is a mere creature of law and society, and are willing to make no return for that property to the public, which by its laws gave it to them, and which guard and protect them in its possession.
All great enterprises owe their success to association of capital and labor. The North is indebted for its great wealth and prosperity to the readiness with which it forms associations for all industrial and commercial purposes. The success of Southern farming is a striking instance of the value of the association of capital and laborers, and ought to suggest to the South the necessity of it for other purposes.
The dissociation of labor and disintegration of society, which liberty and free competition occasion, is especially injurious to the poorer class; for besides the labor necessary to support the family, the poor man is burdened with the care of finding a home, and procuring employment, and attending to all domestic wants and concerns. Slavery relieves our slaves of these cares altogether, and slavery is a form, and the very best
form, of socialism. In fact, the ordinary wages of common labor are insufficient to keep up separate domestic establishments for each of the poor, and association or starvation is in many cases inevitable. In free society, as well in Europe as in America, this is the accepted theory, and various schemes have been resorted to, all without success, to cure the evil. The association of labor properly carried out under a common head or ruler, would render labor more efficient, relieve the laborer of many of the cares of household affairs, and protect and support him in sickness and old age, besides preventing the too great reduction of wages by redundancy of labor and free competition. Slavery attains all these results. What else will?
We find in the days of Sir Matthew Hale, a very singular pamphlet attributed to him. It was an attempt to prove that two healthy laborers, marrying and having in the usual time four children, could not at ordinary labor, and with ordinary wages, support their family. The nursing, washing, cooking and making clothes, would fully occupy the wife. The husband, with the chances of sickness and uncertainty of employment, would have to support four. Such is the usual and normal condition of free laborers. With six children, the oldest say twelve years of age, their condition would be worse. Or should the husband
die, the family that remained would be still worse off. There are large numbers of aged and infirm male and female laborers; so that as a class, it is obvious, we think, that under ordinary circumstances, in old countries, they are incapable of procuring a decent and comfortable support. The wages of the poor diminish as their wants and families increase, for the care and labor of attending to the family leaves them fewer hours for profitable work. With negro slaves, their wages invariably increase with their wants. The master increases the provision for the family as the family increases in number and helplessness. It is a beautiful example of communism, where each one receives not according to his labor, but according to his wants.
A maxim well calculated not only to retard the progress of civilization, but to occasion its retrogression, has grown out of the science of political economy. "The world is too much governed," has become quite an axiom with many politicians. Now the need of law and government is just in proportion to man's wealth and enlightenment. Barbarians and savages need and will submit to but few and simple laws, and little of government. The love of personal liberty and freedom from all restraint, are distinguishing traits of wild men and wild beasts. Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors loved personal liberty because they were barbarians, but
they did not love it half so much as North American Indians or Bengal tigers, because they were not half so savage. As civilization advances, liberty recedes: and it is fortunate for man that he loses his love of liberty just as fast as he becomes more moral and intellectual. The wealthy, virtuous and religious citizens of large towns enjoy less of liberty than any other persons whatever, and yet they are the most useful and rationally happy of all mankind. The best governed countries, and those which have prospered most, have always been distinguished for the number and stringency of their laws. Good men obey superior authority, the laws of God, of morality, and of their country; bad men love liberty and violate them. It would be difficult very often for the most ingenious casuist to distinguish between sin and liberty; for virtue consists in the performance of duty, and the obedience to that law or power that imposes duty, whilst sin is but the violation of duty and disobedience to such law and power. It is remarkable, in this connection, that sin began by the desire for liberty and the attempt to attain it in the person of Satan and his fallen angels. The world wants good government and a plenty of it - not liberty. It is deceptive in us to boast of our Democracy, to assert the capacity of the people for self-government, and then refuse to them its exercise. In
New England, and in all our large cities, where the people govern most, they are governed best. If government be not too much centralized, there is little danger of too much government. The danger and evil with us is of too little. Carlyle says of our institutions, that they are "anarchy plus a street constable." We ought not to be bandaged up too closely in our infancy, it might prevent growth and development; but the time is coming when we shall need more of government, if we would secure the permanency of our institutions.
All men concur in the opinion that some government is necessary. Even the political economist would punish murder, theft, robbery, gross swindling, &c. but they encourage men to compete with and slowly undermine and destroy one another by means quite as effective as those they forbid. We have heard a distinguished member of this school object to negro slavery, because the protection it afforded to an inferior race would perpetuate that race, which, if left free to compete with the whites, must be starved out in a few generations. Members of Congress, of the Young American party, boast that the Anglo-Saxon race is manifestly destined to eat out all other races, as the wire-grass destroys and takes the place of other grasses. Nay, they allege this competitive process is going on throughout all
nature; the weak are everywhere devouring the strong; the hardier plants and animals destroying the weaker, and the superior races of man exterminating the inferior. They would challenge our admiration for this war of nature, by which they say Providence is perfecting its own work - getting rid of what is weak and indifferent, and preserving only what is strong and hardy. We see the war, but not the improvement. This competitive, destructive system has been going on from the earliest records of history; and yet the plants, the animals, and the men of to-day are not superior to those of four thousand years ago. To restrict this destructive, competitive propensity, man was endowed with reason, and enabled to pass laws to protect the weak against the strong. To encourage it, is to encourage the strong to oppress the weak, and to violate the primary object of an government. It is strange it should have entered the head of any philosopher to set the weak, who are the majority of mankind, to competing, contending and fighting with the strong, in order to improve their condition.
Hobbes maintains that "a state of nature is a state of war." This is untrue of a state of nature, because men are naturally associative; but it is true of a civilized state of universal liberty, and free competition, such as Hobbes saw around
him, and which no doubt suggested his theory. The wants of man and his history alike prove that slavery has always been part of his social organization. A less degree of subjection is inadequate for the government and protection of great numbers of human beings.
An intelligent English writer, describing society as he saw it, uses this language:
"There is no disguising from the cool eye of philosophy, that all living creatures exist in a state of natural warfare; and that man (in hostility with all) is at enmity also with his own species; man is the natural enemy of man; and society, unable to change his nature, succeeds but in establishing a hollow truce by which fraud is substituted for violence."
Such is free society, fairly portrayed; such are the infidel doctrines of political economy, when candidly avowed. Slavery and Christianity bring about a lasting peace, not "a hollow truce." But we mount a step higher. We deny that there is a society in free countries. They who act each for himself, who are hostile, antagonistic and competitive, are not social and do not constitute a society. We use the term free society, for want of a better; but, like the term free government, it is an absurdity: those who are governed are not free - those who are free are not social.
liberty concede that the laboring class enjoy more material comfort, are better fed, clothed and housed, as slaves, than as freemen. The statistics of crime demonstrate that the moral superiority of the slave over the free laborer is still greater than his superiority in animal well-being. There never can be among slaves a class so degraded as is found about the wharves and suburbs of cities. The master requires and enforces ordinary morality and industry. We very much fear, if it were possible to indite a faithful comparison of the conduct and comfort of our free negroes with that of the runaway Anglo-Saxon serfs, that it would be found that the negroes have fared better and committed much less crime than the whites. But those days, the 14th and 15th centuries, were the halcyon days of vagabond liberty. The few that had escaped from bondage found a wide field and plenty of subjects for the practice of theft and mendicity. There was no law and no police adequate to restrain them, for until then their masters had kept them in order better than laws ever can. But those glorious old times have long since passed. A bloody code, a standing army and efficient police keep them quiet enough now. Their numbers have multiplied a hundred fold, but their poverty has increased faster than their numbers. Instead of stealing and begging, and
living idly in the open air, they work fourteen hours a day, cooped up in close rooms, with foul air, foul water, and insufficient and filthy food, and often sleep at night crowded in cellars or in garrets, without regard to sex.
In proceeding to prove that this is a correct account of the effects in England of liberating the laboring class, we are at much difficulty how to select from the mass of testimony that at every turn presents itself to us. We are not aware that any one disputes the fact that crime and pauperism throughout Western Europe increased pari passu with liberty, equality and free competition. We know of but a single respectable authority that disputes the fact that this increase is directly attributable to free competition or liberty. Even the Edinburgh Review, hitherto the great champion of political economy and free competition, has been silent on the subject for several years. With strange inconsistency, the very men who assert that universal liberty has, and must ever, from the nature of things, increase crime, mendicity and pauperism among the laboring class, maintain that slavery degrades this very class whom it preserves from poverty and crime. The elevation of the scaffold is the only moral or physical elevation that they can point to which distinguishes the condition of the free laborer from his servile ancestor. The peasantry of England,
in the days of Presley, Agincourt and Shrewsbury, when feudalism prevailed, were generally brave, virtuous, and in the enjoyment of a high degree of physical comfort - at least, that comfort differed very little from that of their lords and masters. This same peasantry, when Charles Edward with three thousand Highlanders invaded England, had become freemen and cowards. Starving Frenchmen will at least fight, but starving Chartists only bluster. How slavery could degrade men lower than universal liberty has done, it is hard to conceive; how it did and would again preserve them from such degradation, is well explained by those who are loudest in its abuse. A consciousness of security, a full comprehension of his position, and a confidence in that position, and the absence of all corroding cares and anxieties, makes the slave easy and self-assured in his address, cheerful, happy and contented, free from jealousy, malignity, and envy, and at peace with all around him. His attachment to his master begets the sentiment of loyalty, than which none more purifies and elevates human nature. This theory of the moral influences of slavery is suggested and in part borrowed from Alexandre Dumas' "French Milliner." He, descended from a negro slave, and we may presume prejudiced against slavery, speaks in glowing terms of its happy influence on the lives and
manners of the Russian serfs. He draws a contrast between their cheerfulness and the wretchedness of the French laboring class, and attributes solely to the feeling of security which slavery induces, their enviable cheerfulness.
The free laborer rarely has a house and home of his own; he is insecure of employment; sickness may overtake him at any time and deprive him of the means of support; old age is certain to overtake him, if he lives, and generally finds him without the means of subsistence; his family is probably increasing in numbers, and is helpless and burdensome to him. In all this there is little to incite to virtue, much to tempt to crime, nothing to afford happiness, but quite enough to inflict misery. Man must be more than human, to acquire a pure and a high morality under such circumstances.
In free society the sentiments, principles; feelings and affections of high and low, rich and poor, are equally blunted and debased by the continual war of competition. It begets rivalries, jealousies and hatreds on all hands. The poor can neither love nor respect the rich, who, instead of aiding and protecting them, are endeavoring to cheapen their labor and take away their means of subsistence. The rich can hardly respect themselves, when they reflect that wealth is the result of avarice, caution, circumspection
and hard dealing. These are the virtues which free society in its regular operation brings forth. Its moral influence is therefore no better on the rich than on the poor. The number of laborers being excessive in all old countries, they are continually struggling with, scandalizing and underbidding each other, to get places and employment. Every circumstance in the poor man's situation in free society is one of harassing care, of grievous temptation, and of excitement to anger, envy, jealousy and malignity. That so many of the poor should nevertheless be good and pure, kind, happy and high-minded, is proof enough that the poor class is not the worst class in society. But the rich have their temptations, too. Capital gives them the power to oppress; selfishness offers the inducement, and political economy, the moral guide of the day, would justify the oppression. Yet there are thousands of noble and generous and disinterested men in free society, who employ their wealth to relieve, and not to oppress the poor. Still these are exceptions to the general rule. The effect of such society is to encourage the oppression of the poor.
The ink was hardly dry with which Adam Smith wrote his Wealth of Nations, lauding the benign influences of free society, ere the hunger and want and nakedness of that society engendered a revolutionary explosion that shook the world to
its centre. The starving artisans and laborers, and fish-women and needle-women of Paris, were the authors of the first French revolution, and that revolution was everywhere welcomed, and spread from nation to nation like fire in the prairies. The French armies met with but a formal opposition, until they reached Russia. There, men had homes and houses and a country to fight for. The serfs of Russia, the undisciplined Cossacks, fought for lares and penates, their homes, their country, and their God, and annihilated an army more numerous than that of Xerxes, and braver and better appointed than the tenth legion of Caesar. What should Western European poor men fight for? All the world was the same to them. They had been set free to starve, without a place to rest their dying heads or to inter their dead bodies. Any change they thought would be for the better, and hailed Buonaparte as a deliverer. But the nature of the evil was not understood; there were some remnants of feudalism, some vigor in the Catholic church; these Buonaparte swept away, and left the poor without a stay or a hope. Buonaparte is conquered and banished, universal peace restored; commerce, mechanic arts, manufactures and agriculture revive and flourish; invention is stimulated, industry urged on to its utmost exertion. Never seemed the world so prosperous, so happy, so
progressive. But only seemed! Those awful statistics unfold the sad tale that misery and crime and poverty are on the increase still. The prisons are filled, the poor houses and the penal colonies supplied too fast, and the gallows ever pendant with its subject. In 1830, Paris starves again, builds barricades, continues hungry, and hesitates what next to do. Finally sets up a new king, no better than the one she has expelled. Revolution follows revolution with electric speed throughout great part of Western Europe. Kings are deposed, governments changed; soon new kings put in their places, and things subside - not quietly - into the status quo ante bellum. All this, while millions of the poor are fleeing from Europe as men fly from an infected plague spot, to seek their fortunes in other climes and regions. Another eighteen years of hunger, of crime, of riots, strikes, and trades unions, passes over free society. In 1848 the drama of 1830 is almost literally re-enacted. Again Paris starves, builds barricades, and expels her king. Again Western Europe follows her example. By this time, however, men had discovered that political changes would not cure the diseases of society. The poor must have bread; government must furnish it. Liberty without bread was not worth fighting for. A Republic is set up in Paris that promises employment and good wages
to every body. The experiment is tried and fails in a week. No employment, except transplanting trees and levelling mounds, could be found, and the treasury breaks. After struggling and blundering and staggering on through various changes, Louis Napoleon is made Emperor. He is a socialist, and socialism is the new fashionable name of slavery. He understands the disease of society, and has nerve enough for any surgical operation that may be required to cure it. His first step in socialism was to take the money of the rich to buy wheat for all. The measure was well-timed, necessary and just. He is now building houses on the social plan for working men, and his Queen is providing nurseries and nurses for the children of the working women, just as we Southerners do for our negro women and children. It is a great economy. Fourier suggested it long after Southerners had practiced it. During these times there was a little episode in Ireland - Ireland, the freest country in the world, where law is violated every day, mocked at and derided, whence the rich and the noble have emigrated, where all are poor, all equal, and all idle. A few thousands only had usually starved annually; but the potatoe crop failed; they had no feudal lords to buy other food for them, and three hundred thousand starved in a single season. No slave or
serf ever did starve, unless he were a runaway. Irishmen, although they love liberty to distraction, have lost their taste for starving. They are coming en masse to America, and in a few years, at the present rate of emigration, will leave the island without inhabitants. The great and increasing emigration from free society in Europe can only be accounted for on the ground that they believe their social system so rotten that no mere political change can help them - for a political revolution can be had on twenty-four hours' notice.
The Chartists and Radicals of England would in some way subvert and re-construct society. They complain of free competition as a crying evil, and may be classed with the Socialists. The high conservative party called Young England vainly endeavors, by preaching fine sentiments, to produce that good feeling between the rich and the poor, the weak and the powerful, which slavery alone can bring about. Liberty places those classes in positions of antagonism and war. Slavery identifies the interests of rich and poor, master and slave, and begets domestic affection on the one side, and loyalty and respect on the other. Young England sees clearly enough the character of the disease, but is not bold enough to propose an adequate remedy. The poor themselves are all practical Socialists, and in some degree pro-slavery
men. They unite in strikes and trades unions, and thus exchange a part of their liberties in order to secure high and uniform wages. The exchange is a prudent and sensible one; but they who have bartered off liberty, are fast verging towards slavery. Slavery to an association is not always better than slavery to a single master. The professed object is to avoid ruinous underbidding and competition with one another; but this competition can never cease whilst liberty lasts. Those who wish to be free must take liberty with this inseparable burden. Odd-Fellows’ societies, temperance societies, and all other societies that provide for sick and unfortunate members, are instances of Socialism. The muse in England for many years has been busy in composing dissonant laborer songs, bewailing the hardships, penury and sufferings of the poor, and indignantly rebuking the cruelty and injustice of their hard-hearted and close-fisted employers.
Dickens and Bulwer denounce the frame-work of society quite as loudly as Carlyle and Newman; the two latter of whom propose slavery as a remedy for existing evils. A large portion of the clergy are professed Socialists, and there is scarcely a literary man in England who is not ready to propose radical and organic changes in her social system. Germany is full of Communists; social discontent is universal, and her people are leaving
en masse for America - hopeless of any amelioration at home for the future. Strange to tell, in the free States of America too, Socialism and every other heresy that can be invoked to make war on existing institutions, prevail to an alarming extent. Even according to our own theory of the necessity of slavery, we should not suppose that that necessity would be so soon felt in a new and sparsely-settled country, where the supply of labor does not exceed the demand. But it is probable the constant arrival of emigrants makes the situation of the laborer at the North as precarious as in Europe, and produces a desire for some change that shall secure him employment and support at all times. Slavery alone can effect that change; and towards slavery the North and all Western Europe are unconsciously marching. The master evil they all complain of is free competition - which is another name for liberty. Let them remove that evil, and they will find themselves slaves, with all the advantages and disadvantages of slavery. They will have attained association of labor, for slavery produces association of labor, and is one of the ends all Communists and Socialists desire. A well-conducted farm in the South is a model of associated labor that Fourier might envy. One old woman nurses all the children whilst the mothers are at work; another waits on the sick, in a house set aside
for them. Another washes and cooks, and a fourth makes and mends the clothing. It is a great economy of labor, and is a good idea of the Socialists. Slavery protects the infants, the aged and the sick; nay, takes far better care of them than of the healthy, the middle-aged and the strong. They are part of the family, and self-interest and domestic affection combine to shelter, shield and foster them. A man loves not only his horses and his cattle, which are useful to him, but he loves his dog, which is of no use. He loves them because they are his. What a wise and beneficent provision of Heaven, that makes the selfishness of man's nature a protecting aegis to shield and defend wife and children, slaves and even dumb animals. The Socialists propose to reach this result too, but they never can if they refuse to march in the only road Providence has pointed out. Who will check, govern and control their superintending authority? Who prevent his abuse of power? Who can make him kind, tender and affectionate, to the poor, aged, helpless, sick and unfortunate? Qui custodiat custodes? Nature establishes the only safe and reliable checks and balances in government. Alton Locke describes an English farm, where the cattle, the horses and the sheep are fat, plentifully fed and warmly housed; the game in the preserves and the fish in the pond carefully provided for; and
two freezing, shivering, starving, half-clad boys, who have to work on the Sabbath, are the slaves to these animals, and are vainly endeavoring to prepare their food. Now it must have occurred to the author that if the boys had belonged to the owner of the farm, they too would have been well-treated, happy and contented. This farm is but a miniature of all England; every animal is well-treated and provided for, except the laboring man. He is the slave of the brutes, the slave of society, produces everything and enjoys nothing. Make him the slave of one man, instead of the slave of society, and he would be far better off. None but lawyers and historians are aware how much of truth, justice and good sense, there is in the notions of the Communists, as to the community of property. Laying no stress on the too abstract proposition that Providence gave the world not to one man, or set of men, but to all mankind, it is a fact that all governments, in civilized countries, recognize the obligation to support the poor, and thus, in some degree, make all property a common possession. The poor laws and poor houses of England are founded on communistic principles. Each parish is compelled to support its own poor. In Ireland, this obligation weighs so heavily as in many instances to make farms valueless; the poor rates exceeding the rents. But it is domestic slavery alone that can
establish a safe, efficient and humane community of property. It did so in ancient times, it did so in feudal times, and does so now, in Eastern Europe, Asia and America. Slaves never die of hunger; seldom suffer want. Hence Chinese sell themselves when they can do no better. A Southern farm is a sort of joint stock concern, or social phalastery, in which the master furnishes the capital and skill, and the slaves the labor, and divide the profits, not according to each one's in-put, but according to each one’s wants and necessities.
Socialism proposes to do away with free competition; to afford protection and support at all times to the laboring class; to bring about, at least, a qualified community of property, and to associate labor. All these purposes, slavery fully and perfectly attains.
To prove the evil effects, moral, social and economic, of the emancipation of feudal slaves or villiens , and how those evil effects gave birth to Socialism, we quote first from the Pictorial History of England:
"To the period (15th century,) immediately preceding the present, belongs the origin of English pauperism, as well as of the legislation on the subject of the poor. So long as the system of villienage was maintained in its integrity, there could be no paupers in the land; that is to say, no persons left destitute of the means of subsistence,
except beggary or public alms. The principle of that institution was, that every individual who had nothing else, had at least a right of food and shelter from the landed proprietor whose bondsman he was. The master was not more entitled to the services of his villien, than the villien was to the maintenance of himself and his family, at the expense of his master. This has of absolute necessity been the law in every country in which slavery has existed. * * * * But as soon as the original slavery of the English laboring population begun to be exchanged for freedom, and villienage gradually, and at last generally passed away in the manner stated in the last book, the working man, now his own master, was of course left in all circumstances to his own resources; and when either want of employment, or sickness, or the helplessness of old age came upon him, if he had not saved something from his former earnings, and had no one to take care of him from motives of affection or compassion, his condition was as unprovided for as that of the fowls of the heavens. But men will not starve, whilst they can either beg or steal; hence, the first appearance that the destitute poor, as a class of the community, make in our annals, is in the character of thieves and mendicants, sometimes enforcing their demands by threats or violence." - Vol. 2d, pages 262, 263.
Such is the description of free society at its birth, by authors who hate and denounce slavery. We will proceed to prove from like authority, that the number of mendicants and thieves has increased with accelerating speed from that day to this.
We find in Hume's History of England, treating of the discontents of the people in the reign of Edward VI., the following language:
"There is no abuse in civil society so great as not to be attended with a variety of beneficial consequences; and in the beginnings of reformation, the loss of these advantages is always felt very sensibly, while the benefit resulting from the change is the slow effect of time, and is seldom perceived by the bulk of the nation. Scarce any institution can be imagined less favorable in the main to the interests of mankind, than that of monks and friars; yet was it followed by many good effects, which having ceased by the suppression of the monasteries, were much regretted by the people of England. The monks always residing in their convents in the centre of their estates, spent their money in the provinces, and among their tenants, afforded a ready market for commodities, and were a sure resource to the poor and indigent; and though their hospitality and charity gave too much encouragement to idleness, and prevented the increase of public riches, yet
did it provide to many a relief from the extreme pressure of want and necessity."
In the Pictorial History of England, under the head of the Condition of the People, about the 16th and 17th centuries, we find crime and pauperism still on the increase, and hundreds of essays and books written and many acts of Parliament passed on this perplexing and growing evil in free society. But it was after Napoleon had made a dead level of Western European society, a sort of "tabula raza," by destroying the remnants of feudalism and crippling and cramping the Catholic Church, that liberty and free competition were first given free scope and elbow-room. Not till then had the doctrines, that "might makes right" and "every man for himself, and devil take the hindmost," been brought into full play. The natural consequence was, that the strong conquered and devoured the weak much faster than they had ever done before. The world of the political economists, the rich, the astute, the avaricious, the prudent, the circumspect and hard-hearted, started forward with railroad speed and railroad recklessness. The world of the Socialists, (vastly increased in numbers,) the poor, the weak, ignorant, generous and improvident, ran backwards quite as fast as the other world went forward. Almost every middle-aged man who can read a newspaper, is aware, that whilst
the aggregate wealth of civilized mankind has increased more rapidly since the fall of Napoleon than it ever did before, and whilst the discoveries and inventions in physical science have rapidly lessened the amount of labor necessary to procure human subsistence and comfort, yet these advantages have been monopolized by the few, and the laboring millions are in worse condition (in free society) than they ever were before. On this subject we shall quote from two able articles in Blackwood, not because our positions need proof, but because these quotations will throw much light on the character of the disease under which free society is suffering, and show that protection of some kind is imperiously demanded to shield the masses from the grinding oppression of universal liberty, free competition and laissez-faire, and to show that it is the carrying into practical operation the theories of the political economists, or free trade men, that has occasioned the unexampled progress and prosperity of the few who are strong, and the appalling and increasing crime and destitution of the many, who are weak. Further, these quotations will sustain and illustrate our doctrine that the political economists have taken partial views of society, and have mistaken the good luck and success of their friends for the general condition and fortune of mankind. Blackwood seems to contemplate protection against foreign
competition as an adequate remedy. We leave it to the intelligent reader to say, whether protection against social and domestic competition is not quite as necessary - and nothing but slavery can afford this latter protection.
In a review of Alton Locke in Blackwood, Nov. No. 1850, the following passages will be found:
"No man with a human heart in his bosom, unless that heart is utterly indurated and depraved by the influence of mammon, can be indifferent to the fate of the working classes. Even if he were not urged to consider the awful social questions which daily demand our attention in this perplexing and bewildered age, by the impulses of humanity or by the call of Christian duty, the lower motive of interest alone should incline him to serious reflection on a subject which involves the well-being, both temporal and eternal, of thousands of his fellow-beings, and possibly the permanence of order and tranquility in this realm of Great Britain. Our civil history during the last thirty years of peace, resembles nothing which the world has yet seen or which can be found in the records of civilization. The progress which has been made in the mechanical sciences is of itself almost equivalent to a revolution. The whole face of society has been altered; old employments have become obsolete, old customs have been altered or remodelled, and old institutions have
undergone innovation. The modern citizen thinks and acts differently from his fathers. What to them was object of reverence, is to him subject of ridicule; what they were accustomed to prize and honor, he regards with undisguised contempt. All this we call improvement, taking no heed the while whether such improvement has fulfilled the primary condition of contributing to and increasing the welfare and prosperity of the people. Statistical books are written to prove how enormously we have increased in wealth, and yet, side by side with Mr. Porter's bulky tome, you will find pamphlets containing ample and distinct evidence that hundreds of thousands of our industrious fellow-countrymen are at this moment famishing for lack of employment, or compelled to sell their labor for such wretched compensation, that the pauper's dole is by many regarded with absolute envy. Dives and Lazarus elbow one another in the street, and our political economists select Dives as the sole type of the nation. Sanitary commissioners are appointed to whiten the outside of the sepulchre; and during the operation their stomachs are made sick by the taint of the rottenness within. The reform of Parliament is, comparatively speaking, a matter of yesterday; and yet the operatives are petitioning for the charter!
These are stern realities, grave facts, which it is impossible to gainsay. What may be the result
of them, unless some adequate remedy can be provided, it is impossible with certainty to predict; but unless we are prepared to deny the doctrine of that retribution which has been directly revealed to us from above, and of which the history of neighboring states affords us so many striking examples, we can hardly expect to remain unpunished for what is truly a national crime. The offense, indeed, according to all the elements of human calculation, is likely to bring its own punishment. It cannot be that society can exist in tranquility, or order be permanently maintained, so long as a large portion of the working classes, of the hard-handed men whose industry makes capital move and multiply itself, are exposed to the operation of a system that makes their position less tolerable than that of Egyptian bondsmen. To work is not only a duty, but a privilege; but to work against hope, to toil under the absolute pressure of despair, is the most miserable lot that the imagination can possibly conceive. It is, in fact, a virtual abrogation of that freedom which every Briton is taught to consider his birthright, but which now, however well it may sound as an abstract term, is practically, in the case of thousands, placed utterly beyond their reach.
We shall not probably be suspected of any intention to inculcate radical doctrines. We have
no sympathy, but the reverse, with the quacks, visionaries and agitators, who make a livelihood by preaching disaffection in our towns and cities and who are the worst enemies of the people whose cause they pretend to advocate. We detest the selfish views of the Manchester school of politicians, and we loathe that hypocrisy which, under the pretext of reforming, would destroy the institutions of the country. But, if it be true, as we believe it to be, that the working and producing classes of the community are suffering unexampled hardship, and that not of a temporary and exceptional kind, but from the operation of some vicious and baneful element that has crept into our social system, it then becomes our duty to attempt to discover the actual nature of the evil; and, having discovered that, to consider seriously what cure it is possible to apply." * * * "Here is a question urgently presenting itself to the consideration of all thinking men; a question which concerns the welfare of hundreds of thousands; a question which has been evaded by statesmen so long as they dared to do so with impunity; but which now can be no longer evaded: that question being, whether any possible means can be found for ameliorating and improving the condition of the working classes of Great Britain, by rescuing them from the cruel effects of that competition which makes each man
the enemy of his fellow; which is annually driving from our shores crowds of our best and most industrious artisans; which consigns women from absolute indigence to infamy; dries up the most sacred springs of affection in the heart; crams the jail and the poor-house; and is eating like a fatal canker into the very heart-blood of society." This subject was deemed by Blackwood so important, that it was resumed in a subsequent number of that review, "The Dangers of the Country," March number, 1851. We will not fatigue the reader's attention with extracts from that article, which is a most able and interesting one; but will merely state that, after giving tedious and careful statistics, showing the rapid and unexampled increase of crime and pauperism in Great Britain since 1819, a period in which the prosperity of the upper classes was as remarkable as the continually increasing debasement and misery of the lower, the Reviewer concludes with these emphatic words: "But this we do say, and with these words we nail our colors to the mast, PROTECTION MUST BE RESTORED, OR THE BRITISH EMPIRE WILE BE DISSOLVED." Now the evil complained of is free competition, and nothing short of some modification of slavery can give protection against free competition. To leave no room for cavil or doubt as to the truth of our positions, that pauperism commenced and crime
was increased with the birth of the liberty of the laboring class, and that each extension of liberty has immediately occasioned an accelerated increase of poverty and crime, we wish to adduce authorities, not only of the highest character, but representing all parties and shades of opinion. We now quote from the April number, 1854, of the Westminster Review on "The Results of the Census." After treating of the breaking up of the feudal system and dissolution of the Catholic church, the writer thus proceeds "These interests having gone down and another class having arisen, is there any other to be considered? Yes an enormous one - an appalling one - the pauper interest. Long before the dissolution of the monasteries, the pauperism of the country had become an almost unmanageable evil. It began with the abolition of serfage; and the monasteries absorbed as much as they could of an existing evil, increasing it all the while. From the fourteenth century there had been laws to restrain vagrancy; and in the sixteenth it had increased 'to the marvellous disturbance of the common weal of this realm.' Beggars went about,'valiant and sturdy,' in great 'routs and companies.' The vagrants were to be put in prison, branded and whipped; the clergy were to press all good citizens to give alms; and all who were able must find employment for those who could work. Then came the
compulsory tax: and then the celebrated 43d Elizabeth; and all apparently in vain. The lower class had not risen, generally speaking, with the middle; and there was as wide an interval between that middle class and the pauper banditti of the realm, as there once was between the landed class and the serfs." Pauper banditti! And this is what two hundred years of liberty makes of white laborers. And now four hundred years have passed over, and their condition is getting daily worse; they are quitting their homes - no, not homes, for they have none - but flying from the land that has persecuted them to every wild and desert corner of the earth.
The cotemporaneous appearance of Alton Locke and a vast number of pamphlets and essays on the subject of the sufferings and crimes of the laboring class in Great Britain, forms a most interesting epoch in the history of social science. No one who pays the least attention to the subject, will doubt that the doctrines and philosophy of socialism or communism, which just then became rife in England, owed their birth to the increased and increasing sufferings of the poor, which that philosophy proposes to remove. The Edinburgh Review, in its January number, 1851, discourses as follows: "As long as socialism was confined to the turbulent, the wild and the disreputable, and was associated with tenets which made it
disgusting and disreputable, perhaps the wisest plan was to pass it over in silence, and suffer it to die of its own inherent weakness. But now, when it has appeared in a soberer guise and purified from much of its evil intermixtures; when it has shown itself an actual and energetic reality in France; when it has spread among the intelligent portions of the working classes in our own country more extensively than is commonly believed; when it raises its head under various modifications, and often as it were unconsciously, in the disquisitions which issue from the periodical press; when a weekly journal, conducted with great ability as to every thing but logic, is devoted to its propagation; and when clergymen of high literary reputation give in their scarcely qualified adherence, and are actively engaged in reducing to practice their own peculiar modification of the theory, it would be no longer kindly or decorous to ignore a subject which is so deeply interesting to thousands of our countrymen." In speaking of the doctrines of the socialists, the writer goes on to say: "The position they take is this: Society is altogether out of joint. Its anomalies, its disfigured aspect, its glaring inequalities, the sufferings of the most numerous portions of it, are monstrous, indefensible, and yearly increasing. Mere palliations, mere sham improvements, mere gradual ameliorations will not meet
its wants; it must be remodelled, not merely furbished up. Political economy has hitherto had it all its own way; and the shocking condition into which it has brought us, shews that its principles must be strangely inadequate or unsound. The miseries of the great mass of the people, the inability to find work, or to obtain in return for such work as can be performed in reasonable time and by ordinary strength a sufficiency of the comforts and necessaries of life, may all be traced to one source - competition instead of combination. The antagonistic and regenerative principle which must be introduced, is association." No association, no efficient combination of labor can be effected till men give up their liberty of action and subject themselves to a common despotic head or ruler. This is slavery, and towards this socialism is moving. The above quotation and the succeeding one go to prove the positions with which we set out: that free trade or political economy is the science of free society, and socialism the science of slavery. The writer from whom we are quoting sees and thus exposes the tendency of socialism to slavery: "There is the usual jumble between the fourteenth century and the nineteenth; the desire to recall the time when the poor were at once the serfs and the proteges of the rich, and to amalgamate it with the days of chartism, when the poor assert their equality
and insist upon their freedom. It is not thus that irritation can be allayed or miseries removed or wrongs redressed. The working classes and their advocates must decide on which of the two positions they will take their stand: whether they will be cared for as dependents and inferiors, or whether, by wisdom, self-control, frugality and toil, they will fight their independent way to dignity and well-being; whether they will step back to a stationary and degraded past, or strive onward to the assertion of their free humanity? But it is not given to them, any more than to other classes, to combine inconsistent advantages; they cannot unite the safety of being in leading strings, with the liberty of being without them; the right of acting for themselves, with the right to be saved from the consequences of their actions; they must not whine because the higher classes do not aid them, and refuse to let these classes direct them; they must not insist on the duty of government to provide for them, and deny the authority of government to control them; they must not denounce laissez-faire, and denounce a paternal despotism likewise." The greatest of all communists, if communist he be, Proudhon, has also seen and exposed this tendency of socialism to slavery. He is a thorough-going enemy of modern free society; calls property a thief; and would, he says, establish anarchy in place of government! But
we have not been able to understand his system, if any he has.
The North British Review stands probably as high for its ability, sound political views and literary integrity, as any other periodical whatever. We will cite copiously from its article on "Literature on the Labor Question," February No. 1851, not merely for the weight of its authority and the force of its arguments, but chiefly because the writer of that article sums up with some fulness and great ability the proofs of the failure of society as now constituted in Western Europe, and of the almost universal abandonment of political economy, the philosophy of that society:
"Servants of this class, and constituting by far the most numerous portion of every community, are the prolétaires, or speaking more restrictedly, the working men, who earn to-day's bread by to-day's labor. They are the veritable descendants of those who in ancient times were the slaves; with but few differences their social position is the same. Despite saving banks, temperance societies, and institutions for mutual improvement, the characteristics of this class, like that of the literary class, is, and probably ever will be, pecuniary insouciance. From week to week, these thousands live, now in work and now out of work, as careless of to-morrow as if Benjamin Franklin had never lived, entering at one end of the journey
of existence and issuing at the other, without ever having at any one moment accumulated five superfluous shillings."
A beautiful commentary on the dignity of labor.
