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Title: Cannibals all!
or, Slaves without masters
Author: George Fitzhugh
Release Date: March 4, 2011 [EBook #35481]
Language: English
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CANNIBALS ALL!
OR,
SLAVES WITHOUT MASTERS.
BY
GEORGE FITZHUGH,
OF PORT ROYAL, CAROLINE, VA.
"His hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against
him."--GEN. XVI. 12.
"Physician, heal thyself."--LUKE IV. 23.
RICHMOND, VA.
A. MORRIS, PUBLISHER.
1857.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by
ADOLPHUS MORRIS,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States
for the Eastern District of Virginia.
C. H. WYNNE, PRINTER, RICHMOND.
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
DEDICATION vii
PREFACE ix
INTRODUCTION xiii
CHAPTER I.
The Universal Trade 25
CHAPTER II.
Labor, Skill and Capital 33
CHAPTER III.
Subject Continued--Exploitation of Skill 58
CHAPTER IV.
International Exploitation 75
CHAPTER V.
False Philosophy of the Age 79
CHAPTER VI.
Free Trade, Fashion and Centralization 86
CHAPTER VII.
The World is _Too Little_ Governed 97
CHAPTER VIII.
Liberty and Slavery 106
CHAPTER IX.
Paley on Exploitation 124
CHAPTER X.
Our best Witnesses and Masters in the Art of War 127
CHAPTER XI.
Decay of English Liberty, and growth of English Poor Laws 157
CHAPTER XII.
The French Laborers and the French Revolution 176
CHAPTER XIII.
The Reformation--The Right of Private Judgment 194
CHAPTER XIV.
The Nomadic Beggars and Pauper Banditti of England 204
CHAPTER XV.
"Rural Life of England," 218
CHAPTER XVI.
The Distressed Needle-Women and Hood's Song of the Shirt 223
CHAPTER XVII.
The Edinburgh Review on Southern Slavery 236
CHAPTER XVIII.
The London Globe on West India Emancipation 274
CHAPTER XIX.
Protection, and Charity, to the Weak 278
CHAPTER XX.
The Family 281
CHAPTER XXI.
Negro Slavery 294
CHAPTER XXII.
The Strength of Weakness 300
CHAPTER XXIII.
Money 303
CHAPTER XXIV.
Gerrit Smith on Land Reform, and William Loyd Garrison
on No-Government 306
CHAPTER XXV.
In what Anti-Slavery ends 311
CHAPTER XXVI.
Christian Morality impracticable in Free Society--but
the Natural Morality of Slave Society 316
CHAPTER XXVII.
Slavery--Its effects on the Free 320
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Private Property destroys Liberty and Equality 323
CHAPTER XXIX.
The National Era an Excellent Witness 327
CHAPTER XXX.
The Philosophy of the Isms--Shewing why they abound
at the North, and are unknown at the South 332
CHAPTER XXXI.
Deficiency of Food in Free Society 335
CHAPTER XXXII.
Man has Property in Man 341
CHAPTER XXXIII.
The "Coup de Grace" to Abolition 344
CHAPTER XXXIV.
National Wealth, Individual Wealth, Luxury and economy 350
CHAPTER XXXV.
Government a thing of Force, not of Consent 353
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Warning to the North 363
Chapter XXXVII.
Addendum 373
DEDICATION.
TO THE HONORABLE HENRY A. WISE.
DEAR SIR:
I dedicate this work to you, because I am acquainted with no one who has
so zealously, laboriously and successfully endeavored to Virginianise
Virginia, by encouraging, through State legislation, her intellectual
and physical growth and development; no one who has seen so clearly the
evils of centralization from without, and worked so earnestly to cure or
avert those evils, by building up centralization within.
Virginia should have her centres of Thought at her Colleges and her
University, centres of Trade and Manufactures at her Seaboard and
Western towns, and centres of Fashion at her Mineral Springs.
I agree with you, too, that State strength and State independence are
the best guarantees of State rights; and that policy the wisest which
most promotes the growth of State strength and independence.
Weakness invites aggression; strength commands respect; hence, the Union
is safest when its separate members are best able to repel injury, or to
live independently.
Your attachment to Virginia has not lessened your love for the Union. In
urging forward to completion such works as the Covington and Ohio Road,
you are trying to add to the wealth, the glory and the strength of our
own State, whilst you would add equally to the wealth, the strength and
perpetuity of the Union.
I cannot commit you to all the doctrines of my book, for you will not
see it until it is published.
With very great respect,
Your obedient servant,
GEO. FITZHUGH.
_Port Royal, Aug. 22, 1856._
PREFACE.
I have endeavored, in this work, to treat the subjects of Liberty and
Slavery in a more rigidly analytical manner than in "Sociology for the
South;" and, at the same time, to furnish the reader with abundance of
facts, authorities and admissions, whereby to test the truth of my
views.
My chief aim has been to shew, that _Labor makes values, and Wit
exploitates and accumulates them_; and hence to deduce the conclusion
that the unrestricted exploitation of so-called free society, is more
oppressive to the laborer than domestic slavery.
In making a distinct onslaught on the popular doctrines of Modern
Ethics, I must share the credit or censure with my corresponding
acquaintance and friend, Professor H. of Virginia.
Our acquaintance commenced by his congratulating me, by letter, on the
announcement that I was occupied with a treatise vindicating the
institution of Slavery in the abstract, and by his suggestion, that he
foresaw, from what he had read of my communications to the papers, that
I should be compelled to make a general assault on the prevalent
political and moral philosophy. This letter, and others subsequent to
it, together with the reception of my Book by the Southern Public, have
induced me in the present work to avow the full breadth and scope of my
purpose. I am sure it will be easier to convince the world that the
customary theories of our Modern Ethical Philosophy, whether utilitarian
or sentimental, are so fallacious or so false in their premises and
their deductions as to deserve rejection, than to persuade it that the
social forms under which it lives, and attempts to justify and approve,
are equally erroneous, and should be re-placed by others founded on a
broader philosophical system and more Christian principles.
Yet, I believe that, under the banners of Socialism and more dangerous,
because more delusive, Semi-Socialism, society is insensibly, and often
unconsciously, marching to the utter abandonment of the most essential
institutions--religion, family ties, property, and the restraints of
justice. The present profession is, indeed, to stop at the half-way
house of No-Government and Free Love; but we are sure that it cannot
halt and encamp in such quarters. Society will work out erroneous
doctrines to their logical consequences, and detect error only by the
experience of mischief. The world will only fall back on domestic
slavery when all other social forms have failed and been exhausted. That
hour may not be far off.
Mr. H. will not see this work before its publication, and would dissent
from many of its details, from the unrestricted latitude of its
positions, and from its want of precise definition. The time has not yet
arrived, in my opinion, for such precision, nor will it arrive until the
present philosophy is seen to be untenable, and we begin to look about
us for a loftier and more enlightened substitute.
INTRODUCTION.
In our little work, "Sociology for the South," we said, "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." That little work has met, every where, we believe, at the
South, with a favorable reception. No one has denied its theory of Free
Society, nor disputed the facts on which that theory rests. Very many
able co-laborers have arisen, and many books and essays are daily
appearing, taking higher ground in defence of Slavery; justifying it as
a normal and natural institution, instead of excusing or apologizing for
it, as an exceptional one. It is now treated as a positive good, not a
necessary evil. The success, not the ability of our essay, may have had
some influence in eliciting this new mode of defence. We have, for many
years, been gradually and cautiously testing public opinion at the
South, and have ascertained that it is ready to approve, and much
prefers, the highest ground of defence. We have no peculiar fitness for
the work we are engaged in, except the confidence that we address a
public predisposed to approve our doctrines, however bold or novel.
Heretofore the great difficulty in defending Slavery has arisen from the
fear that the public would take offence at assaults on its
long-cherished political axioms; which, nevertheless, stood in the way
of that defence. It is now evident that those axioms have outlived their
day--for no one, either North or South, has complained of our rather
ferocious assault on them--much less attempted to reply to or refute our
arguments and objections. All men begin very clearly to perceive, that
the state of revolution is politically and socially abnormal and
exceptional, and that the principles that would justify it are true in
the particular, false in the general. "A recurrence to fundamental
principles," by an oppressed people, is treason if it fails; the noblest
of heroism if it eventuates in successful revolution. But a "frequent
recurrence to fundamental principles" is at war with the continued
existence of all government, and is a doctrine fit to be sported only by
the Isms of the North and the Red Republicans of Europe. With them no
principles are considered established and sacred, nor will ever be.
When, in time of revolution, society is partially disbanded,
disintegrated and dissolved, the doctrine of Human Equality may have a
hearing, and may be useful in stimulating rebellion; but it is
practically impossible, and directly conflicts with all government, all
separate property, and all social existence. We cite these two examples,
as instances, to shew how the wisest and best of men are sure to deduce,
as general principles, what is only true as to themselves and their
peculiar circumstances. Never were people blessed with such wise and
noble Institutions as we; for they combine most that was good in those
of Rome and Greece, of Judea, and of Mediæval England. But the
mischievous absurdity of our political axioms and principles quite
equals the wisdom and conservatism of our political practices. The ready
appreciation by the public of such doctrines as these, encourages us to
persevere in writing. The silence of the North is far more encouraging,
however, than the approbation of the South. Piqued and taunted for two
years, by many Southern Presses of high standing, to deny the
proposition that Free Society in Western Europe is a failure, and that
it betrays premonitory symptoms of failure, even in America, the North
is silent, and thus tacitly admits the charge. Challenged to compare and
weigh the advantages and disadvantages of our domestic slavery with
their slavery of the masses to capital and skill, it is mute, and
neither accepts nor declines our challenge. The comparative evils of
Slave Society and of Free Society, of slavery to human Masters and of
slavery to Capital, are the issues which the South now presents, and
which the North avoids. And she avoids them, because the Abolitionists,
the only assailants of Southern Slavery, have, we believe, to a man,
asserted the entire failure of their own social system, proposed its
subversion, and suggested an approximating millenium, or some system of
Free Love, Communism, or Socialism, as a substitute.
The alarming extent of this state of public opinion, or, to speak more
accurately, the absence of any public opinion, or common faith and
conviction about anything, is not dreamed of at the South, nor fully and
properly realized, even at the North. _We_ cannot believe what is so
entirely different from all our experience and observation, and _they_
have become familiarized and inattentive to the infected social
atmosphere they continually inhale. Besides, living in the midst of the
isms, their situation is not favorable for comprehensive observation or
calm generalization. More than a year since, we made a short trip to the
North, and whilst there only associated with distinguished
Abolitionists. We have corresponded much with them, before and since,
and read many of their books, lectures, essays and speeches. We have
neither seen nor heard any denial by them of the failure of their own
social system; but, in the contrary, found that they all concurred in
the necessity of radical social changes. 'Tis true, in conversation,
they will say, "Our system of society is bad, but yours of the South is
worse; the cause of social science is advancing, and we are ready to
institute a system better than either." We could give many private
anecdotes, and quote thousands of authorities, to prove that such is the
exact state of opinion with the multitudinous isms of the North. The
correctness of our statement will not be denied. If it is, any one may
satisfy himself of its truth by reading any Abolition or Infidel paper
at the North for a single month. The Liberator, of Boston, their ablest
paper, gives continually the fullest exposé of their opinions, and of
their wholesale destructiveness of purpose.
The neglect of the North to take issue with us, or with the Southern
Press, in the new positions which we have assumed, our own observations
of the working of Northern society, the alarming increase of Socialism,
as evinced by its control of many Northern State Legislatures, and its
majority in the lower house of Congress, are all new proofs of the truth
of our doctrine. The character of that majority in Congress is displayed
in full relief, by the single fact, which we saw stated in a Northern
Abolition paper, that "there are a hundred Spiritual Rappers in
Congress." A Northern member of Congress made a similar remark to us a
few days since. 'Tis but a copy of the Hiss Legislature of
Massachusetts, or the Praise-God-Barebones Parliament of England.
Further study, too, of Western European Society, which has been engaged
in continual revolution for twenty years, has satisfied us that Free
Society every where begets isms, and that isms soon beget bloody
revolutions. Until our trip to the North, we did not justly appreciate
the passage which we are about to quote from Mr. Carlyle's "Latter-Day
Pamphlets." Now it seems to us as if Boston, New Haven, or Western New
York, had set for the picture:
"To rectify the relation that exists between two men, is there no
method, then, but that of ending it? The old relation has become
unsuitable, obsolete, perhaps unjust; and the remedy is, abolish
it; let there henceforth be no relation at all. From the
'sacrament of marriage' downwards, human beings used to be
manifoldly related one to another, and each to all; and there was
no relation among human beings, just or unjust, that had not its
grievances and its difficulties, its necessities on both sides to
bear and forbear. But henceforth, be it known, we have changed all
that by favor of Heaven; the 'voluntary principle' has come up,
which will itself do the business for us; and now let a new
sacrament, that of _Divorce_, which we call emancipation, and
spout of on our platforms, be universally the order of the day!
Have men considered whither all this is tending, and what it
certainly enough betokens? Cut every human relation that has any
where grown uneasy sheer asunder; reduce whatsoever was compulsory
to voluntary, whatsoever was permanent among us to the condition
of the nomadic; in other words, LOOSEN BY ASSIDUOUS WEDGES, in
every joint, the whole fabrice of social existence, stone from
stone, till at last, all lie now quite loose enough, it can, as we
already see in most countries, be overset by sudden outburst of
revolutionary rage; and lying as mere mountains of anarchic
rubbish, solicit you to sing Fraternity, &c. over it, and rejoice
in the now remarkable era of human progress we have arrived at."
Now we plant ourselves on this passage from Carlyle. We say that, as far
as it goes, 'tis a faithful picture of the isms of the North. But the
restraints of Law and Public Opinion are less at the North than in
Europe. The isms on each side the Atlantic are equally busy with
"assiduous wedges," in "loosening in every joint the whole fabric of
social existence;" but whilst they dare invoke Anarchy in Europe, they
dare not inaugurate New York Free Love, and Oneida Incest, and Mormon
Polygamy. The moral, religious, and social heresies of the North, are
more monstrous than those of Europe. The pupil has surpassed the master,
unaided by the stimulants of poverty, hunger and nakedness, which urge
the master forward.
Society need not fail in the North-east until the whole West is settled,
and a refluent population, or excess of immigration, overstocks
permanently the labor market on the Atlantic board. Till then, the
despotism of skill and capital, in forcing emigration to the West, makes
proprietors of those emigrants, benefits them, peoples the West, and by
their return trade, enriches the East. The social forms of the North and
the South are, for the present, equally promotive of growth and
prosperity at home, and equally beneficial to mankind at large, by
affording asylums to the oppressed, and by furnishing food and clothing
to all. Northern society is a partial failure, but only because it
generates isms which threaten it with overthrow and impede its progress.
Despite of appearing vain and egotistical, we cannot refrain from
mentioning another circumstance that encourages us to write. At the very
time when we were writing our pamphlet entitled "Slavery Justified," in
which we took ground that Free Society had failed, Mr. Carlyle began to
write his "_Latter Day_ Pamphlets," whose very title is the assertion of
the failure of Free Society. The proof derived from this coincidence
becomes the stronger, when it is perceived that an ordinary man on this
side the Atlantic discovered and was exposing the same social phenomena
that an extraordinary one had discovered and was exposing on the other.
The very titles of our works are synonymous--for the "Latter Day" is the
"Failure of Society."
Mr. Carlyle, and Miss Fanny Wright (in her England the Civilizer)
vindicate Slavery by shewing that each of its apparent relaxations in
England has injured the laboring class. They were fully and ably
represented in Parliament by their ancient masters, the Barons. Since
the Throne, and the Church, and the Nobility, have been stripped of
their power, and a House of Commons, representing lands and money, rules
despotically, the masses have become outlawed. They labor under all the
disadvantages of slavery, and have none of the rights of slaves. This is
the true history of the English Constitution, and one which we intend,
in the sequel, more fully to expound. This presents another reason why
we again appear before the public. Blackstone, which is read by most
American gentlemen, teaches a doctrine the exact reverse of this, and
that doctrine we shall try to refute.
Returning from the North, we procured in New York a copy of Aristotle's
"Politics and Economics." To our surprise, we found that our theory of
the origin of society was identical with his, and that we had employed
not only the same illustrations, but the very same words. We saw at once
that the true vindication of slavery must be founded on his theory of
man's social nature, as opposed to Locke's theory of the Social
Contract, on which latter Free Society rests for support. 'Tis true we
had broached this doctrine; but with the world at large our authority
was merely repulsive, whilst the same doctrine, coming from Aristotle,
had, besides his name, two thousand years of human approval and
concurrence in its favor; for, without that concurrence and approval,
his book would have long since perished.
In addition to all this, we think we have discovered that Moses has
anticipated the Socialists, and that in prohibiting "usury of money, and
of victuals, and of all things that are lent on usury," and in
denouncing "increase" he was far wiser than Aristotle, and saw that
other capital or property did not "breed" any more than money, and that
its profits were unjust exactions levied from the laboring man. The
Socialists proclaim this as a discovery of their own. We think Moses
discovered and proclaimed it more than three thousand years ago--and
that it is the only true theory of capital and labor, the only adequate
theoretical defence of Slavery--for it proves that the profits which
capital exacts from labor makes free laborers slaves, without the
rights, privileges or advantages of domestic slaves, and capitalists
their masters, with all the advantages, and none of the burdens and
obligations of the ordinary owners of slaves.
The scientific title of this work would be best expressed by the
conventional French term "_Exploitation_." We endeavor to translate by
the double periphrases of "Cannibals All; or, Slaves without Masters."
We have been imprudent enough to write our Introduction first, and may
fail to satisfy the expectations which we excite. Our excess of candor
must, in that event, in part supply our deficiency of ability.
CANNIBALS ALL!
CHAPTER I.
THE UNIVERSAL TRADE.
We are, all, North and South, engaged in the White Slave Trade, and he
who succeeds best, is esteemed most respectable. It is far more cruel
than the Black Slave Trade, because it exacts more of its slaves, and
neither protects nor governs them. We boast, that it exacts more, when
we say, "that the _profits_ made from employing free labor are greater
than those from slave labor." The profits, made from free labor, are the
amount of the products of such labor, which the employer, by means of
the command which capital or skill gives him, takes away, exacts or
"exploitates" from the free laborer. The profits of slave labor are that
portion of the products of such labor which the power of the master
enables him to appropriate. These profits are less, because the master
allows the slave to retain a larger share of the results of his own
labor, than do the employers of free labor. But we not only boast that
the White Slave Trade is more exacting and fraudulent (in fact, though
not in intention,) than Black Slavery; but we also boast, that it is
more cruel, in leaving the laborer to take care of himself and family
out of the pittance which skill or capital have allowed him to retain.
When the day's labor is ended, he is free, but is overburdened with the
cares of family and household, which make his freedom an empty and
delusive mockery. But his employer is really free, and may enjoy the
profits made by others' labor, without a care, or a trouble, as to their
well-being. The negro slave is free, too, when the labors of the day are
over, and free in mind as well as body; for the master provides food,
raiment, house, fuel, and everything else necessary to the physical
well-being of himself and family. The master's labors commence just when
the slave's end. No wonder men should prefer white slavery to capital,
to negro slavery, since it is more profitable, and is free from all the
cares and labors of black slave-holding.
Now, reader, it you wish to know yourself--to "descant on your own
deformity"--read on. But if you would cherish self-conceit, self-esteem,
or self-appreciation, throw down our book; for we will dispel illusions
which have promoted your happiness, and shew you that what you have
considered and practiced as virtue, is little better than moral
Cannibalism. But you will find yourself in numerous and respectable
company; for all good and respectable people are "Cannibals all," who do
not labor, or who are successfully trying to live without labor, on the
unrequited labor of other people:--Whilst low, bad, and disreputable
people, are those who labor to support themselves, and to support said
respectable people besides. Throwing the negro slaves out of the
account, and society is divided in Christendom into four classes: The
rich, or independent respectable people, who live well and labor not at
all; the professional and skillful respectable people, who do a little
light work, for enormous wages; the poor hard-working people, who
support every body, and starve themselves; and the poor thieves,
swindlers and sturdy beggars, who live like gentlemen, without labor, on
the labor of other people. The gentlemen exploitate, which being done on
a large scale, and requiring a great many victims, is highly
respectable--whilst the rogues and beggars take so little from others,
that they fare little better than those who labor.
But, reader, we do not wish to fire into the flock. "Thou art the man!"
You are a Cannibal! and if a successful one, pride yourself on the
number of your victims, quite as much as any Feejee chieftain, who
breakfasts, dines and sups on human flesh.--And your conscience smites
you, if you have failed to succeed, quite as much as his, when he
returns from an unsuccessful foray.
Probably, you are a lawyer, or a merchant, or a doctor, who have made by
your business fifty thousand dollars, and retired to live on your
capital. But, mark! not to spend your capital. That would be vulgar,
disreputable, criminal. That would be, to live by your own labor; for
your capital is your amassed labor. That would be, to do as common
working men do; for they take the pittance which their employees leave
them, to live on. They live by labor; for they exchange the results of
their own labor for the products of other people's labor. It is, no
doubt, an honest, vulgar way of living; but not at all a respectable
way. The respectable way of living is, to make other people work for
you, and to pay them nothing for so doing--and to have no concern about
them after their work is done. Hence, white slave-holding is much more
respectable than negro slavery--for the master works nearly as hard for
the negro, as he for the master. But you, my virtuous, respectable
reader, exact three thousand dollars per annum from white labor, (for
your income is the product of white labor,) and make not one cent of
return in any form. You retain your capital, and never labor, and yet
live in luxury on the labor of others. Capital commands labor, as the
master does the slave. Neither pays for labor; but the master permits
the slave to retain a larger allowance from the proceeds of his own
labor, and hence "free labor is cheaper than slave labor." You, with
the command over labor which your capital gives you, are a slave
owner--a master, without the obligations of a master. They who work for
you, who create your income, are slaves, without the rights of slaves.
Slaves without a master! Whilst you were engaged in amassing your
capital, in seeking to become independent, you were in the White Slave
Trade. To become independent, is to be able to make other people support
you, without being obliged to labor for _them_. Now, what man in society
is not seeking to attain this situation? He who attains it, is a slave
owner, in the worst sense. He who is in pursuit of it, is engaged in the
slave trade. You, reader, belong to the one or other class. The men
without property, in free society, are theoretically in a worse
condition than slaves. Practically, their condition corresponds with
this theory, as history and statistics every where demonstrate. The
capitalists, in free society, live in ten times the luxury and show that
Southern masters do, because the slaves to capital work harder and cost
less, than negro slaves.
The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some sense, the
freest people in the world. The children and the aged and infirm work
not at all, and yet have all the comforts and necessaries of life
provided for them. They enjoy liberty, because they are oppressed
neither by care nor labor. The women do little hard work, and are
protected from the despotism of their husbands by their masters. The
negro men and stout boys work, on the average, in good weather, not more
than nine hours a day. The balance of their time is spent in perfect
abandon. Besides, they have their Sabbaths and holidays. White men, with
so much of license and liberty, would die of ennui; but negroes
luxuriate in corporeal and mental repose. With their faces upturned to
the sun, they can sleep at any hour; and quiet sleep is the greatest of
human enjoyments. "Blessed be the man who invented sleep." 'Tis
happiness in itself--and results from contentment with the present, and
confident assurance of the future. We do not know whether free laborers
ever sleep. They are fools to do so; for, whilst they sleep, the wily
and watchful capitalist is devising means to ensnare and exploitate
them. The free laborer must work or starve. He is more of a slave than
the negro, because he works longer and harder for less allowance than
the slave, and has no holiday, because the cares of life with him begin
when its labors end. He has no liberty, and not a single right. We know,
'tis often said, air and water, are common property, which all have
equal right to participate and enjoy; but this is utterly false. The
appropriation of the lands carries with it the appropriation of all on
or above the lands, _usque ad coelum, aut ad inferos_. A man cannot
breathe the air, without a place to breathe it from, and all places are
appropriated. All water is private property "to the middle of the
stream," except the ocean, and that is not fit to drink.
Free laborers have not a thousandth part of the rights and liberties of
negro slaves. Indeed, they have not a single right or a single liberty,
unless it be the right or liberty to die. But the reader may think that
he and other capitalists and employers are freer than negro slaves. Your
capital would soon vanish, if you dared indulge in the liberty and
abandon of negroes. You hold your wealth and position by the tenure of
constant watchfulness, care and circumspection. You never labor; but you
are never free.
Where a few own the soil, they have unlimited power over the balance of
society, until domestic slavery comes in, to compel them to permit this
balance of society to draw a sufficient and comfortable living from
"terra mater." Free society, asserts the right of a few to the
earth--slavery, maintains that it belongs, in different degrees, to all.
But, reader, well may you follow the slave trade. It is the only trade
worth following, and slaves the only property worth owning. All other is
worthless, a mere _caput mortuum_, except in so far as it vests the
owner with the power to command the labors of others--to enslave them.
Give you a palace, ten thousand acres of land, sumptuous clothes,
equipage and every other luxury; and with your artificial wants, you are
poorer than Robinson Crusoe, or the lowest working man, if you have no
slaves to capital, or domestic slaves. Your capital will not bring you
an income of a cent, nor supply one of your wants, without labor. Labor
is indispensable to give value to property, and if you owned every thing
else, and did not own labor, you would be poor. But fifty thousand
dollars means, and is, fifty thousand dollars worth of slaves. You can
command, without touching on that capital, three thousand dollars' worth
of labor per annum. You could do no more were you to buy slaves with it,
and then you would be cumbered with the cares of governing and providing
for them. You are a slaveholder now, to the amount of fifty thousand
dollars, with all the advantages, and none of the cares and
responsibilities of a master.
"Property in man" is what all are struggling to obtain. Why should they
not be obliged to take care of man, their property, as they do of their
horses and their hounds, their cattle and their sheep. Now, under the
delusive name of liberty, you work him, "from morn to dewy eve"--from
infancy to old age--then turn him out to starve. You treat your horses
and hounds better. Capital is a cruel master. The free slave trade, the
commonest, yet the cruellest of trades.
CHAPTER II.
LABOR, SKILL AND CAPITAL.
Nothing written on the subject of slavery from the time of Aristotle, is
worth reading, until the days of the modern Socialists. Nobody, treating
of it, thought it worth while to enquire from history and statistics,
whether the physical and moral condition of emancipated serfs or slaves
had been improved or rendered worse by emancipation. None would
condescend to compare the evils of domestic slavery with the evils of
liberty without property. It entered no one's head to conceive a doubt
as to the actual freedom of the emancipated. The relations of capital
and labor, of the property-holders to the non-property-holders, were
things about which no one had thought or written. It never occurred to
either the enemies or the apologists for slavery, that if no one would
employ the free laborer, his condition was infinitely worse than that of
actual slavery--nor did it occur to them, that if his wages were less
than the allowance of the slave, he was less free after emancipation
than before. St. Simon, Fourier, Owen, Fanny Wright, and a few others,
who discovered and proclaimed that property was not only a bad master,
but an intolerable one, were treated as wicked visionaries. After the
French and other revolutions in Western Europe in 1830, all men suddenly
discovered that the social relations of men were false, and that social,
not political, revolutions were needed. Since that period, almost the
whole literature of free society is but a voice proclaiming its absolute
and total failure. Hence the works of the socialists contain the true
defence of slavery.
Most of the active intellect of Christendom has for the last twenty
years been engaged in analyzing, detecting and exposing the existing
relations of labor, skill and capital, and in vain efforts to rectify
those relations. The philosophers of Europe, who have been thus engaged,
have excelled all the moral philosophers that preceded them, in the
former part of their pursuit, but suggested nothing but puerile
absurdities, in the latter. Their destructive philosophy is profound,
demonstrative, and unanswerable--their constructive theories, wild,
visionary and chimerical on paper, and failures in practice. Each one of
them proves clearly enough, that the present edifice of European society
is out of all rule and proportion, and must soon tumble to pieces--but
no two agree as to how it is to be re-built. "We must (say they all)
have a new world, if we are to have any world at all!" and each has a
little model Utopia or Phalanstery, for this new and better world,
which, having already failed on a small experimental scale, the inventor
assures us, is, therefore, the very thing to succeed on a large one. We
allude to the socialists and communists, who have more or less tinged
all modern literature with their doctrines. In analyzing society; in
detecting, exposing, and generalizing its operations and its various
phenomena, they are but grammarians or anatomists, confining philosophy
to its proper sphere, and employing it for useful purposes. When they
attempt to go further--and having found the present social system to be
fatally diseased, propose to originate and build up another in its
stead--they are as presumptuous as the anatomist, who should attempt to
create a man. Social bodies, like human bodies, are the works of God,
which man may dissect, and sometimes heal, but which he cannot create.
Society was not always thus diseased, or socialism would have been as
common in the past as it is now. We think these presumptuous
philosophers had best compare it in its healthy state with what it is
now, and supply deficiencies or lop off excrescencies, as the comparison
may suggest. But our present business is to call attention to some
valuable discoveries in the terra firma of social science, which these
socialists have made in their vain voyages in search of an ever receding
and illusory Utopia. Like the alchymists, although they have signally
failed in the objects of their pursuits, they have incidentally hit
upon truths, unregarded and unprized by themselves, which will be
valuable in the hands of more practical and less sanguine men. It is
remarkable, that the political economists, who generally assume labor to
be the most just and correct measure of value, should not have
discovered that the profits of capital represent no labor at all. To be
consistent, the political economists should denounce as unjust all
interests, rents, dividends and other profits of capital. We mean by
rents, that portion of the rent which is strictly income. The amount
annually required for repairs and ultimately to rebuild the house, is
not profit. Four per cent. will do this. A rent of ten per cent. is in
such case a profit of six per cent. The four per cent. is but a return
to the builder of his labor and capital spent in building. "The use of a
thing, is only a fair subject of change, in so far as the article used
is consumed in the use; for such consumption is the consumption of the
labor or capital of the owner, and is but the exchange of equivalent
amounts of labor."
These socialists, having discovered that skill and capital, by means of
free competition, exercise an undue mastery over labor, propose to do
away with skill, capital, and free competition, altogether. They would
heal the diseases of society by destroying its most vital functions.
Having laid down the broad proposition, that equal amounts of labor, or
their results, should be exchanged for each other, they get at the
conclusion that as the profits of capital are not the results of labor,
the capitalist shall be denied all interest or rents, or other profits
on his capital, and be compelled in all cases to exchange a part of the
capital itself, for labor, or its results. This would prevent
accumulation, or at least limit it to the procurement of the coarsest
necessaries of life. They say, "the lawyer and the artist do not work so
hard and continuously as the ploughman, and should receive less wages
than he--a bushel of wheat represents as much labor as a speech or
portrait, and should be exchanged for the one or the other." Such a
system of trade and exchange would equalize conditions, but would banish
civilization. Yet do these men show, that, by means of the taxation and
oppression, which capital and skill exercise over labor, the rich, the
professional, the trading and skillful part of society, have become the
masters of the laboring masses: whose condition, already intolerable, is
daily becoming worse. They point out distinctly the character of the
disease under which the patient is laboring, but see no way of curing
the disease except by killing the patient.
In the preceding chapter, we illustrated their theory of capital by a
single example. We might give hundreds of illustrations, and yet the
subject is so difficult that few readers will take the trouble to
understand it. Let us take two well known historical instances: England
became possessed of two fine islands, Ireland and Jamaica. Englishmen
took away, or defrauded, from the Irish, their lands; but professed to
leave the people free. The people, however, must have the use of land,
or starve. The English charged them, in rent, so much, that their
allowance, after deducting that rent, was not half that of Jamaica
slaves. They were compelled to labor for their landlords, by the fear of
hunger and death--forces stronger than the overseer's lash. They worked
more, and did not get half so much pay or allowance as the Jamaica
negroes. All the reports to the French and British Parliaments show that
the physical wants of the West India slaves were well supplied. The
Irish became the subjects of capital--slaves, with no masters obliged by
law, self-interest or domestic affections, to provide for them. The
freest people in the world, in the loose and common sense of words,
their condition, moral, physical and religious, was far worse than that
of civilized slaves ever has been or ever can be--for at length, after
centuries of slow starvation, three hundred thousand perished in a
single season, for want of food. Englishmen took the lands of Jamaica
also, but introduced negro slaves, whom they were compelled to support
at all seasons, and at any cost. The negroes were comfortable, until
philanthropy taxed the poor of England and Ireland a hundred millions
to free them. Now, they enjoy Irish liberty, whilst the English hold all
the good lands. They are destitute and savage, and in all respects worse
off than when in slavery.
Public opinion unites with self-interest, domestic affection and
municipal law to protect the slave. The man who maltreats the weak and
dependant, who abuses his authority over wife, children or slaves, is
universally detested. That same public opinion, which shields and
protects the slave, encourages the oppression of free laborers--for it
is considered more honorable and praiseworthy to obtain large fees than
small ones, to make good bargains than bad ones, (and all fees and
profits come ultimately from common laborers)--to live without work, by
the exactions of accumulated capital, than to labor at the plough or the
spade, for one's living. It is the interest of the capitalist and the
skillful to allow free laborers the least possible portion of the fruits
of their own labor; for all capital is created by labor, and the smaller
the allowance of the free laborer, the greater the gains of his
employer. To treat free laborers badly and unfairly, is universally
inculcated as a moral duty, and the selfishness of man's nature prompts
him to the most rigorous performance of this cannibalish duty. We appeal
to political economy; the ethical, social, political and economic
philosophy of free society, to prove the truth of our doctrines. As an
ethical and social guide, that philosophy teaches, that social,
individual and national competition, is a moral duty, and we have
attempted to prove that all competition is but the effort to enslave
others, without being encumbered with their support. As a political
guide, it would simply have government 'keep the peace;' or, to define
its doctrine more exactly, it teaches "that it is the whole duty of
government to hold the weak whilst the strong rob them"--for it punishes
crimes accompanied with force, which none but the weak-minded commit;
but encourages the war of the wits, in which the strong and astute are
sure to succeed, in stripping the weak and ignorant.
It is time, high time, that political economy was banished from our
schools. But what would this avail in free society, where men's
antagonistic relations suggest to each one, without a teacher, that "he
can only be just to himself, by doing wrong to others." Aristotle, and
most other ancient philosophers and statesmen, held the doctrine, "that
as money would not breed, interest should not be allowed." Moses, no
doubt, saw as the modern socialists do, that all other capital stood on
the same grounds with money. None of it is self-creative, or will
"breed." The language employed about "usury" and "increase" in 25th
Leviticus, and 23d Deuteronomy, is quite broad enough to embrace and
prohibit all profits of capital. Such interest or "increase," or
profits, might be charged to the Heathen, but not to the Jews. The whole
arrangements of Moses were obviously intended to prevent competition in
the dealings of the Jews with one another, and to beget permanent
equality of condition and fraternal feelings.
The socialists have done one great good. They enable us to understand
and appreciate the institutions of Moses, and to see, that none but
Divinity could have originated them.[1] The situation of Judea was, in
many respects, anomalous, and we are not to suppose that its political
and social relations were intended to be universal. Yet, here it is
distinctly asserted, that under certain circumstances, all profits on
capital are wrong.
The reformers of the present day are all teetotalists, and attempt to
banish evil altogether, not to lessen or restrict it. It would be wiser
to assume that there is nothing, in its essence, evil, in the moral or
physical world, but only rendered so by the wrongful applications which
men make of them. Science is every day discovering that the most fatal
poisons, when properly employed, become the most efficacious medicines.
So, what appear to be the evil passions and propensities of men, and of
societies, under proper regulation, may be made to minister to the
wisest and best of purposes. Civilized society has never been found
without that competition begotten by man's desire to throw most of the
burdens of life on others, and to enjoy the fruits of their labors
without exchanging equivalent labor of his own. In all such societies,
(outside the Bible,) such selfish and grasping appropriation is
inculcated as a moral duty; and he who succeeds best, either by the
exercise of professional skill, or by accumulation of capital, in
appropriating the labor of others, without laboring in return, is
considered most meritorious. It would be unfair, in treating of the
relations of capital and labor, not to consider its poor-house system,
the ultimate resort of the poor.
The taxes or poor rates which support this system of relief, like all
other taxes and values, are derived from the labor of the poor. The
able-bodied, industrious poor are compelled by the rich and skillful to
support the weak, and too often, the idle poor. In addition to defraying
the necessary expenses and the wanton luxuries of the rich, to
supporting government, and supporting themselves, capital compels them
to support its poor houses. In collection of the poor rates, in their
distribution, and in the administration of the poor-house system,
probably half the tax raised for the poor is exhausted. Of the
remainder, possibly another half is expended on unworthy objects.
Masters, in like manner, support the sick, infant and aged slaves from
the labor of the strong and healthy. But nothing is wasted in collection
and administration, and nothing given to unworthy objects. The master
having the control of the objects of his bounty, takes care that they
shall not become burdensome by their own crimes and idleness. It is
contrary to all human customs and legal analogies, that those who are
dependent, or are likely to become so, should not be controlled. The
duty of protecting the weak involves the necessity of enslaving
them--hence, in all countries, women and children, wards and
apprentices, have been essentially slaves, controlled, not by law, but
by the will of a superior. This is a fatal defect in the poor-house
system. Many men become paupers from their own improvidence or
misconduct, and masters alone can prevent such misconduct and
improvidence. Masters treat their sick, infant and helpless slaves well,
not only from feeling and affection, but from motives of self-interest.
Good treatment renders them more valuable. All poor houses, are
administered on the penitentiary system, in order to deter the poor from
resorting to them. Besides, masters are always in place to render
needful aid to the unfortunate and helpless slaves. Thousands of the
poor starve out of reach of the poor house, or other public charity.
A common charge preferred against slavery is, that it induces idleness
with the masters. The trouble, care and labor, of providing for wife,
children and slaves, and of properly governing and administering the
whole affairs of the farm, is usually borne on small estates by the
master. On larger ones, he is aided by an overseer or manager. If they
do their duty, their time is fully occupied. If they do not, the estate
goes to ruin. The mistress, on Southern farms, is usually more busily,
usefully and benevolently occupied than any one on the farm. She unites
in her person, the offices of wife, mother, mistress, housekeeper, and
sister of charity. And she fulfills all these offices admirably well.
The rich men, in free society, may, if they please, lounge about town,
visit clubs, attend the theatre, and have no other trouble than that of
collecting rents, interest and dividends of stock. In a well constituted
slave society, there should be no idlers. But we cannot divine how the
capitalists in free society are to be put to work. The master labors for
the slave, they exchange industrial value. But the capitalist, living on
his income, gives nothing to his subjects. He lives by mere
exploitation.
It is objected that slavery permits or induces immorality and ignorance.
This is a mistake. The intercourse of the house-servants with the white
family, assimilates, in some degree, their state of information, and
their moral conduct, to that of the whites. The house-servants, by their
intercourse with the field hands, impart their knowledge to them. The
master enforces decent morality in all. Negroes are never ignorant of
the truths of Christianity, all speak intelligible English, and are
posted up in the ordinary occurrences of the times. The reports to the
British Parliament shew, that the agricultural and mining poor of
England scarce know the existence of God, do not speak intelligible
English, and are generally depraved and ignorant. They learn nothing by
intercourse with their superiors, as negroes do. They abuse wives and
children, because they have no masters to control them, and the men are
often dissipated and idle, leaving all the labor to be done by the women
and children--for the want of this same control.
Slavery, by separating the mass of the ignorant from each other, and
bringing them in contact and daily intercourse with the well-informed,
becomes an admirable educational system--no doubt a necessary one. By
subjecting them to the constant control and supervision of their
superiors, interested in enforcing morality, it becomes the best and
most efficient police system; so efficient, that the ancient Romans had
scarcely any criminal code whatever.
The great objections to the colonial slavery of the latter Romans, to
serfdom, and all forms of prædial slavery, are: that the slaves are
subjected to the cares as well as the labors of life; that the masters
become idlers; that want of intercourse destroys the affectionate
relations between master and slave, throws the mass of ignorant slaves
into no other association but that with the ignorant; and deprives them,
as well of the instruction, as the government, of superiors living on
the same farm. Southern slavery is becoming the best form of slavery of
which we have any history, except that of the Jews. The Jews owned but
few slaves, and with them the relation of master and slave was truly
affectionate, protective and patriarchal. The master, wife and children
were in constant intercourse with the slaves, and formed, in practice as
well as theory, affectionate, well-ordered families.
As modern civilization advances, slavery becomes daily more necessary,
because its tendency is to accumulate all capital in a few hands, cuts
off the masses from the soil, lessens their wages and their chances of
employment, and increases the necessity for a means of certain
subsistence, which slavery alone can furnish, when a few own all the
lands and other capital.
Christian morality can find little practical foothold in a community so
constituted, that to "love our neighbor as ourself," or "to do unto
others as we would they should do unto us," would be acts of suicidal
self-sacrifice. Christian morality, however, was not preached to free
competitive society, but to slave society, where it is neither very
difficult nor unnatural to practice it. In the various family relations
of husband, wife, parent, child, master and slave, the observance of
these Christian precepts is often practiced, and almost always promotes
the temporal well being of those who observe it. The interests of the
various members of the family circle, correctly understood, concur and
harmonize, and each member best promotes his own selfish interest by
ministering to the wants and interests of the rest. Two great stumbling
blocks are removed from the acceptance of Scripture, when it is proved
that slavery, which it recognizes, approves and enjoins, is promotive of
men's happiness and well-being, and that the morality, which it
inculcates, although wholly impracticable in free society, is readily
practised in that form of society to which it was addressed.
We do not conceive that there can be any other moral law in free
society, than that which teaches "that he is most meritorious who most
wrongs his fellow beings:" for any other law would make men martyrs to
their own virtues. We see thousands of good men vainly struggling
against the evil necessities of their situation, and aggravating by
their charities the evils which they would cure, for charity in free
society is but the tax which skill and capital levy from the working
poor, too often, to bestow on the less deserving and idle poor. We know
a man at the North who owns millions of dollars, and would throw every
cent into the ocean to benefit mankind. But it is capital, and, place it
where he will, it becomes an engine to tax and oppress the laboring
poor.
It is impossible to place labor and capital in harmonious or friendly
relations, except by the means of slavery, which identifies their
interests. Would that gentleman lay his capital out in land and negroes,
he might be sure, in whatever hands it came, that it would be employed
to protect laborers, not to oppress them; for when slaves are worth near
a thousand dollars a head, they will be carefully and well provided for.
In any other investment he may make of it, it will be used as an engine
to squeeze the largest amount of labor from the poor, for the least
amount of allowance. We say allowance, not wages; for neither slaves nor
free laborers get wages, in the popular sense of the term: that is, the
employer or capitalist pays them from nothing of his own, but allows
them a part, generally a very small part, of the proceeds of their own
labor. Free laborers pay one another, for labor creates all values, and
capital, after taking the lion's share by its taxing power, but pays the
so-called wages of one laborer from the proceeds of the labor of
another. Capital does not breed, yet remains undiminished. Its profits
are but its taxing power. Men seek to become independent, in order to
cease to pay labor; in order to become masters, without the cares,
duties and responsibilities of masters. Capital exercises a more perfect
compulsion over free laborers, than human masters over slaves: for free
laborers must at all times work or starve, and slaves are supported
whether they work or not. Free laborers have less liberty than slaves,
are worse paid and provided for, and have no valuable rights. Slaves,
with more of actual practical liberty, with ampler allowance, and
constant protection, are secure in the enjoyment of all the rights,
which provide for their physical comfort at all times and under all
circumstances. The free laborer must be employed or starve, yet no one
is obliged to employ him. The slave is taken care of, whether employed
or not. Though each free laborer has no particular master, his wants and
other men's capital, make him a slave without a master, or with too many
masters, which is as bad as none. It were often better that he had an
ascertained master, instead of an irresponsible and unascertained one.
There are some startling social phenomena connected with this subject of
labor and capital, which will probably be new to most of our readers.
Legislators and philosophers often puzzle their own and other people's
brains, in vain discussions as to how the taxes shall be laid, so as to
fall on the rich rather than the poor. It results from our theory, that
as labor creates all values, laborers pay all taxes, and the rich, in
the words of Gerrit Smith, "are but the conduits that pass them over to
government."
Again, since labor alone creates and pays the profits of capital;
increase and accumulation of capital but increase the labor of the poor,
and lessen their remuneration. Thus the poor are continually forging new
chains for themselves. Proudhon cites a familiar instance to prove and
illustrate this theory: A tenant improves a farm or house, and enhances
their rents; his labor thus becomes the means of increasing the tax,
which he or some one else must pay to the capitalist. What is true in
this instance, is true of the aggregate capital of the world: its
increase is but an increased tax on labor. A., by trade or speculation,
gets hold of an additional million of dollars, to the capital already in
existence. Now his million of dollars will yield no profit, unless a
number of pauper laborers, sufficient to pay its profits, are at the
same time brought into existence. After supporting their families, it
will require a thousand of laborers to pay the interest or profits of a
million of dollars. It may, therefore, be generally assumed as true,
that where a country has gained a millionaire, it has by the same
process gained a thousand pauper laborers: Provided it has been made by
profits on foreign trade, or by new values created at home--that is, if
it be an _addition_ of a million to the capital of the nation.
A nation borrows a hundred millions, at six per cent., for a hundred
years. During that time it pays, in way of tax, called interest, six
times the capital loaned, and then returns the capital itself. During
all this time, to the amount of the interest, the people of this nation
have been slaves to the lender. He has commanded, not paid, for their
labor; for his capital is returned intact. In the abstract, and
according to equity, "the use of an article is only a proper subject of
charge, when the article is consumed in the use; for this consumption is
the consumption of the labor of the lender or hirer, and is the exchange
of equal amounts of labor for each other.
A., as a merchant, a lawyer, or doctor, makes twenty dollars a day; that
is, exchanges each day of his own labor for twenty days of the labor of
common working men, assuming that they work at a dollar a day. In twenty
years, he amasses fifty thousand dollars, invests it, and settles it on
his family. Without any labor, he and his heirs, retaining all this
capital, continue, by its means, to levy a tax of three thousand dollars
from common laborers. He and his heirs now pay nothing for labor, but
command it. They have nothing to pay except their capital, and that they
retain. (This is the exploitation or despotism of capital, which has
taken the place of domestic slavery, and is, in fact, a much worse kind
of slavery. Hence arises socialism, which proposes to reconstruct
society.) Now, this capitalist is considered highly meritorious for so
doing, and the poor, self-sacrificing laborers, who really created his
capital, and who pay its profits, are thought contemptible, if not
criminal. In the general, those men are considered the most meritorious
who live in greatest splendor, with the least, or with no labor, and
they most contemptible, who labor most for others, and least for
themselves. In the abstract, however, that dealing appears most correct,
where men exchange equal amounts of labor, bear equal burdens for
others, with those that they impose on them. Such is the golden rule of
Scripture, but not the approved practice of mankind.
"The worth of a thing is just what it will bring," is the common trading
principle of mankind. Yet men revolt at the extreme applications of
their own principle, and denunciate any gross and palpable advantage
taken of the wants, position and necessities of others as _swindling_.
But we should recollect, that in all instances where unequal amounts of
labor are exchanged at par, advantage is really taken by him who gets
in exchange the larger amount of labor, of the wants, position and
necessities of him who receives the smaller amount.
We have said that laborers pay all taxes, but labor being capital in
slave society, the laborers or slaves are not injured by increased
taxes; and the capitalist or master has to retrench his own expenses to
meet the additional tax. Capital is not taxed in free society, but _is
taxed_ in slave society, because, in such society, labor is capital.
The capitalists and the professional can, and do, by increased profits
and fees, throw the whole burden of taxation on the laboring class.
Slaveholders cannot do so; for diminished allowance to their slaves,
would impair their value and lessen their own capital.
Our expose of what the socialists term the exploitation of skill and
capital, will not, we know, be satisfactory to slaveholders even; for,
although there be much less of such exploitation, or unjust exaction, in
slave society; still, too much of it remains to be agreeable to
contemplate. Besides, our analysis of human nature and human pursuits,
is too dark and sombre to meet with ready acceptance. We should be
rejoiced to see our theory refuted. We are sure, however, that it never
can be; but equally sure, that it is subject to many modifications and
limitations that have not occurred to us. We have this consolation,
that in rejecting as false and noxious all systems of moral philosophy,
we are thrown upon the Bible, as containing the only true system of
morals. We have attempted already to adduce three instances, in which
the justification of slavery furnished new and additional evidence of
the truth of Christianity. We will now add others.
It is notorious that infidelity appeared in the world, on an extensive
scale, only cotemporaneously with the abolition of slavery, and that it
is now limited to countries where no domestic slavery exists. Besides,
abolitionists are commonly infidels, as their speeches, conventions, and
papers daily evince. Where there is no slavery, the minds of men are
unsettled on all subjects, and there is, emphatically, faith and
conviction about nothing. Their moral and social world is in a chaotic
and anarchical state. Order, subordination and adaptation have vanished;
and with them, the belief in a Deity, the author of all order. It had
often been urged, that the order observable in the moral and physical
world, furnished strong evidence of a Deity, the author of that order.
How vastly is this argument now strengthened, by the new fact, now first
developed, that the destruction of social order generates universal
scepticism. Mere political revolutions affect social order but little,
and generate but little infidelity. It remained for social revolutions,
like those in Europe in 1848, to bring on an infidel age; for, outside
of slave society, such is the age in which we live.
If we prove that domestic slavery is, in the general, a natural and
necessary institution, we remove the greatest stumbling block to belief
in the Bible; for whilst texts, detached and torn from their context,
may be found for any other purpose, none can be found that even
militates against slavery. The distorted and forced construction of
certain passages, for this purpose, by abolitionists, if employed as a
common rule of construction, would reduce the Bible to a mere allegory,
to be interpreted to suit every vicious taste and wicked purpose.
But we have been looking merely to one side of human nature, and to that
side rendered darker by the false, antagonistic and competitive
relations in which so-called liberty and equality place man.
Man is, by nature, the most social and gregarious, and, therefore, the
least selfish of animals. Within the family there is little room,
opportunity or temptation to selfishness--and slavery leaves but little
of the world without the family. Man loves that nearest to him best.
First his wife, children and parents, then his slaves, next his
neighbors and fellow-countrymen. But his unselfishness does not stop
here. He is ready and anxious to relieve a famine in Ireland, and
shudders when he reads of a murder at the antipodes. He feels deeply for
the sufferings of domestic animals, and is rendered happy by witnessing
the enjoyments of the flocks, and herds, and carroling birds that
surround him. He sympathizes with all external nature. A parched field
distresses him, and he rejoices as he sees the groves, and the gardens,
and the plains flourishing, and blooming, and smiling about him. All men
are philanthropists, and would benefit their fellow-men if they could.
But we cannot be sure of benefiting those whom we cannot control. Hence,
all actively good men are ambitious, and would be masters, in all save
the name.
Benevolence, the love of what is without, and the disposition to incur
pain or inconvenience to advance the happiness and well-being of what is
without self, is as universal a motive of human conduct, as mere
selfishness--which is the disposition to sacrifice the good of others to
our own good.
