Cannibals all! or, Slaves without masters
by George Fitzhugh · English · Gutenberg #35481 · 550,756 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Cannibals all! or, Slaves without masters
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Cannibals all! or, Slaves without masters
Author: George Fitzhugh
Release date: March 4, 2011 [eBook #35481]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35481
Credits: Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CANNIBALS ALL! OR, SLAVES WITHOUT MASTERS ***
Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
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 Mediaeval England. But the
mischievous absurdity of our political axioms and principles quite
equals the wisdom and conservatism of our political practices. The ready
appreciation by the public of such doctrines as these, encourages us to
persevere in writing. The silence of the North is far more encouraging,
however, than the approbation of the South. Piqued and taunted for two
years, by many Southern Presses of high standing, to deny the
proposition that Free Society in Western Europe is a failure, and that
it betrays premonitory symptoms of failure, even in America, the North
is silent, and thus tacitly admits the charge. Challenged to compare and
weigh the advantages and disadvantages of our domestic slavery with
their slavery of the masses to capital and skill, it is mute, and
neither accepts nor declines our challenge. The comparative evils of
Slave Society and of Free Society, of slavery to human Masters and of
slavery to Capital, are the issues which the South now presents, and
which the North avoids. And she avoids them, because the Abolitionists,
the only assailants of Southern Slavery, have, we believe, to a man,
asserted the entire failure of their own social system, proposed its
subversion, and suggested an approximating millenium, or some system of
Free Love, Communism, or Socialism, as a substitute.
The alarming extent of this state of public opinion, or, to speak more
accurately, the absence of any public opinion, or common faith and
conviction about anything, is not dreamed of at the South, nor fully and
properly realized, even at the North. _We_ cannot believe what is so
entirely different from all our experience and observation, and _they_
have become familiarized and inattentive to the infected social
atmosphere they continually inhale. Besides, living in the midst of the
isms, their situation is not favorable for comprehensive observation or
calm generalization. More than a year since, we made a short trip to the
North, and whilst there only associated with distinguished
Abolitionists. We have corresponded much with them, before and since,
and read many of their books, lectures, essays and speeches. We have
neither seen nor heard any denial by them of the failure of their own
social system; but, 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 expose of their opinions, and of
their wholesale destructiveness of purpose.
The neglect of the North to take issue with us, or with the Southern
Press, in the new positions which we have assumed, our own observations
of the working of Northern society, the alarming increase of Socialism,
as evinced by its control of many Northern State Legislatures, and its
majority in the lower house of Congress, are all new proofs of the truth
of our doctrine. The character of that majority in Congress is displayed
in full relief, by the single fact, which we saw stated in a Northern
Abolition paper, that "there are a hundred Spiritual Rappers in
Congress." A Northern member of Congress made a similar remark to us a
few days since. 'Tis but a copy of the Hiss Legislature of
Massachusetts, or the Praise-God-Barebones Parliament of England.
Further study, too, of Western European Society, which has been engaged
in continual revolution for twenty years, has satisfied us that Free
Society every where begets isms, and that isms soon beget bloody
revolutions. Until our trip to the North, we did not justly appreciate
the passage which we are about to quote from Mr. Carlyle's "Latter-Day
Pamphlets." Now it seems to us as if Boston, New Haven, or Western New
York, had set for the picture:
"To rectify the relation that exists between two men, is there no
method, then, but that of ending it? The old relation has become
unsuitable, obsolete, perhaps unjust; and the remedy is, abolish
it; let there henceforth be no relation at all. From the
'sacrament of marriage' downwards, human beings used to be
manifoldly related one to another, and each to all; and there was
no relation among human beings, just or unjust, that had not its
grievances and its difficulties, its necessities on both sides to
bear and forbear. But henceforth, be it known, we have changed all
that by favor of Heaven; the 'voluntary principle' has come up,
which will itself do the business for us; and now let a new
sacrament, that of _Divorce_, which we call emancipation, and
spout of on our platforms, be universally the order of the day!
Have men considered whither all this is tending, and what it
certainly enough betokens? Cut every human relation that has any
where grown uneasy sheer asunder; reduce whatsoever was compulsory
to voluntary, whatsoever was permanent among us to the condition
of the nomadic; in other words, LOOSEN BY ASSIDUOUS WEDGES, in
every joint, the whole fabrice of social existence, stone from
stone, till at last, all lie now quite loose enough, it can, as we
already see in most countries, be overset by sudden outburst of
revolutionary rage; and lying as mere mountains of anarchic
rubbish, solicit you to sing Fraternity, &c. over it, and rejoice
in the now remarkable era of human progress we have arrived at."