As to the prevalence of discontent with free society, and of socialistic and revolutionary doctrines in France, the writer employs the follow language:
"One cannot now take up a French bookseller’s list of advertisements, without seeing the titles of publications of all kinds and sizes devoted to the elucidation of social questions. 'L'Organization du Travail;' 'Destinie Sociale;''Etudes sur la principales causes de la Misere;''De la condition physique and morale des jeune Ouvriens.' Such are some of the titles of a class of French books sufficient already to form a library. The thing, in fact, has become a profession in France. Men of all kinds and of all capacities - men who do not care one farthing about the condition of the people or about the condition of any body except themselves, as well as men of real goodness and philanthropy, now write books full of statistics about the working classes, and of plans for diminishing the amount of social evil. And so too in this country. The 'Condition of England Question' has become the target at which every shallow witling must aim his shaft. All literature seems to be flowing towards this channel, so that there seems
to be a likelihood that we shall soon have no literature at all but a literature of social reference."
Whilst all this hubbub and confusion is going on in France and England, occasioned by the intensest suffering of the free laborers, we of the South and of all slaveholding countries, have been "calm as a summer's evening," quite unconscious of the storm brewing around us. Yet those people who confess that their situation is desperate, insist that we shall imitate their institutions, starve our laborers, multiply crime, riots and pauperism, in order, we suppose, to try the experiment of Mormonism, Socialism or Communism. Try it first, yourselves!
The following passage - and we have quoted a similar one from Blackwood - is a distinct assertion of the complete failure of free society. It is the admission of witnesses of the highest character, corroborated by the testimony of all classes of society - for the poor, by their strikes, trade unions, temperance societies, odd-fellow societies, and insurance societies, speak as eloquently on this subject as the rich and the learned.
"'Alton Locke' is, upon the whole, as powerful a literary expression as exists of the general conviction, shared by all classes alike, that the country has arrived at a condition when something extraordinary, whatever it is, must be decided on and done, if society is to be saved in Great Britain.
As such, therefore, it is a book that should be welcome to all parties."
Now listen to the conclusion, and see whether the practical remedy proposed be not SLAVERY. We believe there is not an intelligent reformist in the world who does not see the necessity of slavery - who does not advocate its re-institution in all save the name. Every one of them concurs in deprecating free competition, and in the wish and purpose to destroy it. To destroy it is to destroy Liberty, and where liberty is destroyed, slavery is established.
"At what conclusion have we arrived? We have pointed out as one of the most remarkable signs of the times, the appearance of a literature of social reference, originating in and then farther promoting a repprochement between the two extremes of society, men of letters and the working classes. We have examined, and to some extent analyzed, the two most conspicuous examples that have been recently furnished in this country, of this new direction and intention of literature. And what has been the result? The result has been, that in both cases, we have found ourselves conducted by the writers in question to one point: the pronunciation of the terrible phrase, 'Organization of Labor,' and the contemplation of a possible exodus, at no very distant period, out of the Egypt of our present system, of competition
and laissez-faire into a comparative Canaan of some kind of co-operative socialism. Such is the fact: startling it may be, but deserving to be fairly stated and apprehended. Right or wrong, we believe this to be a true version and fair history of our current social literature. We have elicited from an examination of but two examples; but we believe the most extensive examination would not invalidate it. Collect all the books, pamphlets and papers that constitute our literature of social reference, or assemble all our men of letters, who have contributed to that literature, so as to learn their private aspirations and opinions with respect to the social problem, and the last word, the united note would still be: 'The Organization of Labor on the associative principle.' There are of course dissentients , but such is the note of the majority; and so far as the note is of value, it may be asserted that a decree of the literary faculty of the country has gone forth, declaring the avater of political economy, if not as a science of facts, at least as a supreme rule of government, to be near its close."
Now strip these and the extracts from Blackwood of their pompous verbiage, and they become express assertions that free society has failed, and that that which is not free must be substituted. Every Southern slave has an estate in tail, indefeasible by fine and recovery, in the lands of the
South. If his present master cannot support him, he must sell him to one who can. Slaves, too, have a valuable property in their masters. Abolitionists overlook this - overlook the protective influence of slavery, its distinguishing feature, and no doubt the cause of its origin and continuance and abuse it as mere engine of oppression. Infant negroes, sick, helpless, aged and infirm negres , are simply a charge to their master; he has no property in them in the common sense of the term, for they are of no value for the time, but they have the most invaluable property in him. He is bound to support them, to supply all their wants, and relieve them of all care for the present or future. And well, and feelingly and faithfully does he discharge his duty. What a glorious thing to man is slavery, when want, misfortune, old age, debility and sickness overtake him. Free society, in its various forms of insurance, in its odd-fellow and temperance societies, in its social and communistic establishments, and in ten thousand other ways, is vainly attempting to attain this never-failing protective, care-taking and supporting feature of slavery. But it will blunder and flounder on in vain. It cannot put a heart and feeling in its societies and its corporations. God makes masters and gives them affections, feelings and interests that secure kindness to the sick, aged and dying slave. Man can never inspire his ricketty
institutions with those feelings, interests and affections. Say the Abolitionists - "Man ought not to have property in man." What a dreary, cold, bleak, inhospitable world this would be with such a doctrine carried into practice. Men living to themselves, like owls and wolves and lions and birds and beasts of prey? No: "Love thy neighbor as thyself." And this can't be done till he has a property in your services as well as a place in your heart. Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto! This, the noblest sentiment ever uttered by uninspired man, recognises the great truth which lies at the foundation of all society - that every man has property in his fellow-man! It is because that adequate provision is not made properly to enforce this great truth in free society, that men are driven to the necessity of attempting to remedy the defects of government by voluntary associations, that carry into definite and practical operation this great and glorious truth. It is because such defects do not exist in slave society, that we are not troubled with strikes, trade unions, phalasteries, communistic establishments, Mormonism, and the thousand other isms that deface and deform free society. Socialism, in some form or other, is universal in free society, and its single aim is to attain the protective influence of slavery. St. Simon would govern his social establishments by savants, more despotic than masters. He would
have no law but the will of the savant. He would have a despot without the feelings and the interests of a master to temper his authority. Fourier proposes some wild plan of passional attraction as a substitute for government, and Louis Blanc is eloquent about "attractive labor." All human experience proves that society must be ruled not by mere abstractions, but by men of flesh and blood. To attain large industrial results, it must be vigorously and severely ruled. Socialism is already slavery in all save the master. It had as well adopt that feature at once, as come to that it must to make its schemes at once humane and efficient. Socialism in other forms than that of slavery is not a new thing. It existed in Crete, in Sparta, in Peru, and was practiced by the Essenes in Judea. All ancient institutions were very much tinged with its doctrines and practices, not only in the relation of master and slave, which was universal, but in the connection of the free citizens to one another and to the government. The doctrines of individuality, of the social contract and of laissez-faire, had not then arisen. Our only quarrel with Socialism is, that it will not honestly admit that it owes its recent revival to the failure of universal liberty, and is seeking to bring about slavery again in some form.
The little experiment of universal liberty that has been tried for a little while in a little corner
of Europe, has resulted in disastrous and appalling failure. Slavery has been too universal not to be necessary to nature, and man struggles in vain against nature. "Expel nature, with a fork, and she will again return;" or, in the eloquent language of Solomon - "The thing that hath been, it is that that shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun."
No one who reads a newspaper can but have observed that every abolitionist is either an agrarian, a socialist, an infidel, an anti-renter, or in some way is trying to upset other institutions of society, as well as slavery at the South. The same reasoning that makes him an abolitionist soon carries him further, for he finds slavery in some form so interwoven with the whole framework of society, that he invariably ends by proposing to destroy the whole edifice and building another on entirely new principles. Some, like Fourier, are honest enough to admit that it must also be built with new materials. There is too much human nature in man for their purposes. Part of that nature is the continual effort to make others work and support him whilst he is idle; in other words, to enslave them, and yet not be charged with their support. But Fourier and his disciples promise most positively that their system will in a few generations cleanse mankind of their mundane
dross, expel every particle of human nature, and that then their system will work admirably. Until then, we would advise them to procure good practical overseers from Virginia to govern their phalanxes and phalasteries; and we venture to affirm, if they try one, they will never be willing to change him for that whip-syllabub, sentimental ruler, "passional attraction." Passional attraction is the very thing government has chiefly to check and punish, and we suspect it will be so to the end of the chapter. The argument seems fairly, however, to have arrived at this point: All concur that free society is a failure. We slaveholders say you must recur to domestic slavery, the oldest, the best and most common form of Socialism. The new schools of Socialism promise something better, but admit, to obtain that something, they must first destroy and eradicate man's human nature.
"There
was a time,
That when the brains were out, the man would
die!"
Cotemporaneously with the explosion of his favorite theory, Mr. Calhoun folded his robe around him with imperial dignity, and expired in the arms an admiring Senate. Mr. Macaulay and the Edinburgh Review still cling to life with the querulous pertinacity of a pair of cats. "Othello's occupation's gone!" Why does Othello still linger on the stage?
Since writing our last chapter, the Edinburgh Review for July, 1854, has reached us. It contains a critique on "An Essay on the Relations between Labor and Capital. B. C. Morrison." The failure of free society we think is admitted in that article. We think the writer further admits that it cannot work successfully without a radical change in human nature. The remedy suggested is very simple; chronic and complex as the diseases which it proposes to cure, yet that remedy requires the poor to give up the use of stimulants. We do not think with Lord Byron, "that man being reasonable should get drunk." We think, the contrary, it is the most irrational act in
the world. But change the line a little, and it is true: "Man being natural, will get drunk." Any theory of society founded on the disuse of stimulants by the poor, is Utopian and false. At all events, it involves the necessity of a total change in man’s nature, for men have ever used stimulants, and until such change will ever use them. If the grog and tobacco rations were withdrawn, would not a smaller number of laborers do the work that a larger number do now, and thus throw a number out of employment? When capitalists discovered that laborers could live on less than they do now, would they not reduce their wages? Would not famine be more common, when there was no room for retrenchment, no tobacco and liquor to substitute for bread, when bread rose in price? Such is the theory of Smith and McCulloch, who attribute famines in Ireland to the too great economy of the peasant. We think the proposed remedy would aggravate the disease; but it suffices for our purpose, that the disease is admitted. The failure of laissez-faire, of political economy, is admitted now by its last and lingering votary. Free society stands condemned by the unanimous testimony of all its enlightened members. We will proceed to quote from the article on which we are commenting:
"A few years ago, when distress among our working people, if not general, was at least chronic
and severe, when the public mind was at once crowded by startling disclosures of misery, and distracted by still more startling projects for relieving it, the book before us would have excited immediate and extensive attention. A few years hence, probably, when the stirring excitement and the noble enterprise of war shall have again given place to the more beneficent pursuits of peace, and when possibly a check to our prosperous career, arising out of war, shall have again awakened our vigilance to those symptoms of social disorder which we are apt to neglect in ordinary times, the book may take the rank it appears to us to deserve. * * * In truth, the great problem it proposes to discuss and elucidate is one of more permanent and mighty interest than any other, however much transient convulsions may throw it into the back-ground, or transient intervals of repose and comfort may lull us into the belief that it is solved or shelved. It is not long since public attention was thoroughly aroused to all that was deplorable, indefensible and dangerous in the condition of the mass of the population; we were daily made aware, that as a fact, the supply of labor was usually in excess of the demand, and much local and occasional suffering was the consequence; but it was not till the Irish famine, and the similar visitation in the Western Highlands, the severe distresses in the manufacturing
districts of England in 1847 and 1848, and the painful and undeniable, even though over-colored, revelations of the state of many thousand artisans of various trades in the metropolis, had alarmed us into inquiry and reflection, that the public mind began to comprehend either the magnitude and imminence of the evil it had to investigate, or the difficulty and complication of the problem it was called upon to solve."
The reviewer and the reviewed very successfully show, after this, that a movement of the laboring class would be attended with more danger in Great Britain than any where else, because in Great Britain this class compose nine-tenths of the nation. In France, where lands are minutely divided, the conservative interest preponderates. There are thirty thousand landholders in England, three thousand in Scotland, and eleven millions in France. The state of society in Great Britain is pregnant with disastrous change and revolution. Emigration affords a temporary vent and relief, but emigration may cease, and then this complex and difficult social problem will recur. The laboring class are about to assume the reins of government. They know their own numbers and strength. All the reasoning in the world will not satisfy them that they who produce every thing should starve, in order that a handful of lords and capitalists should live in wanton waste and idle luxury. Mr. Morrison
will not persuade them that it is a high crime and misdemeanor for them to use a little beer and tobacco, for they make every ounce of tobacco and pint of beer that is consumed in the kingdom. A social revolution is at hand. Dr. Sangrado could not arrest it with his "bleeding and warm water," much less Mr. Morrison with his cold water remedy. The teetotalers should give him a brass medal, for they, like he, propose to remedy all the evils that human flesh is heir to with abstinence and cold water. The Homeopathists will dispute with the Hydropathists the propriety of conferring on him an honorary title. His infinitesimal dose ranking him with the former, and its ingredient, cold water, allying him with the latter practitioners. The reviewer admits that Great Britain is in danger of a far worse social solution than ever visited France, and has no preventive to suggest except to stop the "grog ration." Now, slavery is the only thing in the world that can enforce temperance. The army and navy are the only reliable temperance societies in Great Britain. Men who have lost self-control enlist in them to be controlled by superior authority. They often prolong their lives thereby. Slaves, like soldiers and sailors, are temperate, because temperance is enforced on them. If free laborers will use too much grog and tobacco, it proves they are not ripe for freedom.
But we will forego and give up every word of proof that we have deduced from history to shew the failure of free society. In the present and preceding chapters, we know we have adduced sufficient historical evidence of that failure, but we forego all that. We take a single admission of this reviewer - "that the supply of labor is usually excess of the demand." The admission of course only applies to Great Britain, but it is well known that in free continental Europe the excess is still greater. Now, is it necessary for us to do more than state the admission to prove that free society is absurd and impracticable? Part of the laboring class are out of employment and actually starving, and in their struggle to get employment, reducing to the minimum of what will support human existence those next above them who are employed. This next and employed class are the needle-women, and coarse and common male laborers. The two classes and their dependents constitute one-half of mankind. Theoretically, this half of mankind is always at starvation point in free society. Practically, the proportion of the suffering destitute is much greater. We are astounded that conclusions so obviously and immediately resulting from admitted premises, should not have occurred to every one, especially when horrid facts beckoned the way to the conclusion.
This whole article in the Edinburgh is unfeeling and libellous, unjust and untrue. The greatest destitution and pauperism excludes the use of stimulants. The working women suffer most, and they use few stimulants. The starving peasantry of Scotland, France and Ireland, can rarely indulge in them. It is the well-paid laborers who, after the excessive fatigues of the day, indulge in the pipe and the bottle. Fatigued, maddened and desperate with the prospect before them, some little charity should be extended to their feelings. Such wholesale abuse of the laboring class will but precipitate the social revolution which the reviewer dreads.
energy, enterprise and industry, believe free competition to be an unmixed good.
The South, quiet, contented, satisfied, looks upon all socialists and radical reformers as madmen or knaves. It is as ignorant of free society as that society is of slavery. Each section sees one side of the subject alone; each, therefore, takes partial and erroneous views of it. Social science will never take a step in advance till some Southern slave-holder, competent for the task, devotes a life-time to its study and elucidation; for slavery can only be understood by living in its midst, whilst thousands of books daily exhibit the minutest workings of free society. The knowledge of the numerous theories of radical reform proposed in Europe, and the causes that have led to their promulgation, is of vital importance to us. Yet we turn away from them with disgust, as from something unclean and vicious. We occupy high vantage ground for observing, studying and classifying the various phenomena of society; yet we do not profit by the advantages of our position. We should do so, and indignantly hurl back upon our assailants the charge, that there is something wrong and rotten in our system. From their own mouths we can show free society to be a monstrous abortion, and slavery to be the healthy, beautiful and natural being which they are trying, unconsciously, to adopt.
they are so much under the influence of impulse, passion and appetite, that they want sufficient self-control to be deterred or governed by the distant and doubtful penalties of the law. They must be constantly controlled by parents or guardians, whose will and orders shall stand in the place of law for them. Very wicked men must be put into penitentiaries; lunatics into asylums, and the most wild of them into straight jackets, just as the most wicked of the sane are manacled with irons; and idiots must have committees to govern and take care of them. Now, it is clear the Athenian democracy would not suit a negro nation, nor will the government of mere law suffice for the individual negro. He is but a grown up child, and must be governed as a child, not as a lunatic or criminal. The master occupies towards him the place of parent or guardian. We shall not dwell on this view, for no one will differ with us who thinks as we do of the negro’s capacity, and we might argue till dooms-day, in vain, with those who have a high opinion of the negro’s moral and intellectual capacity.
Secondly. The negro is improvident; will not lay up in summer for the wants of winter; will not accumulate in youth for the exigencies of age. He would become an insufferable burden to society. Society has the right to prevent this, and can only do so by subjecting him to domestic slavery.
In the last place, the negro race is inferior to the white race, and living in their midst, they would be far outstripped or outwitted in the chase of free competition. Gradual but certain extermination would be their fate. We presume the maddest abolitionist does not think the negro’s providence of habits and money-making capacity at all to compare to those of the whites. This defect of character would alone justify enslaving him, if he is to remain here. In Africa or the West Indies, he would become idolatrous, savage and cannibal, or be devoured by savages and cannibals. At the North he would freeze or starve.
We would remind those who deprecate and sympathize with negro slavery, that his slavery here relieves him from a far more cruel slavery in Africa, or from idolatry and cannibalism, and every brutal vice and crime that can disgrace humanity; and that it christianizes, protects, supports and civilizes him; that it governs him far better than free laborers at the North are governed. There, wife murder has become a mere holiday pastime; and where so many wives are murdered, almost all must be brutally treated. Nay, more: men who kill their wives or treat them brutally, must be ready for all kinds of crime, and the calendar of crime at the North proves the inference to be correct. Negroes never kill their wives. If it be objected that legally they
have no wives, then we reply, that in an experience of more than forty years, we never yet heard of a negro man killing a negro woman. Our negroes are not only better off as to physical comfort than free laborers, but their moral condition is better.
But abolish negro slavery, and how much of slavery still remains. Soldiers and sailors in Europe enlist for life; here, for five years. Are they not slaves who have not only sold their liberties, but their lives also? And they are worse treated than domestic slaves. No domestic affection and self-interest extend their aegis over them. No kind mistress, like a guardian angel, provides for them in health, tends them in sickness, and soothes their dying pillow. Wellington at Waterloo was a slave. He was bound to obey, or would, admiral Bying, have been shot for gross misconduct, and might not, like a common laborer, quit his work at any moment. He had sold his liberty, and might not resign without the consent of his master, the king. The common laborer may quit his work at any moment, whatever his contract; declare that liberty is an inalienable right, and leave his employer to redress by a useless suit for damages. The highest and most honorable position on earth was that of the slave Wellington; the lowest, that of the free man who cleaned his boots and fed his hounds. The African
cannibal, caught, christianized and enslaved, is as much elevated by slavery as was Wellington. The kind of slavery is adapted to the men enslaved. Wives and apprentices are slaves; not in theory only, but often in fact. Children are slaves to their parents, guardians and teachers. Imprisoned culprits are slaves. Lunatics and idiots are slaves also. Three-fourths of free society are slaves, no better treated, when their wants and capacities are estimated, than negro slaves. The masters in free society, or slave society, if they perform properly their duties, have more cares and less liberty than the slaves themselves. "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou earn thy bread!" made all men slaves, and such all good men continue to be.
Negro slavery would be changed immediately to some form of peonage, serfdom or villienage , if the negroes were sufficiently intelligent and provident to manage a farm. No one would have the labor and trouble of management, if his negroes would pay in hires and rents one-half what free tenants pay in rent in Europe. Every negro in the South should be soon liberated, if he would take liberty on the terms that white tenants hold it. The fact that he cannot enjoy liberty on such terms, seems conclusive that he is only fit to be a slave.
But for the assaults of the abolitionists, much would have been done ere this to regulate and
improve Southern slavery. Our negro mechanics do not work so hard, have many more privileges and holidays, and are better fed and clothed than field hands, and are yet more valuable to their masters. The slaves of the South are cheated of their rights by the purchase of Northern manufactures which they could produce. Besides, if we employ our slaves in the coarser processes of the mechanic arts and manufactures, such as brick making, getting and hewing timber for ships and houses, iron mining and smelting, coal mining, grading railroads and plank roads, in the manufacture of cotton, tobacco, &c. , we would find a vent in new employments for their increase, more humane and more profitable than the vent afforded by new states and territories. The nice finishing processes of manufactures and mechanics should be reserved for the whites, who are fitted for them, and thus, by diversifying pursuits and cutting off dependence on the North, we might benefit and advance the interests of our whole population. Exclusive agriculture has depressed and impoverished the South. We will not here dilate on this topic, because we intend to make it the subject of a separate essay. Free trade doctrines, not slavery, have made the South agricultural and dependent, given her a sparse and ignorant population, ruined her cities, and expelled her people.
Would the abolitionists approve of a system of society that set white children free, and remitted them at the age of fourteen, males and females, to all the rights, both as to person and property, which belong to adults? Would it be criminal or praiseworthy to do so? Criminal, of course. Now, are the average of negroes equal in information, in native intelligence, in prudence or providence, to well-informed white children of fourteen? We who have lived with them for forty years, think not. The competition of the world would be too much for the children. They would be cheated out of their property and debased in their morals. Yet they would meet every where with sympathizing friends of their own color, ready to aid, advise and assist them. The negro would be exposed to the same competition and greater temptations, with no greater ability to contend with them, with these additional difficulties. He would be welcome nowhere; meet with thousands of enemies and no friends. If he went North, the white laborers would kick him and cuff him, and drive him out of employment. If he went to Africa, the savages would cook him and eat him. If he went to the West Indies, they would not let him in, or if they did, they would soon make of him a savage and idolater.
We have a further question to ask. If it be right and incumbent to subject children to the
authority of parents and guardians, and idiots and lunatics to committees, would it not be equally right and incumbent to give the free negroes masters, until at least they arrive at years of discretion, which very few ever did or will attain? What is the difference between the authority of a parent and of a master? Neither pay wages, and each is entitled to the services of those subject to him. The father may not sell his child forever, but may hire him out till he is twenty-one. The free negro’s master may also be restrained from selling. Let him stand in loco parentis, and call him papa instead of master. Look closely into slavery, and you will see nothing so hideous in it; or if you do, you will find plenty of it at home in its most hideous form.
The earliest civilization of which history gives account is that of Egypt. The negro was always in contact with that civilization. For four thousand years he has had opportunities of becoming civilized. Like the wild horse, he must be caught, tamed and domesticated. When his subjugation ceases he again runs wild, like the cattle on the Pampas of the South, or the horses on the prairies of the West. His condition in the West Indies proves this.
It is a common remark, that the grand and lasting architectural structures of antiquity were the results of slavery. The mighty and continued
association of labor requisite to their construction, when mechanic art was so little advanced, and labor-saving processes unknown, could only have been brought about by a despotic authority, like that of the master over his slaves. It is, however, very remarkable, that whilst in taste and artistic skill the world seems to have been retrograding ever since the decay and abolition of feudalism, in mechanical invention and in great utilitarian operations requiring the wielding of immense capital and much labor, its progress has been unexampled. Is it because capital is more despotic in its authority over free laborers than Roman masters and feudal lords were over their slaves and vassals?
Free society has continued long enough to justify the attempt to generalize its phenomena, and calculate its moral and intellectual influences. It is obvious that, in whatever is purely utilitarian and material, it incites invention and stimulates industry. Benjamin Franklin, as a man and a philosopher, is the best exponent of the working of the system. His sentiments and his philosophy are low, selfish, atheistic and material. They tend directly to make man a mere "featherless biped," well-fed, well-clothed and comfortable, but regardless of his soul as "the beasts that perish."
Since the Reformation the world has as regularly been retrograding in whatever belongs to the departments of genius, taste and art, as it has
been progressing in physical science and its application to mechanical construction. Mediaeval Italy rivalled if it did not surpass ancient Rome, in poetry, in sculpture, in painting, and many of the fine arts. Gothic architecture reared its monuments of skill and genius throughout Europe, till the 15th century; but Gothic architecture died with the Reformation. The age of Elizabeth was the Augustan age of England. The men who lived then acquired their sentiments in a world not deadened and vulgarized by puritanical cant and levelling demagoguism. Since then men have arisen who have been the fashion and the go for a season, but none have appeared whose names will descend to posterity. Liberty and equality made slower advances in France. The age of Louis XIV was the culminating point of French genius and art. It then shed but a flickering and lurid light. Frenchmen are servile copyists of Roman art and Rome had no art of her own. She borrowed from Greece; distorted and deteriorated what she borrowed; and France imitates and falls below Roman distortions. The genius of Spain disappeared with Cervantes; and now the world seems to regard nothing as desirable except what will make money and what costs money. There is not a poet, an orator, a sculptor, or painter in the world. The tedious elaboration necessary to all the productions of high art would be ridiculed
in this money-making, utilitarian, charlatan age. Nothing now but what is gaudy and costly excites admiration. The public taste is debased.
But far the worst feature of modern civilization, which is the civilization of free society, remains to be exposed. Whilst labor-saving processes have probably lessened by one half, in the last century, the amount of work needed for comfortable support, the free laborer is compelled by capital and competition to work more than he ever did before, and is less comfortable. The organization of society cheats him of his earnings, and those earnings go to swell the vulgar pomp and pageantry of the ignorant millionaires, who are the only great of the present day. These reflections might seem, at first view, to have little connexion with negro slavery, but it is well for us of the South not to be deceived by the tinsel glare and glitter of free society, and to employ ourselves in doing our duty at home, and studying the past, rather than in insidious rivalry of the expensive pleasures and pursuits of men whose sentiments and whose aims are low, sensual and grovelling.
Human progress, consisting in moral and intellectual improvement, and there being no agreed and conventional standard weights or measures of moral and intellectual qualities and quantities, the question of progress can never be accurately decided. We maintain that man has not improved,
because in all save the mechanic arts he reverts to the distant past for models to imitate, and he never imitates what he can excel.
We need never have white slaves in the South,
because we have black ones. Our citizens, like those
of Rome and Athens, are a privileged class. We
should train and educate them to deserve the privileges
and to perform the duties which society confers
on them. Instead, by a low demagoguism depressing
their self-respect by discourses on the
equality of man, we had better excite their pride by
reminding them that they do not fulfil the menial
which white men do in other countries. Society
does not feel the burden of providing for the
few helpless paupers in the South. And we should
recollect that here we have but half the people to
educate, for half are negroes; whilst at the North
they profess to educate all. It is in our power to
spike this last gun of the abolitionists. We should
educate all the poor. The abolitionists say that it
is one of the necessary consequences of slavery
that the poor are neglected. It was not so in
Athens, and in Rome, and should not be so in the
South. If we had less trade with and less
dependence on the North, all our poor might be
profitably and honorably employed in trades,
professions and manufactures. Then we should have a
rich and denser population. Yet we but marshal
her in the way that she was going. The South is
We deem this peculiar question of negro slavery
of very little importance. The issue is made
throughout the world on the general subject of
slavery in the abstract. The argument has commenced.
One set of ideas will govern and control
after awhile the civilized world. Slavery will everywhere
be abolished, or every where be re-instituted.
We think the opponents of practical, existing
slavery, are estopped
by their own admission;
nay, that unconsciously, as socialists, they are the
defenders and propagandists of slavery, and have
furnished the only sound arguments on which its
defence and justification can be rested. We have
introduced the subject of negro slavery to afford
us a better opportunity to disclaim the purpose of
reducing the white man any where to the condition
of negro slaves here. It would be very unwise
and unscientific to govern white men as you would
negroes. Every shade and variety of slavery has
existed in the world. In some cases there has
been much of legal regulation, much restraint of
the master's authority; in others, none at all.
The character of slavery necessary to protect the
whites in Europe should be much milder than
negro slavery, for slavery is only needed to protect
the white man, whilst it is more necessary for
the government of the negro even than for his
protection. But even negro slavery should not be
outlawed. We might and should have laws in
Virginia, as in Louisiana, to make the master subject
to presentment by the grand jury and to
punishment, for any inhuman or improper treatment
or neglect of his slave.
We abhor the doctrine of the "Types of Mankind;"
first, because it is at war with scripture,
which teaches us that the whole human race is
descended from a common parentage; and, second,
because it encourages and incites brutal
masters to treat negroes, not as weak, ignorant
and dependent brethren, but as wicked beasts,
without the pale of humanity. The Southerner is
the negro's friend, his only friend. Let no intermeddling
abolitionist, no refined philosophy, dissolve
this friendship.
and occupations of freemen. The necessity which
often compels the best of men to resort to such
trades and occupations in no degree degrades their
character, nor does the necessity which imposes
slavery degrade the character of the slave. The
man who acts well his part, whether as slave or
free laborer, is entitled to and commands the esteem
and respect of all good men. The disgrace
of slavery all consists in the cowardice, the
improvidence or crime which generally originate it.
The Babylonian captivity and slavery were
intended to chastise, purify and elevate the Jews,
not to degrade them. The disgrace consisted in
the crimes, the effeminacy and the idolatry which
invited and occasioned that captivity.
If the scriptural authority for slavery were robbed
of its divine authorship, still it would stand
far above all human authority. Moses, if an impostor,
was the wisest statesman that ever lived.
Under his stereotyped and unchangeable institutions,
Judea, a small and barren country, went on
to prosper, until in the age of Solomon, the Jews
became the wealthiest and most enlightened people
on earth. More than a thousand years afterwards,
in the reign of Vespasian, the single city of
Jerusalem defied for six months the combined
power of the civilized world, led on by the best
warrior and greatest genius of the age.
Such vitality did those institutions of Moses
possess, that although the Jews were scattered
after times to the four winds of heaven, down
trodden, hated, persecuted, oppressed, still clinging to
the very letter of his law, they are to day
a great,
numerous and prosperous people. Whilst the lower
classes among them are shrewd, cunning, filthy
and dishonest, the upper classes are honest,
high-minded, enlightened and immensely wealthy.
To-day, the Rothschilds wield as much power as the
Emperor Nicholas, and wield it more wisely and
humanely. Of their institutions slavery was an
important element. If their unparalleled wisdom
and success prove not their divine origin, this at
least proves that they are infinitely the best models
of human policy.
Ham, a son of Noah, was condemned to slay
and his posterity after him. We do not adopt the
theory that he was the ancestor of the negro race.
The Jewish slaves were not negroes, and to
confine the justification of slavery to that race would
be to weaken its scriptural authority, and to lose
the whole weight of profane authority, for we read
of no negro slavery in ancient times.
The righteous Abraham, the chosen of God from
a wicked world, was both prince and master. He
possessed the power of life and death over his
subjects or slaves, and over his wife and children.
When about to sacrifice Isaac, he never dreamed
that any human authority could dispute his right
or stay his hand. Yet who would not prefer to
have been of the household of Abraham, to delving
as a free laborer for some vulgar boss of modern
times. In the times of Abraham, we may infer
from his history that all masters possessed the
power of life and death. It teaches us another
lesson, - how much there is in a name. We attach
nothing humiliating or disgraceful to the situation
of the subject of a despotic prince; but call him
master, "there all the dishonor
lies." In truth,
influences on character are the same, provided
the persons subjected be the same.
The first runaway we read of was Hagar, and
she we find, like runaways at the North, about
to perish for want. An angel of the Lord did
not spurn the office which Senator Sumner contemns
- to restore the fugitive to her owners.
"And the Angel of the Lord said unto her, return
to thy mistress and submit thyself under
her hands." St. Paul, the Chevalier Bayard of
Christianity, had not so nice a sense of honor as
the Massachusetts Senator. He returned Onesimus
to his master. Christianity then inculcated
and enjoined obedience to masters. Pretended
Christianity, now, incites disobedience and insurrection,
and heads mobs to rescue slaves from their masters.
In Judea men might become slaves, as captives
taken in war; probably a majority of slaves were
of this character. It has been, on insufficient
grounds we think, assumed, that slavery owes its
origin generally to this source.
It is true that ancient peoples made slaves of
the vanquished, but it is also true, that in all
instances we find slavery pre-existing in both the
conquering and conquered nation. The word "servus"
is said to derive its origin from the fact that
prisoners of war who were made slaves, were
saved or preserved from death thereby; their lives
being, according to the Law of Nations as then
understood, forfeited to the victor. The Chinese
every day sell themselves to each other to "save
or preserve" themselves from want, hunger and
death. Such instances no doubt were of daily
occurrence in all ancient societies, and the word
"servus" may have as well originated from this social
practice as from the practices of war. We do not
think history will sustain the theory that even in
case of war, it was the mere saving the life, that
originated the term. Conquerors in feudal times,
we know, and probably in all times, parcelled out
the conquered territory, both the lands and the
people, to inferior chieftains, whose interest and
duty it became to preserve lands, fruits, crops,
houses, and inhabitants, from the cruel rapine,
waste, pillage and oppression of the common
soldiers. It is the interest of victors not to destroy
what they have vanquished, and history shows
that their usages have conformed to their interests.
We deem this definition of the origin of slavery
by war more consistent with history and humanity,
than the usual one, that the mere life of the prisoner
was saved, and hence he was called "servus."
Men might sell themselves in Judea, and they
could be sold for debt or crime. The slavery of
the Jews was but temporary, that of the heathen
to the Jews hereditary. We cannot conclude the
scriptural view of slavery better than by the citation
of authorities collected and collated from the
Old and New Testaments by Professor Stuart of
Andover, in a pamphlet entitled, "Conscience and
Constitution."
Exodus xxi: 2. If thou buy a Hebrew servant,
six years he shall serve, and he the seventh shall
go out free for nothing. (3.) If he came in by
himself, he shall go out by himself; if he were
married, then his wife shall go out with him.
(4.) If his master have given him a wife, and she
have borne him sons or daughters, the wife and
children shall be her master’s, and he shall go
out by himself. (7.) And if a man sell his daughter
to be a maid servant, she shall not go out as
the men servants do. (8.) If she please not her
master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then
shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a
strange nation, he shall have no dower, seeing he
hath dealt deceitfully with her. (9.) And if he
have betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with
her after the manner of daughters. (10.) If he
take him another wife, her food, her raiment, and
her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish. (11.)
And if he do not these three unto her, then shall
she go out free without money. (20.) And if a
man smite his servant or his maid, with a rod, and
he die under his hand, he shall be surely punished.
(21.) Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two,
he shall not be punished: for he is his money.
(26.) And if a man smite the eye of his servant
or maid, that it perish, he shall let him go free
for his eye's sake. (27.) And if he smite out his
man servant’s tooth or his maid servant’s tooth;
he shall let him go free for the tooth’s sake.
Leviticus xxv: 44. Both thy bondmen and thy
bondmaids which thou shalt have, shall be of the
heathen that are around about you; of them
shall you buy bondmen and bondmaids. (45.)
Moreover, of the children of the strangers that
do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy,
and of their families that are with you, which
they begat in your land; and they shall be your
possession. (46.) And ye shall take them as an
inheritance
for your children after you, to inherit
them for a possession; they shall be
your bondmen
forever.
New
Testament Authorities. - Paul to the
Ephesians vi: 5-9. Servants, be obedient to them
that are your masters according to the flesh, with
fear and trembling, with singleness of heart, as
unto Christ; (6.) Not with eye service as men-pleasers;
but as the servants of Christ doing the
will of God from the heart. (7.) With good will
doing service as to the Lord, and not to men;
(8.) Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man
doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord,
whether he be bond or free. (9.) And ye masters,
do the same thing unto them, forbearing
threatening, knowing that your Master also is in
heaven; neither is there respect of persons with
him.
Paul, Colossians iii: 22. Servants obey in all
things your masters according to the flesh; not
with eye service as men-pleasers; but in singleness
of heart fearing God. (23.) And whatsoever
ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not unto
man; knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive
the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the
Lord Christ. (25.) But he that doeth wrong, shall
receive for the wrong which he hath done: and
there is no respect of persons. (iv: 1.) Masters
give unto your servants that which is just and
equal, knowing that you also have a Master in
heaven.
Titus ii: 9. Exhort servants to be obedient unto
their own masters, and to please them well in all
things; not answering again; (10.) Not purloining,
but showing all good fidelity; that they
adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.