The prevalent philosophy of the day takes cognizance of but half of
human nature--and that the worst half. Our happiness is so involved in
the happiness and well-being of everything around us, that a mere
selfish philosophy, like political economy, is a very unsafe and
delusive guide.
We employ the term Benevolence to express our outward affections,
sympathies, tastes and feelings; but it is inadequate to express our
meaning; it is not the opposite of selfishness, and unselfishness would
be too negative for our purpose. Philosophy has been so busy with the
worst feature of human nature, that it has not even found a name for
this, its better feature. We must fall back on Christianity, which
embraces man's whole nature, and though not a code of philosophy, is
something better; for it proposes to lead us through the trials and
intricacies of life, not by the mere cool calculations of the head, but
by the unerring instincts of a pure and regenerate heart. The problem
of the Moral World is too vast and complex for the human mind to
comprehend; yet the pure heart will, safely and quietly, feel its way
through the mazes that confound the head.
CHAPTER III.
SUBJECT CONTINUED--EXPLOITATION OF SKILL.
"The worth of a thing, is just what it bring." The professional man who
charges the highest fees is most respected, and he who undercharges
stands disgraced. We have a friend who has been, and we believe will
continue to be, one of the most useful men in Virginia. He inherited an
independent patrimony. He acquired a fine education, and betook himself
laboriously to an honorable profession. His success was great, and his
charges very high. In a few years he amassed a fortune, and ceased work.
We expounded our theory to him. Told him we used to consider him a good
man, and quite an example for the rising generation; but that now he
stood condemned under our theory. Whilst making his fortune, he daily
exchanged about one day of his light labor for thirty days of the
farmer, the gardener, the miner, the ditcher, the sewing woman, and
other common working people's labor. His capital was but the
accumulation of the results of their labor; for common labor creates all
capital. Their labor was more necessary and useful than his, and also
more honorable and respectable. The more honorable, because they were
contented with their situation and their profits, and not seeking to
exploitate, by exchanging one day of their labor for many of other
people's. To be exploitated, ought to be more creditable than to
exploitate. They were "slaves without masters;" the little fish, who
were food for all the larger. They stood disgraced, because they would
not practice cannibalism; rise in the world by more lucrative, less
useful and less laborious pursuits, and live by exploitation rather than
labor. He, by practising cannibalism more successfully than others, had
acquired fame and fortune. 'Twas the old tune--"Saul has slain his
thousands, and David his tens of thousands." The more scalps we can
shew, the more honored we are.
We told him he had made his fortune by the exploitation of skill, and
was now living by the still worse exploitation of capital. Whilst
working, he made thirty dollars a day--that is, exploitated or
appropriated the labor of thirty common working men, and gave in
exchange his own labor, intrinsically less worthy, than any one of
theirs. But now he was doing worse. He was using his capital as a power
to compel others to work for him--for whom he did not work at all. The
white laborers who made his income, or interests and dividends, were
wholly neglected by him, because he did not know even who they were. He
treated his negro slaves much better. It was true, he appropriated or
exploitated much of the results of their labor, but he governed them and
provided for them, with almost parental affection. Some of them we knew,
who feigned to be unfit for labor, he was boarding expensively. Our
friend at first ridiculed our theory. But by degrees began to see its
truth, and being sensitively conscientious, was disposed to fret
whenever the subject was introduced.
One day he met us, with a face beaming with smiles, and said, "I can
explain and justify that new theory of yours. This oppression and
exaction of skill and capital which we see continually practiced, and
which is too natural to man ever to cease, is necessary in order to
disperse and diffuse population over the globe. Half the good lands of
the world are unappropriated and invite settlement and cultivation. Most
men who choose can become proprietors by change of residence. They are
too much crowded in many countries, and exploitation that disperses them
is a blessing. It will be time enough to discuss your theory of the
despotism of skill and capital, when all the world is densely settled,
and the men without property can no longer escape from the exactions of
those who hold property."
Our friend's theory is certainly ingenious and novel, and goes far to
prove that exploitation is not an unmitigated evil. Under exceptional
circumstances, its good effects on human happiness and well-being, may
greatly over-balance its evil influences. Such, probably, is the case at
the North. There, free competition, and the consequent oppressions of
skill and capital are fiercer and more active than in any other country.
But in forty-eight hours, laborers may escape to the West, and become
proprietors. It is a blessing to them to be thus expelled, and a
blessing to those who expel them. The emigration to the West rids the
East of a surplus population, and enriches it by the interchanges of
trade and commerce which the emigration immediately begets. As an
exceptional form of society, we begin to think that at the North highly
useful. It will continue to be good and useful until the North-west is
peopled. Then, and not till then, it will be time for Mr. Greely to
build phalansteries, and for Gerrit Smith to divide all the lands. We
find that we shall have to defend the North as well as the South against
the assaults of the abolitionist--still, we cannot abate a jot or tittle
of our theory: "Slavery is the natural and normal condition of society."
The situation of the North is abnormal and anomalous. So in desert or
mountainous regions, where only small patches of land can be cultivated,
the father, wife and children are sufficient for the purpose, and
slavery would be superfluous.
In order to make sure that our reader shall comprehend our theory, we
will give a long extract from the "Science of Society," by Stephen
Pearle Andrews of New York. He is, we think, far the ablest writer on
moral science that America has produced. Though an abolitionist, he has
not a very bad opinion of slavery. We verily believe, there is not one
intelligent abolitionist at the North who does not believe that slavery
to capital in free society is worse than Southern negro slavery; but
like Mr. Andrews, they are all perfectionists, with a Utopia in full
view:
I. Suppose I am a wheelwright in a small village, and the only one of my
trade. You are travelling with certain valuables in your carriage, which
breaks down opposite my shop. It will take an hour of my time to mend
the carriage. You can get no other means of conveyance, and the loss to
you, if you fail to arrive at the neighboring town in season for the
sailing of a certain vessel, will be $500, which fact you mention to me,
in good faith, in order to quicken my exertions. I give one hour of my
work and mend the carriage. What am I in equity entitled to charge--what
should be the _limit of price_ upon my labor?
Let us apply the different measures, and see how they will operate. If
Value is the limit of price, then the price of the hour's labor should
be $500. That is the equivalent of the value of the labor to you. If
cost is the limit of price, then you should pay me a commodity, or
commodities, or a representative in currency, which will procure me
commodities having in them one hour's labor equally as hard as the
mending of the carriage, without the slightest reference to the degree
of benefit which that labor has bestowed on you; or, putting the
illustration in money, thus: assuming the twenty-five cents to be an
equivalent for an hour's labor of an artizan in that particular trade,
then, according to the _Cost Principle_, I should be justified in asking
only twenty-five cents, but according to the _Value Principle_, I should
be justified in asking $500.
The _Value Principle_, in some form of expression, is, as I have said,
the only _recognized_ principle of trade throughout the world. "A thing
is worth what it will bring in the market." Still, if I were to charge
you $500, or a fourth part of that sum, and, taking advantage of your
necessities, force you to pay it, everybody would denounce me, the poor
wheelwright, as an extortioner and a scoundrel. Why? Simply because this
is an _unusual_ application of the principle. Wheelwrights seldom have a
chance to make such a "speculation," and therefore it is not according
to the "established usages of trade." Hence its manifest injustice
shocks, in such a case, the common sense of right. Meanwhile you, a
wealthy merchant, are daily rolling up an immense fortune by doing
business upon the same principle which you condemn in the wheelwright,
and nobody finds fault. At every scarcity in the market, you immediately
raise the price of every article you hold. It is your _business_ to take
advantage of the necessities of those with whom you deal, by selling to
them according to the _Value_ to them, and not according to the _Cost_
to you. You go further. You, by every means in your power, create those
necessities, by buying up particular articles and holding them out of
the market until the demand becomes pressing, by circulating false
reports of short crops, and by other similar tricks known to the trade.
This is the same in principle, as if the wheelwright had first dug the
rut in which your carriage upset, and then charged you the $500.
Yet hitherto no one has thought of seriously questioning the principle,
namely, that "_Value is the limit of price_," or, in other words, that
"_it is right to take for a thing what it is worth_." It is upon this
principle or maxim, that all _honorable_ trade professes now to be
conducted, until instances arise in which its oppressive operation is so
glaring and repugnant to the moral sense of mankind, that those who
carry it out are denounced as rogues and cheats. In this manner a sort
of conventional limit is placed upon the application of a principle
which is equally _the principle_ of every swindling transaction, and of
what is called legitimate commerce. The discovery has not hitherto been
made, that the principle itself is essentially vicious, and that in its
infinite and all-pervading variety of applications, this vicious
principle is _the source_ of the injustice, inequality of condition, and
frightful pauperism and wretchedness which characterize the existing
state of our so-called civilization. Still less has the discovery been
made, that there is another simple principle of traffic which, once
understood and applied in practice, will effectually rectify all those
monstrous evils, and introduce into human society the reign of absolute
equity in all property relations, while it will lay the foundations of
universal harmony in the social and moral relations as well.
II. Suppose it costs me ten minutes' labor to concoct a pill which will
save your life when nothing else will; and suppose, at the same time, to
render the case simple, that the knowledge of the ingredients came to me
by accident, without labor or _cost_. It is clear that your life is
worth to you more than your fortune. Am I, then, entitled to demand of
you for the nostrum the whole of your property, more or less? Clearly
so, if _it is right to take for a thing what it is worth_, which is
theoretically the highest ethics of trade.
Forced, on the one hand, by the impossibility, existing in the nature of
things, of ascertaining and measuring positive values, or of
determining, in other words, what a thing _is really worth_, and
rendered partially conscious by the obvious hardship and injustice of
every unusual or extreme application of the principle that it is either
no rule or a bad one, and not guided by the knowledge of any true
principle out of the labyrinth of conflicting rights into which the
false principle conducts, the world has practically abandoned the
attempt to combine Equity with Commerce, and lowered its standard of
morality to the inverse statement of the formula, namely, that, "_A
thing is worth what it will bring_;" or, in other words, that it is
fitting and proper to take for a thing when sold whatever can be got for
it. This, then, is what is denominated the Market Value of an article,
as distinguished from its actual value. Without being more equitable as
a measure of price, it certainly has a great practical advantage over
the more decent theoretical statement, in the fact that it _is_ possible
to ascertain by experiment how much you can force people, through their
necessities, to give. The principle, in this form, measures the price by
the degree of _want_ on the part of the purchaser, that is, by what he
supposes will prove to be the value or benefit to him of the commodity
purchased, in comparison with that of the one with which he parts in the
transaction. Hence it becomes immediately and continually the interest
of the seller to place the purchaser in a condition of as much want as
possible; "to corner" him, as the phrase is in Wall street, and force
him to buy at the dearest rate. If he is unable to increase his actual
necessity, he resorts to every means of creating an imaginary want by
false praises bestowed upon the qualities and uses of his goods. Hence
the usages of forestalling the market, of confusing the public knowledge
of Supply and Demand, of advertising and puffing worthless commodities,
and the like, which constitute the existing commercial system--a system
which, in our age, is ripening into putrefaction, and coming to offend
the nostrils of good taste no less than the innate sense of right,
which, dreadfully vitiating as it is, it has failed wholly to
extinguish.
The Value Principle in this form, as in the other, is therefore _felt_,
without being distinctly understood, to be essentially diabolical, and
hence it undergoes again a kind of sentimental modification wherever the
_sentiment_ for honesty is most potent. This last and highest expression
of the doctrine of honesty, as now known in the world, may be stated in
the form of the hortatory precept, "Don't be _too_ bad," or, "Don't
gouge _too_ deep." No Political Economist, Financier, Moralist, or
Religionist, has any more definite standard of right in commercial
transactions than that. It is not too much to affirm that neither
Political Economist, Financier, Moralist, nor Religionist knows at this
day, nor ever has known, what it is to be honest. The religious teacher,
who exhorts his hearers from Sabbath to Sabbath to be _fair_ in their
dealings with each other and with the outside world, does not know, and
could not for his life tell, how much he is, in fair dealing or equity,
bound to pay his washerwoman or his housekeeper for any service whatever
which they may render. The _sentiment_ of honesty exists, but the
_science_ of honesty is wanting. The sentiment is first in order. The
science must be an outgrowth, a consequential development of the
sentiment. The precepts of Christian Morality deal properly with that
which is the soul of the other, leaving to intellectual investigation
the discovery of its scientific complement.
It follows from what has been said, that the Value Principle is the
commercial embodiment of the essential element of conquest and war--war
transferred from the battle-field to the counter--none the less opposed,
however, to the spirit of Christian Morality, or the sentiment of human
brotherhood. In bodily conflict, the physically strong conquer and
subject the physically weak. In the conflict of trade, the
intellectually astute and powerful conquer and subject those who are
intellectually feeble, or whose intellectual development is not of the
precise kind to fit them for the conflict of wits in the matter of
trade. With the progress of civilization and development we have ceased
to think that superior physical strength gives the _right_ of conquest
and subjugation. We have graduated, in idea, out of the period of
physical dominion. We remain, however, as yet in the period of
intellectual conquest or plunder. It has 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 ever denied. In the whole field of what are
denominated the legitimate operations of trade, there is no other law
recognized than the relative "smartness" or shrewdness of the parties,
modified at most by the sentimental precept stated above.
The intrinsic wrongfulness of the principal axioms and practice of
existing commerce will appear to every reflecting mind from the
preceding analysis. It will be proper, however, before dismissing the
consideration of the Value Principle, to trace out a little more in
detail some of its specific results.
The principle itself being essentially iniquitous, all the fruits of the
principle are necessarily pernicious.
Among the consequences which flow from it are the following:
I. _It renders falsehood and hypocrisy a necessary concomitant of
trade._ Where the object is to buy cheap and sell dear, the parties find
their interest in mutual deception. It is taught, in theory, that
"honesty is the best policy," in the long run; but in practice the
merchant discovers speedily that he must starve if he acts upon the
precept--in the short run. Honesty--even as much honesty as can be
arrived at--is _not_ the best policy under the present unscientific
system of commerce; if by the best policy is meant that which tends to
success in business. Professional merchants are sharp to distinguish
their true policy for that end, and they do not find it in a full
exposition of the truth. Intelligent merchants know the fact well, and
conscientious merchants deplore it; but they see no remedy. The theory
of trade taught to innocent youths in the retired family, or the Sunday
school, would ruin any clerk, if adhered to behind the counter, in a
fortnight. Hence it is uniformly abandoned, and a new system of morality
acquired the moment a practical application is to be made of the
instruction. A frank disclosure, by the merchant, of all the secret
advantages in his possession, would destroy his reputation for sagacity
as effectually as it would that of the gambler among his associates.
Both commerce and gambling, as professions, are systems of strategy. It
is the business of both parties to a trade to over-reach each other--a
fact which finds its unblushing announcement in the maxim of the Common
Law, _Caveat emptor_, (let the purchaser take care.)
II. _It makes the rich richer and the poor poorer._--Trade being, under
this system, the intellectual correspondence to the occupation of the
cut-throat or conqueror under the reign of physical force--the stronger
consequently accumulating more than his share at the cost of the
destruction of the weaker--the consequence of the principle is that the
occupation of trade, for those who possess intellectual superiority,
with other favorable conditions, enables them to accumulate more than
their share of wealth, while it reduces those whose intellectual
development--of the precise kind requisite for this species of
contest--and whose material conditions are less favorable--to
wretchedness and poverty.
III. _It creates trade for trade's sake, and augments the number of
non-producers, whose support is chargeable upon Labor._ As trade under
the operation of this principle, offers the temptation of illicit gains
and rapid wealth at the expense of others, it creates trade where there
is no necessity for trade--not as a beneficent interchange of
commodities between producers and consumers, but as a means of
speculation. Hence thousands are withdrawn from actual production and
thrust unnecessarily into the business of exchanging, mutually devouring
each other by competition, and drawing their subsistence and their
wealth from the producing classes, without rendering any equivalent
service. Hence the interminable range of intermediates between the
producer and consumer, the total defeat of organization and economy in
the distribution of products, and the intolerable burden of the
unproductive classes upon labor, together with a host of the frightful
results of pauperism and crime.
IV. _It degrades the dignity of Labor._ Inasmuch as trade, under the
operation of this principle, is more profitable, or at any rate is
liable to be, promises to be, and in a portion of cases is more
profitable than productive labor, it follows that the road to wealth and
social distinction lies in that direction. Hence "Commerce is King,"
Hence, again, productive labor is depreciated and contemned. It holds
the same relation to commerce in this age--under the reign of
intellectual superioritythat commerce itself held a few generations
since--under the reign of physical force--to military achievement,
personal or hereditary. Thus the degradation of labor, and all the
innumerable evils which follow in its train, in our existing
civilization, find their efficient cause in this same false principle of
exchanging products. The next stage of progress will be the inauguration
of Equity--equality in the results of every species of industry
according to burdens, and the consequent accession of labor to the
highest rank of human estimation. Commerce will then sink to a mere
brokerage, paid, like any other species of labor, according to its
repugnance, as the army is now sinking to a mere police force. It will
be reduced to the simplest and most direct methods of exchange, and made
to be the merest servant of production, which will come, in its turn, to
be regarded as conferring the only true patents of nobility.
V. _It prevents the possibility of a scientific Adjustment of Supply to
Demand._ It has been already shown that speculation is the cause why
there has never been, and cannot now be any scientific Adaptation of
Supply to Demand. It has also been partially shown, at various points,
that speculation, or trading in chances and fluctuations in the market
has its root in the Value Principle, and that the Cost Principle
extinguishes speculation. It will be proper, however, in this connection
to define exactly the limits of speculation, and to point out more
specifically how the Value Principle creates it, and how the Cost
Principle extinguishes it.
By speculation is meant, in the ordinary language of trade, risky and
unusual enterprises entered upon for the sake of more than ordinary
profits, and in that sense there is attached to it, among merchants, a
slight shade of imputation of dishonesty or disreputable conduct. As we
are seeking now, however, to employ language in an exact and scientific
way, we must find a more precise definition of the term. The line
between ordinary and more than ordinary profits is too vague for a
scientific treatise. At one extremity of the long succession of
chance-dealing and advantage-taking transactions stands gambling, which
is denounced by the common verdict of mankind as merely a more specious
form of robbery. It holds the same relation to robbery itself that
duelling holds to murder. Where is the other end of this succession? At
what point does a man begin to take an undue advantage of his fellow man
in a commercial transaction? It clearly appears, from all that has been
shown, that he does so from the moment that he receives from him more
than an exact equivalent of cost. But it is the constant endeavor of
every trader, upon any other than the Cost Principle, to do that. The
business of the merchant is profit-making. _Profit_ signifies,
etymologically, _something made over and above_, that is, something
beyond an _equivalent_, or, in its simplest expression, _something for
nothing_.
It is clear, then, that there is no difference between profit-making in
its mildest form, speculation in its opprobrious sense as the middle
term, and gambling as the ultimate, except in degree. There is simply
the bad gradation of rank which there is between the slaveholder, the
driver on the slave plantation, and the slave dealer, or between the man
of pleasure, the harlot, and the pimp.
The philanthropy of the age is moving heaven and earth to the overthrow
of the institution of slavery. But slavery has no scientific definition.
It is thought to consist in the feature of chattelism; but an ingenious
lawyer would run his pen through every statute upon slavery in
existence, and expunge that fiction of the law, and yet leave slavery,
for all practical purposes, precisely what it is now. It needs only to
appropriate the services of the man by operation of law, instead of the
man himself. The only distinction, then, left between his condition and
that of the laborer who is robbed by the operation of a false commercial
principle, would be in the fact of the oppression being more tangible
and undisguisedly degrading to his manhood.
If, in any transaction, I get from you some portion of your earnings
without an equivalent, I begin to make you my slave--to confiscate you
to my uses; if I get a larger portion of your services without an
equivalent, I make you still further my slave; and, finally, if I obtain
the whole of your services without an equivalent--except the means of
keeping you in working condition for my own sake, I make you completely
my slave. Slavery is merely one development of a general system of human
oppression, for which we have no comprehensive term in English, but
which the French Socialists denominate _exploitation_--the abstraction,
directly or indirectly, from the working classes of the fruits of their
labor. In the case of the slave, the instrument of that abstraction is
force and legal enactments. In the case of the laborer, generally, it is
speculation in the large sense, or _profit-making_. The slaveholder will
be found, therefore, upon a scientific analysis, to hold the same
relation to the trader which the freebooter holds to the blackleg. It is
a question of taste which to admire most, the dare-devil boldness of the
one, or the oily and intriguing propensities and performances of the
other.
CHAPTER IV.
INTERNATIONAL EXPLOITATION.
As individuals possessing skill or capital exploitate, or compel other
individuals in the same community to work for them for nothing, or for
undue consideration, precisely in the same way do nations possessed of
those advantages exploitate other nations with whom they trade, who are
without them.
England lends, say, five hundred millions of dollars to governments and
individuals in America. In a hundred years, she will have withdrawn from
us, in interest, six times the amount loaned or advanced, and at the
expiration of that time she withdraws the principal itself. We pay
England a tax of at least three thousand million of dollars in a
century; for her loans to us are probably even larger than the amount
assumed. She commands the results of our labor to that extent, and gives
us not a cent of the results of her labor in return--for her principal
loaned represents her labor, and that we return to her intact. We are,
to that extent, her slaves,--"slaves without masters;" for she commands
and enjoys our labor, and is under none of the obligations of a
master--to protect, defend and provide for us.
Her superior skill in the mechanic arts, by means of free trade, taxes
or exploitates us quite as much as her capital. She exchanges her
comparatively light and skillful labor, for our hard, exposed and
unintellectual labor; and, in the general, compels us to labor three
hours for her, when she labors one for us. Thus, after deducting the
cost of the material, a yard of her cloth will exchange for an amount of
our cotton, corn or meat, that cost three times as much labor to produce
as her yard of cloth.
As in society, the skillful and professional tax or exploitate the
common laborer, by exchanging one hour of their light labor for many of
the common workingman's hard labor; as lawyers, doctors, merchants and
mechanics deal with day laborers, so England and New England treat us of
the South. This theory, and this alone, accounts for England's ability
to pay the interest on her national debt, and yet increase her wealth.
She effects it all by the immense profits of the exploitation of her
skill and capital; by the power which they give her to command labor,
and appropriate its results, without consideration, or for a very
partial consideration. She trades with the world, and exploitates it
all, except France. France sets the fashion, and this enables her to
exploitate England. England, in her trade with France, has to pay for
French fashions as well as French labor. In other words, France
possesses superior skill, and exploitates England by means of it. Labor,
not skill, is the just and equitable measure of values.
America sends her cotton, her surplus grain and meats, and other
agricultural products, and her California gold, to England, and gets
worse than nothing in return; for if she were compelled to produce at
home what she procures from England, she must cultivate a thousand
skillful and intellectual pursuits, instead of being, as she too much
is, confined to the coarse drudgery of common labor. The Southern States
of this Union are exploitated of their labor and their brains, in their
trade with England and New England. They produce nothing which we had
not better produce at home. Northern trade exploitates us. Trade further
South would enrich us and enlighten us; for we would manufacture for the
far South. We should become exploitators, instead of being exploitated.
When we were in New Haven, a distinguished abolitionist boasted to us
that mechanics received two dollars per day for their labor, and, by
their China trade, exchanged the products of one day's labor for twenty
days' labor of the Chinese, who worked for ten cents a day. The New
England mechanic was thus the master of twenty Chinese laborers, whose
labor he commanded for one of his own day's labor. Here was an instance
of individual, not of national exploitation. Well might China dread free
trade. It gives her taskmasters, who impoverish her people and depress
her civilization; for they, by their machinery and superior skill,
withdraw her people from a thousand mechanical pursuits that promoted
civilization.
In Sociology, we explained this subject synthetically: we have tried now
to expound it analytically.
CHAPTER V.
FALSE PHILOSOPHY OF THE AGE.
The moral philosophy of our age, (which term we use generically to
include Politics, Ethics, and Economy, domestic and national,) is
deduced from the existing relations of men to each other in free
society, and attempts to explain, to justify, to generalize and regulate
those relations. If that system of society be wrong, and its relations
false, the philosophy resulting from it must partake of its error and
falsity. On the other hand, if our current philosophy be true, slavery
must be wrong, because that philosophy is at war with slavery. No
successful defence of slavery can be made, till we succeed in refuting
or invalidating the principles on which free society rests for support
or defence. The world, however, is sick of its philosophy; and the
Socialists have left it not a leg to stand on. In fact, it is, in all
its ramifications, a mere expansion and application of Political
Economy,--and Political Economy may be summed-up in the phrase,
"Laissez-faire," or "Let alone." A system of unmitigated selfishness
pervades and distinguishes all departments of ethical, political, and
economic science. The philosophy is partially true, because selfishness,
as a rule of action and guide of conduct, is necessary to the existence
of man, and of all other animals. But it should not be, with man
especially, the only rule and guide; for he is, by nature, eminently
social and gregarious. His wants, his weakness, his appetites, his
affections, compel him to look without, and beyond self, in order to
sustain self. The eagle and the owl, the lion and the tiger, are not
gregarious, but solitary and self-supporting. They practice political
economy, because 'tis adapted to their natures. But men and beavers,
herds, bees, and ants, require a different philosophy, another guide of
conduct. The Bible, (independent of its authority,) is far man's best
guide, even in this world. Next to it, we would place Aristotle. But all
books written four hundred or more years ago, are apt to yield useful
instruction, whilst those written since that time will generally
mislead. We mean, of course, books on moral science. We should not be
far out in saying, that no book on physics, written more than four
hundred years ago, is worth reading, and none on morals written within
that time. The Reformation, which effected much of practical good, gave
birth to a false philosophy, which has been increasing and ramifying
until our day, and now threatens the overthrow of all social
institutions. The right of Private Judgment led to the doctrine of
Human Individuality, and a Social Contract to restrict that
individuality. Hence, also, arose the doctrines of Laissez-faire, free
competition, human equality, freedom of religion, of speech and of the
press, and universal liberty. The right of Private Judgment, naturally
enough, leads to the right to act on that judgment, to the supreme
sovereignty of the individual, and the abnegation of all government. No
doubt the Reformation resulted from the relaxation of feudalism and the
increased liberties of mind and body which men had begun to relish and
enjoy. We have no quarrel with the Reformation, as such, for reform was
needed; nor with all of the philosophy that has been deduced from it;
but it is the excess of reform, and the excessive applications of that
philosophy, to which we object. Man is selfish, as well as social; he is
born a part and member of society, born and lives a slave of society;
but he has also natural individual rights and liberties. What are his
obligations to society, what his individual rights, what position he is
entitled to, what duties he should fulfill, depend upon a thousand
ever-changing circumstances, in the wants and capacities of the
individual, and in the necessities and well-being of the society to
which he belongs. Modern philosophy treats of men only as separate
monads or individuals; it is, therefore, always partly false and partly
true; because, whilst man is always a limb or member of the Being,
Society, he is also a Being himself, and does not bear to society the
mere relation which the hand or the foot does to the human body. _We_
shall propose no new philosophy, no universal and unerring principles or
guide, in place of those which we assail. A Moral Pathology, which feels
its way in life, and adapts itself to circumstances, as they present
themselves, is the nearest approach to philosophy, which it is either
safe or wise to attempt. All the rest must be left to Religion, to
Faith, and to Providence. This inadequacy of philosophy has, in all ages
and nations, driven men to lean on religious faith for support. Though
assailing all common theories, we are but giving bold and candid
expression to the commonest of thoughts. The universal admiration of the
passages we are about to cite, proves the truth of our theory, whilst it
debars us of all claim to originality:
Solomon, melancholy, gloomy, dissatisfied, and tossed upon a sea of
endless doubt and speculation, exclaims, "Vanity of vanities, saith the
Preacher; all is vanity." But, at length, he finds rest from the stormy
ocean of philosophy, in the calm haven of faith. How beautiful and
consoling, and how natural, too, his parting words:
"Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep
his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man."
"For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret
thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil."
In his Tenth, or Golden Satire, JUVENAL comes to a like conclusion,
after having indulged in like speculations:
Nil ergò optabunt homines? Si consilium vis,
Permittes ipsis expendere numinibus, quid
Conveniat nobis, rebusque sit utile nostris.
Nam pro jucundis aptissama quæque dabunt diis
Carior est illis homo, quàm sibi.
The Epicurean HORACE, in his first Satire, sees the same difficulty, but
gives a less satisfactory solution:
Est modus in rebus; sunt certi denique fines,
Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum.
BURKE'S beautiful words, "What shadows we are, and what shadows we
pursue!" convey the same thought, without attempting a solution.
SHAKSPEARE employs the profoundest philosophy, to assail all philosophy:
"There are more things in heaven and earth,
Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
The infidel, VOLTAIRE, admits that "philosophy had ascertained few
truths, done little good;" and when he sums up that little, satisfies
the reader that it has done nothing--unless it be to perplex and
mislead.
He, Voltaire, also, in another connection, exclaims, mournfully:
"I now repeat this confession, still more emphatically, since the
more I read, the more I meditate, and the more I acquire, the more
I am enabled to affirm, that I know nothing."
NEWTON, admitting his own ignorance, is a standing monument of the
inadequacy and futility of moral researches and speculations.
PINDAR--
Man, the frail being of a day,
Uncertain shadow of a dream,
Illumined by the heavenly beam,
Flutters his airy life away.
ÆSCHYLUS--
Vain thy ardor, vain thy grace,
They, nor force, nor aid repay;
Like a dream, man's feeble race,
Short-lived reptiles of a day.
SOPHOCLES--
'Tis sad to think, but me the farce of life persuades,
That men are only spectral forms, or hollow shades.
ARISTOPHANES--
Come now, ye host of fading lives, like the race of withering leaves,
Who live a day, creatures of clay, tribes that flit like shadows away;
Ephemeral, wingless insects, dreamy shapes, that death expects
Soon to bind in phantom sheaves.
We will conclude our citations, which we might continue to the crack of
doom, (for all who have written well and much, have indulged similar
reflections,) with Doctor Johnson's Rasselas, which is intended to
expand and apply what others had concisely and tersely stated. The
Doctor's is an elaborate failure.
Philosophy can neither account for the past, comprehend the present, nor
foresee and provide for the future. "I'll none of it."
CHAPTER VI.
FREE TRADE, FASHION AND CENTRALIZATION.
Liberty and political economy beget and encourage free trade, as well
between different localities and different nations, as between
individuals of the same towns, neighborhoods or nations. The nations
possessed of most skill and capital, and commercial enterprise, and
cunning, gradually absorb the wealth of those nations who possess less
of those qualities. The effect of international free trade, aided by the
facilities of the credit system, of the mail, and speedy steam
communication, is to centralize wealth in a few large cities, such as
New York, Paris and London; and of social free trade to aggregate wealth
in a few hands in those cities. Theoretically, the disparities of
shrewdness, of skill and business capacity, between nations and
individuals, would, in the commercial and trading war of the wits, rob
the weak and simple, and enrich the strong and cunning. The facts of
history, and of the increasing inequalities of social, individual and
national wealth, under the system of free trade, stimulated by political
economy, correspond with the theory. Every month brings forth its
millionaire, and every day its thousands of new paupers. New York and
London grow richer rapidly on the fruits of a trade that robs the less
commercial and skillful people who traffic with them.
But the worst effect of free trade is, that it begets centres of
opinion, thought and fashions, robs men of their nationality, and
impairs their patriotism by teaching them to ape foreign manners, affect
foreign dress and opinions, and despise what is domestic. Paris, as the
centre of thought and fashion, wields as much power, and makes almost as
much money as London, by being the centre of trade and capital. An
American or Englishman will give five prices for an article because it
is made in Paris. Thus the want of true self-respect in America and
England, makes labor produce more in Paris than elsewhere. A Virginian
thinks it a disgrace to be dressed in home-spun, because home-spun is
unfashionable. The Frenchman prides himself on being a Frenchman; all
other people affect the cosmopolitan.
The tendency of all this is to transfer all wealth to London, New York
and Paris, and reduce the civilization of Christendom to a miserable
copy of French civilization, itself an indifferent copy of Roman
civilization, which was an imitation, but a falling off from that of
Greece.
We pay millions monthly for French silks, French wines, French brandy,
and French trinkets, although we can and do make as comfortable articles
for dress, and as good liquors, at home. But we despise ourselves, and
admire the French, and give four hours of American labor for one of
French labor, just to be in the fashion. And what is our fashion? To
treat whatever is American with contempt. People who thus act are in a
fair way to deserve and meet with from others, that contempt which they
feel for themselves. The little States of Greece each had its dialect,
and cultivated it, and took pride in it. Now, dialects are vulgar and
provincial. We shall have no men like the Greeks, till the manners,
dress, and dialect of gentlemen, betray, like the wines of Europe, the
very neighborhood whence they come. So thought Mr. Calhoun, and talked
South Carolina dialect in the Senate. But for all that, it was the best
English of the day. Its smack of provincialism gave it a higher flavor.
We of the South teach political economy, because it is taught in Europe.
Yet political economy, and all other systems of moral science, which we
derive from Europe, are tainted with abolition, and at war with our
institutions. We must build up centres of trade, of thought and fashion
at home. We must become national, nay, provincial, and cease to be
imitative cosmopolitans. We must, especially, have good colleges and
universities, where young men may learn to admire their homes, not to
despise them.
The South feels the truth of all this, and after a while will begin to
understand it. She has been for years earnestly and actively engaged in
_promoting_ the exclusive and protective policy, and preaching free
trade, non-interference of government and 'let alone.' But she does not
let alone. She builds roads and canals, encourages education, endows
schools and colleges, improves river navigation, excludes, or taxes
heavily foreign show-men, foreign pedlars, sellers of clocks, &c.; tries
to build up by legislation Southern commerce, and by State legislation
to multiply and encourage industrial pursuits. Protection by the State
Government is her established policy--and that is the only expedient or
constitutional protection. It is time for her to avow her change of
policy and opinion, and to throw Adam Smith, Say, Ricardo & Co., in the
fire.
We want American customs, habits, manners, dress, manufactures, modes of
thought, modes of expression, and language. We should encourage national
and even State peculiarities; for there are peculiarities and
differences in the wants and situations of all people, that require
provincial and national, not cosmopolitan, institutions and productions.
Take language, for instance. It is a thing of natural growth and
development, and adapts itself naturally to the changes of time and
circumstance. It is never ungrammatical as spoken by children, but
always expressive, practical and natural. Nature is always grammatical,
and language, the child of nature, would continue so, but for the
grammarians, who, with their Procrustean rules, disturb its proportions,
destroy its variety and adaptation, and retard its growth. They are to
language what dentists are to teeth: they more often injure it than
improve it.
Grammar, lexicography, and rhetoric, applied to language, destroy its
growth, variety and adaptability--stereotype it, make it at once
essentially a dead language, and unfit for future use; for new
localities, and changes of time and circumstances, beget new ideas, and
require new words and new combinations of words. Centralization and
cosmopolitanism have precisely the same effect. They would furnish a
common language from the centre, which is only fully expressive and
comprehensive at that centre. Walking and talking are equally natural,
and talking masters and walking masters equally useless. Neither can
foresee and provide for the thousands of new circumstances which make
change of language, or varieties of movement necessary. Nature is never
at a loss, and is the only reliable dancing master and grammar teacher.
She is always graceful and appropriate, and always ready to adapt
herself to changes of time, situation and circumstances.
Paris is becoming the universal model and grammar of Christendom;
nothing is right unless it be a la Parisienne. Now, in truth, nothing
can be right, natural, appropriate, or in good taste, outside of Paris,
that is Parisienne. When will our monkey imitative world cease to
sacrifice millions of money, cease to show its want of good sense and
propriety, and cease to render itself ridiculous by aping, what, in the
nature of things, is unsuitable, inappropriate, and unnatural? Fashion,
aided by free trade and centralization, is subjecting us to the dominion
of Parisian thought; and commerce, by means of the same agencies, makes
us tributaries to London. Trade and fashion conquer faster than arms.
After the Romans had conquered Greece, Athens became the school and
centre of thought for the civilized world. Men had but one set of ideas,
but one set of models to imitate, in the whole range of the fine arts.
Inventiveness and originality ceased, and genius was subdued. The rule
of Horace, "_Nullius addictus in verba magistri jurare_," was versed,
and men ceased to think for themselves, but looked to the common
fountain of thought at Athens; where the teachers of mankind borrowed
all their ideas from the past. Improvement and progress ceased, and
imitation, chaining the present to the car of the past, soon induced
rapid retrogression. Thus, we think centralization of thought occasioned
the decline of civilization. Northern invaders introduced new ideas,
broke up centralization, arrested imitation, and begot originality and
inventiveness. Thus a start was given to a new and Christian
civilization. Now, a centralization occasioned by commerce and fashion,
threatens the overthrow of our civilization, as arms and conquest
overthrew the ancient.
The ill effect of centralization of thought, whether its centre be the
past, or some locality of the present, is apparent in the arts and
literature of the Latin nations of Europe. France, Spain and Italy,
though possessed of more genius, have displayed less originality than
England and Germany. French art is a mere re-hash of Roman art, and very
inferior to its original. The natural growth, changes and adaptation of
language, are admirably described by Horace in his _De Arte Poetica_. He
makes a great blunder in advising the forming and compounding words from
the Greek, however; for the very want that occasions new words, shows
that they cannot be supplied from the past. In the passage we are about
to quote, he seems to have seen and deplored the advent of that age of
rule and criticism that was to stereotype language, thought, art itself,
prevent progress, and inaugurate decline. From Horace's day, criticism
ruled, language and art were stereotyped, and the world declined:
"Dixeris egregiè, notum si callida verbum,
Reddiderit junctura novum: si fortè necesse est
Indiciis monstrare recentibus abdita rerum,
Fingere cinctutis non exaudita Cethegis
Continget; dabiturque licentia sumpta pudenter;
Et nova fictaque nuper habebunt verba fidem, si
Græco fonte cadant, parcè detorta. Quid autem
Cæcilio, Plantoque dabit Romanus, ademptum
Virgilio, Varioque? ego cur acquirere pauca
Si possum, invideor; cùm lingua Catonis et Ennî
Sermonem patrium ditaverit, et nova rerum
Nomina protulerit? Licuit, semperque licebit
Signatum præsente notâ procudere nomen.
Ut silvæ foliis pronos mutantur in annos,
Prima cadunt; ita verborum vetus interit ætas,
Et juvenum ritu florent modò nata, vigentque."
Italy, of the middle ages, imbibed more of the Christian and chivalric
element, threw off for a while imitation and subserviency to the past,
and shone forth with brilliant originality in all the works of art. But
she, like France, has relapsed into imitation of the antique, and falls
far below either Roman or mediæval art. With the age of Cervantes,
Spanish genius expired. His happy ridicule expelled the absurdities of
Knight Errantry, but unfortunately expelled, at the same time, the new
elements of thought which Christianity and Chivalry had introduced into
modern literature. They were its only progressive elements, in the
Latin nations of Europe, who in all else were mere Romans.
Fenelon's Telemaque is a servile imitation of Virgil's Æneid, and that
is an equally servile imitation of Homer. Each copy falls below the
original.
Nothing shows so strongly the want of originality and want of
independence of taste and thought among these Latin nations, as their
contempt for Shakspeare. He violates all the rules of Greek and Roman
art, and erects a higher art of his own; but Frenchmen, Italians, and
Spaniards, have no tastes and no ideas differing from, or in advance of,
the ancients, and can neither understand nor appreciate the genius of
Shakspeare. In Germany, he is almost as much read and admired as in
England.
Imitation, grammar and slavery suit the masses. Liberty and Laissez
faire, the men of genius, and the men born to command. Genius, in her
most erratic flights, represents a higher Grammar than Dr. Blair or
Lindlay Murray--the grammar of progressive nature. To secure true
progress, we must unfetter genius, and chain down mediocrity. Liberty
for the few--Slavery, in every form, for the mass!
The rules of art destroy art. Homer never could have produced the Iliad,
had he learned grammar and rhetoric and criticism. 'Tis well for the
world, he lived before Longinus. Euripides, Sophocles, and
Aristophanes, and the Greek Masters in Sculpture and Painting, knew
nothing of the rules of art and canons of criticism. Without the modern
helps to art, Grecian art so far excelled ours, that it is a popular
theory that they possessed an Ideal that has been lost. Early in the
days of the Roman Empire, the rhetoricians, by attempting to teach
eloquence by rule, so corrupted it, that the Emperors found it necessary
to banish them from Rome.
We are no doubt indebted to the ignorance of the ancients for the
invention of Gothic architecture. No one taught to reverence Greek
architecture, would have violated its rules by imitating the Gothic.
When about the time of the Reformation, the study of the ancients was
revived, each Gothic spire stopped half way in its course towards
heaven. Mediæval art expired:--and now the world has no art, but basely
copies the past.
Had Shakspeare been as learned as Ben Jonson, he would have written no
better than Ben Jonson. The lofty genius of Milton would have created a
glorious English epic, had he not travelled too much abroad, and dwelt
too much with the past. The Paradise Lost is a splendid piece of Mosaic,
made up of bits of Greek and Roman mythology, Hebrew theology, Christian
morality, Mediæval romance, set in the purest Anglo-Saxon, twisted into
Latin collocation. 'Tis the song of the mocking-bird.
What, then? Shall we not in boyhood sojourn and linger at Athens and at
Rome, nor in manhood travel into France and Italy?
_Est modus in rebus._ Study the past, but be careful not to copy it, and
never travel abroad until age has matured your love and respect for your
native land.
CHAPTER VII.
THE WORLD IS _TOO LITTLE_ GOVERNED.
Whether with reason or with instinct blest,
All enjoy that power that suits them best;
Order is Heaven's first law, and this confessed,
Some are, and must be greater than the rest--
More rich, more wise; but who infers from hence
That such are happier, shocks all common sense.
Heaven to mankind impartial, we confess,
If all are equal in their happiness;
But mutual wants this happiness increase,
All nature's difference, keeps all nature's peace:
Condition, circumstance, is not the thing;
Bliss is the same, in subject, or in king!
POPE.
Mobs, secret associations, insurance companies, and social and
communistic experiments, are striking features and characteristics of
our day, outside of slave society. They are all attempting to supply the
defects of regular governments, which have carried the "Let alone"
practice so far, that one-third of mankind are let alone to indulge in
such criminal immoralities as they please, and another third to starve.
Mobs (_vide_ California) supply the deficiencies of a defective police,
and insurance companies and voluntary unions and associations afford
that security and protection which government, under the lead of
political economy, has ceased to render.
A lady remarked to us, a few days since, "that society was like an army,
in which the inferior officers were as necessary as the
commander-in-chief. Demoralization and insubordination ensue if you
dispense with sergeants and corporals in an army, and the same effects
result from dispensing with guardians, masters and heads of families in
society." We don't know whether she included the ladies in her ideas of
the heads of families; protesting against such construction of her
language, we accept and thank her for her illustration. Rev'd Nehemiah
Adams has a similar thought in his admirable work, "A Southside View of
Slavery," which we regret is not before us. On some public occasion in
Charleston, he was struck with the good order and absence of all
dissipation, and very naively asked where was their mob. He was informed
that "they were at work." He immediately perceived that slavery was an
admirable police institution, and moralizes very wisely on the occasion.
Slavery is an indispensable police institution;--especially so, to check
the cruelty and tyranny of vicious and depraved husbands and parents.
Husbands and parents have, in theory and practice, a power over their
subjects more despotic than kings; and the ignorant and vicious
exercise their power more oppressively than kings. Every man is not fit
to be king, yet all must have wives and children. Put a master over them
to check their power, and we need not resort to the unnatural remedies
of woman's rights, limited marriages, voluntary divorces, and free love,
as proposed by the abolitionists.
Mr. Carlyle says, "Among practical men the idea prevails that government
can do nothing but 'keep the peace.' They say all higher tasks are
unsafe for it, impossible for it, and, in fine, not necessary for it or
for us. Truly, it is high time that same beautiful notion of
No-Government should take itself away. The world is daily rushing
towards wreck whilst it lasts. If your government is to be a constituted
anarchy, what issue can it have? Our own interest in such government is,
that it would be kind enough to cease and go its way before the
inevitable wreck."
The reader will excuse us for so often introducing the thoughts and
words of others. We do so not only for the sake of their authority, but
because they express our own thoughts better than we can express them
ourselves. In truth, we deal out our thoughts, facts and arguments in
that irregular and desultory way in which we acquired them. We are no
regular built scholar--have pursued no "royal road to mathematics," nor
to anything else. We have, by observation and desultory reading, picked
up our information by the wayside, and endeavored to arrange, generalize
and digest it for ourselves. To learn "to forget," is almost the only
thing we have labored to learn. We have been so bored through life by
friends with dyspeptic memories, who never digest what they read,
because they never forget it, who retain on their intellectual stomachs
in gross, crude, undigested, and unassimilated form, every thing that
they read, and retail and repeat it in that undigested form to every
good-natured listener: we repeat, that we have been so bored by friends
with good memories, that we have resolved to endeavor to express what
was useful out of facts, and then to throw the facts away. A great
memory is a disease of the mind, which we are surprised no medical
writer has noticed. The lunatic asylum should make provision for those
affected with this disease; for, though less dangerous, they are far
more troublesome and annoying than any other class of lunatics.
Learning, observation, reading, are only useful in the general, as they
add to the growth of the mind. Undigested and unforgotten, they can no
more have this effect, than undigested food on the stomach of a
dyspeptic can add to his physical stature. We thought once this thing
was original with us, but find that Say pursued this plan in writing his
Political Economy. He first read all the books he could get hold of on
this subject, and then took time to forget them, before he began to
write.
We will not trouble the reader further, for the present, with our
egotisms or our arguments, but refer him to the whole of Carlyle's
"Latter Day Pamphlets," to prove that "the world is too little
governed," and, therefore, is going to wreck. We say, to the whole of
those pamphlets, for that is their one, great leading idea. We also add
an extract from the speech of Ulysses, in the play of Troilus and
Cressida, that beautifully illustrates and enforces our thought. We give
the extract because it is a play that few read, it being, on the whole,
far inferior to Shakspeare's other plays, and by few considered as
wholly, if at all, his work:
"The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre,
Observe degree, priority, and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office and custom, in all line of order:
And, therefore, is the glorious planet, Sol,
In nobler eminence enthron'd and spher'd
Amidst the other; whose med'cinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
And posts, like the commandment of a king,
Sans check, to good and bad: But, when the planets,
In evil mixture, to disorder wander,
What plagues, and what portents? what mutiny?
What raging of the sea? shaking of earth?
Commotion in the winds? frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate,
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixture? O, when degree is shak'd,
Which is the ladder of all high designs,
The enterprise is sick! How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogenitive and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree, stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: The bounded waters
Should lift their bosom's higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe:
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead:
Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong.
(Between whose endless jar justice resides,)
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
We promised to write no more in this chapter; but, like Parthos, when
"we have an idea," we want to give others the benefit of it. We agree
with Mr. Jefferson, that all men have natural and inalienable rights. To
violate or disregard such rights, is to oppose the designs and plans of
Providence, and cannot "come to good." The order and subordination
observable in the physical, animal and human world, show that some are
formed for higher, others for lower stations--the few to command, the
many to obey. We conclude that about nineteen out of every twenty
individuals have "a natural and inalienable right" to be taken care of
and protected; to have guardians, trustees, husbands, or masters; in
other words, they have a natural and inalienable right to be slaves. The
one in twenty are as clearly born or educated, or some way fitted for
command and liberty. Not to make them rulers or masters, is as great a
violation of natural right, as not to make slaves of the mass. A very
little individuality is useful and necessary to society,--much of it
begets discord, chaos and anarchy.
* * * * *
NOTE.--Since writing this chapter, we have received our copy of Mr.
Adams's work. We congratulate ourselves on our success in "learning
to forget." Here is the passage to which we refer:
"One consequence of the disposal of the colored people, as to
individual control, is the absence of mobs. That fearful element
in society, an irresponsible and low class, is diminished at the
South. Street brawls and conflicts between two races of laboring
people, or the ignorant and more excitable portions of different
religious denominations, are mostly unknown within the bounds of
slavery. Our great source of disturbance at the North, jealousy
and collisions between Protestant and Irish Roman Catholic
laborers, is obviated there.
"When the remains of Mr. Calhoun were brought to Charleston, a
gentleman from a free State in the procession said to a southern
gentleman, "Where is your underswell?" referring to the motley
crowd of men and boys of all nations which gather in most of our
large places on public occasions. He was surprised to learn that
those respectable, well-dressed, well-behaved colored men and boys
on the sidewalks, were a substitute for that class of population
which he had elsewhere been accustomed to see with repugnant
feelings on public occasions."
As we are on the subject of Mr. Adams's book, we will give another
extract from it, confirmatory of our doctrines:
"There is another striking peculiarity of Southern society which
is attributable to slavery, and is very interesting to a
Northerner at the present day. While the colored people are
superstitious and excitable, popular delusions and fanaticisms do
not prevail among them. That class of society among us in which
these things get root, has a substitute in the colored population.
Spiritual rappings, biology, second-adventism, Mormonism, and the
whole spawn of errors which infest us, do not find subjects at the
South. There is far more faith in the South, taken as a whole,
than with us. Many things which we feel called to preach against
here are confined to the boundaries of the Free States; yet the
white population are readers of books, though not of newspapers,
perhaps more generally than we. That vast amount of active but
uninstructed mind with us, which seizes every new thing, and
follows brilliant or specious error, and erects a folly into a
doctrine with a sect annexed, and so infuses doubt or contempt of
things sacred into many minds, is no element in Southern life.
This is one reason why there is more faith, less infidelity, at
the South, than at the North. The opinions of a lower class on
moral and religious subjects, have a powerful effect on the
classes above them; more than is generally acknowledged; and hence
we derive an argument in favor of general education, in which
moral and religious principles shall have their important place."
CHAPTER VIII.
LIBERTY AND SLAVERY.
Effugit imago,
Par livibus ventis, volueri que simillima somno.
It seems to us that the vain attempts to define liberty in theory, or to
secure its enjoyment in practice, proceed from the fact that man is
naturally a social and gregarious animal, subject, not by contract or
agreement, as Locke and his followers assume, but by birth and nature,
to those restrictions of liberty which are expedient or necessary to
secure the good of the human hive, to which he may belong. There is no
such thing as _natural human_ liberty, because it is unnatural for man
to live alone and without the pale and government of society. Birds, and
beasts of prey, who are not gregarious, are naturally free. Bees and
herds are naturally subjects or slaves of society. Such is the theory of
Aristotle, promulged more than two thousand years ago, generally
considered true for two thousand years, and destined, we hope, soon
again to be accepted as the only true theory of government and society.
Modern social reformers, except Mr. Carlyle, proceeding upon the theory
of Locke, which is the opposite of Aristotle, propose to dissolve and
disintegrate society; falsely supposing that they thereby follow nature.
