Cannibals all! Part 19

The services and persons, lives and liberty of soldiers and of officers, belong to the Government; they are, whilst in service, both property and slaves.

Every white working man, be he clerk, carpenter, mechanic, printer, common laborer, or what else, who contracts to serve for a term of days, months, or years, is, for such term, the property of his employer. He is not a slave, like the wife, child, apprentice, sailor or soldier, because, although the employer's right to his services be equally perfect, his remedy to enforce such right is very different. In the one case, he may resort to force to compel compliance; in the other, he is driven to a suit for damages.

Again: Every capitalist holds property in his fellow men to the extent of the profits of his capital, or income. The only income possibly resulting from capital, is the result of the property which capital bestows on its owners, in the labor of other people. In our first three chapters we attempt to explain this.

All civilized society recognizes, and, in some measure, performs the obligation to support and provide for all human beings, whether natives or foreigners, who are unable to provide for themselves. Hence poor-houses, &c.

Hence all men hold valuable property, actual or contingent, in the services of each other.

If, Mr. Garrison, this be the only difficulty to be adjusted between North and South, we are sure that your little pet, Disunion, "living will linger, and lingering will die."

When Mr. Andrews and you have quite "expelled human nature," dissolved and disintegrated society, and reduced mankind to separate, independent, but conflicting monads, or human atoms--then, and not till then, will you establish the 'sovereignty of the individual,' and destroy the property of man in man.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

THE "COUP DE GRACE" TO ABOLITION.

The Abolitionists are all willing to admit that free society has utterly failed in Europe, but will a.s.sign two reasons for that failure--"Excess of population, and want of equality and liberty."

Were the population of England doubled, the labor required to support that population would be lessened, could all labor and expenses be supported alike; because the a.s.sociation and division of labor might be rendered more perfect, and the expenses of a single family, or single individual, might be divided among and borne by many. The Socialists and Abolitionists understand this. When one family has to support its own school, its own mill, its own mechanics, its own doctor, parson, &c., living is expensive; but where these and other expenses are divided among many, living becomes cheap; hence it is far less laborious to live in a densely settled country than in a spa.r.s.ely settled one, if labor and expenses can be equally divided. The soil of England will readily support double its population, if its products be not wasted in luxury, in feeding deer, and game, and horses. England has not attained that density of population which enables men to live by the least amount of labor. Her laboring population has been thinned and labor rendered dearer and scarcer, by emigration, of late years, to America, California and Australia--yet, in the winter of 1854, there was a general outbreak and riot of her operatives, because a fall in prices occasioned a large number of her factories to stop work, and turn their hands out of employment. This happens every day in free society, from the bankruptcy of employers, or from the glut of markets and fall of prices. We will add, that a meeting of the working men of New York, in the Park, a.s.serted that there were 50,000 working men and women, in that city, out of employment last winter.

The compet.i.tive system (so injurious to the laboring cla.s.s) is carried out with less exception or restriction in America than in Europe. Hence, considering the spa.r.s.eness of our population, the laboring cla.s.s are worse off in New York, Philadelphia and Boston, than in London, Manchester or Paris. And this begets more Socialists in the higher cla.s.ses, and more mobs, riots and trade-unions, with the laborers, than in Europe.

Finally, if it be excess of numbers, or want of liberty, that occasions the failure of free society, why are our Abolitionists and Socialists so hot and so active in upsetting and re-organizing society? They have p.r.o.nounced, with entire unanimity, that free society is intolerable, whether a country be densely or spa.r.s.ely settled.

The Abolitionists boast, that lands are dearer and labor cheaper in free than in slave society. Either proposition contains the admission that free laborers work more for others and less for themselves than slaves--in effect, that they are less free than slaves. The profits of land are what the land-owner appropriates of the results of work of the laborer. Where he appropriates most, and leaves the laborer least, there lands are dearest, labor cheapest, and laborers least free. In Europe, lands sell much higher than at the North; hence, laborers are less free in fact than at the North. In the North they sell higher than in the South, because the slaves consume more of the results of their own labor than laborers at the North, and leave less profit to the land-owner. The high price of land is, in the general, an unerring indication of the poverty and actual slavery of the laboring cla.s.s. Its low price, equally proves that the laborers, whether called slaves or freemen, work more for themselves, and less for the land-owners, than where lands are dear.

In settled countries, where all the lands are appropriated, this theory is undeniable and irrefutable.