1 Peter ii: 18. Servants be subject to your masters
with all fear; not only to the good and gentle,
but also to the froward. (19.) For this is
thank-worthy, if a man for conscience toward God
endure grief, suffering wrongfully. For what glory
is it, if when ye be buffetted for your faults, ye
shall take it patiently? but if when ye do well
and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable
with God. (21.) For even hereunto were
ye called: because Christ also suffered for us,
leaving us an example that ye should follow his
steps.
of domestic affection over them all, that the winds
of heaven not visit them too roughly; under
its expansive folds other of his creatures repose
in quiet and security: the ox, the horse, the sheep,
the faithful dog, betake themselves to its friendly
shelter, and cluster around their protecting master.
Domestic affection cannot be calculated in dollars
and cents. It cannot be weighed, or measured,
or seen, or felt - except in its effects. "The
wind bloweth where it listeth and no man knoweth
whence it cometh or whither it goeth." Its holy
fountain is concealed in deeper recesses than the
head of the Nile, and in its course it dispenses
blessings from the rich overflowings of the hearth,
ten thousand times more precious than that sacred
river ever gave to the land of Egypt. Political
economists, politicians and materialists ignore its
existence, because it is too refined for their
comprehension. The material world engrosses their
attention, and they heed little those moral
agencies that Providence has established to control
the material world. Slavery without domestic
affection would be a curse, and so would
marriage and parental authority. The free laborer
is excluded from its holy and charmed circle.
Shelterless, naked, and hungry, he is exposed to
the bleak winds, the cold rains, and hot sun of
heaven, with none that love him, none that care
for him. His employer hates him because he
asks high wages or joins strikes; his fellow
laborer hates him because he competes with him for
employment. Foolish Abolitionists! bring him
back like the Prodigal Son. Let him fare at
least as well as the dog, and the horse, and the
sheep. Abraham's tent is ready to receive him.
Better lie down with the kids and the goats, than
stand naked and hungry without. As a slave, he
will be beloved and protected. Whilst free, he
will be hated, despised and persecuted. Such is
the will of God and order of Providence. It is
idle to enquire the reasons.
Soldiers and sailors are, and ever must be, also,
the subjects of despotic rule. They have sold
their liberty. They have sold their persons and
their lives. No domestic affection mitigates and
qualifies their slavery! Those who rule them,
love them not, for they belong not to their family
household. It is well that they are men in
the prime of life, who can bear hard and harsh
treatment; for hard and harsh treatment they are
sure to get. Whipping is prohibited in the army
and navy! Miserable ignorance and charlatanism!
You cannot prohibit whipping until you
disband both army and navy. What is whipping?
Is it not corporeal punishment? and is
not corporeal detention and corporeal punishment
part of the sailor's and soldier's contract. If he
wishes to desert, may you not and will you
restrain him by bodily force? Will you not, if
necessary, knock him down, hand-cuff, and
imprison him? Nay, if he repeat the offence, will
you not shoot him? Will you not fasten a chain
and a block to him if necessary? Whipping has
not been abolished, and cannot be abolished in
navy or army. Whipping means - corporeal
punishment, and corporeal detention. You retain the
right to inflict them, and it is a mere matter of
caprice and taste how they shall be inflicted. The
man whose person is sold is a slave. The man
whose person is imprisoned for punishment has
felt the disgrace of whipping and endured more
than its pains.
The Churches and lands of the Episcopal Church
were confiscated. And an even-handed justice
resolved that there should be no more churches,
church lands, nor even burying places for the poor.
Land could not be held for such purposes. They
professed to allow every one to choose his own
religion, but refused them a place wherein to
make the selection, and to worship God after the
selection should be made. No government had
existed without a recognized state religion.
To dispense with an institution so universal and
so natural, was a bold experiment. Fortunately
for us, Christianity did slip into our governments
despite the intention of their framers. It was
so interwoven with all our customs, feelings, prejudices
and lives, that to the surprise and mortification
of many, Christianity, though maimed, crippled
and disabled, still Christianity was discovered
amongst our own institutions; and probably
has continued to this day the most potent and
influential part of our systems.
Despite the Constitution of the United States,
which secures to all the free exercise of religious
freedom, there is scarcely a State in this Union
that would permit, under the pretext of religious
forms and observances, any gross violations of
christian morality.
Mormons and Oneida Perfectionists would no
sooner be tolerated in Virginia than Pyrrhic Dances
and human sacrifices to Moloch. Even Catholics
would not be permitted to enact a Parisian sabbath,
or Venitian
carnival. Christianity is the
established religion of most of our States, and
Christianity conforming itself to the moral feelings
and prejudices of the great majority of the people.
No gross violation of public decency will be
allowed for the sake of false abstractions.
Women may wear paddies or bloomers, but if
they carry the spirit of independence so far as
to adopt a dress to conceal their sex, they will
soon find themselves in a cage or a prison.
We wished to try the experiment of government
without religion, we failed in the attempt. The
French did try it, and enthroned the goddess of
Reason hard by the reeking guillotine. Moloch
might have envied the Goddess the number of her
victims, for the streets of Paris ran with blood.
The insane ravings of the drunken votaries of Bacchus,
were innocency and decency personified, when
compared with the mad profanity of Frenchmen,
cut loose from religion, and from God.
Soon, very soon, even French republicans
discovered the necessity of religion to the very
existence of society and of government, and with a
profanity more horrible than that which installed the
goddess of Reason, they resolved to legislate into
existence a Supreme Being. On this occasion, the
cruel Robespierre pays one of the most beautiful
and just tributes to religion we have ever read.
We quote it as a continuation of our argument
and an elucidation of our theory - "That religion
is a necessary governmental institution."
"Let us here take a lesson from history. Take
notice, I beseech you, how the men who have
exercised an indolence on the destinies of States
have been led into one or the other of the two opposite
systems, by their personal character, and by
the very nature of their political views. Observe
with what profound art Caesar pleading in the
Roman Senate, in behalf of the accomplices of
Cataline, deviates into a digression against the
dogma of the immortality of the human soul, so
well calculated do those ideas appear to him, to
extinguish in the hearts of the judges the energy
of virtue, so intimately does the cause of crime
seem to be connected with that of infidelity. -
Cicero, on the contrary, invoked the sword of the
law and the thunderbolts of the gods against the
traitors. Leonidas, at Thermopylae, supping with
his companions in arms, the moment before
executing the most heroic design that human
virtue ever conceived, invited them for the next day
to another banquet in a new life. Cato did not
hesitate between Epicurus and Zeno. Brutus and
the illustrious conspirators who shared his
danger and his glory, belonged also to that sublime
sect of the Stoics, which had such lofty ideas of the
dignity of man, which carried the enthusiasm of
virtue to such a height, and which was extravagant
in heroism only. Stoicism saved the honor of
human nature, degraded by the vices of the
successors of Caesar, and still more by the patience
of the people."
In the same speech, speaking of the philosophers,
he identifies atheism and materialism with
the then and now prevalent doctrines of Political
Economy. - "This sect propagated with great
zeal the opinion of materialism, which prevailed
among the great and among the
Beaux
Esprits;
to it we owe in part that kind of practical philosophy,
which, reducing selfishness to a system,
considers human society as a warfare of trickery,
success as the rule of right and wrong, integrity
as a matter of taste or decorum, the world as
the patrimony of clever scoundrels."
We are gradually dismissing our political prejudice
against religion. The Legislature of Virginia,
some years ago, passed a law to permit religious
congregations to hold land to erect churches
on, and at its last session a law was enacted
chartering some religious institution. The
observance of the Christian sabbath is enforced by
law. Ministers of the gospel are recognized as
such, incapacitated to hold civil offices and
exempted from many civil duties. Oaths are
administered on the Bible, and infidels, it is the better
opinion, are incompetent witnesses. Marriage in
the South is generally a Christian ordinance as
well as a civil contract, to be celebrated only by
ministers of the Gospel. At the North marriage
is a mere bargain, like the purchase of a horse,
with the difference, that the wife cannot be
swapped off - hence, when they get tired of her, they
knock her on the head.
We are not surprised that frequent wife murder
should result from their low, sordid, worldly view
of the marriage tie, and still less surprised, that
with these, and a hundred other ill consequences
arising from their sort of marriages, that women's
conventions should be held to assert her rights
to liberty, independence and breeches, and that
sympathising bachelors in the ranks of the Socialists,
propose to dispense with this troublesome and
inconvenient relation altogether. In the North
there is a tendency to anarchy and infidelity, in
the South to conservatism and stricter religious
observation. We should be cautious, prudent and
experimental in giving governmental aid to
religion. Like fire, if it escapes from our control,
it will become dangerous and destructive, - but it
is nevertheless like fire, indispensable. A republic
cannot continue without the prevalence of sound
morality. Laws are useless and inefficient without
moral men to expound and administer them.
We have not a solitary example in all history
to countenance the theories of our ancestors, that
a people may be moral, or that a government
exist where religion is not in some form or
degree recognised by law. What latitude shall be
allowed to men in the exercise and practice of
religion, is a question for the people to determine
when the occasion requires it. It is best not to
lay down abstract principles to guide us in advance.
Of all the applications of philosophy none have
failed so signally as when it has been tried in
matters of government. Philosophy will blow up
any government that is founded on it. Religion,
on the other hand, will sustain the governments
that rest upon it. The French build governments
on a
priori
doctrines of philosophy which explode
as fast as built. The English gradually and
experimentally form institutions, watch their operation,
and deduce general laws from those operations.
That kind of philosophy, which neither attempts
to create nor account for, is admissible and useful.
An extensive knowledge of the history of the
various moral philosophies that have succeeded
each other in the world, is useful, but only useful
because it warns us to avoid all philosophy in the
practical affairs of life. If we would have our
people moral, and our institutions permanent, we
should gradually repudiate our political abstractions
and adopt religious truths in their stead.
It is an unpopular theme to deny human progress
and human improvement. We flatter ourselves
that we are more enlightened as well as
more moral than the ancients, yet we imitate
them in all else save the mechanic arts. Our
hearts, we think, are not as hard and callous as
theirs, for they delighted in gladiatorial combats
which would fill us with horror. But we are as
much pleased to hear of victories won by our
countrymen as they, and our pleasure mounts the
higher as we hear of more of the enemy killed in
battle. Our nerves are too delicate to witness
the pangs of the dying, but we rejoice to hear
they are dead. Now, our moral code is one of
the purest selfishness. The ancients were divided
between Stoicism and Epicurism, - the philosophy
of the Sadducees and that of the Pharisees.
Neither the Epicurean, nor the Sadducee professed
as low, selfish and grovelling a morality as
that which our prevalent political economy inculcates.
The Stoics and the Pharisees soared far above
it. Divest us of our Christian morality, and leave
us to our moral philosophy, and we might dread
the comparison with any era of the past. We
have but one moral code, and that the selfish one;
the ancients always had two, one of which was
elevated, self-denying and unselfish. In truth, a
material and infidel philosophy has prevailed for
a century, and seemed to threaten the overthrow
of Christianity. But man is a religious animal.
His mind may become distempered and diseased
for a time, and he may cavil and doubt as to
Deity, immortality and accountability - but
"conscience that makes cowards of us all," soon forces
upon him the conviction that he is living in the
presence of a God. The belief in God and moral
accountability, like the belief in self-existence and
free agency, is necessitous and involuntary. It
is part of our consciousness. We cannot prove
that we exist; we cannot prove that we are free
agents. We must take our consciousness and
involuntary belief, as proof that we do exist and
are free agents. This is the conclusion at which
metaphysicians have arrived. Now explore all the
secrets of human hearts, all the recesses of history,
and it will be found that religion is as much
a matter of consciousness and involuntary belief
as free agency or self-existence. It is a stubborn
fact in human nature. Statesmen cannot ignore
its existence, and must provide for its exercise and
enjoyment, else their institutions will vanish like
chaff before the wind.
into its own mental operations, it knows not how
it arrived at those conclusions. It sees all the
facts and concludes rightly, - abstract philosophers
see but a few, reason correctly on them, but err
in judgment because their promises are partial and
incorrect. Men of sound judgments, are always
men who give wrong reasons for their opinions.
They form correct opinions because they are
practical and experienced; they give wrong
reasons for those opinions, because they are no
abstractionists and cannot detect, follow and
explain the operations of their own minds. The
judgment of women is far superior to that of
men. They are more calm and observant. Every
married man knows that when he places a scheme
before his wife and she disapproves it, he
conquers her in argument, goes away distrusting his
own opinion, though triumphant, and finds in the
end his wife was right, though she could not tell
him why. Women have more sense than men, but
they want courage to carry out and execute what
their judgments commend. Hence men, although
they fail in a thousand visionary schemes, succeed
at last in some one, and are dubbed the nobler
sex. An old bachelor friend of ours, says: women
are great at a quarrel, bad at argument.
This is deviating a little from the balance of
trade, but we return to it. All political economists
contend that the local increase of currency
increases prices, and Say goes so far as to say that
doubling the money in France, would double prices
in France. Rich men do not give double as high
prices as poor men, but buy cheaper, although
they have more money. Money is cheap and
abundant in London, and prices are not half what
they are in new countries, which are flourishing,
and where money is scarce. Double the amount
of money in the world, and you double prices.
Double its amount in any one country, and in
many instances you would diminish prices. -
Wheat and corn, and negroes, and manufactured
articles, would sell no higher in Virginia, if her
currency were quadrupled, for she would have her
prices determined for those articles, by the
markets of the world. Lands fitted for mere grain
producing would sell no higher, for their value
would be determined by the amount of money
their crops would fetch in foreign markets, and
be not at all affected by the amount of money in
Virginia, for Virginia makes more grain than she
can consume, and foreign markets regulate its
price. City lots and houses would rise in value,
but even in them the prices would be somewhat
regulated by the prices of the world, for men will
sooner quit their country than give inordinate
prices for houses to live in. We never could
account for the common error and folly of political
economists, in supposing that a local increase of
currency, would be followed by a corresponding
increase of prices. If it were true, then the balance
of trade would be of no advantage, but it
is foolishly false.
The balance of trade, the accumulation and
increase of money, having no determinate
influence on prices, in many cases diminishing them,
in a few increasing them, what is to become of
the accession to the currency, for which the business
of the community has no use or demand?
Men will not let their money lie idle. It cannot
be employed by themselves, or by those who
borrow it, in existing pursuits. They are all filled
up. The consequence is, that new pursuits arise.
An agricultural country becomes a commercial
and manufacturing one, and thus four or five
times the money is required for its transactions.
Ships and factories are built, and thousands of
laborers and artisans are introduced for the
purpose. Then it becomes necessary to build
houses, to construct roads, and to make canals.
Now there is use for the increase of money,
occasioned by the favorable balance of trade;
and as one dollar in currency represents some
twenty in property, every dollar imported in
excess over dollars exported, will occasion an
increase of local and national wealth of twenty
dollars. The man who saves a thousand dollars
of his income is only a thousand dollars richer,
but the nation that saves a thousand dollars adds
twenty thousand to its wealth. We are no
cosmopolite philanthropists, and will not stop to
enquire the effects on the wealth of the world,
but we undertake to say, that the local advantages
of the balance of trade have been grossly
underrated by its warmest advocates. Political
economists have ever been the astutest, but most
narrow-minded and least comprehensive of men.
Whilst on this subject we will remark, that so
far as we have examined their works, they
confound the simplest rules of logic. They treat of
political economy as a mere physical science, of
man as a mere machine, impelled by mechanical
forces, and determine the results of all national
policy and industrial avocations by measurements
of time, distance, cost of transportation, capacity
of soil, climate, &c. Now the effect of
an exclusive policy on a people highly intellectual,
having many wants, moral, mental and physical,
in a Northern clime, with a sterile soil, is to stimulate
that people to the exertion of mind and body,
and to make them produce in a small compass all
that human skill, industry and ingenuity can
procure. In such a country, as in the little
republics of Greece, under an exclusive policy,
the wisdom of a world must concentrate, else
their wants, moral, physical and intellectual, will
be unsupplied. On the other hand, a people who
are supplied by commerce with all that their
natures require are lured and enticed to betake
themselves to some simple operation, such as
agriculture, and thus become poor, half-civilized
and ignorant. We appeal to history to attest the
universal truth of our theory. Trade never did
civilize a people; never failed to degrade them,
unless they supplied the manufactured articles.
On another occasion we may show how this
confounding of the moral with the physical, renders
worthless all the speculations of the economists.
As further proof and illustration of our theory,
as to the balance of trade, we cite the following
examples: - A country continually declining in
wealth, would have each day less use for a circulating
medium, and would export a part of it.
On the other hand, a country improving in wealth
and population, must continually increase her
medium of exchange. The balance of trade is,
therefore, always against the declining country,
and in favor of the improving one. It remains
only to show, that this diminution of currency
may be a cause
of decline, and its increase a
cause of improvement. The importation of
agricultural instruments into a country with a rich
soil, and plenty of inhabitants, but without those
instruments, would increase its wealth a thousand
fold. Now, money is not only necessary to set
agriculture in operation, but far more necessary
in all other industrial pursuits. Therefore, the
increase of money, like the increase of tools of
farming, sets men to work in a thousand ways,
in which they could not engage without such
increase. The Negroes, the Indians, the Mexicans
and Lazzaroni of Naples, would not be benefited
by the increase of currency, by bank expansions,
and by a favorable balance of trade, but all people
who are ripe and prepared for new enterprises,
will be immensely benefited by such increase
and expansion.
Their importance is greatly increased in this
country by the existence almost every where of
restraining laws, which prohibit and punish private
banking, or the issue of private paper, payable
to bearer. Private credit being, we think,
very properly restricted in this way, it becomes
the duty of the State to supply its place as fairly
and equally as practicable by bank credit, in the
form of bank notes. In Virginia especially, the
note holders have been more than compensated
for the deprivation of this form of private credit,
by the greater security afforded through means
of corporate banks.
Whether the effect of unrestricted free banking
would be permanently to flood the country with
worthless paper, or by re-action and loss of confidence
in all such paper, to bring it back to a
specie currency, is a question we will not
undertake to solve. We are inclined to believe a
currency solely metallic would be the consequence.
Such a currency is wholly unfitted to the wants
and usages of modern society.
The Virginia system of banking, with mother
banks and branches, has operated well so far as
security to note holders, and integrity of
administration are concerned. We have no doubt the
system, with slight modifications, will be continued.
In a growing and improving State, its
capacity for expansion is one of its greatest
recommendations. It would be well, within certain
limits, that the Legislature should permit the
present banks, at any time, to increase their capitals,
and to establish branches at such points,
and with such capital, as they please - giving
them the further power to wind up such branches
when they pleased. We might thus obtain a currency
capable of expanding and contracting with
the wants and exigencies of trade. Now, we have
a fixed and stationary amount of currency, with
a population rapidly increasing in wealth and
numbers. In the last five years the increase of
prices, occasioned by the mines of California and
Australia, and the growth and increase of our
towns, internal improvements, &c., has doubled
the moneyed price of the property of Virginia.
Yet in that five years a very small addition has
been made to our banking capital. Either that
capital was entirely too great five years ago, or
it is now much too small, and is cramping industry,
energy and enterprise, and preventing growth
and development.
Some political economists contend that the
increase of currency in a country, metallic or
paper, after the existing demands of trade are
satisfied, increases all prices, but does not add
to national wealth. Others restrict and qualify
the proposition, and maintain that such increase
only enhances the prices of immoveable articles,
whose value is not determined by the markets of
the world. Their doctrines are equally false. As
a permanent and normal fact, the prices of lands,
labor and city lots, are no more affected by a
redundant currency than those of wheat, cotton
and tobacco. Rich men, with plenty of money,
do not pay more for what they buy than the poor,
but less. In like manner, rich communities and
cities, like New York and London, affording a
better market, pay less for what they buy and
sell cheaper than poorer places. New banks, like
young merchants, have to buy their experience.
They give too much credit, encourage speculation
and visionary unprofitable enterprises,
and thus inflate the prices of every thing around
them for a time. Failures occur, re-action takes
place, they become over cautious, and depress
prices as far below the proper standard, as they
had inflated above it. After awhile they learn
to conduct business properly, and then prices assume
a proper and safe level.
Two years more must transpire before the
Legislature can convene, re-charter the present
banks, or establish a new system, and get that
system, or additional branches of the present
system, into operation. That the State will suffer
greatly from this delay we think there can be
little doubt.
A banking system, such as we suggest, would
wield much power, and constitute a most important
governmental institution. Its influence would
be conservative, and its administration probably
fair, equal and impartial. The number of mother
banks would secure enough of competition, and
their interests would induce them to establish
branches, when and where only they would be
profitable. The stockholders of banks are generally
men of much experience and knowledge in
business, cautious and conservative in their dealings,
and opposed to speculations. They are men
living on their incomes, whose fortunes are made,
and who have no temptations to incur risk.
The control of the amount of currency might be
safely left in their hands, for either too great
expansions or contractions would injure them. -
Universal suffrage has given to the progressive
element in society, the poor, the young, and the
enterprising, so much power, that this conservative
balance would not be amiss.
The prices of land, and the wages of labor,
are regulated and fixed generally by the prices of
products of land and labor, and not at all
influenced by the scarcity or abundance of money.
The safe and legitimate influence of expansion,
or increase of currency, by stimulating enterprises
that are profitable, is what no one complains of.
This brings us to consider the doctrine which
we maintained in our chapter on the Balance of
Trade, - That the increase of currency, when it is
merely local or national, will not inflate prices,
if it gives rise to new pursuits of industry and
investments of capital which are profitable,
that then each thousand dollars added to the currency
of a country will add at least twenty thousand
to its wealth. In this we assume that each
dollar in a community is represented by twenty
dollars of property. Now, no people are ready
for an increase of their currency, until they are
also ready so to increase their population, and
to vary and add to their trade and pursuits,
as to have twenty times as much additional capital
in property as additional currency. In new
countries we see instances every day where the
value of property is added to twenty fold, in a
single year. In an old country the same thing
will occur, provided accessions to the currency
occasion new and profitable pursuits and enterprises
130
sufficient permanently to absorb and employ
such accessions.
The banks of this State, if they can profitably
double their issues, can only do so by increasing
existing trade and business, or by originating
measures that will result in an increase of the wealth
of the State twenty fold the increase of their
issues. Every people ought to have among them
as much money as can be profitably employed,
because each additional dollar so employed adds
ere long twenty to State wealth. If a million of
dollars were permanently taken away from the
currency of a country, it must either change its
pursuits and engage in modes of industry requiring
less capital in money; or if it continues its
then existing trade and pursuits, it must lessen
their amount in proportion to the diminution of
the currency. This only could be effected by
diminishing the property of the country twenty
millions - that is, on the assumption that twenty
millions of property require for its proper administration,
sales and transfers, one million of money.
As we have before contended, an increase of a
million in currency, to render that increase
permanent and profitable, must be followed by a
corresponding increase in trade, and that this
increase of trade could only occur under ordinary
circumstances, when there was an increase of
twenty millions in the property of the country, to
require such trade.
It can make no difference whether the increase
of currency be occasioned by bank expansions or
the importation of specie. If the specie be not
needed, it will be exported; if the paper be not
required, it will return on the banks. If either
continue in circulation, it is because the country
is increasing, or has increased its property, (of
other kinds than money,) twenty fold the increase
of currency. The increase of currency must
neither entirely precede nor follow the increase
of business. It should occur as soon and as fast
as prudent, sensible, and honest men are willing
to borrow and employ it. Experienced
bank officers
and stockholders will be the best judges
of when and where to increase or diminish the
currency. We conclude that if Virginia be ready
for an increase of her currency in paper or coin,
she is ready for twenty times as much increase of
her property, and that such increase cannot be
permanently made in her currency without producing
such increase in her property. We believe
she is now ready for a very large increase
of currency, provided such increase be made by
judicious laws, at proper points in the State. -
Without it, industry must remain hampered, and
growth and development be prevented.
The doctrine that banks necessarily occasion
speculation and improvidence is untrue. Loans of
coin are used as improvidently as loans of paper.
The stockholders, if there were no banks, would
loan their money in specie; now through the
banks they loan it in paper.
The banks of Virginia, if they err at all, err
on the safe side, that of extreme caution in making
loans. But they aid the poor, the young and
enterprising, by lending small sums on short
dates to mechanics, merchants, manufacturers, &c.
Private individuals lend their money in large
sums, on long credits, to farmers and other wealthy
capitalists. Money lent by banks, usually exercises
a better influence on the well being and
progress of society than money loaned by individuals.
All Southern cities had excess of bank
capital twenty years ago, but this excess neither
produced speculation nor enhanced the price of
town lots.
the weak to oppress the strong, and would
justify swindling and theft, if fully carried out
into practice. But it is not safe or prudent to
swindle or steal; one incurs the penalties of the
law; and it is not politic, for one scares off customers
and subjects. The man who makes good
shaving bargains, will in the long run grow rich;
the swindler and the thief never do. Mankind
have ever detested the extortionate usurer who
takes advantage of distress and misfortune to
increase his profits, more than a Robin Hood who
robs the rich to relieve the poor. There is always
at bottom some sound moral reason for the
prejudices of mankind. Analyze their motives, their
feelings and sentiments closely. The man who
spends a life in dealing hardly and harshly with
his fellow men, is a much worse and meaner man
than the highway robber. The latter is chivalrous,
and where there is chivalry there will be
occasional generosity.
The law should protect men, as well from the
assaults of superior wit as from those of superior
bodily strength. Men's inequalities of wit, prudence,
and providence, differ in nothing so much,
as in their capacity to deal in and take care of
money. This creates the necessity for laws against
usury. Under occasional circumstances, a heavy
rate of interest is morally right, but it is
generally wrong, and laws are passed for ordinary
and not extraordinary occasions.
We do not think badly of our fellow men, but
badly of their philosophy. Their kind feelings,
impulses, and sentiments, get the better of their
principles, and they are continually doing good
and preaching evil.
If men were no better than political economy
would make them, the world would be a Pandemonium.
The Bible fortunately is a more common book
than Adam Smith. Its influences are exerted
over the hearts and conduct of thousands who
never enter a church. "The still small voice of
conscience" oft brings back the mother's image,
and the mother's divine precepts, "Love thy neighbor
as thyself," "Do unto others as you would
that they should do unto you."
As we pursue this investigation, we become
daily more disposed to adopt the theory of
Robespiere
,
"that political economy and infidelity
are one and the same." It was the Devil rebuking
sin; and well he might, for infidel France
sinned to such an excess as to tire the Devil of
his own work.
- "Even the very Devil
and the rivers tempted them to spend it abroad.
They would not send their grain to the little
towns at the head of tide water, because New
York and Boston were equally convenient, and
better markets to buy and sell in. Our towns
were robbed of the trade of their neighbors below
by the rivers, and there were no roads to
bring them trade from above. The poor region
just above the head of tide-water, was becoming
rich from necessity. They were obliged to have
villages, mechanic arts, and manufactures at home.
They had no roads or rivers, and were cut off
from the blessings of free trade. Their villages
contained good schools and churches, and thus
compressed within a small compass the advantages
of society and civilization. Most of these
villages will be ruined by the roads we are
constructing to the West. There will be no use for
them when farmers can sell their crops and get
supplies on better terms from the large towns.
The agricultural portion of the West will be injured
by our system of improvements. Luckily
for the West, her varied and rich mineral resources,
and her water-power, will occasion mining
and manufactures to be carried on, towns to
arise, and home markets to be offered to the farmer.
This will be the situation of the West generally
but in sections where there are neither
mines nor water-power, the country will be
impoverished by the improvements.
An overgrown State, like an overgrown man,
is not generally equal in wisdom or strength to
one of moderate size. The most distinguished,
learned and wealthy States of ancient and
modern times, have had small dominions and
populations. They have been obliged, in order to
secure their independence, to prosecute every art,
science, trade and avocation belonging to
civilized life. Thus a few came to understand and
practice what many performed in large and
cumbrous States. A small nationality and denser
population, not cursed by free trade, necessarily
produces an intense civilization, provided the nation
be of a race that needs and loves civilization.
The effect of free trade and extended dominions,
is to remove from most individuals and sections
the necessity to acquire and practice the arts
of life that require skill and learning, and thus to
dilute and degrade civilization.
But separate nationality is a mere form, not a
reality, when free trade furnishes what the nation
should produce at home.
The cities in the South, on tide-water, will
grow rapidly, as soon as roads enough penetrate the
West. People from the interior, will sell their
grain and buy their manufactures, groceries and
other goods, from those cities. Few, very few,
will change from the cars to vessels, carry their
grain North, and buy their supplies there. Around
all these Southern cities the country will become
rich. It will be dotted with gardens, orchards
and villas. Large cities, like New York and London,
are great curses, because they impoverish a
world to enrich a neighborhood. Numerous small
towns are great blessings, because they prevent
the evil effects of centralization of trade, retain
wealth and population at home, and diffuse happiness
and intelligence, by begetting variety of
pursuits, supporting schools, colleges and religious
institutions, and affording the means of pleasant
and frequent association.
Each Southern State may condense within its
boundaries all the elements of separate independent
nationality. Civilization is imperfect and
incomplete until this state of things arises. Each
must not only have within itself good lawyers,
doctors and farmers, but able statesmen,
learned philosophers, distinguished artists, skilful
mechanics, great authors, and every institution
and pursuit that pertain to high civilization.
Railroads almost invariably increase national
wealth to an amount greatly exceeding the cost
of their construction. In countries purely agricultural,
the increase of wealth which they occasion,
and the diminution of wealth which, when
properly located, they prevent, is almost incalculable.
All the money spent in the construction
of the road is money saved, for in merely agricultural
countries all money not spent in living is
carried off in some way from the country. But,
besides the addition of the road itself, to the
wealth of such a country, the increase of capital
in houses, the enhanced value of lots and lands,
&c., at the town where they terminate, usually
greatly exceeds the cost of the road. Every
road that has been constructed from any of our
seaboard Atlantic cities, has produced this effect.
They have occasioned already an increase in the
value of property in those cities far greater than
the cost of their construction. Whilst their erection
is going on, they afford respectable and profitable
employment to thousands near their track.
They also afford an excellent market to the
farmer for his wood and timber, and many other
things that were before unsaleable. From these
various considerations, it would seem to follow,
at first view, that they should be constructed at
State expense. Especially, since it is desirable
that public roads should not be the subjects of
monopoly.
The gross and grievous inequalities in the burden
of taxation, and the resulting benefits of
roads constructed at public expense, is a strong
consideration against such mode of construction.
Men living a distance from the roads derive no
advantages from them, yet must pay equally for
building; men owning valuable stores, taverns,
&c., in the interior, near where a road passes,
are often made to pay for improvements that will
render their property valueless. Whilst the owners
of vacant lots at the termini, who have scarce
paid any of the tax that built the road, make
often immense fortunes by the increase occasioned
in the value of their lots.
On the other hand, when the public spirited
and patriotic, the young, the enterprising and
the poor, erect public improvements, the rich old
fogies laugh at their enterprise, refuse to aid to
the amount of a cent, and Pharisaically congratulate
themselves on their virtue, prudence
and good sense, in securing, by the situation of
their property, the larger portion of the profits
arising from such schemes, if successful, without
incurring any risk or a cent of cost.
The towns where they terminate might erect
them and make a profit by doing so. But the
owners of houses, merchandise and money would
pay for them, and the owners of vacant lots reap
most of the profits.
We will not undertake to determine how, or
at whose cost, public improvement should be
constructed. We think it would be best to lay down
no general rule, but for the Legislature to act on
each application, according to the necessity,
character and probable profits and advantages of the
proposed work.
Eastern Virginians often complain that they
are taxed to build roads for the West. Roads
piercing an agricultural interior, and terminating
at towns, at or near the ocean, usually impoverish
the interior and create immense wealth in the
seaboard towns, and in the country near them.
If such should be, and to a great extent it no
doubt will be, the result of our roads, then Western
Virginia might with great propriety complain
that she was made "to pay for a stick to
break her own head."
Eastern Virginia is exceedingly conservative.
She opposes all innovations, and sticks to mud
roads as pertinaciously as many of her old gentry
did to fairtops, shorts and kneebuckles. But
she must give way at last, for she is proud and
highly civilized. Rapid intercommunication is the
distinguishing feature of modern progress. ‘Tis
part and parcel of the civilization of our times.
Daily mails, telegraphs and railroads are becoming
necessaries of life. Fashion is omnipotent,
and these things are exceedingly useful, and "all
the rage" to boot. 'Tis easy to be a prophet in
Eastern Virginia. She invents nothing, but slowly
and reluctantly follows in the wake of less dignified,
more fickle, and progressive regions. Go to
England or the North, and you can fortell our
condition ten years hence, as certainly as you can
tell this season in Paris the fashion of ladies' bonnets
next season in America. We will monopolise
the advantages of the system we oppose, for
not more naturally and certainly do rivers bring
detritus and alluvium from the mountains, to lodge
them at their mouths and deltas, than do railroads
bring the wealth of the interior to enrich the
towns and country on the seaboard.
rendered the South merely agricultural, made
population too sparse for neighborhood schools,
prevented variety of pursuits, and thus cut the
poor off as well from the means of living, as from
the means of education.
Universal suffrage will soon attempt to remedy
these evils. But rashness and precipitancy may
occasion failure and bring about despondency.
We are not yet prepared to educate all. Free
schools should at once be established in all
neighborhoods where a sufficient number of scholars
can be collected in one school. Parents should
be compelled to send their children to school.
The obligation on the part of government, to educate
the people carries with it the indubitable
right to employ all the means necessary to attain
that end. But the duty of government does not
end with educating the people. As far as is
practicable, it should open to them avenues of
employment in which they may use what they have
learned. The system of internal improvements
now carried on in the South, will directly and
indirectly, quite suffice to attain this end, so far
as government can aid properly in such an
object. Government may do too much for the
people or it may do too little. We have committed
the latter error.
The mail and the newspaper-press might be
employed, as cheap and efficient agents, in teaching
the masses. No family in the Union is so dull,
stupid and indifferent, as not to be curious about
the news of the day. Cotemporaneous
history is
the most interesting and important part of history.
That is to be had alone from newspapers.
But newspapers contain on all subjects the most
recent discoveries, and the most valuable information.
A large weekly newspaper might be furnished
to every poor family in the State, at less than a
dollar a family. If there were not a teacher within
fifty miles, some member of each family would
learn to read, first to get at the neighborhood
news and scandals, the deaths, and marriages,
and murders. Gradually they would understand
and become interested in the proceedings of our
government, and the news from foreign countries.
The meanest newspaper in the country is worth
all the libraries in Christendom. It is desirable
to know what the ancients did, but it is necessary
to know what our neighbors and fellow
country-men are doing.
Our system of improvements, manufactures,
the mechanic arts, the building up of our cities,
commerce, and education should go hand in hand.
We ought not to attempt too much at once.
'Tis time we were attempting something. We
ought, like the Athenians, to be the best educated
people in the world. When we employ all
our whites in the mechanic arts, in commerce, in
professions, &c., and confine the negroes to farmwork,
and coarse mechanical operations, we shall
be in a fair way to attain this result. The abolition
movement is a harmless humbug, confined
to a handful of fanatics, but the feeling of
antipathy to negroes, the hatred of race, and the
disposition to expel them from the country is daily
increasing, North and South. Two causes are in
active operation to fan and increase this hostility
to the negro race. The one, the neglect to educate
and provide means of employment for the
poor whites in the South, who are thereby led to
believe that the existence of negroes amongst us
is ruin to them. The other, the theory of the
Types of Mankind, which cuts off the negro from
human brotherhood, and justifies the brutal and
the miserly in treating him as a vicious brute.
Educate all Southern whites, employ them, not
as cooks, lacqueys, ploughmen, and menials, but
as independent freemen should be employed, and
let negroes be strictly tied down to such callings
as are unbecoming white men, and peace would
be established between blacks and whites. The
whites would find themselves elevated by the
existence of negroes amongst us. Like the Roman
citizen, the Southern white man would become a
noble and a privileged character, and he would then
like negroes and slavery, because his high position
would be due to them. Poor people can see
things as well as rich people. We can't hide the
facts from them. It is always better openly,
honestly, and fearlessly to meet danger, than to
fly from or avoid it. The last words we will
utter on this subject are, - The path of safety is
the path of duty! Educate the people, no matter
what it may cost!