There is not a human tie that binds man to man, that they do not propose
to cut "sheer asunder." 'Tis true, after their work of destruction is
finished, they see the necessity of society; but instead of that natural
and historical society, which has usually existed in the world, with its
gradations of rank and power, its families and its slaves, they propose
wholly to disregard the natural relations of mankind, and profanely to
build up states, like Fourierite Phalansteries, or Mormon and Oneida
villages, where religion shall be banished, and in which property, wife
and children shall be held somewhat in common. These social
establishments, under a self-elected despotism like that of Joe Smith,
or Brigham Young, become patriarchal, and succeed, so long as such
despotism lasts. That is, when the association loses the character
intended by its founders, and acquires a despotic head like other family
associations, it works well, because it works naturally. But this
success can only be temporary; for nothing but the strong rule of a
Cromwell or Joe Smith can keep a society together, that wants the
elements of cohesion, in the natural ties that bind man to man: and
Cromwells and Joe Smiths are not to be found every day.
'Tis an historical fact, that this family association, this patriarchal
government, for purposes of defence against enemies from without,
gradually merges into larger associations of men under a common
government or ruler. This latter is the almost universal, and we may
thence infer, natural and normal condition of civilized man. In this
state of society there is no liberty for the masses. Liberty has been
exchanged by nature for security.
What is falsely called Free Society, is a very recent invention. It
proposes to make the weak, ignorant and poor, free, by turning them
loose in a world owned exclusively by the few (whom nature and education
have made strong, and whom property has made stronger,) to get a living.
In the fanciful state of nature, where property is unappropriated, the
strong have no weapons but superior physical and mental power with which
to oppress the weak. Their power of oppression is increased a thousand
fold, when they become the exclusive owners of the earth and all the
things thereon. They are masters without the obligations of masters, and
the poor are slaves without the rights of slaves.
It is generally conceded, even by abolitionists, that the serfs of
Europe were liberated because the multitude of laborers, and their
competition as freemen to get employment, had rendered free labor
cheaper than slave labor. But, strange to say, few seem to have seen
that this is in fact asserting that they were less free after
emancipation than before. Their obligation to labor was increased; for
they were compelled to labor more than before to obtain a livelihood,
else their free labor would not have been cheaper than their labor as
slaves. They lost something in liberty, and everything in rights--for
emancipation liberated or released the masters from all their burdens,
cares and liabilities, whilst it increased both the labors and the cares
of the liberated serf. In our chapter on the Decay of English Liberty,
we show that the whole struggle in England has been to oppress the
working man, pull down the powers, privileges and prerogatives of the
throne, the nobility, and the church, and to elevate the
property-holding class. The extracts from the Era and Northern
Churchman, in another chapter, will further elucidate this subject. We
promised to confirm our doctrine of the illusory and undefinable
character of liberty and slavery, by extracts from standard authors.
PALEY on Civil Liberty:
"To do what we will, is natural liberty: to do what we will,
consistently with the interest of the community to which we
belong, is civil liberty; that is to say, the only liberty to be
desired in a state of civil society.
I should wish, no doubt, to be allowed to act, in every instance,
as I pleased; but I reflect, that the rest also of mankind would
then do the same; in which state of universal independence and
self-direction, I should meet with so many checks and obstacles to
my own will, from the interference and opposition of other men's,
that not only my happiness, but my liberty, would be less than
whilst the whole community were subject to the dominion of equal
laws.
The boasted liberty of a state of nature exists only in a state of
solitude. In every kind and degree of union and intercourse with
his species, it is possible that the liberty of the individual may
be augmented by the very laws which restrain it; because he may
gain more from the limitation of other men's freedom than he
suffers by the diminution of his own. Natural liberty is the right
of common upon a waste; civil liberty is the safe, exclusive,
unmolested enjoyment of a cultivated enclosure.
The definitions which have been framed of civil liberty, and which
have become the subject of much unnecessary altercation, are most
of them adapted to this idea. Thus, one political writer makes the
essence of the subject's liberty to consist in his being governed
by no laws but those to which he hath actually consented; another
is satisfied with an indirect and virtual consent; another, again,
places civil liberty in the separation of the legislative and
executive offices of government; another in the being governed by
_law_; that is, by known, preconstituted, inflexible rules of
action and adjudication; a fifth, in the exclusive right of the
people to tax themselves by their own representatives; a sixth, in
freedom and purity of elections of representatives; a seventh, in
the control which the democratic part of the constitution
possesses over the military establishment."
MONTESQUIEU on Liberty:
"There is no word that has admitted of more various
significations, and has made more different impressions on human
minds, than that of _liberty_. Some have taken it for a faculty of
deposing a person on whom they had conferred a tyrannical
authority; others, for the power of choosing a person whom they
are obliged to obey; others, for the right of bearing arms, and of
being thereby enabled to use violence; others, for the privilege
of being governed by a native of their own country, or by their
own laws. A certain nation for a long time thought that liberty
consisted in the privilege of wearing a long beard.
Some have annexed this name to one form of government, in
exclusion of others; those who had a republican taste applied it
to this government; those who liked a monarchical state, gave it
to monarchies. Thus, they all have applied the name of liberty to
the government most conformable to their own customs and
inclinations; and as in a republic, people have not so constant
and so present a view of the institutions they complain of, and
likewise as the laws there seem to speak more, and the executors
of the laws least, it is generally attributed to republics, and
denied to monarchies. In fine, as in democracies, the people seem
to do very near whatever they please, liberty has been placed in
this sort of government, and the power of the people has been
confounded with their liberty.
It is true, that in democracies the people seem to do what they
please; but political liberty does not consist in an unrestrained
freedom. In governments, that is, in societies directed by laws,
liberty can consist only in the power of doing what we ought to
will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to
will.
We must have continually present to our minds the difference
between independence and liberty. Liberty is a right of doing
whatever the laws permit; and if a citizen could do what they
forbid, he would no longer be possessed of liberty, because all
his fellow citizens would have the same power."
BLACKSTONE on Liberty:
"The absolute right of man, considered as a free agent, endowed
with discernment to know good from evil, and with power of
choosing those measures which appear to him to be most desirable,
are usually summed up in one general appellation, and denominated
the natural liberty of mankind.
This natural liberty consists properly in a power of acting as one
thinks fit, without any restraint or control, unless by the law of
nature; being a right inherent in us by birth, and one of the
gifts of God to man at his creation, when he endued him with the
faculty of free will. But every man, when he enters into society,
gives up a part of his natural liberty, as the price of so
valuable a purchase; and, in consideration of receiving the
advantages of mutual commerce, obliges himself to conform to
those laws which the community has thought proper to establish.
And this species of legal obedience and conformity is infinitely
more desirable than that wild and savage liberty which is
sacrificed to obtain it. For, no man that considers a moment,
would wish to retain the absolute, uncontrolled power of doing
what he pleases; the consequence of which is, that every other man
would also have the same power; and then there would be no
security to individuals in any of the enjoyments of life.
Political, therefore, or civil liberty, which is that of a member
of society, is no other than natural liberty, so far restrained by
human laws, (and no farther,) as is necessary and expedient for
the general advantage of the public. Hence, we may collect that
the law, which restrains a man from doing mischief to his fellow
citizens, though it diminishes the natural, increases the civil
liberty of mankind; but that every wanton and causeless restraint
of the will of the subject, whether practiced by a monarch, a
nobility, or a popular assembly, is a degree of tyranny: nay, that
even laws themselves, whether made with or without our consent, if
they regulate and constrain our conduct in matters of mere
indifference, without any good end in view, are regulations
destructive of liberty; whereas, if any public advantage can arise
from observing such precepts, the control of our private
inclinations, in one or two particular points, will conduce to
preserve our general freedom in others of more importance, by
supporting that state of society which can alone secure our
independence. Thus the statute of King Edward IV, which forbade
the fine gentlemen of those times (under the degree of a lord) to
wear pikes upon their shoes or boots of more than two inches in
length, was a law that savored of oppression; because, however
ridiculous the fashion then in use might appear, the restraining
it by pecuniary penalties, could serve no purpose of common
utility. But the statute of King Charles II, which prescribes a
thing seemingly as indifferent, (a dress for the dead, who are all
ordered to be buried in woollen,) is a law consistent with public
liberty; for it encourages the staple trade, on which, in great
measure, depends the universal good of the nation. So that laws,
when prudently framed, are by no means subversive, but rather
introductive of liberty; for, (as Mr. Locke has well observed,)
where there is no law, there is no freedom. But then, on the other
hand, that constitution or frame of government--that system of
laws, is alone calculated to maintain civil liberty, which leaves
the subject entire master of his own conduct, except in those
points wherein the public good requires some direction or
restraint.
The idea and practice of this political or civil liberty, flourish
in their highest vigor in those kingdoms where it falls little
short of perfection, and can only be lost or destroyed by the
folly or demerits of its owner: the legislature, and of course the
laws of England, being peculiarly adapted to the preservation of
this inestimable blessing even in the meanest subject.
Very different from the modern constitutions of other States on
the continent of Europe, and from the genius of the imperial law,
which, in general, are calculated to vest an arbitrary and
despotic power of controlling the actions of the subject, in the
prince or in a few grandees. And this spirit of liberty is so
deeply implanted in our constitution, and rooted even in our very
soil, that a slave, or a negro, the moment he lands in England,
falls under the protection of the laws, and so far becomes a
freeman, though the master's right to his service may possibly
still continue.
Next to personal security, the law of England regards, asserts and
preserves the personal liberty of individuals. This personal
liberty consists in the power of locomotion, of changing
situation, or removing one's person to whatever place one's
inclinations may direct, without imprisonment or restraint, unless
by due course of law. Concerning which, we may make the same
observations as upon the preceding article; that it is a right
strictly natural; that the laws of England have never abridged it
without sufficient cause; and, that in this kingdom, it can never
be abridged at the mere discretion of the magistrate, without the
explicit permission of the laws."
Now, let the reader examine and study these definitions of Liberty by
Paley, Montesquieu and Blackstone, and he will see that they are in
pursuit of an ignis fatuus that eludes their grasp. He will see more,
that their liberty is a mere modification of slavery. That each of them
proposes that degree of restraint, restriction and control, that will
redound to the general good. That each is in pursuit of good government,
not liberty. Government pre-supposes that liberty is surrendered as the
price of security. The degree of government must depend on the moral
and intellectual condition of those to be governed. Take, for instance,
Blackstone's definition of civil liberty, and our negro slaves enjoy
liberty, because the restrictions on their free will and free agency not
only redound to public good, but are really necessary to the protection
and government of themselves. We mean to involve ourselves in no such
absurdities. Negroes, according to Blackstone, Paley and Montesquieu,
although slaves, are free, because their liberty is only so far
restricted as the public interest and their own good require. Our theory
is, that they are not free, because God and nature, and the general good
and their own good, intended them for slaves. They enjoy all the rights
calculated to promote their own interests, or the public good. They are,
at the South, well governed and well protected. These are the aims of
all social institutions, and of all governments. There can be no liberty
where there is government; but there may be security for good
government. This the slave has in the selfish interest of the master and
in his domestic affection. The free laborer has no such securities. It
is the interest of employers to kill them off as fast as possible; and
they never fail to do it.
We do not mean to say that the negro slave enjoys liberty. But we do say
that he is well and properly governed, so as best to promote his own
good and that of society. We do mean to say further, that what we have
quoted from these great authors, is all fudge and nonsense. Liberty is
unattainable; and if attainable, not desirable.
Liberty of locomotion, which Blackstone boasts of as one of the rights
of Englishmen, belongs to the mass of them less than to other people.
For five hundred years the poor laws have confined the poor to their
parishes, denied them the right to bargain for their own wages, and as
late as 1725, set them up in stalls and shambles for hire, like cattle.
Liberty in England, as in Rome and Greece, has been, and is now, the
privilege of the few--not the right of the many. But in Rome, Greece,
and the Southern States of America, the many have gained in protection
what they lost in liberty. In England, the masses have neither liberty
nor protection. They are slaves without masters. This right of
locomotion, of choosing or changing their domicil, is not only denied to
the mass of the poor, but in all countries as well as in England, to
wives, to children, to wards, apprentices, soldiers, sailors, convicts,
lunatics and idiots. Take, then, this test of liberty, and how little of
it is there in England! But, in fact, there is a very large nomadic
class of beggars, rogues, and journeymen workmen, who are always
wandering, and yet, who are the most wretched members of society and its
greatest pests. So much for locomotion.
Great as the difficulty is to determine what is Liberty, to ascertain
and agree on what constitutes Slavery is still greater. Slavery, in its
technical form, has been almost universal, yet not exactly alike in all
its circumstances and all its regulations in any two ages, or in any two
countries. In very many ancient States, the power of life and death was
vested in the master. In most countries, the slave cannot acquire or
hold property legally. In all, he holds more or less by the permission.
In many, his legal right to separate property is protected by law. Even
in Cuba, he can compel his master to emancipate him, upon offering an
adequate price; and in some cases of irreconcilable disagreement, force
his master to sell him to another master. It is remarkable at first
view, that in Cuba, where the law attempts to secure mild treatment to
the slave, he is inhumanly treated; and in Virginia, where there is
scarce any law to protect him, he is very humanely governed and provided
for. In Cuba, many of the slaves are savages, and do not elicit the
domestic affection of the master, who sees in them little more than
brutes. The master is, besides, often an absentee, and tho' overseers be
far more humane than Irish rent-collectors, they have neither the
interests nor feelings of resident masters. But the most efficient cause
of cruelty and neglect, is the African slave trade, which makes it
cheaper to buy than to rear slaves. In Virginia, the slaves have
advanced much in morality, religion and intelligence, and their masters
and mistresses, living on the farm with them, naturally become attached
to them. Self-interest, however, is everywhere the strongest motive to
human conduct. Negroes are immensely valuable, and increase rapidly in
value and in numbers when well treated. The law of self-interest secures
kind and humane treatment to Southern slaves. All the legislative
ingenuity in the world will never enact so efficient a law in behalf of
free laborers.
During the decline of the Roman Empire, slavery became colonial or
prædial. The slaves occupied the place of tenants or serfs, were
"adscripti soli," and could only be sold with the farm. Many
antiquarians consider the colonial slavery of the Romans as the true
origin of the feudal system. This kind of slavery was universal in
Europe till a few centuries since, and now prevails to a great extent.
The serfs of Russia, Poland, Turkey, and Hungary, are happier and better
provided for than the free laborers of Western Europe. They have homes,
and lands to cultivate. They work but little, because their wants are
few and simple. They are not over-worked and under-fed, as are the free
laborers of Western Europe. Hence, they never rise in riots and
insurrections, burn houses, commit strikes,--nor do they emigrate.
This form of slavery, however, makes the master an idle absentee,
depriving the slaves of his guardianship, his government, and his
protection. By throwing large masses of the ignorant into exclusive
association with each other, it promotes and increases ignorance,
negligence and idleness. Men will not improve their condition who have
no examples to emulate and no teachers to instruct. Were their farms
conducted as ours of the South, the wealthy would have ample employment,
and the slaves or serfs find in their masters examples, governors,
teachers and protectors.
The right to sell one's children, or one's self, into slavery has been
very common, and is now practiced in China. The ancient Germans used to
even stake their liberty at games of hazard. This would never have been
done, nor would the laws have permitted it, if the situation of the
slave had been greatly inferior to that of the free. But how shall we
class wives, children, wards, apprentices, prisoners, soldiers and
sailors? They are not free, because their personal liberty is controlled
by the will of a superior; not by mere law. They are liable to
confinement and punishment by their superiors, whose will stands in
place of law as to them. They have no right of locomotion like that
enjoyed by the free. They have no liberty secured by law;--they are not
free. Are they, therefore, slaves?
Paley defines slavery to be, "An obligation to labor for the benefit of
the master, without the contract or consent of the servant." The sick,
the superannuated, the infirm, and the infant slaves are under no such
obligation in theory or practice. The master is under an obligation,
legally, theoretically and practically, to labor for them. Therefore,
the master of twenty slaves is always a slave himself. If he be a good
man, he is the happier for performing his duties as slave to those
classes of his slaves. But what becomes of that slavery of the ancients
and of China, where the slave, by actual contract, sells himself? This
is not slavery according to Paley.
The great and glaring defect, however, of Paley's definition is, that he
omits the obligation on the master to provide for and protect the slave.
'Tis but half of a definition, and that half false. It does often happen
that the _obligations_ of the master are more onerous than those of the
slave. Yet Paley omits those obligations altogether. The slave, when
capable to do so, must work for the master; but the master, at all
times, must provide for the slave. If incapable of doing so, the law
gives the slave a new master and protector. His situation is less
honorable, but far more secure than that of the master. Definitions are
perilous attempts. We never read one that a seventy-four with all sail
set might not drive through. We shall define nothing ourselves, for we
know that this is the business of Omnipotence, that alone knows "all
things in heaven and on earth."
We proceed to examine the attempted definitions of Montesquieu and
Blackstone. Blackstone objects to the right to sell one's self, that the
consideration enures to the buyer. This may or may not be so, according
to the laws of the State where the contract is made. It is not a
necessary feature of slavery, and cannot fairly be employed as an
objection to it. In fact, the slaves of the South, in their houses,
gardens, fruit, vegetables, pigs and fowls, hold more property than the
peasantry of Europe, and are far better secured in its possession by
their masters, than that peasantry is by the law. He further objects,
that in case of absolute slavery, not only the liberty, but the life of
the slave is at the master's disposal. This objection is false and
puerile. In no civilized country has the master the right to kill his
slave.
The protection or support to which the slave is entitled, would be an
ample consideration of itself for the sale of his liberty. A much larger
one than the capitalists of Europe would be willing to give; for they
all say that free labor is cheapest.
Montesquieu thus defines slavery:--"Slavery, properly so called, is the
establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over
another, as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune." This
is French liberty under the rule of the republican Bonapartes, and
English liberty under Cromwell--not Southern slavery. France is always
happy and prosperous with a master, and the masses in England look back
to the Protectorate with fond regret. These despots played the part of
Southern masters. They forced the strong to support the weak, the rich
to take care of the poor. The nations became two farms or families.
Western Europe will soon have to choose between domestic slavery and
universal slavery.
Democracy and liberty are antagonistic; for liberty permits and
encourages the weak to oppress the strong, whilst democracy proposes, so
far as possible, to equalize advantages, by fairly dividing the burdens
of life, and rigidly enforcing the performance of every social duty by
every member of society, according to his capacity and ability.
CHAPTER IX.
PALEY ON EXPLOITATION.
Paley maintains, to its fullest extent, the doctrine of exploitation
which we have endeavored to expound and illustrate in the last three
chapters. Yet, neither Paley nor any of his readers were ever aware of
its tremendous consequences. It is only when those consequences are
pointed out, that the mind revolts at the theory.
He saw and said, that capital paid labor nothing, yet discovered no
iniquity in the transaction. He saw that labor produced every
thing--capital nothing, and "all that the capitalist does is, to
distribute what others produce." He should have added, after retaining
the "lion's share" himself. Our whole theory is to be found in a single
paragraph of Paley, and if there be nothing strange or monstrous in his
theory, there can be nothing of the kind in ours; for our theories are
identical. Chapter 2, Book 3d of his philosophy, under the head of "The
treatment of our domestics and dependants," he employs the following
language: "Another reflection of a like tendency with the former is,
that our obligation to them is much greater than theirs to us. It is a
mistake to suppose that the rich man maintains his servants, tradesmen,
tenants and laborers: the truth is, they maintain him. It is their
industry which supplies his table, furnishes his wardrobe, builds his
houses, adorns his equipage, provides his amusements. It is not the
estate, but the labor employed on it, that pays his rents. _All that he
does is, to distribute what others produce; which is the least part of
the business._" He should have added, "but far the most profitable
part."
A few additional truths, and this paragraph of Paley's would be an
admirable description of "Cannibals" above, and "Slaves without
Masters," below.
His servants are obliged to work as our slaves, not for pay, but for an
allowance out of the proceeds of their own labor. His employers, like
our masters, only distribute something of their earnings to the
laborers, giving them far less than masters give to slaves, retaining
more to themselves--and hence "free labor is cheaper than slave labor."
But Paley did not comprehend what he wrote. We, aided by the Socialists,
will try to make it understood by others.
Philosophy cannot justify the relation between the free laborer, and the
idle, irresponsible employer. But, 'tis easy to justify that between
master and slave. Their obligations are mutual and equal; and if the
master will superintend and provide for the slave in sickness, in
health, infancy and old age--if he will feed and clothe, and house him
properly, guard his morals, and treat him kindly and humanely, he will
make his slaves happy and profitable, and be himself a worthy, useful
and conscientious man.
CHAPTER X.
OUR BEST WITNESSES AND MASTERS IN THE ART OF WAR.
I think few worth damnation, save their kings;
And these but as a kind of quit-rent, to
Assert my right as lord.
VISION OF JUDGMENT.
We intend this chapter as our trump card, and have kept it in reserve,
because it is rash to "lead trumps." We could produce a cloud of
witnesses, but should only protract the trial thereby. We call into
court Horace Greely, Wm. Goodell, Gerrit Smith, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, and
Stephen Pearle Andrews, and propose to prove by them (the actual leaders
and faithful exponents of abolition,) that their object, and that of
their entire party, is not only to abolish Southern slavery, but to
abolish also, or greatly to modify, the relations of husband and wife,
parent and child, the institution of private property of all kinds, but
especially separate ownership of lands, and the institution of Christian
churches as now existing in America. We further charge, that whilst
actively engaged in attempts to abolish Southern slavery, they are busy,
with equal activity and more promise of success, in attempts to upset
and re-organize society at the North.
In convening these gentlemen as witnesses, and also arraigning them
on trial, we are actuated by no feelings of personal ill-will or
disrespect. We admire them all, and have had kindly intercourse and
correspondence with some of them. They are historical characters, who
would seek notoriety in order to further their schemes of setting the
world to rights. We have no doubt of their sincere philanthropy, and as
little doubt, that they are only "paving hell with good intentions."
We speak figuratively. We shall try their cause in the most calm and
judicial temper. We would address each of them in language borrowed from
Lord Byron:
Why,
My good old friend, for such I deem you,
Though our different parties make us fight so shy,
I ne'er mistake you for a _personal_ foe;
Our difference is political, and I
Trust that whatever may occur,
You know my great respect for you, and this
Makes me regret whatever you do amiss.
Indeed, we should be ungrateful and discourteous in the extreme, if we
did not entertain kindly remembrance and make gentlemanly return for the
generous reception and treatment we received, especially from leading
abolitionists, when we went north to personate Satan by defending
Slavery. Though none agreed with us, none were made converts by us:
Yet still between his darkness and his brightness,
There passed a mutual glance of great politeness.
We will first call Mr. Wm. Goodell to the stand. His position as one of
the most active leaders of the Gerrit Smith or Syracuse wing of
abolition, would entitle his admissions and assertions of the failure of
his own society to the greatest credence, since such admissions and
assertions weaken his assaults on the South, and must be reluctantly
drawn from him; but, independent of his peculiar position, his high
character as a man, and his distinction as an author, should enlist
attention and command respect for what he says. In his Democracy of
Christianity, vol. 2d, page 197, he thus writes:
"And what is this pride of wealth, after all, growing up into the
aristocracy of wealth, the usurpations of wealth, the oppressions
of wealth, grinding the masses of humanity into the dust to-day,
throughout our modern Christendom, in the middle of our nineteenth
century civilization and progress, with a hoof more flinty, more
swinish, and MORE MURDEROUS (capitals ours) than that of
semi-barbarous feudalism in its bloodiest days."
He understands the intolerable exploitation of capital better than we
do, for he lives in a country where slavery has not stepped in to shield
the laborer. He, the laborer, is a "slave without a master," and his
oppressors, "cannibals all."
Mr. G's. book appears to us to carry the doctrine of human equality to a
length utterly inconsistent with the power and control which ordinary
Christian marriage gives to the husband over the wife; yet be assures us
he is the unflinching friend of Christian marriage. The purity of his
sentiments revolt at the conclusions to which his abstract doctrines
inevitably lead. Yet his idea of Christian marriage may differ, so far
as the power of the husband is concerned, widely from ours. We are sure
he would do nothing, designedly, to impair the purity and sacredness of
the relation.
Mr. G. is a Christian socialist, and looks to a proximate millenium to
rectify the false relations of men and property, in his own society, and
to the arm of the Federal Government to set things right in the South.
Why not leave all to Providence, especially since the right of the
Government to abolish Southern slavery is denied by all respectable
authority outside of abolition; and also by the Garrisonians, who are
the most thorough-going of all abolitionists, and of all disorganizers.
Mr. Goodell's plan of "rectifying human relations" at the North, by a
millennium, is quite as common as that of Mr. Greely, Andrews and Owen,
each of whom has discovered a new social science that they are sure will
fit the world, because it wont fit a village.
We really think that a man of Mr. Goodell's nice sense of justice and
propriety, should have hesitated long ere he invoked a God to do that
which he would be ashamed to do himself. If it be wrong to strip the
rich of their possessions, why hope or expect that God will perpetrate a
wrong at which human conscience revolts, when it is proposed to be done
by human agency.
After an elaborate argument, to prove the advent of a millennial state
of society, through the instrumentality of Christianity, Mr. Goodell, on
page 510, vol. II, of his Democracy of Christianity, thus sums up and
concludes:
"Glance over, again, the items included in these predictions:--The
general and permanent prevalence of peace,--the result of justice,
_equity_, SECURITY, and the actual _possession_, [italics his] by
each and every one of 'his vine and fig tree'--that is, of soil
sufficient to produce the needful fruits of the earth, or, in some
way, a supply for his physical wants.
"Add to this, the general diffusion and great increase of
knowledge, especially moral and religious knowledge, which
includes the knowledge of social relations, duties and
rights,--the knowledge that implies 'wisdom,' and that wisdom
which begins with 'the fear of the Lord.' Next the application of
all this knowledge, wisdom and fear of the Lord, to the concerns
of civil government, insomuch that 'the kingdoms of this world
shall become the kingdoms of Christ,' and the dominion be given to
THE PEOPLE, who at that period, shall have become purified and
instructed by him,--who shall all be righteous, who 'shall all
know the Lord, from the least to the greatest,' and even 'the
feeble among them shall be as David.' To this, add general
contentment and enjoyment, facilities of social and international
intercourse, the general prevalence of the spirit of benevolence
and brotherly love, and the absence of those maddening and satanic
temptations, delusions and prejudices, that have so long deceived,
enslaved and embroiled the nations;--all this cemented by the true
spiritual worship, protection and love of the Common Father of all
men.
"Is any thing wanting to complete the picture, and to ratify the
assurance of a state of liberty, equality, common brotherhood,
common interests, common sympathy, and common participancy in
social rights, immunities, privileges and arrangements? Must we
need be told in addition to all this, that 'the thrones of
despotism shall be cast down,' that the 'beast' of civil and
ecclesiastical tyranny and usurpation, the persecutor 'of the holy
apostles and people,' shall be given 'to the burning flames,' that
the yoke of domination 'shall be dashed into pieces as a potter's
vessel,' that 'subversion' shall tread upon the heels of
subversion, and one despotism overturn another, till He, 'whose
right it is, shall rule.' That the masses shall be elevated, the
exclusives brought low, that the 'lofty' shall be 'humbled,' and
the 'haughty bowed down'--_in such a period of general possession,
general justice, equality and contentment as has been already and
previously described_?"
Now, Mr. Goodell deplores that the condition of his society is so bad,
that it becomes necessary to upset and reverse it by a millennium. Is
not this, considering his high position and authority, strong evidence
to prove "the failure of Free Society." We should add, that his whole
book teems with evidence of his uncompromising hostility to existing
Church institutions, and the existing Priesthood, as abuses and
interpolations that have been engrafted improperly on Christianity. He
obviously belongs, in faith, to those early Christians, who resembled
the Essenes in their social relations, and who daily expected the advent
of the millennium. Their error in the last respect, shows that it is the
Bible, and not their construction of it, that should be our rule of
faith and guide of conduct.
The next witness we call up, is Gerrit Smith, a man who has a national
reputation as an orator, a philanthropist and a gentleman; who writes
better than he speaks, and whose active charity and benevolence are only
exceeded in the greatness of their amount by the grossness of their
misapplication. He is a zealous Christian, yet edits, or did edit, the
Progressive Christian, which proposed to abolish Christianity as now
understood. He builds churches to keep out the clergy, and heads
Christian conventions to put down Christian institutions, and agrees
with Wendell Phillips, that the pulpit of the North stands in the way
of reform--_et delenda est Carthago_--the pulpit should be destroyed!
Like Mr. Goodell, he seems to look to an approaching millenium. But he
is a man of restless activity and energy, and of incalculable daring,
and would put his shoulder to the wheel, and inaugurate the millenium at
once. He assumes the responsibility; declares continually in speeches,
lectures and essays, that land monopoly is an intolerable evil; that
lands should be as common and as free for use to all, as air and water;
and proposes to divide them at once. He is one of the largest owners of
real estate at the North, and yet the most uncompromising agrarian in
the world. His disinterestedness is only exceeded by his rashness and
destructiveness:
"The mildest-manner'd man,
That ever cut a throat or scuttled ship."
His amiableness of disposition and evenness of temper never desert him,
because he has not to "screw his courage to the sticking-place." 'Tis
always there. The "red right arm of Thundering Jove" could not shake his
tenacity of purpose; and, in a case of conscience, he would let the
world or the Union slide with equal equanimity:
"Si fractus illabitur orbis,
Ímpavidum ferient ruinæ!"
He gives a forty thousand or so to Kansas emigrants from the North,
because, as a gentleman, he feels it his duty to stick to his country,
right or wrong; and abolitionists are _his_ country. His gross
eccentricities and intellectual aberrations are but the natural
out-growth of the social system which surrounds him, and which reminds
him and every other ingenuous and candid mind,
"That whatever is, is _wrong_.'"
He is only seemingly eccentric and erratic. He feels the difficulty of
disposing of his immense wealth, without making it an engine of
oppression and exaction. He understands the theory of capital and labor,
as his speeches show;--knows that labor produces every thing, and that
capital is the whip that forces it to work, and also the exploitator
that robs it of most of the proceeds of its industry. "La proprieté
c'est le vol!" he sees is true, save in the impurity of motive, which it
seems to attribute to its owners. If he endows colleges, or gives his
money in large sums to individuals, in the one case it is used to rear
up exploitators, who rob labor by professional skill; and in the other,
to those who use it at once as an engine of exaction and oppression. If
he gives it in smaller sums to the poor, he is generally giving to the
idle the labor of the industrious, and offering a premium to continued
idleness; for he can neither control the conduct nor expenditure of his
beneficiaries. He is too good, and too proud, to spend his income in
pomp and luxury. Too good thus to waste the proceeds of labor, (as all
public or private luxury does,) and thus increase the burdens of the
working class. Too proud to derive reflected importance and standing
from extraneous glitter and costly show and equipage. He has (no doubt,
in vain,) attempted to ameliorate the condition of a great many slaves,
by purchasing them and emancipating them. Could he retain them as
slaves, he might see that his charity was not misapplied, by educating
them and controlling their conduct. To us, it occurs that a large
capital can only be safely invested in slaves and hands, if the owner
wishes to be sure that it shall not be used as an engine of oppression,
or as a persuasive to idleness and dissipation.
We should do injustice to Mr. Smith were we not to add, that he is quite
as busy in abducting negroes as in buying them. The underground railroad
is one of his favorite pets and beneficiaries. His restless energy is
not satisfied with the slow proceedings of this road, and hence he buys
negroes, as well as aids the abducting of them. He has been severely
censured for buying them, by those whom he supplies with the means to
steal them, or whom he rescues from the fangs of the law, when caught
in abortive efforts to abduct them.
He had the education and has the feelings and bearing of the Southerner.
His father owned slaves, and a territory full of Indians, and he was
reared as playmate and prince in their midst; hence, he has the proud
humility of the Southerner, not the exacting and supercilious arrogance
of the Northerner. He does not demand deference and respect, because it
has, from boyhood, been yielded to him, as his due, by admitted
inferiors.
The value of his testimony, establishing, if true, the utter and entire
failure of free society, cannot be over estimated. He is learned,
candid, honest, well-informed, and has always lived in free society. Its
subversion, which he proposes, and actively attempts, would strip him of
millions of wealth. He is the leading champion of slave abolition, and,
by admitting the failure of free society, blunts and neutralizes all his
arguments against slavery. In every way, then, pride of opinion, seeming
consistency, and pecuniary interest, tempt him to extol, not to condemn
free society. It is true, he thinks slavery also a failure, and a
greater failure; but he knows little practically about slave society,
and cannot admit for us, although he may for himself and his
section.--En passant, we would say to him, that air and water are the
subjects of more exclusive appropriation in free society than land.--He
is a lawyer, and knows that the ownership of the soil carries with it
the ownership of every thing, ad inferos, et usque ad coelum. In fact,
in cities where the poor most do congregate, their food and raiment
differ not half so much from that of the rich, as their enjoyment of
pure air and water. Men must get a place to breathe and drink from; and
all places are appropriated.
Yes, Mr. Smith, you are vainly trying to grasp The Right! The Right is
connected with, affected by, and affects all the Past, all the Present,
and all the Future. God knows the Right--man only the Expedient.
Our next witness is Horace Greely, Editor of the Tribune, and Napoleon
of the Press. His first distinction was won by his espousing and
elaborately propagating the Social Philosophy of Charles Casimir
Fourier. This he did, some twenty years since, in a long controversy
with the Courier & Enquirer: the latter paper sustaining the
conservative side. The correspondence was afterwards published in book
form, and we regret that we have not been able to possess ourselves of a
copy. The whole edition, we learn, was burnt at the Harpers. Consigned
by Providence, not by a human Censor, to the flames. Should we
misrepresent our witness, it will be because we have tried in vain to
get this book. We think he was the first, in America, to assert, and
maintain by arguments and proofs, the inadequacy and injustice of the
whole social and governmental organization at the North. He, not
ourselves, is the American author of the theory of the Failure of Free
Society. His remedies, though not as radical and scientific as those of
Proudhon and Mr. Andrews, did very well for a beginning. He, we think,
proposed at once to coop mankind up in Phalansteries, where, in a few
generations, all the distinctions of separate property, and of separate
wives and children, would be obliterated and lost, and society would
gradually and gently be fused and crystalized into a system of pure and
perfect Communism. The Tribune has to minister to a variety of tastes,
all agreeing in their destructive tendencies, but differing widely as to
the manner in which they shall attain their conclusions; hence, it is
hard to deduce any well defined system of philosophy from its columns.
Mr. Andrews intimates, that our witness is no philosopher at all. Be it
so. Yet all must admit that no man of the age has the organ or faculty
of Destructiveness so fully developed. The Tribune has been, from the
time of the controversy of which we have spoken, to the present day, the
great Organ of Socialism, of Free Love, and of all the other isms which
propose to overthrow and rebuild society and government, or to dispense
with them altogether. Steadily pursuing this destructive course, the
Tribune has for years become the most popular paper in the North, and,
'tis said, has more readers in Europe and America than any paper in the
world; and yet its only peculiar thought, its whole intellectual, moral,
social and political stock in trade, consists of the one idea, variously
expressed, illustrated and enforced, "The Failure of Free Society;" or,
as Carlyle phrases it, "We must have a new world, if we are to have any
world at all."
What a striking illustration of our theory, that "a mere verbal formula
often distinguishes a truism from a paradox." _We_ assert a theory
bluntly and plainly, and attempt to prove it by facts and arguments, and
the world is ready to exclaim, "Oh, what shocking heresy." Mr. Greely,
for twenty years, maintains the same theory, in different language, and
elicits the admiration and gratitude of the world. Oh, Le Pauvre Peuple!
how long will it permit its flatterers to deceive and betray it? Mr.
Greely and ourselves agree in our destructive philosophy, but are wide
asunder as the poles in what is constructive. Each proposes to protect
the weak. He promises "protection without control or abridgment of
liberty." We tell those who ask for or require protection and support,
that "they must submit to be controlled, for that the price of security
has ever been, and ever will be, the loss of liberty."
The popularity of the Tribune shews that the world is prepared to upset
existing social systems. When that is done, it will have to choose
between Free Love and Slavery; between more of government and no
government. We think, like Carlyle, more of government is needed. We,
too, are a Socialist, (for free society,) but we would screw up the
strings of society, not further relax them, much less cut them "sheer
asunder!"
We wish to display the truth, and nothing but truth, to the public, on
the subjects of Abolition and Socialism; and, for fear of
misrepresentation, have written letters to Mr. Greely and Mr. Garrison,
copies of which we shall append to this chapter. Should they be silent,
the letters will at least show our solicitude to arrive at truth.
We have written enough about Mr. Andrews, and quoted enough from his
book already, to show that he is the great philosopher of his party, and
the comprehensive and truthful expositor of its doctrines, its
tendencies, and ultimate results. His co-laborers, less scientific and
far-sighted than he, might be ready to exclaim, on reading his book,
"Thinkest thou thy servant a dog, that he shall do this thing!" But Mr.
Andrews is right. To this complexion must they come at last. A plunge
into the soft and sensual waters of the lake of Free Love--then a sudden
and violent exit into the keen and shivering atmosphere of despotism.
We know less of Mr. Garrison than of either of the other gentlemen. He
heads the extreme wing of the Socialist, Infidel, Woman's-Right,
Agrarian and Abolition party, who are called Garrisonians. He edits the
Liberator, which is conducted with an ability worthy of a better cause.
He and his followers seem to admit that the Bible and the Constitution
recognize and guarantee Slavery, and therefore denounce both, and
propose disunion and no priests or churches, as measures to attain
abolition. Mr. Garrison usually presides at their meetings, and we
infer, in part, their principles and doctrines, from the materials that
compose those meetings. A Wise-Woman will rise and utter a philipic
against Marriage, the Bible, and the Constitution,--and will be followed
by negro Remond, who "spits upon Washington," and complains of the
invidious distinction of calling whites Anglo-Saxons, and negroes
Africans. And now, Phillips arises,
"Armed with hell-flames and fury,"
and gently begins, in tones more dulcet, and with action more graceful
than Belial, to
"Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell!
Uproar the universal peace--
Destroy all unity on earth."
Then Mr. Parker will edify the meeting by stirring up to bloody deeds in
Kansas or in Boston--in which, as becomes his cloth, he takes no
part--and ends by denouncing things in general, and the churches and
parsons in particular. And, probably, the whole will conclude with a
general indulgence and remission of sins, from Mr. Andrews, who assumes,
for the nonce, the character of Father Confessor, and assures the tender
conscience that it is right and incumbent to take the oath to sustain
the Constitution, with the deliberate purpose of violating it, because
such oaths are taken under moral duress. These Garrisonians are as
intellectual men as any in the nation. They lead the Black Republican
party, and control the politicians. Yet are they deadly enemies of
Northern as well as of Southern institutions.
Now, gentlemen, all of you are philosophers, and most zealous
philanthropists, and have for years been roaring, at the top of your
voice, to the Oi Polloi rats, that the old crazy edifice of society, in
which they live, is no longer fit for human dwelling, and is imminently
dangerous. The rats have taken you at your word, and are rushing
headlong, with the haste and panic of a "sauve que peut," into every
hole that promises shelter--into "any port in a storm." Some join the
Rappists and Shakers, thousands find a temporary shelter in Mr. Greely's
Fourierite Phalansteries; many more follow Mr. Andrews to Trialville, to
villages in the far West, or to Modern Times; and a select few to the
saloons of Free Love; and hundreds of thousands find shelter with
Brigham Young, in Utah; whilst others, still more frightened, go to
consult the Spiritual Telegraph, that raps hourly at the doors of heaven
and of hell, or quietly put on their ascension robes to accompany Parson
Miller in his upward flight. But the greater number are waiting (very
impatiently) for Mr. Andrews to establish his New and Better World, or
for Mr. Garrison and Mr. Goodell to inaugurate their Millenium.
Why, Gentlemen! none of these worse than Cassandra vaticinations--why
none of this panic, terror, confusion and flight, in Slave Society? Are
we suffering, and yet contented? Is our house tumbling about our heads,
and we sitting in conscious security amidst the impending ruin? No! No!
Our edifice is one that never did fall, and never will fall; for
Nature's plastic hand reared it, supports it, and will forever sustain
it.
Have we not shewn, in this single chapter, that the North has as much to
apprehend from abolition as the South, and that it is time for
conservatives every where to unite in efforts to suppress and extinguish
it?
We add hereto a letter we addressed to the public as to "Our Trip to the
North," and our reply to a Mr. Hogeboom, a New York abolitionist. Also,
our letters to Garrison and Greely. We do this to shew that we intend
not to mislead, misrepresent or deceive. In truth, the leading
Abolitionists are our pets and favorites. We have an inveterate and
perverse penchant of finding out good qualities in bad fellows.
Robespierre and Milton's Satan are our particular friends.
MY TRIP TO THE NORTH.
_To the Editors of the Enquirer_:
GENTLEMEN,--I hesitated long before resolving to address you this
letter. I feel that I shall be amenable to the charge of egotism; but I
have written a book, in which I undertake to defend and justify Slavery,
and to advise the South as to its future policy. In that I am
egotistical, as every one is who writes a book. I have "stepped in so
far, that returning were more tedious than go o'er." I will not do
things by halves. When I wrote that book, I believed that Government,
Law, Religion, and Marriage, were victims bound and filleted for
sacrifice by Northern abolition. What was then matter of doubtful
opinion, inference and speculation, has become, since my trip to the
North, subject of fixed faith and conviction. I enjoyed the warm and
elegant hospitality of some of the Liberty party of the North. I was in
social intercourse with many of them. I have received many pamphlets,
books and speeches from them. I have no private confidences to betray,
because I heard no secrets. This party is conscientious, believes itself
right, and courts discussion and notoriety. I, besides, conversed
freely with strangers, in public conveyances and at hotels. I think,
with my previous study on the subject of Slavery and Abolition, I may be
able to make some useful suggestions to the South and the North.
It seemed to me, that in attempting to prove "Free Society a failure,"
in my lecture at New Haven, I was "but carrying coals to New Castle."
The Liberty party, at least, discovered that long before I did, and are
as intent on subverting and re-constructing society at home, as on
abolishing slavery with us. A part of them, I will not undertake to say
how large a portion, are infidels, who find the Bible no impediment to
their schemes of social reform, because they assert that it is false.
This wing of the Liberty party is in daily expectation of discovering a
new Social Science, that will remedy all the ills that human flesh is
heir to. They belong to the schools of Owen, Louis Blanc, Fourier,
Comte, and the German and French Socialists and Communists. The other
wing, and probably the most numerous wing of the party, is composed of
the Millenial Christians--men who expect Christ, either in the flesh or
in the spirit, soon to reign on earth; the lion to lie down with the
lamb; every man to sit down under his own vine and fig tree; all to have
an interest in lands; marrying and giving in marriage to cease; war to
be abolished, and peace and good will to reign among men. They are as
intent on abolishing all Church government and authority, as the
infidels. They would, equally with them, trample on all law and
government, because "liberty is," say they, "an inalienable right," and
law, religion, and government continue to protect slavery. Marriage,
Christian marriage, which requires the obedience of the wife, is
slavery; and they would modify it, or destroy it. Land monopoly, they
say, gives to property or capital a greater power over labor than
masters have over slaves; hence, they very wisely and logically
conclude, that land, like air and water, should be common property.
The Liberty party is composed of very able men--of philosophers and
philanthropists. They have demonstrated, beyond a doubt, that slavery is
necessary, unless they can get up a Millenium, or discover a new Social
Science. The increasing crime and poverty of mankind, and the utter
failure of all social experiments like those of Owen and others,
indicate neither the advent of the one, nor the discovery of the other.
This Liberty party are the best allies of the South, because they admit,
and continually expose, the utter failure of Free Society.
One of the most distinguished of this party thus writes to Wendell
Phillips, Esq.:
"I cannot refrain from expressing, in this connection, my grief
that many abolitionists have allowed their faith in the Bible to
be shaken."
In my short trip to the North, I was struck with nothing so much as the
avowed infidelity of many, and the Christianity melting into infidelity,
of the great mass of the balance with whom I conversed. I have no doubt,
however, that although such a state of things is too common at the
North, yet my peculiar associations made the evil appear greater than it
really is. The religious and conservative, like the lily of the valley,
are silent and secluded. As a specimen of this religion melting, as I
think, into infidelity, I will give another extract from the letter to
Wendell Phillips:
"You have been much censured for holding that the anti-slavery
cause can reach success only over the ruins of the American
government and the American church. Nevertheless, you are right.
The religion which tolerates--nay, sanctifies--slavery, must
necessarily be conquered ere the devotees and dupes of that
religion will suffer slavery to be abolished. Again, so long as
the actual government is on the side of slavery, the bloodless
abolition of slavery is impracticable."
The author of the letter from which I quote, and Mr. Phillips to whom it
is addressed, are gentlemen, scholars and christians. They are, besides,
historical characters. We violate no privacy in holding up their
opinions to public view and general criticism. Is their's not
Christianity melting into infidelity? I have lately received a book, in
two volumes, entitled "The Democracy of Christianity," from its
author--William Goodell of New York, a member of the Liberty Party. The
author evinces much ability, ingenuity and research. He is one of the
millenial Christians--obviously pious and sincere. He sees no exodus
from the appalling evils of Free Society, except that state of perfect
equality, peace, happiness and security, that he, like the men of
Cromwell's day, thinks is promised and predicted in the Bible. I cite
the following passage from the conclusion of his work:
"Glance over again the items included in these predictions:--The
general and permanent prevalence of peace--the result of justice,
equity, security, and the actual possession, by each and every
one, of 'his vine and fig tree,' i. e. of soil sufficient to
produce the needful fruits of the earth, or in some way, a supply
of his physical wants."
If this state of things ever occur, God will bring it about without the
help of abolitionists.
We do not deem it necessary to quote from the infidel agrarians and
abolitionists, because their splendid promises and bloody and disastrous
failures, have been matters of every day's history and of every day's
occurrence, from the times of Marat and the guillotine to those of
Lamartine and Cavaignac.
The Proletariat of France, the nomadic pauper banditti of England, the
starving tenantry of Ireland, the Lazzaroni of Italy, and the
half-savages of Hayti, are the admitted results of practical abolition.
But, say the Liberty party, abolition has stopped half-way; abolish
churches, law, government, marriage, and separate property in lands, and
then the scheme will work charmingly.
Well, possibly it will; but as we are very happy, comfortable and
contented in slave society, suppose you try the "experimentum in vile
corpus." Begin at home, and if the experiment works well, we of the
South will follow your example. You have a little Eden now near Lake
Oneida. Some hundreds of Oneida perfectionists, living in primitive
simplicity, among whom there is no "marrying or giving in marriage," no
separate property, all things enjoyed in common; and we suppose, neither
priest nor officer to disturb or mar the harmony of millenial society.
"We but tell the tale as 'twas told to us." Does it work well? If so,
why not form all your institutions on that model?
You of the Liberty party seem to think that "passional attraction" and
"attractive labor" will keep all men up to their duties, and dispense
with the necessity of Church and State, Law and Religion, Priest and
Officer. You think you follow nature, but in truth you are superficial
observers of nature. Man, it is true, is a social and gregarious animal,
but like all animals of that kind, he is, by nature, law-making and
law-abiding. The ants and bees are ruled by despotic and exacting
governments, and by laws and regulations, wise and less changeable than
those of the Medes and Persians. But man is not only a law-making
animal, but a religious one also. In remitting him to a state of anarchy
and infidelity, you would not remit him to a state of nature, but one of
continuous, exterminating warfare, such as France witnessed during the
reign of terror.
I find, Messrs. Editors, that I am somewhat wandering from the subject
with which I commenced, and will conclude--for the present, at least.
Very respectfully, your ob't serv't.
G. F."
LETTER TO MR. HOGEBOOM.
_Port Royal_, Va., Jan. 14th, 1856.
To A. HOGEBOOM, Esq., Sheds Corners, Madison county, N. Y.
DEAR SIR:--Your letter reached this office during my absence from home.
I embrace the earliest opportunity of replying to it, because I rejoice
that public attention at the North may, by this means, be excited to the
subject of my book. I am sure I should not have been honored with your
correspondence had you read the book and known its subject. That subject
is the "Failure of Free Society." You have only read extracts from it,
you say, in the Northern papers. Those papers will be slow to notice the
facts, authorities and admissions which it cites, to prove the failure
of their form of society. I send you the book and refer you particularly
to the preface, to the second and third chapters, and to the "summing
up" in the concluding chapter.
If this does not satisfy you that free society is a cruel failure, read
the history of the English Poor laws, and you will find that the
laboring class of England have, every day since the emancipation of the
villeins, been in a worse condition, morally and physically, than any
slaves ever were. Read, also, two articles, the one in the North British
Review, and the other in Blackwood for December, depicting the
demoralized and starving condition of the whole laboring class of Great
Britain. Read, also, Carlyle's Latter Day Pamphlets. If this does not
convince you that the _Little Experiment_, (for it is a very little one,
both in time and space,) is a disastrous and cruel failure, look at
home! How comes it that your distinguished neighbor, Gerrit Smith,
proposes to make land as free for the enjoyment of all as air and water?
Confessedly, because the despotism of capital over labor is
_intolerable_. Confessedly, because your form of society is found to be
a failure in practice! Why does another distinguished abolitionist, Mr.
Goodell, of New York, in his book, on the Democracy of Christianity,
declare, that wealth now is more cruel, oppressive and _murderous_,
than Feudal masters? Why does Mr. Greely advocate the doctrines of
Fourier, and propose to subvert your society and reconstruct it from top
to bottom, making a sort of common property of women and children, as
well as of lands and houses? Why does, much your ablest philosopher,
Stephen Pearle Andrews, propose plans of reform still more sweeping?
And, why are his doctrines popular with the "higher classes" in New
York? Why, in fine, are the larger number of the abolitionists,
millenial Christians, in daily expectation of the advent of Christ, who
is to divide all property equally, and give to each one his "vine and
fig tree." And why are the others, Atheists, like Owen and Fourier,
attempting to invent new and better forms of society?
Why have you Bloomer's and Women's Right's men, and strong-minded women,
and Mormons, and anti-renters, and "vote myself a farm" men, Millerites,
and Spiritual Rappers, and Shakers, and Widow Wakemanites, and
Agrarians, and Grahamites, and a thousand other superstitious and
infidel isms at the North? Why is there faith in nothing, speculation
about everything? Why is this unsettled, half demented state of the
human mind co-extensive in time and space, with free society? Why is
Western Europe now starving? and why has it been fighting and starving
for seventy years? Why all this, except that free society is a failure?
Slave society needs no defence till some other permanently practicable
form of society has been discovered. None such has been discovered.
Nobody at the North who reads my book will attempt to reply to it; for
all the learned abolitionists had unconsciously discovered and
proclaimed the failure of free society long before I did.
I am indebted for the honor of your correspondence, to your ignorance of
what my book contains. I reply through the Press, because I intend to
use your letter merely as an occasion to challenge the North, to dispute
or deny my assertion that "free society is a failure!"
In conclusion, I propose to you, and through you to the whole North,
these questions.
Do not the past history and present condition of Free Society in Western
Europe (where alone the experiment has been fully tried,) prove that it
is attended with greater evils, moral and physical, than Slave Society?
