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Title: The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery: how it came into the world and how it shall be made to go out
Author: O'Brien, James Bronterre
Language: English
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HUMAN SLAVERY: HOW IT CAME INTO THE WORLD AND HOW IT SHALL BE MADE TO GO
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[Illustration: Decoration]
[Illustration: J Bronterre]
A man who lived for truth, and truth alone--
Brave as the bravest--generous as brave;
A man whose heart was rent by every moan
That burst from every trodden, tortured slave;
A man prepared to fight, prepared to die,
To lighten, banish, human misery.
The mighty scorned him, vilified, oppressed;
The bitter cup of poverty and pain
Forced him to drink. He was misfortune’s guest
Through weary, weary years; his anguish’d brain
Shed tears of pity--wrath--for Mankind’s woe;
For his own sorrows tears could never flow.
He loved the people with a brother’s love;
He hated tyrants with a tyrant’s hate.
He turned from kings below, to God above--
The King of kings, who smites the wicked great.
The shame, the scourge, the terror of their race,
Those demons in earth’s holy dwelling-place.
Thou noble soul!--around thee gathered those
Who, poor and trampled patriots, were like thee.
Thou art not dead!--thy martyred spirit glows
In us, a band devoted of the free;
We best can celebrate thy natal day,
By virtues, valours, such as marked thy way.
WILLIAM MACCALL.
THE
RISE, PROGRESS, AND PHASES
OF
HUMAN SLAVERY:
HOW IT CAME INTO THE WORLD,
AND HOW IT SHALL BE MADE TO GO OUT.
BY
JAMES BRONTERRE O’BRIEN.
[Illustration: Decoration]
LONDON:
WILLIAM REEVES, 185, FLEET STREET, E.C.
G. STANDRING, 8 AND 9, FINSBURY STREET;
MARTIN BOON, 170, FARRINGDON ROAD, W.C.
SOUTH AFRICA: HAY BROS., WHOLESALE AGENTS, KING WILLIAM’S TOWN.
1885
TO THE PEOPLE!
This little Work, by an eloquent denunciator of the manifold evils of
Profitmongering and Landlordism, whose entire life was devoted to the
advocacy of Social Rights, as distinguished from Socialistic theories,
is now given to the world for the first time in a complete form.
The Author, in his lifetime, was frustrated in his design of finishing
his History through the ceaseless machinations of working-class
exploiters and landlords. This has been at length achieved by the aid
of his various writings preserved in print. The object steadily kept in
view has been to give the _ipsissima verba_ of the Author, so that no
foreign pen may garble or mislead.
In order to provide room for so much additional matter as was essential
to the elucidation of the great reforms needed in the subjects of Land
Nationalisation, Credit, Currency, and Exchange, it has been found
expedient to omit from this edition some disquisitions on subjects of
ephemeral and passing interest, not closely connected with the scope of
the Work. Ample compensation, however, has been given in the additions
which have been made for the elucidation and enforcement of the saving
truths herein contained.
“SPARTACUS.”
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PROLETARIANISM SPRUNG FROM CHATTEL SLAVERY.
Importance of Social Reform--Universality of covert or open
Slavery--Partial Prevalence of Working Class--Origin in
Proletarianism--Advent of Christianity--its Effects on Slavery--Middle
and Working Classes the product of Emancipations--Classification of the
_Proletariat_ 1
CHAPTER II.
ORIGIN OF SLAVERY IN PATERNAL AUTHORITY.
Antiquity of Slavery--anterior to Legal Institution--Examples cited
from Ancient History--Arose from Patriarchal Government--despotic
Power of Head of Family--Marriage Custom of Purchase--Aristocratic
Governments favourable to Development--Decadence under Republics 8
CHAPTER III.
CAUSES OF PARENTAL DESPOTISM.
Evidences from Egypt and Persia--Supreme Authority of Family
Head--First Legal Limitation under Roman Empire--Necessity for gradual
Growth of Slavery--Source of Paternal Riches--Importance of Chief of
Family 13
CHAPTER IV.
INCREASE AND CONSOLIDATION OF SLAVERY.
Sanction given by Law and Public Opinion--Various Causes of
Enslavement--Practices of Ancient Germans--Analogy in Modern Commercial
and Funding Systems and Expatriation of Irish Peasantry--Slavery among
the Jews 19
CHAPTER V.
OPINION OF THE ANCIENT WORLD ON SLAVERY.
Permanence of Slavery under all Revolutions--Ignorance of principle of
Human Equality--Theory and Personal Experience of Plato--Contentment
of Slaves with their Condition--Occasional Comfort and Happiness of
Slaves--Absence of Revolts against Slavery--Social and Political Rights
ignored by Greeks and Romans 26
CHAPTER VI.
UNIVERSALITY OF PUBLIC OPINION AS TO MASTER AND SLAVES.
System acquiesced in by Slave-Class--Insurrections and Rebellions from
other causes than Hatred of Slavery--Rising under Spartacus--conditions
wanting for Success--Contrast of Modern Aspirations after
Freedom--Example from enslaved Roman Citizens--Preference of Slaves for
their Condition 33
CHAPTER VII.
COMPARISON OF ANCIENT AND MODERN SLAVERY.
Forces which overthrew Chattel Slavery--Advantages of Chattel Slaves
over Freedmen and Wages-slaves--Natural Fecundity esteemed a Blessing,
not a Curse--Condition of American Slaves under Slavery 40
CHAPTER VIII.
EXPLOITATION-VALUE OF SLAVE AND FREE LABOUR.
Contrast of Plantation-Servants with British Workpeople--Affluence of
former American Slaves--Misery of Free Labourers and Artisans--Value of
Irish Peasants and English Workers--Free and Slave Children
in America 47
CHAPTER IX.
HISTORY OF EARLY SOCIAL REFORMERS.
Intention of foregoing Contrast--Difficulties of Christian
Revolution, and comparative Facility of coming Ones--Essenes as Early
Reformers--Difficulties in the way of Christian innovations on Pagan
Slavery 54
CHAPTER X.
PROGRESS OF EARLY CHRISTIAN PROPAGANDA.
Opposition from corrupt Slave-Caste--Detestation of Christian
Doctrines by Slave-owners--Incomprehensibility of the new Doctrine
of Equality--Absence of a destitute Free People a Drawback on
Reform--Spread of the New Teachings--Alarm, and Persecution of the New
Faith 61
CHAPTER XI.
THE FOUR GREAT PERSECUTIONS.
Obscurity and Insignificance of Early Reformers their best
Protection--Christians the great Levellers--Nero’s Persecution--The
Blood of the Martyrs the Seed of the Church--Persecution of
Domitian--Martyrdoms under Trajan--Tortures under Antonius 68
CHAPTER XII.
PROGRESS OF PROPAGANDA TO THE TENTH PERSECUTION.
Seven Years’ Persecution of Equalitarian Innovators--Seventh
Great Persecution--Christians charged with Sorcery in Eighth
Persecution--Tortures of Ninth and Tenth Persecutions--Pretended
Conversion of Constantine--Lives of Early Christian exemplars to the
Pagan World 75
CHAPTER XIII.
DEBASEMENT OF THE NEW POWER WHEN SEIZED BY RULERS.
Cost of making the New Ideas triumphant--Change in Character in the
hands of Kings, Courtiers, and Profitmongers--Emancipations become a
matter of Policy and Profit--Repudiation of principles of Fraternity
and Equality--Horrors of introduction of Proletarianism 82
CHAPTER XIV.
SERVICE OF CHRISTIANITY IN BREAKING CASTE-BONDS.
Division of Emancipated Slaves into two Classes of
Proletarians--Equality and Fraternity gave the desire for
Liberty--Inveteracy of Caste-prejudice--Perversion of Christianity
under Constantine--Antagonism of Wages-Slavery and Christianity 89
CHAPTER XV.
FORM OF SLAVERY UNDER MODERN CIVILIZATION.
Persistence of Chattel-Slavery in Eastern Countries--Assumption of form
of Wages-Slavery under Modern Civilization--Creation of Millionaire
Capitalists by present System--Result in Ruin and Starvation of the
Labouring Class--Necessity of repressive Armies and Police--Measures
necessary to secure Social Reform 96
CHAPTER XVI.
REFORMS AS MUCH NEEDED IN AMERICA AND IN COLONIES AS IN EUROPE.
Answer to question, “How is Human Slavery to go out?”--Insufficiency of
mere Political Freedom--Accessibility of Public Lands in new Countries
their chief Advantage--Inadequacy of Universal Suffrage without a
Knowledge of Social Rights--America falling into
same Abyss as Europe 104
CHAPTER XVII.
RELIEF TO UNEMPLOYED OR DESTITUTE A RIGHT--NOT A CHARITY.
Inability of a People ignorant of Social Rights to choose
Representatives--Duties of a wise Democracy--Omnipotency of a Knowledge
of Social Rights--Facility of Application of Social Reforms--Exposition
of the three Provisional Measures necessary 109
CHAPTER XVIII.
GRADUAL RESUMPTION OF PUBLIC LANDS BY THE STATE.
Necessity of Agrarian Reform--Crown Lands, Church Lands, and Corporation
Lands to be immediately resumed, and their Rent applied to the relief of
Taxation--The Rich have no right to meddle with them--Needed by the
exploited Millions, as a Fulcrum to raise them from the Earth 115
CHAPTER XIX.
NATIONAL DEBT A MORTGAGE ON REALISED PROPERTY.
Necessity for Adjustment of Public and Private Debts--Their
overwhelming Burden must result in Civil War--Third Resolution the
only Remedy--Opinion of Cobbett--Enormous Increase of Debt through
Improvements in Manufactures--Only just Claims of Public and Private
Creditors 120
CHAPTER XX.
NATIONAL LANDS AND CREDIT FOR THE USE OF THE PEOPLE.
Unjust Laws to enable the Few to deprive the Working Class of their
Earnings--Private Property in Land the Basis of Wages-Slavery--Raw
Materials of Wealth belong to all--Land and Money Lords govern the
World--Right of Working Class to the Use of Credit--Surplus of Earnings
of Working Class beyond Consumption the Source of all Capital 126
CHAPTER XXI.
NATIONAL SYSTEM OF CURRENCY AND EXCHANGE REQUIRED.
Inadequacy and Absurdity of present Medium of Exchange--Necessity of
new National Currency for the Home Trade--Example from Iron Currency of
Sparta--Labour Notes of Guernsey--Gold and Silver mere Commodities--All
four Reforms must be combined 134
CHAPTER XXII.
EVIL OF MONOPOLIES AND EXPLOITATION OF INDUSTRIES.
False principle of Law-made Property--Absurdity of Funding System
and Borrowing from Investors--Evil of Public Works in hands of
Profitmongers and Speculators--Rapacity of Predatory Classes--Efforts
of Robespierre to abolish their nefarious System--his legal
Assassination in consequence--All the evils of Society the work of
Landlords and Profitmongers 143
THE
RISE, PROGRESS, AND PHASES
OF
HUMAN SLAVERY.
CHAPTER I.
PROLETARIANISM SPRUNG FROM CHATTEL SLAVERY.
Importance of Social Reform--Universality of Covert or
Open Slavery--Partial Prevalence of Working Class--Origin
in Proletarianism--Advent of Christianity--Its Effects
on Slavery--Middle and Working Classes the Produce of
Emancipations--Classification of the _Proletariat_.
At this critical period of the world’s history, when either the whole
of society must undergo a peaceful Social Reformation that shall
strike at the root of abuses, or else be incessantly menaced with
revolutionary violence and anarchy, it becomes a subject of grave
interest to ascertain how Human Slavery came into the world; how it
has been propagated; wherefore it has been endured so long; the varied
phases it has assumed in modern times; and, finally, how it may be
successfully grappled with and extinguished, so that henceforth it may
exist only in the history of the past.
Glancing over the world’s map, we find nearly all the inhabited
parts parcelled out into various nations and races--some called
civilized, some savage, and the rest, forming the greater part, in some
intermediate state of semi-barbarism. One sad feature, however, is
found, with hardly an exception, to belong to all. It is Slavery, in
one form or another;--it is the subjection of man to his fellow-man by
force or fraud. Yes, disguise it as we may, human slavery is everywhere
to be found--as rife in countries called Christian and civilized as
in those called barbarous and pagan--as rife in the western as in the
eastern hemisphere--as rife in the middle of the nineteenth century
as in the pagan days of the Ptolemies and the Pharaohs. The only
difference is, it is in the one case slavery direct and avowed; in the
other, slavery hypocritically masked under legal forms. The latter is
the phase slavery has assumed in countries calling themselves Christian
and civilized; but it is a slavery not the less galling and unbearable
because it is indirect and disguised.
What are called the “Working Classes” are the slave populations of
civilized countries. These classes constitute the basis of European
society in particular and of all civilized societies in general. We
make this restriction, because there are societies in which there is
found nothing to correspond with what in England and France are called
the working classes. For example, they are unknown in Arabia, amongst
the Nomad tribes of Africa, the Red-Indians of America, and the hunter
tribes of Tartary; and, although in process of development, they are
comparatively “few and far between” in Russia, Turkey, Greece and,
indeed, throughout the nations of the East in general.
Amongst those who write books and deliver speeches about the working
classes, few concern themselves to note this peculiarity in their
history, namely, the fact that they exist in some countries and not in
others; and the no less startling fact, that it is only at particular
epochs of history, and only under certain peculiar circumstances of
society, that they have been known to spring into social existence as
a distinctive class. Books, journals, pamphlets, essays, speeches,
sermons, Acts of Parliament, all are alike silent upon this notable
fact. Nobody dreams of inquiring whether the working classes do, or do
not, constitute a separate and distinct race in the countries they are
found in; or of asking themselves what cause or causes produced them
at particular epochs and in certain climes, while they continue to be
unknown at other epochs and in other climes; and why we find them, as
it were, sown broadcast in one country, while they appear but emerging
into doubtful existence in other countries. In truth, the history of
the middle and working classes has still to be written; and though it
is far from our present purpose to undertake any such task, we shall,
nevertheless, of necessity have to draw largely upon history for the
elucidation of the facts and arguments by which we shall support our
views upon the subject of slavery.
Not to encumber the question with details which, however interesting
to antiquarians and scholars, would be out of place here, let us
briefly observe at once, that the working classes, however general
and extensive an element they constitute in modern society, are,
nevertheless, but an emanation from another element, much more
extensive and general, bequeathed to us by the ancient world under the
name of Proletarians. By the term Proletarians is to be understood,
not merely that class of citizens to which the electoral census of the
Romans gave the name, but every description of persons of both sexes
who, having no masters to own them as slaves, and consequently to be
chargeable with their maintenance, and who, being without fortune
or friends, were obliged to procure their subsistence as they best
could--by labour, by mendicity, by theft, or by prostitution. The
Romans used the term to denote the lowest, or lowest but one, class of
voters--those who, being without property, had only their offspring
(_proles_) to offer as hostages to the State for their good behavior,
or rather as guarantees for not abusing their rights of citizenship. We
use the term in the more enlarged sense of its modern acceptation, to
denote every description of persons who are dependent upon others for
the means of earning their daily bread, without being actual slaves.
In the early periods of history, and, indeed, until some time after
the introduction of Christianity, the Proletarians constituted a very
small fraction of society. The reason is obvious. Actual slaves and
their owners formed the bulk of every community. The few Proletarians
of the old Pagan world were either decayed families who had lost the
patrimonies of their fathers, or else the descendants of manumitted
slaves, who, in succeeding to the condition of freemen (acquired for
them by their enfranchised forefathers), succeeded also to their
poverty and precarious tenure of life, by inheriting the disadvantage
of having no patrons bound to protect them, no masters answerable for
their maintenance, no market for their labour. But as such manumissions
were, before the establishment of Christianity, comparatively of rare
occurrence, and as the offspring of them were as likely to be absorbed
in time by the slave-owning class as to sink into and swell the
Proletarian, the result was, that until the times of Augustus Cæsar,
and indeed for a considerable period after, the Proletarians were by
no means a numerous class. In other words, there were comparatively
few upon whom the necessity was imposed of obtaining a precarious
subsistence by hired labour, mendicity, theft, or prostitution. Almost
all kinds of labour, agricultural and mechanical, were performed
by slaves; masters had, therefore, little or no occasion to hire
“free labourers.” Prostitution was followed as a profession only by
courtesans who were freed-women or the offspring of freed-women. The
slave class who were devoted to that degradation were either the
property of masters (of whose households they formed part) or else of
mangones, or slave-merchants, who openly sold them or let them out on
hire for that purpose. Of beggars and thieves there could have been
comparatively few, for the same reasons the conditions of society, as
then constituted, did not make place for them. As already observed,
almost every one was either an actual slave or an owner of slaves.
If a slave-owner, he lived upon the revenues of his estates--upon
his possessions, of which his slaves constituted a part, often the
greater part. If a slave, his wants were supplied, and his necessities
provided for, by those to whom he belonged. If a predial slave, he was
kept out of the produce of his master’s farms, just as the herds and
flocks were kept, both being regarded alike in the light of chattel
property. If a domestic slave, his keep was a necessary part of his
master’s household expenses. If let out for hire (an ordinary condition
of ancient slavery), a portion of his gains was of necessity applied
to his own maintenance. In any case--in all cases--he was exempt from
want, and from the fear of want, as well as from all care and anxiety
about providing for his subsistence. He could not, it is true, earn
wages or acquire property for himself without his master’s leave; but
neither, on the other hand, was he liable to starvation or privation
because there might happen to be no work for him to do. Work or no
work, he was always sure to be well fed, well housed, well clothed,
and well cared for, as long as his master had enough and was satisfied
with him. If he was incapable of acquiring property, so was he also
exempt from its cares, and sure to participate in the use of his
master’s, at least to the extent requisite for keeping him in bodily
health and in good condition. Nor were slaves always debarred from the
acquisition of property. There are instances recorded of slaves having
been permitted to amass considerable fortunes, though this was rarely
the case till after their masters manumitted them. Some also became
celebrated as grammarians, poets, and teachers of _belles lettres_ and
philosophy. Indeed, when they happened to have good, kind masters their
lot was by no means a hard one;--it was an enviable one in comparison
with that of a modern “free-born Briton,” rejoicing in the status
of an “independent labourer.” Of this we shall adduce proofs enough
by-and-by. Suffice it, for the present, to observe, that so well must
slaves have been used to fare under the old pagan system, that terms
corresponding with our “wanton,” “saucy,” “pampered,” are of frequent
occurrence in the old Greek and Roman classics as applied to slaves,
particularly domestic or menial. At all events, destitution, in the
modern sense, was unknown to them; and, with it, were also unknown
its inevitable consequences--mendicity, robbery, theft, prostitution,
and crime--_as characteristic of a class or of a system_. Individual
or isolated cases there might be, and these chiefly amongst the
manumitted; but there was no large class of persons subsisting by such
means--no outlawed class compelled, as it were, by the very first law
of nature--self-preservation--to erect such means into a system in
order to preserve life.
Social evils there were--frightful evils--under the old pagan system.
Slavery itself was an evil--an appalling evil--under even its most
favourable conditions. But fearful as those evils were--hateful as
direct slavery must ever be while man is man--the ancient pagan
world has exhibited nothing so revolting and truly abominable as the
development and progress of Proletarianism, which was consequent upon
the breaking up of the old system of slavery, and which has ever since
gained more and more strength in every age, till, in our times, it has
made Proletarians of three-fourths of the people of every civilized
country, and threatens society itself with actual dissolution.
Strange that what God designed to be man’s greatest blessing should
be made man’s greatest curse by man’s own perversity! Yet so it is
with almost every good thing designed or invented to perfect man in
wisdom and civilization. It is so with science and machinery, it is
so with money; it is so with public credit; it is so with mercantile
enterprise; it is so with the institution of private property; and so,
also, it has hitherto been with the divine institution of Christianity
itself.
Christianity was introduced into the world at a period when the cup of
human wickedness was full to overflowing. The inequalities of human
condition were then greater than at any antecedent epoch. Wars the most
bloody and brutal, and on the most extensive scale, had just ravaged
the whole civilized world, ending with the destruction of the Roman
Republic and with the erection of a military empire which threatened
all nations and all future generations with irredeemable bondage. The
long internecine struggles of Marius and Sylla, of Julius Cæsar and
Pompey, and afterwards of Anthony and Augustus, had crimsoned three
parts of the globe with human blood, and let loose such a universal
torrent of rapine, lust, proscriptions, conspiracy, and crime of every
sort throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa, that hardly any nation or
people escaped the general demoralization. Direct human slavery--the
personal subjection of man to man as property--was at its height as a
social institution. Thousands and hundreds of thousands who had been
free citizens were taken prisoners and sold as slaves during those
horrid wars. To escape similar disasters, whole nations and races
without number placed themselves under the protectorate of Rome,
paid tribute to the imperial exchequer, and basely bartered their
independence and the rights and liberties of their subjects to win the
smiles or to court the pleasure of Augustus and his successors. Rome
herself was a mass of incarnadined corruption. To reconcile the Romans
to their newly forged fetters it became the policy of their government
to brutalize their minds with gladiatorial shows, or with the familiar
sight of human beings torn to pieces by wild beasts, or by shedding
each other’s blood with a ferocity unknown to wild beasts, and to
corrupt their hearts and manners with importations of all that was most
debasing in the systematized lewdness and debaucheries of the Grecian
stage.
It was at this peculiar crisis of human affairs that Christianity
made its appearance in the world. Need we say the divine mission of
its Author was to rescue humanity from the scourges we have been
describing, to bind up its bleeding wounds, and to infuse into it
a spirit the opposite of what had produced the appalling vices and
evils so rife at the time of His advent? Need we expatiate upon the
marvellous successes which attended the labours of Himself and his
apostles in the early propagation of the Gospel, or upon the amazing
revolution which His followers wrought in the minds of men during the
three first centuries? It is quite unnecessary to do so: history has
made the world familiar with the prodigies of those days. Suffice it to
say that anything like so extraordinary and so universal a revolution
in the opinions and manners of men had never before been conceived,
much less operated. Upon this point, at least, all historians of credit
and all true philosophers are agreed.
Amongst the greatest of these marvels was the gradual but rapid
extinction of direct human slavery, which took place throughout
the greater part of the Roman empire during the three first ages.
Antecedently to the preaching of the Gospel, the emancipation of slaves
was but of rare and casual occurrence: it happened only on those
unusual occasions when a slave could purchase his freedom, or get
somebody to purchase it for him; or when a benevolent owner conferred
it upon him as the reward of long and faithful services; or when he
broke loose from his owner, to become a pirate or bandit; or when
some ambitious chieftain or conspirator conferred it illegally, by
draughting him into his insurgent battalions. But how few the aggregate
of these emancipations were, even in the early days of the empire, we
may infer from a passage in Seneca, where he tells us that, upon the
occasion of a discussion in the senate upon sumptuary laws, a certain
senator, having proposed that all slaves should be forced to wear a
certain uniform, was immediately reminded of the danger there would be
in furnishing the slaves with so ready a means of contrasting their own
numbers with the paucity of their masters. Indeed, Tacitus also informs
us, that when the quæstor, Curtius Lupus, was dispersing a revolt of
slaves which took place in Italy about the twenty-fourth year of the
vulgar era, “Rome trembled at the frightful number of the slaves,”
as compared with the small number of free citizens--a number which,
Tacitus further states, was diminishing every day. It would be easy to
multiply proofs of this kind, but it is unnecessary, seeing that all
historians admit that no emancipation of slaves upon a large scale--no
systematic emancipations upon principle--took place antecedently to
the introduction of Christianity; but that from the moment when the
Gospel began to take root in Rome and in its tributary provinces--from
that moment the manumissions of slaves began to take place frequently
and systematically, till at last, upon the complete establishment of
Christianity, direct personal slavery was entirely abolished.
Here, however, the perversity of man stepped in, to undo all that
Christianity had done. The very emancipations it operated, and which
it intended for the happiness of the emancipated, and to serve as
the foundation of a new social edifice, in which all should enjoy
equal rights and equal laws--these very emancipations were made a
curse instead of a blessing to the emancipated, and to serve for the
foundation of a worse system of slavery than any that was known under
the Cæsars or the Pharaohs, or than any that existed in the Southern
States of America or under any Oriental despotism.
Yes, the perverse ingenuity of man has turned the systematic and
benevolent emancipations operated by Christianity into an evil greater
than the evil it sought to redress--into an indirect and masked system
of slavery more hideous and unbearable than the direct and undisguised
slavery it warred against. For what did these Christian emancipations
operate; and what have been their consequences to humanity? They
turned well-fed, well-housed, comfortable slaves into ragged, starving
paupers; and their consequences have been to fill Europe with a race of
Proletarians by far more numerous and miserable than the human chattels
of the ancients, whose place they occupy in modern civilization.
Out of the systematic emancipations (the progressive and ultimately
universal manumission of slaves) operated by Christianity have sprung
what are now called the middle and working classes. The more fortunate
of the manumitted and of their posterity have become our modern
Bourgeois; the less fortunate and more numerous have become our modern
Proletarians. These latter are what the French call _le Prolétariat
de l’Europe_; and this _Prolétariat_ their Guizots and doctrinaires
now divide into the four following classes, which we pray all true
democrats to mark, learn, and inwardly digest:--1, les Ouvriers; 2,
les Mendians; 3, les Voleurs; and 4, les Filles Publiques: that is
to say, 1, Workmen; 2, Beggars; 3, Robbers; and 4, Prostitutes!--a
classification which must be highly flattering to the operative class,
and enamour them vastly of royal and doctrinaire governments.
These several divisions of the _Prolétariat_ are thus defined by the
doctrinaires:--
“A workman is a Proletarian who works for wages in order to live.
“A beggar is a Proletarian who will not or cannot work, and who
begs in order to live.
“A robber is a Proletarian who will neither work nor beg, but who
robs or steals in order to live.
“A public woman is a Proletarian who will neither work nor beg nor
steal, but who prostitutes herself in order to live.”
Such is the classification by which the vast majority of civilized
society is nowadays distinguished by writers of the first eminence!
Such is the classification they justify and would uphold! Nay, as
we shall show, they offer it to us as the legitimate development of
civilization, and as a just and righteous inheritance purchased for us
by the blood of our Redeemer, and bequeathed to us through eighteen
centuries of Gospel propagandism!!!
[Illustration: Decoration]
CHAPTER II.
ORIGIN OF SLAVERY IN PATERNAL AUTHORITY.
Antiquity of Slavery--Anterior to Legal Institution--Examples
cited from Ancient History--Arose from Patriarchal
Government--Despotic Power of Head of Family--Marriage
Custom of Purchase--Aristocratic Governments favourable to
Development--Decadence under Republics.
In the preceding chapter we have shown how the modern working classes
sprang from the ancient Proletarians; how the Proletarians arose out
of the downfall of the ancient system of _direct_ slavery; and how
Christianity was mainly instrumental in bringing about the manumission
of slaves in the Roman empire, and thence throughout western Europe.
The Proletarians, past and present, are but the descendants and
successors of the manumitted slaves, and of decayed families of the
ancient master-class; and, as observed in our last chapter, the modern
classification of them by writers of the Guizot school is--WORKPEOPLE,
ROBBERS, BEGGARS, and PROSTITUTES.
All who have escaped this classification are such descendants or
successors of the ancient freedmen as have found their way into
the class of burgesses, consisting of merchants, manufacturers,
professionals, and money-dealers of all sorts. Of the remainder, by
far the greater number fall within the description of work-people:
these are the wages-slaves of modern civilization. Direct slavery was,
then, the parent of Proletarianism; and Proletarianism the parent
of wages-slavery. But how did direct slavery itself originate--the
personal slavery of man to man? Was it instituted? Was it the creature
of law, or of conventional compact? Upon this point the concurrent
testimony of history and of philosophy is unanimous: it goes to show
that slavery was not a public institution originally framed by human
laws, but that it was what the Americans call a _domestic_ institution
originating in the despotic authority of parents over their offspring
in the very infancy of society. This origin necessarily supposes
slavery to have been amongst the earliest, if not the very earliest,
of human institutions--to have been coeval with the institution of
society itself. In point of fact, it appears to have been so. Tracing
history back to its fountain-heads, before systems came to disturb
them, we discover a countless variety of unmistakable signs to show
that two distinct classes, not to say races, made up the aggregate of
souls in every ancient community of which history makes mention. One
is the master-class; the other, the slave-class. The first possesses;
the second is possessed. This aboriginal condition of humanity appears,
as an historical fact, universal. There is no ancient tradition, there
is no authentic record purporting to be history, that does not make
mention of masters and slaves.
There were masters and slaves amongst the ancient Hebrews, the proofs
of which are abundantly scattered throughout the Old Testament and
in Josephus’s “History of the Antiquities of the Jews.” There were
masters and slaves amongst the Greeks in the remotest periods of
their annals. This is shown by numerous passages in Homer’s “Iliad”
and “Odyssey;”--as, for instance, in book xxi. of the “Iliad,” where
Achilles boasts to Lycaon of the captives he had taken, and sold into
slavery; and in book xxii. of the “Odyssey,” where Euryclea, the
governess of Ulysses’ household, says to him, “You have in your house
fifty female slaves, whom I have taught to work in wool-spinning, and
to support their servitude.” That masters and slaves existed at every
epoch of the Roman republic and empire is evident from the testimony of
every ancient classic whose writings or recorded sayings are extant.
The Institutes of Justinian make slavery expressly a subject of
legislation. That the relation of master and slave obtained in ancient
Gaul and in ancient Germany we have abundant evidences in Cæsar’s
Commentaries and in several passages to be found in Tacitus’s treatise
“De Moribus Germanorum.” Indeed, masters and slaves are known to have
existed in France as late as the twelfth century, and in Prussia as
late as one hundred years ago, as may be seen by the General Code of
the Prussian States, published in 1794. Masters and slaves are still
to be found in all Mahomedan countries, throughout the kingdoms of the
East generally, and (tell it not in Gath!), until lately, in several of
the republics of the United States of America.
But it is superfluous to insist upon the existence of a fact, the
proofs of which are to be found in all ages and countries--in the
oldest codes as well as in the oldest books, in the most ancient
legends of poets as well as in the best accredited traditions of
history. Indeed, the institution of direct or personal slavery is so
ancient, that its origin is lost in the night of ages, and is nowhere
accounted for. It appears to have been coeval with the origin of
society itself. Wherever we find the beginning of civil institutions
recorded, there we find slavery already established. Moses founded the
institutions of the Jews; and slavery is found in the books of Moses.
Homer is prior, by many ages, to the historic times of Greece; and
slavery is found in the books of Homer. The “Twelve Tables” are the
basis of Roman institutions; and Romulus, long anterior to the “Twelve
Tables,” opened an asylum at Rome to receive the runaway slaves of
Laticum. At later epochs, the Salic law, the feudal and forest laws,
the common or traditionary law of the Saxons, Thuringians, Germans,
and Anglo-Saxons, are the starting points of the institutions of
most modern nations; and slavery is found in all the codes of the
invaders--it is expressly mentioned or tacitly assumed in all. Let us
note it here as an important consideration, that in all these monuments
of legislation, whether poetic or historic, slavery is not treated
as a thing instituted for the first time; it is only made incidental
mention of as a pre-existing thing, already acknowledged, accepted,
established; it was what the French call _un fait accompli_--a settled
fact. Moses, Homer, the “Twelve Tables,” the mediæval laws of
invasion, do not institute or found slavery; they but bear testimony
to its existence, either by incidental mention of it, or by imposing
new conditions to regulate the relation of master and slaves; in short,
they only go to show that slavery _was_ before they _were_, or, in
other words, that slavery was not (to use the language of jurists) the
work of positive law, but a “great fact” anterior to all law, and as
old as the origin of society itself.
The aboriginal character of slavery admitted, it remains to be
shown, wherefore did society, in its infancy, establish slavery; or,
rather, by what _modus operandi_ was slavery made to develop itself
in aboriginal society. History, reason, our very instincts, tell us
there is but one satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon. It arose
from the unbounded power which fathers, or the heads of families,
exercised, in early days, over their households--wives, concubines,
and children. All history is unanimous as to the fact that fathers
exercised a supreme authority over their offspring in the early ages
of the world. The same fact is found still to obtain amongst races
retaining primitive customs. Evidences to this effect are to be
abundantly met with in the Bible, in the Greek tragedians, in the
legislation of the Romans, in Asiatic traditions. All go to prove
that parental authority was bounded only by parental will,--that it
extended even to the power of life and death over their offspring. The
old pagans, in order to give the highest idea of the power of Jupiter,
call him the “father of the gods.” For no other reason have Jews and
Christians, in like manner, named God the All-Powerful Father. Paternal
authority was so absolute and extensive in primitive times, that it
suffered no other, co-ordinate or paramount: it completely absorbed
the rights and the very existence of wife and children. Out of this
absolute paternal authority did personal slavery first arise. Sons,
daughters, and even wives were but slaves of the head of the family;
they were amongst his chattels--a part of his estate. Aristotle calls
children the “animated tools or instruments of their parents.” In the
days of the patriarchs, paternal authority over children was absolute
amongst the Jews. Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac is one of many proofs
that might be cited. It is evident God would not have ordered a thing
contrary to the positive law--a law ordained by God himself. Moreover,
divers passages in Josephus show in the clearest and most explicit
terms that the absolute authority of fathers over their children
continued undisputed, and to be held sacred, down to the time of Herod
the Great, who was contemporary with the Emperor Augustus of Rome. The
strongest evidence of this is the prosecution of his own two sons,
Alexander and Aristobulus, before Augustus, wherein Herod took great
credit to himself for his moderation in referring the matter to the
emperor, “seeing that, in virtue of his rights as a father, he might
put them to death without any other warrant or authority.” The elder
son, Alexander, in his reply, frankly admitted his father’s right
to give him death as he had given him life. Some years later, this
same Herod exemplified the paternal power of the Jews in a still more
impressive manner. In a speech which he delivered against these same
rebellious sons before an assembly of the notables of his province,
he reminded them that, independently of the law of nature, which gave
him an absolute power of life and death over his offspring, there was
an express law of his nation on the subject, which ordained that when
a father and mother should accuse their children, and lay hands upon
their heads, all parties present should be held bound to _stone_ them;
and that, accordingly, he might, without consulting them, have put
his sons to death without any form of trial whatever, in virtue of
his parental rights. These facts are decisive enough as respects the
Jews. It is to be understood, however, that it was only aristocratic
fathers--fathers amongst the higher orders--that ordinarily exercised
this atrocious despotism over their own families.