The usual and familiar arguments in favor of
this policy are, that it is cheaper to buy abroad
good manufactured articles in exchange for
agricultural products, than to buy them at home,
where more indifferent articles would be obtained
for a larger amount of agricultural products.
And again, that we, having no skill or spare
moneyed capital, but possessing a rich soil, fine
climate, and suitable labor for farming, should
follow farming, whilst other nations, without these
advantages, but having a large moneyed capital,
and great artistic and mechanical skill,
should produce manufactured articles, and
exchange them for our grain and other products,
that thus both we and they would be benefited.
The argument is specious, but as false as it is
specious.
If an agricultural people were found without
any manufactures, by a manufacturing one, the
effect of free trade would be to prevent the
invention and practice of all the mechanic arts, for
"necessity is the mother of invention," and
trade would remove the necessity of home
manufactures. But, in truth, there never was a people,
however savage, without some knowledge of
manufactures and the mechanic arts. When that
knowledge, as in the instances of Africans and
Indians, is very slight, and the processes of course
very tedious, laborious, and inefficient, the
immediate effect of contact with a civilized nation
by trade, is to extinguish the little knowledge
they have, and to divert them to fishing, hunting,
searching for gold and similar pursuits, which
savages can practice almost as well as civilized
men. The African ceases to smelt iron when he
finds a day’s work in hunting for slaves, iron or
gold, will purchase more and better instruments
than he could make in a week, and the Indian
pursues trapping, and hunting, and fishing,
exclusively, when he can exchange his game, his
furs and fish, for blankets, guns, powder and
whiskey, with the American. Thus does free trade
prevent the growth of civilization and depress
and destroy it, by removing the necessity that
alone can beget it. Its effects on agricultural
countries, however civilized, are precisely similar
in character to those on savages. Necessity compels
people in poor regions, to cultivate commerce
and the mechanic arts, and for that purpose to
build ships and cities. They soon acquire skill
in manufactures, and all the advantages necessary
to produce them with cheapness and facility.
The agricultural people with whom they trade,
have been bred to exclusive farming, by the
simplicity of its operations, its independence of life,
and the fertility of their soil. If cut off like
China was, and Japan yet is, from the rest of the
civilized world, they would have to practise at
home all the arts, trades and professions of civilized
life, in order to supply the wants of civilized
beings. But trade will supply everything they
need, except the products of the soil. As they
are unskilled in mechanic arts, have few towns,
little accumulated capital, and a sparse population,
they produce, with great labor and expense,
all manufactured articles. To them it is cheaper,
at present, to exchange their crops for manufactures
than to make them. They begin the exchange,
and each day the necessity increases for
continuing it, for each day they learn to rely
more and more on others to produce articles,
some of which they formerly manufactured, - and
their ignorance of all, save agriculture, is thus
daily increasing. It is cheaper for a man, little
skilled in mechanics, to buy his plough and
wagon by the exchange of agricultural products,
than awkwardly, clumsily and tediously to
manufacture them of bad quality with his own hands.
Yet, if this same man will become a skilful
mechanic, he will be able to procure four times as
much agricultural products for his labor, as he
can now secure with his own hands. His labor
too, will be of a lighter, less exposed, more social
character, and far more improving to his mind.
What is true of the individual, is true as to a
nation, the people who buy their manufactures
abroad, labor four times as hard, and as long, to
produce them, as if they made them at home.
In the case of the nation, this exclusive agriculture
begets a sparse and poor population; sparse,
because no more people can be employed, than
are sufficient to cultivate the land, - poor, because
their labor, though harder and more exposed,
produces in the aggregate about one-fourth
what the same amount of lighter labor would, in
a purely mechanical and manufacturing country.
Density of population doubles and quadruples
the value of labor and of property, because it furnishes
the opportunity for association and division
of labor, and the division of charges and expenses.
When one man has to bear the expense
of a school, a church, a mill, a store, a smith's
shop, &c., he is very apt to let his family go
without religion and education, and his farm without
many of the necessaries and conveniences that
properly appertain to it. Where a few have to
bear these expenses, the burden on each is very
heavy, but where, as in manufacturing countries,
with a dense population and many villages, these
expenses are sub-divided among many, the burden
is light to each, - so that their property and
their labor is vastly more available and valuable.
The sparsely settled agricultural country makes
by its pursuits, one-fourth what the manufacturing
country does, and the money that it makes is
probably, in general, if spent at home, capable
of purchasing one-half only of the pleasures, comforts
and luxuries of life that the same amount of
money would in countries engaged in other pursuits.
The pleasures of society are seldom indulged in, or
if indulged in, at much expense of time and
inconvenience, in merely farming countries, where
people live at considerable distance from each other.
There is no occasion for towns or cities, and not
enough of the rich to support places of recreation
and amusement. The rich are, therefore, all
absentees. Some go off for pleasure, some to
religious conventions and associations, some for
education, and those who remain at home, do so
not to spend money and improve the country, but
to save it, in order that they too may hereafter
visit other regions. The latter class are no less
absentees, in effect, than the former classes.
The consumption abroad, of the crops made at
home would, in two centuries, blast the prosperity
of any country, by robbing it of the manures
which nature intended for it. Where there are
many manufacturing villages they furnish a constant
supply of manure to the country around.
The manure made from the farmer's crop,
consumed in those villages, is returned to his soil,
mixed with a thousand other fertilizing ingredients
from the streets, sewers, and factories of
the town. Thus only can agriculture flourish,
and a soil be kept permanently rich.
Few, very few men, will acquire education, or confer
it on their children, unless some pecuniary advantage
is to result from it. The mass of population
in farming countries are field hands. They
require no education whatever, even if their
wages would procure it. The managers or overseers
need but little, for much as agricultural
chemistry and scientific farming are talked about,
everybody's instinctive common sense and judgment
teaches, that they are part of the humbugs
of the day. No person would employ an overseer
who was learned in the natural sciences.
Botany, geology, chemistry, mineralogy, and natural
history, do very well for the closet philosopher,
but would be dangerous attainments in an
overseer. The farmers of Judea, Egypt, Greece and
Rome, two and four thousand years ago, were better
than ours. Farming rapidly declined in Rome,
as soon as Cato and others attempted to make it
a science. The most potent qualities of soils and
atmospheres evade all analysis. No difference is
found in the death-dealing air of the Pontine
Marshes, and the pure atmosphere of the Appenines.
When fever, plague, or cholera rage in
New Orleans, the minutest analysis can detect
nothing in the air that was not there before,
nothing which does not exist in it in the healthiest
regions. Each adjoining acre of land may produce
wine or tobacco of very different qualities,
yet no chemist can tell the why. Philosophy
cannot prevent the weevil, the rust, or the joint
worm.
Chemists undertake to analyze exactly a grain
of wheat, and to determine accurately and precisely
its component parts. Now, when they can
make
a grain of wheat, that will vegetate and
grow and bear fruit, we will believe in agricultural
chemistry. Till then, we shall contend that
there is something too minute and recondite in
vegetable life for mortal ken to read, and will
throw their physic to the dogs.
The great secrets of animal and vegetable life,
and of their health, growth and decay, are in a
great measure hidden from human search.
Philosophy makes no advances in this direction. Galen
and Hippocrates were as good physicians as the
latest graduate of Edinburgh, and Cato as good
a farmer as Mr. Newton. "A Paul may plant
and an Apollos water, but God alone can give
the increase."
Farming is the recreation of great men, the
proper pursuit of dull men. And the dull are the
most successful, because they imitate, observe,
and never experiment. Washington and Cincinnatus
farmed for amusement, George the Third
and Sancho Panza, because it was their appropriate
avocation. Ambitious men sometimes, to
hide their designs, and allay suspicion, rear game
or "cultivate peas and philosophy." But
farmers have no use for learning, and a farming
country would not be a learned one if books grew
on trees, and "reading and writing came by nature."
The population as it increases must emigrate,
for the want of variety of pursuits, and more
avenues of employment. A manufacturing State,
if it can find agricultural people weak enough to
trade with them, may sustain an enlightened
population indefinite in numbers, for the more dense
population, the better it is adapted for mechanical
and manufacturing pursuits. Internal
improvements, like schools and colleges, cannot
be well sustained in farming States, because the
people are too few and too poor to make or
support them.
Holland and Massachusetts are two of the richest,
happiest, and most highly civilized States in
the world, because they farm very little, but are
engaged in more profitable and enlightened pursuits.
The soil of Massachusetts is very poor, and that
of Holland not adapted to grain. Ireland, the
East and West Indies, and our Southern States,
are poor and ignorant countries with rich soils.
They farm altogether, and their rich and enterprising
and ambitious men desert them for pleasure,
promotion, or employment, in lands less favored
by nature, but improved by man.
The South must vary and multiply her
pursuits, consume her crops at home, keep her
people at home, increase her population, build up
cities towns and villages, establish more schools
and colleges, educate the poor, construct internal
improvements, carry on her own commerce,
and carry on that if possible with more Southern
regions: for the North, whether in Europe or
here, will manufacture for, cheat her, and keep
her dependent. She would manufacture for the
far South, and get thus the same profits and
advantages that are now extracted from her by the
North. Do these things and she will be rich,
enlightened and independent, neglect them and
she will become poor, weak and contemptible.
Her State Rights doctrines will be derided, and
her abstractions scoffed at.
In connection with this subject, we will venture
a suggestion to the South, (for we may not presume
to advise,) as to the intellectual progress
and improvement which the mechanic arts, and
those arts alone open to human study, investigation
and invention. We have just stated that
the world has not improved in the last two
thousand, probably four thousand years, in the science
or practice of medicine, or agriculture; we now
add that it has all this while been retrograding
in all else save the physical sciences and the
mechanic arts. Rome imitated and fell short of
Greece, in all the departments of moral philosophy,
in pure metaphysics, in poetry, in architecture,
in sculpture, in oratory, in the drama,
and in painting, and we to-day imitate Rome. It
is idle to talk of progress, when we look two
thousand years back for models of perfection.
So vast was Grecian superiority in art above ours,
that it is a common theory, that they possessed
an ideal to guide them, which has been lost, and
which loss is irreparable. The ancients understood
the art, practice and science of government
better than we. There was more intelligence,
more energy, more learning, more happiness, more
and more wealth, around the Levant, and
in its islands, in the days of Herodotus, than are
now to be found in all Europe.
The only progress or advancement visible to
the eye, is that brought about by the mechanic
arts, aided by physical science. Chemistry and
philosophy would have remained dead
letters, had not the mechanic stepped in to
construct the cannon and the gun, the compass, the
steam engine, and the electric wire. Looking
back through the vista of ages, the noblest and
oldest monuments of human intellect and human
energy are the works of the mechanic. Long ere
the Muse lisped in liquid and melodious numbers,
long before the buskined Drama trod the stage,
long before the Historian in stately march arrayed
the dim and distant past, the Mechanic had built
pyramids, and walls, and cities, and temples, that
have defied the lapse and corrosion of time. We
are at a loss which most to admire, the first
efforts of his genius, his energy and skill, as daily
developed at Nineveh, in Egypt, in Rome, and in
Greece, or his latest achievements in his steamships,
railroads, immense factories, and time and
distance destroying telegraph. He looks into
heaven with his telescope, he is omnipresent with
his telegraph, may he not reach heaven in some
aerial car. Sic
itur ad astra! Let the ambitious
South cultivate, not spurn the mechanic arts.
can afford to do so, because association renders the
labor of each slave five times as productive and
efficient as it would be, were the slaves working
separately. One man could not enclose an acre
of land, cultivate it, send his crops to market, do
his own cooking, washing and mending. One man
may live as a prowling beast of prey, but not as a
civilized being. One hundred human beings, men,
women and children, associated, will cultivate ten
acres of land each, enclose it, and carry on every
other operation of civilized life. Labor becomes
at least twenty times as productive when a hundred
associate, as when one acts alone. The same
is as true in other pursuits as in farming. But in
free society, the employer robs the laborer, and he
is no better off than the prowling savage, although
he might live in splendor if he got a fair proportion
of the proceeds of his own labor.
We have endeavored to show, heretofore, that
the negro slave, considering his indolence and
unskilfulness, often gets his fair share, and sometimes
more than his share, of the profits of the farm,
and is exempted, besides, from the harassing cares
and anxieties of the free laborer. Grant, however,
that the negro does not receive adequate wages
from his master, yet all admit that in the aggregate
the negroes get better wages than free laborers;
therefore, it follows that, with all its imperfections,
slave society is the best form of society
yet devised for the masses. When Socialists and
Abolitionists, by full and fair experiments, exhibit
a better, it will be time to agitate the subject of
abolition.
The industrial products of black slave labor have
been far greater and more useful to mankind, than
those of the same amount of any other labor. In
a very short period, the South and South-west
have been settled, cleared, fenced in, and put in
cultivation, by what were, a century ago, a handful
of masters and slaves. This region now feeds and
clothes a great part of mankind; but free trade
cheats them of the profits of their labor. In the
vast amount of our industrial products, we see the
advantages of association - in our comparative
poverty, the evils of free trade.
Poor men have families as well as the rich, and
they love those families more than rich men,
because they have little else to love. The smiles of
their wives and the prattle of their children, when
they return from labor at night, compensate, in
some degree, for the want of those luxuries which
greet the rich, but which render them less keenly
alive to the pleasures of domestic affection. Their
love is divided between their possessions and their
families, the poor man's love is intensely concentrated
on his wife and children. Wife and children
do not always smile and prattle. Want makes them
sad and serious. Cold and hunger and nakedness
give them haggard looks, and then the poor man's
heart bleeds at night as he tosses on his restless
pillow. They are often delicate and sometimes
sick. The parent must go out to toil to provide
for them, nevertheless. He cannot watch over their
sick beds like the rich. Apprehension does not
sweeten and lighten his labors. Nor does loss of
rest in watching and nursing a sick wife or child
better fit him to earn his wages the next day. The
poor have not the cares of wealth, but the greater
cares of being without it. They have no houses,
know not when they may be turned out of rented
ones, or when, or on what terms they may rent
another. This must be looked to and provided for.
The head of the family gets sick sometimes, too.
Wages cease. Does it soothe fever and assuage
pain to look at a destitute family, or to reflect
on the greater destitution that awaits them, if he,
the parent, should die? Is he in health and getting
good wages - the competition of fellow-laborers
may any day reduce his wages or turn him out of
employment. The poor free man has all the cares
of the rich, and a thousand more besides. When
the labors of the day are ended, domestic anxieties
and cares begin. The usual, the ordinary, the normal
condition of the whole laboring class, is that of
physical suffering, cankering, corroding care, and
mental apprehension and pain. The poor houses
and poor rates prove this. The ragged beggar
children in the streets, and their suffering parents
pining in cellars and garrets, attest it. Destitute
France, poor Scotland, and starving Ireland proclaim
it. The concurrent testimony of all history
and of all statistics, for three centuries, leave no
room for cavil or for doubt. Why, in this age of
progress, are the great majority of mankind, in
free countries, doomed to live in penitential pains
and purgatorial agony? They, the artificers of
every luxury, of every comfort, and every necessary
of life, see the idle enjoying the fruits of their
toil. Is there a just God in Heaven, and does he
see, approve and ordain all this? Has it ever
been thus? If so, God delights in human agony,
and created man to punish him. All other
animals enjoy life, and did God make man after his
own image, that life should be a pain and torture
to him? Bad as the laboring man's condition
is now, those who live in free society tell us
it was far worse formerly. He used to be a slave,
and they say slavery is a far worse condition to
the laborer than liberty. Well, for the argument,
we grant it. His condition was worse throughout
all past times in slavery, than now with liberty.
Is it consistent with the harmony of nature, or
the wisdom and mercy of God, that such a being
should be placed in this world, and placed, too,
at the head of it? It is rank Diabolism to admit
such a conclusion. None but Lucifer would have
made such a world.
God made no such world! He instituted slavery
from the first, as he instituted marriage and
parental authority. Profane, presumptuous, ignorant
man, in attempting to improve, has marred
and defaced the work of his Creator. Wife and
children, although not free, are relieved from care
and anxiety, supported and protected, and their
situation is as happy and desirable as that of the
husband and parent. In this we see the doings
of a wise and just God. The slave, too, when
the night comes, may lie down in peace. He has
a master to watch over and take care of him. If
he be sick, that master will provide for him. If
his family be sick, his master and mistress sympathise
with his affliction, and procure medical
aid for the sick. And when he comes to die, he
feels that his family will be provided for. He
does all the labor of life; his master bears all its
corroding cares and anxieties. Here, again, we
see harmonious relations, consistent with the
wisdom and mercy of God. We see an equal and
even-handed justice meted out to all alike, and
we see life itself no longer a terrestrial purgatory;
but a season of joy and sorrow to the rich and
poor.
Man is naturally associative, because isolated
and alone he is helpless. The object of all associations,
from States to Temperance societies, is
mutual insurance. Man does not feel the advantage
of State insurance, until he is driven to the
poor house. House insurance companies and life
insurance companies often fail; and when successful,
only insure against a class of misfortunes.
The insurance of Trade Unions, Odd Fellows,
and Temperance societies, is wholly inadequate.
Slavery insurance never fails, and covers all losses
and all misfortunes. Domestic slavery is nature’s
mutual insurance society; art in vain attempts to
imitate it, or to supply its place.
extended it and explained its application. They
demonstrated that social free trade was an evil,
because it incited the rich and strong to oppress
the weak, poor and ignorant. We saw that the
disparities of mental strength were greater
between races and nations than between individuals
in the same society. History spoke less equivocally
as to the ruinous effects of international
free trade, than as to those of social free trade.
Events are occurring every day, especially at
the North, that show that religious liberty must be
restricted as well as other liberty.
Chinese idolaters are coming in swarms too, to
California. If they are to be permitted to practise
their diabolical rights, the negroes should be
allowed to revert to the time-honored customs of
their ancestors, and immolate human victims to
their devil deity. Mormonism is still a worse
religious evil, which we have to deal with.
Liberty is an evil which government is intended
to correct. This is the sole object of government.
Taking these premises, it is easy enough to
refute free trade. Admit liberty to be a good, and
you leave no room to argue that free trade is an
evil, - because liberty is free trade.
With thinking men, the question can never arise,
who ought to be free? Because no one ought to
be free. All government is slavery. The proper
subject of investigation for philosophers and
philanthropists is, "Is the existing mode of
government adapted to the wants of its subjects?"
No one will contend that negroes, for instance,
should roam at large in puris naturalibus, with the
apes and tigers of Africa, and "worry and devour
each other." Nor are they fitted for an
Athenian democracy. What form of government
short of domestic slavery will suit their wants
and capacities? That is the true issue, and we
direct the attention of abolitionists to it. They
are now striking wild, and often hit the Bible,
and marriage tie, and the right of property, and
the duties of children to their parents and guardians,
harder blows, than they do negro slavery.
They are mere anarchists and infidels. If they
would take our advice, they would appear more
respectable, do less harm, and might suggest some
good. For domestic slavery like all human institutions,
has its imperfections - will always have
them. Yet it is our duty to correct such as can
be corrected, and we would do so, if the abolitionists
would let us alone, or advise with us as
friends, neighbors and gentlemen.
in such pursuits, follows head-work, works within
doors, labors lightly, and makes five times as much
as one engaged in the coarsest occupations of
mere hand-work. There cannot be a surplus population
with such a people, because they have the
world for a market to buy and sell in, and the
more dense and numerous the population, the
better opportunities are afforded for the association
and division of labor, which increase its productiveness
and lighten its burdens.
The very reverse of all this has been, till lately,
the policy and practice of the South, inculcated
and encouraged by her so called philosophers and
statesmen. She has pursued the very lowest and
coarsest hand-work, - work which required neither
character nor intelligence, and which shut out the
light of education, by rendering education unnecessary,
or when necessary, making it impracticable
from the sparseness of population. She has
worked hard and been badly paid. On an average,
the products of four hours of her hand work
are exchanged for the results of one hour of such
light work as we first described.
Peoples and individuals must live by hand-work,
or head-work, and those who live by head-work
are always, in fact,
the masters of those who live
by hand-work. They take the products of their
labor without paying an equivalent in equal labor.
The hand-work men and nations are slaves in fact,
because they do not get paid for more than one-fourth
of their labor. The South has, heretofore,
worked three hours for Europe and the
North, and one for herself. It is one of the
beautiful results of free trade.
them a thing whose movement and action could
be controlled with as much certainty as the motion
of a spinning wheel, provided it was organized
on proper principles. It would have been
less presumptuous in them to have attempted to
have made a tree, for a tree is not half so complex
as a society of human beings, each of whom
is fearfully and wonderfully compounded of soul
and body, and whose aggregate, society, is still
more complex and difficult of comprehension than
its individual members. Trees grow and man
may lop, trim, train and cultivate them, and thus
hasten their growth, and improve their size,
beauty and fruitfulness. Laws, institutions,
societies, and governments grow, and men may aid
their growth, improve their strength and beauty,
and lop off their deformities and excrescences, by
punishing crime and rewarding virtue. When
society has worked long enough, under the hand
of God and nature, man observing its operations,
may discover its laws and constitution. The
common law of England and the constitution of
England, were discoveries of this kind. Fortunately
for us, we adopted, with little change, that
common law and that constitution. Our institutions
and our ancestry were English. Those institutions
were the growth and accretions of many
ages, not the work of legislating philosophers.
The abstractions contained in the various
instruments on which we professed, but professed
falsely, to found our governments, did no harm,
because, until abolition arose, they remained a
dead letter. Now, and not till now, these abstractions
have become matters of serious practical
importance, and we propose to give some of them
a candid, but fearless examination. We find these
words in the preamble and Declaration of Independence,
"We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal; that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights, that among them, are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure
these rights governments are instituted among
men, deriving their just powers from the consent
of the governed; that whenever any form of
government becomes destructive of these ends it is
the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and
to institute a new government, laying its
foundations on such principles, and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most
likely to effect their safety and happiness."
It is, we believe, conceded on all hands, that men
are not born physically, morally or intellectually
equal, - some are males, some females, some from
birth, large, strong and healthy, others weak,
small and sickly - some are naturally amiable,
others prone to all kinds of wickednesses - some
brave, others timid. Their natural inequalities
beget inequalities of rights. The weak in mind
or body require guidance, support and protection;
they must obey and work for those who protect
and guide them - they have a natural right to
guardians, committees, teachers or masters.
Nature has made them slaves; all that law and
government can do, is to regulate, modify and
mitigate their slavery. In the absence of legally
instituted slavery, their condition would be worse
under that natural slavery of the weak to the
strong, the foolish to the wise and cunning. The
wise and virtuous, the brave, the strong in mind
and body, are by nature born to command and
protect, and law but follows nature in making
them rulers, legislators, judges, captains, husbands,
guardians, committees and masters. The naturally
depraved class, those born prone to crime,
are our brethren too; they are entitled to education,
to religious instruction, to all the means
and appliances proper to correct their evil
propensities, and all their failings; they have a right to be
sent to the penitentiary, - for there, if they do
not reform, they cannot at least disturb society.
Our feelings, and our consciences teach us, that
nothing but necessity can justify taking human
life.
We are but stringing together truisms, which
every body knows as well as ourselves, and yet
if men are created unequal in all these respects;
what truth or what meaning is there in the passage
under consideration? Men are not created
or born equal, and circumstances, and education,
and association, tend to increase and aggravate
inequalities among them, from generation to generation.
Generally, the rich associate and intermarry
with each other, the poor do the same;
the ignorant rarely associate with or intermarry
with the learned, and all society shuns contact
with the criminal, even to the third and fourth
generations.
Men are not "born entitled to equal rights!"
It would be far nearer the truth to say, "that
some were born with saddles on their backs, and
others booted and spurred to ride them," - and
the riding does them good. They need the reins,
the bit and the spur. No two men by nature are
exactly equal or exactly alike. No institutions
can prevent the few from acquiring rule and
ascendency over the many. Liberty and free
competition invite and encourage the attempt of the
strong to master the weak; and insure their success.
"Life and liberty" are not "inalienable;" they
have been sold in all countries, and in all ages,
and must be sold so long as human nature lasts.
It is an inexpedient and unwise, and often
unmerciful restraint, on a man's liberty of action, to
deny him the right to sell himself when starving,
and again to buy himself when fortune
smiles. Most countries of antiquity, and some,
like China at the present day, allowed such sale
and purchase. The great object of government
is to restrict, control and punish man "in the
pursuit of happiness." All crimes are committed
in its pursuit. Under the free or competitive
system, most men's happiness consists in destroying
the happiness of other people. This, then, is
no inalienable right.
The author of the Declaration may have, and
probably did mean, that all men were created
with an equal title to property. Carry out such
a doctrine, and it would subvert every government
on earth.
In practice, in all ages, and in all countries,
men had sold their liberty either for short periods,
for life, or hereditarily; that is, both their own
liberty and that of their children after them. The
laws of all countries have, in various forms and
degrees, in all times recognized and regulated
this right to alien
or sell liberty. The soldiers
and sailors of the revolution had aliened both
liberty and life, the wives in all America had
aliened their liberty, so had the apprentices and
wards at the very moment this verbose, newborn,
false and unmeaning preamble was written.
Mr. Jefferson was an enthusiastic speculative
philosopher; Franklin was wise, cunning and judicious;
he made no objection to the Declaration,
as prepared by Mr. Jefferson, because, probably,
he saw it would suit the occasion and supposed it
would be harmless for the future. But even
Franklin was too much of a physical philosopher,
too utilitarian and material in his doctrines, to
be relied on in matters of morals or government.
We may fairly conclude, that liberty is alienable,
that there is a natural right to alien it, first,
because the laws and institutions of all countries
have recognized and regulated its alienation; and
secondly, because we cannot conceive of a civilized
society, in which there were no wives, no wards,
no apprentices, no sailors and no soldiers; and
none of these could there be in a country that
practically carried out the doctrine, that liberty
is inalienable.
The soldier who meets death at the cannon's
mouth, does so because he has aliened both life
and liberty. Nay, more, he has aliened the pursuit
of happiness, else he might desert on the eve
of battle, and pursue happiness in some more
promising quarter than the cannon's mouth. If
the pursuit of happiness be inalienable, men
should not be punished for crime, for all crimes
are notoriously committed in the pursuit of
happiness. If these abstractions have some hidden
and cabalistic meaning, which none but the
initiated can comprehend, then the Declaration
should have been accompanied with a translation,
and a commentary to fit it for common use, - as
it stands, it deserves the tumid yet appropriate
epithets which Major Lee somewhere applies to the
writings of Mr. Jefferson, it is,
"exhuberantly
false, and arborescently fallacious."
Nothing can be found in all history more
unphilosophical, more presumptuous, more characteristic
of the infidel philosophy of the 18th century,
than the language that follows that of which we
have been treating. How any observant man,
however unread, should have come to the conclusion,
that society and government were such plastic,
man-created things, that starting on certain
general principles, he might frame them successfully
as he pleased, we are at a loss to conceive.
But infidelity is blind and foolish, and infidelity
then prevailed. Lay your foundations of government
on what principles you please, organize its
powers in what form you choose, and you cannot
foresee the results. You can only tell what laws,
institutions and governments will effect, when you
apply them to the same race or nation under the
same circumstances in which they have already
been tried. But philosophy then was in the chrysalis
state. She has since deluged the world with
blood, crime and pauperism. She has had full
sway, and has inflicted much misery, and done no
good. The world is beginning to be satisfied, that
it is much safer and better, to look to the past,
to trust to experience, to follow nature, than to
be guided by the ignis fatuus
of a
priori speculations
of closet philosophers. If all men had
been created equal, all would have been competitors,
rivals, and enemies. Subordination, difference
of caste and classes, difference of sex, age
and slavery beget peace and good will.
We were only justified in
declaring our independence,
because we were sufficiently wise, numerous
and strong to govern ourselves, and too
distant and distinct from England to be well
governed by her.
Moses and Confucius, Solon, Lycurgus and
English Alfred, were Reformers, Revisors of the
Code. They, too, were philosophers, but too profound
to mistake the province of philosophy and
attempt to usurp that of nature. They did not frame
government on abstract principles, they indulged
in no "a
priori" reasoning; but simply lopped off
what was bad, and retained, modified and simplified
what was good in existing institutions -
"And
that’s as high,
The first clause of the
Bill of Rights of Virginia,
contains language of like import with that
which we have been criticizing. The fourth clause
is in the following words: - "That no man or set of
men are entitled to exclusive or separate privileges
from the rest of the community, but in consideration
of public services: which not being discendible,
neither ought the offices of magistrate, legislator
or judge, to be hereditary." This is very
bad English and is so obscurely expressed, that
we can only guess at the meaning intended to be
conveyed. We suppose, that "exclusive or separate
emoluments and privileges," was intended to
apply to such harmless baubles as titles of nobility
and coats of arms, and to petty ill-paid officers,
and that the author never dreamed that hereditary
property, however large, was a "separate
emolument or privilege."
The author saw no objection to the right
secured by law to hold five hundred subjects or
negro slaves, and ten thousand acres of land, to
the exclusion of everybody else, and to transmit
them to one's children and grand-children,
although an exclusive hereditary privilege far
transcending any held by the nobility of Europe,
- for the nobility of Russia do not hold
such despotic sway over their serfs, as we do
over our negroes, and are themselves mere slaves
to the Emperor, whilst our slaveholders have
scarcely any authority above them. We have
no doubt the author, like our modern farmers,
considered this "a mere circumstance,"
and would have told you that a man has a
natural
right to his lands and negroes, a natural
right to what belonged to his father.
Property is not a natural and divine, but
conventional right; it is the mere creature of society
and law. In this all lawyers and publicists
agree. In this country, the history of property
is of such recent date, that the simplest and most
ignorant man must know, that it commenced in
wrong, injustice and violence a few generations
ago, and derives its only title now from the will
of society through the sanction of law. Society
has no right, because it is not expedient, to
resume any one man's property because he abuses
its possession, and does not so employ it as to
redound to public advantage, - but if all private
property, or if private property generally were
so used as to injure, instead of promote public
good, then society might and ought to destroy the
whole institution.
From these premises, it follows that government,
in taxing private property, should only be limited
by the public good. If the tax be so heavy as to
deter the owner from improving the property, then,
in general, will the whole public be injured.
False notions of the right of property, and of
the duties and liabilities of property holders,
destroy all public spirit and patriotism, cripple and
injure, and prevent the growth and development
of the South. We feel it our duty to deflect a
little from our subject to expose these errors.
Now, a natural right is a "divine right," and
if we Southern farmers have a divine right to
our little realms and subjects, is it not hard to
dispute the like right in sovereigns, on a larger
scale. The world discovered that the power of
kings was a trust power conferred on them for
the good of the people, and to be exercised
solely for that purpose - or else forfeited. Are
we guilty of treason in suggesting that farmers
have no better titles than kings, and that the LAW
vests them with separate property in lands and
negroes, under the belief and expectation that
such separate property will redound more to
public advantage than if all property were in
common? We have an aristocracy with more of
privilege, and less of public spirit, than any that
we meet with in history. Less of public spirit,
because they cherish that free trade philosophy
which inculcates selfishness as a moral and political
duty, which teaches that the public good is best
promoted when nobody attends to public affairs,
but each one is intent on his own private ends.
Naturally, Southerners, like all slaveholders, are
liberal and public spirited. It is their philosophy
that has taken away their patriotism. According
to the sense in which the term "public services"
is used, meaning, no doubt, official services,
in the Bill of Rights, no farmer could hold his
lands and negroes a day, for they have not
rendered, public services as a consideration for their
great, "exclusive and separate emolument and
privilege."
Institutions are what men can sees feel, venerate
and understand. The institutions of Moses
and of Alfred remain to this day, those of Numa
and Lycurgus had a long and flourishing life.
These sages laid down no abstract propositions,
founded their institutions on no general principles,
had no written constitutions. They were
wise from experience, adopted what history and
experience had tested, and never trusted to
a
priori speculations,
like a More, a Locke, a Jefferson,
or an Abbe Sieyes. Constitutions should
never be written till several centuries after governments
have been instituted, for it requires that
length of time to ascertain how institutions will
operate. No matter how you define and limit,
in words, the powers and duties of each department
of government, they will each be sure to
exercise as much power as possible, and to encroach
to the utmost of their ability on the powers
of other departments. When the Commons were
invoked to Parliament, the king had no idea they
would usurp the taxing powers; but having
successfully done so; it became part of the English
constitution, that the people alone could tax
themselves. It was never intended that ninety-nine
guilty should escape, sooner than one innocent
man be punished; yet, finding that the result of
the English judicial system, the judges and lawyers
made a merit of necessity, and adopted it
as a maxim of the common law. So, in a hundred
instances we could show, that in England a
constitution means the modus
operandi of institutions,
not prescribed, but ascertained from experience.
In this country we shall soon have two constitutions,
that a
priori thing which nobody regards,
and that practical constitution deduced from
observation of the workings of our institutions. -
Whigs disregard our written constitution, when
banks, tariffs or internal improvements are in
question; Democrats respect it not when there
is a chance to get more territory; and Young
America, the dominant party of the day, will
jump through its paper obstructions with as much
dexterity as harlequin does through the hoop.
State governments, and senators, and representatives,
and militia, and cities, and churches, and
colleges, and universities, and landed property,
are institutions. Things of flesh and blood, that
know their rights, "and knowing dare maintain
them." We should cherish them. They will give
permanence to government, and security to State
Rights. But the abstract doctrines of nullification
and secession, the general principles laid down
in the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of
Rights, and Constitution of the United States,
afford no protection of rights, no valid limitations
of power, no security to State Rights. The
power to construe them, is the power to nullify
them. Mere paper guarantees, like the constitutions
of Abbe Sieyes, are as worthless as the
paper on which they are written.
Our institutions, founded on such generalities
and abstractions as those of which we are treating,
are like a splendid edifice built upon kegs of
gunpowder. The abolitionists are trying to apply
the match to the explosive materials under our
Parliament House; we are endeavoring to anticipate
them by drenching those materials with ridicule.
No body deems them worth the trouble of
argument, or the labor of removal. They will
soon become incombustible and innocuous.
Property is too old and well-tried an institution,
too much interwoven with the feelings, interests,
prejudices and affections of man, to be shaken by
the speculations of philosophers. It is only its
mal-administration that can endanger it. So far
from wishing to shake or undermine property, we
would, for the public good, give it more permanence.
We do not like the Western Homestead
provision of forty acres, because that entails on
families poverty and ignorance, and tends to
depress civilization. We do not like the large
entails of England, they beget an idle,
useless and vicious aristocracy. But lands do
not breed as men do, and we can see no good
public reason for cutting up small farms, at the end
of each generation, and thus preventing good and
permanent improvements, and incurring the
oft-repeated labor of making new enclosures, and new but
slight buildings. For public good, and property
ought to be administered for public good, it would
be better to have some law of primogeniture where
the lands were of a convenient size to keep
together. A law entailing farms of such amount
as would educate families well, without putting
them above the necessity of industry and exertion,
would add much to national wealth, in
encouraging good and permanent improvements,
and would improve national character and
intelligence, by securing a class of well educated men,
attached to the soil and the country. We need
not fear the mad dog cry of aristocracy; a man
with an entailed estate of five hundred acres, and
a coat of arms to boot, would not be a very
dangerous character. Whilst men with twenty
thousand acres illy cultivated lands and five
hundred idle negroes, or bankers wielding five
millions, all of which they may entail or settle in their
families for generations to come, are to all intents
and purposes, as good aristocrats as any German
Princes. We have the
things, exclusive hereditary
privileges and aristocracy, amongst us, in
their utmost intensity; let us not be frightened at
the names;
but so mould our institutions, regardless
of prejudices, technicalities, names, or titles,
as will best promote, "the greatest good of the
greatest number."