Do not the late writers on society in Western Europe, and in our free
States, generally admit that those evils are intolerable, and that Free
Society requires total subversion and re-organization?
Should you not, therefore, abolish your form of society, and adopt ours,
until Mr. Greely, or Brigham Young, or Mr. Andrews, or Mr. Goodell, or
some other socialist of Europe or America, invents and puts into
successful practice, a social organization better than either, or until
the millenium does actually arrive?
With the assurance that I am quite as intent on abolishing Free Society,
as you are on abolishing slavery, and with the confidence that all of
divine authority, and almost all of human authority, is on my side, I
remain, your co-philanthropist, and
Obedient servant,
GEO. FITZHUGH.
LETTER TO MR. GARRISON.
_Port Royal, Va._, July 18, 1856.
DEAR SIR--I am about to publish a work, entitled "Cannibals All; or,
Slaves Without Masters." I shall, in effect, say, in the course of my
argument, that every theoretical abolitionist at the North is a
Socialist or Communist, and proposes or approves radical changes in the
organization of society. I shall cite Mr. Greely, Mr. Goodell, S. P.
Andrews, Gerrit Smith, yourself, and other distinguished and leading
abolitionists, of both sexes, as proof of my assertion. I shall also
endeavor to show that all the literary mind of Western Europe concurs
with you. You, I perceive, have read a work already written by me, and
will not mistake my object. We live in a dangerous crisis, and every
patriot and philanthropist should set aside all false delicacy in the
earnest pursuit of truth. I believe Slavery natural, necessary,
indispensable. You think it inexpedient, immoral and criminal. Neither
of us should withhold any facts that will enable the public to form
correct opinions. Should you not reply to this letter, I shall publish a
copy of it in my book, and insist that your silence is an admission of
the truth of my charges. I regret that your very able paper reaches me
irregularly.
Your obedient servant,
GEO. FITZHUGH.
LOYD GARRISON, Esq., Boston, Mass.
LETTER TO MR. GREELY.
_Port Royal, Va._, July 20, 1856.
DEAR SIR--I am writing a work, entitled, "Cannibals All; or, Slaves
Without Masters." I shall state, as a matter of fact, that all
theoretical abolitionists assert the failure of free society, and each
proposes some plan for its re-organization. I shall cite particularly
yourself, Gerrit Smith, S. P. Andrews, Mr. Goodell and Mr. Garrison. I
shall rely on your discussion with the Courier and Enquirer, which has
been burnt, chiefly as my proof of your opinion.
I wish to afford you, and other distinguished gentlemen, an opportunity
of correcting me if I have come to erroneous conclusions. I have,
therefore, written to Mr. Garrison, and I now write to you, to afford
you an opportunity to correct me if I am wrong. I know you all think our
society a greater failure than your own; but you can _admit_ it for
yourselves, not for us. I shall publish a copy of this letter in my
book, if you do not reply, (and possibly if you reply,) both this letter
and your answer.
'Tis not possible that our two forms of society can long co-exist. All
Christendom is one republic, has one religion, belongs to one race, and
is governed by one public opinion. Social systems, formed on opposite
principles, cannot co-endure.
With much respect,
Your obedient servant,
GEO. FITZHUGH.
Before parting with our "Masters in the Art of War," we must abate a
little of the honors we have lavished on them. We have said that they
discovered and proclaimed the failure of Free Society before we did. So
they did; but they mistook it for the failure of all society. Their
little world of Western Europe and Yankeedom was, in their eyes, the
whole world. Hence, exclaims Mr. Carlyle, "We must have a new world, if
we are to have any world at all." And Andrews takes up the cry, all the
North joins in chorus, and sends the sad knell echoing back to Europe.
Not so fast, gentlemen. Your world is not one-tenth of the whole world,
and all is peace, quiet, and prosperity outside of it. We of the South,
and all slave countries, want no new world.
Now we were the first to discover and proclaim that Free Society _alone_
had failed; and failed because it was free. We occupied vantage ground,
a good stand-point, saw both forms of society, and thus discovered what
our masters had overlooked. Every body sees it now, and gives us no more
credit for the discovery, than his cotemporaries gave Columbus--"At mihi
plaudo!"
ITALIAM! primus conclamat Achates;
Italiam, coeto socii clamore salutant.
CHAPTER XI.
DECAY OF ENGLISH LIBERTY, AND GROWTH OF ENGLISH POOR LAWS.
Blackstone, whose Commentaries have been, for half a century, a common
school-book, and whose opinions on the rise, growth and full development
of British liberty, are generally received as true, as well in America
as in Europe, maintains a theory the very opposite of that for which we
are about to contend.
He holds that the appearance of the House of Commons, about the reign of
Henry the Third, was the dawn of approaching liberty. We contend that it
was the origin of the capitalist and moneyed interest government,
destined finally to swallow up all other powers in the State, and to
bring about the most selfish, exacting and unfeeling class, despotism.
He thinks the emancipation of the serfs was another advance towards
equality of rights and conditions. We think it aggravated inequality of
conditions, and divested the liberated class of every valuable, social
and political right. A short history of the English Poor Laws, which we
shall annex, will enable the reader to decide between us on this head.
He thinks the Reformation increased the liberties of the subject. We
think that, in destroying the noblest charity fund in the world, the
church lands, and abolishing a priesthood, the efficient and zealous
friends of the poor, the Reformation tended to diminish the liberty of
the mass of the people, and to impair their moral, social and physical
well-being. He thinks that the Revolution, by increasing the power of
the House of Commons, and lessening the prerogative of the Crown, and
the influence of the Church, promoted liberty. We think the Crown and
the Church the natural friends, allies and guardians of the laboring
class; the House of Commons, a moneyed firm, their natural enemies; and
that the Revolution was a marked epoch in the steady decay of British
liberty.
He thinks that the settlement of 1688 that successfully asserted in
theory the supreme sovereignty of Parliament, but particularly the
supreme sovereignty of the House of Commons, was the consummation or
perfection of British liberty. We are sure, that that settlement, and
the chartering of the Bank of England, which soon succeeded it, united
the landed and moneyed interests, placed all the powers of government in
their hands, and deprived the great laboring class of every valuable
right and liberty. The nobility, the church, the king, were now
powerless; and the mass of the people, wholly unrepresented in the
government, found themselves exposed to the grinding and pitiless
despotism of their natural and hereditary enemies. Mr. Charles Dickens,
who pities the condition of the negro slaves, thus sums up, in a late
speech, the worse condition of the "Slaves without Masters," in Great
Britain: "Beneath all this, is a _heaving_ mass of poverty, ignorance
and crime." Such is English liberty for the masses. Thirty thousand men
own the lands of England, three thousand those of Scotland, and fewer
still those of Ireland. The great mass of the people are cut off from
the soil, have no certain means of subsistence, and are trespassers upon
the earth, without a single valuable or available right. Contrast their
situations with that of the old villeins, and see then whether our
theory of British liberty and the British constitution be true, or that
of Blackstone.
All writers agree there were no beggars or paupers in England until the
liberation of the serfs; and moreover admit that slaves, in all ages and
in all countries, have had all their physical wants sufficiently
supplied. They also concur in stating, that crime was multiplied by
turning loose on society a class of men who had been accustomed to and
still needed the control of masters.
Until the liberation of the villeins, every man in England had his
appropriate situation and duties, and a mutual and adequate interest in
the soil. Practically the lands of England were the common property of
the people of England. The old Barons were not the representatives of
particular classes in Parliament, but the friends, and faithful and able
representatives of all classes; for the interests of all classes were
identified. Monteil, a recent French author, who has written the most
accurate and graphic description of social conditions during the Feudal
ages, describes the serfs as the especial pets and favorites of the
Barons. They were the most dependent, obedient, and useful members of
the feudal society, and like younger children, became favorites. The
same class now constitute the Proletariat, the Lazzaroni, the Gypsies,
the Parias, and the "pauper banditti" of Western Europe, and the Leperos
of Mexico. As slaves, they were loved and protected; as pretended
freemen, they were execrated and persecuted.
Mr. Lester, a New York abolitionist, after a long and careful
observation and study of the present condition of the English laboring
class, solemnly avers, in his "Glory and Shame of England," that he
would sooner subject his child to Southern slavery, than have him to be
a free laborer of England.
But it is the early history of the English Poor Laws, that proves most
conclusively that the liberation of the villeins was a sham and a
pretence, and that their situation has been worse, their rights fewer,
and their liberties less, since emancipation than before. The Poor Laws,
from the time of Edward the Third to that of Elizabeth, were laws to
punish the poor, and to keep them at work for low wages. Not till late
in the reign of Elizabeth, was any charitable provision made for them.
Then, most of them would have starved, as the confiscation and sales of
the church lands had deprived them of their only refuge, but for the new
system of charity. The rich must have labor, and could not afford to let
them _all_ starve, although they were ready to attempt the most
stringent means to prevent their increase.
In the Edinburgh Review, October, 1841, on Poor Law Reform, we find the
following admirable history and synopsis of the English Poor Laws:
The great experiment of Poor Law amendment, which has now for
seven years been in progress among our southern neighbors, appears
to us to have been insufficiently attended to, and therefore to
have been imperfectly understood in this part of the island. We do
not believe that many of our Scottish readers are fully aware of
the origin of the English Poor Laws, of the changes which they
underwent, of the abuses which they created, of the remedy which
has been applied; or of the obstacles which have diminished the
success of that great measure, and now threaten its efficiency.
And yet these are subjects of the deepest interest, even to those
who study legislation merely as a science. A series of laws are
exhibited, persevered in for centuries, by a nation always eminent
for practical wisdom, of which the result has almost invariably
been failure, or worse than failure; which in scarcely a single
instance have attained their objects, and in most cases have
produced effects precisely opposite to the intentions of their
framers;--have aggravated whatever they were intended to diminish,
and produced whatever they were intended to prevent. From us, as
Scotchmen, they merit peculiar attention, not only from the
resemblance of our poor laws to the earlier English statutes; but
from the probability that, as the connection between the two
countries becomes more intimate, we shall at no distant period
follow the example, whatever it may be, of the larger country to
which we are united; and participate in the evils and advantages
of the system which she may finally adopt. This fate already
threatens Ireland. It is scarcely probable that Scotland can avoid
it.
Each of the subjects to which we have alluded, would require a
volume for its complete development; but we are constrained to
give to them such consideration as is admissible within the limits
of an article of moderate length.
The Committee of the House of Commons which considered the Poor
Laws in 1817, commence their able Report by stating, that "the
principle of a compulsory provision for the impotent, and for
setting to work the able-bodied, originated, without doubt, in
motives of the purest humanity." From this statement, plausible as
it is, we utterly dissent. We believe that the English poor laws
originated in selfishness, ignorance, and pride. Better motives,
without doubt, though misdirected by almost equal ignorance,
dictated the changes which were made in those laws during the 18th
century--the fourth which elapsed from their commencement; but we
are convinced that their origin was an attempt substantially to
restore the expiring system of slavery. The evils of slavery are
now understood; it is admitted that it destroys all the nobler
virtues, both moral and intellectual; that it leaves the slave
without energy, without truth, without honesty, without industry,
without providence; in short, without any of the qualities which
fit men to be respected or even esteemed. But mischievous as
slavery is, it has many plausible advantages, and freedom many
apparent dangers. The subsistence of a slave is safe; he cannot
suffer from insufficient wages, or from want of employment; he has
not to save for sickness or old age; he has not to provide for his
family; he cannot waste in drunkenness the wages by which they
were to be supported; his idleness or dishonesty cannot reduce
them to misery; they suffer neither from his faults nor his
follies. We believe that there are few of our Highland parishes in
which there is not more suffering from poverty than would be found
in an equal Russian population. Again, the master thinks that he
gains by being able to proportion the slave's subsistence to his
wants. In a state of freedom, average wages are always enough to
support, with more or less comfort, but still to support, an
average family. The unmarried slave receives merely his own
maintenance. A freeman makes a bargain; he asks whatever his
master can afford to pay. The competition among employers forces
them to submit to these terms; and the highly paid workman often
wastes his extra wages in idleness and debauchery. And when
employment is abundant; that is, when his services are most
wanted, he often tries to better himself by quitting his master.
All this is disagreeable to masters who have been accustomed to
the apparent economy of servile labor, and to its lethargic
obedience.
The great motive of the framers of the earlier English poor laws
was to remedy the latter class of inconveniences; those which
affect, or appear to affect the master. The motive of the framers
of the later acts again, beginning with George I., was to remedy
the first class of evils: those which affect the free laborer and
his family.
The first set of laws were barbarous and unskillful, and their
failure is evident from their constant re-enactment or amendment;
with different provisions and severer penalties. The second set
had a different fate--they ultimately succeeded, in many
districts, in giving to the laborer and to his family the security
of servitude. They succeeded in relieving him and those who, in a
state of real freedom, would have been dependent on him, from many
of the penalties imposed by nature on idleness, improvidence, and
misconduct. And by doing this, they in a great measure effected,
though certainly against the intentions of the legislature, the
object which had been vainly attempted by the earlier laws. They
confined the laborer to his parish; they dictated to him who
should be his master; and they proportioned his wages, not to his
services, but to his wants. Before the poor law amendment act,
nothing but the power of arbitrary punishment was wanting in the
pauperized parishes to a complete system of prædial slavery.
Our limits will not allow us to do more than to state very briefly
the material parts of the numerous statutes, beginning by the
statute of laborers, 23d Edward III., (1349,) and ending by the
39th Eliz. cap. 4, (1597,) which were passed for the supposed
benefit of masters.
The 23d Ed. III. requires all servants to accept the wages which
were usually given five or six years before, and to serve by the
year, not by the day; it fixes a positive rate of wages in many
employments; forbids persons to quit the places in which they had
dwelt in the winter, and search employment elsewhere in the
summer; or to remove, in order to evade the act, from one county
to another. A few years after, in 1360, the 34th Ed. III.
confirmed the previous statute, and added to the penalties, which
it imposed on laborers or artificers absenting themselves from
their services, that they should be branded on the forehead with
the letter F. It imposed also a fine of £10 on the mayor and
bailiffs of a town which did not deliver up a laborer or artificer
who had left his service.
Twenty-eight years after, in 1388, was passed the 12th Rich. II.,
which has generally been considered as the origin of the English
poor laws. By that act the acts of Ed. III. are
confirmed--laborers are prohibited, on pain of imprisonment, from
quitting their residences in search of work, unless provided with
testimonials stating the cause of their absence, and the time of
their returning, to be issued by justices of the peace at their
discretion. And, "because laborers will not, nor, for a long
season, would not, serve without extrageous and excessive hire,"
prices are fixed for their labor; and punishments awarded against
the laborer who receives more, and the master who gives more.
Persons who have been employed in husbandry until twelve years of
age, are prohibited from becoming artisans. Able-bodied beggars
are to be treated as laborers wandering without passports.
Impotent beggars are to remain where they are at the time of the
proclamation of the act; or, if those places are unwilling or
unable to support them, they are, within forty days, to repair to
the places where they were born, and there dwell during their
lives.
We have said that this act has been treated as the origin of the
English poor laws. It has been so considered in consequence of the
last clause, which is the first enactment recognizing the
existence of the impotent poor. But this enactment makes no
provision for them; though, by requiring them to be stationary in
a given spot for the rest of their lives, it seems to assume that
they would be supported there. It gives them, however, no claim,
nor is there a clause in the whole act intended to benefit any
persons except the employers of labor, and principally of
agricultural labor--that is to say, the land-owners who made the
law. If the provisions of the act could have been enforced, the
agricultural laborers, and they formed probably four-fifths of the
population of England, though nominally free, would have been as
effectually _ascripti glebæ_ as any Polish serf. And, to make a
nearer approximation to slavery, in the next year (1389), the
13th Rich. II. was passed; which directs the justices of every
county to make proclamation every half year, at their discretion,
according to the price of food, what wages every artificer and
laborer shall receive by the day. This act, with some intervals,
during which the legislature attempted itself to fix the prices of
labor, remained substantially in force until the present century.
A further attempt to reduce husbandry laborers to a hereditary
caste of serfs, was made by the 7th Hen. IV. cap. 17. (1405,)
which, after reciting that the provisions of the former acts were
evaded by persons apprenticing their children to crafts in
towns--so that there is such a scarcity of husbandry laborers that
_gentlemen_ are impoverished--forbids persons not having 20s.
a-year in land to do so, under penalty of a year's imprisonment.
It appears, however, that the laborers did not readily submit to
the villenage to which the law strove to reduce them; for from
this time the English statute book is deformed by the enactments
against able-bodied persons leaving their homes, or refusing to
work at the wages offered to them, or loitering, (that is to say,
professing to be out of work,) which, to use the words of Dr.
Burn, "make this part of English history look like the history of
the savages in America. Almost all the severities have been
inflicted, except scalping."[2] A new class of criminals,
designated by the terms "sturdy rogues" and "vagabonds," was
created. Among these were included idle and suspect persons,
living suspiciously.[3] Persons having no land or craft whereby
they get their living.[4] Idle persons calling themselves
serving-men, having no masters. Persons who, after having been
sent home, absent themselves from such labor as they shall be
appointed to.[5] Able-bodied poor persons who do not apply
themselves to some honest labor or other; or serve even for meat
and drink, if nothing more is to be obtained.[6] Persons able to
labor, not having land or master, nor using any lawful employment.
Laborers using loitering, and refusing to work for reasonable
wages.[7]
The first attempt on the part of a person dependent on his labor
for his support to assert free agency, by changing his abode, or
by making a bargain for his services, or even by refusing to work
for "bare meat and drink," rendered him liable to be whipped and
sent back to his place of birth, or last residence, for three
years; or, according to some statutes, for one year, there to be
at the disposal of the local authorities. The second attempt
subjected him, at one time, to slavery for life, "to be fed on
bread and water and refuse meat, and caused to work by beating,
chaining, or otherwise;" and for the third, he was to suffer death
as a felon.
We have seen that the 12th Rich. II. required the impotent poor to
remain for life where they were found at the proclamation of the
act, or at the places of their birth. The subsequent statutes
require them to proceed either to their places of birth, or last
places of residence, for three years. The law assumed, as we have
already remarked, that they would be supported there by voluntary
alms; and as respects the able-bodied, it assumed that an
able-bodied slave, for such the laborer given up to the local
authorities was, could always be made worth his maintenance; that
maintenance being, of course, the lowest that could keep him in
working order. It appears, however, that casual alms were found an
insufficient, or an inconvenient provision for the impotent; that
the local authorities were not sufficiently severe taskmasters of
the able-bodied; and that the keeping them at work required some
fund, by way of capital. The 27th Hen. VIII. cap. 25, (1536,)
therefore, requires the parishes to which the able-bodied should
be sent, "to keep them to continual labor in such wise that they
may get their own living by the continual labor of their own
hands;" on pain that every parish making default shall forfeit
twenty shillings a-month. It directs the churchwardens, and two
others of every parish, to collect alms and broken meat, to be
employed in supporting the impotent poor, and "setting and keeping
to work the sturdy vagabonds;" and forbids other almsgiving, on
pain of forfeiting ten times the amount. This is the first attempt
at making charity legal and systematic; and it was obviously a
part of the scheme for confining the laboring population to their
own parishes. It seems to have been supposed that voluntary alms,
systematically distributed, would provide wholly for the impotent,
and form a fund which, aided by the fruits of their forced labor,
would support the "sturdy vagabonds;" and, therefore, that no one
could have an excuse for changing his residence.
In the early part of Elizabeth's reign was passed a statute, 5th
Eliz. cap. 3, (1562,) inflicting the usual penalties, whipping,
slavery, and death, on sturdy vagabonds; that is to say, on those
who, having no property but their labor, presumed to act as if
they had a right to dispose of it; and containing the usual
provisions for confining the impotent poor to their parishes. In
one respect, however, it was a great step in advance; for it
contains for the first time a provision enabling the justices to
tax, at their discretion, those who refused to contribute to the
relief of the impotent and the keeping at work the able-bodied.
Concurrently with this statute, and indeed as a part of it, for it
is the next chapter on the roll of parliament, was passed the 5th
Eliz. cap. 4. This statute requires all persons brought up to
certain specified trades, at that time the principal trades of the
country, and not possessed of property, or employed in husbandry,
or in a gentleman's service, to continue to serve in such trades;
and orders that all other persons, between twelve years old and
sixty, not being gentlemen, or students in a school or university,
or entitled to property, and not engaged in maritime or mining
operations, be compelled to serve in husbandry with any person
that will require such person to serve, within the same county.
Females, in corporate towns, between the ages of twelve and forty,
and unmarried, are to be disposed of in service by the corporate
authorities, at such wages, and in such sort and manner, as the
authorities think meet. The hours of work are fixed by the
statute; and the justices are, twice a-year, after "conferring
together respecting the plenty or scarcity of the time," to fix
the wages. Persons directly or indirectly paying more, are to be
punished by imprisonment and fine; persons receiving more, by
imprisonment. No person is to depart from one parish to another,
or from one hundred or county to serve in another hundred or
county, without a license from the local authorities.
When we recollect that disobedience to these enactments exposed a
man or a woman to be included in the proscribed class of
vagabonds, punishable by whipping, branding, slavery, and death,
it must be admitted that, whatever might be the practice, the
_law_ gave little freedom to the laboring classes.
The 14th Eliz. cap. 5, (1572,) carried on the same legislation
against the able-bodied, merely aggravating the penalty, by
subjecting the offenders (that is, all persons who would not work
for what the justices should think reasonable wages) to whipping
and burning for the first offence, and to the penalties of felony
for the second. It made a further approach to the present system,
by directing the fund "for setting to work the rogues and
vagabonds," and relieving the impotent, to be raised by a general
assessment.
Twenty-five years afterwards, the two acts of the 39th Eliz. cap.
3 and 4, were passed, which for the first time divided into
separate statutes the punishment of the able-bodied, and the
relief of the impotent. By the second of these acts, vagabonds
(including, we repeat, persons able to labor, having no lord or
master, not using any lawful employments, and laborers refusing to
work for common wages) are to be whipped, but not branded, sent
back to their parishes: if they appear to be such as will not be
reformed, they are to be transported, or adjudged perpetually to
the galleys.
The other act, the 39th Eliz. cap. 3, differs so slightly from the
43d Eliz. cap. 2, that it requires no further attention.
The 43d of Eliz. directs, that the churchwardens and two or more
householders, to be appointed by the justices, shall take order,
with the consent of the justices, for setting to work children,
and all persons having no means to maintain themselves, and using
no ordinary or daily trade of life to get their living by; and to
raise a fund by taxation of the inhabitants for such setting to
work, and for the necessary relief of the lame, impotent, old, and
blind poor not able to work. And the justices are directed to send
to the House of Correction, or common jail, "such as shall not
employ themselves to work, being appointed thereunto as
aforesaid."
It appears from this statement, that the 43d of Elizabeth deserves
neither the praise nor the blame which have been lavished on it.
So far from having been prompted by benevolence, it was a
necessary link in one of the heaviest chains in which a people
calling itself free has been bound. It was part of a scheme
prosecuted for centuries, in defiance of reason, justice, and
humanity, to reduce the laboring classes to serfs, to imprison
them in their parishes, and to dictate to them their employments
and their wages. Of course, persons confined to certain districts
by penalties of whipping, mutilation, and death, must be
supported; and, if they were capable of labor, it was obvious that
they ought to be made to contribute to the expense of their
maintenance. Thence arose the provisions for relieving the
impotent, and setting to work the able-bodied. But those
provisions do not, on the other hand, deserve the censure passed
on them by the Committee of the House of Commons in 1817. They
were not of a nature to induce the industrious to relax their
efforts. They held out no temptations to idleness. The
able-bodied, who were the objects of the 43d Elizabeth, were those
"who, having no means to maintain themselves, used no ordinary and
daily trade of life to get their living by;" such persons were, by
the previous acts, criminals; the work to which they were to be
put was forced work; and if they did not employ themselves in it,
"being thereunto appointed as aforesaid," the justices were to
commit them to jail. The industrious laborer was not within the
spirit or the words of the act. This was, indeed, the complaint of
Lord Hale: "The plaster," says his Lordship, "is not so large as
the sore. There are many poor who are able to work if they had it,
and had it at reasonable wages, whereby they might support
themselves and their families. These are not within the provisions
of the law."[8]
And it was long before the legislature assented to any extension
of the 43d Elizabeth. The 8th and 9th Will. III. cap. 30, passed
nearly a century afterwards, "To the intent that the money raised
_only_ for the relief of _such as are impotent as well as poor_,
may not be misapplied," requires all persons receiving relief, and
their families, to wear a badge, containing a large Roman P, and
the first letter of the name of the parish from which they
received relief; the object being not, as has been supposed, to
degrade the pauper, but to afford an easy means of detecting the
overseer who had relieved an able-bodied person.
The oppressive legislation of the Plantagenets and Tudors was
unsuccessful. The provisions on which its efficacy depended,
namely, the regulation of wages by the justices, the punishment of
those who refused to work for such wages, or who paid more than
such wages, and the punishment of those who left their parishes
without license, became gradually obsolete. Legally considered,
they remained in force until the present century. Sir Frederic
Eden has collected regulations of wages by the justices, from the
35th of Eliz. (1593) down to 1725. And the last which he gives,
that regulating wages for the county of Lancaster in 1725,
contains an exposition of the law by the justices, in the spirit
of the times of Henry VIII. or Elizabeth: "That the transgressors
may be inexcusable when punished, we, the said justices, publish
these denunciations, penalties, punishments, and forfeitures which
the statutes impose. No servant that hath been in service before,
ought to be retained without a testimonial that he or she is
legally licensed to depart, and at liberty to serve elsewhere, to
be registered with the minister of the parish whence the servant
departs. The master retaining a servant without such testimonial
forfeits five pounds. The person wanting such testimonial shall be
imprisoned till he procure it. If he do not produce one within
twenty-one days, to be whipped as a vagabond. The person that
gives more wages than is appointed by the justices shall forfeit
five pounds, and be imprisoned ten days; the servant that takes
more to be imprisoned twenty-one days. Every promise or gift
whatever to the contrary shall be void. We, the said justices,
shall make strict enquiries, and see the defaults against these
ancient and useful statutes severely corrected and punished."
Free society is a recent and small experiment. The English Poor Laws and
the English poor, constitute its only history; for only in England has
the experiment been made on a large scale for several centuries. If we
have not proved its total and disastrous failure in England, in our
Sociology, and in this chapter, we are resolved to prove it before we
have done.
It is a favorite political maxim of Englishmen, that taxation and
representation should go hand in hand; and that none shall be taxed
without their own consent. Yet in Great Britain, the working men, who
pay every cent of tax, are not represented at all, have no vote in
elections, and are taxed without and against their own consent; whilst
the capitalist class, who pay no taxes, but, as Gerrit Smith truly
says, are the mere conduits, that pass them from the laborers to the
government. This vampire capitalist class impose all the taxes, and pay
none. Alas! poor human nature! It is ever grasping at truth, and hugging
itself.
CHAPTER XII.
THE FRENCH LABORERS AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Each of the many French revolutions was occasioned by destitution almost
amounting to famine among the laboring classes. Each was the
insurrection of labor against capital. But until the revolution of 1848,
the revolutionists were unconscious alike of their motives and their
objects. They believed, till then, that political changes would remedy
the evils which oppressed them. After the revolution of 1830,
philosophers and statesmen, seeing the inadequacy of change of dynasty
or of political policy, to alleviate the distresses of the great working
classes, began to search deeper for the causes of social embarrassment.
Suddenly the discovery was made, not only in France, but throughout
Western Europe, that the disease was social, not political. That it was
owing to the too unequal distribution of capital, and to its
exploitation of labor. The ablest minds saw, as well in England as in
France, that in transferring the reins of government from the hands of
hereditary royalty and nobility, to those of the capitalist class, that
the people had exchanged a few masters for thousands of extortioners.
Never did so vast a moral, intellectual and social movement arise so
suddenly, and spread so rapidly. The thing became the rage and fashion.
Even in America, our Northern folks affected a disease, which they did
not feel, just as Alexander's courtiers aped his wry neck; and
anti-rentism and land monopoly became the constant theme of
conversation, lectures, speeches, books and essays. In France and in
England, prior to 1830, there had been a few Socialists, such as Fourier
and St. Simon, Owen and Fanny Wright--but they were little heeded, and
generally considered about half crazy. Immediately thereafter, by far
the greater portion of the literary mind of Europe imbibed, in whole or
in part, the doctrines of these early Socialists. The infection soon
reached the lower classes, and occasioned revolution, intended to be
social as well as political, throughout Western Europe. The Provisional
Government in France, which immediately succeeded to the expulsion of
Louis Philippe, was composed entirely of Socialists, and its programme
and attempted measures were thoroughly socialistic.
The subject of the condition of the laboring classes in Europe, and
especially in France, was handled with an accuracy of detail and a
breadth of scientific expression in a review of our own work in the
Literary Messenger of March, 1855, of which we are incapable. The
author, Professor H. of Virginia, is our corresponding acquaintance
only. Informed by letter that he would review us, and that he concurred
in the general truth of our theory, we suggested to him in reply, that
he should, from his vast stores of learning, strengthen our main
positions. He thought the suggestion a good one, and fulfilled our
request, with an ability and learning, that no other man, on so short a
notice, could have done. As we have prompted, if not caused his toil, we
make no apology for appropriating so much of his review as seems to be a
reply to our suggestion:
From the principles as laid down in theory and exemplified in
practice, we proceed to the effects. That religion has been
undermined, morals contaminated, crime increased, misery extended,
deepened and multiplied, want and starvation augmented, society
agitated, and orderly government endangered by the progress of the
so-called prosperity of the free labor system, is evident, without
further proof, to any one who reads contemporary literature, who
pays attention to the statements of newspapers, and of Poor Law
Reports, who notes the cases brought before the police or criminal
courts, or is cognizant from any source of information, of the
actual condition of the multitude and of the poor in England,
Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, Prussia, and parts of
Switzerland, and in New England and the Northern States. The
connection of the results with the causes, is ably traced by Mr.
Fitzhugh, but not with sufficient care, minuteness and precision;
and the actual character and enormity of the results is exhibited
by him, and by an indefinite array of the most various and
unexceptionable testimony. The History of the Working Classes, by
Robert du Var, which we have joined with the Sociology for the
South, as the text for the present observations, is full of
evidence to this effect with regard to France; and for the other
countries specified, ample testimony may be easily obtained. The
Boston papers will suffice to illustrate the wretchedness of the
laboring classes in New England: the New York Herald and Tribune,
the works of Stephen Pearl Andrews, and of Greeley himself, will
render the same service for the other Northern States: Alton
Locke, Mary Barton, Mayhew's London Labor and the London Poor, the
debates in Parliament, the Reports of the Poor Law Commissioners,
and the English Reviews, will amply illustrate the condition of
Great Britain and Ireland; and for Germany, reference may be made
to Hacklander's Europarsches Sclavenleben, a work which has
followed the example of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and portrayed the
condition of the inferior classes in Europe, as a much more
legitimate object of European sympathy and consideration than
American Slavery. Where the evidence is so abundant and
voluminous, selection would be as unnecessary as it would be
tedious. It is within the reach of every one who desires to
consult it; and we need not load our pages with extracts to prove
what has been frequently and sufficiently proved before, and what
is so notoriously true as to be undeniable. A few quotations to
illustrate the condition of free labor societies we may indeed
quote at a later period, in connection with a different division
of the argument; but they are wholly unnecessary to confirm the
allegation of the wretchedness and depravity which are consuming
the vitals of the principal free societies of the Nineteenth
Century. They are rendered still more unnecessary by the fact that
the acceptability of Socialism in all of those communities,
betrays the extent of both the misery and the social disease to be
cured; and the confession of the multitude of recent writers on
social topics, admits not merely the evils which we have
specified, and their dependence on the theory and practice of free
societies, but acknowledges also the truth of the general
conclusion, that the free societies enumerated have unquestionably
failed, they have not produced the permanent or general blessings
anticipated from them, they have produced overwhelming social
disaster, multiplied indefinitely the woes and the vices of the
poor, threatened all society and government and national existence
in those communities, and announced a future so dark that little
more than its gloom and spectral shapes can be distinctly
recognized.
We regard Mr. Fitzhugh's employment of these admissions by
European writers and Northern reformers, as constituting the most
important position of his argument, and the most characteristic
novelty in his defence of the South. The testimonies which he
adduces are very strong and pointed, but they may be easily
multiplied, and will gain an accession of strength from such
multiplications. For years we have carefully collected similar
acknowledgments from foreign writers, and cheerfully contribute
them to the cause of the South, and the fortification of Mr.
Fitzhugh's position. And let it be remembered, that neither in the
Sociology for the South, nor in the quotations which will be
shortly introduced here, is the sole or principal obligation due
to Chartists, Socialists, Communists, or Agrarians of any sort.
From such authors some admissions have been received, but the
chief contributions are derived from those who have been the most
strenuous supporters of past social arrangements, and who,
notwithstanding a great diversity of views, abilities, studies,
and opportunities of knowledge, still represent the sober
conservative sense of their respective communities. We regret that
Mr. Fitzhugh should have extended so much countenance to the
Socialists, and should have partially identified Socialism and
Slavery, but the strongest part of his testimonies to the failure
of free societies, is derived from other declarations than theirs,
and we shall imitate his example.
We begin, however, with a Socialist, but almost the only one whom
we shall summon to the stand:
"The French Revolution was an abortion. The trading classes (_la
bourgeoisie_) organized themselves in the name of capital, and,
instead of becoming a man, the serf became a prolétaire. What then
was his situation? The most painful of all, the most intolerable
which can be conceived. Like all the prolétaires, the trading
classes had shouted: 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.' The result
has been that every thing which was prolétaire--that is to say,
all those who have no capital, groan under the most cruel usage
(_exploitation_.) They cannot be freemen, nor brothers, nor
equals. Not free, because their daily bread depends on a thousand
accidents produced and engendered by the competition of
capitalists among themselves; not brothers, because, with hearts
crushed and lacerated by the evils which overwhelm them, they
cannot love those whose creed is so fatal to them; not equals,
because capital being the supreme law, it is only through it that
any participation or concurrence in social power is possible."[9]
An apology is due for not attempting to translate the term
prolétaires in the above passage, but every one familiar with the
condition of modern free societies, is aware that it is absolutely
untranslateable. It is an indispensable word in modern times, and
the impossibility of avoiding its use is a stronger proof of the
failure of free societies, than the invention of the phrase
Sociology, which Mr. Fitzhugh regards in this light. It ought to
be unhesitatingly introduced into the English language; it can
boast of a very respectable Latin descent; it occurs in the XII
Tables, and originally signified a person of the lowest class, too
poor to pay taxes, and unable to serve the State otherwise than by
raising children and thus increasing the population[10]--a very
doubtful service in modern Europe.
We return to Mr. Robert du Var:
"It must be remarked, that what is called pauperism, this sore,
this ulcer, which infests, and more and more consumes the body
social, could not exist in the same degree amongst the nations of
antiquity. It is a phenomenon which could only arise as the
consequence of the transformation of slavery into serfdom, and of
serfdom into free labor (_prolétariat_.) * * * In antiquity, every
one, whether free or not, citizen or slave, was always connected
with some centre which ensured at least his material support."[11]
"As a result of the individual liberty, independent of any central
power, proclaimed by Christianity, favored and developed by the
instincts of the Northern barbarians, legitimated and transformed
into a social doctrine by the institution of Communes, was formed
and agglomerated throughout Europe an innumerable population,
having no material connection with the regular society, and having
for itself nothing but the most naked liberty, that is to say,
misery, poverty, isolation. Thence issued the poor, the beggars,
the thieves--in one word, parias of every description, with whom
society was compelled to compound, willingly or reluctantly, by
the foundation of establishments intended to palliate the bleeding
wound of the pauperism which had been engendered by liberty."[12]
"From whatever point the modern system is regarded, it seems
impossible not to recognize that the Politico-economical rule of
free competition is the negation, as its name indicates, of all
ties and communion of interests between the members of society.
Free competition is a free field open to every individual,
provided or not with the elements necessary and indispensable to
its manifestations; free competition, in a word, is liberty, but
liberty without other rule than the material and moral force, of
which each one may be able to dispose in the presence of the
thousand causes which produce a difference in the position of
individuals."[13]
"But, we say that a system which thus arms, morally, the poor
against each other, is a barbarous system, and contrary to
civilization: it is barbarous, inasmuch as it developes all the
bad tendencies of the human heart: it is contrary to civilization,
because, instead of facilitating harmonious relations among men,
it inclines them to mutual repulsion and hostility."[14]
This is a sufficient sample of M. Robert du Var's testimony. The
greater part of his work is to the same effect: and there is a
singular accordance between his censures of Political Economy,[15]
and those uttered by Mr. Fitzhugh. They merit especial attention.
We will cite another Socialist, M. Vidal:
"The ox, the horse, the hog eat according to their hunger: their
desires are even anticipated: they have their subsistence assured.
It is the same thing in the case of the slave. For the ox, the
horse, the hog, the slave, belong to a master, and their loss is
the loss of the owner: _res perit domino_, says the Digest. But
with the hired laborer it is different! He belongs to himself.
His death is the loss of his family whom he maintained, and who
will no longer find the means of living. What matter to an
employer is the death of a hired laborer? Are there not every
where millions of arms always ready to offer themselves at reduced
wages?"[16]
Let us turn to evidence of a different character. Here is Sir
Robert Peel's testimony to the condition of Ireland before 1844,
previous to the potato-rot and the famine:
"It may be assured that the fourth class of houses, (according to
the census,) are generally unfit for human habitation; and yet it
would appear that in the best circumstanced county, in this
respect, the county of Down, 24.7 per cent., or one-fourth of the
population, live in houses of this class: while in Kerry, the
population is 66.7 per cent., or about two-thirds of the whole;
and, taking the average of the whole population of Ireland, as
given by the census commissioner, we find that in the rural
districts about 43 per cent. of the families, and in the civic
districts, about 36 per cent. inhabit houses of the fourth
class. * * *
"The lowest, or fourth class, remember, comprises all mud cabins,
having but one room."[17]
Mr. Kay, from whom the foregoing remarks of Sir Robert Peel are
quoted, thus comments upon a murder committed in open day in
Ireland. The two murderers had escaped:
"Why," he asks, "were not these men apprehended? Because of the
rottenness that there is in the state of society in these
districts; because of the sympathy which there is on the part of
the great bulk of the population with those who, by these dreadful
acts of vengeance, are supposed to be the conservators of the
rights of the tenant, and supposed to give him that protection
which imperial legislation has denied. The first thing that ever
called my attention to the condition of Ireland, was the reading
an account of one of these outrages. I thought of it for a moment,
but the truth struck me at once: and all I have seen since
confirms it. When law refuses its duty--when government denies the
right of a people--when competition is so fierce for the little
land, which the monopolists grant to cultivation in Ireland--when,
in fact, for a bare potato, millions are scrambling, these people
are driven back from law and from the usages of civilization to
that which is termed the law of nature, and, if not of the
strongest, the law of the vindictive; and in this case the people
of Ireland believe, to my certain knowledge, that it is only by
these acts of vengeance, periodically committed, that they can
hold in suspense the arm of the proprietor and the agent, who, in
too many cases, if he dared, would exterminate them."[18]
A pretty result, this, for free labor and free competition, and
abolitionism, to have arrived at. But Ireland was always esteemed
_un mauvais sujet_. Let us cross St. George's Channel:
"The English peasant is thus deprived of almost every motive to
practice economy, and self-denial, beyond what suffices to provide
his family with food and clothing. Once a peasant in England, and
a man cannot hope that he himself, or his children, will ever be
anything better, than a mere laborer for weekly hire.
"This unhappy feature of an English peasant's life was most
powerfully, and only too justly depicted in those articles of 'The
Times,' to which I have referred above. It was there shown that
during the last half century, every thing has been done to deprive
the peasant of any interest in the preservation of public order;
of any wish to maintain the existing constitution of society; of
all hope of raising himself in the world, or of improving his
condition of life; of all attachment to his country; of all
feelings of there really existing any community of interest
between himself and the higher ranks of society; and of all
consciousness that he has anything to lose by political changes;
and that every thing has been done to render him dissatisfied with
his condition, envious of the richer classes, and discontented
with the existing order of things."[19]
This, too, is a pretty picture, which is not relieved by the
further information that,
"In the year 1770, there were, it is said, in England alone,
250,000 freehold estates in the hands of 250,000 different
families. In the year 1815, at the close of the revolutionary war,
the whole of the lands of England were concentrated in the hands
of only 32,000 proprietors."[20]
"What is the result? The labor market in the manufacturing towns
is constantly overstocked; the laborers and shopkeepers find new
and eager competitors constantly added to the list; competition in
the towns is rendered unnaturally intense; profits and wages are
both unnaturally reduced; the town work-houses and the town gaols
are crowded with inmates; the inhabitants are overburthened with
rates; and the towns swarm with paupers and misery.
"I know not what others may think, but to me it is a sad and
grievous spectacle, to see the enormous amount of vice and
degraded misery which our towns exhibit, and then to think, that
we are doing all we can to foster and stimulate the growth and
extension of this state of things, by that system of laws, which
drives so many of the peasants of both England and Ireland to the
towns, and increases the already vast mass of misery by so doing.
"I speak with deliberation, when I say, that I know of no
spectacle so degraded, and if I may be allowed to use a strong
word, so horrible, as the back streets and suburbs of English and
Irish towns, with their filthy inhabitants; with their crowds of
half-clad, filthy, and degraded children, playing in the dirty
kennels; with their numerous gin-palaces, filled with people,
whose hands and faces show how their flesh is, so to speak,
impregnated with spirituous liquors--the only solaces, poor
creatures, that they have!--and with poor young girls, whom a want
of religious training in their infancy, and misery, has driven to
the most degraded and pitiful of all pursuits."[21]
"Of 1600, [pauper children in London,] who were examined, 162
confessed that they had been in prison, not merely once, nor even
twice, but some of them several times; 116 had run away from their
homes; 170 slept in the "lodging-houses;" 253 had lived altogether
by beggary; 216 had neither shoes nor stockings; 280 had no hat or
cap, or covering for the head; 101 had no linen; 349 had never
slept in a bed; many had no recollection of ever having been in a
bed; 68 were the children of convicts."[22]
"The further we examine, the more painful, disgusting and
incredible does the tale become.
"We see on every hand stately palaces, to which no country in the
world offers any parallel. The houses of our rich are more
gorgeous and more luxurious than those of any other land. Every
clime is ransacked to adorn or furnish them. The soft carpets, the
heavy rich curtains, the luxuriously easy couches, the beds of
down, the services of plate, the numerous servants, the splendid
equipages, and all the expensive objects of literature, science,
and the arts, which crowd the palaces of England, form but items
in an _ensemble_ of refinement and
magnificence, which was never imagined or approached, in all the
splendor of the ancient empires.
"But look beneath all this display and luxury, and what do we see
there? A pauperized and suffering people.
"To maintain a show, we have degraded the masses, until we have
created an evil so vast, that we now despair of ever finding a
remedy."[23]
We may now dismiss Mr. Kay--this testimony is sufficiently direct
and sufficiently ample: and yet it would have been easy to have
introduced many more and stronger statements made by him, which
have been omitted because they were loo long to be quoted. Mr. Kay
is neither Chartist nor Socialist. He is a graduate of Trinity
College, Cambridge, a Barrister-at-law, and has traveled over
Europe for eight years, under an appointment from the Senate of
the University of Cambridge, as Traveling Bachelor of the
University, commissioned "to travel through Western Europe in
order to examine the social condition of the poorer classes of the
different countries."[24] The evidence of such a man should be
authoritative, but we will continue our quotations:
"It is undeniable that morality has declined in our days with the
progress of knowledge."[25]
"One word more, and we have done. On many questions of practical
duty, men are now affecting to be wiser
and better than the Bible. Plans of social progress and
improvement are rife, that have an air of transcendental
refinement about them, unknown to the homely morality of the Word
of God. We are becoming too sentimental to endure that even the
murderer shall be put to death. And now we are for bettering God's
ordinance of marriage itself; and we see a fine, romantic, tender
charm in an alliance of brothers and sisters, on which God has
stamped his curse. What may such things betoken? Are they ominous
of such unbridled lawlessness and lust as marked the days before
the Flood? Are they signs of the days not unlike these that are to
precede the coming of the Son of Man?"[26]
"The task of restoring health and soundness to a society so
fearfully diseased as ours unquestionably is, is on all hands
acknowledged to be at once the noblest and the most imperative to
which citizens or statesmen can now direct their energies."[27]
"Society, such as it now is in England, will not continue to
endure, &c."[28]
"The last battle of civilization is the severest: the last problem
the knottiest to solve. Out of all the multitudinous ingredients
and influences of the past; out of the conquest of nature, and the
victory of freedom; out of the blending and intermixture of all
previous forms
of polity and modifications of humanity, has arisen a complex
order of society, of which the disorders and anomalies are as
complex as its own structure. We are now summoned to the combat,
not with material difficulties, nor yet with oppressors nor with
priests, but with an imperfect and diseased condition of that
social world of which we form a part; with pains and evils
appalling in their magnitude, baffling in their subtlety,
perplexing in their complication, and demanding far more clear
insight and unerring judgment, than even purity of purpose, or
commanding energy of will. This conflict may be said to date from
the first French Revolution; and it has been increasing in
intensity ever since, till it has reached to a vividness and
solemnity of interest, which surpasses and overshadows the
attractions of all other topics, &c. &c."[29]
"England's rapidly accelerating decline is a very remarkable and
mournful phenomenon; it is a mortal sickness for which there is no
remedy. I liken the English of the present day to the Romans of
the third century after Christ."[30]
The analogy might be extended to nearly all of modern
civilization.
"Tremendous catastrophes have come to pass, and there is no
resistance; not a semblance of great men, no joy or enthusiasm, no
hopes for the future, except that the time will one day come, when
by means of mutual instruction every peasant boy shall be able to
read. The
truth of the thing is the unveiled destitution of the populace,
who are resolved to bear it no longer, and this again paves the
way for a revision of property; which is not, indeed, something
new under the sun, but has been unheard of for centuries past, and
even now seems quite inconceivable to our politicians, who have
set property, in the place of God, in the Holiest of Holies, &c,
&c."[31]
We cannot venture to extend our extracts, though we have the
materials before us to increase them ten--nay, twenty-fold. We
contribute these merely as a confirmation of Mr. Fitzhugh's
position, that, really and confessedly, Free Society has proved a
calamitous and irremediable failure in the principal communities
of Christendom.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE REFORMATION--THE RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT.
The Reformation, like the American Revolution, was originated and
conducted to successful issue by wise, good and practical men, whose
intuitive judgments and sagacious instincts enabled them to feel their
way through the difficulties that environed them. Wise men know that
there is too much of complexity in the tangled web of human affairs, to
justify the attempt at once to practice and philosophise, to act and to
reason. Fools and philosophers too often mar the good works of such men,
by pretending to see clearly, and to define accurately, the principles
of action which have led to those works. A Washington, a Peel, or a
Wellington, never "writes himself down an ass" by appealing to abstract
principles to justify measures which are rendered necessary by a
thousand minute and peculiar circumstances of the hour, which common
sense and experience instinctively appreciate, but which philosophy in
vain attempts to detect or to generalize. Common sense never attempts
"to expel nature," but suggests and carries through a thousand useful
reforms by recurrence to and comparison with the past, and by cautious
experimentation.
Common sense sometimes errs by excess of conservation; but it is better
to err with Pope, who thought "Whatever is, is right," than with
Jefferson, whose every act and word proves that he held that "Whatever
is, is _wrong_.
The Reformation was not the thought and the act of Luther, Calvin,
Cranmer and Erasmus; but the thought and the act of society--the vox
Populi, vox Dei. Popes and cardinals are not infallible, but society is.
Its harmony is its health; and to differ with it is heresy or treason,
because social discord inflicts individual misery; and what disturbs and
disarranges society, impairs the happiness and well-being of its
members.
This doctrine of the infallibility of society, is suggested, though not
expressed, in the maxim--Salus populi, est suprema lex. The Puritans, in
the early days of New England, acted it out; and if they hung a few
troublesome old women, the good that they achieved was more than
compensated for by any errors they may have committed. Liberty of the
press, liberty of speech, freedom of religion, or rather freedom from
religion, and the unlimited right of private judgment, have borne no
good fruits, and many bad ones. Infidels, Skeptics, Millerites, Mormons,
Agrarians, Spiritual Rappers, Wakemanites, Free Negroes and Bloomers,
disturb the peace of society, threaten the security of property, offend
the public sense of decency, assail religion, and invoke anarchy.
Society has the right, and is in duty bound, to take care of itself; and
when public opinion becomes powerless, law should intervene, and punish
all acts, words, or opinions, which have become criminal by becoming
dangerous or injurious.
We would rejoice to see intolerance of error revived in New England.
Laxity of rule and laxity of public opinion is sin of itself, and leads
to thousands of sins. New England is culpable for permitting Parker and
Beecher to stir up civil discord and domestic broils from the pulpit.
These men deserve punishment, for they have instigated and occasioned a
thousand murders in Kansas; yet they did nothing more than carry into
practice the right of private judgment, liberty of speech, freedom of
the press and of religion. These boasted privileges have become far more
dangerous to the lives, the property and the peace of the people of this
Union, than all the robbers and murderers and malefactors put together.
The Reformation was but an effort of Nature--the vis medicatrix
naturæ--throwing off what was false, vicious, or superfluous, and
retaining what was good.
The great men of the day but show larger portions of the common
thought. Men, and all other social and gregarious animals, have a
community of thought, of motions, instincts and intuitions. The social
body is of itself a thinking, acting, sentient being. This is eminently
observable with the lower animals. Bees and herds perform their
evolutions with too much rapidity and precision, to leave any doubt but
that one mind and one feeling, either from within or without, directs
their movements. The great error of modern philosophy is the ignorance
or forgetfulness of this fact. The first departure from it was not the
Reformation--for that was preëminently a social idea and a social
movement;--but the doctrine of the right of private judgment, which
speculative philosophers and vain schismatics attempted to engraft upon
it, or deduce from it. Human equality, the social contract, the
let-alone and selfish doctrines of political economy, universal liberty,
freedom of speech, of the press, and of religion, spring directly from
this doctrine, or are only new modes of expressing it. Agrarianism, Free
Love, and No Government, are its logical sequences: for the right to
judge for ourself implies the right to act upon our judgments, and that
can never be done in a world where the private appropriation of all
capital, and the interference of government, restricts our free agency,
and paralyzes our action on all sides.
We sometimes think the burning of the Alexandrian Library was a
providential purification, just as the fictitious burning, by Cervantes,
of Don Quixote's library ridded the world of the useless rubbish of the
Middle Ages, by the ridicule so successfully attached to it. Sure we
are, that a fire that would consume all the theological and other
philosophical speculations of the last two centuries, would be a happy
God-send.
Our Revolution, so wise in its conception and so glorious in its
execution, was the mere assertion by adults of the rights of adults, and
had nothing more to do with philosophy than the weaning of a calf. It
was the act of a people seeking national independence, not the Utopian
scheme of speculative philosophers, seeking to establish human equality
and social perfection.