The power of fathers over their children was quite as absolute
amongst the early Greeks and Romans as amongst the Jews; and if it
did not descend to so late a period of their annals, it is only
because aristocratic forms gave place sooner to democratic, under
their government, than amongst the Jews. That it existed in full
force at the time of the Trojan war is forcibly demonstrated by the
sacrifice of Iphigenia, which, as an historical fact, is a tradition
corresponding exactly with the sacrifice by Abraham. In Sparta it
prevailed as completely, in the days of Lycurgus, as it did in Judæa
in the patriarchal times. Plutarch relates that, at that epoch, a
sort of family council was usually held upon the birth of a child, to
deliberate whether the newly born should be allowed to live or die.
Even at Athens, where the democratic element prevailed more than at
Sparta, and where humanity and refinement, the offspring of arts and
letters, had made greater progress, the absolute power of parents
was such that, even as late as the age of Solon, the Athenians were
in the habit of selling their children for slaves--a practice which,
Plutarch informs us, there was no law to prohibit. Let us here observe
generally, that it was in the Homeric period that the absoluteness of
parental authority displayed itself with the most vigour in Greece,
and that this period corresponds exactly, in the history of their
comparative legislation, with the patriarchal epoch of the Jews. For
example, daughters were so completely identified with the chattels
or property of their fathers, that their suitors had always to pay a
certain price for marrying and taking them away. Thus, Jacob served
Laban for seven years to obtain his daughter Rachel; and thus, among
the Greeks, Othryon engaged to serve Priam during the siege of Troy, to
obtain his daughter Cassandra without paying a dowry--that is, without
buying her otherwise than by his services. Instances of this kind might
be multiplied; but enough has been said to illustrate our position.
Let us observe, however, as a general rule, that paternal authority
was always greatest in the states most aristocratically constituted,
and always least in those most democratically constituted; and that
the period through which the absoluteness of paternal power prevailed
was longer or shorter, in different countries, just according to the
later or earlier development given to the democratic principle in their
institutions. Such a barbarous power being utterly irreconcilable with
liberty and justice, it could flourish only in times of ignorance and
brute force. As democracy arose, and civilization spread, the parental
despotism declined. It lasted longer in Judæa than in Sparta, and
longer in Sparta than in Athens; because the barbarism of oligarchy
pervaded longer in Judæa than in Sparta, and longer in Sparta than in
Athens.
Amongst the Romans paternal despotism was carried to a fearful height.
Roman legislation abounds in records of it; and her chronicles
confirm all that is revealed to us by her legislatures. Dionysius
of Halicarnassus tells us of an old law of the Papyrian Code which
authorised fathers to kill and to sell their children. The Code of
Justinian also makes mention of it. But the despotic authority of
Roman fathers over their children is an historical fact, sufficiently
familiar to most readers to dispense with the necessity of further
proofs. It was one of the darkest traits of their legislation and
national character, and it doubtless had no small share in imparting
to their republic those harsh and overbearing qualities which involved
them in perpetual broils amongst themselves and in endless wars of
aggression against their neighbours.
To this barbarous and despotic power of parents over their offspring--a
power extending over their whole lifetime--a power which applied to
both sexes, and which appears to be coeval with the first existence of
society itself--to this brutal, irrational, and inhuman power are we
doubtless indebted for the origin of all human slavery. In what manner
this despotic power manifested itself, and how the past and present
order of things grew out of it, we shall endeavour to show in future
chapters.
[Illustration: Decoration]
CHAPTER III.
CAUSES OF PARENTAL DESPOTISM.
Evidences from Egypt and Persia--Supreme Authority of Family
Head--First Legal Limitation under Roman Empire--Necessity for
gradual Growth of Slavery--Source of Paternal Riches--Importance
of Chief of the Family.
We stated, in our last chapter, that human slavery, according to the
concurrent testimony of history and philosophy, originated in the
unbounded power which fathers or heads of families exercised, in the
infancy of society, over their household--over wives, concubines, and
children. Of the existence of this power amongst the ancient Jews,
Greeks, and Romans we adduced some remarkable evidences. Similar
evidences abound with respect to Egypt, Persia, Media, Asia Minor,
and, indeed, of every other ancient people of which any traditions
are preserved. The records of the various tribes and nations which
inhabited Asia Minor go to show that the authority of fathers over
their offspring continued to be supreme and absolute even down to a
period not far removed from the Christian era. For example, Xenophon
relates, in his “Anabasis,” how a certain Thracian king, named
Teutes, offered to give him his daughter, and to purchase one of
his (Xenophon’s), if he had any, “according to the law of Thrace.”
Plutarch, in his Life of Lucullus, furnishes similar evidences. He
relates, that during the distress in which the proprietors of Asia
Minor found themselves after the defeat of King Tigranes, those fathers
of families who, upon the arrival of Lucullus, had not wherewith to
satisfy the demands of the Roman tax-collectors, sold their little
children and marriageable daughters. That such things should prevail
under pure despotisms like those of ancient Asia Minor, Egypt, Persia,
&c., or under the patriarchal _régime_ of the Jews, when manners were
primitive and the government a theocracy, is what we might expect in
the natural order of things; but that they should occur under the more
democratic and polished governments of Greece and Rome is what appears
astonishing to our modern notions; yet so it was. The authority of
paternity was no less supreme in the later than in the older countries.
The early annals of Rome exhibit some glaring but curious instances of
it, which, taken in connection with the revelations of later times,
not only render the fact undoubted, but will account for many of the
harsher qualities of the Romans, and, at the same time, strengthen
our theory of human slavery. Going back to the very cradle of the
Romans, we find that, when Rhea was delivered of Romulus and Remus,
Amulius, her uncle, ordered the immediate exposure of the infants.
This Roman fact corresponds with the exposure of Moses in Egypt, and
with the Greek legend which describes Œdipus as having been similarly
exposed and found suspended from a tree by the feet. Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, in relating the well-known story of the Horatii, tells
us that the elder Horatius, assuming the defence of his son, the
murderer of his sister, claimed the right of solely taking cognizance
of the affair, inasmuch as his paternal quality constituted him a
born judge of his own children. If we remember aright, Racine, in
his tragedy of the Horatii and Curiatii, follows up the same idea.
Plutarch, in the Life of Publicola, relating the conspiracy of the
Aquilians in favour of the Tarquins, tells us that Junius Brutus in
like manner arrogated the right of jurisdiction in the affair of his
own son, and that he judged, condemned, and caused him to be executed
in virtue of his paternal authority, without any of those judiciary
observances which were adhered to in respect of the other conspirators.
Titus Livius, an earlier and higher authority in such matters than
Plutarch, gives a similar account of this affair.
Down to the times of Sylla, there does not appear to have been any
considerable check or restraint imposed upon paternal power. The
absolute authority of fathers was in some slight degree moderated by
a law of that dictator, known to jurisconsults under the title of
“Lex Cornelia de Sicariis”--a law aimed not so much at the domestic
jurisdiction of fathers, as at the abuse of such jurisdiction for
the purposes of private vengeance. But, that and similar laws
notwithstanding, we find, even under the emperor, examples of domestic
jurisdiction which go to prove that the sovereign authority of
fathers was carried out through every epoch of the civil law. The
philosopher, Seneca, reports the particulars of a process by a great
personage, named Titus Arrius, instituted of his own authority, at his
own domestic tribunal, against his own son. At this process or trial
Augustus himself assisted as a simple witness. Seneca’s account of
this affair, which is brief and to the purpose, is worthy of notice.
“Titus Arrius,” he says, “wishing to judge his son, invited Augustus
to his domestic council. The emperor repaired to this citizen’s
home, took his seat, and gave his presence simply as a witness of an
affair in which he was not concerned. Augustus does not say: ‘Let the
accused be brought before me at my palace;’ that would have been to
arrogate to himself jurisdiction in the matter, and to deprive the
father of his rights. After the cause had been heard--the accusation
and defence--Titus Arrius demanded of each of the council to write
down his judgment.” Tacitus, in like manner, relates that a senator,
named Plautius, sat in judgment upon his own wife, Pomponia Græcina,
who was accused of addicting herself to superstitions. She was tried
before the assembled household, and according to ancient usage.
This happened in the reign of Nero. To these pagan we might add the
Christian authority of Tertullian, who makes mention, at the opening
of his “Apologetica,” of domestic judgments which had just recently
taken place at Rome, and which, like that of Plautius, would seem
to have been directed against the Christians, whose religion, till
the reign of Constantine, was looked upon (to use the language of
Tacitus) as “a deplorable and destructive superstition.” In short,
the despotism of paternal authority appears to have prevailed in Rome
at every epoch of her history, down to the period when paganism lost
its hold upon the population. It is inferred from divers documents
still extant, that the absolute authority of fathers did not disappear
before the end of the third century; and the first law which positively
prohibited fathers from giving, selling, or contracting away their
children is said to be a law of Dioclesian and of Maximian. These laws
are recited in the fourth book of the Justinian Code. Nevertheless,
there is a law of Constantine, whereby the sale of children, in cases
of great poverty or destitution, was made legally permissible. In
truth, paternal despotism, like its offspring, direct slavery, perished
little by little, or by slow degrees. Like direct slavery itself, it
paled and sank before the rising light of the Gospel. The three first
centuries witnessed one continuous struggle of Christianity against
the establishments of paganism. Amongst the worst of these were
parental despotism and personal slavery. As the Gospel gained ground
upon paganism, parental despotism and slavery went down. Towards the
close of the third century, the majority of the better classes of the
Romans had embraced the new faith. Parental despotism and the servile
subjection of man to man being incompatible with that faith, these two
relics of primeval barbarism began rapidly to disappear; and after
the legal establishment of the Christian religion by Constantine, the
relation of master and servant (though, as we shall see by-and-by, by
no means improved) became altogether a new and different relation.
These preliminary remarks upon the history of fathers of families and
of the ancient paternal authority must not be considered irrelevant,
or otherwise than essential to our design. Without them, we could not
account for the origin of human slavery; and, without knowing its
origin, we could not well develop its progress and the various phases
it has assumed up to the present time. No ancient record or tradition
in existence goes to show that human slavery originated in positive
laws or in coercive ordinances enforced by the sword. Reason and
experience naturally coincide with history in this matter. That any
portion of society, after living on terms of equality with the rest,
should suddenly allow all its rights to be extinguished by brute force,
or consent to have its liberties and independence voted away, when it
had arms and instincts to defend them, is contrary to common sense and
to all experience. Much less is it probable that the great majority
would have everywhere suffered a contemptible minority to usurp the
rights and powers of the whole. The ancient slave-class were everywhere
a majority. Nothing but the force of early habit and traditional
example could have made the majority the willing bondsmen of the
minority. But as the relation must have commenced at some period before
such habits and such traditional example could take effect, and as some
sort of authority was absolutely necessary to establish the relation,
it follows that, in the absence of all other competent authority, it
must have been the natural authority of parents over their offspring
that first established slavery. Such slavery must, of course, in the
first instance have been direct; for, in a rude and primitive society,
no other would be intelligible or possible.
If we be right in these antecedents, our conclusions from them must be,
that the first fathers were the first masters, and the first children
were the first slaves. To determine the history of the first masters
is,therefore, virtually to suggest the history of the first slaves.
Yes, the unbounded power of paternity in the first ages of the world
was the origin of all human slavery; and therefore is slavery a thing
anterior to all written constitutions, to all human laws, traditional
or imposed.
Now come the questions, Why did our first parents make slaves of
their children? and how came the domestic institution, established by
parental despotism, to become a social institution diffused throughout
the whole of society? Our natural instincts, undeveloped by reason
and undisciplined by knowledge and experience, would, methinks, lead
us to account satisfactorily for both facts. It was natural that the
head of the family should govern the family. It was not unnatural that
the parent, who had given life to the child, and who had preserved
that life when the child was unable to take care of itself, should
in some measure regard that life as his own; and as the maintenance
of his offspring must have been a burden on the parent, and kept him
comparatively poor in the days of early manhood, it is no more than
what we should expect from the selfishness of old age--especially in
a rude social state--that he should seek to indemnify himself, by the
future labour of his children, for his cost and pains in bringing them
up. Let us also bear in mind, that we are treating of those primitive
times when man’s animal instincts interpreted polygamy and the law of
nature to be one and the same--times which Dryden describes as
“Those ancient times, e’er priestcraft did begin--
’Twas e’er polygamy was deemed a sin.”
In those days, the larger the family, the greater the wealth and power
of the head of the household. In infancy, the offspring might be a
charge and a source of poverty; but, as they grew up, they more than
repaid the cost of maintenance,--they became, in fact, a source of
wealth and power and aggrandisement to the parent. Now, according to
all known traditions, the ancient fathers of families gloried in a
numerous progeny. In the history of the Jews, families of fifty and
upwards are frequently spoken of. Josephus informs us, that Gedeon had
seventy sons; Jair, thirty; Apsan, thirty sons and thirty daughters;
Abdon, forty sons--all of them living at the time of his death--besides
thirty grandsons. Indeed, the Old Testament abounds in examples showing
the multitudinous progeny ascribed to the old patriarchs--most of
them, too, born of concubines, under what the modern world would call
_disparaging_ circumstances.
The traditions of early Greece harmonise, in this respect, with those
of the Jews. Who has not read of the fifty daughters of Danaüs? In
Homer, we find old Priam appealing to his numerous progeny, as the
best means of exciting pity and respect in the vindictive breast of
Achilles. We find him telling of his fifty children--of nineteen born
of the same mother, Hecuba; and all the rest, of concubines. Livy
and Plutarch tell us of the three hundred Fabians--all of the same
family--who perished in a great battle against the Tuscans, fought in
the early wars of the Republic; and Plutarch also makes mention, in his
Life of Theseus, of a certain personage, Pallas, who had fifty children.
From these and innumerable testimonies of a similar kind, we may
readily conceive that these numerous wives and concubines kept by the
heads of families in early times made fathers vastly more important
personages than they are nowadays, and gave them progenies which, in
comparison with modern ones, might be considered clans or tribes. What
with wives, concubines, children, and grandchildren, every such father
was veritably the head of a community; and inasmuch as his power was
absolute over each and all, he had every motive that selfishness could
dictate to make them, and keep them, slaves for his aggrandisement and
pleasure. In fact, the more numerous his progeny and household, the
greater was his source of wealth, the higher his status, and the better
his security against personal violence in lawless times. That slavery
should originate and grow up in this way appears to us perfectly
natural. At all events, in no other way has it ever been, or can it
ever be, satisfactorily accounted for.
What happened in the case of one father of a family would as naturally
happen in respect of others. In the progress of time, some of the
younger branches would naturally stray from the paternal home, and
emigrate to other lands, where they would settle down and, in time,
become the heads of families--the founders of new races of slaves.
Indeed, we have but to imagine the case of one to apply to thousands
similarly circumstanced, and we shall see the origin of human slavery
at once satisfactorily explained. Those early fathers, or heads of
families, would naturally love some of their children better than
others; at least, they would have more confidence in some one than in
the rest. To those so loved, or so favoured, would naturally devolve
the headship of the family, or such portions of the patrimonial estate
as might enable them to found new families elsewhere. These families,
like the parent one, would as naturally resolve themselves into little
communities of masters and slaves; so that in course of time, by the
natural operation of one and the same first cause, the whole of society
would find itself, what we find it to have been in all early history,
an aggregation of souls divided everywhere into two great classes--a
master-class possessing, and a slave-class possessed.
Let us not imagine, however, that a social order which appears to us
so inhuman and so unnatural was viewed in this light, or inspired
_our_ feelings, in the ancient world; it would be a great mistake to
suppose this. Nothing was further from the contemplation of the men of
antiquity than our notions and theories about the equality of human
rights. The idea of what man ought to be, or is capable of being made,
was an idea unknown to the ancient world. The division of the human
race into masters and slaves appeared to them a perfectly natural
division: they saw no other; they never heard of any other; they
appear never to have conceived the possibility of any other. Even the
slaves themselves never complained of slavery _as an institution_;
they never demanded liberty in the sense we demand it. When they did
complain, it was not because they thought that one class ought not to
be a master-class and the other a slave-class: that was an idea quite
beyond them. When they complained--and they often _did_ complain, and
sometimes rebel too--it was either because they found their masters
harsh and cruel, and wished to exchange them for new and better ones,
or because they hoped, by breaking their fetters and becoming soldiers,
pirates, or adventurers of some kind, to exchange their condition as
slaves for the more enviable one of slave-owners. History records
several insurrections of slaves that took place in ancient times; but
in no one instance does it appear that the insurgents took up arms for
the principle of equality, or for any cause common to other slaves
as well as to themselves. Of this fact we shall adduce some notable
evidences in the progress of this inquiry. For the present, we shall
content ourselves with the assertion that, as a general rule, the
religious doctrine of men’s equality before God, and the political and
social doctrine of man’s equality before the law, or as a member of
society, were doctrines utterly unknown to, or uncared for amongst, the
old pagan world. In hazarding this assertion, we would be understood
as applying it to all classes and callings of the ancients alike--to
philosophers, poets, orators, and statesmen, as well as to mechanics,
labourers, house-servants, even the very lowest description of menial
slaves. That one or two philosophers and poets, here and there, may be
found to have uttered sentiments prophetic of “the good time coming,”
or indicative of a tacit belief that man was made for a higher and
brighter destiny than was his then lot, we pretend not to deny. But
that any class or calling of men existed in the old pagan world who
believed in, much less contended for, the political and social rights
of man _as man_ is what, we fearlessly assert, cannot be proved from
any historical authority extant. With the exception of the Essenes of
Judæa and the Therapeutæ of Egypt, we know of no attempt having been
made in ancient times to realise the social views latterly so prevalent
amongst the working classes in France, Germany, and, indeed, in most
parts of Central and Western Europe, England included. The Essenes
and Therapeutæ, however, can hardly be considered an exception to the
general rule, seeing that the latter was a Christian sect, and that
the Essenes, being Jews, believed in the same God that all Christians
professed to worship. Besides, the Essenes were but a very small sect,
hardly exceeding 4,000 souls in all; and though they held and practised
the theory of human equality, and proscribed slavery from amongst them,
yet, like the Shakers of America, they so mixed up absolute celibacy,
and other ascetic doctrines and practices, with their community-system
that, in the very nature of things, they could never be more than a
small, isolated sect, utterly incapable of influencing, by creed or
example, the destinies of the human race.
But how the cause of human liberty came to be hopeless under the old
pagan systems, and how Christianity itself has hitherto failed in its
divine mission, must be the subject of future chapters.
CHAPTER IV
INCREASE AND CONSOLIDATION OF SLAVERY.
Sanction given by Law and Public Opinion--Various Causes of
Enslavement--Practices of Ancient Germans--Analogy in Modern
Commercial and Funding Systems, and Expatriation of Irish
Peasantry--Slavery among the Jews.
Having shown how human slavery originated in parental despotism, let us
now inquire how positive laws came to consolidate and regulate it, and
public opinion to consecrate and perpetuate it, till it had become the
normal condition of some three-fourths of the human race antecedently
to the period of Christ’s advent. Here we shall again find history our
safest guide. If the oldest traditions show, on the one hand, that
slavery did not originate in human laws, but was the spontaneous growth
of the natural subjection of children to parents, there is equally
ample authority, on the other hand, to show that, once introduced, all
the forces of law and opinion known to the ancients were unsparingly
applied to propagate and maintain slavery in every pagan country.
While families remained apart from each other, without intercourse,
without social relationship, slavery knew no other law than the will or
pleasure of the head of each household. But when, in the progress of
early civilization, the families congregated in any particular locality
or country came to find it necessary to constitute themselves into one
great society for the purposes of exchange or commerce, intermarrying,
mutual defence against aggression, &c., the despotic will of
individuals gave place, of necessity, to a general law of the heads
of families composing the society. It was then, and not till then,
that slavery became a _legal_ institution. The general law not only
sanctioned and enforced it, but also greatly enlarged its bounds by
creating new sources of slavery. For example, to be taken prisoner in
war, to take refuge in the house of another, to be unable to pay one’s
debts, or, if a girl, being married out of her family or tribe,--these
were so many new sources of slavery created by the general law. The
rights of war were made to confer upon the vanquisher the same rights
over the vanquished that belonged to their own fathers. Indeed, amongst
the ancients the vanquished were considered as “men without gods,”
that is to say, men without ancestors of rank or dignity (for, in the
language of the primitive poets, the gods and the ancestors of great
families are one and the same thing); and they were treated as mere
chattels, as appears from the very name given, viz., _mancipia_, which,
though the ordinary term applied to slaves taken in battle, is, in
its etymological sense, applicable only to things inanimate. Whether
it was from a religious scruple, or for the purpose of divesting the
vanquished of what prestige might attach to them from the possession
of their gods or ancestral images, we find that the taking or keeping
possession of these gods was always a vital consideration in the
sieges and battles of antiquity. Once taken by the enemy, the capture
and enslavement of their possessors was deemed inevitable. Those
left without gods, in this sense, were regarded as outlaws by their
fellow-citizens, and their future slavery was considered a _mere
matter of course_ by themselves, as well as by their conquerors. We
may readily imagine what a prolific source of slavery this must have
been in lawless times, when _might_ alone conferred _right_. We may
also conceive how greatly it must have aggravated and embittered the
aboriginal relations between master and slave.
Asylums, or houses of refuge, were another means of extending slavery
under the positive law. The man who took sanctuary in one of these
places became the slave or chattel of the protector who had given
him safety. These asylums, of which we find mention made in the
primitive traditions of almost every old country, drew together not
only maltreated slaves from other quarters, but malefactors and
vagabonds of all sorts, and, in general, that restless and turbulent
class of people who love action for its own sake, and cannot live out
of broils and adventure. History testifies to the opening of such
asylums by rulers, and founders of cities, as an essential feature
of their policy. Thus, Moses determined six certain cities in which
manslayers might take refuge from the avenger. Theseus opened a refuge
at Athens, the remembrance of which was so fresh in Plutarch’s time,
that that biographer thinks the phrase of the common criers in his day,
“All peoples, come hither!” were the identical words used by Theseus
himself. Romulus, as before observed, opened an asylum at Rome for the
fugitive slaves of Latium, which, it is said, remained open for upwards
of 750 years. Indeed, if we are to believe Suetonius, it and similar
places of refuge were to be found in Rome, and in the provinces, till
Tiberius formally abolished “the law and custom” of them by an edict.
It may be observed, generally, of these asylums that, originally or
primitively, the parties who fled for refuge to them became the slaves,
or subjects, or clients of their protectors, yielding to the latter
their personal liberty and service in exchange for their preservation;
but at later epochs the character both of asylums and of those who
fled to them changed altogether. When opened by free cities within the
boundaries of their liberties, or by priests in their temples, they
were sacred to freedom, and not to slavery. There is no doubt, however,
that in the early ages of the world both law and custom turned them
largely to account in extending the domain of slavery.
Next to war, indebtedness, or the relation of debtor to creditor, was
probably the most odious and prolific source of slavery under the
positive law. Such appears to have been the case, at least, amongst
Greeks and Romans, with whose histories the moderns are better
acquainted than with those of other ancient countries. Plutarch tells
us, in his Life of Solon, that that legislator, on his arriving at
power, found a large proportion of the citizens in a state of actual
slavery to their creditors, and that one of his greatest difficulties
and triumphs was the adjustment of their conflicting claims.
Certain writers and commentators speak of an old Athenian law which
gave money-lenders, as security for their money lent, the personal
liberty of the borrowers--otherwise, a power to make them slaves.
Others say the law in question extended the creditor’s power to one of
life or death--that he might expose or kill his defaulting debtor. The
Roman laws of the Twelve Tables were, we know, borrowed from Greece;
and Aulus Gellius cites the express terms of the law of the Third Table
to show that it armed Roman creditors with similar power over their
unfortunate debtors. The rigour of this law was such, that in case
there were several creditors, they had the option either to sell the
debtor’s person to strangers or to dissever his body and divide the
pieces amongst them. Shocked and disgusted at the barbarity of this
law, Aulus Gellius asks, “What can be conceived more savage, what more
foreign to man’s natural disposition, than that the members and limbs
of a destitute debtor should be drawn asunder by a mangling process
of ever so short duration?” Tertullian, one of the early Christian
fathers, bears testimony to the existence of that and similar laws
under the pagan system. As he uses the plural word _leges_ instead of
the singular _lex_, it is clear there must have been more than one
law of the kind. The murderous part of such laws was, however, too
revolting to be carried into effect; so the enslavement of the debtor’s
person was the course usually adopted by vindictive creditors. Indeed,
Quintilian tells us expressly that public morals rejected the law of
the Twelve Tables--at least, that portion of it which gave creditors
the power to cut up the bodies of insolvent debtors. To imprison or
enslave them was, therefore, their only practicable course; and as the
latter was the more profitable, it became the one usually resorted to.
The sale of unfortunate debtors as slaves became, therefore, a part and
parcel of the commerce of Greece and Rome. It was one of the ways by
which hard-hearted creditors indemnified themselves for bad debts. And
as neither law nor custom could reconcile any people to such a palpable
outrage upon the rights of humanity, it never ceased to be a prolific
source of disaffection and civil broils throughout every period of
the Greek and Roman annals. Livy records some terrible outbreaks,
arising solely from the laws of debtor and creditor. Indeed, next to
agrarian monopoly, the workings of usury in pauperizing and enslaving
free citizens was the principal cause of all the civil wars, and the
ultimate cause of the downfall of the Greek and Roman republics.
But Greece and Rome are not the only ancient states in which debt
multiplied slaves and slavery. Tacitus informs us that the ancient
Germans were so addicted to gaming, that sometimes they staked even
their bodies upon the last throw of the dice, and, when the game went
against them, resigned themselves tranquilly to be bound and sold as
slaves. ’Tis curious to observe the language made use of by Tacitus
in describing this affair. It forcibly reminds one of the “national
debts” of modern times, and of the cunning cant by which the toiling
slaves, who pay the interest of them, are made to bear the burden
with more than asinine resignation. Indeed, the whole passage, as
given by Tacitus, might be strictly applied to the men and things we
are living amongst, if we would but substitute a few of our modern
commercial terms for the old dice-table terms employed by Tacitus.
“They (the Germans),” he says, “practise gambling amongst their serious
pursuits, and are quite sober over it. So desperate is their lust of
gain or fear of losing, that when all other means fail, they stake
their liberty and their very bodies upon the last throw of the dice;
nay, the beaten party (the loser) enters voluntarily and resignedly
into slavery. Although younger and more robust than his antagonist,
he quietly submits to be bound in fetters and sold. Such is their
perverseness in depravity--_they, themselves_, call it FAITH, HONOUR!
The successful parties (winners) dispose of this class of slaves in the
way of commerce, _that the infamy of their victory may be lost sight of
by the removal of their victim_.” In this almost literal translation,
we have paraphrased Tacitus no further than his elliptic style and
the different genius of our language render necessary; yet we can
hardly persuade ourselves that we have not been describing the process
and the very terms by which commercial speculation and our system of
public and private credit manufacture the slaves of our own day. The
only substantial difference is, that our gambling and slave-making
are upon an immeasurably larger scale, and that our enslaved Saxons,
unlike their German progenitors, have not even a chance of saving
themselves: for, though they are made to contribute all the stakes,
they are allowed no further share in the game than to look on and
pay the losses, whoever may be the winners. Tacitus’s term, _fides_
(_faith_, _honour_), is the identical term made use of now-a-days to
enforce the payment of national debts by those who never borrowed,
and the payment of “debts of honour” by those who forget to pay their
tailors’ bills and their servants’ wages. The old German gamester’s
trick, too, of getting his victim out of the way by disposing of him as
merchandise, instead of keeping him to serve as a slave upon himself,
is not without its analogies in our modern practice. Indeed, our
whole system of commerce and of public credit is based upon a similar
practice and similar motives. The slaves of our modern landlords,
merchants, and manufacturers are always the _apparent_ slaves of
somebody else--of some wretched go-between underling, on whom the
_odium_, though not the profits, of the system is made to fall. The
landlord throws it upon the farmer or agent; the millowner, upon his
overseer; the coal-king, upon his manager; the exporting merchant, upon
the slop-shops and _sweaters_; and so on, throughout every ramification
of trade and manufacture. The loanmonger retains not in his own hands
his purchased privilege of rifling the pockets of all taxpayers twice
a year for no value received. That would make his position as odious
as that of Tacitus’s successful old German gamester would have been,
had he made the “plucked pigeon” his personal slave, who was whilom
his boon-companion and equal. Business could not go on in that way.
Our loanmonger knows it, and, therefore, no sooner does he get his
bonds than he diffuses the “scrip” as widely and plentifully as the
dews of heaven, till there is hardly a grade or calling in society
that is not made directly interested and instrumental in enslaving
the producer and defrauding him of his hire. At the moment we write,
there are nearly a quarter of a million of families interested in
what is called “public faith,” “national honour,” and all that sort
of thing; and, amongst the whole lot, there is not one that was
originally concerned in any of the hocus-pocusing transactions which
have given us our “national debt,” with its thirty millions of annual
tax on the producing slaves of this country. The original loanmongers
and their representatives have dexterously shifted the odium and the
responsibility of their black job or jobs (for there were many of
them) from their own shoulders to those, of innocent parties; and,
whatever may eventually become of these parties, they took good care
to have more than their _quid pro quo_ before they transferred their
claims upon the public purse to the present recipients of the dividends
payable half-yearly on account of the debt called “national.” Another
and, mayhap, a stronger analogy to the case of Tacitus’s “plucked
pigeons,” sold into slavery, might be found in the expatriated tenantry
and peasantry of Ireland. The landlords of that country do not _always_
dispose of their human chattels by plague, pestilence, and famine; and
there is no law of the Twelve Tables to authorise the cutting up of
the bodies of their tenants in arrear. But there is a law--or, whether
there is or not, they find one--which authorises them to eject tenants
from their holdings, to raze their habitations to the ground, and to
drive the said tenants, homeless and breadless, to find a shelter and
a crust where they may. In such cases (and they are as plentiful as
blackberries), it is not unusual for such landlords to smuggle their
ousted victims out of the country, and even to pay their freight to
Canada in some crazy old hull (provided their fare do not exceed the
amount it would cost to bury them in case they died under a bush or
ditch after the dilapidation of their homes). Once removed to Quebec
or to the bottom of the Atlantic (it matters not which), there is an
end of trouble to both landlord and tenant. In Canada the tenant cannot
fare worse than in Ireland (for worse he could not), and he may fare
better. At the bottom of the sea he is safe, and provided for, for all
time to come. In either case he is out of the landlord’s sight, and out
of the sight of all to whom a knowledge of his treatment might suggest
misgivings as to their own future. To the landlord who ousted him,
his personal service as an actual slave would be as useless as that
of Tacitus’s ruined gamester would be to the successful one who had
won him and sold him. He would be but an incumbrance--a lump of dead
stock--an incubus upon the soil! His presence would be but a reproach
to his landlord, and curse to himself! To get rid of him, then,--to
dispose of him anyhow, or by any means, that will only get him out of
the way,--is the one thing needful. Well, Tacitus has shown us how the
lucky gamesters of his day got rid of their fleeced victims in Germany.
Against his case we fear not to put the Irish “clearers” and the
British farm-“consolidators” of our day, being perfectly assured that
the Saxons of the present day will be found to excel those of Tacitus’s
day, or any other of the old German tribes, in the art of slave-making,
as much as we excel the old Romans themselves in road-making,
shipbuilding, money-grubbing, military manslaughtering, or any other
art or science.