Too much insecurity of property invites to
extravagance and speculation, and prevents
refinements and continued progress. Property should
remain several generations in a family to beget
learning, skill, and high moral qualifications.
Lands divided minutely, depress all pursuits;
for small farms want only coarse and cheap articles,
quack doctors, illiterate parsons, and ignorant
attorneys. When farms are too large, they
occasion a sparse population, absenteeism of the
rich, and a sort of colonial or plantation life.
Either extreme is equally to be avoided, and,
therefore, the State should determine the amount
of land subject to the laws of primogeniture and
entail. Such laws might be enacted without any
shock to existing titles, and would vastly enhance
the value of our lands. People who are tired,
(and half the world is,) of the too frequent ups
and downs of American life, would rush to Virginia
to invest their money. If other States did
not follow our example, Virginia would, in five
years, be the first State in wealth and intelligence
in the Union. If such arrangement be best
for all society, then it is the most democratic
arrangement, for it is the essence of democracy
to consult the good of the whole. Landed
property
thus held, would become an institution
attaching its owners to our government. Patriotism
and love of country, virtues now unknown at the
South, would prevail, and give permanence and
security to society.
No great advantages accrue to society, either
in wealth, morals, or intelligence, by the frequent
change of property from hand to hand, and from
family to family. Lands would become useless, if
minutely divided between all the members of the
community. The law now devolves lands in case
of intestacy on all a man's children. The laws
of most countries have devolved them on the
male children, or on one child. None have a
natural right to them. If it be expedient that
they should descend to one child, and be
continued in the family, there is nothing in natural
justice or equity to oppose the arrangement.
Five hundred acres of land and thirty negroes
would suffice to educate all the younger members
of the family, and make useful citizens of them.
Primogeniture and entails have had this good
effect in England. The younger sons have filled
the professions, the church, the army, and the
navy, with able, ambitious men. It has furnished
London and Liverpool with the best merchants in
the world, and made trade one of the most
honorable professions.
It is pleasing to see the poor acquiring lands,
but the pleasure is more than balanced, with all
save the malicious, by seeing the rich stripped of
them. Those accustomed to poverty, suffer little
from it. Those who have been rich, are miserable
when they become poor.
Tu,
genitor, cape sacra manu, patriosque Penates.
The Catholic Church did
much to preserve the
sanctity and purity of the family circle, by making
marriage a religious sacrament; the Episcopal
Church something in making it a holy ordinance;
and in its ritual, which reminded the parties of
the solemn and sacred engagements into which
they were about to enter. But as liberty, equality
and fraternity advanced, it was reduced, at the
free North, to a mere civil contract, entered into
with no more thought, ceremony or solemnity than
the bargain for a horse. We shall not sully our
sheet with descriptions of the marriage relation
as it often presents itself now, even in good society
in free Europe and in free America. Shakers,
and Oneida Perfectionists and Mormons, are the
legitimate fruits of modern progress. Surely
women ought to be free as well as negroes. In
Utah, (the highest and latest result of liberty,
equality ,and fraternity,) the family dwelling,
which in heathen Rome was a temple of the
Gods, has been converted into a den of
prostitutes. What a rise, from pious and pagan
Æneas, to Brigham Young the Yankee Christian
of the latest cut and newest fashion!
Let
heav'n kiss earth!
Now let not nature's hand
SECOND PART OF KING HENRY IV.
"Liberty, Equality
and Fraternity," is the
motto and watchword of Frenchmen when they
turn out to murder each other wholesale. They
are an epigramatic people, and have a happy way
of condensing into a phrase or maxim, a whole
code of philosophy. The same idea had been
floating in men's minds ever since the Reformation
"What
oft was thought,
but ne'er so well expressed."
It had borne, too,
everywhere the same fruits.
The seventy years' wars in Germany are further
off in time and distance than the French Revolution,
but were quite as prolific of murder, rape
and rapine, as those amiable events themselves.
They were the first exhibitions on a large scale,
of the new philosophy of Liberty, Equality and
Fraternity. The revocation of the edict of Nantes,
and the Vespers of St. Bartholemew, were
small events compared to the days of the Guillotine;
but nevertheless, they were highly respectable
and intense expressions of that fraternity
which nascent liberty was begetting. The Gunpowder
plot, too, but for an unlucky
contre temps,
would have resulted in a very strong expression
of the affectionate brotherly interest which men
feel for one another's well being, both in this
world and the world to come. Shortly thereafter,
when liberty openly reared her standard, and
Cromwell burnt houses, and Sir Thomas Lunsford
ate babies, men began to believe that the world
was really blessed with the millenial advent of
Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Charles and
Jeffries put a stop to it for a while: yet towards
the later part of his reign, Charles wisely
resolved to give a holyday
, and indulge his people
with a bloody carnival. The little Titus Oates
affair that followed, showed that men's affections
for each other had not at all abated, and were
ready to exhibit themselves in the most passionate
manner, whenever the restraints of government
were removed.
Our Pilgrim fathers being denied the opportunity
of practicing to its full extent the divine
precept - "Love thy neighbor as thyself" removed
to America, and here proved to the world
that they had not degenerated since the unctuous
days of Knox and of Cromwell. Many tokens
of their zeal and affection were soon seen pendant
from the elms of New England; and with a delicate
discrimination, that affection selected the
ugliest and oldest of the weaker sex, on whom to
lavish its embraces.
Has the world "supped full with horrors," or
a mere caprice of fashion brought about new
modes of manifesting attachment? Frenchmen
kiss and hug, Americans shake hands, and
Englishmen scowl and bow; yet they all mean the
same thing - 'tis fashion rules the hour. So it
may be that cheating and starving our fellow
beings is now the rage, instead of shooting, and
burning them. Those three hundred thousand
starved in Ireland, show clearly enough that
Liberty, Equality and Fraternity have lost none of
their energy, however much they may have quieted
their manners.
"Nil
admirari" is the perfection
of good breeding in England, and a real gentleman
would sooner cheat in a horse trade than express
sympathy for the millions who are pining with
hunger and nakedness in the fields and factories
and mines of old England.
We should do gross injustice to our own fellow
countrymen if we failed to notice a little "Love
Feast" that occurred a few days ago in St. Louis.
The killed and wounded would have been a trifle
in Paris, but did pretty well for new beginners. It
was a genteel and select affair, for not a negro
was permitted to fraternize. Generally, these
affairs are decidedly vulgar in America, in consequence
of the great love of the Northern folk for
the negroes. In Philadelphia and Cincinnati, some
little Love Feasts have been enacted for the benefit
of our black brethren; who, when the feasts were
over, found themselves stript
of clothes and trowsers
- sans eyes, sans ears, sans teeth, sans every
thing. These, and other striking evidences of
brotherly interest, such as brick-bats and glass
bottles, leave Sambo no room to doubt that he is
a peculiar favorite, - yet Sambo, who is a quiet
body, is getting heartily tired of such rough romping
and hard love-licks.
Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, culminated
when the Goddess of Reason usurped the seat
and the sceptre of Deity, and sent forth her high
priests, Danton, Marat, St. Just and Robespierre,
"to deal damnation round the land!" The
demonstration was then complete. Man without
government, without order, without subordination,
without religion, without slavery in its every form,
from the prison house, the straight jacket, the
army, the navy, serfdom, up to the slavery of
mere subjection to law, without all those restraints
which his peculiar wants and capacities required,
was the cruellest and wildest beast of the field.
It proved that a state of nature was not a state
of liberty, for a state of liberty is a state of
exterminating warfare. It proved that neither
religion nor morality could exist without enough of
government to enforce the performance of duty
on each member of society.
We attempted, elsewhere, to show, that
there cannot be enough of such government
without domestic slavery, because, in its absence,
men are placed in competitive and antagonistic
positions toward each other. This separation of
interest and antagonism begets continual rivalry,
hatred, and intense discord and war, which political
economy exasperates and increases, by
encouraging exclusive devotion to men's self-interest.
A celebrated Socialist properly calls it"the
philosophy of self interest."
But political economy is the necessary result
of Free Society - it is the only moral code which
it can inculcate - and yet all its precepts are at
war with morality. But for Christianity, Free
Society would be a wilderness of crime; and
Christianity has not fair play and a proper field
of action, where government has failed to institute
the peace-begetting and protective influence of
domestic slavery. It is one of the necessary
parts of government, without which men become
enemies instead of brethren. There is no love
between equals, and the divine precept,"Love
thy neighbor as thyself," is thundered vainly in
the ears of men straining for the same object.
The maxim, "every man for himself," embraces
the whole moral code of Free Society;
and Miss Bremer, and all the other philanthropists
in the world, with their thousand schemes and
institutions, will never be able to neutralise the
immoral and death dealing tendency of that
maxim and of the antagonism and social war
that it generates.
Little Prussia, little Venice, little Holland, and
little Portugal, have each, in turn, controlled the
destines of Europe. Even little Sweden, under
Charles XII., whipped all the Russias till she
taught Peter how to fight. Overgrown nations,
like overgrown men, want energy, activity and
intelligence.
We should learn from these instances in history
to prize and guard State Rights. We should, as
far as consistent with the Constitution, make each
State independent of the rest of the world; create
a necessity for the exercise of all the arts, sciences,
trades, professions and other pursuits that
pertain to separate nationality; and endeavor to
counteract the centralizing tendency of modern
improvements in locomotion and intercommunication,
which naturally rob the extremities to enrich
the centres of Power and of Trade. We live in
critical times, for the tendency to centralization is
stronger than ever before. Trade very easily effects
now what conquest did formerly. Let the
States of the South look to this matter. Are they
willing to remain mere colonies and plantations for
the centres of trade, or will they preserve their
separate nationality?
Does slavery violate the Higher Law? Certainly
not, if that Higher Law is to be found
in the Bible. Certainly not, if you throw aside the
Bible, and infer what is right, proper, and natural,
from the course of nature, the lessons of history,
or the voice of experience. But consult the same
sources for your Higher Law, and as certainly is
free society a violation of the laws of Nature and
the revealed will of God.
Liberty, infidelity, and abolition, are three
words conveying but one idea. Infidels who dispute
the authority of God will not respect or obey
the government of man. Abolitionists, who make
war upon slavery, instituted by God and approved
by Holy Writ, are in a fair way to denounce the
Bible that stands in the way of the attainment of
their purpose. Marriage is too much like slavery
not to be involved in its fate; and the obedience
which the Bible inculcates, furnishes a
new theme for infidelity in petticoats or in Bloomers
to harp on. Slavery, marriage, religion, are
the pillars of the social fabric. France felled them
at a blow, and Paris and St. Domingo were crushed
beneath the ruins of the edifice which they supported.
Frenchmen and Germans are generally infidels,
agrarians and abolitionists. An Irish infidel, an
Irish agrarian, or an Irish abolitionist, is scarcely
to be found. No Irish woman ever disgraces her
own sex, or affects the dress and manners of the
opposite sex. The men of Erin are all brave, patriotic
and religious; her women are
"Chaste
as the icicle
This intimate connexion
and dependence, of
slavery, marriage and religion, we suggest as a
subject for the investigation and rejection of the
reader. If ever the abolitionists succeed in
thoroughly imbuing the world with their doctrines and
opinions, all religion, all government, all order,
will be slowly but surely subverted and destroyed.
Society can linger on for centuries without slavery;
it cannot exist a day without religion. As an
institution of government, religion is strictly within
the scope of our work, and as such we treat of it.
For fear assaults upon us may weaken the force
of our facts and arguments, we will take occasion
more strictly to define our opinions as to government.
We have ever, and still do belong to the
Democratic party; - not, however, to the "let
alone" and "largest liberty" wing of that party.
We believe in the capacity of the people to govern,
and would not deny them the opportunity to exercise
that capacity. We think there is no danger
from too much or too popular government, provided
we avoid centralization, and distribute as much as
possible to small localities powers of police and
legislation. We would cherish and preserve all our
institutions
as they are, adding to them probably
larger separate governmental powers to be vested
in the people of each county. The cause of popular
government is on the advance. The printing
press, railroads, steamships and the telegraph
afford opportunities for information, consultation
and combination. But these agencies, which will
make governments more popular, will at the same
time render them more efficient, all-pervading, rigid
and exact. Ancient Republicanism will supplant
Laissez-faire Republicanism; - and ancient
Republicanism we admire and prefer.
Total changes, which revolutions propose, are
never wise or practicable, because most of the
institutions of every country are adapted to the
manners, morals and sentiments of the people.
Indeed, the people have been moulded in character
by those institutions, and they cannot be torn
asunder and others substituted, for none others will
fit. Hence reforms result in permanent change
and improvement. Revolutions, after a great waste
of blood and treasure, leave things to return soon
to the "status quo ante bellum." English statesmen,
fully alive to these great truths, have for
centuries past anticipated and prevented revolutions,
by granting timely reforms. Mr. Jefferson, when
we separated from Great Britain, wished to effect
a total revolution, "laying its foundations on such
principles, and organizing its powers in such forms,
as," &c. Fortunately for us, the practical men
who framed our government saw the wisdom and
necessity of adopting English institutions (to which
we had been accustomed), with very slight modifications,
to adapt them to our circumstances. Our
separation from England was a great and salutary
reform, not a revolution. Scotland is now attempting
a reform less in degree, but the same in character
- she is trying to get back her parliament
and to establish a separate nationality. We have
no doubt it would redound to the strength and the
glory of Great Britain, if both Scotland and Ireland
had separate parliaments.
demand for labor, because their children are not
slaves, and they themselves but for a time. After
liberation they will become a nuisance to the country
that imports them.
The fact that, despite of the enormous annual
importation of slaves to Cuba, the number of
whites is greater than that of blacks in that island,
proves clearly enough that where it is cheaper to
buy African slaves than to rear them, men will
work these poor natives to death, regardless of
humanity. Besides, the natural antipathy between
the savage and the civilized man, not only prevents
the influence of domestic affection on the heart of
the master, but indurates his feelings and degrades
his morals. Our slaves are treated far better than
they were forty years ago, because they have
improved in mind and morals, approached nearer to
the master's state of civilization, and thus elicited
more of his interest and attachment. Slavery with
us is becoming milder every day; were the slave
trade revived, it would resume its pristine cruelty.
The slaves we now hold would become less valuable,
and we should take less care of them. In justice
to them let us protest against the renewal of this
infamous traffic. Slavery originating from the
conquest of a country is beneficent even in its
origin, for it preserves the slaves or serfs who are
parcelled out to the conquering chiefs from the
waste, pillage, cruelty and oppression of the common
soldiers of the conquering army, - but slavery
brought about by hunting and catching Africans
like beasts, and then exposing them to the horrors
of the middle passage, is quite a different thing.
We think it would be both wise and humane to
subject the free negroes in America to some
modification of slavery. Competition with the whites
is killing them out. They are neither so moral, so
happy, nor half so well provided as the slaves. Let
them select their masters, and this would be
another instance of slavery originating without
violence or cruelty - another instance in which slavery
would redress much greater evils than it occasioned.
Slender:
I came yonder
at Eton to
marry mistress Anne Page,
and she's a great lubberly boy. If it had not been
i' the church, I
would have swinged him, or he should have swinged me. If I
did not think it had been Anne Page, would I might never stir,
and 'tis a post-master's boy.
- Merry Wives
of Windsor.
Nothing in the signs of
the times exhibits in
stronger relief the fact, that free society is in a
state "of dissolution and thaw, "of demoralization
and transition, than the stir about woman's
rights. And yet it is time to work. Northern
newspapers are filled with the sufferings of poor
widowed needlewomen, and the murders of wives
by their husbands. Woman there
is in a false
position. Be she white, or be she black, she is
treated with kindness and humanity in the
slave-holding South. In Asia, she ever has been and is
now an idol, secluded from the vulgar gaze, and
exempted from the hard and coarse labors of
man.
The Turks and the Chinese imprison her, but
worship her. Her veiled face and cramped feet,
unfit her for work, condemn her to seclusion, but
secure to her protection. She is a slave, but is
idle, honored and caressed. The Romans girded
up the toga, when about to engage in labor. If
American women wish to participate in the hard
labor of men, they are right to curtail the
petticoat. Queens wear the longest trains, because
they have least occasion to labor. The broom
girls of Bavaria have to work hard for a living,
and find it necessary to amputate the nether
impediments. In France, woman draws the plough
and the canal boat. She will be condemned to
like labors in America, so soon as her dress, her
education and coarse sentiments fit her for such
labors. Let her exhibit strength and hardihood,
and man, her master, will make her a beast of
burden. So long as she is nervous, fickle, capricious,
delicate, diffident and dependent, man will
worship and adore her. Her weakness is her
strength, and her true art is to cultivate and
improve that weakness. Woman naturally shrinks
from public gaze, and from the struggle and
competition of life. Free society has thrown her into
the arena of industrial war, robbed her of the
softness of her own sex, without conferring on
her the strength of ours. In truth, woman, like
children, has but one right, and that is the right
to protection. The right to protection involves
the obligation to obey. A husband, a lord and
master, whom she should love, honor and obey,
nature designed for every woman, - for the number
of males and females is the same. If she be
obedient, she is in little danger of mal-treatment;
if she stands upon her rights, is coarse and masculine,
man loathes and despises her, and ends by
abusing her. Law, however well intended, can
do little in her behalf. True womanly art will
give her an empire and a sway far greater than
she deserves. The best women have been distasteful
to men, and unpopular with their own sex,
simply for betraying, or seeming to betray, something
masculine in their characters. Catherine
Parr, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs. Fry, Miss Martineau,
and Madame De Stael, are not loveable characters.
On the other hand, men have adored the
worst women, merely for their feminine charms
and arts. Rhodope and Aspasia, Delilah, Cleopatra,
Mary Stuart, Ninon D'Enclos, Maria Antoinette,
Herodias and Lola Montez, ruled men as
they pleased, by the exercise of all the charms,
and more than the wiles and weakness of their
sex. Mrs. Stowe, in the characters of Aunt
Phebe and Mrs. St. Clair, beautifully illustrates
and enforces this idea. Bad as Mrs. St. Clair is,
we feel that we might love her, but good Aunt
Phebe is a she-man, continually boring and elbowing
us with her rectangular virtues. Yet Mrs.
Stowe would have women preach. If she sets
them to preaching to-day, we men will put them
to the plough to-morrow. Women would do well
to disguise strength of mind or body, if they
possess it, if they would retain their empire.
The people of our Northern States, who hold
that domestic slavery is unjust and iniquitous, are
consistent in their attempts to modify or abolish
the marriage relation. Marriages, in many places
there, are contracted with as little formality as
jumping over a broom, and are dissolved with equal
facility by courts and legislatures. It is proposed
by many to grant divorces at all times, when
the parties mutually consent. The Socialists
suggest that the relation should be abolished,
private family establishments broken up, and women
and children converted into joint stock. The
ladies are promoting these movements by women’s
right's conventions. The prospects of these
agitators are quite hopeful, because they have no
conservative South to oppose them. It is their
own affair, and we will not interfere with its
regulation.
We shall deplore the day when marriage and
Christianity are abolished anywhere, but will not
interfere in the social and domestic matters of
other people.
The men of the South take care of the women
of the South, the men of slaveholding Asia
guard and protect their women too. The generous
sentiments of slaveholders are sufficient guarantee
of the rights of woman, all the world over.
But there is something wrong in her condition
in free society, and that condition is daily
becoming worse.
Give us woman with all her frailties and infirmities,
varium
et mutabalile semper.
"Like
the uncertain glory of an April day
We like not that -
"Beauty,
forever unchangingly bright,
We would infinitely
prefer to nurse a sickly
woman, to being led about by a masculine blue
stocking. Mrs. Boswell complained that her husband,
following Dr. Johnson, resembled a man led
about by a bear. We would rather be led by a
bear than a woman. He looks more formidable
and master-like.
To the husbands of
pedantic, masculine women,
the lines of Byron may be well applied -
"But
oh! ye Lords of ladies intellectual,
As we are in the poetic
vein, and this chapter
is intended solely for the eyes of the ladies, all
of whom love poetry, (though none of them can
write it,) we will quote a whole ode of Schiller,
which expresses our thoughts on this subject far
better than we can express them ourselves.
Poetry and painting require boldness, originality and
inventiveness. The ladies are too modest to practise
these qualities, and only become coarse when
they attempt to be bold. Sappho is an exception,
but Sappho, we suspect, was a Myth or a man.
We offer this beautiful ode to the ladies as a
propitiation for all the wicked things we have said
about them:
Honor
to Woman! To her it is given
From
the bounds of truth careering,
But
Woman, with looks that can charm and enchain,
Bruised
and worn, but fiercely breasting,
But
woman, at peace with all being, reposes,
Strong
and proud and self-depending,
Alive,
as the wind harp, how lightly soever
Man's
dominion, war and labor:
"Why,
my dear Lucifer, would you abuse
The Vision of Judgment. We did not intend to
write the history of
slavery, or to treat of it in all its aspects. It has
been so interwoven with all the relations and
history of human kind, that to do so would require a
Moral Cosmos and a history of the world. Our
chief object has been to prove the failure of free
society. We knew if we succeeded in that, the
various theories propounded in this work on other
subjects would be found, when closely examined,
necessary results, or legitimate sequences.
In order to enable the reader fully to comprehend
our argument, and to furnish a fair field for
its refutation, if false, we will now sum up the
chief points which we have made, and on which
we rely.
First. Free society is theoretically impracticable,
because its friends admit that "in all old
countries the supply of labor exceeds the demand."
Hence a part of the laboring class must be out of
employment and starving, and in their struggle to
get employment, reducing those next above them
to the minimum that will support human existence.
Secondly. The late invention and use of the
word Sociology in free society, and of the science
of which it treats, and the absence of such word
and science in slave society, shows that the former
is afflicted with disease, the latter healthy.
Thirdly. We prove the failure, from history
and statistics.
Fourthly. We prove it from the exodus now
going on from Western Europe with all the
reckless panic and trepidation of a "Sauve que peut!"
And, lastly, we prove it from the universal
admission of all writers who have of late years
treated of the subject of society in Free Europe.
For thirty years the South has been a field on
which abolitionists, foreign and domestic, have
carried on offensive warfare. Let us now, in turn,
act on the offensive, transfer the seat of war, and
invade the enemy's territory.
Our little work has by
untoward circumstances
been delayed in its publication. Ten years ago we
became satisfied that slavery,
black or white, was
right and necessary. We advocated this doctrine
in very many essays; sometimes editorially and
sometimes as a communicant. The
Fredericksburg
Recorder
and Richmond Examiner will testify to
this fact. We republish in this Appendix a series
of essays that first appeared in the Democratic
Recorder, of Fredericksburg, in 1849, 1850, and
1851.
Few papers in the Union
then had the stern
courage and integrity to admit such articles into
their columns. We then published them in pamphlet
form, for a few friends. We now re-publish
them, because, whatever "bad eminence" we may
attain from being the first to write the
Justification
and Philosophy of Slavery, we prefer that position
to being considered the mere follower in the wake
of evil doers. We believe we are morally and
religiously right. We know that if wrong, we can
be easily confuted.
LIBERTY
AND EQUALITY -
SOCIALISM - YOUNG
ENGLAND - DOMESTIC SLAVERY.
Liberty and equality are
new things under the sun.
The free states of antiquity abounded with slaves.
The feudal system that supplanted Roman institutionally
changed the form of slavery, but brought with it neither
liberty nor equality. France and the Northern States of
our Union have alone fully and fairly tried the experiment
of a social organization founded upon universal
liberty and equality of rights. England has only
approximated to this condition in her commercial and
manufacturing cities. The examples of small communities
in Europe are not fit exponents of the working of
the system. In France and in our Northern States the
experiment has already failed, if we are to form our
opinions from the discontent of the masses, or to believe
the evidence of the Socialists, Communists, Anti-Renters,
and a thousand other agrarian sects that have arisen
in these countries, and threaten to subvert the whole
social fabric. The leaders of these sects, at least in France,
comprise within their ranks the greater number of the
most cultivated and profound minds in the nation, who
have made government their study. Add to the evidence
of these social philosophers, who, watching closely the
working of the system have proclaimed to the world its
total failure, the condition of the working classes, and we
have conclusive proof that liberty and equality have not
conduced to enhance the comfort or the happiness of the
people. Crime and pauperism have increased. Riots,
trades unions, strikes for higher wages, discontent breaking
out into revolution, are things of daily occurrence,
and show that the poor see and feel quite as clearly as the
philosophers, that their condition is far worse under the
new than under the old order of things. Radicalism
and Chartism in England owe their birth to the free and
equal institutions of her commercial and manufacturing
districts, and are little heard of in the quiet farming districts,
where remnants of feudalism still exist in the relation
of landlord and tenant, and in the laws of entail
and primogeniture.
So much for experiment. We will now endeavor to
treat the subject theoretically, and to show that the system
is on its face self-destructive and impracticable.
When we look to the vegetable, animal and human
kingdoms, we discover in them all a constant conflict,
war, or race of competition, the result of which is, that
the weaker or less healthy genera, species and individuals
are continually displaced and exterminated by the
stronger and more hardy. It is a means by which some
contend Nature is perfecting her own work. We, however,
witness the war, but do not see the improvement.
Although from the earliest date of recorded history one
race of plants has been eating out and taking the place
of another, the stronger or more cunning animals been
destroying the feebler, and man exterminating and
supplanting his fellow, still the plants, the animals and the
men of to-day seem not at all superior, even in those
qualities of strength and hardihood to which they owe
their continued existence, to those of thousands of years
ago. To this propensity of the strong to oppress and
destroy the weak, government owes its existence. So
strong is this propensity, and so destructive to human
existence, that man has never yet been found so savage
as to be without government. Forgetful of this important
fact, which is the origin of all governments, the
political economists and the advocates of liberty and
equality propose to enhance the well being of man by
trammeling his conduct as little as possible, and encouraging
what they call FREE COMPETITION. Now, free
competition is but another name for liberty and equality,
and we must acquire precise and accurate notions about
it in order to ascertain how free institutions will work.
It is, then, that war or conflict to which Nature impels
her creatures, and which government was intended to
restrict. It is true, it is that war somewhat modified and
restricted, for the warmest friends of freedom would
have some government. The question is, whether the
proposed restrictions are sufficient to neutralize the
self-destructive tendencies which nature impresses on society.
We proceed to show that the war of the wits, of mind
with mind, which free competition or liberty and equality
beget and encourage, is quite as oppressive, cruel and
exterminating as the war of the sword, of theft, robbery,
and murder, which it forbids. It is only substituting
strength of mind for strength of body. Men are told
it is their duty to compete, to endeavor to get ahead
of and supplant their fellow men, by the exercise of
all the intellectual and moral strength with which
nature and education have endowed them. "Might
makes right," is the order of creation, and this law of
nature, so far as mental might is concerned, is restored
by liberty to man. The struggle to better one's condition,
to pull others down or supplant them, is the great
organic law of free society. All men being equal, all
aspire to the highest honors and the largest possessions.
Good men and bad men teach their children one
and the same lesson - "Go ahead, push your way in the
world." In such society, virtue, if virtue there be, loses
all her loveliness because of her selfish aims. None but
the selfish virtues are encouraged, because none other
aid a man in the race of free competition. Good men
and bad men have the same end in view, are in pursuit
of the same object - self-promotion, self-elevation. The
good man is prudent, cautious, and cunning of fence;
he knows well the arts (the virtues, if you please,)
which will advance his fortunes and enable him to
depress and supplant others; he bides his time, takes
advantage of the follies, the improvidence, and vices of
others, and makes his fortune out of the misfortunes of
his fellow men. The bad man is rash, hasty, and
unskillful. He is equally selfish, but not half so cunning.
Selfishness is almost the only motive of human conduct
with good and bad in free society, where every man is
taught that he may change and better his condition. A
vulgar adage, "Every man for himself and devil take
the hindmost," is the moral which liberty and free
competition inculcate. Now, there are no more honors
and wealth in proportion to numbers, in this generation,
than in the one which preceded it; population fully
keeps pace with the means of subsistence; hence, those
who better their condition or rise to higher places in
society, do so generally by pulling down others or pushing
them from their places. Where men of strong minds,
of strong wills, and of great self-control, come into free
competition with the weak and improvident, the latter
soon become the inmates of jails and penitentiaries.
The statistics of France, England and America show
that pauperism and crime advance
pari passu with
liberty and equality. How can it be otherwise, when all
society is combined to oppress the poor and weak minded?
The rich man, however good he may be, employs
the laborer who will work for the least wages. If
he be a good man, his punctuality enables him to
cheapen the wages of the poor man. The poor war
with one another in the race of competition, in order
to get employment, by underbidding; for laborers are
more abundant than employers. Population increases
faster than capital. Look to the situation of woman
when she is thrown into this war of competition, and has
to support herself by her daily wages. For the same or
equally valuable services she gets not half the pay that
man does, simply because the modesty of her sex
prevents her from resorting to all the arts and means of
competition which men employ. He who would emancipate
woman, unless he could make her as coarse and
strong in mind and body as man, would be her worst
enemy; her subservience to and dependence on man, is
necessary to her very existence. She is not a soldier fitted
to enlist in the war of free competition. We do not set
children and women free because they are not capable of
taking care of themselves, not equal to the constant
struggle of society. To set them free would be to give
the lamb to the wolf to take care of. Society would
quickly devour them. If the children of ten years of
age were remitted to all the rights of person and property
which men enjoy, all can perceive how soon ruin and
penury would overtake them. But half of mankind are
but grown-up children, and liberty is as fatal to them as
it would be to children.
We will cite another familiar instance to prove and
illustrate the destructive effects of liberty or free competition.
It is that where two races of men of different
capacity are brought into juxtaposition. It is the boast
of the Anglo-Saxon, that by the arts of peace under the
influence of free trade he can march to universal conquest.
However true this may be, all know that if Englishmen
or Americans settle among inferior races, they
soon become the owners of the soil, and gradually
extirpate or reduce to poverty the original owners. They are
the wire-grass of nations. The same law of nature
which enables and impels the stronger race to oppress
and exterminate the weaker, is constantly at work in the
bosom of every society, between its stronger and weaker
members. Liberty and equality rather encourage than
restrict this law in its deadly operation. A Northern
gentleman, who was both statesman and philosopher,
once told us, that his only objection to domestic slavery
was, that it would perpetuate an inferior race, who, under
influence of free trade and free competition, would
otherwise disappear from the earth. China and Japan
acted wisely to anticipate this new philosophy and
exclude Europeans.*
One step more, and that the most difficult in this
process of reasoning and illustration, and we have done with
this part of our subject. Liberty and equality throw
the whole weight of society on its weakest members;
they combine all men in oppressing precisely that part of
mankind who most need sympathy, aid and protection.
The very astute and avaricious man, when left free to
exercise his faculties, is injured by no one in the field of
competition, but levies a tax on all with whom he deals.
The sensible and prudent, but less astute man, is seldom
worsted in competing with his fellow men, and generally
benefited. The very simple and improvident man is the
prey of every body. The simple man represents a class,
the common day laborers. The employer cheapens their
wages, and the retail dealer takes advantage of their
ignorance, their inability to visit other markets, and their
want of credit, to charge them enormous profits. They
bear the whole weight of society on their shoulders;
they are the producers and artificers of all the necessaries,
the comforts, the luxuries, the pomp and splendor
of the world; they create it all, and enjoy none of it;
they are the muzzled ox that treadeth out the straw;
they are at constant war with those above them, asking
higher wages but getting lower; for they are also at war
with each other, underbidding to get employment. This
process of underbidding never ceases so long as employers
want profits or laborers want employment. It ends
when wages are reduced too low to afford subsistence, in
filling poor-houses, and jails, and graves. It has reached
that point already in France, England and Ireland. A
half million died of hunger in one year in Ireland -
they died because in the eye of the law they were the
equals, and liberty had made them the enemies, of their
landlords and employers. Had they been vassals or
serfs, they would have been beloved, cherished and taken
care of by those same landlords and employers. Slaves
never die of hunger, scarcely ever feel want.
The bestowing upon men equality of rights, is but
giving license to the strong to oppress the weak. It
begets the grossest inequalities of condition. Menials and
day laborers are and must be as numerous as in a land of
slavery. And these menials and laborers are only taken
care of while young, strong and healthy. If the laborer
gets sick, his wages cease just as his demands are
greatest. If two of the poor get married, who being
young and healthy, are getting good wages, in a few
years they may have four children. Their wants have
increased, but the mother has enough to do to nurse the
children, and the wages of the husband must support
six. There is no equality, except in theory, in such
society, and there is no liberty. The men of property,
those who own lands and money, are masters of the poor;
masters, with none of the feelings, interests or sympathies
of masters; they employ them when they please,
and for what they please, and may leave them to die in
the highway, for it is the only home to which the poor in
free countries are entitled. They (the property holders)
beheaded Charles Stuart and Louis Capet, because these
kings asserted a divine right to govern wrong, and forgot
that office was a trust to be exercised for the benefit of
the governed; and yet they seem to think that property
is of divine right, and that they may abuse its possession
to the detriment of the rest of society, as much as they
please. A pretty exchange the world would make, to
get rid of kings who often love and protect the poor, and
get in their place a million of pelting, petty officers in
the garb of money-changers and land-owners, who think
that as they own all the property, the rest of mankind
have no right to a living, except on the conditions they
may prescribe. " 'Tis bettter
to fall before the lion than
the wolf," and modern liberty has substituted a thousand
wolves for a few lions. The vulgar landlords, capitalists
and employers of to-day, have the liberties and lives of
the people more completely in their hands, than had the
kings, barons and gentlemen of former times; and they
hate and oppress the people as cordially as the people
despise them. But these vulgar parvenus, these psalm-singing
regicides, these worshipers of mammon, "have
but taught bloody instructions which being taught,
return to plague the inventor." The king's office was a
trust, so are your lands, houses and money. Society
permits you to hold them, because private property well
administered conduces to the good of all society.
This
is your only title; you lose your right to your property
as the king did to his crown, so soon as you cease faithfully
to execute your trust; you can't make commons
and forests of your lands and starve mankind; you must
manage your lands to produce the most food and raiment
for mankind, or you forfeit your title; you may not understand
this philosophy, but you feel that it is true, and
are trembling in your seats as you hear the murmurings
and threats of the starving poor.
The moral effect of free society is to banish Christian
virtue, that virtue which bids us love our neighbor as
ourself, and to substitute the very equivocal virtues
proceeding from mere selfishness. The intense struggle to
better each one's pecuniary condition, the rivalries, the
jealousies, the hostilities which it begets, leave neither
time nor inclination to cultivate the heart or the head.
Every finer feeling of our nature is chilled and benumbed
by its selfish atmosphere; affection is under the ban,
because affection makes us less regardful of mere self;
hospitality is considered criminal waste, chivalry a
stumbling-block, and the code of honor foolishness; taste,
sentiment, imagination, are forbidden ground because
no money is to be made by them. Gorgeous pageantry
and sensual luxury are the only pleasures indulged in,
because they alone are understood and appreciated, and
they are appreciated just for what they cost in dollars
and cents. What makes money, and what costs money,
are alone desired. Temperance, frugality, thrift, attention
to business, industry, and skill in making bargains,
are virtues in high repute, because they enable us to supplant
others and increase our own wealth. The character
of our Northern brethren, and of the Dutch, is proof
enough of the justice of these reflections. The Puritan
fathers had lived in Holland, and probably imported
Norway rats and Dutch morality in the Mayflower.
Liberty and equality are not only destructive to the
morals, but to the happiness of society. Foreigners have
all remarked on the care-worn, thoughtful, unhappy
countenances of our people, and the remark only applies
to the North, for travellers see little of us at the South,
who live far from highways and cities, in contentment on
our farms.