Now we plant ourselves on this passage from Carlyle. We say that, as far
as it goes, 'tis a faithful picture of the isms of the North. But the
restraints of Law and Public Opinion are less at the North than in
Europe. The isms on each side the Atlantic are equally busy with
"assiduous wedges," in "loosening in every joint the whole fabric of
social existence;" but whilst they dare invoke Anarchy in Europe, they
dare not inaugurate New York Free Love, and Oneida Incest, and Mormon
Polygamy. The moral, religious, and social heresies of the North, are
more monstrous than those of Europe. The pupil has surpassed the master,
unaided by the stimulants of poverty, hunger and nakedness, which urge
the master forward.
Society need not fail in the North-east until the whole West is settled,
and a refluent population, or excess of immigration, overstocks
permanently the labor market on the Atlantic board. Till then, the
despotism of skill and capital, in forcing emigration to the West, makes
proprietors of those emigrants, benefits them, peoples the West, and by
their return trade, enriches the East. The social forms of the North and
the South are, for the present, equally promotive of growth and
prosperity at home, and equally beneficial to mankind at large, by
affording asylums to the oppressed, and by furnishing food and clothing
to all. Northern society is a partial failure, but only because it
generates isms which threaten it with overthrow and impede its progress.
Despite of appearing vain and egotistical, we cannot refrain from
mentioning another circumstance that encourages us to write. At the very
time when we were writing our pamphlet entitled "Slavery Justified," in
which we took ground that Free Society had failed, Mr. Carlyle began to
write his "_Latter Day_ Pamphlets," whose very title is the assertion of
the failure of Free Society. The proof derived from this coincidence
becomes the stronger, when it is perceived that an ordinary man on this
side the Atlantic discovered and was exposing the same social phenomena
that an extraordinary one had discovered and was exposing on the other.
The very titles of our works are synonymous--for the "Latter Day" is the
"Failure of Society."
Mr. Carlyle, and Miss Fanny Wright (in her England the Civilizer)
vindicate Slavery by shewing that each of its apparent relaxations in
England has injured the laboring class. They were fully and ably
represented in Parliament by their ancient masters, the Barons. Since
the Throne, and the Church, and the Nobility, have been stripped of
their power, and a House of Commons, representing lands and money, rules
despotically, the masses have become outlawed. They labor under all the
disadvantages of slavery, and have none of the rights of slaves. This is
the true history of the English Constitution, and one which we intend,
in the sequel, more fully to expound. This presents another reason why
we again appear before the public. Blackstone, which is read by most
American gentlemen, teaches a doctrine the exact reverse of this, and
that doctrine we shall try to refute.
Returning from the North, we procured in New York a copy of Aristotle's
"Politics and Economics." To our surprise, we found that our theory of
the origin of society was identical with his, and that we had employed
not only the same illustrations, but the very same words. We saw at once
that the true vindication of slavery must be founded on his theory of
man's social nature, as opposed to Locke's theory of the Social
Contract, on which latter Free Society rests for support. 'Tis true we
had broached this doctrine; but with the world at large our authority
was merely repulsive, whilst the same doctrine, coming from Aristotle,
had, besides his name, two thousand years of human approval and
concurrence in its favor; for, without that concurrence and approval,
his book would have long since perished.
In addition to all this, we think we have discovered that Moses has
anticipated the Socialists, and that in prohibiting "usury of money, and
of victuals, and of all things that are lent on usury," and in
denouncing "increase" he was far wiser than Aristotle, and saw that
other capital or property did not "breed" any more than money, and that
its profits were unjust exactions levied from the laboring man. The
Socialists proclaim this as a discovery of their own. We think Moses
discovered and proclaimed it more than three thousand years ago--and
that it is the only true theory of capital and labor, the only adequate
theoretical defence of Slavery--for it proves that the profits which
capital exacts from labor makes free laborers slaves, without the
rights, privileges or advantages of domestic slaves, and capitalists
their masters, with all the advantages, and none of the burdens and
obligations of the ordinary owners of slaves.
The scientific title of this work would be best expressed by the
conventional French term "_Exploitation_." We endeavor to translate by
the double periphrases of "Cannibals All; or, Slaves without Masters."
We have been imprudent enough to write our Introduction first, and may
fail to satisfy the expectations which we excite. Our excess of candor
must, in that event, in part supply our deficiency of ability.