To return from this digression, the relation of debtor and creditor
was unquestionably one of the direst and most fertile sources of
slavery known to the ancient pagan world. Even God’s chosen people,
the Hebrews, were not altogether free from it. It is true, Moses’s
septennial release from debt, and the jubilee ordained at the end
of every fifty years, were powerful checks upon the inroad of this
form of slavery. But, nevertheless, indebtedness _did_ furnish its
contingent to slavery even under the Mosaic law; for do we not find
Moses anticipating this curse in Leviticus, when he enjoins, “If thy
brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and _be sold_ unto thee,
thou shalt not compel him to serve as a slave or bond-servant, but as
an hired servant; and as a sojourner he shall be with thee, and shall
serve thee until the day of the jubilee,” &c. This shows clearly how
inseparable was slavery from indebtedness under the ancient order of
things, when Moses found it necessary to make provisions against its
contingency, notwithstanding all the precautions he had ordained to
prevent it. And Moses’s foresight is fully proved by the subsequent
history of the Jews. For we learn from Josephus, that at a later
epoch, to wit, under King Joram, the son of Jehosaphat, the widow of
Obadias (who had been governor of King Achab’s palace) came to tell the
prophet Elisha that, unable to reimburse the money that her husband
had borrowed, to subsist the hundred prophets he had saved from the
persecution by Jezebel, _his creditors laid claim to herself and her
children as their slaves_. We might furnish other instances of a
similar kind from sacred history; while from profane history we might
cite proofs _ad infinitum_ bearing upon the same point: but enough has
been said for our purpose. The obligation of debtors to their creditors
was undoubtedly one of the most grievous sources of slavery known to
the positive law in ancient times. Next to war, it was probably the
greatest.
The last remaining cause to be disposed of is the marriage of
females--more especially of females married out of their own family
or tribe. That much slavery was brought about in this way is provable
in a variety of ways, and by the best traditional evidence. Homer’s
“Iliad” abounds in testimonies to this effect. We have already cited
the example of Cassandra, whom Othryon purchased from Priam, even as
Jacob bought Leah and Rachel from their father Laban. Other passages
are still more conclusive on the point. We find in the 9th book, for
instance, that Agamemnon, regretting his having occasioned the wrath of
Achilles, offers him, by way of appeasing it, certain costly presents;
amongst others, seven Lesbian female slaves, along with Briseis; and,
when Troy should be taken, twenty captives, the most beautiful, after
Helen; and as a climax, one of his own three daughters--Achilles to
choose, and to have her without purchase. And again, in the 16th book,
we find Homer making mention of a certain Polydora, the mother of
Menestheus, whom he describes as having been purchased for a wife, by
her husband, at a great expense. The poems of Virgil contain similar
evidences,--as for instance, when Juno proposes to Venus to settle
their quarrels, and to accept Dido as a spouse and servant to her son
Æneas. The term _service_ made use of by Virgil indicates clearly the
servile relation to the husband which such marriages imposed upon women.
Having explained the _origin_ of direct slavery, its legal
establishment, and the principal known causes which multiplied it
and consolidated it as a social institution, let us now inquire in
what light it was regarded by the ancients themselves, wherefore it
was able to maintain its footing all over the world, till the advent
of Christianity; why it still obtains in so large a portion of the
habitable globe; and why it has in nowise ceased, without giving birth
to a masked or indirect slavery worse than itself.
In this inquiry, our task will resolve itself in establishing the three
following propositions:--
1st. That direct or personal slavery was not regarded by the ancients
in the light in which enlightened men of the present day regard it,
that is to say, as an unnatural and inhuman institution, but, on the
contrary, was considered to be a thing perfectly natural and reasonable
in itself, and essential to the ends and purposes of society.
2nd. That the main cause of its permanence in the world was the
universality of public opinion in its favour, rather than the force of
law or custom; and that the slaves themselves fully participated in the
general opinion.
3rd. That, all things considered, direct slavery, whether as practised
by the ancients or by the modems (wherever it is in use), was, with
all its evils, less destructive of life, morals, and happiness to the
majority than the present system of indirect or disguised slavery, as
effected in most civilized countries by unjust agrarian, monetary, and
fiscal laws.
[Illustration: Decoration]
CHAPTER V.
OPINION OF THE ANCIENT WORLD ON SLAVERY.
Permanence of Slavery under all Revolutions--Ignorance of
Principle of Human Equality--Theory and Personal Experience of
Plato--Contentment of Slaves with their Condition--Occasional
Comfort and Happiness of Slaves--Absence of Revolts against
Slavery--Social and Political Rights ignored by Greeks and Romans.
Having, in the preceding chapters, shown how human slavery came into
the world, how it originated in the despotism of paternal power,
before laws or governments were known, and how, coeval with society
itself, it had grown up, flourished, and everywhere established
itself, as a _domestic_ institution, before any conventional act or
delegated authority of society came to consolidate it as a _social_
institution--having shown all this, and afterwards explained the
subsequent modifications, enlargements, and aggravations of slavery
made by positive legislation,--let us now ascertain why the diabolical
institution endured so long in the world; why it still endures in very
many countries; and, above all, why every attempt to get rid of it has
hitherto only had the effect of aggravating the evils of society, and
making the mass of mankind more miserable slaves, _without the name_,
than any that ever bore the name in ancient or modern times. Having
ascertained this, we shall then be prepared to comprehend the only just
and practicable means whereby slavery of every sort, and in every form
and degree, may be effectually and for ever banished from the world.
Had slavery, amongst the ancients, originated in, and been upheld by,
their laws and governments, it may be fairly presumed that some of
the revolutions which, at various epochs, swept away their laws and
governments would have swept away the institution of slavery amongst
the rest. Whatever is forced upon a decided majority of any people, by
the will of a minority, can be upheld only by fraud and coercion. Had
these been the conditions of slavery amongst the ancients, it is quite
certain that the moment a successful revolution, from within or from
without, came to break up the authority of rulers in any particular
country, the slaves or bondsmen would, that very moment, seize their
opportunity to emancipate themselves; and if it was the love of
equality or of social justice that made them rise, they would not lay
down their arms till they had established a just social order, based
upon the recognition of _equal rights and equal laws for all_.
Now, there is hardly any ancient state or country we could name
that has not had its revolutions, and that did not witness, at some
period or other, a complete subversion of its government, laws, and
institutes; yet do we find the institution of slavery survive in
all. In no one instance do we find the slaves of a revolutionalized
state avail themselves of such a crisis to establish _the rights of
man as man_. Intestine commotions, military insurrections, foreign
invasions, popular triumphs over kings and senates--these and all other
like incidents in the life of nations invariably passed away without
abolishing the curse of slavery. Why was this? How happened it? Why did
not the slaves of the old pagan world take advantage of some popular
insurrection, or of the overthrow of their rulers by some invader,
to vindicate the rights of humanity in their own persons, by at once
establishing a free government for all, and by abolishing slavery
altogether?
There is but one true and sufficient answer to these questions: it is
this:--The doctrine of human equality, of equality in rights, duties,
and responsibilities, was altogether unknown to the ancients: it was
denied in theory; it was unheard of in practice. With the solitary
exception before adverted to--that of the Essenes (of which more
by-and-by), there is no historical record or monument extant to show
that the slaves of antiquity, as a class, knew or cared anything
about theories of government, much less that they comprehended what a
Frenchman would understand by the words _république démocratique et
sociale_, or what a member of the National Reform League understands
by “the political and social rights of the people.” Nor does there
appear to have been a single writer, teacher, philosopher, legislator,
orator, or poet, amongst the whole heathen world, to inspire the
slave-class with any such notions. On the contrary, the idea that one
class were born to be slaves, and the other to be masters, was an idea
as sedulously inculcated by the educators of ancient society, as it
was implicitly believed in by the slaves themselves. The poet and the
two philosophers who, more than any others of their class, exercised
a moral influence upon the ancient world--to wit, Homer, Plato, and
Aristotle--agreed, to a hair, in considering mankind as naturally
divided into two classes--those made to command and those made to obey,
_alias_ masters and slaves. Homer tell us, formally, in the “Odyssey,”
that Jove gave to slaves but the half of a soul. Plato, when citing
this passage in his “Treatise on Laws,” substitutes the word _mind_
for the Homeric word _virtue_, and adds his authority to that of the
poet, to inculcate that the Father of the Gods bestowed _mind_ and
_virtue_ but by halves upon the children of slavery. Plato is still
more expressive elsewhere. In his dialogue entitled “Alcibiades,” he
makes Socrates teach the same doctrine after his favourite fashion
of question and answer. He makes him ask Alcibiades whether it is
“in the class of nobles or in the class of plebeians that natural
superiority is to be found;” to which the proficient pupil unhesitating
makes answer, “Undoubtedly, in the class of nobles,” or “in those
nobly born.” Aristotle is still more emphatic than Plato in laying
down the theory of human inequality. In one place he goes so far as
to call children “the animated tools of their parents,” signifying
by that, that children are by birth the natural slaves of their
fathers. In his “Treatise on Politics,” he tells us, roundly, that
at the very moment of their birth all created beings are naturally
fashioned, some to obey, and some to command--or, rather, some _to
be commanded_, and the others to command; for it is the same verb he
makes use of in both cases, using the _passive_ mood for the slaves
and the _active_ for the slave-owners. In the same treatise he tells
us, further on, that nature actually makes the bodies of freemen
(genteel folk) different from those of slaves; that the latter are
purposely made robust and hardy for the necessities of labour, whilst
those of gentlemen are made so slight and upright as to be unfit for
physical labour, but well qualified for the business of government.
In citing this passage, we have given an almost literal translation
of the Greek--a translation more expressive of the author’s sense
than a strictly verbal translation would be. The very terms made use
of by Aristotle show clearly his belief that slaves were made to be
slaves, and their masters to govern them. The words we have rendered
by the free translation, “qualified for the business of government,”
mean, “_literally_, availably useful for political life,” which, if
not so intelligible, is stronger and of wider signification than our
translation. At all events, there can be no doubt as to Aristotle’s
meaning. Like Homer and Plato, he was a firm believer in the _duality_
of human nature--that is to say, that slaves were born with one
nature, and their masters with another. Indeed, Plato carried this
creed so far, that he made slavery to consist in the moral and
mental man himself, and not in the servility of his condition as a
slave. A wise man, he contended, could not be made a slave of: the
natural superiority of such a man would rise superior to any, or all,
conditions that might be imposed upon him. Plato lived to have his
doctrine tried in his own person. Dionysius, the tyrant of Sicily, had
him sold for a slave by one Pollio, a Lacedemonian chief; but history
does not say whether Plato the slave held the same opinions on slavery
as Plato the freeman and philosopher. It was one of his maxims that
“a wise and just man could be as happy in a state of slavery as in a
state of freedom.” Dionysius took him at his word, and, tyrant though
he was, we think he served Plato right. The sage who believed in two
natures, one for slaves and another for freemen, and who taught that a
wise and just man could be as happy in slavery as in freedom, deserved
to have such doctrines tried and verified in his own person. Plato had
them tried in his; but, great philosopher as he was, we suspect he must
have found some little difference between slavery and freedom, when
we find him seizing the first opportunity to recover his liberty, and
preferring to live a freeman, in Athens, to living a slave at Ægina.
When such were the opinions of philosophers and poets (whose mission
and function it was to live for other generations and other times them
their own), what may we not expect from the vulgar herd who lived only
for themselves? Their ideas were just what we might expect. High and
low, gentle and simple, rich and poor, freemen and slaves--all, all
believed in the duality of human nature--in the divine origin of kings,
and in the no less divine origin of slavery. On these points the whole
of pagan antiquity appears to have been unanimous. The treatment of
their helots by the Spartans, who, in order to disgust their children
with drunkenness, used to exhibit those unfortunates in a state of
bestial intoxication, speaks volumes for the notions the ancients had
of slaves and slavery. Their occasional decimation of the helots by
wholesale and deliberate slaughter, for no other or better reason than
to thin their ranks and reduce their numbers for their own convenience,
is a still more glaring exemplification. It shows that a slave was a
mere thing--a chattel--a nobody--even a nuisance, if his master only
chose to think him so.
The Elder Cato, who was cried up for his goodness as a master to his
slaves, thought it not unworthy of himself, nor unjust to them, to
keep them always quarrelling with one another, by artfully fomenting
jealousies amongst them. Plutarch tells us, too, that when they got old
and broken down, Cato used to treat them as he (Plutarch) would not use
the ox or the horse that had served him faithfully. He used to sell
them, or dispose of them any way, when there was no more work to be got
out of them. Yet Cato was a model for the gentlemen slave-owners of his
day. He was the Benjamin Franklin of his republic; the Adam Smith of
the Roman political economy of his time. When _he_ behaved so to his
slaves, what must have been the opinions and behaviour of such masters
as were brutes by nature, tyrants by instinct and culture? Seneca
describes one of these worthies to us, under the name of Vedius Pollio,
who, if we are to believe that philosopher, was in the habit of feeding
the fish in his ponds with the flesh of his slaves! It is impossible to
conceive that slaves must not have been considered of a different and
inferior nature, when every description of masters, good and bad, are
found (however differing in their mode of treatment) to deal with them
as with beings having no rights of their own--no rights but what their
masters might choose to confer.
The slaves, on their side, appear to have been perfectly reconciled
to slavery as an institution. The writings of the ancients have left
us nothing to countervail this opinion, but, on the contrary, much
to confirm it. We can nowhere discover any evidence to show that the
slaves of antiquity regarded slavery in any other light than as an
institution natural in itself, and neither unjust nor unreasonable,
provided they (the slaves) were well treated. It is true they often
complained of their lot, and sometimes rebelled, too, in order
to change it; but, in so doing, it is to be observed, they never
complained of slavery _as an institution_, nor invoked the principle of
Equality as the end and object of their complaints or rebellions. Their
complaint was, not that slavery existed, but that they, themselves,
and not others, were the slaves. And when they rebelled, it was not
in order to put down slavery and establish liberty for all; it was to
exchange conditions with their masters, or else to secure their own
freedom at the price of taking away other people’s. The idea of making
common cause with other slaves, in order to emancipate all slaves,
never entered their heads. Principle, or love of equality, had nothing
whatever to do with their movements. The principle of _liberty for
all_ was too sublime an idea for them. Equality before God and the law
was still further beyond them. Slavery, _as a principle_, they had
no fault to find with; they complained only of the _accident_ that
made them slaves and others free. Even of this the vast majority never
complained, because the vast majority (there is reason to believe) were
content with their lot, and satisfied with their masters’ treatment of
them. Indeed, the whole tenour of what we read of in history respecting
slaves leads to this conclusion. The vast majority were content with
their condition. In general they were kindly treated; and as they knew
no other state, and saw nothing unjust or unreasonable in slavery, they
were attached to their masters as to benefactors (regarding them as the
authors of their comfort), and might, mayhap, as a general rule, be
pronounced happy.
The old classics are full of allusions and passages which go to show
the high state of domestic comfort enjoyed by certain descriptions of
slaves, and the free and familiar relations which subsisted between
them and their masters. A kindly and homely sort of intercourse was the
rule; harshness and ill-nature would appear to have been the exception.
Indeed, slaves were regarded so much in the light of mere animals by
masters, and masters so much as demi-gods, or superior beings, by
slaves, that no possible rivalry, jealousy, or misgivings could subsist
between them; but, on the contrary, that sort of mutual confidence,
fidelity, and fondness with which favourite horses and dogs reciprocate
the kindly treatment and caresses of their owners. Whenever we find
slaves breaking out into insurrection, we may be sure it is either
because they have harsh masters, or have been torn from distant homes,
or are being seduced by insurgent chiefs who promise them rapine and
freedom; or because they expect, through a successful insurrection,
to become pirates or robbers, which was the highest occupation of
honour and profit that a slave could aspire to in those days. In these
insurrections, as already observed, equality was never invoked. The
“rights of man” was a profound mystery in the womb of the future. The
insurgents thought of no slavery but their own; and of no other or
better advantages from liberty than the spoils of their masters, and
exchanging conditions with them.
Limiting ourselves, for the moment, to Roman history, we find some six
revolts of slaves recorded by Livy, and some three or four more made
mention of by Aulus Gellius, Tacitus, and others. Livy does not go
much into detail; but, from the little he says, he makes it manifest
that real liberty or equality had nothing to do with any of the six
revolts he treats of. The sixth revolt, which was headed by one Eunus,
a Syrian, is related at greater length by Diodorus of Sicily. And what
does Diodorus show? That Eunus was an impostor, who pretended a mission
from the Syrian Venus, and, ejecting flames from his mouth by means
of a hollow nut that he had filled with lighted sulphur, succeeded in
fanaticising some 2,000 slaves, and inducing them to break loose from
the work-houses. He had soon an army of some 60,000 men, gained several
actions in the course of a long and bloody war, made himself master of
the camps of four prætors; but at last, pressed by increasing numbers,
and forced to shut himself up in the city of Enna with his followers,
he and they, after defending themselves with courage and bravery amid
indescribable difficulties, were at last overpowered, and perished
all, by famine, pestilence, and the sword. This insurrection, which
took place in Sicily, was no sooner quelled than another broke out,
of a similar kind, and upon as large a scale, under the command of a
slave named Athenio, who, after assassinating his master, and causing
all the work-houses to rise in insurrection, had soon as large an army
under his command as Eunus had. Like Eunus, Athenio had some incipient
successes; he stormed and made himself master of two prætorian camps:
like Eunus, however, he had soon to succumb to the united force of
famine and the sword. He perished, with nearly all his followers. The
immediate cause of these two servile wars--which, next to the famous
one under Spartacus, appear to have been the most formidable of their
kind--was the alleged violation of the work-house regulations by the
masters. Indeed, Diodorus testifies, positively and clearly, that the
revolt headed by Athenio arose solely from the inability of the prætor
in Sicily to enforce the laws or regulations which had been made in
favour of the slaves, and which, like our modern factory lords, the
masters were continually seeking to evade. Plutarch lets it appear that
a similar cause provoked the revolt of Spartacus.
Those three revolts, which took place during the last sixty years of
the Republic--namely, the two under Eunus and Athenio, in Sicily,
and the third under Spartacus, in Italy--were the most serious and
destructive of the servile wars recorded of Rome. They had the ablest
commanders, and met with the largest measure of success. In these, if
in any wars of the kind, might we hope to find the dignity of human
nature vindicated by the insurgent bondsmen. There was nothing of the
sort. The harsh conduct of masters and the violation of work-house
rules were the motive powers of each revolt: no higher motive seems,
for a moment, to have actuated the revolters.
The conduct, too, of Eunus and Athenio, during their brief success,
showed how thoroughly undemocratic, and even aristocratic, were their
plans and objects. Instead of setting about the abolition of slavery
and the establishment of equality, they began forthwith to ape the pomp
and circumstance of their oppressors, and to deal with their followers
as though they were little kings, and not fellow-slaves in rebellion.
They wore purple robes and gold chains. Athenio carried a silver staff
in his hand, and had his brow wreathed with a diadem, like a monarch.
Indeed, Florus tells us that, while these adventurers assumed all
the state and airs of royalty, they imitated royalty no less in the
havoc, plunder, and devastations they spread around them. At first they
contented themselves with plundering and pulling down the castles,
villas, and mansions of the aristocrats and master-class; but, this
accomplished, they soon began to exact the same servility from their
followers that they had themselves kicked against. Liberty and equality
were out of the question. Had they succeeded, their wretched followers
would soon have found that they had but exchanged masters.
The revolt under Spartacus is the most horrible of all, because it was
a revolt of men who were gladiators as well as slaves. Liberty or the
rights of man had no more to do with this revolt than with any of the
others. It arose from brutal oppression on the part of one Lentulus
Batiatus, to whom a portion of the insurgents belonged: he was training
them, in fact, that they might combat one another to death in the arena
for his recreation. Neither in its origin, conduct, nor results did
this servile war differ from any of the others. Like all of them, it
originated in private wrongs, was purely personal in its antecedents,
and neither in its progress nor results did it exhibit a single
indication of democratic, philanthropic, or any other virtues than the
usual military ones common to all Romans at the time. In truth, what we
moderns understand by political and social rights (and without which
we know that real liberty cannot exist for any people) was an idea
altogether foreign to every class of Greeks and Romans, and, indeed, to
the whole of antiquity, with the solitary exception of the Essenes.
Thus, _public opinion_ conspired with law and custom to uphold direct
human slavery throughout the ancient world. This opinion must have
been all but universal, since not even slaves in revolt ever dreamt
of abolishing slavery as an institution. They warred against certain
incidents and accidents of slavery; never against the principle itself.
This universality of public opinion in its favour, coupled with the
fact that direct slavery is an evil of far lesser magnitude than
the indirect slavery of modern civilization, we take to be the true
explanation of the old pagan system having endured so long in the world.
[Illustration: Decoration]
CHAPTER VI.
UNIVERSALITY OF PUBLIC OPINION AS TO MASTER AND SLAVES.
System acquiesced in by Slave-Class--Insurrections and
Rebellions from other Causes than Hatred of Slavery--Rising
under Spartacus--Conditions wanting for Success--Contrast of
Modern Aspirations after Freedom--Example from enslaved Roman
Citizens--Preference of Slaves for their Condition.
Although the historical facts cited in the preceding chapter
demonstrate satisfactorily enough that what, in our times, is called
_public opinion_ was amongst the ancients universally in favour of
human slavery as a social institution, nevertheless we shall here
adduce a few additional facts in confirmation of that proposition,
before we pass on to our next, which will go to show that it was more
owing to the prevalence of such opinion, than to the force of laws,
that direct slavery endured so long; and that, viewing the question
impartially and as a whole, that form of slavery was, with all its
abominations, less galling and oppressive, and less destructive of
life, liberty, morals, and happiness, than is the present system of
indirect or disguised slavery, to which our modern civilization dooms
the vast majority of Christendom,--at least, the vast majority of the
proletarian and working classes.
The testimonies we have quoted from Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and Seneca
were pretty decisive as to the light in which slavery was regarded by
the teachers of antiquity. Cato’s treatment of his slaves, the still
more atrocious conduct attributed to such brutes as Vedius Pollio,
and the habitual treatment of their helots by the citizens of Sparta,
show clearly enough that the proprietary classes carried out, to the
letter, the theory of their philosophers and poets; but the most
decisive evidence of all is, unquestionably, that furnished by the
various servile wars and insurrections to which we have made reference.
The fact that in no one recorded instance did the slaves of antiquity
rebel against slavery as an institution,--the fact, that in no one of
the ten servile rebellions which, under the Romans, took place in Italy
and Sicily did the insurgent slaves declare for liberty for all slaves,
nor invoke the principle of Equality against the pretensions of the
master-class,--the fact that, upon these and all similar occasions,
the rebel-slaves never dreamt of emancipating any but themselves,
uniformly betraying an utter disregard of other people’s rights when
they got the upper hand, and manifesting that no higher motive actuated
them than to break their own chains, or transfer them to the persons
of their masters,--these and the like facts banish all doubts on the
subject, and render it matter of positive certainty that no class or
description of men, amongst the ancients, disavowed the principle of
slavery, or dreamt of abolishing it as an institution of society.
We have seen how Eunus and Athenio, the two successful leaders of the
two Sicilian insurrections, used their successes, not to proclaim
equal rights and equal laws for all, but to rob and massacre, to ape
the paraphernalia of royalty, and to impose upon others, as well as to
rivet upon their own followers, the chains they had struck from off
themselves.
If ever a slave-insurrection might have been expected to fly at nobler
game, to strike at the very root of oppression, and to hoist the banner
of universal freedom for all slaves, it was the insurrection of the
gladiators under Spartacus, adverted to in our last, which was by far
the most formidable of all the servile wars that occurred under the
Republic. It was a war which must have succeeded in abolishing slavery,
had it only been a war of principles--that is to say, a war against
the institution itself; for it had every other essential element of
success. It was provoked by a most atrocious abuse of power on the
part of the master-class, by an outrage upon humanity so flagrantly
indefensible that, but for the prevailing prejudices in favour of
slavery as an institution, the conduct of the government in making
common cause with the wrong-doers would be altogether inexplicable.
First, there was a good cause, to begin with--a cause to justify the
very stones of Rome to rise in mutiny. Then, the bondsmen were in this
instance regular fighting-men, trained for combat in the arena. They
had first-rate captains at their head, in the persons of Spartacus,
Crixus, and Œnomaus, of whom Spartacus was more than a match for the
ablest generals sent against him. Moreover, these gladiators might be
said to represent the entire brotherhood of slaves throughout the Roman
empire; for they had amongst them Greeks, Thracians, Gauls, Spaniards,
Germans, &c.--slaves from all parts.
If ever insurgent bondsmen might be expected to strike a blow for
general liberty, to proclaim emancipation not for themselves only, but
for the universal brotherhood of slaves, it was this formidable body.
They had numbers, science, discipline, and commanders of consummate
skill and courage. They represented not the slave-class of Italy
alone, but the slaves of every country then subject to, or in alliance
with, the Romans. To crown all, they had an unexampled run of military
successes. Florus, Appian, and Plutarch give us copious and minute
details of this famous war, which lasted about three years, and, from
their accounts, we cannot help believing that the gladiators must have
been successful, had they made their war a war of principle,--or, to
speak more correctly, had the public opinion of their day allowed such
a thing to be possible. From the moment Spartacus was raised to the
post of commander-in-chief, the war might be said to be one continued
series of brilliant victories for the gladiators. He defeated, in
succession, not less than five Roman armies, led by prætors or consuls.
At last the Senate, after charging Crassus with the responsibility
of the war, found itself obliged to recall Lucullus from Thrace,
and Pompey the Great from Spain, to unite their forces and their
generalship with those of Crassus--so formidable was the foe, so
imminent the danger. Not Hannibal himself struck more terror into
Rome’s proud rulers than did Spartacus the slave-gladiator.
But while history accords to Spartacus many noble qualities, and admits
his consummate talents and bravery as a general, it tells us enough,
on the other hand, to show that neither himself nor his companions in
arms had any notion of fighting for general liberty, nor any other
object in view than to accomplish their own escape from their merciless
oppressors. In this respect Spartacus but shared in the universal
opinion of his day. Possibly he had mind enough, himself, to comprehend
the wisdom and the necessity of making this war a war of principle.
A man of his superior parts was fully equal to that; but as such an
idea could not have been appreciated, nor even comprehended, by his
followers, he was too sensible to broach what would have, to them,
appeared downright insanity. Like all men similarly circumstanced, he
was forced to appeal merely to the lower order of motives. To promise
them personal freedom and the spoils of war was his only means of
keeping his followers together. Accordingly, we learn from Plutarch
that the proposed end of all his victories was to pass the Alps, gain
over the Gauls, and then, with their assistance, make their escape,
each to his respective country and home.
At all events, the idea of abolishing the institution of slavery
appears never to have entered their minds. Had the slaves of that
age been capable of comprehending such an idea, it is almost certain
Spartacus would not have been conquered. The prevalence of such an
idea would have united the whole slave population, not only in Italy,
but everywhere else, under his standard, and there would have been
a simultaneous rising of the whole race. So exalted, so ennobling a
motive would have made his officers proof against bribery, corruption,
and jealousy, and would have effectually prevented that mutinous spirit
amongst his followers to which, more than to the strength of his
opponents, historians ascribe his downfall.
An ignorant people, actuated only by inferior motives, by
considerations purely personal or selfish, cannot be emancipated from
slavery. The narrow selfishness of such people will ever expose them
to be cajoled or bribed into intestine divisions; and as the want of
principle will preclude them from associating the rights and liberties
of others with their own, in any struggles they may make, so will the
aid of these others be wanting to them in their hour of need, and their
ultimate discomfiture prove the inevitable consequence and just reward
of their ignorant selfishness.
Indeed, it is to this narrow-minded disregard of principles on the part
of the slave-class--a disregard founded wholly in a selfish ignorance
of their true interests--we are to ascribe the continued prevalence
of the slavery of our own times, as well as of that which vainly
sought to disenthral itself by force under Spartacus. What happened to
the insurgent slaves under Eunus and Athenio in Sicily, and to the
gladiators under Spartacus in Italy, is just what will happen to the
Red Republicans in France, and to the Chartists in England, should they
ever attempt to recover their political and social rights otherwise
than by a movement founded purely upon principle and wholly exempt from
selfish or merely personal calculations on the part of men and leaders.
Upon no other conditions is success possible, as we shall endeavour to
demonstrate, with all but mathematical exactness, in the progress of
this inquiry.
History has been defined, “philosophy teaching by example.” It is in
order to illume the future by the light of the past that we prosecute
this inquiry. A vulgar belief prevails extensively, both in this
country and upon the Continent, that human slavery is almost wholly
the work of priests and religion, and that the genius of Christianity
in particular is hostile to liberty and progress. Those who hold such
opinions are apt to attach an undue importance to the words “monarchy”
and “republicanism,” and to fancy that there was more real liberty
under the ancient republics of Greece and Rome, before Christianity was
heard of, than it would be now possible to establish in any country
concurrently with the kingly office, and with Christianity being a part
and parcel of its fundamental law. Such persons are also apt to suppose
that the slavery of ancient times was wholly the work of positive laws,
operating by coercion to keep down an adverse public opinion, and to
account in pretty much the same way for the abuses and oppressions of
our own time, ascribing them almost wholly to individual rulers or
governments, and scarcely at all to the ignorance and corruption of
the public opinion around them. Believing such notions to be, in a
great measure, erroneous and prejudicial to the cause of _real reform_
(which must take possession of a people before it can of a government),
we have been at some pains, and shall be at still greater, to make
the true origin and character of slavery better understood than they
appear to be. In so doing, we think we shall be able to show that an
ignorant and unprincipled people cannot have a good or wise government,
and that an intelligent, right-principled people would not tolerate,
and therefore could not long have, a bad one. If we be right in this
sentiment, a reform of public opinion must needs precede a reform of
parliament; and as one great object of this treatise is to endeavour
to operate such a reform, we shall avoid, as much as possible, mere
assertions without proof; and therefore, even at the risk of being
sometimes tedious, we shall continue to bring forward facts and
details, as we proceed, in elucidation of our positions.
Now, without going into theological questions (which nothing
shall induce us to do), let us request a certain class of French
philosophers, who are at present labouring to solve the “social
question,” to ask themselves how it happened that, before Christianity
was heard of, the theory and practice of human slavery had got such a
firm hold of the whole pagan world, that not even the slaves themselves
ever dreamt of calling the institution into question.
In the middle ages we have had Jacqueries, corresponding with the
slave-insurrections under pagan Rome; but it is notorious that, in
those Jacqueries, the principle of fraternity and equality was invoked
by the disaffected. In the 16th century the Anabaptists of Munster rose
against aristocracy and privilege, and, for a season, put down their
lords and masters with as high a hand as Eunus and Athenio put down
theirs in ancient Sicily. But mark the difference: the Anabaptists
sought an order of things in which all should work, and none be
drudges or slaves; the followers of Eunus and Parthenio sought quite
a different thing,--they sought only to exchange places with their
masters, and they had no objection at all to human slavery, provided
they were not slaves themselves.
What is true of John of Leyden and his followers might be applied
to our own Fifth-Monarchy men in Cromwell’s time, and to the French
revolutionists of 1793 and 1795 under Babœuf. If they sought to pull
down those above them, it was upon the principle and the understanding
that neither themselves nor anybody else should take the places of the
dethroned oppressors. Something similar might be predicated of certain
Socialist sects in modern France and Germany. If they are for making
a clean sweep of the aristocracy, it is not that they may take their
places. If they are against privilege, it is against the principle that
they contend, and not against the mere accident that they themselves
are not privileged parties.
This remarkable difference in the revolutionary movements of ancient
and modern times cannot but strike every thinking man who will take
the trouble to compare them. Nor let it be said that the difference
arises solely from the disaffected having been slaves in the times
of paganism and freemen in the times of Christianity. Cataline and
his co-conspirators were not slaves, nor the friends of slaves:
yet they acted precisely upon the same motives and principles as
those ascribed to Eunus and Athenio. Cataline did not promise his
brother-revolutionists a _régime_ of liberty and equality for all
orders of men; quite the contrary. In the first place, he indignantly
repudiated all co-operation with slaves; and instead of _equal rights
and equal laws for all_, he promised one portion of his followers
a cancelling of all their debts; another portion, _magistrates,
sacerdotia, rapinas_--i.e. magisterial offices, the preferments and
property of the Church, and general plunder; and to all he promised
women, wine, horses, dogs, &c., according to their age and tastes.
If we are to believe Sallust, he was to begin with setting fire to
Rome, proceed with the massacre and spoliation of his enemies during
the confusion, and end by putting his associates and friends in the
place of the men they wished to get rid of. In other words, Cataline’s
doctrine was (to use an old Roman phrase), that every man must be
either _prædo_ or _præda_--either the _thief_ or the _spoil_, or,
as Voltaire expresses it, either _hammer_ or _anvil_; and he was
determined to be the thief, or the hammer. The doctrine of _equality_,
at any rate, had no share in his system.
What history describes Cataline to have been is equally predicable of
the whole of the revolutionary school in which he had had his political
training. Sylla and his lieutenants, on the one hand, representing
patrician revolutionists, and Marius, Sulpitius, Saturninus, &c., on
the other, representing the plebeian revolutionists, had acted, every
man of them, upon the principles ascribed to Cataline. Not a chief
or demagogue of them all, on either side, said a word or proposed a
measure that savoured of justice or legality for all people. Principle
was entirely out of the question. It is doubtful, indeed, whether
either leaders or people understood anything at all of the matter.