The facility with which men may improve their condition
would, indeed, be a consideration much in favor of
free society, if it did not involve as a necessary consequence
the equal facility and liability to lose grade and
fortune. As many fall as rise. The wealth of society
hardly keeps pace with its numbers. All cannot be
rich. The rich and the poor change places oftener than
where there are fixed hereditary distinctions; so often,
that the sense of insecurity makes every one unhappy,
so often, that we see men clutching at security through
means of Odd Fellows, Temperance Societies, &c., which
provide for members when sick, and for the families of
deceased members; so often, that almost every State in
the Union has of late years enacted laws or countenanced
decisions giving more permanency to property. Entails
and primogeniture are as odious to us as kings were to the
Romans; but their object - to keep property in our families
- is as dear to us as to any people on earth, because
we love our families as much. Hence laws to exempt
small amounts of personal property from liability to debt
are daily enacted, and hence Iowa or Wisconsin has a
provision in her constitution, that the homestead of some
forty acres shall be exempt from execution. Hence,
also, the mighty impulse of late in favor of woman’s
rights. Legislatures and courts are vieing with each
other which shall do most to secure married women's
rights to them. The ruin of thousands upon thousands
of families in the revulsion of 1837, taught the necessity
of this new species of entail, this new way of keeping
property in the family. The ups and downs of life
became too rapid to be agreeable to any who had property
to lose or a family to provide for. We have not yet
quite cooled down from the fervor of the Revolution.
We have been looking to one side only of our institutions.
We begin to feel, however, that there is another
and a dark side, - a side where all are seen going down
the hill of fortune. Let us look closely and fearlessly at
this feature of free society, so much lauded and so little
understood. What object more laudable, what so dear
to a man's heart, as to continue a competency of property,
refinement of mind and morals, to his posterity?
What nobler incentive to virtuous conduct, than the
belief that such conduct will redound to the advantage of
our descendants? What reflection so calculated to make
men reckless, wretched and immoral, as the conviction
that the means they employ to improve the moral, mental
and pecuniary condition of their offspring, are, in
this land of ups and downs, the very means to make
them the prey of the cunning, avaricious and unprincipled,
who have been taught in the school of adversity
and poverty? We constantly boast that the wealthy and
powerful of to-day are the sons of the weak, ignorant
and destitute of yesterday. It is the other side of the
picture that we want moral courage to look at. We are
dealing now with figures of arithmetic, not of rhetoric.
Those who rise, pull down a class as numerous, and often
more worthy than themselves, to the abyss of misery and
penury. Painful as it may be, the reader shall look with
us at this dark side of the picture; he shall view the
vanquished as well as the victors on this battle-ground
of competition; he shall see those who were delicately
reared, taught no tricks of trade, no shifts of thrifty
avarice, spurned, insulted, down-trodden by the coarse and
vulgar, whose wits and whose appetites had been
sharpened by necessity. If he can sympathize with fallen
virtue or detest successful vice, he will see nothing in
this picture to admire.
The wide fields of the newly rich will cease to excite
pleasure in the contemplation; they will look like
Golgothas covered with human bones. Their coarse and
boisterous joys, while they revel in their spoils, will not
help to relieve the painful sympathies for their victims.
But these parvenus are men with all the feelings of
men, though somewhat blunted by the race for wealth;
they love their children, and would have them unlike
themselves, moral, refined, and educated - above the
necessities and tricks of their parents. They rear them as
gentlemen, to become the victims in their turn of the
children of fallen gentlemen of a past generation - these
latter having learned in the school of adversity the path
to fortune. In Heaven’s name, what is human life worth
with such prospects ahead? Who would not rather lie
down and die than exert himself to educate and make
fortunes for his children, when he has reason to fear that
by so doing he is to heap coals of fire on their heads.
And yet this is an exact picture of the prospect which
universal liberty holds out to its votaries. It is true it
hides with a veil the agonies of the vanquished, and
only exhibits the vulgar mirth of the victors. We have
lifted the veil.
In Boston, a city famed for its wealth and the prudence
of its inhabitants, nine-tenths of the men in business
fail. In the slaveholding South, except in new settlements,
failures are extremely rare; small properties
descend from generation to generation in the same family;
there is us much stability and permanency of property
as is compatible with energy and activity in society;
fortunes are made rather by virtuous industry than by
tricks, cunning and speculation.
We have thus attempted to prove from theory and
from actual experiment, that a society of universal liberty
and equality is absurd and impracticable. We have
performed our task, we know, indifferently, but hope we
have furnished suggestions that may be profitably used
by those more accustomed to authorship.
We now come in the order of our subject to treat of
the various new sects of philosophers that have appeared
of late years in France and in our free States, who,
disgusted with society as it exists, propose to re-organize it
on entirely new principles. We have never heard of a
convert to any of these theories in the slave States. If
we are not all contented, still none see evils of such magnitude
in society as to require its entire subversion and
reconstruction. We shall group all these sects together,
because they all concur in the great truth that Free
Competition is the bane of free society; they all concur, too,
in modifying or wholly destroying the institution of
private property. Many of them, seeing that property
enables its owners to exercise a more grinding oppression
than kings ever did, would destroy its tenure altogether.
In France, especially, these sects are headed by men of
great ability, who saw the experiment of liberty and
equality fairly tested in France after the revolution of
1792. They saw, as all the world did, that it failed to
promote human happiness or well-being.
France found the Consulate and the Empire havens of
bliss compared with the stormy ocean of liberty and
equality on which she had been tossed. Wise, however,
as these Socialists and Communists of France are, they
cannot create a man, a tree, or a new system of society;
these are God's works, which man may train, trim and
modify, but cannot create. The attempt to establish
government on purely theoretical abstract speculation,
regardless of circumstance and experience, has always
failed; never more signally than with the Socialists.
The frequent experience of the Abbe Sieye's paper
structures of government, which lasted so short a time,
should have taught them caution; but they were bolder
reformers than he; they had a fair field for their experiment
after the expulsion of Louis Phillippe; they tried
it, and their failure was complete and ridiculous. The
Abbe's structures were adamant compared to theirs.
The rule of the weak Louis Napoleon was welcomed as a
fortunate escape from their schemes of universal
benevolence, which issued in universal bankruptcy.
The sufferings of the Irish, and the complaints of the
Radicals and Chartists, have given birth to a new party
in England, called Young England. This party saw in
the estrangement and hostility of classes, and the sufferings
of the poor, the same evils of free competition that
had given rise to Socialism in France; though less talented
than the Socialists, they came much nearer discovering
the remedy for these evils.
Young England belongs to the most conservative wing
of the tory party; he inculcates strict subordination of
rank; would have the employer kind, attentive and
paternal, in his treatment of the operative. The operative,
humble, affectionate and obedient to his employer. He
is young, and sentimental, and would spread his doctrines
in tracts, sonnets and novels; but society must be ruled
by sterner stuff than sentiment. Self-interest makes the
employer and free laborer enemies. The one prefers to
pay low wages, the other needs high wages. War, constant
war, is the result, in which the operative perishes,
but is not vanquished; he is hydra-headed, and when he
dies two take his place. But numbers diminish his
strength. The competition among laborers to get employment
begets an intestine war, more destructive than
the war from above. There is but one remedy for this
evil, so inherent in free society, and that is, to identify
the interests of the weak and the strong, the poor and
the rich. Domestic Slavery does this far better than
any other institution. Feudalism only answered the
purpose in so far as Feudalism retained the features of
slavery. To it (slavery) Greece and Rome, Egypt and
Judea, and all the other distinguished States of antiquity,
were indebted for their great prosperity and high
civilization; a prosperity and a civilization which appear
almost miraculous, when we look to their ignorance of
the physical sciences. In the moral sciences they were
our equals, in the fine arts vastly our superiors. Their
poetry, their painting, their sculpture, their drama, their
elocution, and their architecture, are models which we
imitate, but never equal. In the science of government
and of morals, in pure metaphysics, and in all the walks
of intellectual philosophy, we have been beating the air
with our wings or revolving in circles, but have not
advanced an inch. Kant is not ahead of Aristotle - and
Juvenal has expressed in little more than a line the
modern utilitarian morality -
Quis
enim virtutem amplectitur ipsam
Terence, himself a
slave, with a heart no doubt filled
with the kindly affections which the relation of master
and slave begets, uttered the loftiest sentiment that
emanated from uninspired man:
Homo
sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto.
*
But this high
civilization and domestic slavery did not
merely co-exist, they were cause and effect. Every
scholar whose mind is at all imbued with ancient history
and literature, sees that Greece and Rome were indebted
to this institution alone for the taste, the leisure and the
means to cultivate their heads and their hearts; had they
been tied down to Yankee notions of thrift, they might
have produced a Franklin, with his "penny saved is a
penny gained;" they might have had utilitarian philosophers
and invented the spinning jenny, but they never
would have produced a poet, an orator, a sculptor or
an architect; they would never have uttered a lofty
sentiment, achieved a glorious feat in war, or created
a single work of art.
A modern Yankee, or a Dutchman, is the fair result
of liberty and equality. French character has not yet
been subdued and tamed into insignificance by their
new institutions; and besides, the pursuit of arms
elevates and purifies the sentiments of Frenchmen. In
what is the Yankee or Dutchman comparable to the
Roman, Athenian or Spartan? In nothing save his
care of his pelf and his skill in driving a bargain.
The ruins of Thebes, of Nineveh, and of Balbec, the
obelisks and pyramids of Egypt, the lovely and
time-defying relics of Roman and Grecian art, the Doric
column and the Gothic spire, alike attest the taste, the
genius and the energy of society where slavery existed
Quis
locus,
And now Equality where
are thy monuments? And
Echo answers where! Echo deep, deep, from the bowels
of the earth, where women and children drag out
their lives in darkness, harnessed like horses to heavy
ears loaded with ore. Or, perhaps, it is an echo from
some grand, gloomy and monotonous factory, where pallid
children work fourteen hours a days and go home at
night to sleep in damp cellars. It may be too, this cellar
contains aged parents too old to work, and cast off
by their employer to die. Great railroads and mighty
steamships too, thou mayest boast, but still the operatives
who construct them are beings destined to poverty
and neglect. Not a vestige of art canst thou boast;
not a ray of genius illumes thy handiwork. The sordid
spirit of mammon presides o'er all, and from all proceed
the sighs and groans of the oppressed.
Domestic slavery in the
Southern States has produced
the same results in elevating the character of the
master that it did in Greece and Rome. He is lofty
and independent in his sentiments, generous, affectionate,
brave and eloquent; he is superior to the Northerner
in every thing but the arts of thrift. History
proves this. A Yankee sometimes gets hold of the
reins of State, attempts Apollo, but acts Phæton.
Scipio and Aristides, Calhoun and Washington, are the
noble results of domestic slavery. Like Egyptian obelisks
'mid the waste of time - simple, severe, sublime, -
they point ever heavenward, and lift the soul by their
examples. Adams and Van Buren, cunning, complex
and tortuous, are fit exponents of the selfish system of
universal liberty. *
Coriolanus, marching to the gates
of Rome with dire hate and deadly indignation, is
grand and noble in his revenge. Adams and Van
Buren, insidiously striking with reptile fangs at the
South, excite in all bosoms hatred and contempt;
but we will not indulge in sweeping denunciation.
In public and in private life, the North
has many noble and generous souls. Men who,
like Webster and Cass, Dickinson and Winthrop,
*
can soar in lofty eloquence beyond the narrow prejudices
of time and place, see man in all his relations,
and contemn
the narrow morality which makes the
performance of one duty the excuse for a thousand crimes.
We speak only of the usual and common effects of
slavery and of equality. The Turk, half civilized as
he is, exhibits the manly, noble and generous traits of
character peculiar to the slave owner; he is hospitable,
generous, truthful, brave, and strictly honest. In many
respects, he is the finest specimen of humanity to be
found in the world.
But the chief and far most important enquiry is,
how does slavery affect the condition of the slave? One
of the wildest sects of Communists in France proposes
not only to hold all property in common, but to divide
the profits, not according to each man's in-put and
labor, but according to each man's wants. Now this is
precisely the system of domestic slavery with us. We
provide for each slave, in old age and in infancy, in
sickness and in health, not according to his labor, but
according to his wants. The master's wants are more
costly and refined, and he therefore gets a larger share
of the profits. A Southern farm is the beau ideal of
Communism; it is a joint concern, in which the slave
consumes more than the master, of the coarse products,
and is far happier, because although the concern may
fail, he is always sure of a support; he is only transferred
to another master to participate in the profits of
another concern; he marries when he pleases, because
he knows he will have to work no more with a family
than without one, and whether he live or die, that family
will be taken care of; he exhibits all the pride of
ownership, despises a partner in a smaller concern, "a
poor man's negro," boasts of "our crops, horses,
fields and cattle;" and is as happy as a human being
can be. And why should he not? - he enjoys as much
of the fruits of the farm as he is capable of doing, and
the wealthiest can do no more. Great wealth brings
many additional cares, but few additional enjoyments.
Our stomachs do not increase in capacity with our
fortunes. We want no more clothing to keep us warm.
We may create new wants, but we cannot create new
pleasures. The intellectual enjoyments which wealth
affords are probably balanced by the new cares it brings
along with it.
There is no rivalry, no competition to get employment
among slaves, as among free laborers. Nor is there a
war between master and slave. The master's interest
prevents his reducing the slave's allowance or wages in
infancy or sickness, for he might lose the slave by so
doing. His feeling for his slave never permits him to
stint him in old age. The slaves are all well fed, well
clad, have plenty of fuel, and are happy. They have
no dread of the future - no fear of want. A state of
dependence is the only condition in which reciprocal
affection can exist among human beings - the only
situation in which the war of competition ceases, and
peace, amity and good will arise. A state of independence
always begets more or less of jealous rivalry and
hostility. A man loves his children because they are
weak, helpless and dependent; he loves his wife for
similar reasons. When his children grow up and assert
their independence, he is apt to transfer his affection
to his grand-children. He ceases to love his wife
when she becomes masculine or rebellious; but slaves
are always dependent, never the rivals of their master.
Hence, though men are often found at variance with
wife or children, we never saw one who did not like his
slaves, and rarely a slave who was not devoted to his
master. "I am thy servant!" disarms me of the
power of master. Every man feels the beauty, force
and truth of this sentiment of Sterne. But he who
acknowledges its truth, tacitly admits that dependence
is a tie of affection, that the relation of master and
slave is one of mutual good will. Volumes written on
the subject would not prove as much as this single
sentiment. It has found its way to the heart of every
reader, and carried conviction along with it. The slave-holder
is like other men; he will not tread on the worm
nor break the bruised reed. The ready submission of
the slave, nine times out of ten, disarms his wrath even
when the slave has offended. The habit of command
may make him imperious and fit him for rule; but he
is only imperious when thwarted or ordered by his
equals; he would scorn to put on airs of command
among blacks, whether slaves or free; he always speaks
to them in a kind and subdued tone. We go farther,
and say the slave-holder is better than others - because
he has greater occasion for the exercise of the affection.
His whole life is spent in providing for the
minutest wants of others, in taking care of them in sickness
and in health. Hence he is the least selfish of
men. Is not the old bachelor who retires to seclusion,
always selfish? Is not the head of a large family
almost always kind and benevolent? And is not the
slave-holder the head of the largest family? Nature
compels master and slave to be friends; nature makes
employers and free laborers enemies.
The institution of slavery gives full development and
full play to the affections. Free society chills, stints
and eradicates them. In a homely way the farm will
support all, and we are not in a hurry to send our
children into the world, to push their way and make their
fortunes, with a capital of knavish maxims. We are
better husbands, better fathers, better friends, and
better neighbors than our Northern brethren. The tie of
kindred to the fifth degree is often a tie of affection
with us. First cousins are scarcely acknowledged at
the North, and even children are prematurely pushed
off into the world. Love for others is the organic law
of our society, as self-love is of theirs.
Every social structure must have its substratum.
In free society this substratum, the weak, poor and
ignorant, is borne down upon and oppressed with
continually increasing weight by all above. We have
solved the problem of relieving this substratum from
the pressure from above. The slaves are the substratum,
and the master's feelings and interests alike prevent
him from bearing down upon and oppressing
them. With us the pressure on society is like that
of air or water, so equally diffused as not any where
to be felt. With them it is the pressure of the enormous
screw, never yielding, continually increasing.
Free laborers are little better than trespassers on this
earth given by God to all mankind. The birds of the
air have nests, and the foxes have holes, but they have
not where to lay their heads. They are driven to cities
to dwell in damp and crowded cellars, and thousands
are even forced to lie in the open air. This accounts
for the rapid growth of Northern cities. The feudal
Barons were more generous and hospitable and less
tyrannical than the petty land-holders of modern times.
Besides, each inhabitant of the barony was considered
as having some right of residence, some claim to protection
from the Lord of the Manor. A few of them
escaped to the municipalities for purposes of trade, and
to enjoy a larger liberty. Now penury and the want of
a home drive thousands to towns. The slave always
has a home, always an interest in the proceeds of the
soil.
An intelligent New Englander, who was much opposed
to negro slavery, boasting of his own country,
told us that native New Englanders rarely occupied
the place of domestic or body servants, or that of hired
laborers on public works. Emigrants alone served
as menials, cleansed the streets, and worked on railroads
and canals. New England is busy importing
white free laborers for the home market, and catching
negroes in Africa for the Brazilian market. Some of
the negroes die on the passage, but few after they
arrive in Brazil. The masters can't afford to neglect
them. Many of the white laborers die on the passage
of cholera and other diseases occasioned by filth and
crowding - a fourth of them probably in the first year
after they arrive, for the want of employment or the
neglect of employers. The horrors of the middle passage
are nothing to the horrors of a deck passage up
the Mississippi when cholera prevails, or the want,
penury and exposure that emigrants are subjected to
in our large cities. England, too, has a tender conscience
about slavery, but she is importing captured
African slaves into her colonies to serve as apprentices,
and extending this new species of slave trade even to
Asia. "Expel nature with a fork, she will soon return."
Slavery is natural and necessary, and will in
some form insinuate itself into all civilized society. -
The domestic slave trade is complained of, and justly
too, because it severs family ties. It is one of the
evils of slavery, and no institution is without its evils.
But how is it with New England? Are none of the
free, the delicately reared and enlightened forced to quit
the domestic hearth and all its endearments, to seek a
living among strangers? Delicacy forbids our dwelling
on this painful topic. The instances are before our
eyes. What would induce a Virginian, rich or poor,
to launch such members of his family unattended on
the cold world.
More than half of the white citizens of the North are
common laborers, either in the field, or as body or house
servants. They perform the same services that our
slaves do. They serve their employers for hire; they
have quite as little option whether they shall so serve,
or not, as our slaves, for they cannot live without their
wages. Their hire or wages, except with the heathy
and able-bodied, are not half what we allow our slaves,
for it is wholly insufficent for their comfortable maintenance,
whilst we always keep our slaves in comfort, in
return for their past, present, or expected labor. The
socialists say wages is slavery. It is a gross libel on
slavery. Wages are given in time of vigorous health
and strength, and denied when most needed, when sickness
or old age has overtaken us. The slave is never
without a master to maintain him. The free laborer,
though willing to work, cannot always find an employer.
He is then without a home and without wages! In a
densely peopled country, where the supply of laborers
exceeds the demand, wages is worse than slavery. Oh!
Liberty and Equality, to what a sad pass do you bring
your votaries! This is the exact condition to which
the mass of society is reduced in France and England,
and to which it is rapidly approximating in our Northern
States. This state of things brought about the
late revolution in France. The Socialist rulers undertook
to find employment, put the laborers of Paris
to work, transplanting trees and digging the earth.
This experiment worked admirably in all but one respect.
The government could find employment, but
could not find wages. THE RIGHT TO EMPLOYMENT!
Frenchmen deluged Paris with fraternal gore to
vindicate this right. The right to live when you are strong
enough to work, for it is then only you want employment.
Poor as this boon would be, it is one which
Liberty and Equality cannot confer. If it were conferred,
the free laborer's condition would still be below
the slave's, for the wages of the slave are paid whether
he is fit for employment or not.
Oh
carry, carry me back to old Virginia shore,
Liberty and Equality,
thou art humble in thy
pretensions; thou askest little. But that little inexorable
fate denies thee. Literally and truly, "darkness,
death and black despair surround thee."
In France, England, Scotland and Ireland, the
genius of famine hovers o'er the land. Emigrants, like a
flock of hungry pigeons or Egyptian locusts, are alighting
on the North. Every green thing will soon be
iconsumed
. The hollow, bloated prosperity which she
now enjoys is destined soon to pass away. Her wealth
does not increase with her numbers; she is dependent
for the very necessaries of life on the slaveholding
States. If those States cut off commercial intercourse
with her, as they certainly will do if she does not
speedily cease interference with slavery, she will be
without food or clothing for her overgrown population.
She is already threatened with a social revolution. The
right to separate property in land is not only questioned
by many, but has been successfully denied in the case
of the Anti-Renters. Judges and Governors are elected
upon pledges that they will sustain those who deny this
right and defy the law. The editor of the most influential
paper in the North, lately a member of Congress,
is carrying on open war, not only against the right of
property, but against every institution held sacred by
society. A people who can countenance and patronise
such doctrines, are almost ripe to carry those doctrines
into practice. An insurrection of the poor against the
rich may happen speedily among them. Should it occur,
they have no means of suppressing it. No standing
army, no efficient militia, no strength in their State
governments. Society is hurrying on to the gulf of
agrarianism, and no port of safety is in sight; no
remedy for the evils with which it is beset has been
suggested, save the remedies of the Socialists; remedies
tried in France and proved to be worthless. Population
is too dense to introduce negro slaves. White
men will not submit to be slaves, and are not fitted for
slavery if they would. To the European race some
degree of liberty is necessary, though famine stare them
in the face. We are informed in Holy Writ, that God
ordained certain races of men for slaves. The wisest
philosopher of ancient times, with the experience of
slavery before his eyes, proclaimed the same truth.
Modern Abolitionists, wiser than Moses and Aristotle,
have discovered that all men should be free. They
have yet to discover the means of sustaining their lives
in a state of freedom.
At the slaveholding South all is peace, quiet, plenty
and contentment. We have no mobs, no trades unions,
no strikes for higher wages, no armed resistance to the
law, but little jealousy of the rich by the poor. We
have but few in our jails, and fewer in our poor houses.
We produce enough of the comforts and necessaries of
life for a population three or four times as numerous as
ours. We are wholly exempt from the torrent of
pauperism, crime, agrarianism, and infidelity which
Europe is pouring from her jails and alms houses on the
already crowded North. Population increases slowly,
wealth rapidly. In the tide water region of Eastern
Virginia, as far as our experience extends, the crops
have doubled in fifteen years, whilst the population has
been almost stationary. In the same period the lands,
owing to improvements of the soil and the many fine
houses erected in the country, have nearly doubled in
value. This ratio of improvement has been approximated
or exceeded wherever in the South slaves are
numerous. We have enough for the present, and no
Malthusian spectres frightening us for the future.
Wealth is more equally distributed than at the North,
where a few millionaires own most of the property of
the country. (These millionaires are men of cold hearts
and weak minds; they know how to make money, but
not how to use it, either for the benefit of themselves
or of others.) High intellectual and moral attainments,
refinement of head and heart, give standing to a man
in the South, however poor he may be. Money is,
with few exceptions, the only thing that ennobles at
the North. We have poor among us, but none who
are over-worked and under-fed. We do not crowd cities
because lands are abundant and their owners kind,
merciful and hospitable. The poor are as hospitable
as the rich, the negro as the white man. Nobody
dreams of turning a friend, a relative, or a stranger
from his door. The very negro who deems it no crime
to steal, would scorn to sell his hospitality. We have
no loafers, because the poor relative or friend who borrows
our horse, or spends a week under our roof, is a
welcome guest. The loose economy, the wasteful mode
of living at the South, is a blessing when rightly
considered; it keeps want, scarcity and famine at a
distance, because it leaves room for retrenchment. The
nice, accurate economy of France, England and New
England, keeps society always on the verge of famine,
because it leaves no room to retrench, that is to live
on a part only of what they now consume. Our society
exhibits no appearance of precocity, no symptoms
of decay. A long course of continuing improvement is
in prospect before us, with no limits which human
foresight can descry. Actual liberty and equality with
our white population has been approached much nearer
than in the free States. Few of our whites ever work
as day laborers, none as cooks, scullions, ostlers, body
servants, or in other menial capacities. One free citizen
does not lord it over another; hence that feeling
of independence and equality that distinguishes us;
hence that pride of character, that self-respect, that
gives us ascendancy when we come in contact with
Northerners. It is a distinction to be a Southerner, as
it was once to be a Roman citizen.
In Virginia we are about to reform our constitution.
A fair opportunity will be afforded to draw a wider line
of distinction between freemen and slaves, to elevate
higher the condition of the citizen, to inspire every
white man with pride of rank and position. We should
do more for education. We have to educate but half
of society, at the North they attempt to educate all.
Besides, here all men have time for self-education, for
reading and reflection. Nobody works long hours.
We should prohibit the exercise of mechanic arts to
slaves (except on their master's farm) and to free
negroes. We should extend the right of sufferage to all
native Virginians, and to Southerners who move to
Virginia, over twenty-one years of age. We should
permit no foreigner and no Northerner, who shall
hereafter remove to the State, to vote in elections. We
should have a small, well drilled, paid militia, to take
the place of the patrol and the present useless militia
system. All men of good character should serve on
juries without regard to property qualification. Thus
we should furnish honorable occupation to all our
citizens, whilst we cultivated and improved their minds
by requiring them all to take part in the administration
of justice and of government. We should thus make
poverty as honorable as it was in Greece and Rome;
for to be a Virginian would be a higher distinction
than wealth or title could bestow. We should cease to
be a bye-word and reproach among nations for our
love of the almighty dollar. We should be happy in
the confidence that our posterity would never occupy
the place of slaves, as half mankind must ever do in
free society. Until the last fifteen years, our great
error was to imitate Northern habits, customs and
institutions. Our circumstances are so opposite to theirs,
that whatever suits them is almost sure not to suit us.
Until that time, in truth, we distrusted our social system.
We thought slavery morally wrong, we thought
it would not last, we thought it unprofitable. The Abolitionists
assailed us; we looked more closely into our
circumstances; became satisfied that slavery was morally
right, that it would continue ever to exist, that it was as
profitable as it was humane. This begat self-confidence,
self-reliance. Since then our improvement has been rapid.
Now we may safely say, that we are the happiest, most
contented and prosperous people on earth. The inter-meddling
of foreign pseudo-philanthropists in our affairs,
though it has occasioned great irritation and indignation,
has been of inestimable advantage in teaching us
to form a right estimate of our condition. This inter-meddling
will soon cease; the poor at home in thunder
tones demand their whole attention and all their charity.
Self-preservation will compel them to listen to their demands.
Moreover, light is breaking in upon us from
abroad. All parties in England now agree that the
attempt to put down the slave trade has greatly aggravated
its horrors, without at all diminishing the trade itself.
It is proposed to withdraw her fleet from the African
coast. France has already given notice that she will
withdraw hers. America will follow the example. The
emancipation of the slaves in the West Indies is
admitted to have been a failure in all respects. The late
masters have been ruined, the liberated slaves refuse to
work, and are fast returning to the savage state, and
England herself has sustained a severe blow in the
present diminution and prospective annihilation of
the once enormous imports from her West Indian
colonies.
In conclusion, we will repeat the propositions, in
somewhat different phraseology, with which we set out.
First - That Liberty and Equality, with their concomitant
Free Competition, beget a war in society that is
as destructive to its weaker members as the custom of
exposing the deformed and crippled children. Secondly
- That slavery protects the weaker members of
society just as do the relations of parent, guardian and
husband, and is as necessary, as natural, and almost as
universal as those relations. Is our demonstration imperfect?
Does universal experience sustain our theory?
Should the conclusions to which we have arrived appear
strange and startling, let them therefore not be rejected
without examination. The world has had but
little opportunity to contrast the working of Liberty and
Equality with the old order of things, which always
partook more or less of the character of domestic slavery.
The strong prepossession in the public mind in favor of
the new system, makes it reluctant to attribute the evil
phenomena which it exhibits, to defects inherent in the
system itself. That these defects should not have been
foreseen and pointed out by any process of
a priori
reasoning, is but another proof of the fallibility of human
sagacity and foresight when attempting to foretell
the operation of new institutions. It is as much as human
reason can do, when examining the complex frame
of society, to trace effects back to their causes - much
more than it can do, to foresee what effects new causes
will produce. We invite investigation.
may return to a civilized land - a land of law and
order - there to enjoy the blessings of civilized life,
perhaps to retrieve their ruined fortunes - or better still,
to learn resignation to their fate at the altar of the
Christian God. The emancipated negroes do not work,
and hunger will soon drive them to every sort of crime.
The light of Christianity which was fast spreading
amongst them, is destined to speedy extinction, and vile
superstitions will supply its place. It is hardly too
bold a figure to say that in losing his master, the negro
has lost all hope here and hereafter. The civilized
world has sustained a great loss in the diminution of
the products of those Isles, which products have
become the common food of half of mankind. But it is
needless to enumerate the many evils that short-sighted
philanthropy has inflicted on the West Indies and on
the world at large, by emancipation, and equally needless
to speculate about the remedy: there is no remedy,
and it is not our business to propose it if there were.
In the United States the situation of the free blacks
is becoming worse every day. The silly attempts of
the Abolitionists to put them on a footing of equality
with the whites, has exasperated the laboring whites at
the North, and excited odium and suspicion against
them at the South. The natural antipathies of race
have been fanned into such a degree of excitement, that
the free negro is bandied from pillar to post - from
North to South and from South to North, till not a ray
of hope is left him of a quiet, permanent residence any
where, so long as he remains free. Illinois and California
will not permit him to enter their dominions -
Ohio places him under severe conditions, and is now
moving to expel him altogether, and Virginia also
proposes to send him back to Africa. Mobs in our Northern
cities drive him from his home and hunt him
like a wild beast. Two great movements, or rather one
great and one very small movement, may be observed
in constant and busy operation as to the negro race.
The small movement is that of the fanatical Abolitionists,
who would free the whole race and put them on a
social and political equality with the whites. The great
movement is that proceeding from hostility of race, and
proposes to get rid of the negroes altogether, not to
free them. This movement is not confined to the North.
Thousands, we regret to say, at the South, who think
slavery a blessing to the negro, believe the negro a curse
to the country. So far as the slaves are concerned, this
opinion is fast changing. Men begin to look more
closely at what the slaveholders have been doing since
our Revolution, and find that they have been exceeded
in skill, enterprise and industry, by no people under
the sun. They have settled a vast territory from the
Alleghany to the La Platte - from the Rio Grande to
the Ohio, contending all the while with blood-thirsty
savages and a climate more to be dreaded than even
those savages themselves - and are already producing a
greater agricultural surplus than any people in the
world. They see, too, that the condition of the white
man is elevated and equalized, for the blacks perform
all menial duties and occupy the place of servants.
The white laborers of the North think the existence of
negroes at the North as free, or at the South as slaves,
injurious to themselves. They do not like the competition
of human beings who have all the physical powers
of men, with the wants only of brutes. Free Soilism
pretty well represents and embodies this feeling.
It is universal at the North, because the hostility to
negroes - the wish to get rid of their competition is
universal there. It excludes free negroes from California
as well as slaves, showing that the Wilmot Proviso is
directed against the negro race - not against slavery.
This great movement, which proposes to get rid of
negroes, rather than of slavery, is gathering strength every
day, and so far as the free negroes are concerned it
must soon sweep them away; for neither the feelings
nor the interests of any part of the community,
except of a few crazy Abolitionists, can be enlisted in
their behalf. The slaves have masters to guard and
protect them - and guard, protect and
hold them they
will, cost what it may.
The free negroes are no doubt an intolerable nuisance.
They blight the prosperity of every village and
of every country neighborhood where they settle. They
are thieves from necessity, for nature has made them so
improvident they cannot in health provide for sickness,
in youth for old age, nor in summer for winter. Nature
formed them for a climate where all their wants
were supplied abundantly by her liberal hand at every
season. We knew their natures when we set them free.
Should we blame them, or censure ourselves? We knew
they were not fitted for liberty, and yet conferred liberty
on them. Our wiser ancestors made them slaves,
because as slaves they might be made civilized, useful
and christian beings. We subject children till twenty-one
years of age to the control of their parents, or appoint
guardians for them. We subject wives to the
dominion of their husbands - apprentices to their masters.
We permit sailors and soldiers to sell their liberties
for terms of years. We send criminals to jails
and penitentiaries, and lunatics to hospitals. In all
these cases, we take away the liberties of the whites,
either for the benefit of individuals or for the good of
society. We act upon the principle that no one is
entitled to liberty who will abuse it to the detriment of
himself or of others. The
law curtails and restricts
the freedom of the wisest and the best; -
the straight
jacket and
manacles
of iron are applied to the weakest
and most wicked. There is no perfect liberty with the
whites, but every degree of slavery, from law to straight
jackets. The free blacks, who most need the control
of masters, guardians, curators or committees are left
to the enjoyment of the largest liberty.
Law alone is
expected to control and regulate their conduct. We
had as well publish laws to our herds and flocks. Men,
to be governed by mere law, must possess great intelligence,
and have acquired habits of self-control and
self-denial. The whites from 15 to 21 years of age
lack not intelligence, but habits of self-control, to fit
them for government by law alone. The arbitrary will
of the parent or guardian must be superadded to the
mandates of the law, to save them from the indiscretions
into which their feelings and their passions would
lead them. The free negroes as a class, have less
intelligence and less self-control, than the whites over 15
years of age. A good government graduates as nicely
as is practicable, each man’s liberty to his capacity for
its enjoyment - it is obliged, however, to establish
general rules, and thus occasions many cases of individual
hardship. The white male adults, over twenty-one
years of age, are presumed to possess enough of virtue,
intelligence and self-control, to be left with no other
control than that of the law - yet of those we meet
with thousands who from habitual drunkenness, from
excessive improvidence and extravagance, or from strong
criminal propensities, are wholly unfitted for the
government of mere law, and stand in need of the will of
a superior to control their conduct, and save them from
ruining themselves, their friends and families. On the
other hand, we find many instances of wisdom and
prudence among whites under 21 years of age, whom the
law, nevertheless, subjects to the control of guardians
and parents often less wise, less virtuous, and less prudent
than themselves. In subjecting the free blacks
to the will of white masters, fewer instances of injustice
of this kind would occur, than now occur with the
whites, because as a class they are less fitted for
government than the whites between the ages of 15
and 21. A free negro! Why, the very term seems
an absurdity. It is our daily boast, and experience verifies
it, that the Anglo-Saxons of America are the only
people in the world fitted for freedom. The negro's is
not human freedom, but the wild and vicious license of
the fox, the wolf or the hawk. He is, from the necessity
of his nature, a very Ishmaelite, whose hand is
against every man, and every man's hand is against
him. It is as much the duty of government to take
away liberty from those who abuse it, as to confer it
on those who use it properly. It practices every day,
as we have shewn
, on this principle, in its treatment of
the whites, and why should it hesitate to do so in
regard to the blacks? It is the object and duty of
government to protect men, not merely from wrong and
injustice from others, but from the consequences of their
own vices, imprudence and improvidence. The humblest
member of society, no matter what the color of his
skin, has a right to this protection. The experience of
all ages, and of all countries, shows that this protection
to a weaker race like the negro, living among a superior
race, can only be given by bestowing on him a
master whose will shall be the law of his conduct,
whose skill and foresight shall amass and provide for
him in sickness and in old age, and whose power shall
shield him from the consequences of his own improvidence.
The vassalage and serfdom of Europe, the
slavery of America, and the peonage of Mexico, alike
point to this as the natural and proper method of
governing free negroes. The wisdom of the common law,
and indeed of all ancient codes, distinctly teaches the
same truth; for guardians, parents, husbands, committees,
and various officers, are but masters by another
name. They are all intended to supply, in more or
less degree, that want of self-control which unfits large
classes of the whites for self-government. But there is
a peculiar necessity for some measure of this kind, with
regard to the blacks, growing out of the antipathies of
race. They are threatened with violent extermination.
The fate of the Indians shows that they will be exterminated,
if they continue so useless and so troublesome.