But the philosophers seized upon it, as they had upon the Reformation,
and made it the unwilling and unnatural parent of the largest and most
hideous brood of ills that had ever appeared at one birth, since the
opening of the box of Pandora. Bills of Rights, Acts of Religious
Freedom and Constitutions, besprinkled with doctrines directly at war
with all stable government, seem to be the basis on which our
institutions rest. But only seem to be; for, in truth, our laws and
government are either old Anglo-Saxon prescriptive arrangements, or else
the gradual accretions of time, circumstance and necessity. Throw our
paper platforms, preambles and resolutions, guaranties and
constitutions, into the fire, and we should be none the worse off,
provided we retained our institutions--and the necessities that begat,
and have, so far, continued them.
All government proceeds ab extra. Neither individuals nor societies can
govern themselves, any more than the mouse can live in the exhausted
receiver, or the clown lift himself by the lappel of his pantaloons. The
South is governed by the necessity of keeping its negroes in order,
which preserves a healthy conservative public opinion. Had the negroes
votes, the necessity would be removed, because the interest of the
governing class would cease to be conservative. The necessity, the
governing power ab extra, would be removed. The little republics of
ancient Greece were able to preserve the most artificial social
arrangements, under the necessities which slavery and foreign hostile
pressure from without begat. They were afraid of change, because
insurrection was dangerous.
If government on paper were really useless and harmless, we should say
nothing about it. But it is fraught with danger, first because we are
apt to rely on it for safety and security of rights, and secondly
because it rarely suits the occasion. Men and societies are endowed by
Providence generally with sufficient knowledge and judgment to act
correctly or prudently under circumstances as they arise; but they
cannot foresee or provide for the future, nor lay down rules for other
people's conduct. All platforms, resolutions, bills of rights and
constitutions, are true in the particular, false in the general. Hence
all legislation should be repealable, and those instruments are but
laws. Fundamental principles, or the higher law, are secrets of nature
which God keeps to himself. The vain attempt of "frequent recurrence to
them," is but the act of the child who builds card houses, for the
pleasure of knocking them down. Recurrence to fundamental principles and
appeals to the higher law, are but the tocsin of revolution that may
upset everything, but which will establish nothing, because no two men
are agreed as to what the higher law, alias "fundamental principles,"
is.
Moses, and Lycurgus, and Solon, and Numa, built their institutions to
last, enjoined it on the people never to change them, and threw around
them the sanctity of religion, to ward off the sacrilegious hand of
future innovation. "A frequent recurrence to fundamental principles,"
and the kicking down of card houses, was not part of their science of
government. We have often thought, that of all the lost arts, the art of
government was the only one whose loss we would deplore, or whose
recovery is worth the pains of study and research.
To us it seems that "first causes," "fundamental principles," and the
"higher law," mean one and the same thing: An "ignis fatuus," that it is
dangerous to pursue, and hopeless to overtake.
We may be doing Mr. Jefferson injustice, in assuming that his
"fundamental principles" and Mr. Seward's "higher law," mean the same
thing; but the injustice can be very little, as they both mean just
nothing at all, unless it be a determination to inaugurate anarchy, and
to do all sorts of mischief. We refer the reader to the chapter on the
"Declaration of Independence," &c., in our Sociology, for a further
dissertation on the fundamental powder-cask abstractions, on which our
glorious institutions _affect_ to repose. We say _affect_, because we
are sure neither their repose nor their permanence would be disturbed by
the removal of the counterfeit foundation.
The true greatness of Mr. Jefferson was his fitness for revolution. He
was the genius of innovation, the architect of ruin, the inaugurator of
anarchy. His mission was to pull down, not to build up. He thought
everything false as well in the physical, as in the moral world. He fed
his horses on potatoes, and defended harbors with gun-boats, because it
was contrary to human experience and human opinion. He proposed to
govern boys without the authority of masters or the control of
religion, supplying their places with Laissez-faire philosophy, and
morality from the pages of Lawrence Sterne. His character, like his
philosophy, is exceptional--invaluable in urging on revolution, but
useless, if not dangerous, in quiet times.
We would not restrict, control, or take away a single human right or
liberty, which experience showed was already sufficiently governed and
restricted by public opinion. But we do believe that the slaveholding
South is the only country on the globe, that can safely tolerate the
rights and liberties which we have discussed.
The annals of revolutionary Virginia were illustrated by three great and
useful men. The mighty mind of Jefferson, fitted to pull down; the
plastic hand of Madison to build up, and the powerful arm of Washington
to defend, sustain and conserve.
We are the friend of popular government, but only so long as
conservatism is the interest of the governing class. At the South, the
interests and feelings of many non-property holders, are identified with
those of a comparatively few property holders. It is not necessary to
the security of property, that a majority of votes should own property;
but where the pauper majority becomes so large as to disconnect the mass
of them in feeling and interest from the property holding class,
revolution and agrarianism are inevitable. We will not undertake to say
that events are tending this way at the North. The absence of laws of
entail and primogeniture may prevent it; yet we fear the worst; for,
despite the laws of equal inheritance and distribution, wealth is
accumulating in few hands, and pauperism is increasing. We shall attempt
hereafter to show that a system of very small entails might correct this
tendency.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE NOMADIC BEGGARS AND PAUPER BANDITTI OF ENGLAND.
Under various names, such as Proletariat in France, Lazzaroni in Italy,
Leperos in Mexico, and Gypsies throughout all Europe, free society is
disturbed and rendered insecure, by the class, a description of which we
shall draw from the British writers. We do not hesitate to assign to the
Gypsies the same origin with the rest. They are all the outgrowth of
runaway and emancipated serfs. The time of the appearance of the Gypsies
is coeval with the universal liberation and escape of the villeins.
If this _diluvies_ of society is by nature vicious, nomadic and
incapable of any self-control, it is obvious they should be enslaved. If
emancipation of their ancestors and the throwing them upon the world
without property or other means of support, made them and their
posterity, from necessity, beggars, Pariahs and Ishmaelites, they should
be restored to slavery, unless some better disposition of them can be
discovered.
North British Review, "Literature and Labor Question," February No.
1851. The passage we quote is from a work of Mr. Mayhew:
"That we, like the Hottentots, Kaffirs, and Fins, are surrounded
by wandering hordes, the 'sonquas' and 'fingons' of this country,
paupers, beggars and outcasts, possessing nothing but what they
acquire by depredation from the industrious, provident and
civilized portion of the community; that the heads of these nomads
are remarkable for a greater development of the jaws and cheek
bones, than of the skull, and that they have a secret language of
their own--an English 'cuzecat,' or 'slang,' as it is called, for
the concealment of their designs; these are points of coincidence
so striking, that, when placed before the mind, they make us
marvel why the analogy has been so long unobserved. The
resemblance once discovered, however, becomes of great service in
enabling us to use the moral characteristics of the nomadic races
of other countries, as a means of comprehending more readily those
of the vagabonds and outcasts of our own. * * * The nomad there is
distinguished from the civilized man by his repugnance to regular
and continuous labor--by his want of providence in laying up a
store for the future; by his inability to perceive consequences
ever so slightly removed from immediate apprehension; by his
passion for stultifying herbs and roots, and when possible, for
intoxicating fermented liquors; for his extraordinary powers of
enduring privation; by his comparative insensibility to pain; by
an immoderate love of gaming; frequently risking his own personal
liberty on a single cast; by his love of libidinous dances; by
the pleasure which he experiences in witnessing the sufferings of
sentient creatures; by his delight in warfare and all perilous
sports; by his desire for vengeance; by the looseness of his
notions as to property; by the absence of chastity among his
women, and his disregard of female honor; and lastly by his vague
sense of religion, his rude idea of a Creator, and utter absence
of all appreciation of the mercy of the Divine Spirit.
"The nomadic races of England are of many distinct kinds--from the
habitual vagrant, half beggar, half thief, sleeping in barns,
tents, and casual wards, to the mechanic on the tramp, obtaining
his bed and supper from the trade societies in the different towns
on his way to seek work. Between these two extremes, there are
several mediate varieties, consisting of pedlars, show-men,
harvest men, and all that large class who live by either selling,
showing, or doing something through the country. There are, so to
speak, the rural nomads--not confining their wanderings to any one
particular locality, but ranging often from one end of the land to
the other. Besides these, there are urban and suburban travellers,
or those who follow some itinerant occupation in and about the
large towns. Such are in the metropolis, more particularly the
pickpockets, the beggars, the prostitutes, the street sellers, the
street performers, the cab-men, the coachmen, the watermen, the
sailors, and such like. In each of these classes, according as
they partake more or less of the family vagabond, doing nothing
whatever for their living, but moving from place to place, preying
upon the earnings of the more industrious part of the
community--so will the attributes of the nomad tribe be found to
be more or less marked."
To the same effect, read the following from July No. 1852, of Edinburgh
Review, in article on "Mendicity; its causes and statistics:"
There live, then, in the midst and about all the English population, a
distinct population, fearful in numbers, constantly and rapidly
increasing, having a language, manners, and customs of its own--living,
in nine cases out of ten, in a course of life the most immoral and
profligate; and yet so living, and so increasing, in spite of the laws,
in spite of the municipal arrangements of the last few years, so
favorable to their detection and punishment; in spite of the new
poor-law arrangements; and in spite of the general feeling that the
poor-rates and the union ought to provide for all real cases of
destitution and misery. This population has its signs, free-masonry, its
terms of art, its correspondence, its halting-houses, its barns still
kept open, and even well-strawed by farmers and country gentlemen; its
public-houses, its well-known and even recognized lodging houses; and
its manifold plans to extract or extort, to win or to scold, out of its
reluctant but deceived victims, sums amounting, we are inclined to
believe, to not less than £1,375,000; being one-third of the total
amount of poor-rates! This sum may at first appear utterly extravagant;
but it will not be found to be so when it is remembered, that on an
average each begging family extorts £55 per annum from the public. The
annual poor law expenditure for the year ending in March, 1840, in
England, was, in round numbers, £4,300,000. In England, including the
three ridings of Yorkshire, there are forty-two counties. The population
of those counties is nearly fifteen millions. If we take at this moment
a rough and general, though a tolerably correct estimate of that
population, with its dense misery in towns and cities, and its diffused
but not less individually intense misery in the agricultural districts,
we may fairly calculate that one out of every one hundred is a beggar or
lives in a state of practical vagrancy--looking in one form or other, to
alms for support. The one-hundredth part of the population is 150,000;
and if each begging family, raising £55 per annum from the public by
alms, be estimated as consisting of six, we shall have 25,000 English
begging families, raising £55 per annum each, or the total sum of
£1,375,000. But we believe that we have underrated, instead of
overstated the facts of the case in these calculations. In London alone
and its vicinity, in spite of all the efforts of the police, a very
large part of that sum is extorted; and we have not taken into
consideration the wholesale mendicity which is now deplorably manifest
in the larger English manufacturing towns. We have also omitted all
Irish mendicants; and yet they are nearly in the proportion of one to
three in the English agricultural districts. Naturally anxious as we are
to avoid even the appearance of exaggeration, we are still bound to
state, that the estimate we have made is greatly deficient, and that we
have understated the real statistics.
The begging population of England, existing and increasing in spite of
municipal police, and notwithstanding the penalties of the vagrant act,
is divided into several classes; and we now propose to draw upon a
little pamphlet, mentioned at the head of this article, which has been
recently published at Birmingham, and which contains very accurate
details of the mendicant population--written by one who long frequented
the haunts of the vagrant community. The portion of the community to
which his details extend, belong principally to the hereditary and
professional class of beggars.
The writer of this family thus proceeds with his descriptive details:
'In order fully to explain each individual character, I shall
begin with those vagrants who generally obtain the most, and are
considered of the _first class_, and are by some termed 'Silver
Beggars,' but by travelers LURKERS.
'LURKERS are persons who go about with briefs, containing false
statements of losses by fire, shipwrecks, accidents, &c. The seals
and signatures of two or more magistrates are affixed to those
briefs, and they are so well written, that thousands of persons
are daily imposed upon by them. As there are so many different
ways used by these persons, it will be necessary to explain each
of them separately.'
The writer then enters into details as to '_the Fire-Lurkers_,' or
those, 'who go about begging for loss by fire.' They have false briefs,
pretended to be signed by two magistrates and the clergyman of the place
where the fire is alleged to have taken place. The documents are
accompanied by a sham subscription-book, and the brief is called, in the
mendicant's parlance, 'a sham,' whilst the subscription-book they name
'a delicate.' With this 'sham and delicate' the 'lurkers,' or beggars,
proceed all over the country; and the author states that one man, with
whom he was acquainted, 'had been a fire-lurker for fourteen years, and
had travelled through every county in England, and the greater part of
Wales.'
Then there is,
'_The Shipwrecked Sailor's Lurk._--Persons who go on this lurk,
generally represent themselves as captains or masters of merchant
ships, which have been wrecked, and they have, of course, lost all
their property; and their pretended loss always amounts to many
hundred pounds, sometimes even to thousands. This class of
impostors are very respectably dressed, having moustaches, gold
chains, &c.; they have either a well-written brief, or one partly
printed and filled up with writing and the seals and signatures of
two or three magistrates are placed at the bottom. I have seen
briefs of this description from almost every part of the kingdom.'
He goes on to say, that one named Captain Johnstone had 'followed the
lurk of a shipwrecked captain for many years, had been over every county
in England and Wales many times, and obtained not only hundreds, but
thousands of pounds.' He relates various anecdotes of the most
successful 'Lurkers' in this department.
'_The Foreigner's Lurk._--Considerable numbers proceed on this
lurk, representing themselves as foreigners in distress.... Of
late years, by far the greatest number have represented themselves
as _Polish_ noblemen or gentlemen, who had been driven by the
tyranny of Russia from their native country to seek a refuge....
Their briefs have the names and seals of two magistrates attached,
and are always well written. Whenever they present their briefs,
they affect not to be able to speak a word of English, and the few
words they utter are spoken in broken accent.... One of these
lurkers, known among mendicants by the nickname of 'Lord Dundas,'
had often got several pounds in a day.... There are also many
females who go on the foreigner's lurk.... I knew a female who
went on the foreigner's lurk, who dressed very well; she had a boy
with her, and often succeeded in getting two or three pounds in a
day. When she called on any one, she _pattered_ (spoke) in French,
and affected not to be able to converse in the English language.'
4. '_The Accident Lurk._--Lurkers of this description have a sham
and delicate, (brief and book,) and the sham states, that by some
dreadful accident the bearer has lost all, or at least the greater
part of his property, sometimes by storm, and at other times by a
flood, or in some other way: but, in whatever way the accident has
happened, the bearer has always suffered a very considerable loss,
and is deprived of the means of supporting himself and family. The
sums raised vary from five shillings to a pound per day.'
5. '_The Sick Lurk._--This is worked in so many different ways,
that it will be necessary to say a little on each. It would seem,
1st, That a common method of imposing upon the public is, by
applying blistering ointment to the arms, causing them to have the
appearance of having been badly scalded. 2d, That others go about
with hands and arms tied up, said to be injured by lightning, or
by some other deplorable accident. 3d, Others affect fits. 4th,
Others affect pregnancy and destitution. 5th, Others obtain alms
by the husband remaining at home and affecting indisposition, in
case any one should visit his lodgings to examine into the merits
of the case, whilst the wife goes out begging for wine, rags,
clothes, &c., for the sham invalid. 6th, Others pretend to have
bad wounds, and beg for linen rags and small bottles to contain
medicine necessary for their cure. I saw a man who got, in one
day, by this means, thirteen pounds' weight of white rags, and
more than five dozen of phial bottles. Rags and bottles sell well.
7th, Others affect to have children confined with scarlet fever,
&c. &c, and beg for _them_. They state that they have obtained a
note to take their children to an infirmary or to an hospital, and
want a few clothes and a little money.'
6. '_The Deaf and Dumb Lurk._--I have known many persons of both
sexes, who have acted as if deaf and dumb, and by this means
succeeded very well in obtaining money, food, &c. Many of them
pretend to tell fortunes, and frequently get something
considerable by such practices. They carry a slate and pencil with
them, to write questions and answers.'
It would appear from the pamphlet before us, that sometimes these deaf
and dumb lurkers affect even in the lodging-houses to be thus afflicted;
but in such cases they are generally found out by their fellow vagrants.
7. '_The Servants' Lurk._--There are considerable numbers who go
on the servants' lurk, or as servants out of place; and both males
and females frequently succeed well in imposing on servants and
others by false statements and tales of distress.... The greater
part of those who go on this lurk are neatly dressed, and have
exactly the appearance of servants in gentlemen's families....
Many of them have the _Court Guide_, which, as it contains a list
of the nobility and gentry, enables them to do the thing
completely.'
8. '_Collier's Lurk._--This is followed by thousands who were
never in a coal-pit, and numbers of such are daily imposing upon
the public as colliers out of employ. They generally say they have
been thrown out of work by some accident, such as the flooding of
the works or the falling in of the pit.... They often go in
parties from two to seven or eight.... Others have printed papers,
which are left at each house, and called for again in a few
hours.... Others have written statements of the pretended masters
of the accidents, and the supposed signatures of the works are
affixed to them.... Some of those obtain as much as fourteen or
fifteen shillings per diem.'
9. '_The Weaver's Lurk._--There are at the present time great
numbers who go on this lurk, many of them having printed papers or
small handbills, and leave one at each house, and then call again
for them, and to receive what persons are disposed to give.... I
have seen men who represented themselves as weavers of every kind,
and from all the manufacturing parts of the kingdom--men who I
well knew had never been near a loom, but had been born and bred
vagrants.'
10. '_The Cotton Spinner's Lurk._--There are many going on this
lurk with printed papers or small handbills also.... Some who go
on this lurk carry sewing cotton for sale, alleged to be their own
spinning.... One man I know, who travels on this lurk, has been
doing so for twelve years. He sometimes obtains as much as from
twelve to fifteen shillings in one day.'
11. '_The Calenderer's Lurk._--Those who go on this lurk represent
themselves as calenderer's out of employ, through the depression
of trade and improvement in machinery. They, like sham weavers and
colliers, have false papers, which are printed, some in poetry.'
The sums raised by these descriptions of 'lurks' must be immense,
especially where the individuals have a good address, and can explain
and enforce the written and printed appeals they take with them.
'HIGH-FLIERS,' or begging letter writers, are, it would seem, the
next in order of importance, after the Lurkers. 'These begging
letter-writers scribble false statements of their having been
unfortunate in business, or suffered great losses, which have
reduced them to a state of extreme distress. In London, but
especially in the watering and sea-bathing places, these letters
procure as much as from five to one pound per day.'
'SHALLOW COVES' are 'impostors begging through the country as
shipwrecked sailors. They generally choose winter, and always go
nearly naked. Their object in doing so is to obtain left-off
clothes.... They have a long, pitiful got-up tale of pretended
distress, which they shout through the streets, of having been
shipwrecked, &c.... Shallow Coves generally go in _companies_,
(or, technically speaking, in _school_) of from two to ten. There
is generally one selected to be the spokesman.... As Shallow Coves
only call at respectable houses, they often obtain a great deal of
money.'
'_Shallow Motts_' are females who, like the Shallow Coves, go
nearly naked. They also adopt that mode of begging in order to
obtain wearing apparel.... They plead long and severe sickness,
but only ask for _clothes_. The clothes are disposed of as soon as
possible, none being ever kept for their own use.... I knew one of
these who in ten days obtained at Kingston-upon-Thames between
seven and eight pounds' worth of clothes.
'CADGERS' are those who make begging their trade, and depend upon
it for their support. _Cadgers on the downright_ are those who beg
from door to door, and _Cadgers on the fly_ are those who beg as
they pass along the tober, (road.) Cadging on the fly is a
profitable occupation in the vicinity of bathing-places and large
towns. A person of this description generally gets many shillings
in the course of the clay. Cadging on the downright (from door to
door) is like all other trades, getting worse; but still thousands
do very well at it, and frequently get more food than they can
consume.... I have often seen food, which many working people
would gladly have eaten, shamefully and wantonly wasted.
'CADGERS CHILDREN' (kiddies) 'are so well instructed in the arts
of imposition by their parents, that they frequently obtain more
in money and food than grown-up cadgers.'
'_Cadgers' Screeving_.--There are many cadgers who write short
sentences with chalk on the flags, and some of them can do it
remarkably well; these are called _screevers_. I have seen the
following sentences frequently written by them in places where
there were numbers passing by, and where they thought it would be
likely to get plenty of half-pence, (browns,) and now and then a
_tanner_ or a _bob_, (sixpence or a shilling,)
"Hunger is a sharp thorn, and biteth keen."
"I cannot get work, and to beg I am ashamed."
I have known them by this means obtain seven shillings a day.
'_Cadgers' Sitting Pad._--Whenever cadgers _stand_ or _sit_,
either in towns or by the road side, to beg, they call it
_sitting_ or _standing pad_; and this often proves a very
profitable method. Some of them affect blindness; whilst others
represent themselves as unable to follow any employment, in
consequence of being subject to fits. Some cadgers save very
considerable sums of money; but these are very few, compared with
the great number who live by this trade of beggary.
'_Match-sellers_' never entirely depend upon selling matches, for
they cadge as well; in fact, they only carry matches as a cloak
for begging, and never offer them at any house where they expect
to get more without them.... Match-sellers, as well as all other
cadgers, often get what they call '_a back-door cant_;' that is,
anything they can carry off where they beg, or offer their matches
for sale.'
'CROSS COVES,' though they beg their bread, can tell a long story
about being out of employ through the badness of trade, &c., yet
get what they call _on the cross_, (by theft.).... One of their
chief modes of getting things _on the cross_ is by shoplifting,
(called grabbing,).... Another method is to _star the glaze_, (i.
e. break or cut the window.)
'_Prigs_ (or pickpockets) are another class of vagrants, and they
frequent races, fairs, and prize-fights.... Like cross coves, they
are generally young men who have been trained to vagrancy, and
have been taught the arts of their profession in their childhood.'
'_Palmers_ are another description of beggars, who visit shops
under pretence of collecting _harp_ half-pence; and to induce
shopkeepers to search for them, they offer thirteen-pence for a
shilling's worth, when many persons are silly enough to empty a
large quantity of copper on their counters to search for the
half-pence wanted. The _palmer_ is sure to have his hand amongst
it; and while he pretends to search for the harps, he contrives to
conceal as many as possible in the palm of his hand, and whenever
he removes his hand from the coppers on the counter, always holds
his fingers out straight, so that the shopkeeper has not the least
suspicion that he is being robbed. Sums varying from five to
fifteen shillings per diem are frequently got in this way, by
characters of that description.'
Extract from Edinburgh Review, Jan. No. 1844:
IRISH PEASANTRY.
It is obvious that the insecurity of a community in which the bulk of
the population form a conspiracy against the law, must prevent the
importation of capital; must occasion much of what is accumulated there
to be exported; and must diminish the motives and the means of
accumulation. Who will send his property to a place where he cannot rely
on its being protected? Who will voluntarily establish himself in a
country which to-morrow may be in a state of disturbance? A state in
which, to use the words of Chief Justice Bushe, 'houses, and barns, and
granaries are leveled, crops are laid waste, pasture lands are ploughed,
plantations are torn up, meadows are thrown open to cattle, cattle are
maimed, tortured, killed; persons are visited by parties of banditti,
who inflict cruel torture, mutilate their limbs, or beat them almost to
death; men who have in any way become obnoxious to the insurgents, or
opposed their system, or refused to participate in their outrages, are
deliberately assassinated in the open day; and sometimes the unoffending
members of a family are indiscriminately murdered by burning the
habitation." A state in which even those best able to protect
themselves, the gentry, are forced to build up all their lower windows
with stone and mortar; to admit light only into one sitting-room, and
not into all the windows of that room, to fortify every other inlet by
bullet proof barricadoes; to station sentinels around during all the
night, and the greater part of the day; and to keep fire-arms in all the
bedrooms, and even on the side-table at breakfast and dinner time. Well
might even Bishop Doyle exclaim--"I do not blame the absentees; I would
be an absentee myself if I could."
CHAPTER XV.
"RURAL LIFE OF ENGLAND."
From "Rural Life of England," by WM. H. HOWITT, we take the following
extract:
"The wildness into which some of these children in the more
solitary parts of the country, grow, (recollect this is in
Lancashire, near the great city of Manchester,) is, I imagine, not
to be surpassed in any of the back settlements of America. On the
5th July, 1836, the day of that remarkable thunder-storm which
visited a great part of the kingdom with much fury, being driven
into a cottage at the foot of Pendle by the coming on of this
storm, and while standing at the door watching its progress, I
observed the head of some human creature, carefully protruded from
the doorway of an adjacent shed, and as suddenly withdrawn on
being observed. To ascertain what sort of a person it belonged to,
I went into the shed, but at first found it too dark to enable me
to discover anything. Presently, however, as objects became
visible, I saw a little creature, apparently a girl about ten
years old, reared very erectly against the opposite wall. On
accosting her in a kind tone, and telling her to come forward and
not be afraid, she advanced from the wall, and behold! there stood
another little creature, about the head shorter, whom she had been
concealing. I asked the elder child, whether this younger one were
a girl. She answered, 'Ne'a.' 'Was it a boy?' 'Ne'a.' 'What!
neither boy nor girl? Was she a girl herself?' 'Ne'a.' 'What! was
it a boy I was speaking to?' 'Ne'a.' 'What in the name of wonder
were they then?' 'We are childer.' 'Childer! and was the woman in
the house their mother?' 'Ne'a.' 'Who was she, then?' 'Ar mam.'
'O! your mam! and do you keep cows in this shed?' 'Ne'a,--bee-as.'
In short, common English was quite unintelligible to these poor
little creatures, and their appearance was as wild as their
speech. They were two fine young creatures,
nevertheless,--especially the elder, whose form and face were full
of that symmetry and fine grace that are sometimes the growth of
unrestrained Nature, and would have delighted the sculptor or
painter. Their only clothing was a sort of little boddice with
skirts, made of a reddish stuff, and rendered more picturesque by
sundry patches of scarlet cloth, no doubt from their mother's old
cloak. Their heads, bosoms, and legs to the knees, were bare to
all the influences of earth and heaven; and on giving each of them
a penny, they bounded off with the fleetness and elasticity of
young roes. No doubt the hills and the heaths, the wild flowers of
summer, and the swift waters of the glens, were the only live long
day companions of these children, who came home only to their
oatmeal dinner, and a bed as simple as their garments. Imagine the
violent change of life by _the sudden capture and confinement of
these little English savages in the night-and-day noise, labor,
and foul atmosphere of the cotton purgatories_!
"In the immediate neighborhood of towns, many of the swelling
ranges of hills present a much more cultivated aspect, and delight
the eye with their smooth, green, and flowing outlines; and the
valleys, almost everywhere, are woody, watered with clear, rapid
streams, and in short, are beautiful. But along the rise of the
tall chimneys of vast and innumerable factories, and even while
looking on the places of the master manufactories, with their
woods, and gardens, and shrubbery lawns around them, _one cannot
help thinking of the horrors detailed before the committee of the
House of Commons, respecting the Factory System_; of the
parentless and friendless wretches, sent by wagon loads from
distant work-houses to these prisons of labor and despair; of the
young frames crushed to the dust by incessant labor; of the beds
into which one set of children got, as another set got out, so
that they were said never to be cold the whole year round, till
contagious fires burnt out and swept away by hundreds these little
victims of Mammon's ever-urging never-ceasing wheel. Beautiful as
are many of these wild recesses, where, before the introduction of
steam, the dashing rivulet invited the cotton-spinners to erect
their mills; and curious as the remains of those simple original
factories are, with their one great water-wheel, which turned
their spindles while there was water, but during the drought of
summer quite as often stood still; yet one is haunted even there,
among the shadows of the fine old trees that throw their arms
athwart streams dashing down their beds of solid rock, by the
memory of little tender children, that never knew pity or
kindness, but labored on and on, through noon and through
midnight, till they slept and yet mechanically worked, and were
often awaked only by the horrid machinery rending off their limbs.
In places like these, where now the old factories and large houses
of the proprietors, stand deserted, or are inhabited by troops of
poor creatures, whose poverty only makes them appear the more
desolate. We are told by such men as Mr. Fielden, of Oldham, once
a factory child himself, and now a great manufacturer, who dares
to reveal the secrets of the prison-house, that little children
have even committed suicide to escape from a life worse than ten
deaths. And what a mighty system is this now become? What a
perpetual and vast supply of human energy and human life it
requires, with all the facilities of improved machinery, with all
the developed power of steam, and with all the glowing thirst of
wealth to urge it on! We are told that the state of the factories
is improved, and I trust they are; but if there be any truth in
the evidence given before the Parliamentary committees, there is
need of great amelioration yet; and it is, when we recollect these
things, how completely the laboring class has, in these districts,
been regarded as mere machinery for the accumulation of enormous
capitals, that we cease to wonder at their uncouth and degraded
aspect, and at the neglect in which they are suffered to swarm
over these hills, like the very weeds of humanity, cast out into
disregarded places, and left to spread and increase in rank and
deleterious luxuriance."
What is so poetically and graphically described by Mr. Hewitt, is
verified in its minutest details in the "Glory and Shame of England,"
a very interesting work by C. Edwards Lester, an abolitionist of New
York.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE DISTRESSED NEEDLE-WOMEN AND HOOD'S SONG OF THE SHIRT.
We take what follows from the January No., 1849, of the Westminster
Review--we having nothing to remark, except as to the line from the
French song, which has taken the place of the Marseilloise as the great
National Song, we should rather say, National Dirge. It is the maddening
cry of hunger for employment and bread, and more resembles the howl of
the wolves of the Pyrennes, as they start in quest of prey, than the
Anthem of Liberty. It truly represents, embodies and personifies the
great Socialistic movement of the day. Whilst statesmen and philosophers
speculate, the mass agitate, organize and threaten. Winter before last,
they took possession of the streets of New York, and levied enforced
charity. This spring, they meet in the Park and resolve, "that there
were fifty thousand men and women in vain seeking employment during the
last inclement winter. America echoes to France, "Vivre en travaillant,
ou mourir en combatant!" 'Tis the tocsin and the watchword of free
society. 'Tis the grumbling noise of the heaving volcano, that
threatens and precedes a social eruption greater than the world has yet
witnessed. But let us give the language of the Reviewer:
"The question of human misery--its causes and their removal, is at
the bottom of the movement which is now convulsing Europe, and
which threatens to agitate it for some time to come. Could some
practicable scheme of relief, generally acceptable to all classes
and adequate to cope with the magnitude of the evil, be but
suggested, what a load of anxiety would be taken from the mind of
many a Minister of State!--what comfort would be offered to many a
desponding philanthropist!
"Human misery has at last found tongues and pens to make itself
heard and felt. It appeals to our feelings and our understandings,
to our sympathies and fears. Its wails melt us to pity, its
ravings terrify us, its woes sicken us. It will no longer hide
itself. We must either remove it, or submit to have it constantly
exposed to our gaze in all its horrid deformity.
"Hitherto the comfortable classes have virtually answered the
bitter complaints of the uncomfortable classes in some such terms
as these: 'Poor people! we are very sorry for your suffering--we
really feel for you--take this trifle--it will be some relief. We
wish we could do more;--and now pray be quiet--don't distress
us with your writhings and agonies--resign yourselves to the
will of Providence, and bear hunger and cold in peace and
seclusion;--above all, attempt no violence, or we must use
violence to keep you quiet.' The answer of the uncomfortable
classes to such admonitions, day by day becoming more
unmistakable, is: 'Relieve us, relieve us! Make us comfortable, or
show us how we may make ourselves comfortable: otherwise we must
make you uncomfortable. We will be comfortable or uncomfortable
together.'
"'Vivre en travaillant, ou mourir en combatant.' In our last
number, we ventured to offer a few indications as to what we
considered a part, an important part, of the remedial measures to
be resorted to for the prevention of human misery. We were then
dealing with that question as a whole. We now propose to address
ourselves to miseries of a class.
"The sufferings of the distressed needle-woman have obtained an
infamous notoriety--they are a scandal to our age and a reproach
to our boasted civilization. They have been clothed in language at
once truthful and impressive, full of pathos and yet free from
exaggeration. Well known as Hood's immortal lines may be, we
reproduce them here, because no narrative, no statistics of ours,
could be more true nor half so much to the purpose:
THE SONG OF THE SHIRT.
"With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread.
Stitch--stitch--stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt;
And still, with a voice of dolorous pitch,
She sang the 'Song of the Shirt!'
"Work--work--work!
While the cock is crowing aloof!
And work--work--work!
Till the stars shine through the roof!
It's O! to be a slave,
Along with the barbarous Turk,
Where woman has never a soul to save,
If this is Christian work!
"Work--work--work!
Till the brain begins to swim;
Work--work--work!
Till the eyes are heavy and dim!
Seam and gusset and band,
Band and gusset and seam,
Till o'er the buttons I fall asleep,
And sew them on in a dream!
"O! men, with sisters dear!
O! men, with mothers and wives,
It is not linen you're wearing out!
But human creatures' lives!
Stitch--stitch--stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt;
Sewing at once, with a double thread,
A shroud as well as a shirt!
"But why do I talk of death?
That phantom of grisly bone?
I hardly fear his terrible shape,
It seems so like my own!
It seems so like my own,
Because of the fasts I keep--
Oh, God! that bread should be so dear,
And flesh and blood so cheap!
"Work--work--work!
My labor never flags;
And what are its wages? A bed of straw,
A crust of bread, and--rags.
That shatter'd roof, and this naked floor,
A table--a broken chair;
And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank
For sometimes falling there!
"Work--work--work!
From weary chime to chime,
Work--work--work,
As prisoners work for crime!
Band and gusset and seam,
Seam and gusset and band,
Till the heart is sick and the brain benumb'd,
As well as weary hand.
"Work--work--work!
In dull December light,
And work--work--work,
When the weather is warm and bright--
While underneath the eaves
The brooding swallows cling,
As if to show me their sunny backs
And twit me with the Spring.
"Oh! but to breathe the breath
Of the cowslip and primrose sweet--
With the sky above my head,
And the grass beneath my feet,
For only one short hour--
To feel as I used to feel,
Before I knew the woes of want
And the walk that costs a meal!
"Oh, but for one short hour!
A respite however brief!
No blessed leisure for Love or Hope,
But only time for Grief!
A little weeping would ease my heart--
But in their briny bed
My tears must stop, for every drop
Hinders needle and thread!
"With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread--
Stitch--stitch--stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
Would that its tone could reach the rich!
She sang this 'Song of the Shirt!'"
We annex part of an article from Jerrold's Magazine, which draws quite
as clear a picture of the condition of the English poor, and points out
the only feasible remedy for the evils of that condition:
SLAVERY.
THE ONLY REMEDY FOR THE MISERIES OF THE ENGLISH POOR.
BY A PHILANTHROPIST.
Whoever is unprepared to cast aside not only his prejudices, but many of
what may be considered well-formed opinions, had better not attempt to
peruse the following few pages. I must demand of my reader that he come
to the perusal, the _beau ideal_ of a juryman. No information that he
has gained elsewhere, no feelings that he has cherished as virtues, no
sentiments that he has cultivated as noble, and no opinions that he may
have formed as infallible, must interfere with his purely and simply
receiving the following arguments on their own cogency and truth alone.
The writer considers he has made a great discovery in moral and
political science; and elevated by his subject above all personal
influences, he commits it to be worked out by others, without the
ostentation of recording his name, or deeming that the applause of
present or of future generations can add to his sublime delight, in
discovering and applying a "panacea" to the varied and bitter ills that
beset three-fourths of the poor inhabitants of the "_United_ Kingdom."
As some account of the means by which a great discovery has been arrived
at is necessary, in order to prepare the mind for its reception with due
respect, I shall give a brief outline of the process by which this
all-important truth was elicited.
Born with natural sensibilities, I early learnt to shrink from pain
endured by others, as if felt actually and bodily by myself. Thus
constituted, what a scene was displayed to me when I came into the great
and moving society of mankind! What mighty heaps of misery did I
discern! What details did the records of the various courts of justice
disclose! What regions of squalor, misery, and degradation did my
travels reveal to me in every city, and every hamlet, I visited! The
bent of my future avocation was soon fixed, and I became a
philanthropist by profession. Not to make a trade of it at monster
meetings, or fancy fairs, but as a pursuit to which I felt myself called
by a spiritual voice, as distinct, I should say, as that which ever
called a theologian from a curacy of fifty pounds a year to a bishopric
of twenty thousand.
It is not necessary to recapitulate the horrors I have witnessed in the
regions of poverty. It is said that the eras of pestilence and famine
are passed, but so will not those say who have visited the dwellings of
the operatives of our great manufacturing towns, when the markets are
glutted, and the mills and manufactories are closed. Pestilence still
rages fiercely as ever, in the form of typhus, engendered by want. In
the mission I have called myself to, I have stood upon the mud floor,
over the corpse of the mother and the new-born child--both the victims
of want. I have seen a man (God's image) stretched on straw, wrapped
only in a mat, resign his breath, from starvation, in the prime of age.
I have entered, on a sultry summer's night, a small house, situate on
the banks of a common sewer, wherein one hundred and twenty-seven human
beings, of both sexes and all ages, were indiscriminately crowded. I
have been in the pestilential hovels of our great manufacturing cities,
where life was corrupted in every possible mode, from the malaria of the
sewer to the poison of the gin-bottle. I have been in sheds of the
peasant, worse than the hovel of the Russian, where eight squalid,
dirty, boorish creatures were to be kept alive by eight shillings per
week, irregularly paid. I have seen the humanities of life desecrated in
every way. I have seen the father snatch the bread from his child, and
the mother offer the gin-bottle for the breast. I have seen, too,
generous sacrifices and tender considerations, to which the boasted
chivalries of Sydney and Edward were childish ostentation. I have found
wrong so exalted, and right so debased--I have seen and known of so much
misery, that the faith in good has shivered within me.
For a time, when I urged these things in the circles of the comfortable,
I received many various replies. By some it was said that it was the lot
of humanity--that it had always been so, and, therefore, always must.
That to enlarge on the evil was only to create discontent, and so injure
"the better classes." It was in vain I urged to these reasoners that for
hundreds, and, perhaps, thousands of years, creatures little better than
Calibans infested the morasses and forests of Europe. That civilization
had an onward progress, and that the history of the world proved the one
great truth--that man is the creature of circumstances. By some, the
evils were denied: by some few, deplored. By all, the discussion was
avoided; though the destruction that menaced the Roman empire from the
invasion of the barbarian world was never so imminent, nor could the
consequence be so dreadful, as that which the wealthy, and civilization
itself, would sustain from the insurrection of outraged poverty.
I next tried the politicians. I devoted some years to history and
political economy. I even entered the senate. In politics, I found no
means of relief. The struggle there was for the preponderance in power,
and the reply, "Help us to get into power, and then we will see what we
can do." The utmost was to institute inquiries; and from the information
thus gathered, has been collected a record of misery, such as never was
before displayed.
It is true, some steps have at last been taken in the right direction;
some few noble spirits have spoken out to the "comfortable," the
dreadful truths. That something must be done, is now acknowledged by all
who think. The foolish, the careless, and the truculent, can no longer
avowedly declare the cries and groans of the miserable multitude to be
seditious discontent; nor ascribe their sufferings to the results of
retributive justice.
Baffled in every search for a remedy at home, I determined to search
foreign nations, and having carefully journeyed through Europe, I sought
successively the East and West, until I had traversed the civilized
countries of the world. It was in the remote regions of the East and
West that I found a clue to my discovery. I here found mankind as
multitudinous as at home, but much more happy. Starvation, except in
cases of general famine, was unknown; and, on the contrary, I heard the
sounds of revelry and dancing, of mirth and leisure, amongst the lowest
classes. How different to the everlasting toil of the superior
Englishman! "These, then," I said, "are the concomitants of bondage!"
Having thus struck out the idea, I followed it up with logical severity,
and enunciated the truth that _slavery and content, and liberty and
discontent, are natural results of each other_. Applying this, then, to
the toil-worn, half-fed, pauperized population of England, I found that
the only way to permanently and efficiently remedy the complicated
evils, would be to ENSLAVE _the whole of the people of England who have
not property_.
Of course, I expect a shout of execration and contempt at such a bold
proposition; but, as I have already said, I seek only to gain the
hearing, at first, of the impartial and the original thinker. That I am
disinterested, will at once be allowed, when I declare I do not seek to
be one of the enslaved. But let us proceed to examine how this mighty
benefit would manifest itself. The first great advantage would be, that
the lower classes of society would be placed on an equality with the
domestic animals; and by becoming property, become valuable and valued.
At present there can be no doubt that a horse that is worth fifty pounds
is much more cared for than a man who is worth nothing. We have lately
seen a case where a woman was allowed to expire in parturition, because
no more than eight shillings was allowed for the midwife's fee; whereas,
when a famous racing mare foaled, ten guineas were not thought too great
a sum to secure the attendance of a first-rate veterinary surgeon. Now,
had the woman been a slave, her offspring would have been worth
something, and, of course, her safety secured.
Like all great discoveries, the ramifications of the advantages are
found to be endless, and, if once fully entertained, would be
irresistible. Entire and complete slavery of the poor would put an end
to all the discussions of their rights, and clearly and definitely work
out the relative duties of all classes. We should have no more occasion
for vague special pleading, such as we find in Paley and other moral
philosophers, who endeavor to reconcile dependence and independence, and
liberty and obedience. Sedition would be at once annihilated; for where
there was no hope nor recognition of equality, there would be no attempt
to raise claims which were stifled before born. All vain ambition, such
as that now subsisting, between the potboy and the peer, as manifested
in Chesterfield's mosaic gold and cigars, would be prevented. The potboy
would be a contented slave, and the peer left to his superiority in
clothes, trinkets, and sensualities.
It will of course be asserted that the people would not be contented as
slaves, but it is only to make a state inevitable, and humanity is soon
reconciled to it, as we are to death, governments, and the income-tax.
Besides, what is liberty? a word now almost forgotten; a battle sound
used to juggle men in every age and country; in Greece, Rome, and
America, the war-cry of slaves to fight for the liberty of slavery. Must
we, then, ever remain the tools of words; reject all the true advantages
of slavery because we cannot bear the name, and take all its evils, and
more, because we wish to renounce the sound? What are soldiers and
sailors but bondsmen? Indeed, they are a happy specimen of slavery; well
fed, clad, and tended; with plenty of leisure and repose. Why, then,
should they be happier than the peasant, who pines away his dreary
existence on bread and potatoes and water? What is the convict but a
slave, who by his crimes has earned his right to be kept well and safe
from the elements and want? We reward the criminal with slavery and
competence, and leave the honest man to liberty and want.
If, indeed, the old noble cry of "Liberty _and Beer_" could be realized,
then it were vain to urge my discovery; but as Englishmen, in proportion
as they have gained their liberty, have lost their beer, it behooves us
to see whether they had not better hasten back to that state, when
inventoried with their masters' swine they shared also their
superfluities.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE EDINBURGH REVIEW ON SOUTHERN SLAVERY.
The Edinburgh Review well knows that the white laborers of England
receive more blows than are inflicted on Southern slaves. In the Navy,
the Army, and the Merchant service of England, there is more of cruelty,
more physical discomfort, than on all the farms of the South. This
Review, for twenty years, has been a grand repository of the ignorance,
the crimes, and sufferings of the workers in mines and factories, of the
agricultural laborers, of the apprentices, and, in fine, of the whole
laboring class of England. We might appeal to its pages almost _passim_
to establish these facts. Half the time of Parliament is consumed in
vain efforts to alleviate the condition of the cruelly-treated, and
starving poor; and much of this Review is taken up in chronicling the
humane, but fruitless action of Parliament. No man in the South, we are
sure, ever bred slaves for sale. They are always sold reluctantly, and
generally from necessity, or as a punishment for misconduct. The
South-West has been settled in great part by farmers from the older
slave States, removing to them with their negroes. The breaking up of
families of whites and of blacks keeps equal pace. But we have no law
of impressment in the South to sever the family ties of either blacks or
whites. Nor have we any slavery half so cruel as that to which the
impressed English seaman is subjected. The soldiers torn from their
wives and children, to suffer and to perish in every clime and on every
sea, excite not the sympathies of the Reviewer; they are all reserved
for imaginary cases of distress, occasioned by the breaking up of
families of Southern negroes. The so-called slave trade of the South is
no evil, because the instances of the improper severing of family ties
are rare. Will some Yankee or Englishman, ere the charge is repeated
that slaves are bred to be sold like horses, when they are old enough
for market, point out a single instance in the present, or the past, of
a Southerner's pursuing such a business? Yankees and Englishmen kill
their wives annually, yet it has not occurred to Englishmen at all, and
not to the Yankee till very lately, to abolish the marriage relation.
When Englishmen correct the thousand real and pressing evils in their
society, it will be time enough to call on us to do away with the
imaginary abuses of slavery. These remarks have been elicited from us by
an article on Southern slavery, in the April number of the Edinburgh
Review, which is equally distinguished for the falsity of its charges
and the ill nature of its comments. As a full justification for the
indefinite continuance of negro slavery, we give below an extract from
an able article from the same Review, in its January number, 1846,
entitled "Legislation for the working classes." In showing the many
evils arising from emancipating the whites, the Reviewer demonstrates,
though not intending it, the absurdity of emancipating negroes. If
Irishmen, who are as intellectual a race of men as any in all Europe,
have lost infinitely in physical comfort, and gained nothing in morals
or in mind by liberty, what will it avail negroes? Let Hayti and Jamaica
answer. But Frenchmen, Scotchmen and Englishmen, we mean the masses, the
proletariat, have lost as much by emancipation as Irishmen. History and
statistics, the jails, the gallows, and the poor-house tell the same sad
tale everywhere. We would be willing, if necessary, to rest the complete
justification of negro slavery on this single extract:
[From the Edinburgh Review, 1846.]
The moral and domestic feelings of the slave are sacrificed, and
his intellect is stunted; but in respect of his physical condition
he may be a gainer. "It is necessary," says Aristotle, in his
celebrated justification of slavery, "that those who cannot exist
separately should live together. he who is capable of foreseeing
by his intellect, is naturally a master; he who is able to execute
with his body what another contrives, is naturally a slave:
wherefore the interest of the master and slave is one." There is a
certain degree of force in this argument, if it is limited to the
economical relations of the two parties. It is the interest of the
master to maintain his slave in good working order. In general,
therefore, he is comparatively well fed, clothed and lodged; his
physical wants are provided for; his food descends into his mouth
like the manna in the wilderness; he is clothed like the lilies of
the field; he has no thought or care for the morrow. Although
complaints were made of insufficient food and overwork, the
arguments against negro slavery in our West India colonies were
founded, mainly, on the necessity of constant punishment--on the
_driving system_, as it was called--and the cruelty of the
inflictions. The Report of the French Commission, framed by the
Due de Broglie, which recommended the gradual abolition of
slavery, likewise bears testimony to the excellent physical
condition of the slaves in the French colonies. It is on account
of the advantages which may belong to dependence upon a wealthy
lord, as compared with a needy independence, that the slave in
Menander exclaims, that "it is better to obtain a good master,
than to live meanly and wretchedly as a freeman." So the
Rhetorician Libanus, who lived in the fourth century, in a
declamation entitled a _Vituperation of Poverty_, after having
enumerated the privations and sufferings which fall to the lot of
the poor freeman, proceeds thus:--"None of these evils belong to
slavery. The slave sleeps at his ease, being fed by the cares of
his master, and supplied with all the other things needful for his
body. But the poor freeman is constantly awake, seeking the means
of subsistence, and subjected to the severe dominion of want which
compels him to hunger." The well-informed author of _Haji Baba_
describes the astonishment of the vizier of the Shah of Persia, on
hearing from the British ambassador that there is no slavery in
England, and that the king is using his influence to put it down
in other States. "Indeed!" said the vizier, "you surely cannot be
so cruel! What would become of the poor slaves if they were free?
Nothing can be happier than the lot of ours; but if they were
abandoned to their fate, they would starve and die. They are our
children, and form a part of our family."
A similar feeling is described by Mr. Kohl as existing among the
serfs in the Baltic provinces of Russia, with respect to their
recent emancipation. The serf is now no longer _abscriptus glebæ_;
but it is not difficult for his lord to find the means of
detaining him on the estate if he wishes so to do. Mr. Kohl
continue thus:--"Though the right which the peasant has thus
obtained is so frequently useless to him, the counter right of his
master, of banishing him from his native place, is very often
turned against him. Formerly, a noble could not, by any means, get
rid of his serfs; and, whenever they were in want, he was forced
to support and maintain them. At present, the moment a peasant
becomes useless and burdensome, it is easy to dismiss him; on
account of which the serfs, in some parts of the provinces, would
not accept of the emancipation offered, and bitterly lamented the
freedom, as it was called, which was forced upon them. The serf
often mournfully complains that he has lost a father and kept a
master, and his lord now often refuses the little requests of his
peasants, saying, 'You know you are not my children now.'" A
similar state of feeling is likewise reported to exist among the
serfs of Russia Proper, who, in many cases, prefer the certainty
of slavery to the risks of emancipation. Mr. Featherstonhaugh, in
his _Travels_ in the Slave States of North America, relates that
Mr. Madison, the ex-President, informed him that he had once
assembled all his numerous slaves, and offered to manumit them
immediately; "but they instantly declined it, alleging that they
had been born on his estate, had always been provided for by him
with raiment and food, in sickness and in health, and, if they
were made free, they would have no home to go to, and no friend to
protect and care for them. They preferred, therefore, to live and
die as his slaves, who had always been a kind master to them."
Slavery excludes the principle of competition, which reduces the
wages of the free laborer, increases his hours of work, and
sometimes deprives him of all means of subsistence. The
maintenance of slaves as one household, or _familia_, likewise
conduces to thrift; their supply on a large scale is, or ought to
be, less expensive than when each laborer, as in a state of
freedom, has a separate cottage and a family of his own. With
slaves thus supported, there is no more waste than with horses or
cattle. There is none of the loss or damage which arises from the
drunkenness and improvidence of the free laborer expending his own
wages. Again, the slave-master can regulate the number of his
workmen, and can in this manner control the amount of population.