There is certainly nothing in history to evidence that they either knew
or cared for any other rules or principles of government than those
good old-fashioned ones, which the several agencies of gold, intrigue,
and the sword resolve themselves into--the right of the strongest. To
such republicans as Sylla, Marius, Clodius, Sulpicius, &c., our modern
ideas of a _république démocratique et sociale_ would be about as
intelligible as a proposal to light old Rome with gas or to communicate
_senatus consulta_ by the electric telegraph.
Before despatching this branch of our inquiry, let us cite just one
more fact from history, which we regard as perfectly decisive on the
question--a fact sufficient of itself to convince any reasonable man
that slavery, as an institution, had the public opinion of all classes
in its favour in the times we are treating of; so much so, that not
even Roman citizens and warriors, sold into slavery, thought of
questioning its propriety.
In the second Punic war, some 1,200 Roman citizens were made prisoners
by the Carthaginians, and by them disposed of to merchants, who, in
the regular way of trade, sold them as slaves amongst the farmers of
Peloponessus, by whom they were set to work in the fields. Now, if
any class of slaves ought to be imbued with the sentiments of human
equality, it is, undoubtedly, men like these, who had not been born in
slavery, and who, from the very constitution of the Roman army, must
have been men of family and station. Let us see. Plutarch tell us, in
his Life of Flaminius, that some years after, when the Achæan cities
demanded succour of the Romans against Philip of Macedon, Titus Quintus
was sent to them with some legions, and made himself master of the
disputed territories. While engaged in these operations, his soldiers
fell in, one day, with the 1,200 Roman citizens who had been sold into
slavery by the Carthaginians, and found them delving the ground, like
any other slaves. As might be expected, the soldiers and the slaves
embraced one another as fellow-countrymen and old friends; but mark
the sequel: not a word is there in Plutarch or elsewhere to intimate
that either soldiers or slaves regarded this bondage of Roman citizens
as anything monstrous or degrading. On the contrary, after embracing,
the soldiers went their way, and the citizen-slaves resumed their
task-work. Flaminius, as being master of the country, might have set
them at liberty at once, if he liked: he did no such thing. It would
have been to _violate the rights of property_. It is true, those slaves
afterwards obtained their liberty; but it was only through a voluntary
subscription raised by the cities of the Achæan league, which, in
gratitude for the services rendered by Flaminius, redeemed the bondsmen
and made a present of them to their benefactor. And even when released
by Flaminius they did not resume their former rank of citizens: that
rank was irredeemably forfeited. They became _freedmen_ only; which
imposed upon them a sort of fealty to their patron, whose vassals they
thenceforward were in the eye of the law. This one historical incident
speaks volumes. It shows how completely the system of slavery was
ingrained in the minds and habits of the people, as well as in their
laws and institutes. Here was a victorious Roman general and soldiers
so respecting the institution, that not even their own fellow-citizens,
made prisoners by their most hated foes, were regarded as fit objects
for freedom, until it pleased their masters or owners to give them
up to the general for a sum of money; and had it not been for the
subscription of the cities, the slaves would have reconciled themselves
to their lot of slavery as to a thing quite natural and proper under
the circumstances.
After this, let it not be said that it was the force of law or the
strength of governments that maintained slavery in ancient times. No;
it was the universality of the public opinion in its favour. Had it
been otherwise, the slaves might have emancipated themselves in any
of those revolutionary crises which were of such frequent occurrence,
and when neither law nor government had any force adequately to cope
with them. But, even in their own most successful insurrections against
the tyranny of their masters, they never dreamt (as we have seen) of
abolishing slavery. Nay, on one occasion, when Marius, unable to cope
with Sylla’s faction for want of sufficient troops, solicited the
slaves to rise in behalf of the democratic party, and offered them
their liberty if they would but join his ranks, only three individuals,
we are told, out of the whole slave population gave in their names to
be enrolled.
In the following chapter we shall endeavour to account for this, and
show that, as a general rule, the slaves acted wisely, in preferring to
remain slaves (when they knew so little of real liberty) to becoming
“free and independent labourers,” without arms, votes, lands, money, or
credit, after British fashion.
[Illustration: Decoration]
CHAPTER VII.
COMPARISON OF ANCIENT WITH MODERN SLAVERY.
Forces which overthrew Chattel Slavery--Advantages of real Slaves
over Freed-Men and Wages-Slaves--Natural Fecundity esteemed a
Blessing, not a Curse--Condition of American Slaves under Slavery.
Having seen how firmly rooted was the institution of direct human
slavery in the public opinion of the ancient world, let us now inquire
what was the potent force or combination of forces which subverted
that opinion, and which operated the mighty changes that afterwards
took place in the social relation of man to man. By these changes, we
mean the manumission of the slave-class, the consequent formation of
proletarianism, and, in course of time, the universal substitution
of indirect or disguised for direct or personal slavery--an order of
things which has ever since prevailed, and which, at the moment we
write, imposes upon the vast majority of every “civilized” country a
bondage more galling and intolerable than was the personal servitude of
man to man under the ancient system.
It will be readily comprehended what a potent agency was requisite,
and what sacrifices must have been incurred, to subvert a social order
so deeply implanted in the habits, prejudices, and even convictions of
the whole world. To produce such effect, only the most potent causes,
only the most powerful influences known to act upon human nature,
could suffice. What are these? _Religion and self-interest._ For--not
to encumber ourselves with subdivisions of causes--suffice it to say,
that two overwhelming ones brought the change: one, the Christian
dispensation, which gradually revolutionized public opinion amongst the
slave-class, and among the pious and benevolent of the master-class;
the other was of the gross and worldly kind, coming from quite the
opposite direction, yet concurring to the same end--it was the force
of selfishness. This force it was which, operating by calculations of
profit and loss upon the mass of worldly-minded slave-owners, taught
them, if not instinctively, at least by practical experience, that
their bondmen might be made more servile and profitable slaves for
them, _without the name_, than any that ever bore the name. The former
or sublime Christian cause would, had it been allowed to operate freely
and unalloyed with worldly selfishness, have extinguished human slavery
of every form and degree from the face of the earth. The latter or more
worldly cause, by turning the manumitted slaves into proletarians and
mercenary drudges, only substituted a new and worse kind of slavery for
the old.
But, before showing how the change was brought about, let us briefly
compare the two kinds of slavery--the old and the new. Under the old
system a slave was called by his right name--a slave. He was, to all
intents and purposes, the property of his master. He was liable to be
bought and sold, or otherwise disposed of, the same as cattle, sheep,
bales of goods, oil, wine, or any other kind of merchandise. If he had
a harsh or cruel master, he was liable to all manner of ill-treatment,
including corporal punishment and even death itself. Of liberty or
rights of course he had none but what his master might choose to
confer. Whatever wealth he might hoard or scrape together was at the
mercy of his master; for as slaves were themselves but the property of
their masters, whatever belonged to them belonged, by the same rule, to
their owners. It is needless to argue in condemnation of such a system:
it is self-condemned in the very fact that human nature recoils from
such a state, and that it is only bearable by those who know no better,
and only preferable to the sort of mockery of freedom to which it has
given place. Let it not, however, be supposed that the evils of such
a state were felt as we should now-a-days feel them, who have enjoyed
the rights of liberty and conscience; it was quite otherwise. If the
condition of direct slavery had its dark side, it had also its bright
side--bright, at least, in comparison with what has followed. The slave
of antiquity was not insulted with the name or mockery of freedom when
he knew he had none. He had not the shadow hypocritically offered him
for the substance. He had not to upbraid his masters with dissimulation
and treachery, in addition to the burdens imposed upon him. He had not
to complain that his master had robbed him or defrauded him of rights,
and of a position which belonged to him by the same constitutional
law by which the master claimed his own. Of these he could have known
nothing, simply because they had never existed in or before his time.
What men have never had, they can hardly be said to have ever lost;
and what men have never lost, they can better bear the want of, than
they can the loss of what was once theirs, and which they know and feel
ought still to belong to them. In these respects the chattel-slaves of
ancient and modern times have greatly the advantage over the starving
proletarian drudges falsely called “free and independent labourers.”
But the ancient bondsman had other and more substantial advantages
unknown to his proletarian successors. He knew nothing of the actual
wants and destitution, nothing of the manifold privations, in which
the great mass of the labouring classes now-a-days live, move, and
have their being. The very fact of his being his master’s property
caused him to be always well fed, well housed, well clothed, and
well cared for, according to his condition and habits. If he had no
property, nor the right to acquire any, independently of his master’s
control, neither had he any rent or taxes to pay, nor any other claims
or demands upon him that were not all amply provided for at his
master’s expense. Food, clothing, shelter, firing, medicine, medical
care--these and every other essential requisite for keeping him in
health and good condition were abundantly supplied him by his master,
for the master’s own sake. Indeed, it was the master’s interest to
do so; for whether there was work for the slave to do, or not, it
equally behoved the master to keep him always in good condition, that
he might be the better workman when there was work for him to do,
and that he might fetch a better price in the slave-market when his
services were no longer wanted. Besides, it was the custom in those
days for masters to take a pride in displaying the goodly state of
their slaves--of both their prædial and domestic slaves--just as our
modern gentry and graziers take a pride in displaying the stock upon
their farms, the studs in their stables, and, above all, the plump and
portly figures of their butlers, footmen, grooms, and all the other
paraphernalia of modern flunkeyism. There was, in those days, none of
that desperate competition, in vanity or in trade, which now-a-days
makes starvelings of the millions in order to make millionaires of the
thousands; which offers premiums for fat oxen, and the union workhouse
to lean labourers; and which awards prizes for bulls and rams, and
superior breeds of every description of brutes (not excluding even the
stye and the kennel), while it degrades the human animal below the
lowest description of savage man, and maintains its anti-christian
pomp of circumstances for the few, at the expense of blistering the
backs and pinching the bellies of those who, St. Paul said, should
be “first partakers of the fruits.” This kind of modern science was
wholly unknown to the ancients. Not a line is there in the works of
Homer, Hesiod, Plato, Aristotle, indeed of any of the old poets,
philosophers, or historians, to show that they knew anything of our
modern science of political economy. They believed in slaves and in
slavery; but they had no idea of enriching a master-class by famishing
the bodies of those to whom the masters owed everything, much less did
they ever dream that the wealth and aggrandisement of the master-class
were to be promoted by the expatriation, decimation, or diminution
of the slave-class. If the ancient Spartans occasionally decimated
their slaves, it was not because they looked upon them as a “surplus
population,” burdensome upon their estates, but because they feared
their growing numbers, while their own ranks were being continually
thinned by internecine wars with their neighbours. The idea of a slave
being a useless incumbrance, a mere incubus upon the soil, was an idea
utterly incompatible with their established custom of regarding slaves
not only as property, but as that superior description of property
which alone gave value to every other. Accordingly, though amongst the
ancient philosophers we find many strange schools and sects, and very
many eccentric and incomprehensible doctrines taught, yet nowhere do we
meet with any sect or school corresponding with our modern political
economists. There is no such philosopher as our Parson Malthus to be
found in the whole circle of classic or Biblical lore. Had such a
fellow as Malthus shown himself in the days of Alexander the Great,
and gone about preaching that the gods had sent too many mouths for
the meat and harvests they had provided, not even Diogenes would have
associated with such a lunatic; and if the slaves had only got scent
of the tendencies of his theory, not Alexander himself could, in all
probability, have prevented them from flaying him alive. Fortunately
for them, however, there were no Malthuses in the world at that time.
In the absence of such philosophers, slaves were not only free to
marry and to beget children, but their masters actually regarded
every increase in their slaves’ families as a direct gain--a direct
increase of the most valuable portion of their property. The idea that
at Nature’s feast there was no cover for the new-comer was, at that
epoch, an idea that would be as abhorrent to the master’s notions
of self-interest as it would have been to the slave’s instincts of
procreation and self-preservation.
It is true, the condition of slaves was a deplorable one when they had
such brutes for masters as Seneca describes in the person of Vedius
Pollio; but we are to regard such extreme cases as rare exceptions.
All historic testimony goes to show that the general rule was in the
other direction. Even Seneca’s testimony proves this; for, in speaking
of this very Vedius Pollio, he says, “Who does not detest this man,
even more than did his own slaves, for fattening the fish in his ponds
with human blood?” The treatment of his gladiators by Lentulus Batiatus
is another indirect proof to the same effect. Had Lentulus trained
his gladiators to appear in the arena in the usual way, to be matched
against others on some great occasion of public games, &c., they would
not have complained, much less rebelled. They would, in that case, but
have been called upon to exercise a profession which was as familiar to
the Romans, and as little distasteful to the combatants themselves, as
that of prize-fighting in England or bull-fighting in Spain. But the
brute, Batiatus, kept his gladiators locked up, and was professedly
training them to _fight with one another_ till they should die by each
other’s hands--a destination which, while it promised certain death,
held out no prospect of honour, _éclat_, nor even safety to the greater
number. It was this studied brutality, so much out of the ordinary
course, which provoked the slaves to mutiny and revolt. And the fact of
its being the only recorded instance of gladiators rising in rebellion
against the laws is the best proof that such barbarity was unusual, and
not sanctioned by the public opinion of the time. Indeed, so general
appears to have been the contentment of ancient slaves with their lot,
that only one or other of three causes is ever assigned by history for
the servile outbreaks it records:--first, excessive cruelty on the part
of masters; second, the non-execution of the laws regulating the labour
and condition of slaves; and third, the chiefs of parties raising and
embodying them with their insurgent bands in times of civil war. The
fewness of the servile wars recorded as arising out of the two first
causes sufficiently testifies that harshness on the part of masters,
and the non-execution of the regulations in favour of the slaves,
were but exceptions to the ordinary course of slave-life, and not the
general rule. It proves also that it was not against slavery itself the
slaves rose, seeing that it was only what they considered _an abuse of
it_, and not the thing itself, they rose against, and that, even when
victorious, they never set about abolishing the institution. And as to
the third cause of slave-insurrections, it proves still more forcibly
the general contentment of slaves with their lot; for, had it been
otherwise, _three_ slaves only out of the whole population would not
have responded to Marius’s appeal for a general rising of their order;
still less would they have failed to profit by the splendid victories
of Spartacus, when, had they only felt the sentiment of equality, or
entertained any dissatisfaction with their lot as slaves, they might
have effectually exterminated the whole master-class, and established
whatever form of government and of social order they thought fit.
Indeed, they had frequent opportunities during the last sixty years of
the Republic, and also during the first century or two of the Empire,
to make a successful rising against the master-class, had they been
inspired generally with a hatred of their servile condition. But it was
not so.
As a general rule, the slaves both of Greece and Rome were fully
reconciled to their condition, and had good reason to be so,
considering how profoundly ignorant they were of the political
conditions upon which alone real liberty can exist for the many. With
their ideas and habits, any attempt to emancipate themselves would have
plunged them into deeper degradation and ruin. Even their masters, much
less themselves, knew little of the laws and institutions by which
liberty, with security and prosperity, can be established. The proof
of this is their interminable wars with one another, and with their
neighbours all around them. A still stronger proof is their egregious
folly in allowing agrarian monopoly, and usury to make such frightful
progress amongst them, that “free citizens” became actually greater
slaves to money-lenders and land-monopolists than the slaves so called;
till at last the republics of Greece and Rome were brought to such a
state that a military despotism alone could save them from tearing
one another to pieces. When such universal ignorance and barbarity
prevailed amongst the master-class--an ignorance and barbarity that
virtually left civil liberty and equality without any solid guarantees
whatever--it would be madness to expect that any revolution useful to
humanity could have been effected by a still more ignorant slave-class.
They would but have made confusion more confounded, and, by altogether
suspending production, annihilated society itself amid scenes of
indescribable carnage and cannibalism. At all events, the slaves knew
better than to make any such attempt. They preferred bearing the ills
they had, to flying to those they knew not of. Without land or capital,
and freedom to use them in security, they were infinitely better off
as slaves than they would be by any revolution, however successful,
that did not give them these essential requisites. And seeing how the
poorer classes of free citizens fared (who had to make shift to live
without the use of land or capital), it is no wonder they clung so
tenaciously to their well-fed, well-housed servile condition. In plain
truth, the slaves of antiquity would have been mad to exchange their
slavery for what is, now-a-days, falsely called liberty, unless in so
doing they took good care that, along with liberty, _they had the means
of producing and distributing wealth on their own account_. And as this
supposes a species of politico-economical knowledge infinitely beyond
what might be expected from such a class in their day,--as it supposes
such a knowledge of agrarian, monetary, fiscal, and other laws as
are absolutely necessary to the preservation of even the semblance
of liberty, and which knowledge was almost as dead a letter to their
masters as to themselves,--we cannot but rejoice, for their own sakes,
that the slaves of antiquity chose to remain as they were. When men
have but a choice of two evils, it is desirable they should choose the
lesser. The slaves of antiquity had but a choice between direct slavery
and the miseries of proletarianism: in our opinion, they chose the
lesser of the two. Had they been wise enough to understand their true
political and social rights, they might have escaped both. Christianity
came to teach them; but man’s perversity stepped in between them and
the light of the Gospel. Even to this day, after eighteen centuries of
gospel-propagandism, not one in a thousand of the slave-class--whether
they be chattel-slaves or wages-slaves--whether they be proletarians
or the property of their masters--understands his political and social
rights. The consequence is, the two kinds of slavery prevail still all
over the world; and, of the two, direct or chattel-slavery is now, as
formerly, the lesser evil of the two. In no part of the East, that we
know of, would an Oriental slave of modern times exchange conditions
with one of our Wigan handloom weavers, nor with a Dorsetshire labourer.
But, to bring this question to a test that will make the difference
at once obvious to every one, let us just compare the condition of a
modern American slave (so-called) with that of “a free and independent
labourer” in England. We choose these two countries because they are
inhabited by the same Anglo-Saxon race; because they are at the head
of modern civilization; and because, from the commercial intercourse
between them, we know more of their positive and relative condition
than of any other two known countries.
First, what was the actual condition of a modern chattel-slave, as he
was to be found in any of the Southern States of the great American
Union? We shall give it from the lips of an eye-witness--from one
who has visited that country and judged for himself, in the year
1849--above all, from one who is a rank abolitionist, and so thorough
going a hater of slavery, and of everything pertaining to it, that in
the paragraph immediately preceding the one we are about to extract, he
buoyantly exclaims, “When we remember the ardour and perseverance of
the American character, and the intelligence of their leaders, we must
believe that the day approaches when the axe shall be laid to the root
of this fell upas-tree.” The author of this sentiment is a Mr. Edward
Smith, who was deputed, along with another gentlemen, by an influential
body of capitalists in London to make a survey and inspection of
the north-western part of Texas, with a view to some extensive plan
of colonization projected by the parties. This Mr. Edward Smith has
furnished his employers with a printed report of his travels through
several States of the Union; and in that report he utters not a few
jeremiads upon the curse of slavery, and not a few withering invectives
against its aiders and abettors. If, therefore, any testimony in favour
of slaves and slavery can be pronounced wholly unexceptionable, it
is that of Mr. Edward Smith, the Abolitionist. Now, what says this
gentleman? We quote pages 83 and 84 of his report:--
“From the slaves themselves and from other parties I have learned that,
with few exceptions, they are kindly treated, are not overworked, and
have abundance of food, clothing, and efficient medical attention. We
saw them lodged in small cabins, sometimes rudely built, and in other
places very neatly built, but always _partaking of the character of the
planter’s or overlooker’s house_ near to which they stand. A slave,
his wife and family, occupy a cabin exclusively, unless the family be
small, when two or more families live together. The planters find it
to be their interest to use their negroes well. They always permit
and, indeed, urge the slave to do overwork by planting a small plot
of land, set apart for his use, with corn, tobacco, or other produce.
This they do after the day’s work is over, and also on Sundays,
when the law does not allow the master to require them to work; and
wherefore we saw them clean and well dressed, lying upon the banks of
the rivers, as we passed by. When the produce is gathered, it is sold
by the planters, and the proceeds given to the slaves. Some slaves
prefer to cut wood, which is sold to the steamboats; and all supply
themselves with vegetables from their own garden. Many industrious
slaves can thus obtain from fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars per
year for themselves, which they expend in the purchase of tea, coffee,
sugar, whisky, and other luxuries of the table, and in clothing fit
for any European gentleman. In large cities, as New Orleans, they
hire themselves from their masters at an agreed-upon sum, and work
for others, as they prefer, and thus earn from twenty to twenty-five
dollars per month for themselves. _Very many slaves own horses, kept
for their own use; and others own lands_; and Captain Knight, of the
‘New World,’ stated that he knew a slave _who owned four drays and
teams and seven slaves_. Indeed, when they are good servants, they are
much valued, and obtain every enjoyment they desire.”
This extract is, we think, pretty decisive of our position; yet there
is another, just following, which is so strongly corroborative of what
we have advanced in respect of the contentment with their condition
which we have ascribed to the ancient slaves, that we cannot forego the
temptation to quote it. “Free-born Britons!” “independent labourers!”
mark this passage:--
“They” (the slaves) “do not usually care to save money wherewith to
purchase their freedom, _feeling that the protection of their masters
is an advantage to them_; but there are those, as the stewardess on
board the boat on which we descended the Mississippi, who have paid
from 1,000 to 1,500 dollars for their freedom!”
CHAPTER VIII.
EXPLOITATION-VALUE OF SLAVE AND FREE LABOUR.
Contrast of Plantation-Servants with British Workpeople--Affluence
of former American Slaves--Misery of Free Labourers and
Artisans--Value of Irish Peasants and English Workers--Free and
Slave Children in America.
Look on the life of a modern negro-slave in America, and compare it
with the life of a modern Irish or Scotch peasant, or even that of an
English hand-loom weaver in the North or of an English labourer in
the South and West. _Compare_, did we say? Alas! the two conditions
will not bear a comparison. _Contrast_ is the word we must use. To
the damning disgrace of modern civilization be it said, we cannot
_compare_ the condition of our free workpeople in Europe with that of
the negro-slaves of Louisiana,--we can only _contrast_ them; and the
contrast is so truly appalling that, in contemplating it, one cannot
help trembling at the prospective destination of humanity.
Mr. Edward Smith says: “Many industrious slaves can thus” (by overwork)
“obtain from 50 to 250 dollars per year, which they expend in luxuries
of the table and in clothing fit for any European gentleman.” This, be
it observed, is over and above an abundant supply of all their ordinary
wants by their masters. It includes neither food, drink, ordinary
apparel, medicine, firing, nor house-rents,--not even vegetables or
poultry, for with these, it seems, the slaves are provided out of their
own gardens and fowl-yards. It includes not one of those ordinary
expenses which absorb the entire week’s earnings of a modern “free-born
Briton.” The American slave’s surplus earnings may be considered as so
much pocket-money. He might save, or lay by at interest, the whole of
his 250 dollars per annum towards the purchase of his liberty, if he
liked to exchange his condition for that of an independent labourer.
According to Mr. Smith, however, the negro knows better; for Mr. Smith
tells us, “they” (the negroes) “do not usually care to save money
wherewith to purchase their freedom, feeling that the protection
of their masters is an advantage to them.” If this protection be
an advantage in America, where the wages of independent labour are
still comparatively high, what would be the negro’s feelings were it
proposed to him to give up his master’s protection in exchange for the
independence of a Dorsetshire labourer or of a Yorkshire weaver? Ah!
then, indeed, he would _feel_ the difference between the two kinds
of slavery; then he would know how to appreciate that condition of
primitive slavery which Mr. Smith calls a upas-tree, and from which
our saints of Exeter Hall so yearn to release him. “Very many slaves,”
again quoth Mr. Smith, “own horses kept for their own use; and others
own land.” We should like to know how many operative cordwainers or
journeymen tailors in London keep horses for their own use, and how
many of them own lands purchased with the proceeds of their overwork?
We should like to know, too, how many of their masters can afford to
keep horses for their own use? We apply this query to the tailors and
shoemakers of London, because no other two trades are subject to less
variation than these, and because the wages paid in them are higher in
London than anywhere else in the United Kingdom. Is there a journeyman
tailor or shoemaker in London that can afford to buy and keep a
horse out of his wages? We believe not one. And if it cannot be done
with London wages, certainly nowhere else can it be done in England,
Ireland, or Scotland. As to an English field-labourer, or an artisan
in one of our manufacturing towns, keeping a horse or owning land,
the idea is absolutely ludicrous. Indeed, we are living in times when
very few of their masters, much less themselves, can afford to indulge
in such luxuries. For though we have many of that class who, having
become millionaires and country squires, can keep carriages as well
as horses, yet the majority, if the truth were known, are nearer the
_Gazette_ than they are to that easy condition in which men can afford
to keep horses for their recreation and amusement. The case of the
stewardess whom Mr. Smith met on board the boat in which he descended
the Mississippi presents a startling contrast to the ordinary condition
of industrious females in England. The stewardess had, it seems, with
her own surplus earnings purchased her freedom at from 1,000 to 1,500
dollars; 1,500 dollars, at 4s. 2d. the dollar, is just £312 10s. of our
money. Where is the woman engaged in any branch of industry in England
that could show £312 10s., or a tithe of that sum, as the result of a
few years’ saving of wages? If there be such cases they are not one in
ten thousand. According to the commissioner of the _Morning Chronicle_,
to whose valuable revelations we referred in the preceding chapter,
“there are now in London some 28,577 needlewomen whose earnings average
but 4½d. per day. There are as many more whose earnings hardly exceed
3s. a week all the year round. Contrast (for we dare not say compare)
the condition of these unfortunate beings with that of the black female
slave who, besides living well, could save 1,500 dollars in a few
years wherewith to purchase her independence! Yet there are hypocrites
amongst us--hypocrites to be met with in shoals upon our platforms and
in our pulpits--who would wring tears of pity from us for the poor
negro slave, while not an atom of sensibility have they for their own
white slaves whose condition is infinitely more to be commiserated.”
But, after all, the real test is this:--What is a negro-slave’s value
in the eye of his master, and what is the British or Irish slave’s
value in the eye of _his_ master or employer? A sorry, good-for-nothing
slave indeed must he or she be whom an American planter could not find
a market for! From 800 to 1,200 dollars was a common price for a good
stout negro in New Orleans. In the case of the stewardess spoken of by
Mr. Smith, we find that her master considered her worth from 1,000
to 1,500 dollars--_i.e._, of that much value to himself. We know in
the case of our own West India slaves, that our Parliament estimated
their value to their owners at £20,000,000, the annual interest of
which we taxpayers have still to provide. But how stands the British
or Irish slave in respect of marketable value? In Ireland his value
stands so high that, only a few years ago, the landlords of Kilkenny
county, with the Marquis of Ormond at their head, actually memorialized
the Government to relieve Ireland from the presence of 2,000,000 of
the peasantry, offering to assist the Government even pecuniarily
in any scheme of emigration or transportation, or expatriation or
extermination, it might set on foot for that purpose! Indeed, hardly
a Parliamentary session has passed over, for the last twenty years,
without witnessing some kind of project, or proposal, or suggestion
for getting rid of Ireland’s “surplus population.” Up to the winter
of 1846-47 (the year of the famine) 2,000,000, at least, of the
population were uniformly condemned as surplus! Instead of being
considered worth so much per head, like the negroes, it was deemed
worth making a pecuniary sacrifice to rid the land of them. At £10 per
head, these 2,000,000 would fetch just the sum which the West India
planters thought a very inadequate remuneration for the loss of their
slaves. Instead of asking £10 per head for them, the Irish owners and
occupiers of the land were disposed to give £10 per head to get rid
of them. They would have jumped at the bargain, could they have found
the money and the purchasers. Fortunately for those patriotic and
Christian gentlemen, the famine of 1846-47 came to carry off about a
million of the surplus. Emigration and starvation have since relieved
them of another large batch. Starvation being a cheaper process than
emigration, it is the favourite scheme of the Irish proprietary
classes. But as there were then, and still are, many refractory Irish
who hold the rich man’s laws of _meum_ and _tuum_ in less respect
than they do the great law of nature which forbids any man to starve
in a land of abundance, the landowners and occupiers have found it
necessary, and for their interest, to contribute largely to the
emigration of the last few years. They have in this way expended some
hundreds of thousands of pounds, besides sacrificing many times that
amount in the voluntary cancelling of debts and in the remission of
arrears of rent due. At all events, the proprietary classes of Ireland
have furnished, and do still continue to furnish, proofs innumerable
and irrefragable that they consider their white slaves as not only
valueless, but to be worth considerably less than nothing, seeing that
they will give something very considerable to get quit of them. There’s
the marketable value of an Irish white slave!
And how stands the case in England? Not very dissimilar from Ireland.
Are not the ominous words, “surplus population,” as familiar to us upon
this side of St. George’s Channel as they are to our Irish brethren
upon the other side? Have we not all manner of emigration schemes
afloat here, as well as there, to get rid of the surplus? How often
has it been proposed to raise a gigantic loan of millions wherewith
to promote British emigration upon a gigantic scale, and to mortgage
the poor-rates as security for the repayment of the loan! We remember
how, some twenty and odd years ago, great numbers of the agricultural
parishes in England had it gravely in contemplation to get rid of
their surplus in that way. We remember some of the calculations made
on that occasion. We remember how certain wise men in certain places
laid it down that whole parishes might be cleared at the rate of £30
per family, on the average, and how much better it was to sacrifice
the interest of this sum (£1 10s. for each) than to saddle a parish
with the maintenance of a whole family of paupers. According to this
estimate, a whole family of English white slaves was worth just £30
less than nothing! In other words, their marketable value might be
expressed algebraically thus:--
An English white slave and family = minus £30.
About the time this estimate was made of the value of live Englishmen
in this country, Burke and Hare, the murderers, were selling dead
men’s bodies, in Scotland, at the rate of £10 per head to the College
of Surgeons in Edinburgh. Consequently, a dead slave was at that time
worth some £40 more than a whole family of live ones, unless the latter
could be made available for anatomical purposes. Since that period
the value both of live slaves and dead ones has greatly fallen in
the market. Subjects for the dissecting-table can now be got almost
for a song. And as to live slaves, our “surplus population” has so
vastly augmented since the time referred to, that, notwithstanding
the myriads already disposed of by famine and the cholera, we feel
assured our lords and masters have still some 5,000,000 or 6,000,000
more they would gladly get rid of upon any terms. There are full that
number at present in the United Kingdom for whom no regular kind of
remunerative employment can be had--who are, in consequence, regarded
as not only valueless, but as a positive incumbrance upon the soil--as
a dead loss to the country--and whose lives are thereby made a burden
to themselves as well as to others. To compare the condition of these
thoroughly oppressed and neglected beings with that of the well-fed,
well-clothed, well-housed, well-cared-for negro slaves described by Mr.
Edward Smith would be to outrage common sense. As already observed, we
may _contrast_; we cannot, in decency, _compare_. Why, according to
that gentleman’s testimony, any industrious negro, with a kind master,
could save more money in twelve months (besides leading a life wholly
exempt from care) than some of our hand-loom weavers could earn in two
years, or than an Irish white slave could earn in four years at 6d. a
day--which is more than their average earnings throughout the year.
The writer of this happening to visit Leicester some twelve months
ago, he made diligent inquiry there touching the rate of wages and the
condition of the people generally, engaged in the staple trade of the
town. From the very best sources of information, he learned that their
average wages did not exceed 6s. a week throughout the year, although
at that period the hosiery trade was unusually brisk, and all hands
full of work. Only twelve months before, nearly one-half the artisans
were out of employ, and the streets literally swarmed, at all hours
of the day, with men, women, and children roaming about in a state of
utter destitution. To beg or steal was their only resource; for they
were absolutely starving.
Talk of negro slavery, indeed! No chattel slaves of ancient or modern
times ever knew the dire distress and torturing privations of these
poor Leicester people. Indeed, except in the midst of a civil war, such
sufferings as theirs could not have happened under the ancient system
of chattel-slavery. In ordinary times of peace, it could not have been
even conceived; for neither masters nor slaves could have possibly had
any experience of such a state of things. It was only in desperate
civil wars, or occasionally from plagues, pestilences, or famine, that
such calamities arose in ancient times; and then all classes shared
alike in the visitation. Indeed, upon such occasions the slaves were
generally those that suffered least; for as they possessed nothing to
invite spoliation, and as their productive uses made it the interest
of all parties not to molest them, they necessarily escaped most of
the evils which, in times of war and commotion, ravaged every other
class. Hence their uninterrupted increase in numbers in Italy, Sparta,
and elsewhere; whilst the free citizens, or master-class, were being
continually thinned by the calamities, referred to. And seeing that
their owners could have valued them as property only on account of
their labour, the idea of their roving about in famished gangs, like
the poor Leicester weavers, without bread or work, and of then being
forced, as a means of preserving life, to beg a brother-worm of the
earth to give them leave to toil, is an idea that would be as novel
and as difficult of explanation to them as (to borrow an illustration
from Locke) the peculiar flavour of a pine-apple would be novel and
indescribable to one who had never tasted that particular fruit.