Had the Indian been useful as a slave, he would have
survived and become a civilized and christian being;
but he was found as useless, as troublesome, and as
intractable as a beast of prey, and has shared the fate of
a beast of prey. The negro, in the condition of slavery,
is a happy, contented, and useful being. It is the
state for which nature intended, and to which our
ancestors, quite as wise and virtuous as ourselves,
consigned him. We have fully and fairly tried the
experiment of freeing him; we have witnessed its
universal and deplorable failure, and it is now our right
and our duty, to listen to the voice of wisdom and
experience, and re-consign him to the only condition for
which he is suited.
There is another and an urgent reason why his very
existence requires that he should be subjected to some
modification of slavery. His lot is cast among the
Anglo-Saxon race, and what people can stand free
competition with that race? The Romans conquered
England, and the ancient Britons flourished and became
civilized under their rule. The Saxon, Dane and Norman
came, and nothing remains to tell of the existence
of the Britons but the names of a few rivers.
The Indian is exterminated from Maine to Georgia,
the Hindoos are perishing under British rule by millions,
the Spaniard is hardly heard of in Florida, and
Peonage alone can save the Mexican from annihilation.
From the days of Hengist and Horsa, to those of Houston,
the same adventurous, rapacious, exterminating
spirit has characterized the race. Can the negro live
with all his reckless improvidence under the shade of
this Upas tree, whose deadly poison spares no other
race? Is he fitted to compete with a people who, in
the struggle of life, have outstripped and exterminated
all other nations with whom they have come in contact?
No. Throwing out of view the signs of the
times, pregnant with growing hate and hostility to the
free negro, the experience of the past shows that his
present condition is hopeless; but make him property,
and this same Anglo-Saxon will protect, guard and
cherish him, for no people on earth love property
more, will go greater lengths, so far as danger is concerned,
to obtain it, or take better care of it after it is obtained.
We will not undertake to decide what degree or
modification of servitude shall be adopted, but will suggest
that peonage, which is probably one of its mildest forms,
might be instituted. To attain this, it is only necessary
to repeal so much of the common law as prevents
a man's parting with his personal liberty. Indeed, the
common law, in the cases of soldiers and sailors, permits
even white men to sell themselves and bind their
persons for a term of years. Grant the same privilege
to the free negro at all times, and we think there will
be few of them left free in ten years to come. They
cannot now, we know from experience, obtain much
more than half the yearly hire of slaves, because the
hirer has no security that they will remain till the end
of the year. Their improvidence, and their desire to
obtain the protection of some white man, would drive
them all into contracts of this kind. The nuisance
would thus be abated, and in its place we should
acquire a class of strong, healthy laborers. If this plan
did not work well, the State authorities should, at the
beginning of each year, hire all those out who owned
not enough property to support themselves. Part of the
hires might be paid over to them, and the balance
retained as a fund to support the infants, the aged, and
infirm here, or used as a means to send them all to Africa.
If experience showed that nothing short of absolute
slavery would meet the exigencies of the case, then give
them a year's notice to quit the State, or be sold into
unconditional slavery. This last alternative would still place
them in a situation of much greater security and comfort
than they now any where enjoy, or can ever probably
enjoy, in a state of unlimited freedom. We think it a more
humane measure, and a more politic one, than to send
them to Africa. If it be necessary, it must be right.
Reducing men to slavery has been practised throughout
all time, and by men as good, and as wise as ourselves.
Practised too, continually, upon men much better,
much wiser, and much more suited for freedom
than the negro. There is more of selfishness, less of
exalted, chivalrous disinterested virtue in this utilitarian
age, than in most of those with which we are acquainted,
that have preceded it. We only
Compound
for sins
we are inclined to,
Liberty is the great
hobby of this money-making age,
and the over-ruling argument in its favor is borrowed
from the arithmetic. "Free labor is more productive
than slave labor. It is cheaper to hire the laborer,
when you want him, and turn him out to starve when
you have done with him, than to buy a slave and support
him through all the seasons of the year, and
through all the periods of his life. Besides, the free
man whose very life depends on it, will work harder
than the slave, who is sure of a support, whether he
works or not." Since the slave-trade is abolished, which
was a lucrative and favorite pursuit of the Yankees and
English, those gentry have, from the above interested
calculations, turned abolitionists. Our Southern patriots,
at the time of the Revolution, finding negroes
expensive and useless, became warm anti-slavery men.
We, their wiser sons, having learned to make cotton
and sugar, find slavery very useful and profitable, and
think it a most excellent institution. We of the South
advocate slavery, no doubt, from just as selfish motives
as induce the Yankees and English to deprecate it.
We have, however, almost all human and divine authority
on our side of the argument. The Bible no where
condemns, and throughout recognises slavery. Slavery
has been so universal in the civilized world, and so little,
if at all known among savages, that its occasional
absence of late years in civilized nations, seems to
indicate something wrong or rotten in their condition.
The starving state of the poor in all such countries,
furnishes the solution of the difficulty, and indicates the
character of the disease under which society is suffering.
They have become too poor to have slaves, whom
the law would oblige them to support. We have never
met with a Southern man, of late years,
who did not
think slavery a blessing to the negro race. We have
never heard a single white man maintain that this race
was qualified for freedom, nor met with one who did not
complain of the free negroes as a nuisance. Now, how
strange and inconsistent in us to permit men to remain
free, whose freedom is a curse to themselves and a
nuisance to society. How cruel and unwise in us not to
extend the blessings of slavery to the free negroes,
which work so well with the slaves. Humanity, self-interest,
consistency, all require that we should enslave
the free negro. We enslave the whites whenever the
good of the individual, or of society requires it, in the
many instances we have cited, and leave the free negro
to roam at large in liberty as untrammelled and
unconstrained as that of the beasts of the field or birds of
the air. They are restrained neither by the conventionalities
of society, the bonds of religion, the laws of morality,
the chain of marriage, the authority of parents
or guardians, nor by the power of a master. They
who are least fitted for liberty are scarcely subjected to
any governmental control whatever.
But if they
be qualified for liberty, so are our slaves,
and we are acting morally wrong in retaining in bondage
beings who would be better off as freemen. The
slave, if set free, would be just what the free negroes
now are, and if that be a desirable condition, one better
for them and for society, than that they are now in,
we ought to set about making free negroes of them.
Both cases are before us, we have ample experience of
the working of both. It is not only our right, but
our duty to cherish and encourage that condition of
the negro race which works well - to abolish that which
works badly.
The free negroes corrupt our slaves and make them
less contented with their situation. Their competition
is injurious to our white laboring citizens. Their wants
are so few and simple, that when they do work, they
will take lower wages than the white man can afford
to receive; besides, it is as well the policy as the duty
of the State to elevate the condition of her citizens,
not to send them in the labor market with negroes for
competitors. Let the negro always occupy a situation
subordinate to the white man. North and South, every
deviation from this policy leads to violence, in which
the blacks are the sufferers. The law cannot make
negroes free if it would, because society will not tolerate
it. The signs of the times, North and South, clearly
show that the free negroes will be borne with no longer
by society. If the subject be promptly attended to
by State governments, some disposition of them may be
made consistent with humanity. If legislative action
be delayed, the people in their primary capacity, in
vulgar parlance mobs, will take the case in hand. We
heard but recently, that the people in one of our counties
had given them notice to quit. Quit! and go
where? To be turned out and hunted like the bagged fox.
for liberty would not sell it, or if in some moment of
misfortune they did, they would buy that liberty again
by the exercise of great economy and industry. The
right to purchase their own liberty has, in other countries,
been a common privilege of slaves. We mean that
white men sold into slavery would, if worthy of liberty,
purchase their freedom. We do not advocate any change
of the law that would permit them to part, even for a
day, with their personal liberty. One of the objects in
granting such privilege to free negroes, would be to draw
a wider line of distinction between the negroes and our
white citizens. But in countries where there are no
negroes, we can see no reason why the whites in all
cases might not be allowed to sell their persons for short
periods. Soldiers and sailors are allowed to do so for
the defence of the nation and the benefit of commerce.
Domestic servants and farm hands would be benefited
themselves, and their employers also benefited, could
these be hired by the year; at all events, every government
that denies this privilege of selling one's self, is
bound to provide for its poor citizens, as well as masters
provide for their slaves. But all governments permit
thousands of the poor to starve - in truth, every body
seems to have taken it for granted that this provision of
the law is right, without having taken the trouble to
examine into the reasons on which it is founded. The
reasons assigned by Blackstone in his Commentaries, are
so false and puerile, as to show that he had given no
consideration to the subject. The objection that a man may
not sell himself, because slavery puts his life in his master’s
hands, is false as to modern slavery in all civilized
countries, and 'tis with this slavery we and he too had to
deal. The other objection, that the slave's property belongs
to the master, is not a necessary or universal feature
of slavery. We would not have it so in the case of the
free negroes, when placed, as we hope they will be, in
some modified condition of slavery. His third objection,
that the consideration accrues to the master, is only true
when the slave can hold no separate property. In most
cases, no consideration would be paid, other than protection
and support. Justice will compel us, in some cases,
to pay hire for the free negroes, but we know from
experience that morality forbids it. We hire a free negro by
the year - we feed and clothe him, and he is anxious to
continue with us another year. We know that he spends
almost every cent of his hire in vice and debauchery, yet
he is superior to his race generally, for he is honest and
industrious. We pay him a third less hire than we
would give for him had he the right to bind his person.
Free negroes generally hire for little more than half what
slaves do: liberty costs them dear. Whilst on this subject,
we would call attention to a new kind of African
slave-trade that prevails in our neighborhood; the free
negro women hire out their children, and bask in the
sun idle and unemployed themselves. We tried to persuade,
some days since, a young negro man, who, with
his young wife, were desperately poor, that he would be
better off as a slave, as he might expect soon to have a
large family to support, and could now scarce support
himself. He quaintly replied, "that he then would hire
out his children and live easy."
Blackstone, treating of the relative position of master
and servant, employs the following language: "The first
sort of servants, therefore, acknowledged by the laws of
England, are menial
servants, so called from being
intra
moenia, or domestics. The contract between them and
their masters arises upon the hiring. If the hiring be
general, without any particular time limited, the law
considers it to be a hiring for a year, upon a principle of
natural equity that the servant shall serve and the master
maintain him throughout all the revolutions of the
respective seasons, as well when there is work to be done
as when there is not - but the contract may be made for
any longer or smaller term. All single men, between
twelve years old and sixty, and married ones under thirty
years of age - and all single women between twelve and
forty, not having any visible livelihood are compellable
by two justices to go out to service in husbandry or other
specific trades for the promotion of honest industry, and
no master can put away his servant, or servant leave his
master, after being so retained, either before or at the
end of his term, without a quarter's warning; unless
upon reasonable cause, to be allowed by a justice of the
peace; but they may part by consent, or make a special
bargain."
Now, a statute in our State, with regard to free negroes
which should attain the ends contemplated by this English
statute, would rid us of the nuisance. To attain
those ends, the contract of hiring should be for a year or
longer period, and should bind the person.
The Roman history contains a remarkable proof of
the kindly and friendly relations which subordination of
rank begets. The Plebeians all became the clients or
vassals of some Patrician, who was bound to advise,
counsel and protect them. In all the vicissitudes of the
Republic, during a lapse of six hundred years, we are
told that not a single instance occurred of faithlessness
to this tie of inferior and superior. The attachment between
client and patron descended from father to son,
and made one family of the protector and protected.
How much more does the free negro need a patron than
did the Roman. Curious speculators on society, seeing
that hereditary distinctions of rank gradually disappear
in nations, have concluded that these distinctions were
all induced by conquest and difference of race. No
length of time will wear out the distinction between
blacks and whites; but proper subordination of the black
to the white man will be sure to produce the usual
attachment between lord and vassal, master and slave,
protector and protected. The fate of the Gipsey
race in
England shows the impossibility of governing half-civilized
beings by mere law. The laws against them were
numerous and bloody, and influenced their conduct no
more than laws passed against crows and blackbirds.
They heeded not the precepts and admonitions of the
law, and have been exterminated by the avenging sword
of the law. Such has been the fate of the Indians, and
such will be the fate of the free negroes, if mobs, to the
eternal disgrace of our country, do not anticipate the
law. History furnishes but a single instance where negroes
have been well governed without masters, and in
that instance the rule was ten times more rigorous than
that of the master. Tousaint
, the president of Hayti
,
by a strict military surveillance, kept them at work on
separate farms, and punished them capitally for the third
offence of quitting the farm without a written permit.
Succeeding administrations have relaxed the government
till the whole island is in a state of savage anarchy which
invites and would justify another conquest and reduction
of the inhabitants to that state of slavery for which alone
they are fitted, and from which they so wickedly escaped.
The great mortality, the vice and ignorance that prevail
at the British colony of Sierra Leone, show that
this attempt to improve the condition of the negro has
resulted in consequences infinitely worse than slavery.
Better governments at Liberia and Cape Palmas have
prevented, so far, the exhibition of so much gross vice
and ignorance; but even in those colonies the mortality
is so great as to deter those who value human life as the
greatest of human blessings from encouraging emigration
to them. But if almost certain death from the climate
did not await the emigrant negroes, they must be extirpated
by the savages, or extirpate the savages to make
room for themselves. No habitable part of Africa is
unsettled, and the free blacks who go there in numbers
must make room for themselves, sword in hand, as the
whites did in America. We who maintain that it was a
blessing to the negro to be brought from Africa and
made a slave and a Christian, are estopped
from
contending that it is also a blessing to set him free and send
him back to become a savage and a Pagan. Between
the two blessings, the middle passage on the inward trip
and the climate of the coast on the return, few would
survive to tell of their happiness.
Let us try the experiment of hiring them by the year,
and if that fail, sell them into unconditional slavery.
Slavery is a blessing to the negro - at all events, it is
better than the tender mercies of an American mob or
an African cannibal, the Scylla and Charybdis which
now threaten him. Slavery is too costly, too humane
and merciful an institution for France, England or New
England. The free competition of labor and capital in
those countries where labor is redundant, is certain to
bring the wages of labor down to the minimum amount
that will support human life. The employers of free
laborers, like the riders of hired horses, try to get the
most possible work out of them, for the least hire. They
boast of the low rates at which they procure labor, and
still hold up their heads in society uncensured and
unreproved. No slaveholder was ever so brutal as to boast of
the low wages he paid his slaves, to pride himself on
feeding and clothing them badly - neglecting the young,
the aged, the sick and infirm; such a man would be
hooted from society as a monster: Society hardly tolerates
inhumanity to horses, much less to slaves. But
disguise the process a little, and it is a popular virtue to
oppress free white poor people. Get the labor of the
able-bodied husband as cheap as you can, and leave his
wife, children and aged parents to starve, and you are
the beau ideal of a man in England and New England.
Public opinion, as well as natural feeling, requires a man
to pay his slave high wages; the same public opinion
commends your cleverness in paying low wages to free
laborers, and nature and conscience oppose no obstacles
to the screwing process.
KING
LEAR. - Take physic, pomp;
reasoning of this kind cannot be employed at all,
because we have to deal with things moral and metaphysical,
in which there are no ascertainable quantities -
no standard of admeasurement to appeal to. We can
measure the physical comforts of life - such as food,
raiment, &c., in various ways; but all of them, by the
common, agreed standard of price - the amount of dollars
and cents which they cost - but we cannot measure
morality, virtue, hope, happiness, despair, &c. To illustrate,
the slave feels secure for himself and family,
of future comfortable maintenance, but hopeless as to
bettering his condition. The free laborer is harrowed
with fears and apprehensions of the future, but along
with these fears and apprehensions, entertains the hope
of changing and improving his condition. In these
cases we can get at no precise quantities - appeal to no
standard of measure, to determine whether the attributes
of slavery, or those of liberty are of greater
quantity or value. We launch on a sea of moral or
speculative reasoning, where we cannot approximate any
thing like proof - each man's taste will be the only
arbiter, and de gustibus non est disputandum. We
have inverted, intentionally, the correct order of reasoning.
We come in the last place to prove our premises;
we knew the reader would admit them till he saw the
conclusions to which they infallibly led - then many a
reader will revolt at those premises, because they lead
to what are, in his mind, revolting conclusions. First
then, free labor is cheaper than slave labor, in a thickly
settled country, else the European nations who sent
slaves to America would have also employed them at
home; for it is notorious that as a general, almost an
universal rule, farmers and other capitalists employ
that labor which is cheapest.
Secondly. The slave-holding South is supplied by
the North and other non-slaveholding countries, with
all articles that can be made as well at the North as at
the South - which proves that it is cheaper to employ
free labor to make those articles and pay the expenses
of transportation, than to have them made by slaves at
home.
Thirdly. In all old countries there is a superfluity
of laborers, and they, in competing to get employment,
under-bid each other, till wages reach the lowest point,
that will support human existence; but the master is
afraid so to depress the wages of his slave, else he
might lose the slave.
Fourthly. The Puritan fathers and their immediate
descendants were active slave-traders and slave-holders -
their later posterity, neither more pious nor moral than
their ancestors or their Southern neighbors, liberated
their slaves, we may fairly infer, because they found
free labor cheaper.
Fifthly. It has been generally admitted by the
opponents of slavery that free labor is cheaper.
Having demonstrated that the physical condition of
the slave is better than that of the free laborer, it remains
only that we should apply this conclusion to the
free negroes whom we propose to enslave. Their physical
condition would be improved by slavery, and their
moral condition could not be made worse, for, unlike
the white man, they have no hope of changing and
improving their condition whilst free. They cannot
escape from the class of common laborers. The whites
above them oppose an insuperable barrier to their
elevation. It is certainly better to be a slave than a free
laborer, without hope of improving one's condition.
[NOTE. - We have left out the original cost of the
slaves, in estimating the relative cheapness of slave
and free, because formerly African slaves cost so little
as not to have seriously influenced the preference given
to free labor in Europe, and more recently our Northern
States, after incurring that cost, found it cheaper to
liberate the slaves and employ free labor.]
succeeded wonderfully in aggravating and embittering the
natural hostility of the white and black race. They
have prompted the free negroes to assert their equality
with the whites, and in return for their insolence, the
whites are ready to expel them from the land. But
expulsion is now, at least, impracticable. If it ever
succeeds, it will require ages to complete it. In the
meantime, it is the right and duty of the State to enslave
them, because experience has clearly proved that
it is the only practicable mode of governing them.
We deprive them of no right, because no one, black
or white, has a right to liberty who abuses it to the
detriment of himself or of society. They have the
right to the protection and care of masters, but the
law denies them the exercise of that right in not
permitting them to hire or sell themselves. The common
notion that liberty is good for man, is one of the most
false and foolish that ever entered the human mind.
None but brutes and savages desire entire liberty.
The only free people in the world are the Digger
Indians of the Valley of the Great Salt Lake and the
Australians of New Holland; they know nothing of
government, of society, of castes, of classes, or of
subordination of rank; each man digs for worms and
climbs for birds' eggs on his own hook; they are
perfectly free, famished and degraded. We admire and
love liberty, coupled with happiness, as much as any
one. We pine with the caged bird, and rejoice with
the free warblers of the grove and the forest. The
sportive gambols of the colt fill us with pleasure.
Quæ
velut latis equa trima campis
Nature has fitted such creatures for liberty; but of
cold, shivering, naked, houseless, starving liberty, the
liberty of the prodigal son and the free negro, we
entertain much the same opinion that Falstaff did of
honor: - "What is honor? A word. What is in that
word honor? What is that honor? Air. A trim
reckoning! - Who hath it? He who died o' Wednesday.
Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No.
Is it insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But it will
not live with the living - therefore I'll none of it
Honor is a mere scutcheon, and so ends my catechism."
As civilization advances liberty recedes. The Cossacks
of Russia are a thousand times more free than the
enlightened inhabitants of the city of New York. The
Cossacks, living far from government, and having little
property, are scarcely aware that a government exists.
The enlightened citizen of New York daily feels the
operation of the laws of the Union, the laws of the
State, and the laws of the corporation; he is probably
a member of a church, a club, of a Masonic society,
and of a board of trade - he is controlled in his conduct
by the rules, regulations and laws of all these institutions;
besides, he is the slave of fashion, and cannot,
like the savage, dress and appear as he pleases: he
has a wife and children to attend to and provide for,
and all his spare moments must be devoted to them.
Does such a man enjoy one moment of liberty? No;
every moment has its appropriate duties, which he
must slavishly perform, or he is a disgraced man. It
is true, his slavery is self imposed in a great measure.
This only shews
that civilized man does not desire
liberty. Was there ever a white savage - we mean
one of the Caucasian race - except the wild Boy of
Hanover? The Greeks and Romans were very lavish
of the term barbarian, but we doubt whether they
ever saw a savage. Herodotus treats of men without
heads and with eyes in their breasts, in Africa, but
says not a word of men with black skins and woolly
heads. His learning, which embraces on this subject
all known by his countrymen, only extended to the
limits of civilization. Have the whites been civilized
in some degree from the days of Noah, or did civilization
in the middle ages spread with electric speed
through Norway, Sweden, Lapland and Russia? It
matters not which proposition be true. The white
race has either been always civilized, or has evinced a
remarkable aptitude to adopt civilization; they required
no missionaries and colonization societies to civilize
them.
Alexander Everett, a Northern gentleman, in a work
on America, contends that civilization had its birth with
the negroes, and that the rest of the world derived it
from them. In locating the birth-place of civilization,
he very nearly concurs with a majority of the learned.
The records of history and the remains of art alike
designate the banks of the lower Nile as the cradle of
civilization. For four thousand years, certainly, the negro
race has been in immediate contact with civilization. A
dense population, without interruption or interval, for
ages before the time of Pharaoh and Moses, extended
along the Nile from the Pyramids and Thebais
to the
negroes along the white Nile. Between Thebais
and
the negroes, an interval of a few hundred miles was
settled by people of Arabic descent - a people from the
days of Abraham always more or less civilized. Yet
with all the advantage of contact with civilization for
four thousand years, not a single negro was ever
reclaimed from his savage state till he was caught, tied,
tamed and domesticated like the wild ox or the wild
horse. Talk of sending missionaries to such a people!
Why, millions of missionaries have been side by side
with them for four thousand years, and none but the
slave-dealer ever made a convert. War, pestilence and
famine are the best missionaries to teach civilization,
(except the conjunction of a thin skin and a hard frost,) for
necessity is the mother of invention, civilization but
accumulated invention, and war, pestilence and famine the
great necessities which prompt men to invent, and teach
them to remember and improve what they invent. A
people so imbecile in intellect, or so improvident as not
to be civilized by these great necessities, can only be
civilized by slavery. The horse and ox will not willingly
submit to the yoke to provide for the exigencies of winter,
however eloquently you discourse to them on the necessity
and propriety of such conduct; no more will the negro.
A crazy poet or an Irish orator (in love with universal
emancipation,) would permit the horse and the negro to
luxuriate in liberty in the summer and starve in winter.
Not so a sensible Englishman and profound philosopher
like Carlyle, to whom we are indebted for this illustration.
He thinks the liberated negroes in the West Indies
are no more operated on in the regulation of their
lives, by reason, than the horse or the ox. But like the
ox and ass, the negro may be domesticated; he is not
like the Indian of America, an animal
feroe
naturæ.
The Indian, like the savage races of Canaan, is doomed
to extermination, and those who most sympathize with
his fate would be the first to shoot him if they lived on
the frontier. God did not direct his chosen people to
exterminate all races; such as were fit for slaves they
were ordered to make slaves of. Despite the mawkish
sensibility of the age, practical men are, without the aid
of immediate revelation, pursuing the same course; they
slay the Indians hip and thigh, as in the days of Moses
and Joshua, and enslave the negroes. "There is nothing
new under the sun." This is all right, because it is
necessary. Father Bacchus (when drunk, no doubt,)
and the last exhibitor of wild beasts in New York,
(Quid
non mortalia pectora cogis, auri sacra fames,) drove
lions to their cars; yet lions to-day are as useless and
ferocious as in the days of Bacchus; and the Indian of
to-day is as fierce and wild as those who met Columbus
on the beach.
"Like
the fox,
In his proper sphere,
we love and respect the negro.
He is eminently docile, imitative and parasitical. He
will not go to Liberia, nor to the West Indies, because
he has too much good sense to trust his fate to a community
of negroes. He knows he is the ivy, and would
cling to the white oak, not to the ivy, for support. He
respects, as we do, some of the Abolitionists, because
many of them are men who will make any sacrifice of
their time and money to achieve what they think right.
They are crazy Quixotes, no doubt, but their high aims
and lofty disinterestedness make than far more respectable
than they would be as plain, plodding farmers of
La Mancha. Don Quixote mad, is the noblest, because
the most chivalrous and disinterested of all the heroes of
Epic poetry; he is but a drivelling, penitent dotard when
he recovers. We would as soon stop a crusader or a
fox-hunter in mid career, and prove to him the folly of
his pursuit, as cure these Abolitionists of their madness.
Such illusions afford so much higher pleasure than the
sober realities of life, that it is the part of true philosophy
to cherish, not dispel them. Much the larger portion
of the abolitionists are, however, men of very different
characters - Catilines and Jack Lades, men of desperate
fortunes and desperate morals, who make as fierce
war on landed property at home as they do on slavery
abroad. The negroes despise the Clay clique of Colonizationists,
because, believing slavery morally wrong, they
have not the courage to say so, nor the justice to give
the slave up. If slavery be wrong, the abolitionists are
right. We say to the colonizationists, you cannot send
the free negroes away. They have felt the coming storm,
they have intermarried with the slaves, they have hired
themselves to the farmers, and cling and cluster about
the penates at the very horns of the domestic altar.
Hic
Hecuba, et
natæ necquiquam altaria circum
No ruthless Pyrrhus
shall tear them thence. They
are the guests of the farmer, and the Turk holds not
hospitality half so sacred as the Southern farmer. His
house is his castle, which he will defend to the last
extremity against all intrusion. The barons of Runimede
have their exact prototype in the Southern farmer.
Better beard the lion in his den than touch any thing
that has entered the sacred precinct of his farm.
But the free negro is not
only the guest; he is, for
the time, the property of the farmer; and Shakspeare
has well expressed the English sense of property, from
the lips of an Italian speaking of his wife:
PETRUCHIO.
- I will be master of what is my own;
Thus will the farmer
defend the free negro who has
selected him for his patron and master. Whilst on the
subject of Shakspeare, we would invite those who think
that slavery degrades the character of the slave, to read
the play of "As you like it." They will find old Adam
a more elevated character than any anti-slavery man that
ever lived - and the character is true to nature.
"ADAM.
Master, go on, and I will follow thee
Equality begets
universal envy, meanness and uncharitableness
- slavery elevates and purifies the sentiments of
master and slave.
To return from this digression - very many of the free
negroes, alarmed by the portentous signs of the times,
threatening them with extermination or expulsion, have
attached themselves to white masters. Will our legislators
sanction and encourage these contracts, or will
they send them all to Africa? Suppose the project succeeds,
and all the free negroes are shipped off - how long
will it be before we are called to send off our slaves also?
Northern abolition quieted and the free negroes sent
off, may not gradual emancipation rear its head and prove
a worse enemy, because a domestic one, than any with
which we have had to contend? But a small portion
of the Southern press even now undertakes to justify
slavery, to maintain that it is right in the abstract,
morally right; that it is expedient or profitable. Will
not this press, when foreign interference is quieted, and
the free negroes removed, become the advocate of gradual
emancipation? As they say not a word to justify
slavery, we presume they think it wrong; and if so, it is
their duty, as conscientious men, to embrace the first safe
occasion to get rid of it.
The Abolitionists themselves furnish the most conclusive
evidence that slavery must exist in every society
until human nature itself is changed. Nay, they propose
to change all man's nature, in order to fit him for
that social equality, that community of property, and of
other things more sacred than property, which they
would erect on the ruins of our present system of society.
The Ohio ladies hate slavery, and seeing that marriage
brings about one of the forms of slavery, to be consistent,
they will have no more marriages after the old
fashion. Separate property, too, gives power to those
who hold property to command the labor of those who
hold none."Property," say they, "is a thief!" and
must be abolished. The Bible commands wives to obey
their husbands, and slaves their masters; the Bible must
be cast into the flames! Christianity and Socialism are
deadly enemies. But after all the institutions of society
are destroyed, families abolished, churches demolished,
the Bible burnt, and property held in common, still they
have the candor to admit that the selfishness of human
nature would for a time disturb the harmonious working
of their system. They promise us, however, that a few
generations would change and perfect man's nature, and
then Socialism would work admirably. At the end of
the time we suspect they would become converts to the
sage reflection of Christopher North: "There is a great
deal of human nature in man!" We treat the Abolitionists
and Socialists as identical, because they are notoriously
the same people, employing the same arguments
and bent on the same schemes. Abolition is the first
step in Socialism: the former proposes to abolish negro
slavery, the latter all kinds of slavery - religion, government,
marriage, families, property - nay, human nature
itself. Yet the former contains the germ of the latter,
and very soon ripens into it; Abolition is Socialism in
its infancy. Ladies of Ohio! Horace Greely! Socialists
of France! Is it not so?
Alton Locke,
Tailor and Poet: an Auto-biography: has
recently been the subject of review in the Edinburgh,
the North British, and Blackwood. Each of these
able Reviews admits that Alton Locke, in the main,
gives a fair picture of the state of the poor in England,
and that their condition is intolerable, and daily growing
worse. Blackwood and the North British Review
farther admit, with the Socialists, that this desperate
condition of the poor is owing to free competition, or
liberty; and even the Edinburgh, with all its love for
political economy, distinctly alleges that a cure for the
sufferings of the working classes may be found by
recurring to the old order of things: - feudalism, vassalage
and serfdom. It further appears from these Reviews,
that socialism, with thinking men, is almost universal
in England. Except the Edinburgh Review, and
a little clique that adhere to it, all men agree that free
competition has brought on the evils under which the
Empire is suffering, and that free competition must be
checked and corrected, or the Empire be subverted.
Now free competition is nothing in the world but the
absence of domestic slavery; and these Reviews, all
though afraid to use the word, do in effect distinctly
admit that the intolerable condition of the working
classes is owing to the absence of that form of domestic
slavery which afforded support and protection to the
poor in feudal times. Experience has universally
shown, that the slavery of the working classes to the
rich, which grows out of liberty and equality, or free
competition, is ten times more onerous and exacting
than domestic slavery. The bathos of human misery is
to be a slave without a master. Such is the condition of
the poor in the free States of Europe; they are slaves
without masters. They have no houses, no property,
none to protect them, none to care for them. In the
fierce competition for employment, the intense struggle
to get a livelihood, and the ruinous underbidding it occasions,
we see the rich devouring the poor, and the
poor devouring one another. This process is well
described by the Chartist, Crossthwaite, in Alton Locke:
"It is a sin to add our weight to the crowd of artisans
who are now choking and strangling each other to
death, as the prisoners did in the black hole of Calcutta.
Let those who will, turn beasts of prey and feed
upon their fellows; but let us at least keep ourselves
pure. It may be the law of political civilization, that
the rich should eat up the poor, and the poor eat up
each other. Then, I here rise and curse that law, that
civilization, that nature. Either I will destroy them or
they shall destroy me. As a slave, as an increased
burden on my fellow-sufferers, I will not live. So help
me God! I will take no more work to my house, and I
call upon all to sign a protest to that effect."
England is a Garden of Eden, in which the birds of
the air, the fishes of the sea, and the beasts of the field
participate equally with the owners of the soil in the
fruits of the earth. The working man alone, who has
made this garden to blossom like the rose, is excluded
from its enjoyment. Hiatus,
valde deflendus! And
he is excluded simply because he is not like the horse
and the ox, and the sheep, the fish in the pond and
the game in the preserves, the property of the owner of
the soil. Make him also property, and he would be
better fed and cared for than the brutes, for he is more
valuable property; and besides, it is more natural for
man to love his fellow man, provided that fellow man
be his dependent or his master, than it is to love brute
creatures. God, when he created the world, established
a community of goods, not only between men, but also
let in the brute creation to their full share of enjoyment
of the fruits of the earth. An attempt has been
made in Southern and middle Europe, for the last
century or two, to establish a new order of things on
the ruins of feudalism, which was a modification of the
old order. This attempt has signally failed, as is attested
by almost daily revolutions, the starving condition
of the working classes, and the general prevalence
of socialist doctrines, which doctrines propose the total
subversion and re-construction of the social fabric.
We entirely agree with the socialists, that free competition
is the bane of modern society. We also agree
with them, that it is right and necessary to establish in
some modified degree, a community of property. We
agree with them in the end they propose to attain, and
only differ as to the means.
We do not believe that any new discoveries have been
made in moral science for the last four thousand years,
or that any will hereafter be made. In the remotest
antiquity, men had the same lights of experience before
them that we have to-day, and they were wiser men
and profounder thinkers than we, because their attention
was not divided and frittered away, by a thousand
objects, wants and pursuits, as ours is, in consequence
of the many discoveries in physical science. The ancients
led simpler lives, were harrassed by fewer cares,
had their minds exercised on fewer subjects, and were
therefore wiser men than we. Their works are imperishable,
and have a reputation as wide as the world.
The fame of the best of ours is ephemeral and local.
It is to them we should recur for lessons in government,
rather than look to our cotemporaries
or indulge in rash
experiment. Thousands of years before the days of
Moses and Numa, Solon and Lycurgus, the field of
experiment had been exhausted, and they no doubt were
aware of the results of those experiments, and profited
by them.
So little has human nature changed, that we find the
men of today, with all their virtues and vices, passions
and peculiarities, more exactly and faithfully portrayed
in the Old Testament, and by the Greek and Latin
poets, than by any English or American author of the
present day. It is with human nature that government
has to deal, and we should look back to th os
who understood it best, to learn how to deal with it.
The Socialists expect to organize society on entirely new
principles. Society every where is much alike and of
gradual growth. It is the result of the passions, the
motives, the affections, and the selfishness of human
nature. These are much the same in all ages and in
all countries. What madness and folly, at this late
day, to form society for human beings regardless of
human nature. Yet the Socialists are guilty of this folly,
and gravely propose to change man's nature to fit him
for their new institutions. How much more wise, prudent
and philosophical it would be to recur to some old
tried forms of society, especially as we shall presently
show that such forms of society have existed, and do
now exist, as will remove all the evils they complain of,
and attain all the ends they propose.
A community of property, in some modified degree,
existed in all the states of antiquity, whether savage or
civilized, and continued to exist under the form of
feudalism throughout the dark ages. This community of
property existed in two forms. The one form, universal
among savages, is where the lands belong to the State
and the individuals composing the State have a common
right of enjoyment in those lands. Society may
get along very happily under this order of things. Nor,
indeed, is it wholly inconsistent with the advance of
civilization. Every one recollects the example of Sparta,
when there was no separate property in lands, and in
modern times the Peruvian Indians, the most civilized
in America, held their lands in common. The few
instances, however, of this kind of community of
property among civilized nations, shows that it is adapted
only to the savage state. The other kind of community
of property, which is at least as old as civilization itself,
will require some pains to explain, because we are the first
who have treated it in this light. No doubt the same
reflections are daily passing through thousands of minds,
that now pass through ours, and we but give a new
name to an old thought. This latter kind of community
of property exists where separate ownership having
been acquired in all the soil of a State, those who
own that soil own also those individuals who cultivate
it. A beautiful example and illustration of this kind
of communism, is found in the instance of the Patriarch
Abraham. His wives and his children, his men
servants and his maid servants, his camels and his
cattle, were all equally his property. He could sacrifice
Isaac or a ram, just as he pleased. He loved and
protected all, and all shared, if not equally, at least fairly,
in the products of their light labor. Who would not
desire to have been a slave of that old Patriarch, stern
and despotic as he was? How quick he would have
beheaded a Yankee abolitionist who had abused his
open hospitality to entice away his slaves. Poor Hagar!
wert thou deluded by some vender of quack medicines
and wooden nutmegs? How many Hagars, starving
in the wilderness, may now be found at the North?
Nay, it is worse than a wilderness to them, for they are
surrounded by luxuries which they cannot taste, and
by fellow beings whose hideous scowl of hate aggravates
their woes. Pride, affection, self-interest, moved
Abraham to protect, love and take care of his slaves.