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 praedial slavery, are: that the slaves are
subjected to the cares as well as the labors of life; that the masters
become idlers; that want of intercourse destroys the affectionate
relations between master and slave, throws the mass of ignorant slaves
into no other association but that with the ignorant; and deprives them,
as well of the instruction, as the government, of superiors living on
the same farm. Southern slavery is becoming the best form of slavery of
which we have any history, except that of the Jews. The Jews owned but
few slaves, and with them the relation of master and slave was truly
affectionate, protective and patriarchal. The master, wife and children
were in constant intercourse with the slaves, and formed, in practice as
well as theory, affectionate, well-ordered families.
As modern civilization advances, slavery becomes daily more necessary,
because its tendency is to accumulate all capital in a few hands, cuts
off the masses from the soil, lessens their wages and their chances of
employment, and increases the necessity for a means of certain
subsistence, which slavery alone can furnish, when a few own all the
lands and other capital.
Christian morality can find little practical foothold in a community so
constituted, that to "love our neighbor as ourself," or "to do unto
others as we would they should do unto us," would be acts of suicidal
self-sacrifice. Christian morality, however, was not preached to free
competitive society, but to slave society, where it is neither very
difficult nor unnatural to practice it. In the various family relations
of husband, wife, parent, child, master and slave, the observance of
these Christian precepts is often practiced, and almost always promotes
the temporal well being of those who observe it. The interests of the
various members of the family circle, correctly understood, concur and
harmonize, and each member best promotes his own selfish interest by
ministering to the wants and interests of the rest. Two great stumbling
blocks are removed from the acceptance of Scripture, when it is proved
that slavery, which it recognizes, approves and enjoins, is promotive of
men's happiness and well-being, and that the morality, which it
inculcates, although wholly impracticable in free society, is readily
practised in that form of society to which it was addressed.
We do not conceive that there can be any other moral law in free
society, than that which teaches "that he is most meritorious who most
wrongs his fellow beings:" for any other law would make men martyrs to
their own virtues. We see thousands of good men vainly struggling
against the evil necessities of their situation, and aggravating by
their charities the evils which they would cure, for charity in free
society is but the tax which skill and capital levy from the working
poor, too often, to bestow on the less deserving and idle poor. We know
a man at the North who owns millions of dollars, and would throw every
cent into the ocean to benefit mankind. But it is capital, and, place it
where he will, it becomes an engine to tax and oppress the laboring
poor.
It is impossible to place labor and capital in harmonious or friendly
relations, except by the means of slavery, which identifies their
interests. Would that gentleman lay his capital out in land and negroes,
he might be sure, in whatever hands it came, that it would be employed
to protect laborers, not to oppress them; for when slaves are worth near
a thousand dollars a head, they will be carefully and well provided for.
In any other investment he may make of it, it will be used as an engine
to squeeze the largest amount of labor from the poor, for the least
amount of allowance. We say allowance, not wages; for neither slaves nor
free laborers get wages, in the popular sense of the term: that is, the
employer or capitalist pays them from nothing of his own, but allows
them a part, generally a very small part, of the proceeds of their own
labor. Free laborers pay one another, for labor creates all values, and
capital, after taking the lion's share by its taxing power, but pays the
so-called wages of one laborer from the proceeds of the labor of
another. Capital does not breed, yet remains undiminished. Its profits
are but its taxing power. Men seek to become independent, in order to
cease to pay labor; in order to become masters, without the cares,
duties and responsibilities of masters. Capital exercises a more perfect
compulsion over free laborers, than human masters over slaves: for free
laborers must at all times work or starve, and slaves are supported
whether they work or not. Free laborers have less liberty than slaves,
are worse paid and provided for, and have no valuable rights. Slaves,
with more of actual practical liberty, with ampler allowance, and
constant protection, are secure in the enjoyment of all the rights,
which provide for their physical comfort at all times and under all
circumstances. The free laborer must be employed or starve, yet no one
is obliged to employ him. The slave is taken care of, whether employed
or not. Though each free laborer has no particular master, his wants and
other men's capital, make him a slave without a master, or with too many
masters, which is as bad as none. It were often better that he had an
ascertained master, instead of an irresponsible and unascertained one.
There are some startling social phenomena connected with this subject of
labor and capital, which will probably be new to most of our readers.
Legislators and philosophers often puzzle their own and other people's
brains, in vain discussions as to how the taxes shall be laid, so as to
fall on the rich rather than the poor. It results from our theory, that
as labor creates all values, laborers pay all taxes, and the rich, in
the words of Gerrit Smith, "are but the conduits that pass them over to
government."