But man lives not by bread alone; he has other wants besides those
of food, clothing, and shelter: he has certain moral wants, and
certain sympathies, the gratification of which is as essential to
his well-being and happiness as the satisfaction of his mere animal
wants. It is in respect of these, even more than in respect of his
physical requirements, that the chattel-slave had, and still has, so
immeasurably the advantage over the proletarian wages-slave. Waiving,
for the present, the numerous proofs and evidences of this to be found
in the ancient classics, let us prove it by less fallible evidence--by
the actual condition of the chattel-slave in our own time. And here we
shall again cite the testimony of an abhorrer of chattel-slavery, to
show its superiority over the wages-slavery of proletarianism. What
says Mr. Edward Smith, the Abolitionist, in treating of those moral
relations between master and negro slave, upon which the well-being
and happiness of the latter must depend, as much as upon his physical
comforts? He says, “The planters find it their interest to use the
negroes kindly.” He says, the cottages built for them “usually partake
of the character of the planter’s or overlooker’s house, near to which
they stand.” He says, “The young coloured children are brought up with
the planter’s children, and thus learn to read a little,” though he
admits “the planters forbid their learning to write.” He says, “most
of the planters encourage ministers in giving religious instruction to
their slaves; for they have discovered that a good Christian is not a
bad servant.” He says that, as a consequence of the sort of paternal
care bestowed upon the coloured children by the planters, and of their
being brought up as companions and playmates with the planter’s own
children, “the slaves are deeply attached to the place of their birth
and to the planter’s children with whom they were raised, or whom they
nursed in infancy;” and he adds, “this attachment is commonly returned
by the planter, so that he will not part with the slaves so long as
he lives or can retain them.” These are pretty strong evidences. Yet
there is a stronger still. It relates to that event in every man’s
life, which, next to his coming into the world and leaving it, is
accounted the most important of his life; at all events, his happiness,
more especially in the humbler ranks, is said to depend more upon it
than upon any other event, or upon any other relation in which he may
stand towards his species; we mean, of course, marriage and sexual
intercourse. Now, how stands the negro-slave in this respect? Let us
see whether the planter scowls at him for marrying; let us see whether
he incurs the wrath of poor law guardians and commissioners, and the
withering anathemas of Malthus, for fulfilling one of the ends of his
being. Let us see, in short, whether he is menaced with starvation and
death, like a “free-born Briton” of the proletarian order, for obeying
a paramount law of his nature, enforced by scriptural injunction.
Upon this vitally important point in the negro’s condition Mr. Smith
observes:--“They” (the planters) “uniformly encourage marriage amongst
their slaves, and do not require a man and woman to marry unless they
wish to do so. If the man fancy a woman on another plantation, the
masters agree to the marriage, and one will sell the husband or the
wife, so that one master may own them both.” Compare these features and
conditions of negro marriages with those which characterise marriages
amongst the poor of this country. Where do we find a British or Irish
landlord encouraging the “peasantry” to marriage? Where do we find an
English or a Scotch cotton-lord, coal-king, or ironmaster promoting
early marriages amongst their white slaves? Whoever heard of any of
these gentry taking a young man or a young woman into his service, in
order to facilitate their union with those they love? On the contrary,
early marriages are systematically proscribed by these gentry, and,
indeed, all marriages, early or late, amongst the poor. Nothing is more
common, in this country, than for landlords to make it a condition,
when letting a farm to a tenant, that he (the tenant-farmer) shall not,
on any account, introduce a son-in-law or daughter-in-law beneath his
roof as inmates of the establishment; whilst he (the landlord) takes
care, at the same time, that there shall be no other habitations for
young couples on his estate. What is this but interdicting marriage
by taking the most stringent precautions against it? We know a certain
_noble_ lady, now living, who, not many years ago, when appointing a
master and mistress to instruct the young people in a boys’ and girls’
school (established upon one of her estates), made it a positive
condition of their appointment that, although they were man and wife,
they should have no children while they held their situation! This
titled Malthusian is by no means a rare specimen of her rank or sex;
on the contrary, she is but a sample of the sack; and the sack is
judged by the sample. In truth, from Lord John Russell and his Grace
of Richmond down to “penny-a-line Chadwick,” of poor-law notoriety,
and the very lowest of his understrappers, there prevails but one
sentiment on this subject, namely, an unmitigated dread and hatred of
affording any encouragement to the labouring classes to marry. And,
from the manner in which they have contrived to frame and administer
our present system of poor-laws (throwing the weight of the burden
where there is least strength to bear it), we may add, with truth,
that they have succeeded in making the great body of our ratepayers as
anti-matrimonial and as thoroughly Malthusian as themselves.
As the tree is known by its fruit, so may we judge of the relative
merits of the system which facilitates and encourages marriages amongst
chattel-slaves, and of that which prescribes Malthusianism to our
free and independent proletarians. The result of the latter system in
this metropolis alone is 100,000 women obliged to subsist themselves,
wholly or in part, by prostitution! The result of the former system is
prostitution reduced within very narrow limits amongst the slave-class,
and what there is of it is directly chargeable to the masters’ own
account, and not to that of their male slaves.
But enough has been said to establish our position that
chattel-slavery, with all its abominations, is less destructive
of life, liberty, and happiness than the wages-slavery of modern
proletarianism. Were other facts and arguments necessary, we could
supply them to redundancy. We therefore dismiss the subject, and shall
proceed to show how Christianity unconsciously caused the greater evil
in attempting to rescue humanity from the lesser.
[Illustration: Decoration]
CHAPTER IX.
HISTORY OF EARLY SOCIAL REFORMERS.
Intention of foregoing Contrast--Difficulties of Christian
Revolution, and comparative Facility of Coming Ones--Essenes as
Early Reformers--Difficulties in the way of Christian Innovations
on Pagan Slavery.
Before proceeding to show how Christianity, on the one hand, and
worldly selfishness on the other, concurred in superimposing the evil
of proletarianism upon that of chattel-slavery, and in gradually
supplanting chattel-slavery itself, to make place for the wages-slavery
of modern civilization, let us guard ourselves by a word or two against
a misconception that might possibly arise in the minds of some from the
perusal of the two last chapters.
Let no one suppose that it was any part of our intention to extenuate
the abomination of serfdom or chattel-slavery under any condition, or
to mitigate that just abhorrence of it, in all its forms, which we feel
assured the reader, in common with ourselves, feels towards it. Far be
from us any such purpose. The object of this part of our inquiry was
simply to show that wages-slavery with proletarianism may be the worse
evil of the two, and is positively at this moment a greater curse to
the human race than any form of chattel-slavery or of serfdom known in
ancient, mediæval, or even in modern times. The inference, therefore,
that should be drawn from the last two chapters is, not that we regret
the social revolution which has taken place, but that it did not take
place in the right way, and that, in consequence, another and greater
revolution is still indispensable and inevitable for the major part of
the human race.
That such revolution or, as we prefer to call it, reformation is
ardently desired by the millions everywhere cannot be doubted.
The existing condition of every country in Europe--our own
included--affords unmistakable evidence of it. The revolutionary
struggles of 1848, and the counter-revolutionary barbarities of 1849,
resorted to for their temporary suppression, are but forerunners
of the great social reconstruction we refer to. Whether this
reconstruction shall be effected peaceably in the way of social
reformation, or emerge, like order out of chaos, from the throes of a
violent convulsion, is a secret of the future, which time alone can
disclose. It ought to be, it may be, and, we trust, will be a peaceful
reformation. The times are favourable for such a change. The amazing
revolution which has lately taken place in the arts and sciences, as
applicable to the purposes of human economy, ought naturally to give
birth to another revolution of a kindred quality in the political and
social mechanism of society. This latter change need have nothing in
common with the innovations or revolutions of times past. We live at
an era of the world’s history when science may be made to yield more
treasure for all than ever was won for the few, by war and commerce,
in the past. We have agencies and powers at command for the production
of wealth, and facilities for its rapid interchange, which the ancient
world never dreamt of, and which to even our own grandfathers in the
last century would have seemed as marvellous as a Barmecidal feast or
any other brain-creation in an Arabian tale. By the agency of a single
inanimate power, that consumes not and never tires, we can do more
to change the face of terrestrial creation than could be done by the
labour of all the men and horses in the known world. We have already
in full play, though misapplied, a sufficiency of this power to equal
the labour of 700 or 800 millions of hands, with a capability of
enlarging its application and uses _ad libitum_, and with mechanical
contrivances within reach whereby that gigantic power may be made
available for the performance of every operation now performed by human
hands, and for the production and distribution of every description of
wealth and luxury desirable for man’s use. We can raise more sustenance
for man and beast from an acre of land than could the ancients from
six. We can transport tons of merchandise in ten or twelve hours to
distances which our ancestors could hardly have reached within as
many days. We could, were it worth while, light up the whole of this
vast metropolis at a single stroke of the clock. We have learned to
ride by vapour, to sketch and paint with the sunbeam, and to transmit
our messages by the lightning. In the subjugation of the elements to
man’s use, we have opened new fields for ambition, new roads to glory,
whose trophies will, ere long, throw those of kings and conquerors
into the shade, and render statecraft, priestcraft, lawyer-craft, and
every other description of craft now in the service of landlordism and
money-mongering, as odious and as obsolete as the occult sciences.
With these powers and appliances at command, no portion of the
human race needs the subjugation of any other portion for the
gratification of its utmost legitimate wants and desires. With
such prodigious advantages in its favour, the age we live in ought
to witness the extinction of every vestige of every description
of slavery known to man. The transition from chattel-slavery to
proletarianism and wages-slavery cost, as we shall see, rivers of
human blood; and, nevertheless, man’s ignorance and barbarity have,
as we have seen, made the change rather a curse than a blessing
to the majority of his fellows. The second social revolution--the
transition from proletarianism and wages-slavery to real and universal
emancipation--may be effected without the loss of a single life, or
the sacrifice of a shilling’s worth of his possessions to any man of
any class. Such, at least, is the creed of us, National Reformers. To
make that creed known and appreciated by submitting it to a full and
impartial examination by the public, and thereby to enlist as many
as we can of the good and wise of all classes in the cause of human
redemption, is, we hardly need say, the main object of this inquiry.
In entering upon it, we found it necessary to begin at the beginning.
The light of the past, though a lurid one, has appeared to us necessary
to illumine the present; and, to see our way clearly into the future,
both lights will, we think, be found serviceable. In other words, to
render clearly intelligible _what ought to be_, we have deemed it an
essential part of our inquiry to ascertain _what has been_ and _what
now is_. In the prosecution of this task, we now proceed to show how
Christianity and selfishness concurred in changing the slavery _that
was_ into the slavery _that is_.
As already explained, the institution of slavery was never called in
question by any class of the ancients before the advent of Christ, if
we except that small obscure sect amongst the Jews known by the name
of Essenes. Even these are supposed by some to have been a society
of Christian monks originally formed by St. Mark, who is said to
have founded the first Christian church at Alexandria. The accounts
given us by Josephus and Philo, however, make it much more probable
that the Essenes were Jews, and not Christians, and that they existed
before the birth of the Messiah. Those who ascribe their origin to
St. Mark evidently confound them with another sect of later growth,
established at Alexandria by Christian monks, and known by the name,
Therapeutæ. The bulk of this latter sect are supposed to have been
Greek Jews, converted to Christianity, and settled in Egypt. The
Essenes lived chiefly in Palestine, and spoke the Aramean and not the
Greek language. As far as certainty can be had in such matters, there
is reason to believe that the Essenes existed before and in the time
of Christ; and though no mention is made of them in the New Testament,
they are supposed to be alluded to by St. Paul in his Epistles to the
Ephesians and Colossians and in his First Epistle to Timothy. From
Josephus’s and Philo’s account of them, we should suppose them to
have been enthusiasts and ascetics, who occupied pretty much the same
position amongst their contemporaries and co-religionists, the Jews, as
the Shakers in America do amongst the modern Christian sects of that
country. That they were not _necessarily_ Christians might, we think,
be fairly inferred from the very doctrines and practices ascribed to
them; and that the existence of such a sect might well have preceded
Christ’s appearance will appear strange to no one who considers how
very popular St. John the Baptist was, and what crowds of enthusiastic
followers he attracted by his preachings and asceticism before the
Saviour made known His mission. Assuredly the Essenes were not more
ascetic than St. John the Baptist, whose raiment was camel’s hair, and
food locusts and wild honey; and assuredly their mysticism and social
equalitarianism bear less analogy to veritable Christianity than the
doctrines and practices of John.
This argument alone, independently of historic authority, ought, we
think, to suffice to set aside the ill-grounded belief of many that
the Essenes were _necessarily_ an early Christian sect. Their holding
certain doctrines in common with Christians, such as the immortality
of the soul and man’s spiritual responsibility to and equality before
God, is no more a proof that they were followers of Christ, than the
holding of similar doctrines by Socrates and Plato would prove these
philosophers to have been believers in a religion which was unknown
till near four centuries after their death. Dr. Neander’s account of
the Essenes is, that they were a society of pious Jews, who, disgusted
with the cant and hypocrisy of the Pharisees, and wearied with the
trials of the outward and of the inward life, had withdrawn themselves
out of the strife of theological and political parties, at first,
apparently (according to Pliny the Elder), to the western side of the
Dead Sea, where they lived together in intimate connection, partly
after the fashion of the monks of later days, and partly like mystical
orders in all periods have done. From this society other smaller ones
afterwards proceeded, and spread themselves all over Palestine. They
employed themselves in the arts of peace, such as agriculture, pasture,
handicraft works, and especially in the art of healing according to
the simple but unerring ways of Nature. Dr. Neander thinks it also
probable that they imagined themselves supernaturally illuminated in
their search into Nature’s secrets and use of her powers; and that
their natural knowledge and art of healing assumed, moreover, a sort
of religious or theosophic character, since they professed to have
peculiar prophetic gifts. Comparing this account with what we know
of similar sects in our own time--with the Mormons, for instance,
or with the Shakers, or with the White Quakers of Dublin--it seems
probable enough. It is the way of all such enthusiasts to run from one
extreme to another. Despising the Pharisees for their hollowness and
canting adherence to mere traditional and ceremonial law, in which the
_letter_ was everything and the _spirit_ nothing, the Essenes went
right into the opposite extreme, and almost sacrificed the outer to
the inner man. They believed firmly in the immortality of the soul and
in future rewards and punishments; they were absolute predestinarians;
they observed the seventh day with peculiar strictness; they held the
traditions of the Old Testament in great reverence, but only as mystic
writings which they expounded allegorically; they sent gifts to the
Temple, like other Jews, but offered no sacrifices; they admitted
no one into their society till after a three years’ probation; they
lived in a state of perfect equality, except that they paid great
respect to the aged and to their priests; they considered all secular
employments ungodly and immoral, except agriculture and the trades
and occupations connected with it. They were practical communists in
the largest sense of the word, for they had no separate or individual
interests, and held all things in common; they were industrious,
quiet, orderly, and free from every kind of vice practised in ordinary
society; they held solitude and celibacy in high esteem. Some say they
allowed no marriages or sexual intercourse in their society; but this
is doubted. They allowed no change of raiment till necessity required;
they abstained from wine and other fermented liquors; they were not
permitted to eat but with their own sect, and then a certain portion
of food was served out to each person, of which they partook together
after solemn ablutions.
It is, no doubt, the similarity of many of these practices to those
of some of the early Christians, and of the Therapeutæ in particular,
that has led some Roman Catholic divines, and also some philosophic
writers, to speak of the Essenes as of a Christian sect. Were the
supposition of these writers correct, history would in that case be
without one single testimony to show that the theory or practice of
the equality of human rights was known to any ancient people on earth,
Jew or Gentile, before the propagation of the Gospel. We believe,
however, that the supposition is without foundation. We believe the
Essenes were a Jewish, not a Christian sect. We believe their sect
was anterior to Christ, and even to John the Baptist. We believe it
consisted of ardent Jews, who, inflamed by the pious, fervid, and
truly democratic outpourings of Nehemiah and others of their prophets,
and disgusted by the manner in which they saw all Moses’s laws in
favour of the poor set aside by the scribes and Pharisees of their
day, to the profit of usurers and land-monopolisers, resolved, in the
language of their own Scripture, to “come out from amongst them and be
separate;” and that, accordingly, in the words of Dr. Neander, they
were “distinguished from the mass of ordinary Jews in this--that they
knew and loved something higher than the outward ceremonial and a dead
faith--that they really did strive after holiness of heart and inward
communion with God.” We believe moreover, that, instead of owing their
origin to Christianity, Christianity in a great measure owed its early
progress and successes to the Essenes; and that the Therapeutæ, with
whom they have been confounded, were but an offshoot of their society,
which subsequently engrafted itself upon a Christian stock. With these
considerations we hold it to be an established fact that the Essenes do
constitute a veritable exception, but the only solitary one recorded
in all history, of any people, before Christ’s advent, repudiating the
doctrine and practice of human slavery. This singular exception, if it
be one, proves two things worthy of every serious man’s notice. One is,
that if we are not indebted to Christianity for the first or earliest
repudiation of human slavery, we are indebted for it to the purest
fraction of that people, and to the purest form of that religion, to
whom and to which we owe Christianity itself; in other words, it is to
believers in the God of the Jews and of the Christians, and not to the
believers in any pagan gods or in no God, we are indebted for the first
authoritative interference with the pretended right of man to hold
his fellow-man in bondage. The other is, that the Essenes must have
purposely avoided propagandism and proselytism, kept themselves few
and select, and courted retirement and obscurity, in order to escape
persecution and perhaps death at the hands of their Jewish brethren.
Upon no other supposition would it be easy to account for their fewness
and impunity. For everything recorded of them goes to show that they
were as singular a people amongst the Jews, as the Jews themselves
were singular to the rest of the world; and those who did not spare
Christ and his Apostles were not likely to have spared them, had they
been equally bold and zealous in the propagation of their principles.
It was, probably, from similar motives that they mixed up celibacy
and other asceticisms and eccentricities with their system. What was
singular and unpopular was not likely to alarm rulers, or to excite
a dread of innovation, because not likely to excite imitation and to
attract followers; and what the authorities or the ruling classes saw
no cause to dread, they would not be forward to prosecute or persecute.
The apparent absurdities and vagaries of many other levelling sects
might probably be accounted for in a similar way. Had the Mormons mixed
up celibacy and other repulsive asceticisms and absurdities with their
politico-religious system, like the Shakers and White Quakers, it is
not improbable that they would be still under the patriarchal care of
Joe Smith at Nauvoo. This fact alone speaks volumes for the dangers and
difficulties Christianity had to encounter a few years later, when,
for the first time in the history of the human race, a few fishermen
and other obscure persons, headed by the supposed son of a carpenter,
proclaimed open warfare against all that, up to that time, had been
held sacred and indestructible in the constitution of human society.
And what pen, what tongue, can describe the zeal, the labour, the
sacrifices, the dangers, the trials, the persecutions, of the early
Christians in their first onslaught upon the powers of might and
darkness? Never, never, can a tithe of a tithe of what they achieved
and suffered in the cause of human redemption be known to their
Christian successors of our day. It is only the profound politician,
conversant with men and with the world, as well as versed in the
history of his own and other times, who can even imagine what they must
have suffered, or approximate to appreciating the miraculous virtues
they must have displayed, and the herculean labours they must have
performed.
Had the slaves of the ancient world been as conscious of their
own degradation, or as discontented with their lot, as are their
proletarian successors, the wages-slaves of our day, the case would
have been vastly different. But it was not so; on the contrary, the
slave-class of old was the very class that least of all was susceptible
of the sentiment of equality, and least disposed by inclination or
habit to countenance equalitarian innovators. What Mr. Edward Smith
says of the negroes of America is still more applicable to the ancient
slave-populations:--“They never tasted freedom, and do not feel the
want of it; and to be as happy as a nigger is a common phrase in free
and slave States alike.” If the modern negro has never tasted freedom,
he has at least heard of it, and heard that slavery is accounted a
crime and a felony in most Christian countries. But the ancient slave
never heard of, or imagined, any such a thing. Besides, except when he
had a downright brute for his master, he was really comfortable and
happy--“as happy as a nigger,” and for the self-same reasons.
Here was the first great difficulty Christianity had to cope with--a
difficulty almost impossible of conception in our times. To appreciate
it properly, we must only try to conceive what a Chartist or Socialist
lecturer’s difficulty would be as a propagandist in London or in the
provinces, provided all our labourers, artisans, and other workpeople
were so fully employed at light work and ample wages, that “as happy
as a hand-loom weaver,” “as happy as a London needlewoman,” or “as
happy as a Dorchester labourer” would be as current proverbial phrases
in England as the phrase, “as happy as a nigger,” is in America. Add
to this the difference between the toleration allowed to opinions
now-a-days and formerly, and the fact that as slaves were the property
of their masters, to tamper with them was, in the eye of the law and of
public opinion, to tamper with the master’s rights of property and with
his personal security. Just imagine these things, and we shall then
have some faint idea of what the early Christians had to contend with
from this source alone, in the first propagation of _liberty, equality,
and fraternity_. But of this and their other difficulties, dangers, and
sufferings more in the next chapter.
[Illustration: Decoration]
CHAPTER X.
PROGRESS OF EARLY CHRISTIAN PROPAGANDA.
Opposition from corrupt Slave-Caste--Detestation of Christian
Doctrines by Slave-owners--Incomprehensibility of new Doctrine
of Equality--Absence of a destitute Free People a Drawback on
Reform--Spread of the New Teachings--Alarm, and Persecution of the
New Faith.
We have seen, in the preceding chapter, what apparently insurmountable
difficulties the early Christians had to struggle with in the
ignorance, contentment, traditional habits, and deep-rooted prejudices
of the slave-class. To these hereditary bondsmen, who knew no gods but
their masters’ gods, no law but their masters’ will, the sublime dogmas
of the Gospel appeared altogether incomprehensible and out of nature’s
course. Slavery they had ever regarded as decreed for them by fate; and
as they had no wants, spiritual or temporal, but such rude ones as were
abundantly provided for by their owners’ care, they regarded with alarm
and distrust the apostles of a new faith, which was characterised as
subversive of everything human and divine. In a word, the slave-class
was, of all classes existing at the time, the least accessible to
evangelical doctrine,--the least susceptible of the new dispensation
so freely and so bountifully offered, for the first time, to the whole
of humanity in the name of the Creator of all. Undoubtedly, this, if
not the first, was the greatest stumbling-block in the way of the new
reformers.
That the master-class and the civil magistrate should encounter
such unheard-of innovations with the fiercest resistance was but
what might naturally be expected. To these the new religion was at
once sedition and rank blasphemy. A religion which treated their
gods and oracles as the offspring of fraud, begotten upon the body
of folly, was subversive of everything they deemed conservative of
society and wished to be held sacred by the multitude. A religion
which taught there was only one true God, the common Father of all,
in whose sight all men were equal,--that this God was no respecter of
persons or of classes, but would judge all alike, without regard to
rank, family, or condition,--that His worship demanded the practice
of all the virtues, and a renunciation of pride, lust, covetousness,
ambition, injustice--in short, of all the vices inseparable from
tyranny and slavery,--that, to be acceptable in His sight, men should
be as brothers, loving Him above all things, and their neighbours as
themselves,--a religion which told masters and rulers that whoever
would be foremost should be the servant of the rest, and which enjoined
upon all that whatsoever they would have others to do unto them,
even so should they do unto others,--a religion of this (till then)
new and singular character must of necessity have appeared a medley
of abominations to masters and rulers. And such, in good sooth, it
did appear to them. Indeed, so utterly atrocious and “subversive of
all law and order” did Christianity appear to the world at its first
introduction, that, but for the obscurity and seeming insignificance
of its first propagators, it is impossible it ever could have been
established by mere human agency. Contempt and pity were the true
safeguards of its first missionaries. Had they, at the outset,
exhibited any signs of strength or importance, it is certain they would
have been extirpated at once. No slave-owner would tolerate a system
which went to deny him a property in his fellow-man. No ruler, no
magistrate, would spare innovators whose doctrine went to revolutionize
the entire social system as then constituted. No nation as a notion, no
people as a people, would, for an instant, endure a religion which went
to deprive them of _their_ gods--the accredited protectors of their
liberties and laws. For in those days, be it observed, every particular
State or people had its peculiar form of worship, and its own peculiar
gods; and every religion being particularly united with the laws which
prescribed it, there was no way of converting a nation but by subduing
it--no possibility of any system of proselytism proving successful
but what could enforce its dogmas at the head of a victorious army.
In other words, the only system of religious propagandism known in
the old pagan world was the propagandism of the sword. And here let
us note, for the benefit of certain shallow philosophists who declaim
against Christianity on the alleged ground that before its introduction
religious wars were unheard of, that political and religious wars
amongst pagans were one and the same thing; and consequently, to make
good their case, they should prove that political wars were unheard
of. Rousseau exposes this philosophic error effectively in his “Social
Contract,” when showing the inseparable connection that subsisted
between religion and politics under the pagan system. “The reason,”
he says, “there appear to have been no religious wars in the days of
paganism was, that each State, having its peculiar form of government
as well as of religion, did not distinguish its gods from its laws,
and the political was also a religious war; the jurisdiction of their
gods being, as it were, limited by the boundaries of the nation, and
the gods of one country having no right over the people of another.”
Under an order of things like this, it is manifest no progress could
have been made by the first Christians had they appeared in sufficient
numbers, or of sufficient importance in the way of rank and station,
to attract the notice of governments. As already observed, it was to
their insignificance and obscurity alone they owed their preservation
and first successes. For, as we shall presently see, the moment they
grew strong enough to invite public vigilance, from that moment their
persecutions began, and a torrent of execration and vengeance was let
loose upon them the like of which was never witnessed before, nor will,
we trust, ever be again. What we shall say of these persecutions will
abundantly prove the horror which the doctrine of equality inspired in
rulers and slave-owners, and, at the same time, show what miracles of
_bearing_ and _forbearing_ the martyrs of the faith had to achieve
before those great principles, which all true Christians and democrats
now hold sacred, could ever obtain recognition in the world.
A third difficulty, as formidable as either of the others, although
of a negative kind, also obstructed the early Christians. It was the
absence of a numerous poverty-stricken, destitute class, corresponding
with our modern proletarians, and having, like them, no guarantee for
regular subsistence from day to day. Had such a class as this been
in existence in St. Paul’s time, his missionary labours amongst the
Gentiles would have been immeasurably lighter and more successful.
The millions would have been everywhere, as it were, predisposed for
the new doctrine. Life being a burden to such people, they would have
flung themselves with enthusiasm into the movement. But all history
goes to show that hardly any such class existed till a century or
two later. Speaking on this subject, an eminent French writer (M. de
Cassagnac) observes:--“We have no certain means of determining up to
what period of history pure slavery continued, _i.e._, slavery without
any enfranchisements or manumissions.”
Although we find early mention made of _freedmen_ in the Bible and
in the “Odyssey,” yet it is certain that in the primitive times of
slavery there were no beggars. One is, in effect, a beggar only though
lack of other means of subsistence. Now, a slave is not a beggar, he
being found and provided for by his master. There were no beggars in
our colonies during the early period of their settlement; and there
are but few still, notwithstanding the people of colour have been set
free. Blackstone judiciously observes, in his “Commentaries on the
Laws of England” (without being apparently aware of the value and
importance of the fact in a moral and social point of view), “that
the vast numbers of destitute poor which had already, in his time,
overspread England--and for whose subsistence the government had found
it necessary to make some provision, ever since the reign of Henry
IV., by an eleemosynary contribution levied with the regularity and
permanence of an ordinary tax--arose chiefly from the manumission or
setting free of large bodies of serfs during the middle ages, who were
suddenly and without forethought thrown upon society.” The monasteries,
with their magnificent hospitals and well-organised system of charity,
supported these poor outcasts as well as might be for a considerable
period. But at length came the Reformation, which, pitilessly closing
the monasteries, changed the workpeople into paupers, and the destitute
poor into robbers. Following up this argument, M. de Cassagnac,
after showing why there are fewer destitute poor in France than in
England, concludes thus:--“But whether we regard France, England,
or any other country,--whether we consult ancient history or modern
history,--we shall find it everywhere and at all times to hold good,
as a general rule, that _the emancipation of slaves is the first and
universal cause of pauperism and mendicity all the world over_.” Our
pseudo-philanthropists and saints of Exeter Hall--our abolitionists
and humanity-mongers, who sentimentalize so blandly and edifyingly
upon the evils of negro-slavery, will not, mayhap, be much gratified
by this piece of historic intelligence. It is not the less true,
however. Living experience adds the weight of its testimony to that
of ancient history to confirm M. de Cassagnac’s conclusions. For,
to this day, we find that wherever direct or chattel slavery is the
normal condition of the mass of the labouring class--as, for instance,
in sundry Asiatic nations and in the Southern States of America till
recently--there pauperism and mendicity are comparatively unknown. A
few beggars and destitute persons may be found, here and there, amongst
such people; but, besides that their number is hardly noticeable in the
general mass, it will also be found that even these few are decayed
freedmen and their offspring, or else the descendants of slaves who had
purchased or otherwise obtained their freedom.
M. de Cassagnac mentions another fact confirmatory of this conclusion.
It is, that the first great irruption of beggars, prostitutes, thieves,
and paupers which overran Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire is
ascertained to have taken place from the second to the sixth century--a
period which corresponds exactly with the time when the mass of pagan
slaves set free was added to the mass of enfranchised Christians; and
this irruption made itself manifest at once by the regular organisation
of hospitals which then took place, but which were altogether unknown
to the ancients, whose custom it was to provide for their sick and
infirm slaves in private infirmaries, to which dispensaries were
attached, within their own premises. Indeed, wherever we find the word
“beggar” or “pauper” occur in primitive writings, we may make sure
that those writings belong to an epoch when a great many slaves had
already been emancipated--that is to say, to a secondary epoch in the
civilization of the country the writings may refer to.
The same remark applies to mercenaries or wages-slaves; for the
ancient mercenary is no other than a manumitted slave, who is allowed
to sell his labour when he can no longer be sold himself, he being
no longer any one’s property. There is an allusion to this class of
persons in Leviticus xxv. 6: there are a few also in the “Odyssey.”
Plutarch, in his “Life of Theseus,” cites a verse of Hesiod, in which
also allusion is made to mercenaries or wages-slaves. In the same poem
of Hesiod there is mention made of beggars. These several allusions,
however, are made in such a way as to show that the class referred to
was insignificantly small. Moreover, it is far from certain that in
some of them the word “mercenary” does not refer to a class of slaves
corresponding with those modern ones in America, whose masters allowed
them, as it were, to farm themselves out to other employers, accepting
a fixed sum for themselves, and permitting the slaves to appropriate
the overplus; just as a modern London cabman is allowed to pocket all
he can make in the day, over and above what he pays his “governor”
for the use of his horse and vehicle. It is remarkable that Homer’s
“Iliad,” which was written before the “Odyssey,” does not contain a
single hemistich having reference to paupers or beggars; from which it
has been inferred that the period intervening between the two works
was one of those periods of transition when, manumissions occurring
with unusual frequency, a small mercenary class was formed, to which
allusion is made in the later poem. At all events, it is quite certain
that no large class of mercenaries or wages-slaves existed at the
time the Gospel was first propagated; and this was one of the main
difficulties in the way of its progress. A destitute proletarian class
would have hailed the doctrine of equality with joy and gladness.
To well-fed, contented, ignorant slaves, who had neither hunger nor
tuition to sharpen their intellects, it was all but incomprehensible:
besides, the relation in which they stood to their owners made it
perilous to tamper with them.
In the face of these formidable difficulties, it may well be asked
what means, short of the miraculous, could have secured such amazing
successes for Christianity so soon after its foundation? We are not
_divines_, and therefore shall leave the miraculous to those who prefer
accounting in that way for the truly marvellous progress made by the
first Christians in the propagation of their doctrines. Suffice it for
us to say that nothing like it was ever before known in the world, nor
since. Of the rapidity and multiplicity of its early triumphs we have
abundant evidence in the history of the Acts of the Apostles. In Judea,
where the Gospel was first preached (and where, no doubt, the labours
of bygone martyred prophets, the preachings of John the Baptist, and,
mayhap, the example and secret propagandism of the Essenes had prepared
the ground for the seed), the new mission was, as might be expected,
most successful. On the fiftieth day after the Crucifixion, it is said,
three thousand persons were converted in Jerusalem by a single sermon
of the Apostles. A few weeks after, five thousand true believers were
present at another sermon preached in Jerusalem. Within less than ten
years after Christ’s death, the disciples and followers had become
so numerous throughout Judea, particularly in and about Jerusalem,
that they were objects of jealousy and alarm to Herod himself. About
the twenty-second year after the Crucifixion they had so multiplied
themselves that their name was legion. These facts may be collected
from the Acts themselves.