The means may doubtless be harsh and cruel, but they are effective
for their end. In general, indeed, slave classes show a
disposition to diminish rather than increase in number; and,
where the slave trade has not been prohibited, the number is kept
up rather by new importation than by births. Hence the evils of an
abundant population never manifested themselves while the mass of
the people was in a servile and semi-servile state. Moreover, it
can scarcely be doubted, that under certain circumstances industry
may be promoted, and the produce of the land increased, by the
existence of a slave class. Mr. M'Culloch, indeed, thinks that the
tropical countries can never be effectually cultivated by free
labor. "Were the slaves completely emancipated in the United
States, Cuba, and Brazil," says he, "it is all but certain that
the culture of sugar and cotton would be as completely abandoned
in them as in Hayti. And if the change were accompanied by a
considerable improvement in the condition of the black population,
the sacrifice might not, perhaps, be deemed too great. But where
is the ground for supposing that such would be the case? Indeed,
the fair presumption seems to be the other way. Little, at all
events, would be gained by turning a laborious, well-fed slave,
into an idle, improvident, and perhaps beggarly freeman." If we
look merely to the present, and confine our views to _economical_
results, Mr. M'Culloch's arguments certainly appear strong. And
although it is true that all hope of _future_ improvement, in
respect of his physical condition, is denied to the slave, yet it
must be admitted, that practically, and looking to the actual
generation, the absence of a power of rising in the world is no
severe privation to a peasant class. Neither in England among the
agricultural laborers, nor in the Continental States among the
small proprietors, are there many instances of a person quitting
the condition in which he is born. Nor is any slavery so
indellible (where the slaves have the same colored skin as their
masters) as to prevent frequent emancipations of individual slaves
from personal affection and other causes. The freedmen formed a
numerous class among the Romans; and it is known to what important
posts slaves have risen in the Turkish empire.
After these remarks, (the intention of which cannot be
misunderstood by any reader of this Journal,) we can better
estimate the effects of the change from slavery to personal
freedom, upon the emancipated slave. He is relieved from the
liabilities and burdens, but he at the same time forfeits the
advantages of slavery. While the slave is exonerated from his
legal obligations to his master, the master is exonerated from his
legal and moral obligations towards his slave, and his interest in
the conservation and protection of his slave is at an end. The
slave (to use the common phrase) becomes his own master. With the
acquisition of this power, he incurs the obligations of
self-support. He becomes independent; and, being so, he must
provide for his self-defence. Self-dominion is not an unmixed good
to the work. It imports onerous duties. It implies the necessity
of providing for a man's own wants, and those of his family. The
freedman is no longer forced, by the fear of corporal punishment,
to do a prescribed task of work. But he must work in order to earn
wages; and, what is more, he must find work for himself. He is no
longer incapable of acquiring property, or of reaping the fruits
of his own industry. But he is, in consideration of this power,
bound to provide for his own support. He is no longer incapable of
contracting a lawful marriage, or begetting free legitimate
children. But he is bound to maintain his wife and children by his
own exertions; and if he deserts them, or allows them to starve,
he is subject to legal punishment. He is no longer fed and
maintained merely according to his physical wants, without
reference to the value of his services; but, on the other hand, he
is delivered over to the unchecked operation of the principle of
competition; and he must content himself with the scanty pittance
which the rivalry of the labor market may assign him. He is no
longer treated as a mere animal or implement of production,
without feeling, mind, or moral character; he does not follow the
religion of his master, and he may voluntarily choose his own
creed. But, in becoming a free moral agent, he accepts the
responsibilities of that condition; his path is open to virtue,
but he is answerable for his acts and their consequences if he
deviates into other ways; he can, by foresight, determine his own
lot, but he must, in compensation, suffer the penalties of his own
improvidence.
When we contemplate the actual results of the change in question,
and compare the state of the working classes in countries where
they are free, with the state of a slave class, we find that the
only benefits of freedom, which have been fully enjoyed by the
laboring classes, are the _negative_ ones, (such as exemption from
bodily inflictions, and other ill treatment;) but that the
_positive_ benefits which they have hitherto derived from the
social independence, have been less prominent. The _positive_
benefits--which are economical and domestic--which consist in the
acquisition, enjoyment and transmission of wealth, and in the
development of the family affections--are more remote, and depend
on numerous preliminary conditions which hitherto have rarely
co-existed in any community. The entire harvest of the change will
not be reaped until civilization has made further progress--until
the providence, industry, intelligence, and peaceableness of the
working man are such as to render him altogether fit for
self-support, and to protect society against the shocks arising
from his delusions and violence.
But, in proportion as the positive advantages are distant, the
disadvantages of the change make themselves sensibly felt. As soon
as slavery has ceased to exist, the freedom of action for the
working classes is complete; they are masters of their own
conduct, and their conduct determines the condition of the great
mass of the community. If, then, their moral state is low, and
they are exempt from all legal compulsion, they are likely to make
a bad use of their liberty. Whenever the moral restraints are
weak, and the rights of the freeman are exercised without
limitation, and with an inward consciousness of power, political
or social dangers cannot be far off. A slave-class, emancipated at
once, affords the strongest example of the evils arising under
this influence. Their moral condition is, at the best, like that
of children; they have had no experience of self-management; and
the rights of freedom are, from their novelty, prized most highly.
Some countries, however, from which slavery has long been
banished, exhibit a nearly similar state of things. Thus, in
Ireland, the freedom of the working classes has produced the
smallest amount of positive advantages, combined with the largest
amount of disadvantages. The peasantry are in the lowest physical
degradation; they derive the smallest possible quantum of
happiness from their power of disposing of themselves and their
families, and of acquiring property; while their rights of
citizenship are too frequently perverted to purposes detrimental
to themselves, and dangerous to the public peace.
When the slavery of the working classes had been gradually
extinguished in Western Europe, it began to be seen that the
theory of personal freedom could not be carried consistently into
practical effect for the entire community. A man might, in the eye
of the law, be presumed able and bound to maintain himself and his
family: but want of industry, or intelligence, or providence, or
the rapine of the strong, might reduce him to destitution and
helplessness. Accordingly, unless many of the laboring class were
to be permitted to die of hunger and neglect, it was necessary to
find some means of alleviating their sufferings.
In further reply to the Edinburgh Reviewer, and to illustrate by
examples our theory of "Cannibals All; or, Slaves without Masters," read
the following from the North British Review for November, 1855, on the
Rural Population of England:
Have we not come upon a very paradise of rural seclusion? Is it
not a spot to be chosen by those who are intending to while away
existence among the never tiring sweets of a country life? But let
us step on a little way, and overtake the group of children that
is just now crossing the common. Alas! yet should we not refrain
from expressing the sad feelings which the first sight of these
infant shadows has awakened? feelings heightened by contrast; for
lately we were making our way through a fourth class street, where
the prime necessities of life are amply provided for. Besides, if
we look a second time at these shrunken forms--such is the
beneficence of the Creator--we see that childhood will have its
smiles, its laughs, its gambols, under conditions even the most
forlorn. Moreover, there is, notwithstanding that famished, watery
look--there is, taking the group altogether--there is an air of
pure rusticity--there is an innocence, comparatively, and a modest
propriety--there is a respectfulness in their style and deportment
which is greatly in their favor when thought of in comparison with
the bold, unreverential sauciness of the infant Hercules of
manufacturing towns.
But look at these unfortunates--the infant serfs of a neglected
rural district! Look at them physiologically--observe their lank,
colorless hair, screening the sunken eye, and trailing upon the
bony neck; look at the hollow cheeks, the candle-like arms, and
the unmuscular shanks which serve the young urchins for legs! But
are not these children breathing a pure atmosphere? Are they not
Nature's own? Yes; but there is one thing wanting to them--one
ominous word clears up the mystery. Starvation! Not, indeed, such
starvation as brings the sorrows of a sad lot to a speedy end; but
such as drags its pining sufferings out, through the overshadowed
years of childhood and youth; through those spasmodic years of
manhood during which the struggle to exist wears an aspect of
rugged rigor; and then through that residue of early decrepitude,
haggard, bent, idiot-like, which is indeed an unblessed end of an
unblessed existence. This rural population does pretty well if the
father be able-bodied and sober, and the mother managing, through
the summer season, of wheat-hoeing, hay-making, and wheat harvest;
that is to say, when the labor of the mother and her children
comes in to swell a little the weekly wages. During these weeks
something of needed clothing is obtained, rent is paid up, and a
pittance of animal food, weekly, is added to the bread, and the
tea, and the potato of the seven months' diet.
It would be doing a wrong to our worthy farmer friends, and to the
rural sporting gentry, to affirm that these miserables are
actually dying of want. No, they are not dying, so as inquests
must be held before they may be buried--would to God they
were--they are the living--they are living to show what
extremities men, women and children may endure, and yet not die;
or what they hold to be worse, not to betake themselves to "the
union!" But how do these same men, women and children pass five
months of the year? Gladly would one find them curled round like
hedgehogs, and hybernating in hollow trees; in rabbit burrows,
lost to consciousness. We should, indeed, count it a miracle if,
on a May morning, we were to see a group of human beings start up
alive from the sward, along with the paiglus and the cowslips. But
it is much less than a miracle to see the people of a depressed
rural district stepping alive out of the winter months!
The instances are extremely rare in which those who were born to
the soil, and destined to the plow, rise above their native level.
Such instances--two, three, or five--might be hunted up, if an
agricultural county were ransacked for the purpose; but the
agricultural laborer, even if he had the brain and the ambition
requisite, and if otherwise he could effect it, would seldom bring
with him that which the social mass, into which he might rise,
especially needs, namely, a fully developed and robust body.
Meantime, what is it that is taking place in hundreds of
instances, and every day, throughout the entire area of the
manufacturing region? Men, well put together, and with plenty of
bone, and nerve, and brain, using with an intense ardor those
opportunities of advancement which abound in these spheres of
enterprise and of prosperous achievement--such men are found to be
making themselves heard of among their betters, are seen
well-dressed before they reconcile themselves to the wearing of
gloves; by rapid advances they are winning for themselves a place
in society--a place which, indeed, they well deserve; and there
they are doing what they had not thought of--they are regenerating
the mass within which they have been received.
We extract the following from an article in the Edinburgh Review on
Juvenile and Female Labor, in its January No., 1844. It is of the
highest authority, being part of a report of commissioners appointed by
Parliament, and stands endorsed as well by the action of Parliament as
by the authority of the Reviewer:
Our limits will not allow us to go through all the employments reported
upon in these volumes; but, as specimens, we will give a short account
of the condition of the people engaged in Coal mines, Calico-printing,
Metal wares, Lace-making, and Millinery.
_Coal Mines._--The number of children and young persons employed in
these mines is enormous; and they appear to commence working, even
underground, at an earlier age than is recorded of any other occupation
except lace-making. The Commissioners report--
"That instances occur in which children are taken into these mines
to work as early as _four_ years of age, sometimes at five, not
unfrequently between six and seven, and often from seven to eight,
while from eight to nine is the ordinary age at which their
employment commences.... That a very large proportion of the
persons employed in these mines is under thirteen years of age;
and a still larger proportion between thirteen and eighteen. That
in several districts female children begin to work in the mines as
early as males.
"That the nature of the employment which is assigned to the
youngest children, generally that of 'trapping,' requires that
they should be in the pit as soon as the work of the day
commences, and, according to the present system, that they should
not leave the pit before the work of the day is at an end.
"That although this employment scarcely deserves the name of
labor, yet, as the children engaged in it are commonly excluded
from light, and are always without companions, it would, were it
not for the passing and re-passing of the coal carriages, amount
to solitary confinement of the worst order.
"That in some districts they remain in solitude and darkness
during the whole time they are in the pit, and, according to their
own account, many of them never see the light of day for weeks
together during the greater part of the winter season, excepting
on those days in the week when work is not going on, and on the
Sundays.
"That at different ages, from six years old and upwards, the hard
work of pushing and dragging the carriages of coal from the
workings to the main ways or to the foot of the shaft, begins: a
labor which all classes of witnesses concur in stating, requires
the unremitting exertion of all the physical power which the young
workers possess.
"That, in the districts in which females are taken down into the
coal mines, both sexes are employed together in precisely the same
kind of labor, and work for the same number of hours; that the
girls and boys, and the young men and the young women, and even
married women and women with child, commonly work almost naked,
and the men, in many mines, quite naked; and that all classes of
witnesses bear testimony to the demoralizing influence of the
employment of females underground.[32]
"That, in the east of Scotland, a much larger proportion of
children and young persons are employed in these mines than in
other districts, many of whom are girls; and that the chief part
of their labor consists in carrying the coals on their backs up
steep ladders.
"That when the work-people are in full employment, the regular
hours of work for children and young persons are rarely less than
eleven; more often they are _twelve_; in some districts they are
_thirteen_; and in one district they are generally _fourteen_ and
upwards.
"That, in the great majority of these mines night-work is a part
of the ordinary system of labor, more or less regularly carried on
according to the demand for coals, and one which the whole body
of evidence shows to act most injuriously both on the physical and
moral condition of the work-people, and more especially on that of
the children and young persons.
"That in many cases the children and young persons have little
cause of complaint in regard to the treatment they receive, while
in many mines the conduct of the adult colliers to them is harsh
and cruel; the persons in authority who must be cognizant of this
ill usage never interfering to prevent it, and some of them
distinctly stating that they do not conceive they have a right to
do so. That with some exceptions little interest is taken by the
coal-owners in the children employed in their works after the
daily labor is over.... That in all the coalfields accidents of a
fearful nature are extremely frequent, and of the work-people who
perish by such accidents, the proportion of children and young
persons sometimes equals, and rarely falls much below that of
adults."--(First Report, p. 255-7.)
With respect to the general healthiness of the employment, there is
considerable discrepancy in the evidence adduced; many witnesses stating
that the colliers generally, especially the adults, are a remarkably
healthy race, showing a very small average of sickness,[33] and
recovering with unusual rapidity from the severest accidents;--a
peculiarity which the medical men reasonably enough attribute to the
uniform temperature of the mines, and still more to the abundance of
nutritious food which the high wages of the work-people enable them to
procure. The great majority of the witnesses, however, give a very
different impression. Upwards of two hundred, whose testimony is quoted,
or referred to in the Report of the Central Commissioners, testify to
the extreme fatigue of the children when they return home at night, and
to the injurious effect which this ultimately produces on their
constitution.
While the effect of such early and severe labor is, to cause a peculiar
and extraordinary degree of muscular development in collier children, it
also stunts their growth, and produces a proportionate diminution of
stature, as is shown by the following comparison.--(Physical and Moral
Condition of Children, p. 55.)
10 Farmers' boys, between 12
and 14 years, measured, each, 56.4 inches in height.
10 Colliers' boys, 53.4 " "
----
Difference, 3. " "
10 Farmers' girls, between 14
and 17 years, measured, each, 60.5 inches in height.
10 Colliers' girls, 55.6 " "
----
Difference, 4.9 " "
51 Farmers' children, 10 years
old, measured, each, 51. " "
60 Colliers' children, 48. " "
----
Difference, 3. " "
49 Farmers' children, 15-1/2 years
old, measured, each, 59. " "
50 Colliers' children, 53. " "
----
Difference, 6. " "[34]
Labor in coal mines is also stated, by a great number of most
respectable witnesses, to produce a crippled gait, and a curvature of
the spinal column, as well as a variety of disorders--among which may be
enumerated, affections of the heart, rupture, asthma, rheumatism, and
loss of appetite;--and this not merely in a few cases, but as an
habitual, and almost inevitable result of their occupation.
"Of the effect of employment in the coal mines of the East of
Scotland in producing an early and irreparable deterioration of
the physical condition, the Sub-commissioner thus reports:--'In a
state of society, such as has been described, the condition of the
children may be easily imagined, and its baneful influence on the
health cannot well be exaggerated; and I am informed by very
competent authorities, that six months' labor in the mines is
sufficient to effect a very visible change in the physical
condition of the children: and indeed it is scarcely possible to
conceive of circumstances more calculated to sow the seeds of
future disease, and, to borrow the language of the instructions,
to prevent the organs from being developed, to enfeeble and
disorder their functions, and to subject the whole system to
injury, which cannot be repaired at any subsequent stage of
life.'---(Frank's Report, s. 68: App. Pt. I, p. 396.) In the West
of Scotland, Dr. Thomson, Ayr, says:--'A collier at fifty
generally has the appearance of a man ten years older than he
is.'"--(Evidence, No. 34; App. Pt. I, p. 371, l. 58.)
If we turn to the testimony as to the moral, intellectual, and spiritual
state of the great mass of the collier population, the picture is even
darker and more appalling than that which has been drawn of their
physical condition. The means of instruction to which they have access
are scanty in the extreme;--their readiness to avail themselves of such
means, if possible still scantier; and the real results of the
instruction they do obtain, scantiest of all--as the following extracts
will show:--
"As an example of the mental culture of the collier children in
the neighborhood of Halifax, the Sub-commissioner states, that an
examination of 219 children and young persons at the bottom of one
of the coal-pits, he found only 31 that could read an easy book,
not more than 15 that could write their names, these latter having
received instruction at some day-school before they commenced
colliery labor, and that the whole of the remaining number were
incapable of connecting two syllables together."--(Scriven,
Report, Mines: App. Pt. II, 73, s. 91.)
"Of the state of education in the coalfields of Lancashire, the
Sub-commissioner gives the following account:--'It was my
intention to have laid before the Central Board evidence of the
effects of education, as shown by the comparative value of
educated and uneducated colliers and children employed in coal
mines, as workmen, and to have traced its effects, as shown by the
superior moral habits and generally more exalted condition of
those who had received the benefits of education over those who
had not, which I had observed and proved to exist in other
branches of industry. I found, however that the case was hopeless;
there were so few, either of colliers or their children, who had
even received the first rudiments of education, that it was
impossible to institute a comparison.'--(Kennedy, Report, Mines:
App. Pt. II, p. 183, s. 268.)
"In the coalfields of North Lancashire examined by Mr. Austin, it
is stated that the education of the working-people has been almost
wholly neglected; that they have received scarcely any instruction
at all, either religious or secular; that they cannot therefore be
supposed to have any correct conception of their moral duties, and
that in fact their intellects are as little enlightened as their
places of work--'darkness reigns throughout.'--(Report, Mines:
App. Pt. II, p. 805, s. 26.)
"In the East of Scotland a marked inferiority in the collier
children to those of the town and manufacturing population.
Upwards of 100 heads of collier families, most of whom leave their
children to themselves--to ignorance and irreligion."--(_Ibid._
p. 426, l. 42.) 'Many of the children are not educated at
all.'"--(_Ibid._ p. 428, l. 30.)
It appears that, in the principal mining districts, few of the colliers
attend any place of worship; and of their entire ignorance of the most
elementary truths, either of secular or religious knowledge, the
following extracts will give some idea:--
"YORKSHIRE.--With respect even to the common truths of
Christianity and facts of Scripture,' says Mr. Symons, 'I am
confident that a majority are in a state of heathen ignorance. I
unhesitatingly affirm that the mining children, as a body, are
growing up in a state of absolute and appalling ignorance; and I
am sure that the evidence I herewith transmit, alike from all
classes--clergymen, magistrates, masters, men, and children--will
fully substantiate and justify the strength of the expressions
which I have alone felt to be adequate to characterize the mental
condition of this benighted community.'
"'Throughout the whole district of the coal-field,' says Mr.
Scriven, 'the youthful population is in a state of profaneness,
and almost of mental imbecility.'
"'The ignorance and the degraded state of the colliers and their
children,' says Mr. Kennedy, 'are proverbial throughout this
district. They are uneducated, ignorant, and brutal; deteriorated
as workmen and dangerous as subjects.'"
But nothing can show their mental state in so striking a manner, as the
evidence derived from the examination of the children themselves, by the
Sub-commissioner:--
"'A girl eighteen years old--I never learnt nought. I never go to
church or chapel. I have never heard that a good man came into the
world, who was God's Son, to save sinners. I never heard of Christ
at all. Nobody has ever told me about him, nor have my father and
mother ever taught me to pray. I know no prayer: I never pray. I
have been taught nothing about such things.'--(Evidence, Mines, p.
252, 11, 35, 39.) 'The Lord sent Adam and Eve on earth to save
sinners.'--(_Ibid._ p. 245, l. 66.) 'I don't know who made the
world; I never heard about God.'--(_Ibid._ p. 228, l. 17.) 'Jesus
Christ was a shepherd; he came a hundred years ago to receive sin.
I don't know who the Apostles were.'--(_Ibid._ p. 232, l. 11.)
'Jesus Christ was born in heaven, but I don't know what happened
to him; he came on earth to commit sin. Yes; to commit sin.
Scotland is a country, but I don't know where it is. I never heard
of France.'--(_Ibid._ p. 265, l. 17.) 'I don't know who Jesus
Christ was; I never saw him, but I've seen Foster, who prays about
him.'--(_Ibid._ p. 291, l. 63.) 'I have been three years at a
Sunday-school. I don't know who the Apostles were. Jesus Christ
died for his son to be saved.'--(_Ibid._ 245, l. 10.) Employer (to
the Commissioner,) 'You have expressed surprise at Thomas Mitchell
(the preceding witness) not having heard of God. I judge there are
few colliers hereabouts that have.'"--(Second Report, p. 156.)
The moral state of the collier population is represented by the
Sub-commissioners as deplorable in the extreme:--
"LANCASHIRE.--'All that I have seen myself,' says the
Sub-commissioner, 'tends to the same conclusion as the preceding
evidence; namely, that the moral condition of the colliers and
their children in this district, is decidedly amongst the lowest
of any portion of the working-classes.'--(_Ibid._ Report, s. 278,
_et seq._)
"DURHAM and NORTHUMBERLAND.--The religious and moral condition of
the children, and more particularly of the young persons employed
in the collieries of North Durham and Northumberland, is stated
by clergymen and others, witnesses, to be 'deplorable.' 'Their
morals,' they say, 'are bad, their education worse, their
intellect very much debased, and their carelessness, irreligion,
and immorality' exceeding any thing to be found in an agricultural
district."--(Leifchild, Report, Mines: Evidence, Nos. 795, 530,
500, 493, 668.)
_Calico-Printing._--This employs a vast number of children of both
sexes, who have to mix and grind the colors for the adult work-people,
and are commonly called _teerers_. They begin to work, according to the
Report, sometimes before five years of age, often between five and six,
and generally before nine. The usual hours of labor are twelve,
including meal-time; but as the children generally work the same time as
the adults, "it is by no means uncommon in all the districts for
_children of five or six years old to be kept at work fourteen and even
sixteen hours consecutively_."--(Second Report, p. 59.) In many
instances, however, it will be seen that even these hours are shamefully
exceeded, during a press of work.
"352. Thomas Sidbread, block-printer, after taking a child who had
already been at work all day to assist him as a teerer through the
night, says--'We began to work between eight and nine o'clock on
the Wednesday night; but the boy had been sweeping the shop from
Wednesday morning. You will scarcely believe it, but it is true--I
never left the shop till six o'clock on the Saturday morning; and
I had never stopped working all that time, excepting for an hour
or two, and that boy with me all the time. I was knocked up, and
the boy was almost insensible.'
"353. Henry Richardson, block-printer, states--'At four o'clock I
began to work, and worked all that day, all the next night, and
until ten the following day. I had only one teerer dining that
time, and I dare say he would be about twelve years old. I had to
shout to him towards the second night, as he got sleepy. I had one
of my own children, about ten years old, who was a teerer. He
worked with me at Messrs. Wilson & Crichton's, at Blakely. We
began to work together about two or three in the morning, and left
off at four or five in the afternoon.'
Night-work, too, with all its evil consequences, is very common in this
trade;--and of the general state of education among the block-printers
in Lancashire, the Commissioners thus speak, (p. 172.)
"The evidence collected by Mr. Kennedy in the Lancashire district,
tends to show that the children employed in this occupation are
excluded from the opportunities of education; that this
necessarily contributes to the growth of an ignorant and vicious
population; that the facility of obtaining early employment for
children in print-fields empties the day-schools; that parents
without hesitation sacrifice the future welfare of their children
through life for the immediate advantage or gratification obtained
by the additional pittance derived from the child's earnings, and
that they imagine, or pretend, that they do not neglect their
children's education if they send them to Sunday-schools."
_Metal Wares._--The chief seats of manufactures in metal are Birmingham,
Wolverhampton, and Sheffield; but many of the minor branches are carried
on in different parts of Scotland, and in Worcestershire and Lancashire.
In the various departments of this species of manufacture many thousands
of children of both sexes are employed. They begin to work generally
about their _eighth_ year, as in Birmingham and Sheffield, but often
earlier; while in _pin-making_, as carried on at Warrington, both boys
and girls commence when _five_ years old, and work _twelve hours_ a-day,
and sometimes, though rarely, even more. The hours of work in most of
the metal manufactures are very irregular, generally from ten to
thirteen a-day; but, especially in the neighborhood of Wolverhampton, it
is by no means unfrequent to extend them to fifteen or sixteen for weeks
together. The places in which the occupations are carried on are
occasionally large, clean, and well ventilated; but in the great
majority of cases, a very different description of them is given.
"In general the buildings are very old, and many of them are in a
dilapidated, ruinous, and even dangerous condition. Nothing is
more common than to find many of the windows broken; in some cases
I observed more broken than whole panes; great and just complaint
is made upon this point by those employed. The shops are often
dark and narrow; many of them, especially those used for stamping,
are from four to seven feet below the level of the ground; these
latter, which are cold and damp, are justly complained of by the
workers. From defective construction all these old shops are
liable to become 'sufficatingly hot in summer (and also at night
when the gas is lighted) and very cold in winter. Efficient
ventilation is a thing unknown in these places. The great majority
of the shops are never whitewashed, but there are many creditable
exceptions to this statement.'
"It has been already stated, that although the whole population of
the town of Wolverhampton and the neighborhood, of all ranks, are
engaged in the different manufactures of the place, yet that there
are few manufactories of large size, the work being commonly
carried on in small workshops. Those workshops are usually
situated at the backs of the houses, there being very few in the
front of a street; so that the places where the children and the
great body of the operatives are employed are completely out of
sight, in narrow courts, unpaved yards, and blind alleys. In the
smaller and dirtier streets of the town, in which the poorest of
the working classes reside, 'there are narrow passages, at
intervals of every eight or ten houses, and sometimes at every
third or fourth house. These narrow passages are also the general
gutter, which is by no means always confined to one side, but
often streaming all over the passage. Having made your way through
the passage, you find yourself in a space varying in size with the
number of houses, hutches, or hovels it contains. They are nearly
all proportionately crowded. Out of this space there are other
narrow passages, sometimes leading to other similar hovels. The
workshops and houses are mostly built on a little elevation
sloping towards the passage.'"--(Second Report, p. 33.)
The most painful portions, however, of the Report on the metal
manufactures, are those which relate to the treatment of the children
and apprentices at Willenhall, near Wolverhampton, and to the noxious
influences of those departments which are carried on at Sheffield.--(P.
83.)
"455. The district which requires special notice on account of the
general and almost incredible abuse of the children, is that of
Wolverhampton and the neighborhood. In the town of Wolverhampton
itself, among the large masters children are not punished with
severity, and in some of the trades, as among the japanners, they
are not beaten at all; but, on the other hand, in the nail and tip
manufactories, in some of the founderies, and among the very
numerous class of small masters generally, the punishments are
harsh and cruel; and in some cases they can only be designated as
ferocious.
"456. In Willenhall the children are shamefully and most cruelly
beaten with a horsewhip, strap, stick, hammer handle, file, or
whatever tool is nearest at hand, or are struck with the clenched
fist or kicked.
"457. In Sedgley they are sometimes struck with a red-hot iron,
and burnt and bruised simultaneously; sometimes they have 'a flash
of lightning' sent at them. 'When a bar of iron is drawn white-hot
from the forge it emits fiery particles, which the man commonly
flings in a shower upon the ground by a swing of his arm before
placing the bar upon the anvil. This shower is sometimes directed
at the boy. It may come over his hands and face, his naked arms,
or on his breast. If his shirt be open in front, which is usually
the case, the red-hot particles are lodged therein, and he has to
shake them out as fast as he can.' ... 'His master's name is ----,
of Little London. There is another apprentice besides him, who is
treated just as bad.' ----, aged fifteen, 'works at Knoblocks with
----. Is a fellow-apprentice with ----. Lives in the house of his
master. Is beaten by his master, who hits him sometimes with his
fists, and sometimes with the file haft, and sometimes with a
stick--it's no matter what when he's a bit cross; sometimes hits
him with the locks; has cut his head open four or five times; so
he has his fellow-apprentice's head.'
"466. The Rev. Isaac Clarkson, magistrate, vicar of Wednesbury.
'In his capacity of magistrate complaints often come before him,
made by boys against masters, from different places round about,
such as Willenhall and Darlaston, but he did not encourage them,
as they should more properly apply to the magistrates of
Wolverhampton. More complaints came before him from the mines than
from the manufactories; but sometimes there was very bad usage in
the latter. A boy from Darlaston has recently been beaten most
unmercifully with a red-hot piece of iron. The boy was
burnt--fairly burnt. Wished to cancel the indentures; but the
master had been to the board of guardians, or to the clerk of the
Stafford union, and promised to behave better in future. Has had
various similar cases brought before him.'"
The following statements of the Commissioners demand serious
consideration.--(Second Report, p. 105.)
"581. But the chief disease is that produced by the occupation of
the grinder, which is the most pernicious of any branch of
manufacture in England. The inhalation of the dust of the
grindstone and of the steel of the knife, or whatever he may be
grinding, is so pernicious, that the life of a dry grinder
scarcely averages thirty-five years, whilst that of a wet grinder
is seldom prolonged to more than forty-five years. The bent
posture and pressure on the stomach aggravate the evil.
Fork-grinding is the most pernicious, because it is done dry, and
a great deal more of the steel has to be ground off. Dr. Knight
states that he cannot better express how injurious grinding is to
the health than by stating, that 'they who are the greatest
drinkers among the grinders are sometimes the longest lived, owing
to their more frequent absence from their work.'
"582. Dust flues, in the state of perfection to which they have
now been brought, appear to be capable of greatly diminishing if
not of entirely obviating the evil. The Sheffield grinders cannot,
however, be induced to avail themselves of this security; they
know that they are doomed to an early death, yet they are
absolutely unwilling that the evil to which they are exposed
should in any degree be lessened: they regard every precaution to
prolong life with jealousy, as a means of increasing the supply of
labor and lowering wages; they are for 'a short life and a merry
one,' and hence, even when the masters are at the expense of
erecting the apparatus, these men refuse to use it, and even
frequently kick it down and break it under their feet.'"--(_Ibid._
Evidence.)
As to the moral state of this class of work-people, the Report speaks
thus.--(Second Report, p. 176-178.)
"933. The moral and religious state of the children and young
persons employed in the trades and manufactures of Birmingham, is
described by the Sub-commissioner as very unfavorable. The social
and domestic duties and affections are but little cultivated and
practiced; great numbers never attend any place of religious
worship; and of the state of juvenile crime some conception may be
formed from the statement, that of the total number of known or
suspected offenders in this town, during the last twelve months,
namely 1223, at least one-half were under fifteen years of age.
"934. As to illicit sexual intercourse, it seems to prevail almost
universally, and from a very early period of life: to this
conclusion witnesses of every rank give testimony.
"936. WOLVERHAMPTON.--Of the moral condition of the youthful
population in the Wolverhampton district, Mr. Horne says--'Putting
together all I elicited from various witnesses and conversations
with working people, abroad and at home, and all that fell under
my observation, I am obliged to come to the conclusion, that the
moral virtues of the great majority of the children are as few in
number and as feeble in practice as can well be conceived of those
who are born in a civilized country, surrounded by religious and
educational institutions, and by individuals anxious for the
improvement of the condition of the working classes.' He adds of
Willenhall--'A lower condition of morals, in the fullest sense of
the term, could not, I think, be found. I do not mean by this that
there are many more prominent vices among them, but that moral
feelings and sentiments do not exist among them. They have no
morals.'
"940. SHEFFIELD.--In all the Sheffield trades employing large
numbers of children, it is stated that there is a much closer
intermixture of the younger children with the elder youths, and
with the men, than is usual in the cotton, woollen, and flax
factories; and that the conversations to which the children are
compelled to listen, would debase their minds and blunt their
moral feelings even if they had been carefully and virtuously
educated, but that of course this result takes place more rapidly
and completely in the case of those who have had little or no
religious culture, and little but bad example before their eyes
from their cradle upwards.
"943. Habits of drinking are formed at a very early age, malt
liquor being generally introduced into the workshops, of which the
youngest children are encouraged to partake. 'Very many,' say the
police officers, 'frequent beer-shops, where they play at
dominoes, bagatelle, &c., for money or drink.' Early intemperance
is assigned by the medical men as one cause of the great mortality
of Sheffield. 'There are beer-houses,' says the Rev. Mr. Farish,
'attended by youths exclusively, for the men will not have them in
the same houses with themselves. In these beer-houses the youth
of both sexes are encouraged to meet, and scenes destructive of
every vestige of virtue or morality ensue.'
"945. But it is stated by all classes of witnesses, that 'the most
revolting feature of juvenile depravity in this town is early
contamination from the association of the sexes;' that 'juvenile
prostitution is exceedingly common.' 'The evidence,' says the
Sub-commissioner, 'might have been doubled which attests the early
commencement of sexual and promiscuous intercourse among boys and
girls.'
"953. SEDGLEY.--At Sedgley and the neighboring villages, the
number of girls employed in nail-making considerably exceeds that
of the boys. Of these girls Mr. Horne reports--'Their appearance,
manners, habits, and moral natures, (so far as the word _moral_
can be applied to them,) are in accordance with their
half-civilized condition. Constantly associating with ignorant and
depraved adults and young persons of the opposite sex, they
naturally fall into all their ways; and drink, smoke, swear, throw
off all restraint in word and act, and become as bad as a man. The
heat of the forge and the hardness of the work render few clothes
needful in winter; and in summer, the six or seven individuals who
are crowded into these little dens find the heat almost
suffocating. The men and boys are usually naked, except a pair of
trousers and an open shirt, though very often they have no shirt;
and the women and girls have only a thin, ragged petticoat, and an
open shirt without sleeves.'"
_Lace-Making._--In this occupation it is proved, by unquestionable
evidence, that it is _customary_ for children to begin to work at the
age of four, five, and six years; and instances were found in which a
child only _two_ years old was set to work by the side of its mother.
The work is of course very slight, but is trying to the eyes. The
Sub-commissioner, after detailing a case, says:--
"58. In this case, if the statement of the mother be correct, one
of her children, four years of age, works twelve hours a-day with
only an interval of a quarter of an hour for each meal, at
breakfast, dinner, and tea, and never going out to play: and two
more of her children, one six and the other eight years of age,
work in summer from 6 a. m. till dusk, and in winter from seven in
the morning till ten at night, fifteen hours.
"59. This family is singular only in the children being set to
work at the ages of two or three. It is common in this district
for children to commence work at four, five, and six; the evidence
renders this fact indubitable."--(Second Report, p. 10.)
The following extracts relate to the hours of work in the lace trade:--
"336. In the Nottingham, Leicester, and Derby districts, partly
from the causes just assigned, and partly from the dissipated
habits of the workmen, 'the hours of labor are so extremely
irregular that it is impossible to speak of them with exact
precision.' The hand-machines, especially the wide machines, are
usually double-handed; some very large ones have three men each;
the men work such machines by 'spells for shifts.' The most common
time is sixteen, eighteen, and occasionally twenty hours. 'However
long,' adds the Sub-commissioner, 'may be the hours during which
the machines are propelled, even for the whole twenty-four, either
by hand or power, there are scarcely ever two complete sets of
threaders.'
"341. Mr. William Hinde, aged twenty-nine, operative--'Among the
small masters, who have each one or two machines, it is the custom
for one set of children to work for two or three masters. The
masters often live a long way from each other; children have often
to go one or two miles. They are always wanted when the machine
comes off, whatever may be the hour of the day or night; they are
required just as much by night as by day, unless the men will
accommodate the children, which is very rarely done, especially
when trade is good. When there has been a good pattern, and the
machine in constant use, the children "have scarcely a bit of
peace," they have no regular time for meals, "no time for
nothing;" when one machine is off, another is on. Was himself
formerly a threader, and then a winder. Has often gone at six in
the morning, and has had no time to get any thing to eat, except a
mouthful now and then, till three or four in the afternoon. It is
the same now, when trade is good. The children have no regular
time for meals; they have their food sent to them, and they eat
when they can; some have nothing but a bit of bread. There is no
more regular time for sleeping than for eating; the children often
lie down "in the middle of the shop door, when it is warm." Thinks
hundreds have been sent to the grave by this work. It is enough to
kill the children, going half fed and clothed to work in the
night, at this time of the year. (The thermometer last night was
102.')--(Second Report, pp. 56-9).
Of course, work of this nature, for such hours, and at such an early
age, cannot but be followed by deplorable consequences to health in
after life, as well as to moral character. Accordingly the Commissioners
report.--(II, p. 109, 110, 181.)
"598. From the nature of their occupation, the long and irregular
hours of work, the frequency of night-work, and the insufficient
time allowed for meals--an evil of the greatest magnitude in the
case of growing children--the constitution is frequently seriously
impaired. 'The majority of the children whom I saw,' says the
Sub-commissioner, 'were pale and unhealthy-looking, and several
were of diminutive stature. The health and sight are often greatly
impaired, especially among the runners, who occasionally faint
while at work; indeed, there cannot be an occupation which more
seriously deteriorates the constitution. Short-sightedness,
amaurosis, distortion of the spine, excessive constitutional
debility, indigestion, and derangement of the uterine functions,
may be said to be almost universal: all the evidence points to
this conclusion.'
"'In the town of Nottingham,' says Mr. Grainger, 'all parties,
clergy, police, manufacturers, work-people, and parents, agree
that the present mode of employing children and young persons as
threaders and winders is a most fertile source of immorality.
There can, in fact, be but few states more immediately leading to
vice and profligacy. Children of both sexes are called out of
their parents' houses at all hours of the night, and, as it is
quite uncertain how long they may be required, whether for two
hours or the whole night, a ready and unanswerable excuse for
staying out is furnished.--(No. 138.)
"The moral condition of the lace-makers in Northamptonshire,
Oxfordshire, Beds and Bucks, is stated by Major Burns to be
extremely low, and prostitution is rife among them, from their
scanty earnings, their love of finery, and the almost total
absence of early moral culture."--(Report: App. Pt. I, p. A. 12,
s. 104.)
_Millinery and Dressmaking._--The portion of these instructive volumes
which describes the condition of the young women employed as milliners
and mantua-makers in our great cities, and especially in London, is,
however, that which has left the most painful impression upon our
minds--not only because the work of these unfortunate girls is of all
the most, severe and unremitting--nor because it is inflicted
exclusively upon the weaker sex, and at a period of life the most
susceptible of injury from overstrained exertion--nor yet because the
actual consequences which are shown to ensue in thousands of cases are
so peculiarly deplorable---but because the excess of labor (with all
its pernicious and fatal results) is endured in the service, and
inflicted in execution of the orders, of a class whose own exemption
from toil and privation should make them scrupulously careful not to
increase, causelessly or selfishly, the toils and privations of their
less favored fellow-creatures--a class, too, many of whom have been
conspicuously loud in denouncing the cruelties of far more venial
offenders, and in expressing a somewhat clamorous and overacted sympathy
with sufferings which cannot for a moment be compared in severity with
those which are every day inflicted on the helpless of their own sex, in
ministering to their own factitious and capricious wants. The remark may
appear harsh, but the evidence before us fully warrants it--that
probably in no occupation whatever--not in the printing fields of
Lancashire--not, in the lace trade of Nottingham--not in the collieries
of Scotland--scarcely in the workshops of Willenhall--most assuredly not
in the cotton factories of Manchester, (which a few years ago the
fashionable fair of London were so pathetic in lamenting)--can any
instances of cruelty be met with which do not "whiten in the shade" of
those which every spring and autumn season sees practiced--unreprobated,
and till now nearly unknown--in the _millinery establishments_ of the
metropolis.
The following extracts will show that we are guilty of no
exaggeration.--(II, p. 114-122.)
"622. It is estimated that there are in London, in the millinery
and dressmaking business, at least 1500 employers, and that the
number of young people engaged by each employer varies from two or
three to twenty-five or thirty-five--the average in each
establishment being about ten, making in the whole 15,000; but
this does not include journeywomen who work at their own houses,
of whom also there are great numbers.
"623. In some of what are considered the best regulated
establishments, during the fashionable season, occupying about
four months in the year, the regular hours of work are fifteen,
but on emergencies, which frequently recur, these hours extend to
eighteen. In many establishments the hours of work, during the
season, are unlimited, the young women never getting more than
six, often not more than four, sometimes only three, and
occasionally not more than two hours for rest and sleep out of the
twenty-four; and very frequently they work all night.
"625. Miss O'Neil, Welbeck street, an employer, says--'In the
spring season the hours of work are unlimited. The common hours
are from six a. m. till twelve at night--sometimes from four a. m.
till twelve. Has herself often worked from six a. m. till twelve
at night for two or three months together. It is not at all
uncommon, especially in the dressmaking, to work all night; just
in the 'drive of the season,' the work is occasionally continued
all night three times a-week. Has worked herself twice in the week
all night. In some houses which profess to study the health of
their young people, they begin at four a. m. and leave off at
eleven p. m., never earlier. Has heard there are houses in London
which work on Sundays.
"628. Miss ---- ----, manager--'has been ten years a "first hand,"
which signifies the party who takes the superintendence of the
business, as overlooker of the young persons, cutter-out of the
work, &c. The common hours of business are from eight a. m. till
eleven p. m. in the winter; in the summer from six or half-past
six a. m. till twelve at night. During the fashionable season,
that is from April to the end of July, it frequently happens that
the ordinary hours are greatly exceeded: if there is a
drawing-room, or grand fête, or mourning to be made, it often
happens that the work goes on for twenty hours out of the
twenty-four, occasionally all night. Every season in at least
half the houses of business, it happens that the young persons
occasionally work twenty hours out of the twenty-four, twice or
thrice a-week. On special occasions, such as drawing-rooms,
general mournings, and very frequently wedding orders, it is not
uncommon to work all night; has herself worked twenty hours out of
the twenty-four for three months together; at that time she was
suffering from illness, and the medical attendant remonstrated
against the treatment she received. He wished witness to remain in
bed at least one day longer, which the employer objected to,
required her to get up, and dismissed the surgeon. It frequently
happened that the work was carried on till seven o'clock on Sunday
morning. If any particular order was to be executed, as mournings
or weddings, and they left off on Saturday night at eleven, they
worked the whole of Sunday; thinks this happened fifteen times in
the two years. In consequence of working so late on Sunday
morning, or all that day occasionally, could very rarely go to
church; indeed it could not be thought of, because they generally
rested in bed.'
"639. The correctness of these representations is confirmed, among
others, by the following medical witnesses:--Sir James Clark,
Bart., Physician to the Queen--'I have found the mode of life of
these poor girls such as no constitution could long bear. Worked
from six in the morning till twelve at night, with the exception
of the short intervals allowed for their meals, in close rooms,
and passing the few hours allowed for rest in still more close and
crowded apartments--a mode of life more completely calculated to
destroy human health could scarcely be contrived, and this at a
period of life when exercise in the open air, and a due proportion
of rest, are essential to the development of the system. Judging
from what I have observed and heard, I scarcely believed that the
system adopted in our worst-regulated manufactories can be so
destructive of health as the life of the young dressmaker.'
"647. 'The protracted labor described above,' says the
Sub-commissioner, 'is, I believe, quite unparalleled in the
history of manufacturing processes. I have looked over a
considerable portion of the Report of the Factory Commission, and
there is nothing in the accounts of the worst-conducted factories
to be compared with the facts elicited in the present enquiry.
Gentlemen who, from their official situation, were well qualified
to judge, have also stated, in answer to my questions, that they
knew of no instance in which the hours of work were so long as
those above stated.'
"663. Of the general treatment and condition of these young
people, the Sub-commissioner reports:--'The evidence of all
parties establishes the fact that there is no class of persons in
this country, living by their labor, whose happiness, health, and
lives, are so unscrupulously sacrificed as those of the young
dressmakers. It may without exaggeration be stated, that, in
proportion to the numbers employed, there are no occupations, with
one or two questionable exceptions, such as needle-grinding, in
which so much disease is produced as in dressmaking, or which
present so fearful a catalogue of distressing and frequently fatal
maladies. It is a serious aggravation of all this evil, that the
unkindness of the employer very frequently causes these young
persons, when they become unwell, to conceal their illness from
the fear of being sent out of the house; and in this manner, the
disease often becomes increased in severity, or is even rendered
incurable. Some of the principals are so cruel as to object to the
young women obtaining medical assistance.'"--(No. 626.)
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE LONDON GLOBE ON WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION.
We find the following frank and explicit admission in the Globe of 10th
July, 1856:
"Our own West India Islands are fast relapsing into primitive
savageness. When the rich lands of Jamaica are being yearly
abandoned, and when in Trinidad and Guiana cultivation has almost
ceased, it is not likely that England will care to extend her
sovereignty further over tropical territory, which can only be
brought into use by a system which has been solemnly condemned."
Now, let us rigidly examine and ascertain what is the condemned system,
what the approved system, that has been generally adopted in its stead,
and why this system is approved, and the free negro system condemned as
a failure.
There is no doubt the writer alludes to the system of domestic slavery,
in the general, as the condemned system; and especially, to that serfdom
or villienage which lately prevailed, but is now abolished throughout
Western Europe. In asserting that the system of slavery has been
condemned, and yet admitting West India emancipation to be a failure, he
in effect maintains that the liberation of the villiens has been no
failure. He means that it has been no failure, because the liberated
villiens do work: aye, just twice as hard and as long as their
ancestors, the serfs. He means it is no failure, because they not only
work harder and longer, but work for half the pay or allowance of their
servile ancestors. He means it is no failure, because the once masters,
now employers, get their labor for half what it cost to support them as
slaves. He means it is no failure, because free labor in England is more
plentiful and far cheaper than slave labor in America. He means it is no
failure, because the employers, besides getting cheaper and more
abundant labor, are relieved of all the cares and anxieties of governing
and providing for their laborers, in health and in sickness, in old age
and in infancy. In fine, he means it is no failure, because the laborers
of England are not half so free now as before their pretended
emancipation. They have lost all their rights, half their liberty (for
they work harder than before,) and their former masters have been
relieved of all their legal obligations and responsibilities.
No--British emancipation has not failed, if we look solely to the
selfish interests of the property class. And British liberty, we shall
show in another chapter, means the unlimited right of the property class
to oppress the laboring class, uncoupled with the obligation to provide
for them. But this writer well knew, that looking to the effect of
emancipation on the condition of the laboring class in England, it has
been a cruel and monstrous failure, from first to last. They are almost
as savage and ignorant as West India negroes, know nothing of the Bible,
and live in a state of continued destitution, hunger, and excessive
labor, from generation to generation--from infancy to old age.
West India emancipation was a blunder of swindling philanthropy. People
were told that the negroes, after emancipation, would work harder, work
for less, and be more of slaves than before, just as had happened with
emancipated English. But philanthropy "hath bad luck." It overlooked, or
forgot, the few wants and indolent habits of the negro, the abundance of
mountain lands, the fertile soil, the volunteer fruits and mild climate
of Jamaica. The negro _is really_ free, and luxuriates in sloth,
ignorance and liberty, as none but a negro can. The mistake and the
failure consisted in setting him really free, instead of nominally so.
Hinc illæ lachrymæ!
What vile hypocrisy to shed crocodile tears over the happy negro, and
boast of British Liberty, which is daily and hourly consuming, by
poverty, and cold, and foul air and water, and downright starvation, the
lives of ten millions of your white brethren and neighbors!
But this system, which carried to untimely graves three hundred thousand
Irishmen in a single season, has not been _condemned_. No; it is
profitable to the oppressors, and will not be condemned.
In all countries where a few own the property and the population is
tolerably dense, laborers relieved from domestic slavery are remitted to
the exploitation of skill and capital, which renders them less free and
worse situated in all respects after emancipation than before. To prove
this great truth, is the chief object of our present work. We know that
the philosophy of the subject is intricate and complex, and that we have
the prejudices, fanaticism and prepossessions of a world to oppose and
conquer. We therefore indulge in frequent iteration, and adduce numerous
proofs, examples and illustrations.
CHAPTER XIX.
PROTECTION, AND CHARITY, TO THE WEAK.
A mere verbal formula often distinguishes a truism from a paradox. "It
is the duty of society to protect the weak;" but protection cannot be
efficient without the power of control; therefore, "It is the duty of
society to enslave the weak." And it is a duty which no organized and
civilized society ever failed to perform. Parents, husbands, guardians,
teachers, committees, &c, are but masters under another name, whose duty
it is to protect the weak, and whose right it is to control them. The
blacks in America are both positively and relatively weak. Positively
so, because they are too improvident to lay up for the exigencies of
sickness, of the seasons, or of old age. Relatively so, because they are
wholly unequal to the whites among whom they live, in the war of the
wits and free competition, which universal liberty begets, and political
economy encourages.
In old countries the white laborers are relatively weak, because all
property is closely appropriated, and the capitalist class possess the
means of unlimited oppression. Everybody admits that in such countries
the poor need protection. But there can be no efficient protection
without enslavement of some sort. In England, it has often been
remarked, that all the legislation for the poor is borrowed from the
system of domestic slavery.
Public and private charity is a fund created by the labor of the
industrious poor, and too often bestowed on the idle or improvident. It
is apt to aggravate the evils which it intends to cure.
Those who give should have the power to control, to some extent, the
conduct and expenditure of the objects of their charity. Not till then
can they be sure that their gifts will be promotive of good. But such
power of control would be slavery.
Can abolitionists solve these social problems?
Ambition has ever been considered the most noble of human failings. It
is, however, no failing, or crime, at all. Ambition desires power, and
without power there can be no safe, prudent and active benevolence. The
selfish, the indolent, and the timid, are without ambition, and eschew
power, because of the trouble, the expenses, and the responsibilities
which it imposes. The actively good are always ambitious, and desire to
possess power, in order that they may control, in some measure, the
conduct of those whom they desire to benefit.
The best thing a philanthropist can do, is to buy slaves, because then
his power of control is greatest--his ability to do practical good, most
perfect.
We take this occasion to correct an error into which we had fallen as
to Northern character. Benevolence, affection, generosity, and
philanthropy, are equally common North and South; and only differ in
their modes of manifestation. We are one people.
The daily and hourly exercise of these qualities is elicited at the
South, because it is safe, prudent and expedient so to exercise them.
The reverse is true at the North: yet, "expel Nature and she will return
again." Man is social and philanthropic, and his affections, dammed out
in one direction, find vent and gush out in another. The people of the
North are far more generous and munificent in the endowment of public
charities, and other public institutions, than we. This correction of
our error does not affect our theories--if it be true, that you can only
safely be charitable to dependents whom you can control. But if it did
or does affect, neutralize and subvert them, it is due to truth,--and if
we advance the cause of truth, we are ready for the sacrifice of all
else.
"Our Trip to the North" excited doubts as to our estimate of Northern
character; and subsequent observation, reading and reflection, have
brought us to the conclusion, which we now with pleasure avow. We would
rather be right than consistent.
CHAPTER XX.
THE FAMILY.