The same motives operate on all masters, and secure
comfort, competency and protection to the slave. A
man's wife and children are his slaves, and do they not
enjoy, in common with himself, his property? As he
advances in age and his wants become fewer, his children
most always get the lion's share. Look to a well
ordered farm and see whether the cattle, the horses, the
sheep, and the hogs, do not enjoy their full proportion
of the proceeds of the farm. Would you emancipate
them too? Why not? Liberty and idleness are as
natural and agreeable to them as to slaves.
Men love the brute creatures that belong to them.
It is the law of God impressed on the heart of man
that secures good and kind treatment to the brutes, far
more effectually than all human law can do. The same
law of God makes man love his slaves far more than
he does his horse. The affection which all men feel
for what belongs to them, and for what is dependent
on them, is Nature’s magna charta, which shields,
protects and provides for wives, children and slaves. The
selfishness of man's nature, which occasions all the
oppression of the weak by the powerful, the poor by
the rich, in free society, is the very instrument which
Providence in his wisdom has chosen to protect the
weak and the poor in a natural and healthy state of
society - that is in a society where domestic slavery
exists. Ye meddlesome, profane, presumptuous abolitionists!
think ye that God has done his work imperfectly
and needs your aid? He that takes account of the
sparrow, has he no care for the slave? Is he waiting,
and has he waited for four thousand years, for you to
do his work? Must you steal the negro before he
can save his soul? Are not the negroes whom you
have stolen and freed, ten times more vicious than our
slaves? Has God permitted slavery to exist so long
and so generally, because he knew no better, or
because he was afraid to denounce it, or was he waiting
for you to help him?
In the February No. of the North British Review,
in a critique on Sir Charles Lyell's Travels in North
America, we find the following singular and contradictory
language. We say contradictory, for if "self-interest
and domestic feeling combine to surround the
slave with every blessing," what becomes of the
"cruelty and injustice," the "sound of the whip and
the clank of the chain?" Does domestic feeling exhibit
itself in this way?
"Could we look at the slave in his simple humanity,
without regarding him as a being of the future, we
should view him as the inmate of a luxurious house,
with all the blessings with which self-interest and
domestic feeling combine to surround him. Under this
bright phase, and in striking contrast with the in-dweller
of the work-house, or the laborer in the factory, we
are disposed to forget the horrors of the middle passage,
and shut our ears to the sound of the whip and the
clank of the chain. But when the mind's eye rests
upon the precious jewel - the white soul which the clay
cask encloses - eternal truth recoils from the sight of a
spirit in shackles, and immortal affection clasps in her
warmest embrace the victims of cruelty and injustice."
We suppose the writer thinks there are no slaves in
heaven, but plenty of savages, cannibals and free
negroes. "The Devil can quote scripture for his purpose,"
but we think this would puzzle him.
If any doubt our theory, that domestic slavery does
establish a fair community of goods, we cite them to
the facts. Look to the old Patriarchs and their slaves,
to the feudal lords and their vassals, or come to the
South and see our farms. See the aged and infirm,
the women and children, on every farm, more tenderly
watched over and better provided for, than the sturdy
and laborious. God intended, no doubt, that those who
most needed sympathy, assistance and attention, should
have most of it. Put your own house in order, ye
abolitionists? When the women and children, the sick
and the aged, in your laboring class, are secure of the
same ample provision, sympathy and attention as our
slaves, then, and not till then, offer your advice to us.
But we have said the slave is secure of a
fair proportion
of the profits in the community of property
which grows out of the institution of domestic slavery.
We will explain how this happens, and cite facts to
prove that it is so. As man rises in the scale of civilization
his wants increase, his skill and capacity for
production increase pari passu. As a slave, he needs
more and is entitled to more, of the products of the
joint concern, than the mere newly imported savage.
As he assimilates himself to his master, his master's
attachment to him increases; he is made a mechanic, a
dining-room or body servant, and is treated very differently
from what we call "out hands." Each, however,
has his wants supplied. The negroes first imported to
this country were badly clad; clothes to them were an
irksome incumbrance. Our male field hands even now
generally prefer a bench by the fire and a blanket, to
the finest feather bed in the world. They are but gradually
learning to like plank floors to their houses. The
masters are more ready to supply their wants than they
are to acquire them.
There is another law of our nature that secures to
the slave his right. Place men in the relation of
master and slave, and the wiser and more strong
willed invariably rules. It is so in the case of man
and wife, father and child, and slaves have often
been "a power behind the throne greater than
the throne itself," and thus ruled empires. Negroes
do not rule their masters, because of the inferiority of
race, but they are better treated as they advance in
morality and intelligence.
Besides that domestic slavery does away with competition,
so ruinous to the working classes in free
countries, and occasions a community of profits if not
of property - it supplies another great desideratum
of the socialists, and, indeed, of the political economists
too: it brings about the ASSOCIATION OF
LABOR. This result, too, is obtained in a better form
than any we have seen suggested by the Socialists.
They propose only to associate men of the same trade.
Domestic slavery profitably associates men, women and
children, mechanics and common laborers. On a farm,
under the supervision of one master, who supplies the
skill and capital, all ages and sexes can find appropriate
and profitable employment. Set the slaves on a farm
free, and leave each to get employment, and however
disposed to work, the products of their labor would not
sit half what they were before. Much time must be
lost in looking for work, and they would rarely find
beuations where all the members of a large family could
get employment. Much loss would ensue from the want
of one common head to find them work and give skillful
direction to their labor, and still more from the fact
that each one buying for himself, their wants would be
supplied at retail instead of wholesale prices.
This association of labor and capital, by means of
domestic slavery, would remove another evil that
bewilders, staggers and confounds Malthusians, Economists
and Socialists alike. This is the evil of excessive
population, an evil sorely felt through half of Europe, and
irremediable because confined to the most indigent who
have no means of emigrating. If they were slaves,
their masters would send them at once to countries
where population was sparse and labor dear; and they
would be sent off in families, not separated as free
people generally are when they remove. Thus is slavery
the simple and adequate remedy for the greatest evil
with which mankind is afflicted at present or threatened
for the future.
We cannot believe that the Socialists do not see that
domestic slavery is the only practicable form of socialism
- they are afraid yet to pronounce the word.
An admirable proof and illustration of our doctrine,
that slavery is communism, might be had by making all
the working-men in England slaves to the land-holders,
and requiring by law the land-holders to support them
as we do our slaves. Would not, in such case, the
working-men be joint owners of the farm? If the land-holders
were also permitted to sell them, or remove them
to the colonies where labor is scarce and dear, it would
be an excellent bargain on both sides. Labor and
capital would thus be beneficially associated. They do sell
white men now in England, and remove them to distant
colonies, but require as a perquisite to the boon,
that a man should first steal a turnip or shoot a hare.
Many take the boon even on these harsh terms, rather
than starve; they steal in order to be shipped to New
Holland and sold as slaves. They are willing to
encounter the disgrace of crime, and be torn from every
tie of friendship and affection, rather than remain in
England and starve. Could the poor of England sell
themselves and families for terms of years, or for life,
or in perpetuity, they would at once have the means of
certain and comfortable support. Removed to new
colonies, they might by extra work and frugality, soon
purchase their liberty again. The situation of the slave
is a good one to amass money, because he may save all
he makes, the master supplying all his wants.
We have often been reminded of the absurdity of
the law which prevents a man's selling himself, or to
speak more accurately, which refuses to enforce performance
of the contract, whilst observing the character of
the emigration to California. No poor man could get to
the mines, except by deserting the army, the navy, or
the merchant service. The law permitted him to sell
his liberty for five years, and subject himself to hard
fare and harsh treatment, and low wages, provided he
would enter either of those services. He might sell
himself for eight dollars a month, and have the cat
applied to his back gratis once a quarter, but he might
not sell himself for fifty dollars per month to work in
the mines and be well treated. The law, we know, is
the perfection of reason, and liberty the greatest good,
yet we can't help thinking, when a strong young fellow
finds his whole capital reduced to his own person,
it would be as well to let him pawn that or sell it, "to
make a raise." It is the only way a poor fellow can
get a start in life sometimes and it seems hard to
prohibit his using, in the way of trade, the only capital he
has left. We wonder it never occurred to the economists,
who so much admire free trade and free competition,
that the denial of this right was part of the restrictive
and protective system. Laissez
nous faire!
Let us sell ourselves if we please!
That the condition of working men, in all old countries
where population is dense, is a thousand times
worse than that of our slaves, is a FACT that no one will
dispute. This
fact
is worth all the theories in the world,
and shows conclusively that the common laborers should
be slaves, in old countries. It is hard for us Americans
to understand why this must ever be so, for here
population is generally sparse, and working men scarce;
so that working men are in demand and can get just
such wages as they choose to demand. Mrs. Trollope,
by far the most philosophical traveller who has visited
America, very justly remarked, that the difficulty of
retaining a servant in Cincinnati, showed that there
the master or employer was under obligations to the
servant. The servant might work one day in the week
and get enough wages to live on all the week; the master
needed a servant every day and could with difficulty
get one, because masters were more numerous than
servants. The COMPETITION was among masters to get
servants, not among servants to get places. This
competition of course continually increased the wages of
servants. We will venture the assertion, based upon
mere theory, that this state of things is already changed
in Ohio - servants have become more numerous than
employers. There is already competition and under-bidding
to get places, because population is dense; and
we will stake our reputation, that the white servants in
Cincinnati are not as well paid as our negro slaves.
We mean that their wages are not sufficient to secure
to them and their families the same comforts in all seasons
of the year, in health, and in sickness; as we allow
our slaves. In a newly and partially settled country
like California, working men have greatly the advantage
over mere moneyed men, and slavery is not necessary
for their protection. Competition in such countries
is attended with no evils, and greatly promotes the
rapid development of its resources. In settling a new
country, free labor is better than slave labor, because
competition stimulates industry, without impairing the
condition of the laborer. In old countries, every stimulant
to increased industry is an injury to the laboring
class, for thereby a few do the work that should employ
many, and thus leave the many to starve. In old countries,
human wisdom can devise no effectual means to
provide for the poor, where lands have become separate
property, except by making slaves of those who hold no
property to those who have property, and thus in fact,
if not in form, establishing a community of property.
The history of the free States of Europe, for the last
sixty years, and the present condition of the poor in
those States, we think conclusively proves this. All
parties admit that society there requires radical change.
They must go back to domestic slavery. Civilized
society cannot long exist without it. In conclusion, we
will sum up the evidence that establishes this truth
beyond doubt, independent of all theory. In the slave
States of this Union all classes of society are satisfied
with government as it is; famine is neither known nor
apprehended, and there is no complaint that the wages
of the working class are inadequate to their comfortable
support. In the whole South there is not one Socialist,
not one man, rich or poor, proposing to subvert
and reconstruct society. Society is in a natural,
healthy and contented state. Such was very much the
condition of society in middle and southern Europe
two centuries ago, before feudalism disappeared and
liberty and equality wore established. Now, in these
latter countries, famine and revolutions are daily
occurrences; the poor are discontented, riotous and
insurrectionary, and the rich, from mere sympathy with the
sufferings of the poor, have become young English men,
Chartists and Socialists, and admit that the organization
of society is wholly wrong, and the sufferings of
the poor intolerable. What more proof is needed, that
the diseases that afflict society with them are occasioned
by the absence of domestic slavery, and what remedy
so obvious as to remove the cause of those diseases by
restoring that institution?
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CHAPTER VI.
SCRIPTURAL AUTHORITY FOR SLAVERY.
We find slavery repeatedly instituted by God,
or by men acting under his immediate care and
direction, as in the instances of Moses and Joshua.
Nowhere in the Old or New Testament do we find
the institution condemned, but frequently recognized
and enforced. In individual instances slavery
may be treated as an evil, and no doubt it is often
a very great one where its subject is fitted to take
care of himself and would be happier and more
useful as a freeman than as a slave. It was often
imposed as a punishment for sin, but this affords
no argument against its usefulness or its necessity.
It is probably no cause of regret that men are so
constituted as to require that many should be
slaves. Slavery opens many sources of happiness
and occasions and encourages the exercise of many
virtues and affections which would be unknown
without it. It begets friendly, kind and affectionate
relations, just as equality engenders antagonism
and hostility on all sides. The condition of
slavery in all ages and in all countries has been
considered in the general disgraceful, but so to
some extent have hundreds of the necessary trades
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CHAPTER VII.
DOMESTIC AFFECTION.
Historians and philosophers, speculating upon
the origin of governments, have generally agreed
that the family was its first development. It has
ever been, and will ever be, its most common form.
Two-thirds of mankind, the women and children,
are everywhere the subjects of family government.
In all countries where slavery exists, the
slaves also are the subjects of this kind of
government. Now slaves, wives and children have
no other government; they do not come directly
in contact with the institutions and rulers of the
State. But the family government, from its nature,
has ever been despotic. The relations between
the parent or master and his family subjects
are too various, minute and delicate, to be
arranged, defined, and enforced by law. God has
in his mercy and wisdom provided a better check,
to temper and direct the power of the master of
the family, than any human government has devised.
He who takes note of every sparrow that
falls, who will not break the bruised reed, and
who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, has not
been forgetful or regardless of wives, children,
and slaves. He has extended the broad panoply
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CHAPTER VIII.
RELIGION.
Our ancestors of the Revolution adopted the
doctrine of free competition, demand and supply,
and Laissez-faire
in religion, as in almost everything
else. The "world was too much governed,"
and religion seemed to them, one of the most
odious forms of government. The fires of Smithfield,
the Gun-powder plot, and the Vespers of St. Bartholomew
were fresh in men's memories.
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CHAPTER IX.
THE BALANCE OF TRADE.
Political economists maintain that a nation gains
nothing by selling more than it buys. That the
balance of trade is a humbug; nay more, that the
way for a nation to get rich is to buy more than
it sells. Thus more will come in than goes out.
Instinct and common sense deny the proposition.
They say, that the way for individuals or people
to get rich is to sell more than buy. Philosophy
beats them all hollow in argument, yet
instinct and common sense are right and philosophy
wrong. Philosophy is always wrong and instinct
and common sense always right, because
philosophy is unobservant and reasons from
narrow and insufficient premises, whilst common sense
sees and observes all things, giving them their due
weight, comes to just conclusions, but being
busied about practical every day matters, has
never learned the process of abstraction, has
never learned how to look into the operations of
its mind and see how it has come to its conclusions.
It always judges rightly, but reasons
wrong. It comes to its conclusions by the same
processes of ratiocination that abstract philosophers
do, but unaccustomed and untrained to look
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CHAPTER X.
BANKS.
Banks have become so important a part of our
institutions, and exercise so controlling an influence
on the wealth and well being of individuals
and of States, that any treatise on social science
would be imperfect, that omitted to notice them.
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CHAPTER XI.
USURY.
Nothing has more perplexed political economists
and mankind at large, than the subject of
usury. That it was right, proper, and laudable
for every man to get the highest market price
for the use of his money, as for the use of
every other article, was an obvious deduction from
the axioms of the economists. The instincts
and common sense of mankind, whilst admitting
the premises, stubbornly denied the unavoidable
conclusion. Convicted in argument, but not
convinced; they still fought on. In truth, the error
lay in the premises, in the axioms and first principles
of political economy. That systematic selfishness
that inculcates the moral duty to let
every man take care of himself and his own selfish
interest, that advises each to use his wits, his
prudence, and his providence, to get the better
of those who have less wit, prudence and providence,
to make the best bargains one can, and
that a thing is worth what it will bring, is false
and rotten to the core. It bears no sound fruit,
brings forth no good morality. "Laissez nous
faire," and "Caveat Emptor," (the latter the
maxim of the common law,) justify usury, encourage
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On
this occasion his own work abhorred,
So
surfeited with the infernal revel;
Though
he himself had sharpened every sword,
It
almost quenched his innate thirst of evil."
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CHAPTER XII.
TOWNS, RIVERS AND ROADS.
Towns and villages are breaks that arrest and
prevent the exhausting drain of agriculture, aided
by rivers and roads. They consume the crops of
the neighborhood, its wood and timber, and thus
not only furnish a home market, but manures to
replenish the lands. They afford respectable
occupations, in the mechanic arts, commerce,
manufactures, and the professions, for the energetic
young men of the neighborhood. They sustain
good schools, which a sparse country neighborhood
never can. They furnish places and opportunities
for association and rational enjoyment to
the neighborhood around. They support good
ministers and churches, and thus furnish religious
consolation and instruction to many who have not
the means to visit distant places of worship. -
Rivers and roads, without towns, are mere facilities
offered to agriculture to carry off the crops
to exhaust the soil, and to remove the inhabitants,
rich and poor. This was strikingly exemplified
in Virginia a few years ago. The people
on the rich lands, on navigable rivers, were a few
absentees, without villages, towns, mechanic arts,
churches or schools. They made money at home,
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CHAPTER XIII.
EDUCATION.
The abolitionists taunt us with the ignorance
of our poor white citizens. This is a stigma on
the South that should be wiped out. Half of the
people of the South, or nearly so, are blacks.
We have only to educate the other half. At the
North, they educate all. Our Southern free-trade
philosophy, our favorite maxim, "every man for
himself," has been the cause of the neglect of
popular education. The civilized world differ from
us and censure us. They say it is the first duty
of government to provide for the education of all
its citizens. Despotic Prussia compels parents to
send their children to schools supported at public
expense. All are educated and well educated.
As our's is a government of the people, no where
is education so necessary. The poor, too, ask no
charity, when they demand universal education.
They constitute our militia and our police. They
protect men in possession of property, as in other
countries, and do much more, they secure men
in possession of a kind of property which they
could not hold a day but for the supervision and
protection of the poor. This very property has
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CHAPTER XIV.
EXCLUSIVE AGRICULTURE.
Writing, as we do, with the hope of suggesting
some things useful to the South, we deem the subject
of agriculture, their favorite and almost sole
pursuit, one worthy of separate consideration;
especially as it is intimately connected with the
doctrines of free trade. Agriculture can never
be the exclusive pursuit of a civilized people,
unless by free trade, all other wants than those of
food, are supplied from abroad. Man naturally
gives a preference to agriculture over all other
avocations, because it is the most simple and the
most independent. This preference is greatly
increased when the climate and soil are adapted to
its pursuit. Such is the case in the Southern
States, with the additional inducement in its favor,
that the laboring class, the negroes, are
admirably fitted for farming, and too ignorant
and dull for any of the finer processes of the
mechanic arts. Hence the South has become
almost exclusively agricultural, and hence, also, she
has ever been the advocate of free trade, which
supplies the many wants that agriculture leaves
unsupplied.
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CHAPTER XV.
THE ASSOCIATION OF LABOR.
If the Socialists had done no other good, they
would be entitled to the gratitude of mankind for
displaying in a strong light the advantages of the
association of labor. Adam Smith, in his elaborate
treatise on the Division of Labor, nearly stumbled
on the same truth. But the division of labor
is a curse to the laborer, without the association
of labor. Division makes labor ten times more
efficient, but by confining each workman to some
simple, monotonous employment, it makes him a
mere automaton, and an easy prey to the capitalist.
The association of labor, like all associations,
requires a head or ruler, and that head or
ruler will become a cheat and a tyrant, unless his
interests are identified with the interests of the
laborer. In a large factory, in free society, there
is division of labor, and association too, but association
and division for the benefit of the employer
and to the detriment of the laborer. On a large
farm, whatever advances the health, happiness and
morals of the negroes, renders them more prolific
and valuable to their master. It is his interest to
pay them high wages in way of support, and he
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CHAPTER XVI.
THE FREE LABORER’S CARES AND ANXIETIES.
We think we have shown in the preceding chapter,
not only that the physical condition of the free
laborer is worse than that of the slave, but that
its evils are intolerable. It is admitted and is
proved to be so by the almost unanimous authority
of rich and poor, learned and ignorant, living in
the midst of free society. What is the mental
condition of the free laborer? Is he exempt from
the cares that beset wealth and power, and plant
thorns in the path of royalty?
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CHAPTER XVII.
LIBERTY AND FREE TRADE.
These are convertible terms; two names for the
same thing. Statesmen, orators, and philosophers,
the tories of England, and the whigs of America,
have been laboring incessantly for more than half
a century to refute the doctrine of free trade.
They all and each failed to produce a single plausible
argument in reply. Not one of their books or
speeches survived a month. Not one ever was, or
ever will be, quoted or relied on as authority to
disprove the principles of political economy. The
reason is obvious enough; they were all confused
by words, or afraid to make the proper issue.
They first admitted liberty to be a good, and then
attempted, but attempted in vain, to argue that
free trade was an evil. The socialists stumbled
on the true issue, but do not seem yet fully aware
of the nature of their discovery. Liberty was the
evil, liberty the disease under which society was
suffering. It must be restricted, competition be arrested,
the strong be restrained from, instead of encouraged
to oppress the weak - in order to restore
society to a healthy state. To them we are indebted
for our argument against free trade. We have
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CHAPTER XVIII.
HEAD-WORK AND HAND-WORK.
Parents often warn their children, that they
must live by hand-work or head-work. That the
latter is far preferable, because the work is lighter,
pays much better, and is generally in far higher
esteem with the world. Virtue, intelligence and
good education are necessary to success in the
latter. No man cares much what the character
of his ditcher or ploughman is, but his merchant,
his lawyer, his mechanics, and his physician must
be men of good sense and good morals. Thus
do parents hold out incentives to virtuous
exertion. Governors and rulers should do the same.
States must live by hand-work or head-work. The
production of books on the various arts and
sciences, and on other subjects, the manufacture
of fine silks, woolens, calicoes, shawls, the making
of exquisite porcelain, the building of ships,
and steamboats, the construction of machinery,
and a thousand other pursuits that we could
enumerate, require intelligence and attainments of
the highest order, and good character besides,
else no one would buy what would probably be a
cheat or a counterfeit. A nation chiefly engaged
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CHAPTER XIX.
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE AND VIRGINIA
BILL OF RIGHTS.
An essay on the subject of slavery would be
very imperfect, if it passed over without noticing
these instruments. The abstract principles which
they enunciate, we candidly admit, are wholly at
war with slavery; we shall attempt to show that
they are equally at war with all government, all
subordination, all order. Men's minds were heated
and blinded when they were written, as well by
patriotic zeal, as by a false philosophy, which,
beginning with Locke, in a refined materialism, had
ripened on the Continent into open infidelity. In
England, the doctrine of prescriptive government,
the divine right of kings, had met with signal
overthrow, and in France there was faith in
nothing, speculation about everything. The human
mind became extremely presumptuous, and
undertook to form governments on exact philosophical
principles, just as men make clocks, watches
or mills. They confounded the moral with the
physical world, and this was not strange, because
they had begun to doubt whether there was any
other than a physical world. Society seemed to
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As
metaphysic wit can fly."
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CHAPTER XX.
THE MARRIAGE RELATION.
The Roman dwelling was a holy and sacred
place; a temple of the gods, over which Manes,
and Lares, and Penates watched and hovered.
Each hearthstone was an altar on which daily
sacrifice was offered. The family was hedged all
round with divinities, with departed ancestry
purified and apotheosised, who with kindly interest
guarded and guided the household. Roman
elevation of sentiment and of character is easily
accounted for, when we reflect that they felt
themselves ever in the presence of deities. That
pure religious sentiment was associated with
these deities, a single passage from Virgil will
prove. Æneas, on that night that Troy was
sacked, forced at length to fly with his family,
does not forget in his haste and confusion, the
family gods.
Me,
belle è tanto digressum,
et caede recenti
Attrectare
nefas: donec me flumine vivo
Abluero.
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CHAPTER XXI.
THE MORALS OF FREE SOCIETY.
Keep
the wild flood confin'd! let order die!
And
let this world no longer be a stage,
To
feed contention in a lingering act;
But
let one spirit of the first-born Cain
Reign
in all bosoms, that each heart being set
On
bloody courses, the rude scene may end
And
darkness be the burier of the dead!
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CHAPTER XXII.
SMALL NATIONALITIES.
Almost the only secret of high civilization and
national greatness consists in narrow and confined
territorial limits. Beget the necessity for exercise
of all the functions of government, all the
mechanic and artistic arts, for the cultivation of
all the sciences, and for the pursuit of all the
avocations of civilized life by a small population, and
intense enlightenment and universal education are
the immediate result. History, ancient and modern,
teaches but one lesson on this subject. Little
Phoenicia and little Carthage, the hundred little
states of Greece, and Rome, whilst her dominion
was confined to Italy, were truly great. When
Alexander had conquered Egypt and Persia, and
died for want of other worlds to conquer, Greece
fell to rise no more, and in her fall involved the
conquered nations in one common ruin. Rome
conquered the world, and forthwith Cimmerian
darkness began to cover her empire. England,
under the Plantagenets, ere Scotland or Ireland
were annexed, crowned her King in Paris. Now
whilst the beat of her drum circles the globe, she
trembles at the threat of French invasion.
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CHAPTER XIII.
THE HIGHER LAW.
In framing and revising the institutions and
government of a nation, and in enacting its laws,
sensible and prudent statesmen study carefully the
will of God and designs of Providence, as revealed
in Holy Writ, or as gathered from history and
experience. "Truth is mighty, and will prevail,"
and laws in contravention of the great truths
deducible from these sources, will become nugatory
and inefficient. Yet whilst the law is on the statute
book, every citizen is bound to respect and
obey it, or else take the consequences of trespass,
felony or treason. He may discuss the question,
"Does the law coincide with the 'Higher Law'?"
but he may not act on his conclusions if they be
against the law.
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CHAPTER XXIV.
INFIDELITY AND ABOLITIONISM.
Every one who reads the newspapers must have
observed that open-mouthed infidelity is never seen
or heard in this country except in abolition meetings
and conventions, and in women's rights conventicles.
On such occasions some woman unsexes
herself, and with Gorgon head and Harpy tongue
pours out false and foul execrations against slavery
and the Bible, aided by men with sharper tongues
and duller courage than the women themselves.
To this there is a single exception. One pulpit in
Boston is on the Sabbath made a rostrum whence
an abolitionist fulminates contention and discord,
and stirs up to bloodshed and murder.
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That's
curdled by the frost of purest snow,
And
hangs on Dian's temple."
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CHAPTER XXV.
REVOLUTIONS AND REFORMATIONS.
Reformations always do good, revolutions always
harm. All old institutions in time become
incrusted with error and abuse, and frequent reforms
are required to keep them in good working order,
and to adapt them to the gradually changing
circumstances of mankind. This is equally true of
religious institutions as of political ones, for there
is much in the machinery and external manifestations
of the former, that is of mere human origin
and contrivance, - and everything human is liable
to imperfection and decay.
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CHAPTER XXVI.
THE SLAVE TRADE.
From several quarters propositions have of late
been made for the revival of the African slave
trade. The South has generally been opposed to
this trade, the North favorable to it. Such is
likely to be the case again; for the North would
make much money by conducting the trade; the
settled states of the South lose much by the
depreciation of their negroes. The extreme
inhumanity of this trade is enough to condemn it, but
men's interests blind their eyes and steel their
hearts against considerations of humanity. Besides,
the argument will be most successfully
played in its behalf, that it will but take the place
of another kind of slave trade, that is still more
inhuman. The importation of apprentices or temporary
slaves is now actively conducted by England
from Africa and various parts of Asia. These
apprentices, if not worked to death before their
terms of service expire, are left to starve afterwards,
and new ones imported in their place. They
are treated with less humanity than slaves, because
the master has little interest in their lives. Vastly
larger numbers must be imported to supply the
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CHAPTER XXVII.
WOMAN’S RIGHTS.
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Which
now shows all the beauty of sun,
And
bye and bye a cloud takes all away!"
Like
the long sunny lapse of a summer's day light,
Shining
on, shining on, by no shadow made tender,
Till
love falls asleep in its sameness of splendor."
Inform
us truly, have they not hen-pecked you all."
Page 218HONOR TO WOMAN.
To
guard the earth with the roses of heaven!
All
blessed, she linketh the Loves in their choir;
In
the veil of the Graces her beauty concealing,
She
tends on each altar that's hallowed to Feeling
And
keeps ever living the fire!
Man's
strong spirit wildly sweeps,
With
each hasty impulse veering
Down
to Passion's troubled deeps.
And
his heart contented never,
Goads
to grapple with the far,
Chasing
his own dream forever,
On
through many a distant star!
Lureth
back at her beck the wild truant again,
By
the spell of her presence beguiled;
In
the home of the mother, her modest abode,
And
modest the manners by Nature bestowed
On
Nature's most exquisite child!
Page 219
Foe
to foe, the angry strife;
Man,
the wild one, never resting,
Braves
along the troubled life;
What
he planneth, still pursuing;
Vainly
as the hydra bleeds.
Crest
the severed crest renewing -
Wish
to withered wish succeeds.
And
seeks from the moment to gather the roses,
Whose
sweets to her culture belong.
Ah!
richer than he, though his soul reigneth o'er
The
mighty dominion of Genius and Love,
And
the infinite Circle of Song.
Man's
cold bosom beats alone;
Heart
with heart divinely blending
In
the love that gods have known,
Soul's
sweet interchange of feeling,
Melting
tears - he never knows.
Each
hard sense, the hard one steeling,
Arms
against a world of foes.
If
woo'd by the Zephyr, to music will quiver,
Is
woman to Hope and to Fear;
Ah!
tender one! still at the shadow of grieving,
How
quiver the chords - how thy bosom is heaving -
How trembles thy glance through the tear!
Might
to right the statute gave;
Laws
are in the Scythian's sabre;
Where
the Mede reign'd - see the slave!
Peace
and meekness grimly routing,
Prowl's
the War-lust, rude and wild;
Eris
rages, hoarsely shouting,
Where
the vanished Graces smiled.
Page 220
But
Woman, the Soft One, persuasively prayeth,
Of
the life that she charmeth, the sceptre she swayeth;
She
lulls, as she looks from above,
The
Discord whose hell for its victims is gaping,
And
blending awhile, then forever escaping,
Whispers
Hate to the image of Love!
Page 221
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE SUMMING UP.
My
call for witnesses? I did not mean
That
you should half of earth and hell produce;
'Tis
even superfluous, since two honest, clean,
True
testimonies are enough: We live
Our
time, nay, our eternity, between
The
accusation and defense: if we
Hear
both, 'twill stretch our immortality."
Page 222
Page 225
APPENDIX.
Page 226SLAVERY JUSTIFIED.
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* But free trade has
conquered.
Chinese are shipped off as
slaves, and Japan trembles as she hears the knocking at her
door.
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Page 242
Proemia
si tollas?
*
The line and a half from Juvenal expresses the philosophy and
morale of free society: that from Terence the moral of slave
society.
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Quae
regio in terris non nostri plena laboris?
Page 244
*
The North was pushing the Wilmot Proviso when this was
written. We wrote under angry excitement. We did Mr.
Van Buren injustice and the North injustice. We believe Mr.
Van Buren thoroughly patriotic, though wrong on the Proviso;
and we think Northerners more fanatical than selfish.
Page 245
*
We had not seen Mr. Winthrop's late speech when this was
written.
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For
I am old and feeble grown,
And
cannot work any more.
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Page 259WHAT SHALL BE DONE
WITH
THE FREE NEGROES?
Nearly one half the civilized world is deeply interested
in the solution of this question - but especially
France, England and America. Already the emancipation
of the blacks has occasioned many evils, and
been productive of no ostensible good to themselves or
to the whites. In the West Indian dominions of France
and England, all industry is paralyzed, and the most
fertile islands in the world threaten soon to become
desert wastes, infested with lawless savages. The blacks
so far outnumber the whites, that the latter will remove,
or remain to witness the acting over again the tragedy
of St. Domingo. The crusades occasioned less human
suffering than has ensued or is certain to ensue from
the emancipation of the blacks in the West Indies.
The crusades, with all their iniquities, gave the first
great impulse to civilization. West Indian emancipation
has expelled civilization and veiled those lovely
Isles with the thick curtain of ignorance and superstition.
The masters have been robbed of their farms
and of their slaves, with more millions than even Croesus
dreampt
of - yet their loss is as nothing compared to
the loss the slaves have sustained in being deprived of
the tutelary guardianship of those masters. The masters
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By
damning those we have no mind to.
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Page 272II.
Is there any good reason why men should not be
allowed to sell their liberty? Is it wise, politic or humane,
to prevent the man, who sees his family starving
around him, from hiring himself so as to bind his person,
even for a day, a week, or a month, to save himself
and family from death? Could the poor Irish sell
themselves and families for a term of years, to the
farmers of our Northwestern States, in order to pay
their passage to this country, and secure them from want
on their arrival, would there be any thing unwise or
unmerciful in the laws which permitted it? The law
did once permit it, for Virginia was in great part settled
by indented servants, and by the descendants of girls
bought up in London and sold to the planters here for
wives. Indeed, all women literally sell their liberties
when they marry, and very few repent of the bargain.
Among the civilized States of antiquity, the right to sell
one's liberty, we believe, was universal. Is it not a
curtailment of liberty to deny the right? The starving
poor would often think so. To the victim of intemperance
who has just recovered from an attack of delirium
tremens, such a right would be worth all the temperance
societies in the world. His enervated will can no longer
control him, and the law will not permit him to adopt
the will of another. The law thus murders thousands
annually, pretending all the while to guard and protect
their rights. The army, the navy and the merchant
service are filled with men of this description. It is the
only refuge the law allows them. Those who were fitted
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Expose
thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That
thou mayest shake the superflux to them,
And
show the heavens more just.
Page 279III.
To say that free labor is cheaper than slave labor, is
to say that the slave is better off, so far as physical
comfort is concerned, than the free laborer. The wages
of the free laborer exactly represent all the physical
material comforts he and his family can enjoy - the
cost of slave labor consists (after the slaves are
purchased) entirely of the comforts of life which the
master gives to his slaves. The hirer of free laborers
maintains the families of those laborers, in sickness and
in health, in infancy and in old age, precisely as does
the master his slaves - the only difference being that
the free laborer expends the hire himself for those purposes,
whilst the master expends it for the slave. If
free labor be cheapest, it is because it costs the employer
less to support the free laborer and his family, than it
does the master to support his slaves. Price is the
measure of things useful to man. If the slave's labor
costs more than the free man's, he gets a larger measure
of things useful to mankind. Now this is exact or
demonstrative reasoning, because it treats of quantities
of things physical or material, which admit of
admeasurement. Mathematical certainty is attainable by
argument of this kind. We think, (granting our premises,
that free labor is cheaper than slave labor,) we
have attained this degree of certainty. We add as a
corollary, that the slave's physical condition is exactly
so much better than the free laborer's, as the cost of
slave labor exceeds that of free labor. Now, as to the
relative moral condition of the slave and the free laborer,
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Page 282IV.
Has the State the right to enslave them? Slavery
is but a form of government, and we have shewn
it is
the duty and practice of every State to adopt the degree
of control and form of government as near as
practicable to the capacity and necessity of each
individual. Guardians are provided for children, masters
for apprentices, captains for sailors and soldiers, dark
cells and hard work for convicts, and straight jackets
for lunatics. No one doubts that it is as well the right
as the duty of government to make these provisions,
and abridge or take away liberty from all white citizens
who are not qualified to enjoy it. Every other form
of government than that of slavery has signally failed
in the case of the negro. He is an enemy to himself,
and an intolerable pest and nuisance to society, where
ever among the whites he is free. The Abolitionists
failing in their efforts to free the slaves, have
Page 283
Ludit
exultim metuit que tangi.
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Who,
ever so tame, so cherished and locked up,
Will
have a wild trick of his ancestors,"
Page 288
Precipites
atra, ceu tempestate
Columbæ
Condensæ,
et Divum
amplexæ semulacra tenebant.
Page 289
She
is my goods, my chattels; she is my house,
My
household stuff, my field, my barn,
My
horse, my ox, my ass, my any thing,
And
here she stands; touch her whoever dare.
To
the last gasp, with truth and loyalty."
Page 290
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Page 292SLAVERY JUSTIFIED.
THE SUBJECT CONTINUED.
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CONTENTS.
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APPENDIX.