Nor was it amongst the poor only that the doctrines of fraternity and
equality gained ground; they penetrated all ranks of the population;
they were ardently espoused by men in high stations and of responsible
offices, whose countenancing of such a creed was at the moment a most
perilous adventure. Amongst those early proselytes we find Joseph
of Arimathea and Nicodemus, both members of the Jewish sanhedrim or
council; Jarius, a ruler of the synagogue; Zaccheus, the chief of
the publicans at Jericho; Apollos, a distinguished orator; Sergius
Paulus, a Roman and governor of the island of Cyprus; Cornelius,
a Roman centurion; Dionysius, a judge and senator of the Athenian
Areopagus; Erastus, treasurer of Corinth; Tyrennus, another Corinthian
and professor of rhetoric; Paul, learned in the Jewish law; Publius,
governor of Melite (now Malta); Philemon, a man of great rank and
influence at Colosse; Simon, a sophist of some note in Samaria; Zenas,
a lawyer; and, we are told, even some of the emperor’s own household.
For, as may be inferred from some of these names, it was not in Judea
only the new faith triumphed: it spread with almost equal celerity
and success throughout Asia Minor, Greece, Africa, and the islands of
the Archipelago; indeed, everywhere in the countries bordering the
Mediterranean. There was hardly a province of the Roman empire that was
not visited by its missionaries, even in the lifetime of the Apostles.
Some of its earliest and most marked triumphs came off in the heart
of Greece itself, at that time reputed the most polished nation in
the world, and to whose schools and academies (as being the choicest
nurseries of learning, art, and science) the aristocracies of Rome
and elsewhere sent their sons to be educated and trained for public
employments. Indeed, long before the last of the Apostles disappeared,
we read of churches founded at Ephesus, Corinth, Thessalonica, Berœa,
Philippi, and other Greek cities. Rome herself, the seat of empire
and mistress of the world, was not proof against the contagion of
spiritualized democracy. Before the end of the second century there
were Christians to be found in almost every department of the imperial
service--Christians in the senate, in the palace, in the camp, in
the public offices,--in short, everywhere, it is said, except in
the temples and the theatres, from which, of course, their religion
debarred them.
But, it will be readily imagined, this amazing progress was not
obtained without paying the cost which is paid for all reformations, in
the blood and calamities of the principal actors. A religion of such
unheard-of character, ushered into a world such as we have described,
could not but excite the fiercest opposition and call forth the most
malignant passions. It was so with Christianity, despite all the
miracles alleged to have been wrought in its favour. The very term
“Christian” was first heard of as a term of reproach. The new believers
are said to have got that name at Antioch, where the people “were given
to scoffing,” but afterwards adopted it themselves as a term of honour,
and gloried in it, just as we have seen the Chartists of England adopt
that title (first given them in derision by their enemies), and glorify
themselves in it; or as the French revolutionists of 1793 adopted and
converted into an honorary title the nickname of “Sans Culottes,”
contemptuously given them by Lafayette; or as our democratic brethren
in America converted “Yankee Doodle” into a national air, by way of
revenge for the insult originally intended by their enemies in its use.
That the word Christian was, indeed, originally used as a term of
reproach cannot be doubted. Christ or his disciples never used the
term. It is nowhere to be found in the Gospels; and if made use of
twice or thrice in the Acts, and in one of the Apostolic Epistles,
it is evidently used as a term borrowed from others, and not as one
voluntarily adopted by the sect itself. But the best proof that the
term was used in an offensive sense, and that the sect itself was held
in detestation (mitigated only by contempt), is furnished by Tacitus’s
“Annals,” in the only passage in which that historian deigns to notice
them. It occurs where, speaking of the Christians persecuted by Nero,
he describes them as believers in a “deplorable and destructive
superstition,” which had its origin with one Christ; and then, as
if for want of a name to give them, he adds, “_Vulgus Christianos
appellabat_,” _i.e._ the vulgar or common people called them Christians.
At the period referred to here, the Christians were too few and too
weak to cause much alarm out of Judea. Hence the air of contempt
with which Tacitus wrote of them. Not very long after, however,
the score was altogether changed. From a handful of obscure and
unnoticeable sectarians, having scarcely any feelings in common with
the rest of mankind, they grew into a gigantic community, having
their missionaries, their churches, and even their political agents,
spread throughout every corner of the empire. It was then their
persecutions began to assume those forms and proportions which are
necessary to attract history; it was then the pagan priesthoods,
pagan magistrates, and pagan aristocracies found it necessary to
check the tendencies of the new heresy, and to rouse and infuriate
the superstitious prejudices and passions of the populace against the
innovators. Nor was this a difficult task. At all times it is easy
enough to influence ignorant mobs against reforms they understand not,
and against men they comprehend not. It was peculiarly so in the case
of the pagan rabble, let loose against the early Christians. For, be
it observed, this new religion, which never ceased proselytizing,
was a singularly exclusive one. It denied dogmatically, and rejected
contemptuously, every alleged fact and article of heathen mythology,
and the existence of every article of their worship. It would hear
of no compromise, no amalgamation. If it prevailed at all, it must
prevail by the subversion of every altar, statue, temple, consecrated
to pagan uses. It pronounced all other gods false; all other worship
sinful and an abomination. With these peculiarities engraved on it,
it was impossible for the new religion to escape persecution from the
pagan priesthood and superstitious rabble. And when we combine with
this the consideration that the pagan magistrates and rulers regarded
the doctrines of Christ as subversive of governmental authority, of the
subordination of classes, and of the institution of property itself, as
well as of religion and of the protection of their gods, we shall be
at no loss to appreciate the nature of the feelings about to be roused
into action against the Christians. We shall see, as we proceed, how
these feelings showed themselves in the struggles and prosecutions
which ensued.
[Illustration: Decoration]
CHAPTER XI.
THE FOUR GREAT PERSECUTIONS.
Obscurity and Insignificance of Early Reformers their
best Protection--Christians the Great Levellers--Nero’s
Persecution--The Blood of the Martyrs the Seed of the
Church--Persecution of Domitian--Martyrdoms under Trajan--Tortures
under Antoninus.
We have seen, in the preceding chapter, why Christianity must, upon its
first introduction, have been universally and virulently opposed by the
established powers of the world; and how, but for the lowliness and
obscurity of its first propagators, it must, by attracting the notice
of the wealthy and powerful, have been crushed at once, instead of
making the amazing progress it did, before its persecutions began.
When the interests of wealth and power adjudged it necessary to
crucify the Founder, their comparative insignificance could alone be
a protection for his disciples and followers. And the supposed cause
of their being spared so long is the fact of their appearing to the
Roman governors only as a sect of Jews who had seceded from their
brethren on account of some non-important item of worship or doctrine,
not worth inquiring into. It was a part of Roman policy, as we have
seen, to tolerate all religions, and even to incorporate the gods of
their subjects or allies along with their own. The Jews, like all other
people subject to the empire, enjoyed this toleration; and so long as
the Christians appeared to be only a sect of this singular people, they
participated with them in the imperial protection. We have a remarkable
proof of this in the case of St. Paul. When he returned to Jerusalem
from his third apostolic mission, the favour with which he was received
by his Christian brethren there, and the joy they manifested at the
great success of his mission in Macedonia, Achaia, &c., roused the
ire of his countrymen. It is related that some Jews of Asia (who had
probably witnessed the fruits of his zeal and ability amongst the
Gentiles in their own country), seeing him one day in the temple, gave
instant vent to their bigoted or conservative rage, by pointing him
out as the man who was aiming to destroy all distinction between Jew
and Gentile. They charged him with teaching things contrary to the
law of Moses, and with polluting the holy temple by bringing into it
uncircumcised heathen. The effect of this was to enrage the multitude
against St. Paul. They seized him, dragged him out of the temple,
brutally maltreated him, and were on the point of putting him to death,
when he was rescued out of their hands by Lysias, a Roman military
tribune, and the then principal army-officers at Jerusalem. This
conduct of Lysias towards the great apostle, taken in juxtaposition
with the previous well-known efforts of Pontius Pilate to save Christ
himself from the hands of his Jewish enemies, shows clearly enough
that the early Christians had little to fear from the Romans, so long
as they were deemed to be only a religious sect of the Jews, and to be
aiming at a kingdom which “is not of this world.”
It became otherwise, however, as soon as the pagan priesthood and
pagan magistracy began to discover that Christ’s kingdom would very
materially affect this world, as well as the next. The priests,
trembling for their revenues and estates, the magistrates and rulers
for their power, and the rich generally for their wealth and station,
became _very_ Jews from the moment that discovery was made. A religion
which proclaimed _spiritual_ equality was, to the priest and rulers,
undistinguishable from one that, if it did not proclaim, would very
speedily lead to _temporal_ equality as well; and the principle of
_community of goods_, which so notoriously prevailed in some of the
early churches, was point blank evidence of the levelling tendencies of
the sect. Indeed, examining it philosophically, the religion could not
be otherwise than _social_ in its effect. For, as its main doctrines
went to condemn riches (“lay not up for yourselves treasures,” &c.),
to make power a _trust_ for the governed, and not a profitable
_monopoly_ for governors (“let him who would be foremost amongst you
be the servant of the rest,” &c.), and to exhibit this life as a mere
probationary state for another and eternal one, in which the poor of
this world were likely to fare better than the rich (“it is easier
for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man
to enter the kingdom of heaven”),--as these and the like were amongst
the vital doctrines of the new religion, it is impossible that such
as embraced it with a firm belief in its ordinances, and promises of
future rewards and punishment, could dare to rob and enslave their
fellow-creatures, or peril their eternal salvation in another world
for the sake of enjoying the mammon of unrighteousness in this for
the brief space of a few years. These conclusions being but strictly
logical deductions from Christian premisses, it is no wonder that
a people, whom one of their own historians (Sallust) represents as
valuing riches, honour, and empire as the greatest goods the immortal
gods could vouchsafe to man, should regard with an evil eye a religion
which threatened them with the loss of all, by bringing them into
contempt, and making the possession of them a peril to salvation.
At all events, such was the impression made upon the pagan mind. Had
they regarded Christ’s kingdom as pertaining only to another world,
they would have cheerfully made his followers a present of it, on
condition that they did not meddle with this. But in the face of such
levelling doctrines, and in presence of a faith so lively and ardent,
which made hosts of men renounce their temporal possessions in order
to render themselves worthy of the new dispensation, the higher and
wealthier orders of the empire soon became convinced that they would
lose their kingdoms in this world if they allowed any further scope to
that new and strange religion which promised so much in the next.
Hence originated that series of persecutions so well known in the
history of the Christian church, and which lasted upwards of three
hundred years. According to the best accounts, it began about A.D.
64, in the reign of Nero. Although the mummeries and monstrosities of
polytheism were openly derided by St. Paul and others from the first
starting of their missions, yet it does not appear that any public acts
of legislation or administration were directed against Christianity
till this period, when it had acquired such extension and stability
as to make it truly formidable. It was then the Roman authorities
began to blame themselves for their toleration, and to wonder that
the Jews had found it so difficult to infuse into the breasts of
Roman magistrates that rancour and virulence so conspicuous in the
Jews themselves. Moreover, the open attacks upon paganism continually
made by the Christians rendered them extremely obnoxious to the
populace, who considered their understandings as well as their gods
insulted by every sermon directed against them. They retorted upon the
Christians by stigmatising them as _atheists_, and at the instigation
of their priests, secretly backed by the rich, called loudly upon the
civil magistrates to suppress them by force, as a body of seditious
conspirators whose object was to destroy the politico-religious
constitution of the empire. As happens in the suppression of all
popular movements, lies and inventions the most horrid, imputing to
them all manner of abominations, were circulated all over the empire,
and, by these and like circumstances, the minds of all classes of
pagans were prepared to regard with pleasure or indifference any amount
of cruelty and wrong that interested vengeance might wreak upon them.
In short, the sort of feeling that was got up against the Socialists
and Red Republicans of France, before and after the June insurrection,
will convey the best idea of the public opinion which was manufactured
in Nero’s time to prepare men’s minds for the terrible proscriptions
that followed. Indeed, many of the designations of horror applied to
modern Socialists are little else than translations of the Latin terms
so copiously lavished upon the poor Christians.
Besides the private persecution which never ceased (and which is always
more galling and unbearable than the public), there were at least ten
great imperial crusades directed against Christianity. When we say
directed against Christianity, we wish to be distinctly understood as
meaning against _liberty_ and _equality_. About the _spiritualism_ of
Christianity the pagan rulers cared not a straw, more than they did
about their own gods. Religion was a mere pretence in the matter, as
it is in all such matters. It served their purposes with the multitude
(who alone are sincere on such occasions); and that is all they
cared for. It is by viewing persecution in this light--the only true
light--that modern reformers can profit by our remarks on this head.
The first great persecution (which took place under Nero, about A.D.
64) is noticed by Tacitus in his “Annals.” From the language used by
that historian, it is manifest that the wealthier classes of Rome
regarded the Christians of that period as a most dangerous combination
against not only the government, but (to use a _doctrinaire_ phrase)
against “society” itself. Tacitus--himself an aristocrat--regarded
the aristocratic orders of his day as constituting _society_; and
finding these orders to be no favourites with the Christians, he
roundly accuses the latter of “hatred towards the human race,” and
describes them as followers of _one_ Christ, who was the founder of
a “deplorable and destructive superstition”! In the same way, the
Bonapartes, the Thiers, and the Guizots of the present day represent
their own plundering class as _society_, and describe such men as Ledru
Rollin, Mazzini, Louis Blanc, Proudhon, &c., as enemies of all law
and order--as enemies of family, property, and religion,--in short,
as warring against “the very existence of society itself” (their own
words), because they preferred the rights and happiness of the great
majority to the usurpations of a criminal and contemptible minority.
It is now an established fact--a fact as well attested as any in
history--that the insurrection and bloody carnage in June, 1848, was
preconcerted and with great pains elaborated by the friends of “law and
order,” in order to purge “society” of Red Republicanism and Socialism,
or (to use their own phrase) _pour en finir_--_i.e._ to make a finish
of the democratic and social republic by drowning it in the blood of
its authors and most heroic defenders.
It is not so well known how the great fire originated in Rome, which
Nero and his myrmidons charged upon the Christians. History had no
historians for the poor of those days. There is but too much reason,
however, to believe that the burning of Rome in Nero’s time was as
much the work of the friends of “law and order,” and for a similar
purpose, as the June insurrection was notoriously the work of the
same description of gentry in Paris. Times and circumstances change,
but not human nature; it is always the same, and will ever develop
itself in the like way under like circumstances. Nero is said to have
fiddled when Rome burned. The friends of “law and order,” the defenders
of “society,” were never in brighter ecstacies than when Cavaignac
announced the demolition, by shells and cannon, of the houses of the
insurgents, and the massacre of their brave defenders. If setting fire
to Rome, and reducing three-fourths of it to ashes, could have been
made available for the destruction of the Christians, the aristocracy
of that day would no more have scrupled at it than did Rostochin the
burning of Moscow, Cavaignac the demolitions in Paris, or General
Oudinot the bombardment of Rome. Aristocrats have never been aught but
robbers since the birth of their order; and all history proves that
they invariably become murderers, burners, devastators, and hirers of
assassins the moment the people attempt to recover their own. It was
so, most likely, in the burning of Rome. To this day, Nero himself is
suspected of the deed, though we think it far more likely to have been
the work of his aristocracy, with whom he was no favourite, because he
made himself too familiar with the common people.
But whether the atrocity was Nero’s work, or that of the aristocratic
enemies of Christianity, it is certain the unfortunate Christians were
made to bear the odium and penalties of it. Without any evidence on
the matter, the best and bravest of the Christian party--those publicly
known as such--were openly seized and accused of the act. Through
these, others were discovered and laid hold of, till the imperial
net was full of victims. They were condemned to a variety of cruel
deaths, and they perished in the midst of all manner of insults and
execrations. Some were sewed up in the skins of wild beasts, and then
thrown to hungry dogs, to be torn in pieces and devoured. Some were
nailed to crosses, like their Divine Master. Others were burnt alive,
in a manner which ought to cause aristocracy and vulgar intolerance to
be abhorred till the crack of doom. The victims were first sewed up in
pitched clothes or coverings; these were then set on fire, and, being
lighted up at night, they served as torches to illuminate Nero’s own
gardens, which were given for the purpose.
These barbarities were followed by edicts published against the
Christians, which enjoined upon the authorities to repress them
by every means placed at their disposal by the law. Of course,
many martyrs suffered, especially in Italy. St. Peter and St. Paul
are generally supposed to have been of the number. The former was
crucified, it is said, with his head downwards, at his own request.
St. Paul was beheaded. Such, at least, is the tradition preserved by
the early Fathers, who are all unanimous that their martyrdom was a
consequence of this persecution; though it is not precisely known
whether it was the burning of Rome that was made the pretence of
killing them, or a revolt of the Jews from the Romans, which took place
a year or two later, through a successful insurrection in Jerusalem.
The former is the more likely and accredited, though the latter is not
improbable, seeing the Christians gave the Romans some trouble at the
time in Judea, where their garrison in Jerusalem was put to the sword,
and one of their generals, who came to besiege it, was ignominiously
repulsed and defeated in his retreat. Such events would naturally
exasperate the Romans against both Jews and Christians; and as the
populace hated both sects alike, the martyrdom of Peter and Paul might
be easily enough accounted for under the circumstances.
It is needless to say, Nero’s persecution was unsuccessful. It
only made the Christians more cautious. Their numbers and zeal but
multiplied in despite of it. And if, to men of their principles, it
could be any satisfaction to hear of their enemy’s death, they had
abundant occasion for it when it became known that Nero fell by his
own hand--thus atoning for his injustice to them by at last doing
justice to himself. If we mistake not, the Red Republicans and Social
Reformers of the Continent will have cause to rejoice at many such acts
of self-retribution on the part of their oppressors before many years
elapse.
The second general persecution of the Christians took place in the
reign of Domitian, towards the close of the first century. In this
persecution many Christian teachers of great eminence suffered, but
with no better success to the cause of paganism than the first. It
appears to have ceased at the death of Domitian.
The third great persecution commenced in the third year of the Emperor
Trajan, A.D. 100. Without going into the causes alleged by divines
and churchmen for this persecution (which they would have us think
was a purely spiritual affair), let us at once say that every feature
of it known to us in these days shows clearly enough that it was the
_temporal_ and not the _spiritual_ tendencies of Christianity the
Emperor Trajan directed his force against. Indeed, the charges recorded
against them are precisely the same as those made against Chartists
in England, Red Republicans in France, or democrats anywhere in the
present day. One churchman, treating of it, says, “Under the plausible
pretence of their holding illegal meetings and societies, they were
severely persecuted by the governors of provinces and other officers,
in which persecutions great numbers fell by the rage of popular tumult,
as well as by laws and processes.” Is it not under a similar “plausible
pretence of holding illegal meetings and societies” that most
persecutions take place against the political and social reformers of
the present day? And wherein are the doctrines professed by the latter
different from those recorded of the Christians in Trajan’s time?
In no one essential particular. What a pity that our modern divines
and churchmen cannot be got to see the persecutions of Chartists and
Socialists, now-a-days, with the same eyes with which they look upon
those of our predecessors, in religion and politics, who suffered under
Nero, Domitian, and Trajan! The Trajan persecution continued several
years, and made an immense number of martyrs; amongst others the famous
Clement, Bishop of Rome. But as Trajan was an emperor famed for his
liberality, justice, and moderation, some of our modern parsons are at
a loss to account for his severity to the Christians. Unless it be the
chastening hand of Providence, they know not what to see in it. Sweet
innocents! Did they ever hear of any _liberal_ persecutors in England,
or of any _moderate_ mitrailleurs in France? Know they not that the
authors of all the late massacres, transportations and dungeonings
in France call themselves _moderate_ reformers and liberals, and
declare they will have only _la république des honnêtes gens_--the
republic of honest men? Know they not, too, that the really honest men
who are their victims get the very identical names, in France, that
Trajan’s judges gave the victims of his persecution--viz., brigands,
malefactors, and traitors? Yes, let modern churchmen and parsons
pretend what they may, the authorities they now uphold are the exact
counterpart of the Trajans and Domitians of old; and the political
victims of the present day are as exactly the counterpart of those
early Christians whose martyrdom they so affect to deplore, and which
(to blind their flocks) they would have us believe was purely the
consequence of their opinions touching a future state.
In this persecution under Trajan, and in another which ensued under
his successor Adrian, it is as well known as anything in history that
the great bulk of the martyrs suffered for the _political_ and not the
_spiritual_ dogmas they upheld, and that in the eye of public opinion
they passed not so much for blasphemers and atheists (names given to
them to please the superstitious rabble), but as seditious disturbers
of the peace, enemies of the emperor, malefactors towards society, and
traitors to the imperial government.
The fourth great persecution took place under Antoninus the
Philosopher, and, with different degrees of severity in different
places, continued throughout the whole of his reign. In this
persecution perished the famous Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, said
to have been the friend and companion of St. John. Thus the poor
Christians fared no better under a philosophic emperor than under
the “moderate” and “virtuous” Trajan. Indeed, we have at this moment
shoals of “philosophers” in France and England who, for absurdity
and hard-heartedness, throw churchmen entirely into the shade.
Parson Malthus’s divinity may have been bad enough; we aver it was
not worse than his philosophy. Many of the unfortunate sufferers in
this philosopher’s reign were devoured by wild beasts; others were
tortured to death in an iron chair, made red-hot for the purpose.
Even women were not spared. The names of two are preserved--Biblia
and Blandina--whose sufferings and heroic courage contrast nobly with
the cowardly cruelty of the philosophic scoundrel-emperor who gave
his sanction to their death. Singularly enough, France, the “eldest
daughter of the church,” was the scene of the worse persecutions
which took place in this reign, when false philosophy _versus_ real
Christianity was the order of the day; and, singularly enough,
France is now the country where, _par excellence_, real Christianity
is taking the field in right earnest against both philosophism
and false Christianity. What France failed to do in the first and
second centuries, and failed again to do in the eighteenth, she is
now labouring to accomplish for all the world in the middle of the
nineteenth.
[Illustration: Decoration]
CHAPTER XII.
PROGRESS OF PROPAGANDA TO THE TENTH PERSECUTION.
Seven Years’ Persecution of Equalitarian Innovators--Seventh
Great Persecution--Christians charged with Sorcery in Eighth
Persecution--Tortures of Ninth and Tenth Persecutions--Pretended
Conversion of Constantine--Lives of Early Christians Exemplars to
the Pagan World.
The persecutions under the “moderate” Trajan and the “philosophic”
Antoninus had no effect, as we have seen, in stopping the progress of
Christianity. On the contrary, they but served to extend it, by causing
the multitude to interest themselves more in examining a religion which
excited so much alarm amongst those orders of men who, from their power
and riches, they could not but regard as their natural oppressors.
The discreet conduct and humane character of the early Christians was
another, indeed, the chief cause of their success. Those pagans who had
relations with them in private life, and who had thereby opportunities
of judging them as men and citizens, could not be brought to regard
with horror a religion which had produced such characters, nor to
sympathise with the atrocious spirit which consigned them to the fate
of malefactors. Up to the reign of Severus, then, Christianity went on
conquering and to conquer, in despite of edicts and persecutions.
It was in this reign that the fifth great persecution took place.
In the early part of it no additions were made to the severe edicts
already in force against them; and history preserves but few cases of
their suffering from the application of the old. This was partly owing
to the greater caution imposed upon them by the laws against illegal
meetings and societies passed under Trajan and Antoninus, and partly,
it is said, to the interest at court of a celebrated Christian, named
Proculus, who, by an extraordinary application of his medical art, had
cured the emperor of a dangerous distemper. This precarious lenity,
however, did not endure long. After having been partially interrupted
by an occasional execution of the old laws in force, it was effectually
terminated by an edict of Severus (A.D. 197), which prohibited every
subject of the empire, under severe penalties, from embracing the
Jewish or Christian faith.
This edict would appear, at first sight, designed only to prevent the
further growth of Christianity; but as, in one of its clauses, it
urged the magistracy to enforce the law’s of former emperors, still in
force, it gave rise to a frightful proscription. For seven years the
Christians were exposed to all manner of persecution and prosecution,
not only in Rome and Italy, but in Gaul, Greece, Asia Minor, Palestine,
Syria, Egypt and the rest of Africa. Amongst the celebrated martyrs in
this persecution fell Leonidas, the father of Origen, and Irenæus,
Bishop of Lyons, in Gaul. It was on this occasion Tertullian composed
his well-known “Apologetica,” or apology on behalf of the victims--a
work from which a great deal may be learned of what the early
Christians had to endure in this persecution, more particularly at
Alexandria in Egypt, where the violence of pagan intolerance was most
felt.
The sixth persecution, under the Emperor Maximinus, which began about
A.D. 235, does not appear to have been so severe as the preceding ones.
Maximinus’s predecessor, the Emperor Alexander, was rather favourable
to the Christians, he and his family having given shelter and patronage
to many of them. This excited the envy and hatred of the party
favourable to Maximinus’s interests, and, at their instigation it is
supposed, the latter prince rekindled the flames of persecution against
the Christians. Celsus was the literary champion of the pagans on this
occasion; and Origen, that of the Christians. The latter gained great
credit and influence amongst his own party, by the zeal and energy with
which he supported the Christians in the fiery ordeal they had to pass
through in the trials of this period.
The seventh persecution is considered by many the severest that ever
befell the Christian world. It took place during the short reign
of Decius, and was ushered in by an imperial edict, couched in the
strongest terms, and issued A.D. 249. One of its first effects was the
putting to death of Fabianus, Bishop of Rome, with a number of his
followers. Immense numbers of the Christians were publicly destroyed
in almost every province of the empire. The Bishops of Jerusalem and
Antioch died in prison. Tortures the most excruciating were resorted
to, to extort confessions of guilt, the betrayal of accomplices, or a
renunciation of their faith. These were, for the most part, endured
with heroic fortitude; but many sank under the trial, and, to save
their lives, consented to burn incense upon the altars of the gods;
others purchased safety by bribes, or secured it by flight. The poor,
as usual, fared worst. Unable to secure themselves by patronage or
bribery, they were seized before they had time for flight, and put to
death with every refinement of torture, and in a variety of ways. Some
were publicly burnt in the market-places; others were whipped, branded,
and then impaled or crucified. Many were thrown to wild beasts to be
devoured; and not a few were stoned to death by an enraged populace,
whose “wild justice” was too impatient to await magisterial decisions.
At Alexandria in particular, they anticipated the emperor’s edict,
and in their blind fury put many to death who were not Christians
at all, mistaking them for such on account of their connections,
real or supposed. Political bias had much to do in embittering this
persecution. The leading Christians were known to be attached to
the family of the Emperor Philip, who was supposed to be secretly
favourable to their sect. This aggravated the rage of the opposite
faction, and superadded political passions to fanatic zeal in the
proscriptions under Decius. Upon the whole, no other pagan persecution
cost the Christians more lives than this, nor entailed upon them a
greater variety of sacrifices and sufferings.
The eighth general persecution was not upon so large a scale; but it
had its distinguishing barbarities to bear witness to the truth of a
celebrated saying of Plutarch, namely, that rage and rancour stifle
all sentiments of humanity in the human breast, and that “no beast
is more savage than man when he is possessed of power equal to his
passions.” We may conceive to what excess these passions were carried
under the Emperor Valerian (A.D. 257), when we find that potentate and
his aristocracy employing an Egyptian magician (named Macrinus) to give
out, as the result of his occult science, that he had discovered that
the peace and prosperity of the Roman empire were incompatible with the
“wicked spells” and “execrable charms” practised by the Christians.
This, of course, was a mere pretence to infuriate the rabble and the
distressed of all classes against them. To counteract the pretended
“spells” and “charms” of Christianity, Valerian is said, by the advice
of Macrinus, to have performed many impious rites and sacrifices,
amongst which was the cutting the throats of infants, &c. All this
jugglery was intended to disguise from his subjects the true nature
of the struggle between Christianity and pagan despotism, namely, the
struggle of humanity to vindicate its inherent rights against arbitrary
power and the barbarism of superstitious ignorance. At any rate, fresh
edicts were promulgated in all places against the Christians; and,
with the emperor’s sanction, they were exposed without protection to
the common rage. Amongst the noble army of martyrs sacrificed under
this brutal emperor, history makes honorary mention of St. Lawrence,
Archdeacon of Rome, and of St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, said to
have been two of the most learned and distinguished men of their age.
The ninth general persecution took place under the Emperor Aurelian,
about the year 274. So little, however, is recorded of this
persecution, that we may safely infer it gave but little interruption
to the peace of the church. Indeed, by this time the Christians were,
in many places, as numerous as the pagans; and many of their body were
opulent subjects, possessed of great local and general influence. One
more great persecution, and we shall find them upon an equality with
their proud oppressors. We shall next find them, in political parlance,
“masters of the situation;” we shall find them established in power,
and corrupted with riches and luxury. A portion of them, at least,
we shall find in that position; and then, agreeably to the laws of
human nature, we shall find them no longer Christians, but practising
the same vices, and committing the same crimes of tyranny and wrong,
they so much condemned in the old pagans. One great persecution more,
and lo! Christianity will be enthroned in power; and then farewell to
Christian progress and Christian principles! One great persecution more
will give to “Christians” the ascendancy; and in that ascendancy will
be the death of Christianity itself!
The tenth and last great persecution of the early church took place
under the Emperor Diocletian, and broke out in the nineteenth year
of his reign (about the year A.D. 303). Diocletian himself does not
appear to have been animated by any bigoted zeal or political hatred
against the Christians. Galerius, whom he had declared Cæsar, and the
mother of Galerius, who was a zealot in the pagan interest, vehemently
urged him to promulgate edicts for their suppression. To this end,
the philosopher Hierocles prepared public opinion for them by violent
writings against the Christians; and the pagan priesthood, as in
interest bound, supported Hierocles.
This persecution began in the city of Nicomedia, and thence extended
into other cities and provinces, till at last it became general all
over the empire. Though, doubtless, the historians of the church
have exaggerated this as well as other persecutions, yet there is a
sufficiency of well-authenticated facts to show that, however the
wealthy and intriguing Christians might have contrived to secure
lenity and even impunity for themselves, it was far otherwise with
the majority, who were poor, ardent, and enterprising. As in the
seventh persecution under Decius, the diabolical ingenuity of man
was racked to discover new modes of punishment, new refinements of
torture. Some were roasted alive at slow fires till death put an end
to their sufferings; others were hung by the feet, with their heads
downwards, and suffocated by the smoke of dull fires. Pouring melted
lead down the throats of the victims was one variety of torture;
another was tearing off the flesh from their quivering limbs with
shells. Some of the sufferers had splinters of reeds thrust into the
most sensitive parts of their persons--into their eyes, for example, or
under their finger-nails and nails of their toes; others were impaled
alive. Many had their limbs broken, and in that condition were left
to expire in protracted agonies. Such as were not capitally punished
were scourged or branded, or else had their limbs mutilated and their
features disfigured. Altogether, the victims were as numerous as in
the persecution under Decius. Amongst the more noted ones we read of
the Bishops of Tyre, Sidon, Emesa, and Nicomedia. Very many matrons
and virgins of unblemished character passed through the flames of
martyrdom. And as to the plebeian or poorer classes, they perished
literally in myriads. At length, upon the accession of the Emperor
Constantine the persecution slackened. He declared in favour of the
Christians, and soon after, openly embracing the new religion, he
published the first law in their favour. The death of Maximian, Emperor
of the East, soon after put an end to all their tribulations at the
hands of pagans.
It was then that, for the first time, Christianity (or rather a
something worse than paganism which usurped its name) took possession
of the thrones of princes. The religion of the court, it became
the fashionable religion. Aristocrats, military men, the leading
professions, men of the world, became converts to it in a twinkling. We
speak, of course, only of the _name_--not of the _thing_. It was the
_name_ only that was established by Constantine: the _thing_ itself he
knew and cared nothing about. The religion as taught by Jesus and his
disciples is not a religion for courts and courtiers; it flourishes not
in presence of emperors and prætorian guards. Constantine’s conversion
was but a _coup d’état_, or political _ruse_, to destroy Christianity
by itself; _alias_, to make its votaries (all true believers) ashamed
of its very name, through seeing it professed by base hypocrites--its
natural and irreconcilable enemies. Its immediate effect was to
neutralise the force of Christianity as operating against the abuses
of government and against social injustice. It became henceforward
impossible to know who were Christians and who were not--at least, who
were sincere and who were not; the false ones bearing the same name as
the true ones, and, in proportion to their hypocrisy, more emphatic
and ostentatious in their profession of faith than the true believers.
As a matter of course, the rich, the ambitious, the low intriguer, the
bustling man of the world, adhered publicly to the name or profession
of Christian for the sake of the good things attached thereto in
church and state. The honest, the simple-hearted, the oppressed many
saw they were foully tricked, but were powerless to right themselves.
Between the pagans, who still adhered to the old system, and their
hypocritical betrayers in high places, their fate was a deplorable one.
After all their struggles and sacrifices for Christianity, they had
the mortification to find that, just at the moment they counted upon
victory, they found discomfiture and shame; and that what 300 years of
pagan torturings, dungeonings, and terrorism had failed to accomplish
against their religion, was effected at once by an “organised
hypocrisy” of _soi-disant_ Christians supposed to belong to their own
church and party.