As this is a short chapter, we take the opportunity to apologize and account for our discursive, immethodical and unartistic manner.

In the first place, the character of the enemy we have to contend with prevents anything like regular warfare. They are divided into hundreds of little guerrilla bands of isms, each having its peculiar partizan tactics, and we are compelled to vary our mode of attack from regular cannonade to bush-fighting, to suit the occasion.

Again, we practiced as a jury lawyer for twenty-five years, and thereby acquired an inveterate habit of c.u.mulation and iteration, and of various argument and ill.u.s.tration. But, at the same time, we learned how "to make out our case," and to know when it is "made out." The lawyer who observed the Unities in an argument before a jury would be sure to lose his cause; and now the world is our jury, who are going to bring in a verdict against free society of "guilty."

We admire not the pellucid rivulet, that murmurs and meanders, in cramped and artificial current, through the park and gardens of the n.o.bleman; but we do admire the flooded and swollen Mississippi, whose turbid waters, in their majestic course, sweep along upon their bosom, with equal composure, the occupants of the hen-roost and the poultry yard, the flocks, the herds, the crops, the uprooted forest, and the residences of man. The Exhaustive, not the Artistic, is what we would aspire to. And yet, the Exhaustive may be the highest art of argument.

The best mode, we think, of writing, is that in which facts, and argument, and rhetoric, and wit, and sarcasm, succeed each other with rapid iteration.

Intonuere poli, et crebris micat ignibus aether!

Again, Artistic execution is un-English. It neither suits their minds nor their tastes. Discursiveness and prurient exuberancy of thought and suggestion, they often possess, but always fail when they attempt a literary or other work of Art. Indeed, we have a strong suspicion that Art went out of the world about the time the Baconian Philosophy came in.

A continuous argument, without pause or break, on a subject profoundly metaphysical, equally fatigues the writer and the reader. n.o.body likes it, and very few read it. "Desipere in loco" is not only a very agreeable maxim to the author, but a very wise and prudent one.

Lastly. Like Porthos, when "we have an idea," we are at once seized with a feverish anxiety to communicate it, and we think it better to break in on the regular thread of our discourse, and do so at once, than to spoil our whole discourse by having our minds occupied with two subjects at a time.

Another idea strikes us. As yet we hardly aspire to the dignity of authorship. We indulge in abandon, because, as a writer, we have no reputation to jeopard or to lose. But, should this book take, we will mount the ant.i.thetical stilts of auctorial dignity--write a book as stale and dry as "the remainder biscuit after a long voyage," and as free from originality, wit, thought or suggestiveness, as the Queen's Speech, the President's Message, or a debate in the United States Senate. We do not as yet bore the world with "respectable stupidity,"

because our position does not authorize it.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

NATIONAL WEALTH, INDIVIDUAL WEALTH, LUXURY AND ECONOMY.

It is a common theory with political economists, that national wealth is but the sum of individual wealth, and that as individual wealth increases, national wealth increases, _pari pa.s.su_.

We think this theory false and pernicious, and the more so because it is plausible.

All profit-bearing possessions or capital, tend to exonerate their owners from labor, and to throw the labor that supports society on a part only of its members. Now, as almost all wealth is the product of labor, this diminution of labor diminishes wealth, or, at least, increases poverty, by placing heavier burdens on the laboring cla.s.s.

This, however, is a very small part of the evil effects of individual wealth. Society requires it of the rich to live according to their income, to fare sumptuously, to have costly dress, furniture, equipage, houses, &c., and to keep many servants.

Their incomes are spent in luxuries, and thousands of laborers are taken off from the production of necessaries to produce those luxuries, or to wait on their owners. Thus, the burden of the support of society, so far as the ordinary comforts and necessaries of life are concerned, are thrown on fewer and fewer, as private wealth and luxury increase. It requires a thousand pauper laborers to sustain one millionaire, and without them his capital will produce no profit. This accounts for the great numbers and excessive poverty of the ma.s.s in England. Half the boasted capital of England, probably two-thirds of it, is but a mortgage of the bones and sinews of the laborers, now and forever, to the capitalists. The national debt, stocks of all kinds, money at interest, and indeed all debts, represent this sort of private wealth, which is national poverty.

Sumptuous houses, parks, and all establishments that are costly to sustain and keep up, and do not facilitate, but check the production of necessaries, are also part of private wealth, and of national poverty.