All modern philosophy converges to a single point--the overthrow of all
government, the substitution of the untrammelled "Sovereignty of the
Individual," for the Sovereignty of Society, and the inauguration of
anarchy. First domestic slavery, next religious institutions, then
separate property, then political government, and, finally, family
government and family relations, are to be swept away. This is the
distinctly avowed programme of all able abolitionists and socialists:
and towards this end the doctrines and the practices of the weakest and
most timid among them tend. Proudhon, and the French socialists
generally, avow this purpose in France, and Stephen Pearl Andrews
re-echoes it from America. The more numerous and timid class are
represented by Mr. Greeley and the Tribune, who would not "at once
rush," like French revolutionists, "with the explosive force of
escapement, point blank to the bull's eye of its final destiny," but
would inaugurate social conditions, that would gradually bring about
that result. Mr. Greeley does not propose to do away at once with
marriage, religion, private property, political government and parental
authority, but adopts the philosophy and the practices of Fourier, which
promise gradually to purify human nature, and fit it, in a few
generations, for that social millenium, into which the bolder and more
consistent Andrews urges society at once to plunge.
The Christian socialists are beautifully and energetically co-laborating
with the infidel socialists and abolitionists to bring about this
millenium. They also are divided into two parties. The one would wait
upon Providence--only help it a little, like Mr. Greeley--and permit our
poor old effete world to pass out of existence by gentle euthanasia. The
other and bolder party, feel themselves "called" as special instruments,
to give at once the coup de grace to the old world, and to usher in the
new golden age, of free love and free lands, of free women and free
negroes, of free children and free men.
We like the Northern socialist theoretical abolitionists--read their
speeches, essays, lectures and books, because they agree with us, that
their own form of society is a humbug and a failure; and in their
efforts, speculations and schemes to re-organize it, afford the most
beautiful, perfect and complete specimen of the reductio ad absurdum. A
lecture from Mr. Andrews on No-government, an Oneida den of incest, a
Greeley phalanstery, or a New York free love saloon, afford equally good
instances of this mode of demonstration by the absurdities which they
exhibit, and equally good proofs of the naturalness and necessity of
slavery, since such horrid abuses are everywhere the approved and
practiced outgrowth of free society. As all our thoughts, arguments,
proofs and demonstrations are suggested by or borrowed from the
abolitionists, it seems to us we ought to dedicate to them. The Tribune
very properly remarked that our Sociology was the first attempt of the
kind at the South. It ridiculed our ignorance, too, severely. It should
have recollected that were there no sickness there would be no
physicians. We assure the Tribune, we are quite a prodigy in these
matters for a Southern man. We have no social diseases, and therefore no
social doctors to write about them or cure them. Such diseases have been
rare: for Aristotle complains that there are no terms to express the
relations of husband and wife, or parent and child. These relations have
worked so smoothly in slave society to this day, that we in writing have
felt the same want of language of which Aristotle, more than two
thousand years ago, complained. You should invent such terms at the
North, if it be true, as Mr. Andrews states in italics, that there are
ten fugitives from Northern matrimony to one from Southern slavery--from
which he seems to infer very logically, that the necessity of abolishing
the family at the North, is ten times as great as that for abolishing
slavery at the South. He and you are experts, and we know it is
presumptuous in us to dispute what you say about your own society. Still
we are dead against your phalansteries and his love saloons. Gentlemen
and scholars, generally at the South, would as soon be caught studying
or practicing the black art, as in reading Owen or Fourier, or in
building phalansteries. For ourselves, like the Bastard in King John, we
learn these things, "not to deceive, but to avoid deceit." We have whole
files of infidel and abolition papers, like the Tribune, the Liberator
and Investigator. Fanny Wright, the Devil's Pulpit and the Devil's
Parson, Tom Paine, Owen, Voltaire, et id genus omne, are our daily
companions. Good people give our office a wide berth as they pass it,
and even the hens who loiter about it, have caught the infection of
Woman's Rights, for we saw but as few days ago a Shanghai cock under its
eaves hovering a brood of twenty chickens, whilst madam hen was
strutting about in as large a liberty as any Bloomer or wise woman of
the North.
Love and veneration for the family is with us not only a principle, but
probably a prejudice and a weakness. We were never two weeks at a time
from under the family roof, until we had passed middle life, and now
that our years almost number half a century, we have never been from
home for an interval of two months. And our historical reading, as well
as our habits of life, may have unfitted us to appreciate the communist
and fusion theories of Fanny Wright, Owen and Mr. Greely. In attempting
to vindicate and justify the ways of God and Nature, against the
progressiveness of Black Republicanism in America, and Red Republicanism
in Europe, we would forewarn the reader that we are a prejudiced
witness. We are the enthusiastic admirer of the social relations
exhibited in the histories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The social
relations established in Deuteronomy, and 25th chapter Leviticus, and as
practiced by the Jews to this day, elicit our unfeigned admiration and
approval. Moses is with us the Prince of Legislators, and the
twenty-fifth Leviticus the best of political platforms. The purity of
the family seems to be his paramount object.
Homer, too, especially in his Odyssey, charms and enchains us with his
beautiful descriptions of family felicity and family purity. As conquest
and commerce introduced wealth and corrupted morals and manners, the
family was corrupted and disrupted, as it is now, at the most commercial
points in the North. But we have only to pass over to Italy, and there,
from the earliest days of tradition until the extinction of liberty,
began by Sylla and Marius, and ended by Augustus, we find the family a
pure, a holy and sacred thing. From that era till slavery arose in the
South, the family never resumed its dignity and importance. Feudalism
did something to correct the loose morality of the Augustan Age, but it
adopted its colonial slavery, relaxed family ties, and never drew
together in sufficiently close connection and subordination, the
materials which nature dictates should form the human hive or social
circle.
Aristotle understood this subject thoroughly; and it seems to have been
generally so well comprehended in his day, that he takes little trouble
to explain and expound it. He commences his treatise on Politics and
Economics with the family, and discourses first of the slaves as a part
of the family. He assumes that social life is as natural to man as to
bees and herds; and that the family, including husband, wife, children,
and slaves, is the first and most natural development of that social
nature. As States are composed of families, and as a sound and healthy
whole cannot be formed of rotten parts, he devotes much of his treatise
to family education and government. Would that modern statesmen,
philosophers and politicians, would become practical like Aristotle, and
not attempt to build social and political edifices, until they were sure
of the soundness of the materials of which they would construct them. As
all human beings live for the greatest part of their lives in families,
it is all important that they should look to the wise arrangement of
this old and universal institution.
We wish to prove that the great movement in society, known under various
names, as Communism, Socialism, Abolitionism, Red Republicanism and
Black Republicanism, has one common object: the breaking up of all law
and government, and the inauguration of anarchy, and that the
destruction of the family is one of the means in which they all concur
to attain a common end. We shall quote only from Stephen Pearle Andrews,
because he is by far the ablest and best informed of American Socialists
and Reformers, and because he cites facts and authorities to show that
he presents truly the current thought and the general intention. Mr.
Andrews is a Massachusetts gentleman, who has lived at the South. He has
been an Abolition Lecturer. He is the disciple of Warren, who is the
disciple of Owen of Lanark and New Harmony. Owen and Warren are Socrates
and Plato, and he is the Great Stygarite, as far surpassing them, as
Aristotle surpassed Socrates and Plato. But it is not merely his
theories on which we rely; he cites historical facts that show that the
tendency and terminus of all abolition is to the sovereignty of the
individual, the breaking up of families, and no-government. He delivered
a series of lectures to the elite of New York on this subject, which met
with approbation, and from which we shall quote. He established, or
aided to establish, Free Love Villages, and headed a Free Love Saloon
in the city of New York, patronized and approved by the "Higher
classes." He is indubitably the philosopher and true exponent of
Northern Abolitionism. With this assertion, which none who read his
Science of Society we think will deny, we proceed to quote from his able
and beautiful lectures, embodied in a publication entitled "Science of
Society." Our first quotation is from his first lecture and the first
chapter of his work:
Every age is a remarkable one, no doubt, for those who live in it.
When immobility reigns most in human affairs, there is still
enough of movement to fix the attention, and even to excite the
wonder of those who are immediately in proximity with it. This
natural bias in favor of the period with which we have most to do,
is by no means sufficient, however, to account for the growing
conviction, on all minds, that the present epoch is a marked
transition from an old to a new order of things. The scattered
rays of the gray dawn of the new era date back, indeed, beyond the
lifetime of the present generation. The first streak of light that
streamed through the dense darkness of the old _regime_ was the
declaration by Martin Luther of the right of private judgment in
matters of conscience. The next, which shed terror upon the old
world, as a new portent of impending revolutions, was the denial,
by Hampden, Sidney, Cromwell, and others, of the divine right of
kings, and the assertion of inherent political rights in the
people themselves. This was followed by the American Declaration
of Independence, the establishment of a powerful Democratic
Republic in the western world upon the basis of that principle,
followed by the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, the
Re-action, and the apparent death in Europe of the Democratic
idea. Finally, in our day, comes the red glare of French
Socialism, at which the world is still gazing with uncertainty
whether it be some lurid and meteoric omen of fearful events, or
whether it be not the actual rising of the Sun of Righteousness,
with healing in His wings; for there are those who profoundly and
religiously believe that the solution of the social problem will
be the virtual descent of the New Jerusalem--the installation of
the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth.
First in the religious, then in the political, and finally in the
social relations of men, new doctrines have thus been broached,
which are full of promise to the hopeful, and full of alarm and
dismay to the timid and conservative. This distinction marks the
broadest division in the ranks of mankind. In church, and state,
and social life, the real parties are the Progressionists and the
Retrogressionists--those whose most brilliant imaginings are
linked with the future, and those whose sweetest remembrances bind
them in tender associations to the past. Catholic and Protestant,
Whig and Democrat, Anti-Socialist and Socialist, are terms which,
in their origin, correspond to this generic division; but no
sooner does a new classification take place than the parties thus
formed are again subdivided, on either hand, by the
ever-permeating tendency, on the one side toward freedom,
emancipation, and progress, and toward law, and order, and
immobility on the other.
Hitherto the struggle between conservatism and progress has seemed
doubtful. Victory has kissed the banner, alternately, of either
host. At length the serried ranks of conservatism falter. Reform,
so called, is becoming confessedly more potent than its
antagonist. The admission is reluctantly forced from pallid lips
that revolutions--political, social and religious--constitute the
programme of the coming age. Reform, so called, for weal or woe,
but yet Reform, must rule the hour. The older constitutions of
society have outlived their day. No truth commends itself more
universally to the minds of men now, than that thus set forth by
Carlyle: "There must be a new world if there is to be any world at
all. That human things in our Europe can ever return to the old
sorry routine, and proceed with any steadiness or continuance
there--this small hope is not now a tenable one. These days of
universal death must be days of universal new birth, if the ruin
is not to be total and final! It is a time to make the dullest man
consider, and ask himself, Whence he came? Whither he is bound? A
veritable 'New Era,' to the foolish as well as to the wise." Nor
is this state of things confined to Europe. The agitations in
America may be more peaceful, but they are not less profound. The
foundations of old beliefs and habits of thought are breaking up.
The old guarantees of order are fast falling away. A veritable
"new era" with us, too, is alike impending and inevitable.
So much to show the width and scope of the social revolution that is
contemplated as well by destructives as conservatives; for Mr. Carlyle
is like ourselves, and thinks society needs more government, screwing
up, instead of relaxing. He, too, is a socialist, but a conservative
socialist. He asserts, like Mr. Andrews, that society has failed, but
proposes a different mode of reconstruction. At the very moment we in
America were announcing the Failure of Free Society, he in Europe
proclaimed the 'Latter Day' of that Society. It was but a different mode
of expressing the same thought. Now we will show from this same lecture
of Mr. Andrews, that the annihilation of the Family is part of the
programme of Abolition. He says, page 31, in this same lecture:
Every variety of conscience, and every variety of deportment in
reference to this precise subject of love is already tolerated
among us. At one extreme of the scale stand the Shakers, who
abjure the connection of the sexes altogether. At the other
extremity stands the association of Perfectionists, at Oneida, who
hold and practice, and justify by the Scriptures, as a religious
dogma, what they denominate complex marriage, or the freedom of
love. We have, in this State, stringent laws against adultery and
fornication; but laws of that sort fall powerless, in America,
before the all-pervading sentiment of Protestantism, which
vindicates the freedom of conscience to all persons and in all
things, provided the consequences fall upon the parties
themselves. Hence the Oneida Perfectionists live undisturbed and
respected, in the heart of the State of New York, and in the face
of the world; and the civil government, true to the Democratic
principle, which is only the same principle in another
application, is little anxious to interfere with this breach of
its own ordinances, so long as they cast none of the consequences
of their conduct upon those who do not consent to bear them.
And, page 33, he says:
In general, however, Government still interferes with the marriage
and parental relations. Democracy in America has always proceeded
with due reference to the prudential motto, _festina lente_. In
France, at the time of the first Revolution, Democracy rushed with
the explosive force of escapement from centuries of compression,
point blank to the bull's eye of its final destiny, from which it
recoiled with such force that the stupid world has dreamed, for
half a century, that the vital principle of Democracy was dead. As
a logical sequence from Democratic principle, the legal obligation
of marriage was sundered, and the Sovereignty of the Individual
above the institution was vindicated.
Page 42:
I must apologize as well for the incompleteness as for the
apparent dogmatism of any brief exposition of this subject. I
assert that it is not only possible and rationally probable, but
that it is rigidly consequential upon the right understanding of
the constitution of man, that all government, in the sense of
involuntary restraint upon the Individual, or substantially all,
must finally cease, and along with it the whole complicated
paraphernalia and trumpery of Kings, Emperors, Presidents,
Legislatures, and Judiciary. I assert that the indicia of this
result abound in existing society, and that it is the instinctive
or intelligent perception of that fact by those who have not
bargained for so much, which gives origin and vital energy to the
re-action in church and state and social life. I assert that the
distance is less to-day forward from the theory and practice of
Government as it is in these United States, to the total
abrogation of all Government above that of the Individual, than it
is backward to the theory and practice of Government as Government
now is in the despotic countries of the old world.
The reader will thus see that Abolition contemplates the total overthrow
of the Family and all other existing social, moral, religious and
governmental institutions. We quote Mr. Andrews because he is 'longo
intervallo,' the ablest Abolition Philosopher. Many volumes would be
needed to display and expose the opinions of all the votaries of the New
Philosophy. But every man who sets to work honestly to discover truth,
will find at every step, that we have neither distorted nor exaggerated.
The Family is threatened, and all men North or South who love and revere
it, should be up and a doing.
CHAPTER XXI.
NEGRO SLAVERY.
Until the lands of America are appropriated by a few, population becomes
dense, competition among laborers active, employment uncertain, and
wages low, the personal liberty of all the whites will continue to be a
blessing. We have vast unsettled territories; population may cease to
increase, or increase slowly, as in most countries, and many centuries
may elapse before the question will be practically suggested, whether
slavery to capital be preferable to slavery to human masters. But the
negro has neither energy nor enterprise, and, even in our sparser
population, finds, with his improvident habits, that his liberty is a
curse to himself, and a greater curse to the society around him. These
considerations, and others equally obvious, have induced the South to
attempt to defend negro slavery as an exceptional institution,
admitting, nay asserting, that slavery, in the general or in the
abstract, is morally wrong, and against common right. With singular
inconsistency, after making this admission, which admits away the
authority of the Bible, of profane history, and of the almost universal
practice of mankind--they turn round and attempt to bolster up the cause
of negro slavery by these very exploded authorities. If we mean not to
repudiate all divine, and almost all human authority in favor of
slavery, we must vindicate that institution in the abstract.
To insist that a status of society, which has been almost universal, and
which is expressly and continually justified by Holy Writ, is its
natural, normal, and necessary status, under the ordinary circumstances,
is on its face a plausible and probable proposition. To insist on less,
is to yield our cause, and to give up our religion; for if white slavery
be morally wrong, be a violation of natural rights, the Bible cannot be
true. Human and divine authority do seem in the general to concur, in
establishing the expediency of having masters and slaves of different
races. The nominal servitude of the Jews to each other, in its temporary
character, and no doubt in its mild character, more nearly resembled our
wardship and apprenticeship, than ordinary domestic slavery. In very
many nations of antiquity, and in some of modern times, the law has
permitted the native citizens to become slaves to each other. But few
take advantage of such laws; and the infrequency of the practice,
establishes the general truth that master and slave should be of
different national descent. In some respects, the wider the difference
the better, as the slave will feel less mortified by his position. In
other respects, it may be that too wide a difference hardens the hearts
and brutalizes the feelings of both master and slave. The civilized man
hates the savage, and the savage returns the hatred with interest.
Hence, West India slavery, of newly caught negroes, is not a very
humane, affectionate or civilizing institution. Virginia negroes have
become moral and intelligent. They love their master and his family, and
the attachment is reciprocated. Still, we like the idle, but intelligent
house-servants, better than the hard-used, but stupid out-hands; and we
like the mulatto better than the negro; yet the negro is generally more
affectionate, contented and faithful.
The world at large looks on negro slavery as much the worst form of
slavery; because it is only acquainted with West India slavery.
Abolition never arose till negro slavery was instituted; and now
abolition is only directed against negro slavery. There is no
philanthropic crusade attempting to set free the white slaves of Eastern
Europe and of Asia. The world, then, is prepared for the defence of
slavery in the abstract--it is prejudiced only against negro slavery.
These prejudices were in their origin well founded. The Slave Trade, the
horrors of the Middle Passage, and West India slavery, were enough to
rouse the most torpid philanthropy.
But our Southern slavery has become a benign and protective institution,
and our negroes are confessedly better off than any free laboring
population in the world.
How can we contend that white slavery is wrong, whilst all the great
body of free laborers are starving; and slaves, white or black,
throughout the world, are enjoying comfort?
We write in the cause of Truth and Humanity, and will not play the
advocate for master or for slave.
The aversion to negroes, the antipathy of race, is much greater at the
North than at the South; and it is very probable that this antipathy to
the person of the negro, is confounded with or generates hatred of the
institution with which he is usually connected. Hatred to slavery is
very generally little more than hatred of negroes.
There is one strong argument in favor of negro slavery over all other
slavery: that he, being unfitted for the mechanic arts, for trade, and
all skillful pursuits, leaves those pursuits to be carried on by the
whites; and does not bring all industry into disrepute, as in Greece and
Rome, where the slaves were not only the artists and mechanics, but also
the merchants.
Whilst, as a general and abstract question, negro slavery has no other
claims over other forms of slavery, except that from inferiority, or
rather peculiarity, of race, almost all negroes require masters, whilst
only the children, the women, the very weak, poor, and ignorant, &c,
among the whites, need some protective and governing relation of this
kind; yet as a subject of temporary, but world-wide importance, negro
slavery has become the most necessary of all human institutions.
The African slave trade to America commenced three centuries and a half
since. By the time of the American Revolution, the supply of slaves had
exceeded the demand for slave labor, and the slaveholders, to get rid of
a burden, and to prevent the increase of a nuisance, became violent
opponents of the slave trade, and many of them abolitionists. New
England, Bristol, and Liverpool, who reaped the profits of the trade,
without suffering from the nuisance, stood out for a long time against
its abolition. Finally, laws and treaties were made, and fleets fitted
out to abolish it; and after a while, the slaves of most of South
America, of the West Indies, and of Mexico were liberated. In the
meantime, cotton, rice, sugar, coffee, tobacco, and other products of
slave labor, came into universal use as necessaries of life. The
population of Western Europe, sustained and stimulated by those
products, was trebled, and that of the North increased tenfold. The
products of slave labor became scarce and dear, and famines frequent.
Now, it is obvious, that to emancipate all the negroes would be to
starve Western Europe and our North. Not to extend and increase negro
slavery, _pari passu_, with the extension and multiplication of free
society, will produce much suffering. If all South America, Mexico, the
West Indies, and our Union south of Mason and Dixon's line, of the Ohio
and Missouri, were slaveholding, slave products would be abundant and
cheap in free society; and their market for their merchandise,
manufactures, commerce, &c., illimitable. Free white laborers might live
in comfort and luxury on light work, but for the exacting and greedy
landlords, bosses and other capitalists.
We must confess, that overstock the world as you will with comforts and
with luxuries, we do not see how to make capital relax its monopoly--how
to do aught but tantalize the hireling. Capital, irresponsible capital,
begets, and ever will beget, the "immedicabile vulnus" of so-called Free
Society. It invades every recess of domestic life, infects its food, its
clothing, its drink, its very atmosphere, and pursues the hireling, from
the hovel to the poor-house, the prison and the grave. Do what he will,
go where he will, capital pursues and persecutes him. "Hæret lateri
lethalis arundo!"
Capital supports and protects the domestic slave; taxes, oppresses and
persecutes the free laborer.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE STRENGTH OF WEAKNESS.
An unexplored moral world stretches out before us, and invites our
investigation; but neither our time, our abilities, nor the character of
our work, will permit us to do more than glance at its loveliness.
It is pleasing, however, to turn from the world of political economy, in
which "might makes right," and strength of mind and of body are employed
to oppress and exact from the weak, to that other and better, and far
more numerous world, in which weakness rules, clad in the armor of
affection and benevolence. It is delightful to retire from the outer
world, with its competitions, rivalries, envyings, jealousies, and
selfish war of the wits, to the bosom of the family, where the only
tyrant is the infant--the greatest slave the master of the household.
You feel at once that you have exchanged the keen air of selfishness,
for the mild atmosphere of benevolence. Each one prefers the good of
others to his own, and finds most happiness in sacrificing selfish
pleasures, and ministering to others' enjoyments. The wife, the husband,
the parent, the child, the son, the brother and the sister, usually act
towards each other on scriptural principles. The infant, in its
capricious dominion over mother, father, brothers and sisters, exhibits,
in strongest colors, the "strength of weakness," the power of affection.
The wife and daughters are more carefully attended by the father, than
the sons, because they are weaker and elicit more of his affection.
The dependent exercise, because of their dependence, as much control
over their superiors, in most things, as those superiors exercise over
them. Thus, and thus only, can conditions be equalized. This constitutes
practical equality of rights, enforced not by human, but by divine law.
Our hearts bleed at the robbing of a bird's nest; and the little birds,
because they are weak, subdue our strength and command our care. We love
and cherish the rose, and sympathize with the lily, which some wanton
boy has bruised and broken. Our faithful dog shares our affections, and
we will risk our lives to redress injustice done him.
Man is not all selfish. "Might does not always make right." Within the
family circle, the law of love prevails, not that of selfishness.
But, besides wife and children, brothers and sisters, dogs, horses,
birds and flowers--slaves, also, belong to the family circle. Does their
common humanity, their abject weakness and dependence, their great
value, their ministering to our wants in childhood, manhood, sickness
and old age, cut them off from that affection which everything else in
the family elicits? No; the interests of master and slave are bound up
together, and each in his appropriate sphere naturally endeavers to
promote the happiness of the other.
The humble and obedient slave exercises more or less control over the
most brutal and hard-hearted master. It is an invariable law of nature,
that weakness and dependence are elements of strength, and generally
sufficiently limit that universal despotism, observable throughout human
and animal nature. The moral and physical world is but a series of
subordinations, and the more perfect the subordination, the greater the
harmony and the happiness. Inferior and superior act and re-act on each
other through agencies and media too delicate and subtle for human
apprehensions; yet, looking to usual results, man should be willing to
leave to God what God only can regulate. Human law cannot beget
benevolence, affection, maternal and paternal love; nor can it supply
their places: but it may, by breaking up the ordinary relations of human
beings, stop and disturb the current of these finer feelings of our
nature. It may abolish slavery; but it can never create between the
capitalist and the laborer, between the employer and employed, the kind
and affectionate relations that usually exist between master and slave.
CHAPTER XXIII.
MONEY.
From the days of Plato and Lycurgus to the present times, Social
Reformers have sought to restrict or banish the use of money. We do not
doubt that its moderate use is essential to civilization and promotive
of human happiness and well-being--and we entertain as little doubt,
that its excessive use is the most potent of all causes of human
inequality of condition, of excessive wealth and luxury with the few,
and of great destitution and suffering with the many, and of general
effeminacy and corruption of morals. Money is the great weapon in free,
equal, and competitive society, which skill and capital employ in the
war of the wits, to exploitate and oppress the poor, the improvident,
and weak-minded. Its evil effects are greatly aggravated by the credit
and banking systems, and by the facilities of intercommunication and
locomotion which the world now possesses. Every bargain or exchange is
more or less a hostile encounter of wits. Money vastly increases the
number of bargains and exchanges, and thus keep society involved, if not
in war, at least in unfriendly collision. Within the family, money is
not employed between its members. Where the family includes slaves, the
aggregate use of money is greatly restricted. This furnishes us with
another argument to prove that Christian morality is practicable, to a
great extent, in slave society--impracticable in free society.
The Socialists derive this idea of dispensing with or restricting the
use of money, from Sparta and other ancient States; and to the same
sources may be traced almost all their schemes of social improvement.
Plato, in his philosophy, borrowed from those sources, and subsequent
Socialists have borrowed from him. We annex an interesting article on
this subject of money from Sir Thomas Moore's Utopia:
UTOPIA; OR, THE HAPPY REPUBLIC.
"Therefore, I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have no
other notion of all the governments that I see or know, than that
they are a conspiracy of the richer sort, who, on pretence of
managing the public, do only pursue their private ends, and devise
all the ways and arts that they can find out; first, that they
may, without danger, preserve all they have so ill acquired, and
then, that they may engage the former sort to toil and labor for
them at as low rates as possible, and oppress them as much as they
please; and if they can but prevail to get these contrivances
established by public authority, which is considered as the
representative of the whole people, then they are accounted laws;
and yet these wicked men, after they have, by a most insatiable
covetousness, divided that among themselves, with which all the
rest might have been well supplied, are far from that happiness
that is enjoyed by the Utopians; _for the use us well as the
desire of money being extinguished_, there is much anxiety and
great occasion of mischief cut off with it. And who does not see
that frauds, thefts, robberies, quarrels, tumults, contentions,
seditions, murders, treacheries and witchcrafts, that are indeed
rather punished than restricted by the severities of the law,
would fall off, if money were not any more valued by the world.
Their fears, solicitudes, cares, labors and watchings would all
perish in the same moment that the value of money did sink."
CHAPTER XXIV.
GERRIT SMITH ON LAND REFORM, AND WILLIAM LOYD GARRISON ON NO-GOVERNMENT.
Within the last week, we have received the _Land Reformer_, an agrarian
paper, just started in New York, in which we are sure we recognize the
pen of Gerrit Smith, the leader of the New York abolitionists; and also
a No. of the Liberator, in which Mr. Garrison, the leader of the New
England abolitionists, defines his No-Government doctrines.
In calling attention, North and South, to opinions openly and actively
promulgated by such distinguished men, which opinions are at war with
all existing institutions, we are rendering equal service to all
sections of our common country.
Mr. Smith says:
"Why should not this monopoly be broken up? Because, says the
objector, vested rights forbid it. But there can be no vested
rights against original and natural rights. No claim of a part of
the human family to the while earth can be valid against the claim
of the whole human family to it. No passing of papers or
parchments in former generations can foreclose the rights of the
present generation. No bargains and no conventional titles can
avail in justice against the great title-deeds, by which Nature
grants and conveys herself to each generation, as it comes upon
the earth; and by which she makes the living (simply because they
are the living, and not at all because of their relation to the
dead) the equal owners of her soil and seas, her light and air. No
arrangements, by which the six thousand, who have monopolized the
lands of Ireland, should be allowed to overcome the title of the
six millions to it. If the natural and inherent right of the whole
is not paramount to that, which the fractions claim to have
acquired, then are _the six millions born into the world
trespassers_; and then is the Creator chargeable with a lack of
wisdom and goodness. If it is right that the mass of men should
hold their standing-place on the earth by mere sufferance, or upon
terms dictated by their fellows, then is it not true that God is
an Impartial Father--for then it is not true that he has given the
earth to all his children, but only to a select."
We, too, think Free Society a very bad thing, and a decided failure, but
not half so bad as Mr. Smith paints it. There is a poor-house system in
Ireland, which, to some extent, recognizes the doctrine that all men are
entitled to live on the earth, and be supported from it. In practice,
the system does not always work well; yet we are confident it works much
better for all parties, than would Mr. Smith's plan of agrarianism.
But slavery does, in practice as well as in theory, acknowledge and
enforce the right of all to be comfortably supported from the soil.
There was, we repeat, no pauperism in Europe till feudal slavery was
abolished.
It will be strange, indeed, if the voters in New York, a majority of
whom own no land, do not take Mr. Smith at his word, and assert their
superior claim, under his Higher Law and "Fundamental Principles," to
all the land. 'Tis a concise and ingenious syllogism, to this effect:
"The earth belongs equally to all mankind, under the Higher Law, or Law
of God, which is superior to all human laws; therefore, the lackland
majority have a better right to the soil than the present proprietors,
whose title is derived from mere human law."
It never did occur to us, that the paupers had the best right to all the
farms, until we saw this new application of the Higher Law. But 'tis
clear as noon-day, if you grant the Higher Law, as expounded by Mr.
Seward; and we expect soon to hear that they are bringing their titles
into court. Anti-rentism looked this way, and anti-rentism chose its own
Governor and Judges.
But Mr. Garrison outbids Mr. Smith all hollow for the pauper vote. He
promises not only to every one his "vine and fig-tree," but a vine and
fig-tree that will bear fruit without culture. He is going to get up a
terrestrial paradise, in which there will be no jails, no taxes, no
labor, no want, no sickness, no pain, no government--in fact, no
anything. But he shall speak for himself. We find the following in the
_Liberator_ of 1st August:
"Indeed, properly speaking, there is but one government, and that
is not human, but divine; there is but one law, and that is 'the
Higher Law;' there is but one ruler, and that one is God, 'in whom
we live and move, and have our being.' What is called human
government is usurpation, imposture, demagoguism, peculation,
swindling, and tyranny, more or less, according to circumstances,
and to the intellectual and moral condition of the people.
Unquestionably, every existing government on earth is to be
overthrown by the growth of mind and moral regeneration of the
masses. Absolutism, limited monarchy, democracy--all are sustained
by the sword; all are based upon the doctrine, that 'Might makes
right;' all are intrinsically inhuman, selfish, clannish, and
opposed to a recognition of the brotherhood of man. They are to
liberty, what whiskey, brandy and gin are to temperance. They
belong to the 'Kingdoms of this World,' and in due time are to be
destroyed by the Brightness of the coming of Him, 'whose right it
is to reign;' and by the erection of a Kingdom which cannot be
shaken. They are not for the people, but make the people their
prey; they are hostile to all progress; they resist to the utmost
all radical changes. All history shows that Liberty, Humanity,
Justice and Right have ever been in conflict with existing
governments, no matter what their theory or form."
Mr. Greely's Phalansteries, Mr. Andrews' Free Love, Mr. Goodell's
Millenium, and Mr. Smith's Agrarianism, all pale before this Kingdom of
Mr. Garrison's. He is King of the Abolitionists, Great Anarch of the
North.
We cannot reconcile this millennial doctrine of Mr. Garrison's with
another doctrine, which we have seen imputed to him in the _Richmond
Examiner_, to wit, that there is no God, because no beneficent Creator
would have so constituted mankind as to have made slavery almost
universal. Now, assume, as he does, that slavery is a cruel, sinful and
wicked institution, destructive alike of human happiness and well-being,
and his conclusion is irresistible. To be consistent, all anti-slavery
men should be atheists. Ere long, we suspect, their consistency will
equal their folly and profanity.
With us, who think slavery a benevolent institution, equally necessary
to protect the weak, and to govern the wicked and the ignorant, its
prevalence is part of that order and adaptation of the universe that
"lifts the soul from Nature up to Nature's God."
CHAPTER XXV.
IN WHAT ANTI-SLAVERY ENDS.
Mr. Carlyle very properly contends that abolition and all the other
social movements of the day, propose little or no government as the
moral panacea that is to heal and save a suffering world. Proudhon
expressly advocates anarchy; and Stephen Pearl Andrews, the ablest of
American socialistic and abolition philosophers, elaborately attacks all
existing social relations, and all legal and governmental restraints,
and proposes No-Government as their substitute. He is the author of the
Free Love experiment in New York, and a co-laborer and eulogist of
similar experiments in villages or settlements in Ohio, Long Island and
other places in the North and Northwest. He is a follower of Josiah
Warren, who was associated with Owen of Lanark at New Harmony. We do not
know that there is any essential difference between his system and that
which has been for many years past practically carried out in Oneida
county, New York, by the Perfectionists, who construe the Bible into
authority for the unrestrained indulgence of every sensual appetite. The
doctrines of Fourier, of Owen and Fanny Wright, and the other early
Socialists, all lead to No-Government and Free Love. 'Tis probable they
foresaw and intended this result, but did not suggest or propose it to a
world then too wicked and unenlightened to appreciate its beatific
purity and loveliness. The materials, as well as the proceedings of the
infidel, woman's rights, negro's rights, free-every thing and anti-every
school, headed and conducted in Boston, by Garrison, Parker, Phillips,
and their associate women and negroes, show that they too are busy with
"assiduous wedges" in loosening the whole frame of society, and
preparing for the glorious advent of Free Love and No-Government. All
the Infidel and Abolition papers in the North betray a similar tendency.
The Abolitionists of New York, headed by Gerrit Smith and Wm. Goodell,
are engaged in precisely the same projects, but being Christians, would
dignify Free Love and No-Government with the appellation of a Millenium.
Probably half the Abolitionists at the North expect a great social
revolution soon to occur by the advent of the Millenium. If they would
patiently await that event, instead of attempting to get it up
themselves, their delusions, however ridiculous, might at least be
innocuous. But these progressive Christian Socialists differ not at all
from the Infidel Socialists of Boston. They are equally intent and busy
in pulling down the priesthood, and abolishing or dividing all
property--seeing that whether the denouement be Free Love or a
Millenium, the destruction of all existing human relations and human
institutions is pre-requisite to their full fruition.
Many thousand as have been of late years the social experiments
attempting to practice community of property, of wives, children, &c.,
and numerous as the books inculcating and approving such practices, yet
the existence and growth of Mormonism is of itself stronger evidence
than all other of the tendency of modern free society towards
No-Government and Free Love. In the name of polygamy, it has practically
removed all restraints to the intercourse of sexes, and broken up the
Family. It promises, too, a qualified community of property and a
fraternal association of labor. It beats up monthly thousands of
recruits from free society in Europe and America, but makes not one
convert in the slaveholding South. Slavery is satisfied and
conservative. Abolition, finding that all existing legal, religious,
social and governmental institutions restrict liberty and occasion a
quasi slavery, is resolved not to stop short of the subversion of all
those institutions, and the inauguration of Free Love and No-Government.
The only cure for all this is for free society sternly to recognize
slavery as right in principle, and necessary in practice, with more or
less of modification, to the very existence of government, of property,
of religion, and of social existence.
We shall not attempt to reconcile the doctrines of the Socialists, which
propose to remove all legal restraints, with their denunciations of
Political Economy. Let Alone is the essence of Political Economy and the
whole creed of most of the Socialists. The Political Economists, Let
Alone, for a fair fight, for universal rivalry, antagonism, competition
and cannibalism. They say, the eating up the weaker members of society,
the killing them out by capital and competition, will improve the breed
of men and benefit society. They foresee the consequences of their
doctrine, and are consistent. Hobbes saw men devouring one another,
under their system, two hundred years ago, and we all see them similarly
engaged now. The Socialists promise that when society is wholly
disintegrated and dissolved, by inculcating good principles and "singing
fraternity over it," all men will co-operate, love, and help one
another.
They place men in positions of equality, rivalry, and antagonism, which
must result in extreme selfishness of conduct, and yet propose this
system as a cure for selfishness. To us their reasonings seem absurd.
Yet the doctrines so prevalent with Abolitionists and Socialists, of
Free Love and Free Lands, Free Churches, Free Women and Free
Negroes--of No-Marriage, No-Religion, No-Private Property, No-Law and
No-Government, are legitimate deductions, if not obvious corollaries
from the leading and distinctive axiom of political economy--Laissez
Faire, or let alone.
All the leading Socialists and Abolitionists of the North, we think,
agree with Fanny Wright, that the gradual changes which have taken place
in social organization from domestic slavery to prædial serfdom and
thence to the present system of free and competitive society, have been
mere transitive states, each placing the laborer in a worse condition
than that of absolute slavery, yet valuable as preparing the way for a
new and more perfect social state. They value the present state of
society the more highly because it is intolerable, and must the sooner
usher in a Millenium or Utopia.
CHAPTER XXVI.
CHRISTIAN MORALITY IMPRACTICABLE IN FREE SOCIETY--BUT THE NATURAL
MORALITY OF SLAVE SOCIETY.
It is strange that theories, self-evidently true so soon as suggested,
remain undiscovered for centuries. What more evident, obvious, and
axiomatic, than that equals must from necessity be rivals, antagonists,
competitors, and enemies. Self-preservation, the first law of human and
animal nature, makes this selfish course of action essential to preserve
existence. It is almost equally obvious, that in the natural, social, or
family state, unselfishness, or the preference of others' good and
happiness, is the dictate of nature and policy. Nature impels the father
and husband to self-abnegation and self-denial to promote the happiness
of wife and children, because his reflected enjoyments will be a
thousand times greater than any direct pleasure he can derive by
stinting or maltreating them. Their misery and their complaints do much
more to render him wretched than what he has denied them can compensate
for. Wife and children, too, see and feel that in denying themselves and
promoting the happiness of the head of the family, they pursue true
policy, and are most sensibly selfish when they seem most unselfish.
Especially, however, is it true with slaves and masters, that to "do as
they would be done by" is mutually beneficial. Good treatment and proper
discipline renders the slave happier, healthier, more valuable,
grateful, and contented. Obedience, industry and loyalty on the part of
the slave, increases the master's ability and disposition to protect and
take care of him. The interests of all the members of a natural family,
slaves included, are identical. Selfishness finds no place, because
nature, common feelings and self-interest dictate to all that it is
their true interest "to love their neighbor as themselves," and "to do
as they would be done by,"--at least, within the precincts of the
family. To throw off into the world wife, children, and slaves, would
injure, not benefit them. To neglect to punish children or slaves when
they deserved it, would not be to do as we would be done by. Such
punishment is generally the highest reach of self-abnegation and
self-control. 'Tis easy and agreeable to be indulgent and remiss--hard
to exact and enforce duty. Severe disciplinarians are the best officers,
teachers, parents, and masters, and most revered and loved by their
subordinates. They sacrifice their time and their feelings to duty, and
for the ultimate good of others. Easy, lax, indulgent men are generally
selfish and sensual, and justly forfeit the respect and affection of
those whom they neglect to punish, because to do so would disturb their
Epicurean repose. Christian morality is neither difficult nor unnatural
where dependent, family, and slave relations exist, and Christian
morality was preached and only intended for such.
The whole moralé of free society is, "Every man, woman and child for
himself and herself." Slavery in every form must be abolished. Wives
must have distinct, separate, and therefore antagonistic and conflicting
interests from their husbands, and children must as soon as possible be
remitted to the rights of manhood. Is it not passing strange, wonderful,
that such men as Channing and Wayland did not see that their world of
universal liberty was a world of universal selfishness, discord,
competition, rivalry, and war of the wits. Hobbes did see it, and
supposing there was no other world, said "a state of nature was a state
of war." But the family, including slaves, which the Abolitionists would
destroy, has been almost universal, and is therefore natural. Christian
morality is the natural morality in slave society, and slave society is
the only natural society. Such society as that of the early Patriarchs
of Judea, under Moses and Joshua, and as that of the South, would never
beget a sceptic, a Hobbes, a Wayland, nor a Channing. In such society it
is natural for men to love one another. The ordinary relations of men
are not competitive and antagonistic as in free society; and selfishness
is not general, but exceptionable. Duty to self is the first of duties:
free society makes it the only duty. Man is not naturally selfish or
bad, for he is naturally social. Free society dissociates him, and makes
him bad and selfish from necessity.
It is said in Scripture, that it is harder for a rich man to enter the
kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.
We are no theologian; but do know from history and observation that
wealthy men who are sincere and devout Christians in free society, feel
at a loss what to do with their wealth, so as not to make it an
instrument of oppression and wrong. Capital and skill are powers
exercised almost always to oppress labor. If you endow colleges, you
rear up cunning, voracious exploitators to devour the poor. If you give
it to tradesmen or land owners, 'tis still an additional instrument,
always employed to oppress laborers. If you give it to the really needy,
you too often encourage idleness, and increase the burdens of the
working poor who support every body: We cannot possibly see but one safe
way to invest wealth, and that is to buy slaves with it, whose conduct
you can control, and be sure that your charity is not misapplied, and
mischievous.
Is there any other safe way of investing wealth, or bestowing charity?
We regret that delicacy restrains us from putting the question to a
celebrated, wealthy philanthropist of the North, who is candid, bold,
experienced, and an Abolitionist to boot.
CHAPTER XXVII.
SLAVERY--ITS EFFECTS ON THE FREE.
Beaten at every other quarter, we learn that a distinguished writer at
the North, is about to be put forward by the Abolitionists, to prove
that the influence of slavery is deleterious on the whites who own no
slaves.
Now, at first view it elevates those whites; for it makes them not the
bottom of society, as at the North--not the menials, the hired day
laborer, the work scavengers and scullions--but privileged citizens,
like Greek and Roman citizens, with a numerous class far beneath them.
In slave society, one white man does not lord it over another; for all
are equal in privilege, if not in wealth; and the poorest would not
become a menial--hold your horse, and then extend his hand or his hat
for a gratuity, were you to proffer him the wealth of the Indies. The
menial, the exposed and laborious, and the disgraceful occupations, are
all filled by slaves. But filled they must be by some one, and in free
society, half of its members are employed in occupations that are not
considered or treated as respectable. Our slaves till the land, do the
coarse and hard labor on our roads and canals, sweep our streets, cook
our food, brush our boots, wait on our tables, hold our horses, do all
hard work, and fill all menial offices. Your freemen at the North do the
same work and fill the same offices. The only difference is, we love our
slaves, and we are ready to defend, assist and protect them; you hate
and fear your white servants, and never fail, as a moral duty, to screw
down their wages to the lowest, and to starve their families, if
possible, as evidence of your thrift, economy and management--the only
English and Yankee virtues.
In free society, miscalled freemen fulfill all the offices of slaves for
less wages than slaves, and are infinitely less liked and cared for by
their superiors than slaves. Does this elevate them and render them
happy?
The trades, the professions, the occupations that pay well, and whose
work is light, is reserved for freemen in slave society. Does this
depress them?
The doctor, the lawyer, the mechanic, the dentist, the merchant, the
overseer, every trade and profession, in fact, live from the proceeds of
slave labor at the South. They divide the profits with the owner of the
slaves. He has nothing to pay them except what his slaves make. But you
Yankees and Englishmen more than divide the profits--you take the lion's
share. You make more money from our cotton, and tobacco, and sugar, and
indigo, and wheat, and corn, and rice, than we make ourselves. You live
by slave labor--would perish without it--yet you abuse it. Cut off
England and New England from the South American, East and West India and
our markets, from which to buy their food, and in which to sell their
manufactures, and they would starve at once. You live by our slave
labor. It elevates your whites as well as ours, by confining them, in a
great degree, to skillful, well-paying, light and intellectual
employments--and it feeds and clothes them. Abolish slavery, and you
will suffer vastly more than we, because we have all the lands of the
South, and can _command_ labor as you do, and a genial soil and climate,
that require less labor. But while in the absence of slavery, we could
support ourselves, we should cease to support you. We would neither send
you food and clothing, nor buy your worse than useless notions.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
PRIVATE PROPERTY DESTROYS LIBERTY AND EQUALITY.
The Abolitionists and Socialists, who, alone, have explored the recesses
of social science, well understand that they can never establish their
Utopia until private property is abolished or equalized. The man without
property is theoretically, and, too often, practically, without a single
right. Air and water, 'tis generally believed, are the common property
of mankind; but nothing is falser in fact as well as theory. The
ownership of land gives to the proprietor the exclusive right to every
thing above and beneath the soil. The lands are all appropriated, and
with them the air above them, the waters on them, and the mines beneath
them. The pauper, to breathe the air or drink the waters, must first
find a place where he may rightfully enjoy them. He can find, at all
times, no such place, and is compelled, by his necessities, to inhale
the close and putrid air of small rooms, damp cellars and crowded
factories, and to drink insufficient quantities of impure water,
furnished to him at a price he can ill afford. He pays for the water
which he drinks, because it has ceased to be common property. He is not
free, because he has no where that he may rightfully lay his head.
Private property has monopolized the earth, and destroyed both his
liberty and equality. He has no security for his life, for he cannot
live without employment and adequate wages, and none are bound to employ
him. If the earth were in common, he could always enjoy not only air and
water, but by his industry might earn the means of subsistence. His
situation is theoretically and practically desperate and intolerable.
Were he a slave, he would enjoy in fact as well as in legal fiction, all
necessary and essential rights. Pure air and water, a house, sufficient
food, fire, and clothing, would be his at all times. Slavery is a form
of communism, and as the Abolitionists and Socialists have resolved to
adopt a new social system, we recommend it to their consideration. The
manner in which the change shall be made from the present form of
society to that system of communism which we propose is very simple.
Negro slaves are now worth seven hundred dollars a-head. As whites work
harder, they are worth about a thousand. Make the man who owns a
thousand dollars of capital the guardian (the term master is
objectionable) of one white pauper of average value; give the man who
is worth ten thousand dollars ten paupers, and the millionaire a
thousand. This would be an act of simple mercy and justice; for the
capitalists now live entirely by the proceeds of poor men's labor, which
capital enables them to command; and they command and enjoy it in almost
the exact proportions which we have designated. Thus, a family of poor
laborers, men, women and children, ten in number, can support
themselves, and make about six hundred dollars, for their employer,
which is the interest on ten thousand. They would work no harder than
they do now, would be under no greater necessity to work, would be
relieved of most of the cares of life, and let into the enjoyment of all
valuable and necessary rights. What would they lose in liberty and
equality? Just nothing. Having more rights, they would have more liberty
than now, and approach nearer to equality. It might be, that their
security and exemption from care would render their situation preferable
to that of their employers. We suspect it would be easier to find wards
or slaves than guardians or masters--for the gain would be all on the
laborer's side, and the loss all on that of the capitalist.
Set your miscalled free laborers actually free, by giving them enough
property or capital to live on, and then call on us at the South to free
our negroes. At present, you Abolitionists know our negro slaves are
much the freer of the two; and it would be a great advance towards
freeing your laborers, to give them guardians, bound, like our masters,
to take care of them, and entitled, in consideration thereof, to the
proceeds of their labor.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE NATIONAL ERA AN EXCELLENT WITNESS.
In an article in the _Era_ of August 16, 1855, criticising and denying
our theory of the Failure of Free Society, the writer begins by
asserting, "We demonstrated, last week, from history, that the condition
of the poor of England has greatly improved in modern times, as they
have become free from the restraints of feudal bondage." He then goes on
to criticise us, but, before concluding, contradicts and refutes his
work of the week before, and adopts our theory in its fullest extent. He
admits the intolerable exploitation and oppression of capital over
labor, but looks forward to the day when it will be corrected. He is,
like all Abolitionists, agrarian. He holds our doctrine, too, that the
serfs were set free to starve, not because liberty was a good or a boon.
He further holds, that the poor laborers could not get masters if they
wanted them, because the rich can get their labor on better terms. Thus
he distinctly shows that Free Society has failed, and why it has failed.
We know very well the rich of Western Europe would not willingly take
the poor as slaves, but the law should compel them to do so; for that
is the only feasible system of agrarianism, the only practicable way of
letting in all men to a sufficient, if not equal, enjoyment of terra
mater. Here is his refutation of himself, and confirmation of our
theory, which he thinks he is upsetting. We never take up an abolition
paper without finding doctrines like those of the _Era_, and only adduce
it as a specimen:
"Under despotic and corrupt governments, which oppress the people
with taxes, to support extravagant misrule and unnecessary
war--which debauch them by evil example of those in high places,
and discourage education or render it impossible--the condition of
the poor and nominally free becomes truly deplorable. But it is
not Freedom which is their undoing--it is rather the lack of it.
It is their subjection, through ignorance, to bad rulers, which
keeps them in poverty. We know that the claim laid by capital to
the lion's share of profits is itself, under any circumstances, a
great obstruction to the progress of the masses; but we believe
that even that obstacle will one day be removed--that problem in
political science be solved by civilization and Christianity. We
believe that the human intellect will never, with the light of the
Gospel to guide and inspire its efforts, surrender to the cold and
heartless reign of capital over labor. But, at any rate, one thing
is certain, under the worst form of government, or the best,
namely: when Freedom becomes a burden and a curse to the poor,
Slavery--that is to say, the enslavement of the mass of laborers,
with responsibility on the part of the master for their
support--is no longer possible. When freemen are unable to
support, themselves, among all the diversified employments of free
societies, it would be impossible for them to find masters willing
to take the responsibility. The masses in Europe, in fact, owe
their liberty to the excessive supply of slave labor, which, when
it becomes a burden to the land, was cast aside as worthless. Who
believes that Irish landlords would take the responsibility of
supporting the peasantry, on the condition of their becoming
slaves? In fact, is it not notorious that they help them to
emigrate to America, and often pull down their cabins and huts, in
order to drive them off?"
In further proof of the agrarian doctrines of the Abolitionists, we add
an article from the _Northern Christian Advocate_, a clever Methodist
paper, edited in the State of New York:
"FACTORY OPERATIVES.--There is a class of laborers, consisting of
men, women and children, whom we never contemplate but with
regret--we see them, at least, in imagination, subsiding, in spite
of all their care, into utter dependence and poverty. Hence, we
never look upon a factory or large manufacturing establishment
with unmingled pleasure. The men and women, who ply its machinery,
are too apt to become identified with such establishments in an
improper degree. This process of assimilation and identification
goes on slowly, but surely, till at last the individual and the
factory are so blended into one, that a separate existence is
impossible. One or two generations are required to bring about
this state of things. Pecuniary dependence, ignorance of other
employments, physical malformation, and the general helplessness
of a mere factory population, are not the work of a day.
Individuals cannot be detached from other pursuits at once--cannot
have manufacturing knowledge and no other knowledge until they
have had time to drift away from other occupations. But however
retarded the effect, it is sure to follow, and consequently every
large mechanical establishment must be considered as having
certain malign tendencies, which are to be carefully guarded
against.
"The causes of the evil under consideration are very obvious, as
is also their appropriate remedy. We must set down as the first
and principal cause of injury, the fact that the capital which
sustains mechanical business is not under the control of the
operatives. The mills or machines may stop at any hour in spite of
the wants or wishes of the employees. Wages may be put down,
little or much, with or without notice. Operatives are not
consulted in such cases. The motive may be good or bad--it may be
to guard against bankruptcy, or to amass wealth from the sinews of
a toiling, dependent race. But, whatever the motive and the
decision, the operative is helpless--he can control neither the
one nor the other. It is his to labor; others are charged with the
regulation of prices, and the only check in his power is the
precarious one of a _strike_. Strikes in business are like
insurrections in civil governments--a last, desperate remedy, and
as often fatal to the sufferer as protective of his interests.
The same is true of the farmer who does not own the soil on which
he labors, but is compelled to make terms with a landlord. Hence,
the well known insurmountable evils of agricultural tenantry. In
Europe it has produced serfdom and feudalism, besides a good deal
of servitude and degradation concealed under the mild name of
peasant. It matters not what the occupation may be, as soon as the
laborer becomes thoroughly dependent, and feels that dependence,
the system does him an incalculable injury. It is for this reason
that large landholders always deteriorate the population, and
society becomes worthless just in proportion as the means of
independent existence pass from the hands of the many to the few.