Most people date the triumph of Christianity from the accession, or
rather from the conversion, of Constantine. In our opinion, it is the
_decline_ of Christianity, or the _reaction_ against it, that ought
to date therefrom. During the first three centuries the progress of
Christianity was one continued series of triumphs--purchased, it is
true, by the blood of countless martyrs, but not the less real and
effective on that account; but from the moment it became a state
religion, under Constantine and his successors, it ceased to be the
religion of Christ and his apostles, and became a figment of forms and
ceremonies worthless as the ceremonialism of the Pharisees. Many, it is
true, continued sincerely attached to the real thing--the religion of
Jesus; but, discountenanced and discouraged by their own priests and
rulers, they soon fell into discredit, and their numbers diminished
with every succeeding reign, till at last Christianity (as at first
taught) was nowhere to be found.
In this present century, and in this present year 1850, it is reviving
again under new names and forms. It is allying itself with a philosophy
which has nothing in common with the hollow philosophism of the last
century, but much in common with the natural instincts and primitive
feelings of man. The Christianity which is being now revived in
France, Germany, and elsewhere on the Continent approaches nearer to
the Christianity of the first and second centuries than most people
are aware of. At bottom it is the same; but in form and garb it must
necessarily partake of the science and civilization of the times we
are in. Its object, like that of Christ and his disciples, is to
banish sin and slavery, crime and misery, from the world, but without
pretending to any extraordinary mission, or to any other light than
the revelations of Scripture interpreted and explained by reason. The
_Christianisme_ and the _humanité_ of Pierre Leroux may be taken as
samples of this modern revival of Christianity.
As a general rule, the early Christians exemplified in their lives
the charity, the purity, and the disinterestedness enjoined by the
Gospel; it was therefore they were so successful with the people. The
persecutions of the pagans did not make them retaliate. They were too
wise, too discreet, to rebel against laws or governments that could
have crushed them at once; and for the unfortunate, deluded populace
they had nothing but pity in the midst of their worst excesses. They
knew it was ignorance alone that made the populace so furious against
them: they knew they were the true friends of this populace; and that
this populace would be their friend, if they could but understand each
other. Hence the toleration preached and practised with such good
effect in the early ages of the church. It is true, there were disputes
and occasional intolerance amongst Christians from the first,--we have
sundry proofs of it in Paul’s Epistles, the Acts, and in the writings
of the early Fathers; but it was not till after the legal establishment
of Christianity that the guilt of intolerance or persecution could
be charged against Christians as a body. Though corruption had been
making way amongst them long before that, and though there were
symptoms enough in the Church prognosticative of the dire effect
that power and the mammon of unrighteousness might have upon them,
yet the main body remained sound. What they suffered from the pagans
naturally made them hold together for mutual aid and counsel; it also
cemented in them habits of mutual love and tenderness for each other’s
feelings: above all, it confirmed them in their aversion to tyranny
and intolerance, and enamoured them more and more of that Gospel which
everywhere enjoins charity, tenderness, mercy, and self-denial for
the sake of others. They remembered Christ’s sermon on the mount, his
unbounded compassion for sinners, his forgiveness of all, his love of
little children, his humility, his readiness to be the servant of his
followers, his teachings, fastings, prayers, and sufferings for all.
These were ever present in their minds. They knew and felt that, guided
by the spirit and precepts of the Gospel, by the conduct of its Author,
and by the preachings and examples of his apostles, true Christians
could not be otherwise than tolerant, forgiving, just, and affectionate
towards one another.
The general conduct of Christians before the age of Constantine was
in conformity with those maxims. They believed what they professed;
and they practised what they believed. Upon this head the writings of
the early Fathers are all but unanimous. We could cite a volume-full
of exemplifications; but the fact, as an historical one, is notorious
beyond the necessity for proof.
Up to the time of Constantine the progress of Christianity was one
continued series of triumphs over the principles and practices of
human slavery--one earnest, uninterrupted protest against those vices
and passions in which the subjection of man to his fellow-man has its
origin. In the minds of the early Christians, the Gospel dispensation
was no other than a divine protestation against the abasement of
the human race by tyranny, upon the one hand, and slavery upon the
other. Not one of the sublime virtues so beautifully pourtrayed and so
authoritatively enjoined by Christ and his disciples could flourish and
bear fruit in a world of tyrants and slaves. Either that divine Gospel
must, therefore, ever remain a dead letter, or the system of human
slavery, with all its violence, vice, and crimes, must be overthrown.
Every act, every institute, every martyrdom, of the early Christians
goes to show they were impressed with this belief. Hence their
marvellous labours, their still more marvellous sufferings (voluntarily
incurred and borne), and, most marvellous of all, their extraordinary
successes. Everything goes to prove their fixed determination to
subvert, from its foundation, that anti-social structure of society
which made man the slave of his fellow-man; their every act and
discourse tended accordingly to its overthrow. It cannot be overthrown
by an outbreak, a _coup de main_, a surprise, or onslaught of brute
force. Its existence being the work of opinion, it can be overthrown
only by opinion. The world must therefore be made to believe
differently. The minds and hearts that uphold it must be enlightened,
softened, refined, exalted, reformed. Behold the mission of the early
Christians--the means and end of their godlike labours.
Up to the age of Constantine, we repeat, the Christian revolution
gained ground incessantly, if not uninterruptedly. It progressed not
only in despite of, but actually _by means of_ every one of the ten
great imperial persecutions we have sketched. Like the Antæus of
mythology, it gathered fresh strength from every fall.
With its _establishment_ under Constantine ended its triumphant
progress! What churchmen call its final victory, its crowning glory,
was in reality its first decisive check--the cause and forerunner
of its downfall; in other words, it was the beginning of the
counter-revolution or reaction which soon afterwards rendered null and
void all the martyrdoms and triumphs of three hundred years.
[Illustration: Decoration]
CHAPTER XIII.
DEBASEMENT OF THE NEW POWER WHEN SEIZED BY RULERS.
Cost of making the New Ideas triumphant--Change in Character in
the hands of Kings, Courtiers, and Profitmongers--Emancipations
become a matter of Policy and Profit--Repudiation of Principles of
Fraternity and Equality--Horrors of Introduction of Proletarianism.
We have seen, in the two last chapters, what terrible tribulations
it cost the early Christians to obtain admission into the world for
the doctrines of liberty, fraternity, and equality,--we ought rather,
perhaps, to say, for the more comprehensive doctrines of justice
and humanity, upon which the others must be based to be real and
enduring. For upwards of three hundred years these poor Christians
were the victims of an untiring persecution, which smote them without
pity and without remorse, in every part of the wide-extended Roman
empire. We have seen how, at ten distinct epochs, by the edicts of as
many emperors, this persecution burst upon them with such signal and
surpassing fury that, to this day, it seems almost a miracle that the
sect was not utterly extirpated. More marvellous still, we find them
growing and extending themselves after every persecution, till at
length, under Constantine, they have become so numerous and formidable
that persecution may no longer be safely tried. Indeed, force would
no longer prevail; so fraud must be resorted to. The sham conversion
of Constantine and his courtiers was the fraud had recourse to. Those
hypocrites suddenly pretended to a new light. Constantine made his
own conversion quite a supernatural affair; he pretended to have
seen a brilliant apparition in the heavens, presenting a cross with
this inscription, “In hoc signo vinces,”--“In this sign thou shalt
conquer.” His courtiers and expectants, of course, partook of the
imperial illumination; they discovered with miraculous haste, if not
by miraculous agency, the divine authority of the Christian religion.
By embracing it in _name_ and _profession_ they wisely calculated
they could more easily extinguish it in _substance_ and in _practice_
than by any other means. In the first place, it would detach the mere
_political_ Christians--_i.e._, the selfish and ambitious ones--from
the real ones, the honest, unsuspecting mass. In the next place, it
would conciliate the former by throwing open to them the offices and
honours of the state; and, at the same time, flatter the multitude by
the seeming conversion of an emperor and his court to their religion.
Above all, it would have the advantage of pricking up the Christian
organization (which, up to that epoch, was a veritable democratic
organization) by detaching from the multitude all their leading
spiritual and political chiefs, who would thenceforward be sure to have
one doctrine for the rich and another for the poor, in order to keep
the doors of preferment open for themselves. Such, at least, was the
effect of the legal establishment of Christianity; and they know but
little of men and of politics who would attribute that event to other
motives or causes.
In truth, the progress of real Christianity--the Christianity taught
by Christ and his disciples--received its death-blow from its legal
establishment by Constantine. As long as it had the enemies of human
rights for its foes, it attracted to itself the friends of human
rights; but the moment it became a state religion--the religion of
courts and courtiers--the religion of emperors and aristocrats--the
religion of ambitious priests and sanguinary soldiers--the religion, in
short, of the rich and powerful,--from that moment it repelled sincere
believers from all communion with the church. It either plunged them
into despair for humanity, or else forced them, by their necessities
and passions, to become servile and hypocritical professors of what in
their hearts they despised, as being a libel upon the Redeemer and a
fraud upon humanity. It was, in effect, paganism under a new name and
with somewhat new forms.
Altogether the propagation of Christianity assumed a new aspect after
it became the religion of the Roman empire. Pride and hypocrisy took
the place of humility and zeal. Ambition, corruption, and servility
entirely supplanted in the hearts of men the virtues which the Gospel
had hitherto consecrated in the eyes of Christians. Not a shred of
democracy, not a vestige of fraternity nor of the love of liberty and
equality, could survive in a religion patronised by courts, professed
by its parasites and prostitutes, made a stepping-stone for the
purposes of lucre and ambition, guarded and defended by prætorian
bands, and surrounded with the munificence and corruption of imperial
power.
The effects of the change soon became visible and palpable to all.
During the three first centuries every extension of the Christian
propagandism was followed by the most beneficial social consequences.
It brought rich and poor, gentle and simple, high and low, learned and
unlearned, Jew and Gentile, into terms of the closest and most cordial
communionship. All distinctions of wealth and talent, of rank, station,
office, intellectual and personal endowments--all, all sank before
the beneficent spell of a religion which declared all men equal and
brothers, and which promised to all a heaven both here and hereafter,
upon the sole condition of keeping its commandments and carrying
into effect its precepts. In the face of such a religion, no man who
believed in it could be a tyrant; no man would be a slave a moment
longer than he could help. “My service,” says Christ, “is perfect
freedom.” Thus was it understood by the Christians of the first three
centuries. Under the Heaven-bred influence of the new dispensation,
masters manumitted their slaves in thousands. The slaves so manumitted
loved their masters to distraction, and would die rather than betray or
disoblige them. The rich converts divided their substance freely with
the poor; the poor as freely bestowed their services, and administered
comforts to the rich, renouncing or losing all feelings of envy and
distrust towards them. Everywhere collections were made amongst the
brethren for distressed members--for members even of churches or
congregations in far-off countries; and these collections were always
superabundant, because from the heart, and inspired by a power greater
than the power of pelf. In many of the primitive congregations a real
equality prevailed amongst all the members--a veritable reciprocity of
benefactions and sacrifices--a _bona fide_ community of goods and of
friendly offices.
This it was which gave such an extraordinary impulse to Christianity
at its first outset:--the total absence of selfishness; the perfect
sincerity of the members; their unbounded faith in their new religion
and in one another; their sovereign contempt for worldly advantages
obtained by trickery and fraud; and their firm belief that it needed
only their example and precept to change the face of entire humanity,
and assimilate the rest of the world to themselves in virtue and innate
happiness. In a word, they abounded and superabounded in the three
cardinal virtues--
FAITH, HOPE, AND CHARITY!
faith in their principles--a perfect hope of seeing them realised--and
a charity prepared to make the most unbounded allowances for the
weaknesses and follies of all who might oppose themselves to the new
dispensation. No wonder, with such principles, they accomplished such
marvels.
But all was changed with the change that took place under Constantine.
Masters, it is true, still continued to manumit their slaves; but,
alas! it was in a very different spirit, and for very different
purposes from those which actuated the true or early Christians. It
appears from the concurrent testimonies of the Fathers of the church,
and of legal documents still extant, that vast numbers of slaves were
manumitted, in the first three centuries, through the pious zeal of
their masters; and that those slaves and their progeny fell into great
poverty and want through the absence of any legal provision for them,
to compensate for the loss of their masters’ protection and support.
The early Christian missionaries, who caused their liberation from
slavery, never, of course, contemplated such a result. They looked to a
complete renovation of society, which would dispense the blessings of
creation to all God’s creatures alike, according to their services and
deserts. They never imagined a state of things in which _to be free_
would imply _freedom only to starve_. Yet such, unfortunately, was the
result they unconsciously brought about. The myriads of manumitted
slaves, once deprived of their masters’ homes and protection, had
thenceforward no other means of providing a subsistence, but to betake
themselves to one or other of the four courses indicated in our first
and second chapters. They must either find work as hired labourers,
or they must beg, or they must steal, or they (if females) must turn
to prostitution. They must, to repeat the Guizot classification of
proletarianism, become
LABOURERS, BEGGARS, THIEVES, OR PROSTITUTES
And that is just what happened. All that could find work, and were
inclined to work, became labourers for hire; others took to begging;
a third class became thieves and robbers; and the unfortunates of
the weaker sex as naturally and as necessarily betook themselves to
prostitution.
The majority of both sexes, of course, took to hired labour, when they
could get it, as the safest occupation. Having no land nor capital
wherewith to turn their freedom to account for their own advantage,
they had no alternative but to find employers, or else die of hunger,
unless they betook themselves to the other courses adverted to.
Here began that frightful system of wages-slavery, so often adverted to
in the progress of this inquiry--that desolating system which has since
extended itself all over the civilized world, and which has converted
three-fourths of Christendom into more degraded and unhappy beings than
were the ancient chattel-slaves of the pagans or the negro-slaves who
were in the Southern States of the American republic.
Constantine’s courtier-“Christians” and capitalists were not slow in
availing themselves of this new form of slavery. They soon discovered
that it was (to them) a _cheaper_ slavery than the old one. They
discovered that an “independent labourer” might be made, by the fear
of starvation, to do more work than a chattel-slave ever did under the
fear of the lash; and with this advantage in their own favour, that
he might be turned off and left to starve when there was no work for
him; whereas they would have to _keep_ the chattel-slave, and _keep him
well_ too, whether there was work for him or not.
But as we have already, in a former chapter, so largely dwelt on the
comparative merits of the two kinds of slavery, it is unnecessary to
repeat here the signal advantages which landlords and capitalists
derive from wages-slavery in comparison with the other. At any rate,
the capitalists or proprietors, under Constantine and his successors,
must have been well aware of them; for we find that, instead of
compelling the manumitted slaves and their progeny to return to the
condition of chattel-slavery, they greatly added to their numbers by
still further manumissions, only accompanying them with very stringent
laws and regulations to keep them, now “independent labourers,” as
effectually under their thumb as when they had been nominal bondsmen.
Had the primitive Christians foreseen the terrible abuse their
benevolent labours were destined to give rise to, it may be questioned
whether they would not have abandoned their mission, rather than risk
the superinducing of proletarianism, with all its horrors, upon the
system they sought to explode--the system of chattel-slavery. It was
not in order to fill the world with famishing beggars, with necessitous
thieves and prostitutes, and, above all, with myriads of honest
producers starving in the midst of their own productions,--it was not
for such unholy purposes that the early Christians divized the _régime_
of fraternity and equality; yet all the traditions that remain to us of
Christian propagandism prove unmistakably that such were its effects,
even before the downfall of the Roman empire, to which event it, in our
opinion, in no small degree contributed.
Indeed, Rome was already overrun with paupers and fugitive slaves, and
Italy with thieves and vagabonds, before Constantine found it politic
to make Christianity a state religion. But, lest we might be suspected
of giving scope to invention, or of indulging in idle imaginings,
on a subject so fraught with interest to mankind, we shall here use
the authority of a profound antiquarian to illustrate this critical
period of history, when the great transition from chattel-slavery to
proletarianism was effected. Let our readers fail not, in perusing it,
to compare it with what we have previously laid down in respect of
the condition of slaves under the old pagan system. We quote from the
learned work of M. Granier de Cassagnac, entitled “Histoire des Classes
Ouvrières et Bourgeoises”:--
“Things remained in this state, that is to say, the poor, still far
from numerous, had no hospital or asylum in which to take refuge
during the first ages of the vulgar era. The Christians dispensed alms
freely and bountifully, nourishing the necessitous poor out of their
substance. But they were not yet masters; they were still a minority
of the population. They could not act collectively, publicly, or in a
corporate or legal capacity, but only individually and in an isolated
manner, each on his own account. The pagan clergy, on the other hand,
who were in possession of immense territorial estates, which proceeded
partly from permanent grants or donations disbursed from the imperial
treasury, and dating as far back as the age of Numa (who had originated
them), and partly from innumerable inheritances and legacies which had
subsequently fallen to them, never had any idea of succouring the poor,
or of organizing any system of public charity; and when, towards the
close of the fourth century, Symmachus addressed to Valentinian II., to
Theodosius, and to Arcadius those two celebrated letters on the pagan
worship which was falling into decay, in which he complains so bitterly
of the emperors having confiscated the property of the priests and the
vestals, St. Ambrose, in the first of his two answers to Symmachus
addressed to Valentinian II., contrasts with the avarice of the pagan
clergy, who kept all their riches to themselves, the self-denial of the
Christian church, which possessed nothing (as St. Ambrose expresses it)
but its faith, and the whole of whose goods were the property of the
poor.
“However, although it is certain the number of permanent poor or
professional beggars was not very numerous up to the beginning of the
third century, there occurred terrible epochs when this number was
fearfully augmented. It was in years of famine--in years when the
harvests failed in Sicily or in Africa, or when the two corporations of
shippers and bakers--one charged with superintending the importations
and the other with the distribution of bread and flour--were suddenly
brought to a standstill, that occurred those horrible famines from
which the superior administration of modern times preserves the
people of our times; it was then that all the slaves of Italy, no
longer fed by their masters, were seen flocking to Rome to demand
bread; but as this increase of population soon threatened Rome itself
with starvation, they were expelled the city upon a given day, to
go and die where they might. This was the ordinary course adopted
by Roman administrations in critical times; and Symmachus, who was
prefect of Rome about the year 383, wrote thus:--‘We fear the total
failure of provisions at Rome, even after having chased away all the
stranger-population which took refuge amongst us, and which the city
subsisted.’
“On their side, the Christians inveighed loudly against the burgesses
of Rome for refusing to divide their superfluity with the strangers who
sought relief within her walls. St. Ambrose, who makes mention of this
expulsion in several parts of his works, inveighs indignantly against
this want of feeling on the part of the pagans. ‘Those,’ says he, ‘who
banish the poor strangers from Rome are much to blame. It is inhuman
to repulse a fellow-creature at the moment he craves succour at your
hands. Brute beasts do not treat their kind so: ’tis only man that
behaves so to man.’ Sometimes the pagans themselves protested against
the expulsion of strangers when famine threatened the towns they had
fled from.”
This, it will be observed, took place after the legal establishment of
Christianity under Constantine. M. de Cassagnac continues:--
“For the rest, it is manifest from divers writings of the third and
fourth centuries that, as soon as the charity of the early Christians
became known, the poor gathered in groups around the churches. At Rome
they congregated near the church of the Apostles, in the Vatican.
It was there they received a diurnal distribution of alms, as may
be seen (amongst other proofs) in the works of Ammian Marcellinus,
and in the poem of Prudentius against Symmachus. Moreover, it seems
all manner of imposition used to be committed by loose characters to
surprise the compassion of the Christian bishops. Here is the way
St. Ambrose expresses himself on this subject, in the second book of
his treatise on the duties of ministers:--‘We must fix bounds to our
liberality, that it may not be abused or rendered useless. The priests,
in particular, ought to be very circumspect on this head, that they
may proportion their alms to the justice of the case, and not to the
importunity of the claimant. Never did the greediness of beggars reach
such a pitch. Able-bodied men present themselves, strolling about for
the mere pleasure of vagabondizing, and who would absorb the relief
due only to the veritable poor. There are some of them who feign to
be in debt: let this point be strictly verified. Others declare they
have been despoiled by robbers: let exact information be taken of these
persons,’ &c. The scandal given by these fraudulent beggars and their
impositions went to such a length, that the Emperor Valentinian II.
made a law, dated from Padua, in 382, expelling from Rome all who were
not beggars really incapable of gaining a livelihood.
“The law of Valentinian is very curious, in so far as it contains
certain data and precise details illustrative of the state of
pauperism in Italy towards the close of the fourth century. We see
by it, for example, that the greater part of the beggars congregated
at Rome were either runaway slaves or serfs whom the culture of the
fields could not supply with employment. They precipitated themselves
into Rome, which was then the largest city in the world, and where,
better than anywhere else, they might escape the vigilant search of
their masters.... Justinian re-enacts pretty nearly the same law as
Valentinian--only with this difference,--that he condemns all sturdy
beggars to labour on the public works.
“The whole of this vast redundancy of beggars took place in the third
and fourth centuries. It seems they had interpreted literally St.
Jerome’s character of Christians, when he calls them, in his 26th
Epistle to Pammachius, the _subordinates and candidates of the poor_.
The predominant historic and social fact of the fourth century is the
outrageous multiplication of proletarians, and (after innumerable
failures of private charity) the creation and organization of a grand
system of public charity to relieve the wants of the poor, and to
provide asylums for old age, for the infirm, and for deserted children.
This eleemosynary system, which the lapse of time has but more largely
developed, and which is still the only palliative resorted to by modern
societies to cure, or rather to bandage, the wounds of civilization,
thus owes its origin to Christianism.
“Seeing that antiquity, during a period of more than 4,000 years,
had not emancipated so many slaves as to produce any noticeable or
considerable mass of proletarians, and that in less than 400 years
Christianism had so multiplied them, that regular society was, as it
were, choked and perilled by them, one would be tempted to believe
that Christianity made a dead set against slavery, and went to work by
grand essays of systematic enfranchisement. That, however, would be an
error. In general, Christianism did not meddle with the positive law:
it left to Cæsar what belonged to Cæsar. St. Paul wrote to the slaves
of Ephesus that the new religion made no change in their duties as
slaves. Nevertheless, Christianity created, alongside the old moral
world, a new moral world, into which it admitted all who volunteered
to accept its conditions. It was by this attractive power that
Christianism drew over to it, in succession, all the members of pagan
society; and the magnificent application that it gave to its ideas of
charity, fraternity, and love was the principal cause which indirectly
determined so many emancipations, and which gave birth to such a host
of proletarians.”
[Illustration: Decoration]
CHAPTER XIV.
SERVICE OF CHRISTIANITY IN BREAKING CASTE-BONDS.
Division of Emancipated Slaves into two Classes of
Proletarians--Equality and Fraternity gave the desire for
Liberty--Inveteracy of Caste-Prejudice--Perversion of Christianity
under Constantine--Antagonism of Wages-Slavery and Christianity.
Our last chapter concluded with an instructive passage, translated from
the work of M. Granier de Cassagnac, showing how the pure spirit of
primitive Christianity had operated the manumission of slaves in such
masses that the Roman empire was soon overrun with proletarians of the
several conditions described. What four thousand years of paganism had
not effected, to any sensible extent, was the work of less than three
hundred years of Christian propagandism. But, alas! how different was
the result aimed at by Christ and his successors! Those emancipations,
which the early Christians had fondly hoped would bring about the reign
of universal liberty and fraternity, but introduced a new form of
slavery infinitely worse than the old, became, under Constantine and
his successors, a curse to the emancipated, whose fatal consequences
have never since ceased to be felt by three-fourths of Christendom.
A few of the manumitted prospered, in the old Roman guilds or
corporations, as burgesses, employers, or administrators; and a similar
class, more extensive and more opulent, still obtains in our own times.
But the vast majority, being without land, capital, or the patronage of
masters, had to seek a precarious subsistence by casual labour, or else
by theft, beggary, or prostitution. The passage from Cassagnac, quoted
in the last chapter, shows how fearfully those unhappy proletarians
had multiplied before the end of the fourth century. Immediately
following it, there is another which bears so authoritatively upon the
subject-matter of our inquiry, and which so strongly corroborates what
has been advanced, in this work, on the relative merits of chattel
and wages slavery, that we cannot forbear giving it a place here. We
translate from pages 304 and 305 of the work referred to:--
“In pagan society few slaves desired to become free; and the reason
is very simple. As slaves, they had, in their masters’ homes, all the
necessaries of life; they were sure of never having to suffer cold, nor
hunger or thirst, and to be comfortably housed and well taken care of,
in old age as well as in youth, in sickness as well as in health. As
freemen (‘independent labourers’!) they would have to provide not only
for their own wants, but also for those of their wives and children;
and this not only during the vigour of life, but also in old age and
during their infirmities, without taking into the account that, poor
and weak as they must necessarily be when emerging from slavery,
they would have to encounter all the chances of a perpetual struggle
with society--a struggle in which even the rich and the strong not
unfrequently succumb.”
This account of the ancient pagan slaves corresponds exactly with Mr.
Edward Smith’s account of the slaves he met with in the Southern States
of America. The latter would not give you “thank ye” for their liberty,
“feeling the protection of their masters to be an advantage,” and
because the “mere hirer has not the attachment for the hired that the
master naturally feels for his slave.”
It may be asked, then, how came the ancient pagan slave to appreciate
the boon of liberty when gratuitously given to him by his Christian
master? M. de Cassagnac, we think, answers the question with great
force and truth. “But in the new Christian association the slave felt
a new motive and attraction towards liberty. In the first place, the
enfranchised Christian was not, as in pagan society, repulsed by the
remorseless prejudices of caste. Without refusing to take nobility
of race into account, it showed no extravagant preference for it, as
paganism did. The Apostles and the early Fathers had freely extended
the hand of fellowship to the enfranchised and to the lower orders in
general--a race of men whom the Gentiles, that is to say, the genteel
society of paganism, had, up to that time, scornfully flouted. St.
Paul wrote to the Romans, that before God there is no exception of
persons; and St. Gregory and St. Ambrose have filled their works with
philosophical as well as Christian raillery levelled against the
pride of pedigree, and the right of domination founded upon it, which
was a direct onslaught upon the pagan nobility, whose principle was
the tradition of power and rank according to blood. The enfranchised
slaves and their offspring were always welcome amongst the Christians,
to share with them every social advantage. They might pass through
all the degrees of clerical ordination--become deacons, priests,
bishops,--in short, leap that hitherto impassable gulf, which, under
the old pagan régime, completely separated the humble from the higher
ranks of society. Accordingly, the Christian slaves who became free
were sure to have no moral prepossession or prejudice against them,
while all religious ones were in their favour. They were certain not to
be insolently scouted as of the lower orders, and also to be succoured
and relieved, in case of need, as fellow-Christians. It was on this
account they precipitated themselves into the régime of liberty, and
that so imprudently and in such immense masses that, suddenly becoming
their own masters, and responsible for their own maintenance, the vast
majority were soon overtaken and overwhelmed by misery of which they
had had no foresight--a misery till then unheard of--an appalling
misery, the recollections of which, as handed down to us from the
fourth century, present a veritable picture of horrors.”
It is only those who have felt the insolence of rank and power who can
appreciate the motives which impelled the slaves and the lower ranks of
citizens to embrace the new Christian code of liberty in the days to
which the foregoing passage refers. One more passage, illustrative of
this view, we shall translate from another part of Cassagnac’s work.
And, in this passage, what a true but frightful picture is presented to
us of the wrongs inflicted by the self-privileged few upon the despised
many--wrongs as old as the world, and yet as green in the present
day as though they were but of yesterday’s growth! It is a fearfully
significant passage:--
“The proletarians are, then, the progeny of the ancient slave-class--of
the ancient junior branches of families, given, bartered, or sold by
the _fathers_ of the _heroic_ period--the age of gods and heroes. This
great, active, terrible, poetic, and calamitous race has been marching
onwards since the beginning of the world, struggling to conquer repose
for itself, like Ahasuerus, and mayhap, like him, will never attain
it. It has still the old malediction on its head, which dooms it to
move incessantly without making progress. All it has gained from its
fatigues of ages is, that Homer and Plato say to it, ‘March on!--you
will never reach your destination in this world;’ and that St. Paul
says to it, ‘You will reach it in the next world.’ It marches on,
then, and has been so marching for sixty centuries; covered with
obscurity, opprobrium, and contempt; obtaining no credit for its
virtues or talents, none for its labours, none for its sufferings. It
is not accounted more beautiful for having produced an Aspasia, more
illustrious for having given birth to a Phedon, more brave for having
turned out a Spartacus from amid its ranks. Whatever may have been its
intelligence, its patient endurance, its wisdom, its parts, it was
never honoured with the title of ‘sons of the gods,’ like the noble
race; and Plato himself, though he had felt what slavery was under
King Dionysius, cast in its teeth the famed Homeric verse, in which
it is told that the slave has but the half of a human soul. Singular
fatality! In vain did manumissions and enfranchisements break the
chains of this doomed race. The mark of the collar is still on their
necks (as with the dog in the fable); and one of their own caste,
Horace, the son of a _freed_ man, in the very golden age of antique
philosophy, poesy, and civilization, threw in their face the eternal
aspersion, ‘Money alters not the race--changes not the blood.’ Though
they had gained this money by fatigues of body or fatigues of mind, by
manual or by intellectual excellence,--though they had been merchants
or soldiers, senators or philosophers,--still was the cry rung in their
ears, ‘Money alters not the race.’ This malediction of race or blood
was implacable. In vain had Ventidius Bassus become a consul: he was
told, ‘You have been a scavenger and a muleteer.’ In vain had Galerius,
Diocletian, Probus, Pertinax, Vitellius, Augustus himself, become
emperors. Galerius was told, ‘You are but an upstart;’ Diocletian, ‘You
have been a slave;’ Probus, ‘Your father was a gardener;’ Pertinax,
‘Your father was an enfranchised bondsman;’ Vitellius, ‘Your father was
a soap-maker;’ and they were very near writing upon the marble statue
of Augustus, ‘Your grandfather was a mercer, and your father was a
usurer or a money-lender.’
“If this eternal and universal reprobation of the slave and
enfranchised caste did not spare the most exalted heads and the most
illustrious, imagine what the wretched proletarian was to expect
in his lowly, poverty-stricken, and degraded state. The gentlefolk
repelled him from the family hearth; civil society made him an outcast
from all its prerogatives. He was born, and he lived and he died,
apart from other men. And as we are told of certain rivers which flow
together in the same bed or channel without once commingling their
waters, so proletarianism and gentility, enfranchised slavery and
nobility, touched and elbowed each other, and even lay down in the same
bed, but without ever combining or losing themselves in each other by
amalgamation.”
Had Christianity operated no other good in the world than breaking down
the barriers of rank and pedigree--those barriers which up to Christ’s
advent had effectually divided the human race into two irreconcilable
castes--it would have done enough to entitle it to be regarded as the
most important event that had till then occurred in the world. Until
that most stupid and inveterate of all prejudices, the prejudice in
favour of race or blood, was effectually rooted out, no real progress
could have been made by humanity. The early Christians felt this, and
so did the few freed-men and proletarians of their day. The latter,
ousted from the family circle and from the rights of citizenship,
rejected at once from private and from public society, must naturally
have yearned for some new society in which their wounded feelings
might find a refuge from the barbarous pride of their fellow-men.
Such a society they found in the new Christian brotherhood. Hence the
ardour with which the slave and proletarian class embraced the new
dispensation; and hence its first fatal but unforeseen consequence--the
myriad pauper-population which soon after overran Italy and the whole
Roman empire.
But no sooner was the character of Christianity altered and debased--as
it became after its legal establishment under Constantine--no sooner
did the wealthy and ambitious portion of the Christians abandon their
religious obligations for worldly advantages, and lose all sympathy
with their poorer brethren, than the latter found themselves in a worse
condition, in respect of social intercourse, than was the lot of the
old slaves, their forefathers. They had then to endure the pangs of
destitution, superadded to the insolence and pride of race and riches.
Before the epoch of Christianity, the only refuge society offered to
the few manumitted slaves and proletarians from the withering pride of
social disparagement was what Frenchmen call _communes_, or what we in
England would call _municipal institutions_. All ancient history goes
to show that _communes_ or _municipalities_, of some kind or other,
existed from a very remote period. In these communes or municipalities
the progeny and descendants of slaves formed a sort of society amongst
themselves, in which they were governed by their own bye-laws,
according to the charters they held, or the amount of privileges
conceded to them by the governments under which they found shelter.
The enormous mass of proletarianism caused by Christianity necessarily
enlarged and greatly altered the character of these municipal bodies:
one portion of the members became in time opulent burgesses, growing
rich by manufactures, commerce, and the professions allied with them;
the remainder--the vast majority--became wages-slaves, or else fell
into the other degraded sections of proletarianism already described.
In our modern society, the pride and exclusiveness of the upstart
burgess-class towards their proletarian brethren is not less insulting
and obdurate than were the same qualities in the ancient nobles towards
the slave-class from which these burgesses are derived. If our modern
middle-classes have still to endure an occasional humiliation from
aristocratic _morgue_--from the exclusive pretensions of noble blood
and ancestral honours--they take care to indemnify themselves largely
by similar insolence at the expense of their less fortunate brethren,
the working-classes. Indeed, were the latter to be asked which of the
two classes, the higher or the middle, they ordinarily experience most
courtesy from, they would unhesitatingly make answer, from the higher.