Four-fifths of the private wealth of England, and half of that of our Northeast, is a severe tax on labor, and a constant preventive of the acc.u.mulation of national wealth.

Private wealth at the South consists chiefly in negro laborers, and improvements of land, that increase its productive capacities. Fine enclosures, improved stock, good granaries, and machines and implements for farming, comfortable negro cabins, good orchards, &c., are as strictly a part of national, as of individual wealth. Not so with the costly private dwellings in our Northern cities. The expense of building, of repairing, of furnishing, and of keeping servants for their owners or tenants, is a constant drawback from productive industry, increases the burdens of the laboring poor, and diminishes national wealth. The poverty-stricken fields of New England are the necessary consequence of the luxurious expenditure in her cities. Yet that luxury is no part of national wealth, but a constant tax on it, whilst unproved farms const.i.tute almost three-fourths of all her real wealth, for they feed and clothe mankind.

This is a most interesting subject; one which we have not mastered, or, if we had, this work on which we are engaged is not the proper one for its full discussion and exposition. We merely throw out a few suggestions for the consideration of the thinking and ingenuous. If we are right, luxury is the greatest sin against society; economy and industry, the chiefest of social virtues.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

GOVERNMENT A THING OF FORCE, NOT OF CONSENT.

We do not agree with the authors of the Declaration of Independence, that governments "derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." The women, the children, the negroes, and but few of the non-property holders were consulted, or consented to the Revolution, or the governments that ensued from its success. As to these, the new governments were self-elected despotisms, and the governing cla.s.s self-elected despots. Those governments originated in force, and have been continued by force. All governments must originate in force, and be continued by force. The very term, government, implies that it is carried on against the consent of the governed. Fathers do not derive their authority, as heads of families, from the consent of wife and children, nor do they govern their families by their consent. They never take the vote of the family as to the labors to be performed, the moneys to be expended, or as to anything else. Masters dare not take the vote of slaves, as to their government. If they did, constant holiday, dissipation and extravagance would be the result. Captains of ships are not appointed by the consent of the crew, and never take their vote, even in "doubling Cape Horn." If they did, the crew would generally vote to get drunk, and the ship would never weather the cape. Not even in the most democratic countries are soldiers governed by their consent, nor is their vote taken on the eve of battle. They have some how lost (or never had) the "inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness;" and, whether Americans or Russians, are forced into battle, without and often against their consent. The ancient republics were governed by a small cla.s.s of adult male citizens, who a.s.sumed and exercised the government, without the consent of the governed. The South is governed just as those ancient republics were. In the county in which we live, there are eighteen thousand souls, and only twelve hundred voters. But we twelve hundred, the governors, never asked and never intend to ask the consent of the sixteen thousand eight hundred whom we govern. Were we to do so, we should soon have an "organized anarchy."

The governments of Europe could not exist a week without the positive force of standing armies.

They are all governments of force, not of consent. Even in our North, the women, children, and free negroes, const.i.tute four-fifths of the population; and they are all governed without their consent. But they mean to correct this gross and glaring iniquity at the North. They hold that all men, women, and negroes, and smart children, are equals, and ent.i.tled to equal rights. The widows and free negroes begin to vote in some of those States, and they will have to let all colors and s.e.xes and ages vote soon, or give up the glorious principles of human equality and universal emanc.i.p.ation.

The experiment which they will make, we fear, is absurd in theory, and the symptoms of approaching anarchy and agrarianism among them, leave no doubt that its practical operation will be no better than its theory.

Anti-rentism, "vote-myself-a-farm" ism, and all the other isms, are but the spattering drops that precede a social deluge.

Abolition ultimates in "Consent Government;" Consent Government in Anarchy, Free Love, Agrarianism, &c., &c., and "Self-elected despotism,"

winds up the play.

If the interests of the governors, or governing cla.s.s, be not conservative, they certainly will not conserve inst.i.tutions injurious to their interests. There never was and never can be an old society, in which the immediate interests of a majority of human souls do not conflict with all established order, all right of property, and all existing inst.i.tutions. Immediate interest is all the ma.s.s look to; and they would be sure to revolutionize government, as often as the situation of the majority was worse than that of the minority. Divide all property to-day, and a year hence the inequalities of property would provoke a re-division.

In the South, the interest of the governing cla.s.s is eminently conservative, and the South is fast becoming the most conservative of nations.