Again, since labor alone creates and pays the profits of capital;
increase and accumulation of capital but increase the labor of the poor,
and lessen their remuneration. Thus the poor are continually forging new
chains for themselves. Proudhon cites a familiar instance to prove and
illustrate this theory: A tenant improves a farm or house, and enhances
their rents; his labor thus becomes the means of increasing the tax,
which he or some one else must pay to the capitalist. What is true in
this instance, is true of the aggregate capital of the world: its
increase is but an increased tax on labor. A., by trade or speculation,
gets hold of an additional million of dollars, to the capital already in
existence. Now his million of dollars will yield no profit, unless a
number of pauper laborers, sufficient to pay its profits, are at the
same time brought into existence. After supporting their families, it
will require a thousand of laborers to pay the interest or profits of a
million of dollars. It may, therefore, be generally assumed as true,
that where a country has gained a millionaire, it has by the same
process gained a thousand pauper laborers: Provided it has been made by
profits on foreign trade, or by new values created at home--that is, if
it be an _addition_ of a million to the capital of the nation.
A nation borrows a hundred millions, at six per cent., for a hundred
years. During that time it pays, in way of tax, called interest, six
times the capital loaned, and then returns the capital itself. During
all this time, to the amount of the interest, the people of this nation
have been slaves to the lender. He has commanded, not paid, for their
labor; for his capital is returned intact. In the abstract, and
according to equity, "the use of an article is only a proper subject of
charge, when the article is consumed in the use; for this consumption is
the consumption of the labor of the lender or hirer, and is the exchange
of equal amounts of labor for each other.
A., as a merchant, a lawyer, or doctor, makes twenty dollars a day; that
is, exchanges each day of his own labor for twenty days of the labor of
common working men, assuming that they work at a dollar a day. In twenty
years, he amasses fifty thousand dollars, invests it, and settles it on
his family. Without any labor, he and his heirs, retaining all this
capital, continue, by its means, to levy a tax of three thousand dollars
from common laborers. He 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 ergo optabunt homines? Si consilium vis,
Permittes ipsis expendere numinibus, quid
Conveniat nobis, rebusque sit utile nostris.
Nam pro jucundis aptissama quaeque dabunt diis
Carior est illis homo, quam sibi.
The Epicurean HORACE, in his first Satire, sees the same difficulty, but
gives a less satisfactory solution:
Est modus in rebus; sunt certi denique fines,
Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum.
BURKE'S beautiful words, "What shadows we are, and what shadows we
pursue!" convey the same thought, without attempting a solution.
SHAKSPEARE employs the profoundest philosophy, to assail all philosophy:
"There are more things in heaven and earth,
Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
The infidel, VOLTAIRE, admits that "philosophy had ascertained few
truths, done little good;" and when he sums up that little, satisfies
the reader that it has done nothing--unless it be to perplex and
mislead.
He, Voltaire, also, in another connection, exclaims, mournfully:
"I now repeat this confession, still more emphatically, since the
more I read, the more I meditate, and the more I acquire, the more
I am enabled to affirm, that I know nothing."
NEWTON, admitting his own ignorance, is a standing monument of the
inadequacy and futility of moral researches and speculations.
PINDAR--
Man, the frail being of a day,
Uncertain shadow of a dream,
Illumined by the heavenly beam,
Flutters his airy life away.
AESCHYLUS--
Vain thy ardor, vain thy grace,
They, nor force, nor aid repay;
Like a dream, man's feeble race,
Short-lived reptiles of a day.
SOPHOCLES--
'Tis sad to think, but me the farce of life persuades,
That men are only spectral forms, or hollow shades.
ARISTOPHANES--
Come now, ye host of fading lives, like the race of withering leaves,
Who live a day, creatures of clay, tribes that flit like shadows away;
Ephemeral, wingless insects, dreamy shapes, that death expects
Soon to bind in phantom sheaves.
We will conclude our citations, which we might continue to the crack of
doom, (for all who have written well and much, have indulged similar
reflections,) with Doctor Johnson's Rasselas, which is intended to
expand and apply what others had concisely and tersely stated. The
Doctor's is an elaborate failure.
Philosophy can neither account for the past, comprehend the present, nor
foresee and provide for the future. "I'll none of it."
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 egregie, notum si callida verbum,
Reddiderit junctura novum: si forte 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
Graeco fonte cadant, parce detorta. Quid autem
Caecilio, Plantoque dabit Romanus, ademptum
Virgilio, Varioque? ego cur acquirere pauca
Si possum, invideor; cum lingua Catonis et Enni
Sermonem patrium ditaverit, et nova rerum
Nomina protulerit? Licuit, semperque licebit
Signatum praesente nota procudere nomen.