This difficulty is, and must be forever in the way of conducting
manufacturing establishments on the present plan. Perhaps some
means of diffusing capital among operatives, or, what is the same,
of giving the laborer reasonable securities, may yet be
discovered; but the change would require to be radical. The
monopoly of capital, is so nearly like the monopoly of land, that
we may readily see no partial measures can ever effect a cure."
CHAPTER XXX.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ISMS--SHEWING WHY THEY ABOUND AT THE NORTH, AND
ARE UNKNOWN AT THE SOUTH.
The exploitation, or unjust exactions of skill and capital in free
society, excite the learned and philanthropic to devise schemes of
escape, and impel the laborers to adopt those schemes, however
chimerical, because they feel that their situation cannot be worsted.
They are already slaves without masters, and that is the bathos of human
misery. Besides, universal liberty has disintegrated and dissolved
society, and placed men in isolated, selfish, and antagonistic
positions--in which each man is compelled to wrong others, in order to
be just to himself. But man's nature is social, not selfish, and he
longs and yearns to return to parental, fraternal and associative
relations. All the isms concur in promising closer and more associative
relations, in establishing at least a qualified community of property,
and in insuring the weak and unfortunate the necessaries and comforts of
life. Indeed, they all promise to establish slavery--minus, the master
and the overseer. As the evils which we have described are little felt
at the South, men here would as soon think of entering the lion's cage,
as going into one of their incestuous establishments. Mormonism is only
a monster development of the isms. They are all essentially alike, and
that the most successful, because, so far, it has been socialism--plus
the overseer. The mantle of Joe Smith descended on Brigham Young, and if
he transmit to a true prophet, there is no telling how long the thing
may work. Mormonism had its birth in Western New York, that land fertile
of isms--where also arose Spiritual Rappings and Oneida
Perfectionism--where Shakers, and Millenarians, and Millerites abound,
and all heresies do most flourish. Mormonism now is daily gathering
thousands of recruits from free society in Europe, Asia, Africa, and our
North, and not one from the South. It has no religion, but in place of
it, a sensual moral code, that shocks the common sense of propriety. But
it holds property somewhat in common, draws men together in closer and
more fraternal relations, and promises (probably falsely) a safe retreat
and refuge from the isolated and inimical relations, the killing
competition and exploitation, of free society. All the other isms do the
same--but mal-administration, or the want of a master, soon explodes
them. We saw last year an advertisement, under the hammer, of the last
of fourteen phalansteries, established at the North on the
Greely-Fourierite plan. The Shakers do better; but Mr. S. P. Andrews,
who is an expert, informs us that they, like the Mormons, have a
despotic head. Socialism, with such despotic head, approaches very near
to Southern slavery, and gets along very well so long as the despot
lives. Mr. S. P. Andrews should enlighten the public as to the progress
of the Free Love villages of Trialville, in Ohio, Modern Zion, on Long
Island, &c. "Self-elected despotism" is his theory of the perfection of
society. Has any Cromwell, or Napoleon, or Joe Smith, seized the sceptre
in those delightful villages, which we hope will soon inspire the pen of
some Northern Bocaccio. Human opinion advances in concentric circles.
Abolition swallows up the little isms, and Socialism swallows up
Abolition. Socialism long since attained the point of the circle most
distant from slavery, and is now rapidly coming round to the point
whence it started--that is, to slavery. Mr. Andrews, who is no humbug,
(except in so far as any philosopher is a humbug,) Mr. Andrews, who is
probably the foremost thinker in America, could, if he would, prove to
the Abolitionists and Socialists, that after a furious day's drive, like
that of Toby Lumpkin and his mother, they are just about to haul up at
the horse pond, in a few yards of the place where they started in the
morning. The Socialists, Louis Napoleon included, are trying to
establish slavery, whilst abusing the word.
CHAPTER XXXI.
DEFICIENCY OF FOOD IN FREE SOCIETY.
The normal state of free society is a state of famine. Agricultural
labor is the most arduous, least respectable, and worst paid of all
labor. Nature and philosophy teach all who can to avoid and escape from
it, and to pursue less laborious, more respectable, and more lucrative
employments. None work in the field who can help it. Hence free society
is in great measure dependent for its food and clothing on slave
society. Western Europe and New England get their cotton, sugar, and
much of their bread and meat from the South, from Cuba, Russia, Poland
and Turkey. After all, the mass of their population suffers continual
physical want. McCulloch informs us in his edition of Adam Smith, "that
the better sort of Irish laborers eat meat once a month, or once in six
months; the lowest order never. The better class of English laborers eat
meat twice or three times a week." Now no Southern negro would believe
this if you were to swear to it. Yet it is a very favorable account of
those laborers. The Irish rarely eat bread, and the English peasantry
have wholly inadequate allowance of it. On the Continent, the peasantry
generally live on fruits, nuts and olives, and other things, which our
slaves do not seek as food at all, but as mere condiments to give a
relish to their meat and bread. Agriculture is the proper pursuit of
slaves, to be superintended and directed, however, by freemen. Its
profits are inadequate to the support of separate families of laborers,
especially of white laborers in cold climates, whose wants are greater
than those of negroes at the South. The expenses of families are greatly
lessened where slavery associates a large number under a common head, or
master, and their labor is rendered more efficient and productive.
This is the great idea of the Socialists, and it is a truer one than the
"every-man-for-himself" doctrine of the political economists. Free
society is in great measure fed and clothed by slave society, which it
pays for in worthless baubles, fashionable trifles, and deleterious
luxuries;--without which, slave society would do much better. Every one
should study the census of the Union, in order to see how dependent the
North-east is on slave labor, and how trifling are her agricultural
products.
The profits of slave farming enure chiefly to the advantage of Western
Europe and our North. Practical men, therefore, at the North, so far
from going to work to abolish slavery, are bringing daily a larger
supply of slaves into the slave market, than ever was brought before.
Add the Coolies of Asia and apprentices from Africa to the old negro
slave trade, and the annual supply of new slaves exceeds by far that of
any other period.
The Abolitionists will probably succeed in dissolving the Union, in
involving us in civil and fratricidal war, and in cutting off the North
from its necessary supply of food and clothing; but they should
recollect that whilst they are engaged in this labor of love, Northern
and English merchants are rapidly extending and increasing slavery, by
opening daily new markets for the purchase and sale of Coolies,
apprentices and Africans.
The foreign slave trade is not necessary for the supply of the slave
markets. The increase of the present slaves, if humanely treated, would
suffice to meet that demand. But Africans and Coolies cost less than the
rearing of slaves in America, and the trade in them, whenever carried
on, induces masters to work their old slaves to death and buy new ones
from abroad.
The foreign slave trade, especially the Cooley trade, is the most
inhuman pursuit in which man ever engaged. Equally inhuman to the
victims which it imports, and to the old slaves, whose treatment and
condition it renders intolerably cruel. By directing philanthropy and
public opinion in a false direction, the Abolitionists have become the
most efficient propagandists of slavery and the slave trade. And
slavery, such as it exists in pursuance of the foreign slave trade,
shocks our sense of humanity quite as much as that of the most sensitive
Abolitionists.
Since writing thus far, we met with the following in the Charleston
Mercury:
"WHEAT IN MASSACHUSETTS.--The deficiency in the production of
wheat in Massachusetts alone, in 1855, for the consumption of her
inhabitants, was 3,915,550 bushels; and of Indian corn, 3,420,675
bushels, (_without allowing any thing for the consumption of corn
by cattle_.)
"In 1850, the deficiency in the production of wheat in all the New
England States, was equal to 1,691,502 barrels of flour; and to
3,464,675 bushels of corn, (_without allowing any thing for the
consumption by cattle_.)
"This is 327,185 barrels more than was exported of domestic flour
from all of the United States to foreign countries during the year
ending 30th June, 1855, and 87,000 more barrels than was exported
both of domestic and foreign flour from the United States for the
same period."
We conclude, from our examination of the census, that the grain and
potatoes made in New England would about feed her cattle, horses, hogs
and sheep--leaving none for her inhabitants. We lately compared
carefully the census of Massachusetts and North Carolina, and found, in
round numbers, that according to population, North Carolina produced
annually ten times as much of human food as Massachusetts,--but that
Massachusetts balanced the account by producing annually ten times as
many paupers and criminals as North Carolina. We also discover that the
want of food in the one State and its abundance in the other, tells on
the duration of human life. The mortality in Massachusetts is nearly
double that in North Carolina. We infer that there is ten times as much
of human happiness in North Carolina as in Massachusetts. The census
gives no account of the infidels and the isms--of them there are none in
North Carolina, and Massachusetts may boast that she rivals Germany,
France and Western New York in their production.
Really, it is suicidal folly in New England to talk of disunion and
setting up for herself. She does not possess the elements of separate
nationality. She is intelligent and wealthy; but her wealth is
cosmopolitan--her poverty indigenous. Her commerce, her manufactures,
and moneyed capital, constitute her wealth. Disunion would make these
useless and unprofitable at home, and they would be transferred
immediately to other States and Nations.
North Carolina might well set up for herself, for she can produce all
the necessaries and comforts and luxuries of life within herself, and
has Virginia between herself and danger on the one side, and an
inaccessible sea coast on the other. But we of Virginia, being a border
State, would be badly situated in case of disunion, and mean to cling to
it as long as honor permits. Besides, Virginia loves her nearest sister,
Pennsylvania, and cannot bear the thought of parting company with her.
Tecum vivere amem!
Tecum obeam lubens!
CHAPTER XXXII.
MAN HAS PROPERTY IN MAN!
In the Liberator of the 19th December, we observe that the editor
narrows down the slavery contest to the mere question, whether "Man may
rightfully hold property in man?"
We think we can dispose of this objection to domestic slavery in a very
few words.
Man is a social and gregarious animal, and all such animals hold
property in each other. Nature imposes upon them slavery as a law and
necessity of their existence. They live together to aid each other, and
are slaves under Mr. Garrison's higher law. Slavery arises under the
higher law, and is, and ever must be, coëval and coëxtensive with human
nature.
We will enumerate a few of its ten thousand modifications.
The husband has a legally recognized property in his wife's services,
and may legally control, in some measure, her personal liberty. She is
his property and his slave.
The wife has also a legally recognized property in the husband's
services. He is her property, but not her slave.
The father has property in the services and persons of his children till
they are twenty-one years of age. They are his property and his slaves.
Children have property, during infancy, in the services of each parent.
Infant negroes, sick, infirm and superannuated negroes, hold most
valuable property in the services and capital of their masters. The
masters hold no property in such slaves, because, for the time, they are
of no value.
Owners and captains of vessels own property in the services of sailors,
and may control their personal liberty. They (the sailors) are property,
and slaves also.
The services and persons, lives and liberty of soldiers and of officers,
belong to the Government; they are, whilst in service, both property and
slaves.
Every white working man, be he clerk, carpenter, mechanic, printer,
common laborer, or what else, who contracts to serve for a term of days,
months, or years, is, for such term, the property of his employer. He is
not a slave, like the wife, child, apprentice, sailor or soldier,
because, although the employer's right to his services be equally
perfect, his remedy to enforce such right is very different. In the one
case, he may resort to force to compel compliance; in the other, he is
driven to a suit for damages.
Again: Every capitalist holds property in his fellow men to the extent
of the profits of his capital, or income. The only income possibly
resulting from capital, is the result of the property which capital
bestows on its owners, in the labor of other people. In our first three
chapters we attempt to explain this.
All civilized society recognizes, and, in some measure, performs the
obligation to support and provide for all human beings, whether natives
or foreigners, who are unable to provide for themselves. Hence
poor-houses, &c.
Hence all men hold valuable property, actual or contingent, in the
services of each other.
If, Mr. Garrison, this be the only difficulty to be adjusted between
North and South, we are sure that your little pet, Disunion, "living
will linger, and lingering will die."
When Mr. Andrews and you have quite "expelled human nature," dissolved
and disintegrated society, and reduced mankind to separate, independent,
but conflicting monads, or human atoms--then, and not till then, will
you establish the 'sovereignty of the individual,' and destroy the
property of man in man.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE "COUP DE GRACE" TO ABOLITION.
The Abolitionists are all willing to admit that free society has utterly
failed in Europe, but will assign two reasons for that failure--"Excess
of population, and want of equality and liberty."
Were the population of England doubled, the labor required to support
that population would be lessened, could all labor and expenses be
supported alike; because the association and division of labor might be
rendered more perfect, and the expenses of a single family, or single
individual, might be divided among and borne by many. The Socialists and
Abolitionists understand this. When one family has to support its own
school, its own mill, its own mechanics, its own doctor, parson, &c.,
living is expensive; but where these and other expenses are divided
among many, living becomes cheap; hence it is far less laborious to live
in a densely settled country than in a sparsely settled one, if labor
and expenses can be equally divided. The soil of England will readily
support double its population, if its products be not wasted in luxury,
in feeding deer, and game, and horses. England has not attained that
density of population which enables men to live by the least amount of
labor. Her laboring population has been thinned and labor rendered
dearer and scarcer, by emigration, of late years, to America, California
and Australia--yet, in the winter of 1854, there was a general outbreak
and riot of her operatives, because a fall in prices occasioned a large
number of her factories to stop work, and turn their hands out of
employment. This happens every day in free society, from the bankruptcy
of employers, or from the glut of markets and fall of prices. We will
add, that a meeting of the working men of New York, in the Park,
asserted that there were 50,000 working men and women, in that city, out
of employment last winter.
The competitive system (so injurious to the laboring class) is carried
out with less exception or restriction in America than in Europe. Hence,
considering the sparseness of our population, the laboring class are
worse off in New York, Philadelphia and Boston, than in London,
Manchester or Paris. And this begets more Socialists in the higher
classes, and more mobs, riots and trade-unions, with the laborers, than
in Europe.
Finally, if it be excess of numbers, or want of liberty, that occasions
the failure of free society, why are our Abolitionists and Socialists
so hot and so active in upsetting and re-organizing society? They have
pronounced, with entire unanimity, that free society is intolerable,
whether a country be densely or sparsely settled.
The Abolitionists boast, that lands are dearer and labor cheaper in free
than in slave society. Either proposition contains the admission that
free laborers work more for others and less for themselves than
slaves--in effect, that they are less free than slaves. The profits of
land are what the land-owner appropriates of the results of work of the
laborer. Where he appropriates most, and leaves the laborer least, there
lands are dearest, labor cheapest, and laborers least free. In Europe,
lands sell much higher than at the North; hence, laborers are less free
in fact than at the North. In the North they sell higher than in the
South, because the slaves consume more of the results of their own labor
than laborers at the North, and leave less profit to the land-owner. The
high price of land is, in the general, an unerring indication of the
poverty and actual slavery of the laboring class. Its low price, equally
proves that the laborers, whether called slaves or freemen, work more
for themselves, and less for the land-owners, than where lands are dear.
In settled countries, where all the lands are appropriated, this theory
is undeniable and irrefutable.
As this is a short chapter, we take the opportunity to apologize and
account for our discursive, immethodical and unartistic manner.
In the first place, the character of the enemy we have to contend with
prevents anything like regular warfare. They are divided into hundreds
of little guerrilla bands of isms, each having its peculiar partizan
tactics, and we are compelled to vary our mode of attack from regular
cannonade to bush-fighting, to suit the occasion.
Again, we practiced as a jury lawyer for twenty-five years, and thereby
acquired an inveterate habit of cumulation and iteration, and of various
argument and illustration. But, at the same time, we learned how "to
make out our case," and to know when it is "made out." The lawyer who
observed the Unities in an argument before a jury would be sure to lose
his cause; and now the world is our jury, who are going to bring in a
verdict against free society of "guilty."
We admire not the pellucid rivulet, that murmurs and meanders, in
cramped and artificial current, through the park and gardens of the
nobleman; but we do admire the flooded and swollen Mississippi, whose
turbid waters, in their majestic course, sweep along upon their bosom,
with equal composure, the occupants of the hen-roost and the poultry
yard, the flocks, the herds, the crops, the uprooted forest, and the
residences of man. The Exhaustive, not the Artistic, is what we would
aspire to. And yet, the Exhaustive may be the highest art of argument.
The best mode, we think, of writing, is that in which facts, and
argument, and rhetoric, and wit, and sarcasm, succeed each other with
rapid iteration.
Intonuere poli, et crebris micat ignibus æther!
Again, Artistic execution is un-English. It neither suits their minds
nor their tastes. Discursiveness and prurient exuberancy of thought and
suggestion, they often possess, but always fail when they attempt a
literary or other work of Art. Indeed, we have a strong suspicion that
Art went out of the world about the time the Baconian Philosophy came
in.
A continuous argument, without pause or break, on a subject profoundly
metaphysical, equally fatigues the writer and the reader. Nobody likes
it, and very few read it. "Desipere in loco" is not only a very
agreeable maxim to the author, but a very wise and prudent one.
Lastly. Like Porthos, when "we have an idea," we are at once seized with
a feverish anxiety to communicate it, and we think it better to break in
on the regular thread of our discourse, and do so at once, than to spoil
our whole discourse by having our minds occupied with two subjects at a
time.
Another idea strikes us. As yet we hardly aspire to the dignity of
authorship. We indulge in abandon, because, as a writer, we have no
reputation to jeopard or to lose. But, should this book take, we will
mount the antithetical stilts of auctorial dignity--write a book as
stale and dry as "the remainder biscuit after a long voyage," and as
free from originality, wit, thought or suggestiveness, as the Queen's
Speech, the President's Message, or a debate in the United States
Senate. We do not as yet bore the world with "respectable stupidity,"
because our position does not authorize it.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
NATIONAL WEALTH, INDIVIDUAL WEALTH, LUXURY AND ECONOMY.
It is a common theory with political economists, that national wealth
is but the sum of individual wealth, and that as individual wealth
increases, national wealth increases, _pari passu_.
We think this theory false and pernicious, and the more so because it is
plausible.
All profit-bearing possessions or capital, tend to exonerate their
owners from labor, and to throw the labor that supports society on a
part only of its members. Now, as almost all wealth is the product of
labor, this diminution of labor diminishes wealth, or, at least,
increases poverty, by placing heavier burdens on the laboring class.
This, however, is a very small part of the evil effects of individual
wealth. Society requires it of the rich to live according to their
income, to fare sumptuously, to have costly dress, furniture, equipage,
houses, &c., and to keep many servants.
Their incomes are spent in luxuries, and thousands of laborers are taken
off from the production of necessaries to produce those luxuries, or to
wait on their owners. Thus, the burden of the support of society, so
far as the ordinary comforts and necessaries of life are concerned, are
thrown on fewer and fewer, as private wealth and luxury increase. It
requires a thousand pauper laborers to sustain one millionaire, and
without them his capital will produce no profit. This accounts for the
great numbers and excessive poverty of the mass in England. Half the
boasted capital of England, probably two-thirds of it, is but a mortgage
of the bones and sinews of the laborers, now and forever, to the
capitalists. The national debt, stocks of all kinds, money at interest,
and indeed all debts, represent this sort of private wealth, which is
national poverty.
Sumptuous houses, parks, and all establishments that are costly to
sustain and keep up, and do not facilitate, but check the production of
necessaries, are also part of private wealth, and of national poverty.
Four-fifths of the private wealth of England, and half of that of our
Northeast, is a severe tax on labor, and a constant preventive of the
accumulation of national wealth.
Private wealth at the South consists chiefly in negro laborers, and
improvements of land, that increase its productive capacities. Fine
enclosures, improved stock, good granaries, and machines and implements
for farming, comfortable negro cabins, good orchards, &c., are as
strictly a part of national, as of individual wealth. Not so with the
costly private dwellings in our Northern cities. The expense of
building, of repairing, of furnishing, and of keeping servants for their
owners or tenants, is a constant drawback from productive industry,
increases the burdens of the laboring poor, and diminishes national
wealth. The poverty-stricken fields of New England are the necessary
consequence of the luxurious expenditure in her cities. Yet that luxury
is no part of national wealth, but a constant tax on it, whilst unproved
farms constitute almost three-fourths of all her real wealth, for they
feed and clothe mankind.
This is a most interesting subject; one which we have not mastered, or,
if we had, this work on which we are engaged is not the proper one for
its full discussion and exposition. We merely throw out a few
suggestions for the consideration of the thinking and ingenuous. If we
are right, luxury is the greatest sin against society; economy and
industry, the chiefest of social virtues.
CHAPTER XXXV.
GOVERNMENT A THING OF FORCE, NOT OF CONSENT.
We do not agree with the authors of the Declaration of Independence,
that governments "derive their just powers from the consent of the
governed." The women, the children, the negroes, and but few of the
non-property holders were consulted, or consented to the Revolution, or
the governments that ensued from its success. As to these, the new
governments were self-elected despotisms, and the governing class
self-elected despots. Those governments originated in force, and have
been continued by force. All governments must originate in force, and be
continued by force. The very term, government, implies that it is
carried on against the consent of the governed. Fathers do not derive
their authority, as heads of families, from the consent of wife and
children, nor do they govern their families by their consent. They never
take the vote of the family as to the labors to be performed, the moneys
to be expended, or as to anything else. Masters dare not take the vote
of slaves, as to their government. If they did, constant holiday,
dissipation and extravagance would be the result. Captains of ships are
not appointed by the consent of the crew, and never take their vote,
even in "doubling Cape Horn." If they did, the crew would generally vote
to get drunk, and the ship would never weather the cape. Not even in the
most democratic countries are soldiers governed by their consent, nor is
their vote taken on the eve of battle. They have some how lost (or never
had) the "inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness;" and, whether Americans or Russians, are forced into battle,
without and often against their consent. The ancient republics were
governed by a small class of adult male citizens, who assumed and
exercised the government, without the consent of the governed. The South
is governed just as those ancient republics were. In the county in which
we live, there are eighteen thousand souls, and only twelve hundred
voters. But we twelve hundred, the governors, never asked and never
intend to ask the consent of the sixteen thousand eight hundred whom we
govern. Were we to do so, we should soon have an "organized anarchy."
The governments of Europe could not exist a week without the positive
force of standing armies.
They are all governments of force, not of consent. Even in our North,
the women, children, and free negroes, constitute four-fifths of the
population; and they are all governed without their consent. But they
mean to correct this gross and glaring iniquity at the North. They hold
that all men, women, and negroes, and smart children, are equals, and
entitled to equal rights. The widows and free negroes begin to vote in
some of those States, and they will have to let all colors and sexes and
ages vote soon, or give up the glorious principles of human equality and
universal emancipation.
The experiment which they will make, we fear, is absurd in theory, and
the symptoms of approaching anarchy and agrarianism among them, leave no
doubt that its practical operation will be no better than its theory.
Anti-rentism, "vote-myself-a-farm" ism, and all the other isms, are but
the spattering drops that precede a social deluge.
Abolition ultimates in "Consent Government;" Consent Government in
Anarchy, Free Love, Agrarianism, &c., &c., and "Self-elected despotism,"
winds up the play.
If the interests of the governors, or governing class, be not
conservative, they certainly will not conserve institutions injurious to
their interests. There never was and never can be an old society, in
which the immediate interests of a majority of human souls do not
conflict with all established order, all right of property, and all
existing institutions. Immediate interest is all the mass look to; and
they would be sure to revolutionize government, as often as the
situation of the majority was worse than that of the minority. Divide
all property to-day, and a year hence the inequalities of property would
provoke a re-division.
In the South, the interest of the governing class is eminently
conservative, and the South is fast becoming the most conservative of
nations.
Already, at the North, government vibrates and oscillates between
Radicalism and Conservatism; at present, Radicalism or Black
Republicanism is in the ascendant.
The number of paupers is rapidly increasing; radical and agrarian
doctrines are spreading; the women and the children, and the negroes,
will soon be let in to vote; and then they will try the experiment of
"Consent Government and Constituted Anarchy."
It is falsely said, that revolutions never go backwards. They always go
backwards, and generally farther back than where they started. The
Social Revolution now going on at the North, must some day go backwards.
Shall it do so now, ere it has perpetrated an infinitude of mischief,
shed oceans of blood, and occasioned endless human misery; or will the
Conservatives of the North let it run the length of its leather, inflict
all these evils, and then rectify itself by issuing into military
despotism? We think that by a kind of alliance, offensive and defensive,
with the South, Northern Conservatism may now arrest and turn back the
tide of Radicalism and Agrarianism. We will not presume to point out
the whole means and modus operandi. They on the field of action will
best see what is necessary to be done.
Whilst we hold that all government is a matter of force, we yet think
the governing class should be numerous enough to understand, and so
situated as to represent fairly, all interests. The Greek and Roman
masters were thus situated; so were the old Barons of England, and so
are the white citizens of the South. If not all masters, like Greek and
Roman citizens, they all belong to the master race, have exclusive
rights and privileges of citizenship, and an interest not to see this
right of citizenship extended, disturbed, and rendered worthless and
contemptible.
Whilst the governments of Europe are more obviously kept alive and
conducted by force than at any other period, yet are they all, from
necessity, watchful and regardful of Public Opinion. Opinion now rules
the world, but not as expressed through the ballot-box. Governments
become more popular as they become more forcible. A large governing
class is not apt to mistake or disregard opinion; and, therefore,
Republican institutions are best adapted to the times. Under Monarchical
forms, the governments of Europe are daily becoming more Republican. The
fatal error committed in Western Europe is, the wielding of government
by a class who govern, but do not represent, the masses. Their
interests and those of the masses are antagonistic, whilst those of
masters and slaves are identical.
Looking to theory, to the examples of the Ancient Republics, and to
England under the Plantagenets, we shall find that Southern institutions
are far the best now existing in the world.
We think speculations as to constructing governments are little worth;
for all government is the gradual accretion of Nature, time and
circumstances. Yet these theories have occurred to us, and, as they are
conservative, we will suggest them. In slaveholding countries all
freemen should vote and govern, because their interests are
conservative. In free states, the government should be in the hands of
the land-owners, who are also conservative. A system of primogeniture,
and entails of small parcels of land, might, in a great measure,
identify the interests of all; or, at least, those who held no lands
would generally be the children and kinsmen of those who did, and be
taken care of by them. The frequent accumulation of large fortunes, and
consequent pauperism of the masses, is the greatest evil of modern
society. Would not small entails prevent this? All cannot own lands, but
as many should own them as is consistent with good farming and advanced
civilization. The social institutions of the Jews, as established by
Moses and Joshua, most nearly fulfill our ideas of perfect government.
A word, at parting, to Northern Conservatives. A like danger threatens
North and South, proceeding from the same source. Abolitionism is
maturing what Political Economy began. With inexorable sequence "Let
Alone" is made to usher in No-Government. North and South our danger is
the same, and our remedies, though differing in degree, must in
character be the same. "Let Alone" must be repudiated, if we would have
any Government. We must, in all sections, act upon the principle that
the world is "too little governed," You of the North need not institute
negro slavery; far less reduce white men to the state of negro slavery.
But the masses require more of protection, and the masses and
philosophers equally require more of control. Leave it to time and
circumstances to suggest the necessary legislation; but, rely upon it,
"Anarchy, plus the street constable," wont answer any longer. The
Vigilance Committee of California is but a mob, rendered necessary by
the inadequacy of the regular government. It is the "vis medicatrix
naturæ," vainly attempting to discharge the office of physician. That
country is "too little governed," where the best and most conservative
citizens have to resolve themselves into mobs and vigilance committees
to protect rights which government should, but dues not, protect.
The element of force exists probably in too small a degree in our
Federal Government. It has neither territory nor subjects. Kansas is
better off; for she has a few citizens and a large and fertile
territory. She is backing the Government out, if not whipping her.
Massachusetts, too, has nullified her laws. Utah contemns her authority,
and the Vigilance Committee of California sets her at successful
defiance. She is an attempt at a _paper consent_ government, without
territory or citizens. Considered and treated as a league or treaty
between _separate States_ or _Nations_, she may yet have a long and
useful existence; for then those _Nations_ or _States_, seeing that she
has no means of self-enforcement, self-support, or self-conservation,
may, for their mutual interests, combine to sustain and defend her.
Heretofore, domestic weakness and danger from foreign foes has combined
the States in sustaining the Union. Hereafter, the great advantages of
friendly and mutual intercourse, trade and exchanges, may continue to
produce a like result. But the prospects are alarming, and it is well
that all patriots should know that the Union has little power to sustain
and perpetuate itself.
There are three kinds of force that occur to us will sustain a
government. First, "inside necessity," such as slavery, that occasions a
few to usurp power, and to hold it forcibly, without consulting the
many; secondly, the force of foreign pressure or aggression, which
combines men and States together for common defence; and thirdly, the
inherent force of a prescriptive or usurpative government, which
sustains itself by standing armies. Such are all the governments of
Western Europe. Not one of them could exist forty-eight hours, but for
the standing armies. These standing armies became necessary and grew up
as slavery disappeared. The old Barons kept the Canaille, the
Proletariat, the Sans Culottes, the Nomadic Beggars, in order, by
lashing their backs and supplying their wants. They must be fed and kept
at work. Modern society tries to effect this (but in vain) by moral
suasion and standing armies. Riots, mobs, strikes and revolutions are
daily occurring. The mass of mankind cannot be governed by Law. More of
despotic discretion, and less of Law, is what the world wants. We take
our leave by saying, "THERE IS TOO MUCH OF LAW AND TOO LITTLE OF
GOVERNMENT IN THIS WORLD."
Physical force, not moral suasion, governs the world. The negro sees the
driver's lash, becomes accustomed to obedient, cheerful industry, and is
not aware that the lash is the force that impels him. The free citizen
fulfills, "con amore," his round of social, political and domestic
duties, and never dreams that the Law, with its fines and jails,
penitentiaries and halters, or Public Opinion, with its ostracism, its
mobs, and its tar and feathers, help to keep him revolving in his
orbit. Yet, remove these physical forces, and how many good citizens
would shoot, like fiery comets, from their spheres, and disturb society
with their eccentricities and their crimes.
Government is the life of a nation, and as no one can foresee the
various future circumstances of social, any more than of individual
life, it is absurd to define on paper, at the birth of either the nation
or individual, what they shall do and what not do. Broad construction of
constitutions is as good as no constitution, for it leaves the nation to
adapt itself to circumstances; but strict construction will destroy any
nation, for action is necessary to national conservation, and
constitution-makers cannot foresee what action will be necessary. If
individual or social life were passed in mere passivity, constitutions
might answer. Not in a changing and active world. Louisiana, Florida and
Texas would have been denied to the South under strict construction, and
she would have been ruined. A constitution, strictly construed, is
absolutely inconsistent with permanent national existence.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
WARNING TO THE NORTH.
_Banquo_-- But 'tis strange:
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths;
Win us with honest trifles, to betray us
In deepest consequences.
MACBETH.
The reader must have remarked our propensity of putting scraps of poetry
at the head of our chapters, or of interweaving them with the text. It
answers as a sort of chorus or refrain, and, when skillfully handled,
has as fine an effect as the fiddle at a feast, or the brass band on the
eve of an engagement. It nerves the author for greater effort, and
inspires the reader with resolution to follow him in his most profound
ratiocinations and airiest speculations. We learnt it from "our Masters
in the art of war" when we carried their camp and their whole park of
artillery, (which we are now using with such murderous effect against
their own ranks.) We also captured their camp equipage, books of
military strategy, &c. In them we found rules laid down for the famous
songs, which are so harmoniously blended with the speeches at all
Infidel and Abolition conventions, and Women's Rights and Free Love
assemblages. They are intended to inspire enthusiasm, confirm
conviction, and to "screw the courage to the sticking point." Besides,
sometimes they answer admirably the opposite purpose of a sedative.
Often, when Sister This One has, by her imprudent speech, outraged
decency, propriety, religion and morality, and drawn down upon her head
hisses and cries of "Turn her out! Turn her out!" Brother That One
bursts forth in "strains of sweetest melody," and like another Orpheus
quells and quiets another hell. Not that we intend by any means to
intimate that this musical brother would play Orpheus throughout, and
take as long and perilous a trip to rescue his sister as Orpheus did for
Eurydice. On the contrary, we suspect in such contingency he would pray
to Pluto to double bar the gates, and bribe Cerberus to keep closer
watch. We derive this impression from the triangular correspondence of
Greeley, Andrews and James, entitled "Love, Marriage and Divorce;" and
from the actings and doings of the courts and legislature of
Massachusetts--who, from the number of the divorces they grant, we
should think could hardly find time to send Hiss on a visit of
purification to the Convents.
Now it may be, that sometimes, when we "have gone it rather strong" (as
we are very apt to do,) and offended the reader, our scraps of poetry
may answer the purpose of the Abolition songs, and soothe and
propitiate him. Besides, they afford a sort of interlude or by-play,
like that of Sancho where he slipped off from the flying horse,
Clavileno, just as he and the Don had reached the constellation of the
Goat, and went to playing with the little goats to relieve the giddiness
of his head. I am sure, when we have, as we often do, mounted with our
reader into the highest regions of metaphysics, that his head becomes a
little giddy, (at least ours does,) and that he is thankful for a little
poetry or a turn at play with our Abolition Goats. "Goats, indeed!"
quoth Mr. G----, "Lions, you had better say." Well, be it lions! We are
no more afraid of you than if you were lambs; and you will no sooner
dare to attack us than you did the Knight of La Mancha when he vainly
challenged you to mortal combat.
Let not the reader suppose that we either emulate the chivalry of the
Don or the wisdom of his Squire. A Northern clime has congealed the
courage of our lions and they are afraid of the "paper bullets of the
brain;" yet they are vastly fond of shooting them at others, provided
they are sure the shot will not be returned.
As for Sancho, we think him the wisest man we ever read after, except
Solomon. Indeed, in the world of Fiction, all the wisdom issues from the
mouths of fools--as witness Shakspeare's Falstaff and his fools. There
is at least vraisemblance in all this; for, as in the Real world, the
philosophers (e. g. our Masters in the art of war) have monopolized all
the folly,--where so likely to find the wisdom as among the fools?
We fear our "Little Cannibals" are growing impatient, and may be, a
little jealous of our seeming preference for our goats. They are young
yet and require nursing. But they are young Herculeses, born with teeth,
and if any Abolition serpents attempt to strangle them in the cradle,
they'll be apt to get the worst of it. The danger is, however, that the
Abolitionists will steal and adopt them--for they are vastly fond of
young cannibals, and employ much of their time in sewing and knitting
and getting up subscriptions, to send shirts and trowsers to the little
fellows away over in Africa, who as indignantly repel them as old King
Lear did when he stripped in the storm and resolved to be his
"unsophisticated self."
Now, seeing that the Abolitionists are so devoted to the uncouth, dirty,
naked little cannibals of Africa, haven't we good reason to fear that
they will run away with and adopt ours, when they come forth neatly
dressed in black muslin and all shining with gold from the master hands
of Morris and Wynne? They will be sure at least to captivate the hearts
of the strong-minded ladies, and if they will treat them well in
infancy, we don't know but what, if they will wait till they grow up, we
may spare them a husband or two from the number.
Mr. Morris has promised they shall be black as Erebus without, and white
as "driven snow" within.
If they can get over the trying time of infancy--if the critics don't
smother them in the cradle, the boys will make their own way in the
world, and get a name famous as Toussaint or Dessalines.
To be candid with the reader, we have learned lately that the physique
of a book is quite as important as its metaphysique--the outside as the
inside. Figure, size, proportion, are all to be consulted: for books are
now used quite as much for centre table ornaments as for reading. We
have a marble one on our centre table that answers the former purpose
admirably, because nobody can put puzzling questions about its contents.
Now, we must write the exact amount, and no more, to enable Mr. Morris
and Mr. Wynne to make our book appear externally "comme il faut." We
write this chapter in part for that purpose. The reader would not object
to a page, or so, more or less of it, and Mr. Morris and Mr. Wynne will
know how to curtail or omit, for they are not only masters of their own
trades, but can render us valuable assistance in ours.
We return to our Cannibals, with this single remark to that morose and
demure reader who is snarling at our occasional levity--"You, sir, never
throw off your dignity; because you would be sure to uncover your
folly."
We warn the North, that every one of the leading Abolitionists is
agitating the negro slavery question merely as a means to attain
ulterior ends, and those ends nearer home. They would not spend so much
time and money for the mere sake of the negro or his master, about whom
they care little. But they know that men once fairly committed to negro
slavery agitation--once committed to the sweeping principle, "that man
being a moral agent, accountable to God for his actions, should not have
those actions controlled and directed by the will of another," are, in
effect, committed to Socialism and Communism, to the most ultra
doctrines of Garrison, Goodell, Smith and Andrews--to no private
property, no church, no law, no government,--to free love, free lands,
free women and free churches.
There is no middle ground--not an inch of ground of any sort, between
the doctrines which we hold and those which Mr. Garrison holds. If
slavery, either white or black, be wrong in principle or practice, then
is Mr. Garrison right--then is all human government wrong.
Socialism, not Abolition, is the real object of Black Republicanism. The
North, not the South, the true battle-ground. Like Fanny Wright, the
author of American Socialism, the agitators of the North look upon free
society as a mere transition state to a better, but untried, form of
society. The reader will not fully comprehend the ideas we would
convey, without reading "England the Civilizer," by Miss Fanny
Wright. It is worth reading, not only as far the best history of
the British constitution, but as the most correct and perfect
analysis and delineation of free society--of that form of society
which all Socialists and all thinking men agree cannot stand as
it is. The Abolition school of Socialists like it because it is
intolerable--because they consider it a transition state to a form of
society without law or government. Miss Wright has the honesty to admit,
that a _transition_ has never taken place. No; and never will take
place: because the expulsion of human nature is a pre-requisite to its
occurrence.
But we solemnly warn the North, that what she calls a _transition_, is
what every leading Abolitionist is moving heaven and earth to attain.
This is their real object--negro emancipation a mere gull-trap.
In the attempt to attain "transition" seas of gore may be shed, until
military despotism comes in to restore peace and security.
We (for we are a Socialist) agree with Mr. Carlyle, that the action of
free society must be reversed. That, instead of relaxing more and more
the bonds that bind man to man, you must screw them up more closely.
That, instead of no government, you must have more government. And this
is eminently true in America, where from the nature of things, as
society becomes older and population more dense, more of government will
be required. To prevent the attempt at transition, which would only
usher in revolution, you must begin to govern more vigorously.
But we will be asked, How is this to be effected? The answer is easy.
The means are at hand, and the work is begun.
The Democratic party, purged of its radicalism and largely recruited
from the ranks of the old line Whigs, has become eminently and actively
conservative. It is the antipodes of the Democratic party of the days of
Jefferson, in the grounds which it occupies and the opinions which it
holds, (what it professes to hold is another thing.) Yet it has been a
consistent party throughout. Consistent, in wisely and boldly adapting
its action to the emergencies of the occasion. It is pathological, and
practices according to prevailing symptoms. 'Tis true, it has a mighty
Nosology in its Declaration of Independence, Bills of Rights,
Constitutions, Platforms, and Preambles and Resolutions; but, like a
good physician, it watches the state of the patient, and casts Nosology
to the dogs when the symptoms require it. When we entered the party we
were radicals, and half Abolitionists, and found inscribed on its
banner, "_The world is too much governed!_" Now, we are sure the
conviction has fastened itself on the heart of every good citizen, that
"the world is too little governed."
The true and honorable distinction of the Democratic party is, that it
has but one unbending principle--"The safety of the people is the
supreme law." To this party we think the Nation and the North may
confidently look for a happy exodus from our difficulties. It is pure,
honest, active and patriotic now, and will continue so as long as the
dark cloud of Abolition and Socialism lowers and threatens at the North.
Long and quiet possession of power will be sure to corrupt it. It will
be then time to cast it aside. It is now able, and it alone is able, to
grapple with and strangle the treasons of the North.
"Times change, and men change with them."
Good and brave men are proud, not ashamed, of such changes. Let no false
pride of seeming consistency deter us from an avowal, which omitted, may
trammel and impede our action.
Our old Nosology is an effective arsenal and armory for the most ultra
Abolitionists, and the more effective, because we have not _formally_
repudiated it. Let "_The world is too little governed_" be adopted as
our motto, inscribed upon our flag and run up to the mast-head.
NOTE.--We learn that many of the old Federalists of the North, and
some of the South, are joining our ranks. We welcome them. Their
principles were wrong when they adopted them, but (barring their
consolidation doctrines) will answer pretty well now. It was ever
the misfortune of the old Federal party and the lately deceased
Whig party, to be right at the wrong time. They were, as the
doctors say, nosological and not pathological in practice. The
Whig party of England, like the Democratic party of America, is
eminently pathological, active, observant and impressible.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
ADDENDUM.
_Virginia, Nov. 18, 1856._
WM. LLOYD GARRISON, Esq.:
DEAR SIR--I have observed so much fairness in the manner in which
slavery and other sociological questions are treated in _The Liberator_,
that it has occurred to me you would not consider suggestions from an
ultra pro-slavery man obtrusive, and might deem them worth a place in
your columns. I shall not promise that the example of your liberality
will be followed at the South. It is a theory of mine, that "recurrence
to fundamental principles" is only treason clothed in periphrastic
phrase; and that the right of private judgment, liberty of the press,
freedom of speech, and freedom of religion, are subordinate to these
"principles," and must not be allowed to assail them,--else there can be
no stability in government, or security of private rights. The South
thinks me heretical, but feels that I am right, and takes care to
trammel these sacred rights quite as efficiently by an austere public
opinion, as Louis Napoleon does by law or by mere volition.
I entirely concur in a theory I heard Mr. Wendell Phillips[35] propound
in a lecture at New Haven. I shall not attempt to give his eloquent
words, for I am incapable of doing justice to his language; but the
amount of his theory was, that governments are not formed by man, but
are the gradual accretions of time, circumstance, and human exigencies;
that they grow up like trees, and that man may cultivate, train and aid
their growth and development, but cannot make them out and out. Now, I
accept the theory, and propose, in the first place, to deter men from
applying the axe to the root of our Southern institutions, (that is,
discussing or recurring to "fundamental principles,") by moral suasion
or monition; next, by tar and feathers, and, that failing, by the
halter. The worst institutions that ever _grew up_ in any country are
better than the best that philosophers or philanthropists ever devised.
As for ours, we deem them, since the days of Rome, Athens and Judea, the
crack institutions of the world.
With these preliminary remarks, I will make the following suggestions or
interrogations:--
Is not slavery to capital less tolerable than slavery to human masters?
Where a few, as in England, Ireland and Scotland, own all the lands, are
not the mass, the common laborers, who own no capital, and possess
neither mechanical nor professional skill, of necessity, the slaves to
capital?
Was it not this slavery to capital that occasioned the great Irish
famine, and is it not this same slavery that keeps the large majority of
the laboring class in Western Europe in a state of hereditary
starvation?
In old societies, where the laborers are domestic slaves, and exceed in
number the demand for labor, would not emancipating them subject them at
once to a mastery, or exacting despotism of capital, far more oppressive
than domestic slavery?
Did not the emancipation of European serfs, or villiens, in all
instances, injure their condition as a class?
In the event of the occurrence of such excess of domestic slaves, would
it not be more merciful to follow the Spartan plan, and kill the
surplus, than the abolition plan, which sets them all free, to live on
half allowance, and to "make free labor cheaper than slave labor," by
this fierce competition and underbidding to get employment?
Are there not fewer checks to superior wit, skill and capital, and less
of protection afforded to the weak, ignorant and landless mass in
Northern society, than in any other ever devised by the wit of man?
Is not "_laissez-faire_," in English, "Every man for himself, and devil
take the hindmost," your whole theory and practice of government?
When your society grows older, your population more dense, and property,
by your trading, speculating and commercial habits, gets into a few
hands, will not the slavery to capital be more complete and unmitigated
than in any part of Europe, where a throne, a nobility and established
church, stand between the bosses, bankers and landlords, and the
oppressed masses?
Do not almost all well-informed men of a philosophical turn of mind in
Western Europe and our North, concur in opinion that the whole framework
of society, religious, ethical, economic, legal and political, requires
radical change?
Is not the absence of such opinion at the South, and its prevalence in
free society, conclusive proof of the naturalness and necessity of
domestic slavery?
Would not the North be willing to leave the settlement of the slavery
question in Kansas to the public opinion of Christendom, (for it will be
settled by all Christendom, of whom not one in a hundred will be
slaveholders,) if it were not sensible that public opinion was about to
decide in favor of _negro_ slavery, and, therefore, that it must be
forstalled by Federal legislation?
A SOUTHERNER.
Since our work was in the press, the above has appeared in the
_Liberator_. We embrace the occasion to thank Mr. Garrison for his
courtesy, and to make a few remarks that we hope will not be deemed
ill-timed or impertinent.
A comparison of opinions and of institutions between North and South
will lead to kinder and more pacific relations. Hitherto, such
comparisons could not be made, because the South believed herself
wrong, weak and defenceless; and that Abolition was but an attempt to
apply the brand to the explosive materials of her social edifice. She is
now equally confident of her justice and her strength, and believes her
social system more stable, as well as more benevolent, equitable and
natural, than that of the North. Whilst she will never tolerate radical
agitation and demagoguical propagandism, she is ready for philosophical
argument and discussion, and for historical and statistical comparison.
A Southerner employs the term "discussion," as equivalent to agitation;
for the South does not proscribe the discussion of any subject, by
proper persons, at proper places, and on proper occasions. (Who are
proper persons, and what proper times and places, must be left to a
healthy, just and enlightened public opinion to determine.) But men
shall not lecture our children, in the streets, on the beauties of
infidelity; parsons shall not preach politics from the pulpit; women
shall not crop the petticoat, mount the rostrum, and descant on the
purity of Free Love; incendiaries shall not make speeches against the
right of landholders, nor teach our negroes the sacred doctrines of
liberty and equality.
We are satisfied with our institutions, and are not willing to submit
them to the "experimentum in vile corpus!" If the North thinks her own
worthless, or only valuable as subjects for anatomical dissection, or
chemical and phrenological experiments, she may advance the cause of
humanity, by treating her people as philosophers do mice and hares and
dead frogs. We think her case not so desperate as to authorize such
reckless experimentation. Though her experiment has failed, she is not
yet dead. There is a way still open for recovery.
As we are a Brother Socialist, we have a right to prescribe for the
patient; and our Consulting Brethren, Messrs. Garrison, Greely, and
others, should duly consider the value of our opinion. Extremes
meet--and we and the leading Abolitionists differ but a hairbreadth.
We, like Carlyle, prescribe more of government; they insist on
No-Government. Yet their social institutions would make excellently
conducted Southern sugar and cotton farms, with a head to govern them.
Add a Virginia overseer to Mr. Greely's Phalansteries, and Mr. Greely
and we would have little to quarrel about.
We have a lively expectation that when our Cannibals make their entreé,
"Our Masters in the art of War" will greet them with applause, instead
of hisses; with a "feu de joie," or gratulatory salute, instead of a
murderous broadside. We want to be friends with them and with all the
world; and, as the curtain is falling, we conclude with the valedictory
and invocation of the Roman actor--"Vos valete! et plaudite!"
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Not only does Moses evince his knowledge of the despotism of
capital, in forbidding its profits, but also in his injunction, not to
let emancipated slaves "go away empty." Deuteronomy xv. 13, 14.
"And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go
away empty. Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out
of thy floor, and out of thy wine-press: of that wherewith the Lord thy
God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him."
People without property exposed to the unrestricted exactions of capital
are infinitely worse off after emancipation than before. Moses prevented
the exactions of capital by providing property for the new free man.
[2] History of the Poor Laws, p. 120.
[3] 11 Hen. VII. cap. 2.
[4] 22 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.
[5] 27 Hen. VIII. cap. 25.
[6] 1 Ed. VI. cap. 3.
[7] 3 and 4 Ed. VI. cap. 16. 14 Eliz. cap. 5. 39 Eliz. cap. 4.
[8] See Lord Hale's paper at length, in "Burn's History of the Poor
Laws," p. 144.
[9] Robert (du Var.) Hist. de la Classe Ouvrière. Dédicace aux
Travailleurs. tome. I. p. X-XI.
[10] Aulus Gellius, Noct. Alt. lib. XVI, c. X.
[11] Hist. de la Classe Ouvrière. liv. IX. chap. VII. tome. III. p. 100.
[12] Hist. de la Classe Ouv. liv. IX. chap. VII. p. 102, tome. III. p.
102.
[13] Ibid. No. XIV. chap. I. tome. IV. p. 285-6.
[14] Ibid. No. XIII. chap. II. tome. IV. p. 247.
[15] Ibid. No. XII. chap. III. tome. IV. p. 50-105.
[16] Vidal. Repartition des Richesses. ptie. II. chap. III.
[17] The Social Condition and Education of the People of England and
Europe. By Joseph Kay, Esq., M. A., chap. I, vol. I, p. 314.
[18] Kay, Social Condition, &c., of England and Europe. chap. I, vol. 1,
p. 317-318.
[19] Kay, chap. II, vol. I, p. 361.
[20] Kay, chap. II, 2nd vol., p. 370. citing Rev. H. Worsley's Essay on
Juvenile Depravity, p. 53.
[21] Kay, chap. I, vol. I, p. 372-3.
[22] Kay, chap. I, vol. I, p. 395.
[23] Kay, chap. I, vol. I, p. 452-3.
[24] Kay, chap. I, vol. I. p. 4.
[25] Saisset, Sur la Philosophie et la Religion du XIX. Siècle. p. 222.
[26] North British Review, No. XXIV, Art. IX, Feb. 1850. p. 299-300. Am.
Ed.
[27] Edingb. Rev. Oct. 1849. Art. VI, p. 497-8. Engl. Ed.
[28] Chateaubriand. Essays on English Literature. Paris. 1838, cited by
Kay.
[29] Westminster Review, No. CXI. Art. III. Jan. 9. 1852.
[30] Niebuhr. Life and Letters, p. 506.
[31] Niebuhr, Ibid. p. 528. See also, p. 526.
[32] It is, however, but fair to state, that many competent and most
respectable observers declare, that though the _facts_ stated by the
Commissioners may be perfectly true, yet that the tone and spirit of the
Report bears token of material exaggeration.
[33] The colliers in the east of Scotland, however, are excepted.
[34] It is curious to contrast this with a similar comparison instituted
by the Factory Commissioners, and embracing upwards of 1000
children.--(Analysis of the Evidence taken before the Factory
Commissioners, p. 9.)
Boys _not_ in factories averaged 55.56 inches.
Boys in factories, " 55.28 "
-----
Difference, .28!
Girls _not_ in factories, " 54.979 "
Girls in factories, " 54.951 "
------
Difference, .028!! "
[35] Mr. Phillips is, in private life, aside from his abolition and
sectional prejudices, a worthy, accomplished gentleman. He is the most
eloquent and graceful speaker to whom we ever listened. He seems to
distill manna and ambrosia from his lips, but is all the while firing
whole broadsides of hot shot. "He is his own antithesis"--an infernal
machine set to music.
THE END.
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