Ut silvae foliis pronos mutantur in annos,
Prima cadunt; ita verborum vetus interit aetas,
Et juvenum ritu florent modo 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 mediaeval 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 AEneid, 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. Mediaeval art expired:--and now the world has no art, but basely
copies the past.
Had Shakspeare been as learned as Ben Jonson, he would have written no
better than Ben Jonson. The lofty genius of Milton would have created a
glorious English epic, had he not travelled too much abroad, and dwelt
too much with the past. The Paradise Lost is a splendid piece of Mosaic,
made up of bits of Greek and Roman mythology, Hebrew theology, Christian
morality, Mediaeval romance, set in the purest Anglo-Saxon, twisted into
Latin collocation. 'Tis the song of the mocking-bird.
What, then? Shall we not in boyhood sojourn and linger at Athens and at
Rome, nor in manhood travel into France and Italy?
_Est modus in rebus._ Study the past, but be careful not to copy it, and
never travel abroad until age has matured your love and respect for your
native land.
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
praedial. The slaves occupied the place of tenants or serfs, were
"adscripti soli," and could only be sold with the farm. Many
antiquarians consider the colonial slavery of the Romans as the true
origin of the feudal system. This kind of slavery was universal in
Europe till a few centuries since, and now prevails to a great extent.
The serfs of Russia, Poland, Turkey, and Hungary, are happier and better
provided for than the free laborers of Western Europe. They have homes,
and lands to cultivate. They work but little, because their wants are
few and simple. They are not over-worked and under-fed, as are the free
laborers of Western Europe. Hence, they never rise in riots and
insurrections, burn houses, commit strikes,--nor do they emigrate.
This form of slavery, however, makes the master an idle absentee,
depriving the slaves of his guardianship, his government, and his
protection. By throwing large masses of the ignorant into exclusive
association with each other, it promotes and increases ignorance,
negligence and idleness. Men will not improve their condition who have
no examples to emulate and no teachers to instruct. Were their farms
conducted as ours of the South, the wealthy would have ample employment,
and the slaves or serfs find in their masters examples, governors,
teachers and protectors.
The right to sell one's children, or one's self, into slavery has been
very common, and is now practiced in China. The ancient Germans used to
even stake their liberty at games of hazard. This would never have been
done, nor would the laws have permitted it, if the situation of the
slave had been greatly inferior to that of the free. But how shall we
class wives, children, wards, apprentices, prisoners, soldiers and
sailors? They are not free, because their personal liberty is controlled
by the will of a superior; not by mere law. They are liable to
confinement and punishment by their superiors, whose will stands in
place of law as to them. They have no right of locomotion like that
enjoyed by the free. They have no liberty secured by law;--they are not
free. Are they, therefore, slaves?
Paley defines slavery to be, "An obligation to labor for the benefit of
the master, without the contract or consent of the servant." The sick,
the superannuated, the infirm, and the infant slaves are under no such
obligation in theory or practice. The master is under an obligation,
legally, theoretically and practically, to labor for them. Therefore,
the master of twenty slaves is always a slave himself. If he be a good
man, he is the happier for performing his duties as slave to those
classes of his slaves. But what becomes of that slavery of the ancients
and of China, where the slave, by actual contract, sells himself? This
is not slavery according to Paley.
The great and glaring defect, however, of Paley's definition is, that he
omits the obligation on the master to provide for and protect the slave.
'Tis but half of a definition, and that half false. It does often happen
that the _obligations_ of the master are more onerous than those of the
slave. Yet Paley omits those obligations altogether. The slave, when
capable to do so, must work for the master; but the master, at all
times, must provide for the slave. If incapable of doing so, the law
gives the slave a new master and protector. His situation is less
honorable, but far more secure than that of the master. Definitions are
perilous attempts. We never read one that a seventy-four with all sail
set might not drive through. We shall define nothing ourselves, for we
know that this is the business of Omnipotence, that alone knows "all
things in heaven and on earth."
We proceed to examine the attempted definitions of Montesquieu and
Blackstone. Blackstone objects to the right to sell one's self, that the
consideration enures to the buyer. This may or may not be so, according
to the laws of the State where the contract is made. It is not a
necessary feature of slavery, and cannot fairly be employed as an
objection to it. In fact, the slaves of the South, in their houses,
gardens, fruit, vegetables, pigs and fowls, hold more property than the
peasantry of Europe, and are far better secured in its possession by
their masters, 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,
Impavidum ferient ruinae!"
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 propriete
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,
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/35481