Nor is this class-insolence, this two-fold pride of blood and riches,
confined to monarchical countries. It is as rife in republican Americas
as in purse-proud, aristocratic England. In Spanish America both kinds
of pride exist in full vigour; but that of caste, or blood, is carried
to such excess as must render the excluded classes perfectly miserable
all their lives. In the Free States even of republican America a man of
colour dared not sit in the same part of a church or a theatre with the
whites. Intermarriage between the two races was regarded with horror,
and with difficulty could a clergyman be found to officiate at such
a ceremony. In travelling, the people of colour must not enter the
same carriages, nor (if in a steamboat) must they be seen in the same
cabin as the whites. The negro-class, male and female, must travel in
inferior trains by land, and sleep in inferior berths or upon deck when
at sea or in excursions up and down the rivers. At places of public
amusement they have their “coloured” seat and in the house of God their
“coloured” gallery. In New Orleans and other cities in the South there
are great numbers of coloured ladies of excellent education--ladies
highly accomplished, and possessed, too, of great wealth, who lived in
concubinage with white men, because they could not be legally married
to them. There was a distinguished American general in the States who
had several children, the offspring of such concubinage; and, with all
his influence, he could not find admission into society for the members
of his family. They and their like find barriers everywhere opposed to
them.
It is true, these are not so much distinctions of wealth and pedigree,
as distinctions of blood and race. But the principle of exclusiveness
is the same. It is the exercise of injustice by the strong against the
weak--the oppression of one class by another--a particular form or
phase of slavery, which under any and every phase is anti-Christian
and anti-human. Liberty and Christianity do not require a black
man to marry a white woman, nor _vice versâ_; but both liberty and
Christianity forbid coercive laws against such marriages, and more
especially do they repudiate and reprobate the system of exclusiveness
and unnecessary insults so universally exercised by the whites against
the people of colour. Had the Christianity which overthrew paganism,
in the three first centuries, continued to prevail in the world, and
succeeded in assimilating the laws and institutions of nations to the
law of the Gospel, it is certain slavery must have long since become
extinct. Christianity knows no distinction between black men and white
men--between noble and peasant--between proletarian and millionaire.
Wages-slavery is as incompatible with its spirit as is chattel-slavery.
Were that spirit to prevail, our laws and institutions would be such
that neither form of slavery could for an instant raise its head
anywhere.
It is true, great efforts are being made by a certain class of
_soi-disant_ Christians to procure the abolition of chattel-slavery.
We must, however, regard all such efforts as the fruits of folly or
hypocrisy, so long as we find no efforts made by the same parties
to abolish _wages-slavery_--a slavery which we have shown to be
immeasurably worse for white slaves than is chattel-slavery for
the blacks. If it be said that to abolish wages-slavery would be
impossible, we answer, No! We shall show, before we dismiss this
inquiry, that wages-slavery is wholly and solely the work of tyrannical
laws which one set of men impose upon another by fraud and force, and
which they have no more right to impose, nor necessity for imposing,
than they have to traffic in human flesh, or the black king of Dahomey
has to make war upon his neighbours that he may conquer and sell them
for slaves.
As long as these infamous laws (the laws alluded to) continue to be
in force, we hold it to be disgustingly absurd and even infamous
to agitate the world for the abolition of chattel-slavery. If we
attempt to alter the condition of slaves we should do so for their
own benefit, and not for _ours_. We should do so to ameliorate their
condition, and not to make it worse. The ranters of Exeter Hall have
no idea of ameliorating the condition of the negroes they so yearn to
“emancipate.” Their whole and sole object is to “proletarianize” them
for the benefit of employers and usurers. Their object is, in fact, to
reduce them to the level of the Irish peasantry, or of the labourers
in Dorsetshire or the weavers in Lancashire. The planters themselves
did not deny that they would have preferred “independent labourers”
to slaves, if they could have got them. They acknowledged that white
labour would have been more profitable to them than slave-labour--even
in cotton and sugar planting--if they could only have made sure of a
constant supply of it when wanted. But they said the white labourer
was too independent to render it safe for the planters to trust to his
services in seasons of pressure, as during the time of cane-pressing,
sugar-boiling, and cotton-picking. Assure him of a supply of such
labour--only give him a “surplus population” of starving proletarians
to be ever ready at his hand, like so many sheep in a crib, and you
will make him an abolitionist at once. And why? Because wages-slavery
would be then cheaper and better for him than chattel-slavery. On no
other principle would he emancipate them. Upon no other principle did
any emancipations ever take place in the world, save in the three
first ages of Christianity. And no sooner did the pagan masters and
hypocritical _Christians_ discover, under Constantine, that more work
could be got out of “free” proletarians than out of chattel-slaves, and
that the former _need not_ while the latter _must be_ kept, than they,
too, became abolitionists upon the same principle.
[Illustration: Decoration]
CHAPTER XV.
FORM OF SLAVERY UNDER MODERN CIVILIZATION.
Persistence of Chattel-Slavery in Eastern Countries--Assumption
of Form of Wages-Slavery under Modern Civilization--Creation of
Millionaire Capitalists by Present System--Result in Ruin and
Starvation of the Labouring Class--Necessity of Repressive Armies
and Police--Measures necessary to secure Social Reform.
Having seen how human slavery originated in parental despotism--how
it expanded by war, commerce, indebtedness, marriage, _&_c.--how it
continued to be _direct_ or _chattel_ slavery all over the world till
the advent of Christianity--how it, in consequence of the workings
of the Gospel, gradually assumed the form of _wages_-slavery, and
generated modern proletarianism throughout Western Europe and
America--having also seen how the system of chattel-slavery _worked_
in the ancient world and in the slave-states of America, and compared,
or rather contrasted, that system with its more hideous successor,
wages-slavery--let us now inquire what are the forms and conditions of
human slavery as it exists under modern civilization, and by what means
and appliances it may be effectually and for ever banished from the
world.
As already stated, direct or chattel slavery is still the normal
condition of the labouring classes in most Eastern countries, and of
the black population in South America. In Russia and other countries a
species of serfdom, until quite recently, obtained, which partook of
the nature of both chattel and wages slavery, but which was probably,
on the whole, less objectionable than either. The serfs of such
countries correspond with our _villains_ of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman
times, and are clearly a remnant of the old feudal system which grew
up in most parts of Europe upon the dissolution of the Roman empire.
Wherever this serfdom prevails, proletarianism is confined to the
cities and towns, the serfs being, like chattel-slaves, provided for
out of the lands to which they are attached.
In the principal states of Europe and America, in our colonies
generally, and indeed in most modern countries called “civilized,”
wages-slavery is the normal condition of the labouring classes. This
latter kind of slavery is, _cæteris paribus_, more or less intensely
severe according to the degree of perfection to which civilization
is carried. Thus, in our United Kingdom, which is accounted the most
civilized country in the world, wages-slavery is attended with greater
hardships, and subject to more privations and casualties, than anywhere
else. Nowhere else do we find employment so precarious; nowhere else
such multitudes of people overworked at one time and totally destitute
of employment at other times; nowhere else do we see such masses
of the population subsisting upon pittances wholly inadequate to
sustain human beings in health and strength; nowhere else do we find
jails and workhouses so overcrowded; nowhere else do we hear of whole
districts depopulated by famine, nor of upwards of 1,500,000 out of
eight millions of people being cut off by actual starvation and forced
expatriation in the course of twelve months, as has happened in Ireland
in our own times. All this, too, we find to be contemporaneous and in
juxtaposition with granaries, warehouses, and shops teeming with a
superabundance of the choicest produce of all climes--with cries of
over-production and glutted markets ringing in our ears wherever we
pass--and with the most opulent and numerous aristocracy, territorial
and commercial, that was ever known to be congregated in any country
of seven times the extent--to say nothing of a still more numerous
middle-class, in whose ranks may be found some thousands far surpassing
German counts or German princes in command of wealth and luxury.
Hence, no doubt, it was that Sir Robert Peel, not many years since,
accounted in Parliament for our distress by assuring the House that
“the occasional distress and destitution of great numbers of people was
a necessary consequence of our advanced civilization, and was therefore
a thing naturally to be expected in such a country as England.”
We remember, some years ago, when an address was presented to this
same Sir Robert Peel by some 6,000 or 7,000 of the merchants,
bankers, shipowners, &c., of the City of London, to console him for
his temporary expulsion from office by the Whigs,--we remember how
the _Times_ (which was then _ratting_ from the Whigs) boasted, by
way of demonstrating the respectability of the addressers, that the
list contained the names of 1,500 citizens whose aggregate wealth
would suffice to redeem the National Debt, and still leave enough to
support the owners in opulence. We remember having seen it stated,
about the same period, in a City article of the said _Times_, that so
prosperous was trade that ironmasters in Staffordshire and Wales were
known to have realised £200,000 in one year. We remember hearing, on
the best authority, of the house of Baring & Co. clearing £650,000 by
the speculations of a single year. We know a banker died, a few years
since, in Liverpool whose estate was computed at from £5,000,000 to
£7,000,000. Peel’s father is said to have died worth £3,000,000; and
old Arkwright worth twice that much. Soames, the late shipowner, was
worth several millions. Rentals varying from £20,000 to upwards of
£200,000 a year are numerous in England. The Duke of Westminster’s
property will, it is said, be now worth half-a-million per annum of
income. London, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, and other towns abound
in millionaires worth from a _plum_ to twenty, thirty, and even fifty
_plums_. A year’s rental of some of our dukes would pay the wages of
some 20,000 Irish labourers for a whole twelvemonth, at sixpence per
day each, which is more than thousands of them can earn by a hard
day’s work. A single bargain on the Stock Exchange will realise, for
a Rothschild, a Baring, a Gurney, or a Goldsmid, more than 30,000
needlewomen in London could possibly earn in two years at present
wages. Were a few of our great landowners and millionaire capitalists
so inclined, they might, by clubbing together, keep an army of 100,000
fighting men about them, whose maintenance, at their present wages,
would actually not be missed out of their enormous revenues. At £15 per
man, the annual cost would be only a million and a half, which, divided
amongst Sir Robert Peel’s 1,500 city addressers, would weigh less
heavily upon them than a penny a week subscription upon a poor Chartist
weaver.
And while this monstrous hell-begotten opulence stares us in the face
wherever we go, what find we to be the condition of the men to whom we
owe the very bread we eat, and without whom England would be a howling
wilderness, namely, the agricultural labourers? We find them, in order
to escape death from starvation, driven to the very brink of rebellion,
as may be collected from paragraphs like the following, which may be
seen in almost every agricultural journal we may chance to take up. We
quote from a Wiltshire paper:--
“RIOTS IN THE AGRICULTURAL DISTRICTS.--The farm-labourers of the
district round West Lavington, Devizes, have been resisting an attempt
to reduce wages from seven to six shillings a week, by forcibly
stopping farm operations. The men having got a hint of the contemplated
reduction, a number of them waited upon the steward of Lord Churchill,
the owner of the principal farms, with a view of inducing him to
intercede in their behalf. This led to no beneficial results; and the
men finding that their masters were determined on reduction, about a
hundred and fifty of them assembled in front of the house of a Mr.
Spencer, and stopped men, horses, and agricultural implements that
were proceeding to work by that road. Having persuaded other labourers
to join them, they went round to all the farms and completely stopped
all operations. They took horses from ploughs, opened sheep-pens, and
prevented all labour being proceeded with. On the following day some of
them returned to work; but warrants being issued for the ringleaders,
more than a hundred men formed themselves into a band and paraded the
streets, armed with staves. The assistance of the constabulary was then
obtained, and something like order restored. The next day a man named
Kite was taken before the magistrates and committed to prison. He had
not been long in custody before a large body of his fellow-labourers,
armed with sticks, came into the town for the purpose of rescuing him,
but were deterred by the presence of a strong military detachment.”
Here we find soldiers and policemen (whose keep costs for each man
more than double the labourer’s pay) employed to force Englishmen
to choose between starvation and toiling all the week round for six
shillings. Supposing these unfortunate labourers to work every day in
the year (Sundays excepted), their wages, at six shillings a week,
would be just £15 12s. for the whole year! Here is a sum wherewith to
keep a wife and, mayhap, five or six young children! Mr. Edward Smith
has told us how common it is to see nigger-slaves in America making
and spending from 50 to 150 dollars per annum by the labour of their
leisure hours--that is to say, exclusive of the maintenance provided
for them by their masters in exchange for their regular work. Take the
mean--100 dollars. This, at 4s. 2d. per dollar, is just £20 16s. 8d. If
he saves or spends 150 dollars, it is upwards of £30. Here, then, we
find a nigger-bondsman so far superior in condition to the free-born
Englishman, that he can actually afford to throw away upon luxuries (by
the earnings of his leisure hours) one-third more than, or even double,
the entire sum that a Wiltshire labourer is paid for the whole of his
time, though he drudge all the year round, and is never sick a single
day. If facts like these do not make the blood of Englishmen rush to
their cheeks, and the very cravenest of them take the field for their
social rights, they are past redemption.
Sir Robert Peel calls all this “civilization;” and the House of Commons
cried, “Hear, hear,” and cheered and supported him, when he declared
that the remedy for such a state of things lay not within the compass
of legislation; that Parliament depended, itself, upon the people,
and not the people on Parliament; and that the only and proper remedy
for the distressed classes was for them “to take their affairs into
their own hands”! Well, in the foregoing paragraph from the Devizes
newspaper, we see them essay to take their affairs into their own
hands; and we see also, that no sooner do they attempt to do so--no
sooner do they proceed to act upon Sir Robert’s advice--than soldiers
and police are brought down upon them, and warrants issued for their
apprehension. If this be not the perfection of human slavery, as well
as the perfection of inhumanity and injustice, we really know not what
is.
But is it true that no Parliamentary cure is findable for the
disease?--that the evil is one beyond the reach of legislative
control?--that, after all, the boasted “omnipotence of Parliament”
(which, Blackstone tells us, can do anything and everything not
naturally impossible)--is it true that this boasted omnipotence cannot
secure for an Englishman the food he has raised, the bread he has
earned--nay, doubly, trebly, quintuply, decuply earned? Is this true?
No, no; a thousand times no! What Parliament has done, it can undo;
what Parliament ought to do, and can do, it ought to be made to do, or
else to abdicate. There is not a member in either House of Parliament
that does not know, as well as we know, that our _land_ and _money_
laws are at the bottom of all the distress in the country, and that
the repeal of bad laws, and the enactment of good ones, are all that
is wanted to make England a paradise. There is not a member in either
House that does not know that all the slavery in the world, or that
has ever been in the world, is, or has been, the work of landlords
and money-lords; and that, consequently, the only true and proper way
to put an end to slavery is to make laws to deprive landlords and
money-lords of the power to enslave and rob their fellow-creatures.
If it be said, this cannot be done without interfering with the
rights of private property, we answer emphatically that it is laws
against robbery, and not against property, that are wanted. We assert
emphatically (because we know we can prove satisfactorily) that the
repeal of unjust laws, and the enactment of a few just and salutary
ones, upon Land, Credit, and Equitable Exchange (the latter including
Currency), is all that is needed to terminate poverty and slavery
for ever; and that it is perfectly within the compass of Parliament
to enact such laws without violating the rights of private property,
or confiscating to the value of one shilling of any man’s estate, or
otherwise dealing with it than in the legitimate way of taxation and
commutation, which the laws of all countries recognise and practise,
and none more than our own.
But, before going a step further in this inquiry, we beg to submit
here the following resolutions which were proposed to a crowded public
meeting by the author of this work, and carried by acclamation without
a single dissentient, although the meeting was composed of reformers
and philanthropists of all shades and sects:--
“This meeting is of opinion that in addition to a full, fair, and free
representation of the whole people in the Commons House of Parliament,
upon principles the same, or similar to those laid down in the People’s
Charter, the following measures, some of a provisional, the others
of a permanent nature, are necessary to ensure real political and
social justice to the oppressed and suffering population of the United
Kingdom, and to protect society from violent revolutionary changes:--
“1. A repeal of our present wasteful and degrading system of poor-laws,
and a substitution of a just and efficient poor-law (based upon the
original Act of Elizabeth), which would centralise the rates, and
dispense them equitably and economically for the beneficial employment
and relief of the destitute poor; the rates to be levied only upon the
owners of every description of realized property; the employment to be
of a healthy, useful, and reproductive kind, so as to render the poor
self-sustaining and self-respecting. Till such employment be procured
the relief of the poor to be, in all cases, promptly and liberally
administered as a right, and not grudgingly doled out as a boon; the
relief not to be accompanied with obduracy, insult, imprisonment in the
workhouses, separation of married couples, the breaking up of families,
or any such other harsh and degrading conditions as, under the present
system, convert relief into punishment, and treat the unhappy applicant
rather as a convicted criminal than as (what he really is) the victim
of an unjust and vitiated state of society.
“2. In order to lighten the pressure of rates, and at the same time
gradually to diminish, and finally to absorb, the growing mass of
pauperism and surplus population, it is the duty of the Government to
appropriate its present surplus revenue, and the proceeds of national
or public property, to the purchasing of lands, and the location
thereon of the unemployed poor. The rents accruing from these lands to
be applied to further purchases of land, till all who desired to occupy
land, either as individual holders or industrial communities, might be
enabled to do so. A general law, empowering parishes to raise loans
upon the security of their rates, would greatly facilitate and expedite
the operation of Government towards this desirable end.
“3. Pending the operations of these measures, it is desirable to
mitigate the burdens of taxation and of public and private indebtedness
upon all classes who suffer thereby,--the more especially as these
burdens have been vastly aggravated by the recent monetary and free
trade measures of Sir Robert Peel. To this end, the Public Debt and
all private indebtedness affected by the fall of prices should be
equitably adjusted in favour of the debtor and productive classes, and
the charges of Government should be reduced upon a scale corresponding
with the general fall of prices and of wages. And, as what is
improperly called the National Debt has been admitted, in both Houses
of Parliament, to be in the nature of a _bona fide_ mortgage upon
the realised property of the country, it is but strict justice that
the owners of this property, and they only, should be henceforward
held responsible for both capital and interest. At all events, the
industrious classes should not be held answerable for it, seeing
that the debt was not borrowed by them, nor for them, nor with their
consent, and that even had it been so, they have had no assets left
them for the payment of it. Moreover, the realised property of this
country, being estimated at eight times the amount of the debt, the
owners or mortgagers have no valid excuse or plea to offer on the score
of inability, for refusing to meet the claims of their mortgagees.
“4. The gradual resumption by the State (on the acknowledged principles
of equitable compensation to existing holders or their heirs) of its
ancient, undoubted, inalienable dominion and sole proprietorship over
all lands, mines, turbaries, fisheries, &c., of the United Kingdom
and our Colonies; the same to be held by the State, as trustees in
perpetuity for the entire people, and rented out to them in such
quantities and on such terms as the law and local circumstances shall
determine;--because the land, being the gift of the Creator to ALL,
can never become the exclusive property of individuals; because the
monopoly of the land in private hands is a palpable invasion of the
rights of the excluded parties, rendering them more or less the slaves
of landlords and capitalists, and tending to circumscribe or annul
their other rights and liberties; because a monopoly of the earth by a
portion of mankind is no more justifiable than would be the monopoly
of air, light, heat, or water; and because the rental of land (which
justly belongs to the whole people) would form a national fund adequate
to defray all charges of the public service, execute all needful public
works, and educate the population, without the necessity for any
taxation.
“5. That, as it is the recognised duty of the State to support all
those of its subjects who from incapacity or misfortune are unable to
procure their own subsistence, and as the nationalization of landed
property would open up new sources of occupation for the now surplus
industry of the people (a surplus which is daily augmented by the
accumulation of machinery in the hands of the capitalists), the same
principle which now sanctions a public provision for the destitute poor
should be extended to the providing a sound system of National Credit,
through which any man might (under certain conditions) procure an
advance from the national funds arising out of the proceeds of public
property, and thereby be enabled to rent and cultivate land on his
own account, instead of being subjected, as now, to the injustice and
tyranny of wages-slavery (through which capitalists and profitmongers
are enabled to defraud him of his fair recompense), or being induced
to become a hired slaughterer of his fellow-creatures at the bidding
of godless diplomatists, enabling them to foment and prosecute
international wars, and trample on popular rights, for the exclusive
advantage of aristocratic and ‘vested interests.’ The same privilege
of obtaining a share of the national credit to be applicable to the
requirements of individuals, companies, and communities in all other
branches of useful industry, as well as in agriculture.
“6. That the National Currency should be based on real, consumable
wealth, or on the _bona fide_ credit of the State, and not upon the
variable and uncertain amount of scarce metals; because a currency
depending on such a basis, however suitable in past times, or as a
measure of value in present international commerce, has now become, by
the increase of population and wealth, wholly inadequate to perform
the functions of equitably representing and distributing that wealth;
thereby rendering all commodities liable to perpetual fluctuation
in price, as those metals happen to be more or less plentiful in
any country; increasing to an enormous extent the evils inherent in
usury and in the banking and funding systems (in support of which
a legitimate function of the law--the PROTECTION of property--is
distorted into an instrument for the CREATION of property to a large
amount for the benefit of a small portion of society belonging to what
are called vested interests); because, from its liability to become
locally or nationally scarce or in excess, that equilibrium which
should be maintained between the production and consumption of wealth
is destroyed; because, being of intrinsic value itself, it fosters a
vicious trade in money and a ruinous practice of commercial gambling
and speculation; and, finally, because, under the present system of
society, it has become confessedly the ‘root of all evil,’ and the
main support of that unholy worship of Mammon which now so extensively
prevails, to the supplanting of all true religion, natural and revealed.
“7. That in order to facilitate the transfer of property or service,
and the mutual interchange of wealth among the people, to equalize
the demand and supply of commodities, to encourage consumption as
well as production, and to render it as easy to sell as to buy, it is
an important duty of the State to institute, in every town and city,
public marts or stores for the reception of all kinds of exchangeable
goods, to be valued by disinterested officers appointed for the
purpose, either upon a corn or a labour standard; the depositors to
receive symbolic notes representing the value of their deposits, such
notes to be made legal currency throughout the country, enabling their
owners to draw from the public stores to an equivalent amount, thereby
gradually displacing the present reckless system of competitive trading
and shopkeeping--a system which, however necessary or unavoidable in
the past, now produces a monstrous amount of evil, by maintaining a
large class living on the profits made by the mere sale of goods, on
the demoralizing principle of buying cheap and selling dear, totally
regardless of the ulterior effects of that policy upon society at large
and the true interests of humanity.
“It is not assumed that the foregoing propositions comprise all the
reforms needed in society. Doubtless there are many other reforms
required besides those alluded to; doubtless we want a sound system
of national education for youth, made compulsory upon all parents
and guardians; doubtless we require a far less expensive system of
military and naval defence than now obtains; doubtless we require
the expropriation of railways, canals, bridges, docks, gas-works,
water-works, &c.; and doubtless we require a juster and more humane
code of civil and penal law than we now possess. But these and all
other needful reforms will be easy of accomplishment when those
comprised in the foregoing propositions shall have been effected.
Without these, indeed, justice cannot be done to humanity; society
cannot be placed in the true path of improvement, never again to
be turned aside or thrown back; nor can those natural checks and
counter-checks be instituted without which the conflicting passions and
propensities of man fail to produce a harmonious whole, but with which,
as in the material world, all things are made to work together for
good, reconciling man to his position in the universe, and exalting his
hopes of future destiny.”
We shall treat the subject of these propositions in the following
chapters; and meanwhile the reader will please observe that similar
resolutions have also received the sanction of numerous meetings, large
and small, throughout the country.
[Illustration: Decoration]
CHAPTER XVI.
REFORMS AS MUCH NEEDED IN AMERICA AND IN COLONIES AS IN EUROPE.
Answer to question, “How is Human Slavery to go
out?”--Insufficiency of mere Political Freedom--Accessibility of
Public Lands in new Countries their chief Advantage--Inadequacy of
Universal Suffrage without a Knowledge of Social Rights--America
falling into same Abyss as Europe.
Before resuming the subject of the foregoing propositions, we pray the
reader to bear in mind, that we are now arrived at that all-important
branch of our inquiry which proposes to answer the question, “How is
human slavery to be made to go out of the world?” To have shown how it
came in,--how it was propagated,--the varied phases it has assumed,
and the hideous, wide-spread proletarianism to which the conversion
of _chattel_-slavery into _wages_-slavery has given rise,--to have
shown all this, without at the same time essaying to show how the fell
monster is to be eradicated from the face of the earth, would be a
mere idle literary dissertation--a contemptible parade of erudition,
without object, without end. A higher purpose will, we trust, be
found to have dictated this inquiry. An earnest, heartfelt desire
to contribute our quota towards rescuing humanity from oppression
and sorrow is the motive we lay claim to. This motive it is which
impelled us, on the part of the National Reform League, to propose
the resolutions embodied in the last chapter. In those resolutions
we profess to answer the question, “How is human slavery to be made
to go out of the world?” It is true, their immediate application is
intended only for our own country; but they are equally applicable
to France, Germany, and every other “civilized” country--America
itself not excepted. America is comparatively free from most of the
political anomalies and exclusive privileges which disgrace Europe,
and degrade the vast numerical majority of its people. There are no
crowned heads there; there is no State Church. Some of the States have
public debts, but they are comparatively light, and, for the most
part, in course of easy liquidation. Moreover, there is no titled
aristocracy claiming, by hereditary right, to legislate for or govern
any of the States. In this respect, men of all grades and conditions
are equally eligible for office, and for places of trust, honour, and
emolument. Universal suffrage may be said to be the general rule, and
property qualifications the exception, for the election of members
of the legislature and officers of government. Treason works no
corruption of blood in America. There is no law of primogeniture or
entail; there is no religion established and maintained by law, and
consequently no legal bars to religious freedom. Taxation is, generally
speaking, equal, uniform, and direct. It was, before the civil war,
comparatively light, too; and when otherwise, the remedy lies with the
people themselves; for, as restrictions upon the suffrage by property
and tax-qualifications exist but in some few of the States (and in
these are not very onerous or stringent), the basis of representation
may, for all practical purposes, be considered _numerical_, and not
territorial or financial. Add to these advantages the fact that the
old common law of England is the common law of America; and that
where any departure from it is made by statute, it is invariably in a
democratic sense. Thus, in Texas and other States, for instance, that
part of the old common law which considers a married woman as dead in
law is abrogated by statute in favour of the gentle sex, and so as to
give her more power than she possesses under the civil law. Thus, any
property possessed by her before marriage remains at her sole disposal
after marriage, as also any property she may become entitled to during
coverture. She may receive from and give to her husband a deed of
conveyance whilst under coverture. And any deed of conveyance made by
the husband requires for its full validity the joint signature of the
wife. In some of the States, too, the homestead can never be taken in
execution of debt; and, at the moment we write, a powerful movement is
going on throughout the States to secure a similar exemption of the
homestead throughout the entire Union. These and other privileges--the
result of her political constitution--America fully enjoys. No European
state can compare with her in these respects--not even Norway or
Switzerland. In a word, America is already possessed of every political
amelioration contended for by the old Radicals of this country, or
by the financial or mere middle-class reformers of the present day.
Indeed, to assimilate us to America is their _summum bonum_--the _ne
plus ultra_ of their reforming aspirations.
Far be it from us to undervalue the political rights secured to the
Americans by their general and State constitutions. Nevertheless, we
unhesitatingly affirm that the foregoing propositions are no less
necessary for the extinction of slavery in America than in England,
France, or any other European country.
Our position is this: It is the land and money laws of a country that
must ever mainly determine the social condition of its people. In other
words, without just agrarian and commercial laws--laws that shall
establish for all classes equal rights in the soil and equal advantages
from the use of money and credit (so as to secure equitable exchange
in trade)--no country can be prosperous, be its form of government
what it may. Now, in these respects America has but little to boast
of over England, France, or any other European country. If she does
not exhibit the wide-spread distress that these countries exhibit, she
owes it not so much to the superiority of her political institutions
(for of these she has as yet but little availed herself), as she
does to her unbounded resources (in the extent and fertility of her
soil), and to the comparative exemption she enjoys from public and
private indebtedness owing to her being a new country. But for these
causes--but for the facility with which unappropriated land may be had,
and but for the fewness of her territorial and commercial aristocracy
as compared with those of older countries--her citizens would very soon
exhibit the same hideous extremes of rich and poor as are to be found
in Europe. Indeed, New York and some of the New England States (where
most of the land is appropriated, and the population crowded) have
already, on more than one occasion, exhibited all the worst features
of British “civilization”--that is to say, wholesale squalor and
destitution (with their necessary consequences) in close proximity to
teeming granaries and warehouses; otherwise, an unemployed labouring
population, in rags and hunger, within sight of merchant-princes and
master-manufacturers worth some hundreds of thousands of dollars each.
And why should it be otherwise? The social system is the same there as
here. Rents are higher in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, &c., than
in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin. Competition is the same or worse.
Wages-slavery is as rife in Massachusets, Pennsylvania, and New York
as in any part of the British Isles; and if wages be not quite as low
in Philadelphia and Lowell as they are in Manchester and Birmingham,
it is partly owing to the high protective duties laid on foreign
manufactures, partly to the comparative scarcity of hands, but chiefly
to the facility with which the victims of competition can escape from
the mills and factories to the backwoods of Indiana, Missouri, &c.
In other words, the Americans owe whatever advantage they have over
us not to any superiority in their _social_ institutions,--not to
better agrarian and commercial laws,--nor even to the acknowledged
superiority of their civil and religious system of polity,--but to
the territorial and other local advantages to which we have referred,
and which no more distinguish them than they do the people of Sydney,
Adelaide, Port Phillip, Natal, New Zealand, or any other new country
in which land is abundant and labour scarce. But let America (with her
present social system) come to be peopled as England is,--let her now
unappropriated land be made private property of, and her agrarian and
commercial laws remain what they are,--and we venture to say that not
one jot better off will her labouring population be than ours now is.
Universal suffrage might stem the aristocratic tide for a season (as it
has done in other new countries); but the men of land and money would
sweep away universal suffrage there, as they have ever done elsewhere,
the moment they found it incompatible with landlordism and usury. All
the principal States of Europe had universal suffrage a few years ago;
France alone possesses it now, and that with a tenure so insecure that
it can hardly be said to be established. In all the other States the
men of land and money destroyed universal suffrage by brute force; they
dispersed diets and national assemblies at the point of the bayonet,
and made rights and constitutions to disappear before the cannon of
disciplined assassins. It may be the same in France before six months.
It would have been the same long ere now, but that some two millions
of _social_ reformers were known to be ready to take advantage of the
event, in order to wreak vengeance upon the landed and commercial
villains who have defrauded them out of the fruits of three revolutions
purchased with torrents of blood.
In truth, universal suffrage is no guarantee at all for liberty,
unless it be accompanied, on the part of the working classes, with a
knowledge of their social rights, and a consequent determination to use
political power for their establishment. The Romans, the Spartans and
Athenians, the Sicilians, and many other ancient peoples had universal
suffrage--at least, a vote for every citizen who was not a helot or a
bondsman; but it proved of no use to them, for want of knowing their
social rights. For the like reason, the Irish made no good use of
their forty-shilling freehold vote, when they had it; and, for the
same reason, they offered no resistance when it was taken away. The
French people had universal suffrage in 1793. Their Convention of that
period was elected by universal suffrage; and the constitution it made
was far more democratic than the French constitution of 1848. But, not
understanding their social rights then so well as they do now, they
suffered their landlords and money-lords to rob them of it, just as
the old Romans, Athenians, &c., had allowed _their_ land and money
lords to do in their day. After the Convention had succeeded, with
the aid of the Parisian shopocracy, in murdering Robespierre and in
striking terror into all who, like him, loved justice and the people,
they not only abolished the democratic constitution of 1793 and put a
middle-class constitution in its place, but they actually decreed that
they (the Convention members) should constitute _two-thirds_ of the
next Legislative Assembly, and that the nation should be at liberty
to choose only the remaining third! Strange to say, too, the people
submitted to this, as to every other abomination of the times; they
submitted because the great mass of them were too profoundly ignorant
of their social rights to take much interest in the franchise question.
It ever was so, it ever will be so, with a people ignorant of their
social rights: they will never risk life or limb in defence of their
_political_ till they comprehend their _social_ rights.
In America there is less danger than anywhere else of the people losing
their political rights. This is owing partly to the greater equality in
property which subsists there, but chiefly to the agitation of _social_
questions which has been forced upon the working classes of late years
by the continuous arrival of European emigrants competing with them
in the labour-market, and alarming them, by their example, as to what
might prove their own fate hereafter, should they suffer a powerful
territorial and commercial aristocracy to grow up amongst them. Hence
the springing up of the “Free Soil” and “National Reform” movements
in the United States; hence an attempt to radicalize the constitution
of Rhode Island; hence the numerous publications which denounced the
sale of the public lands--especially to foreigners and companies; hence
the hatred of national debts--especially if they arise out of foreign
loans--and the determination of the working-classes to repudiate them;
and hence, above all, the cheering fact, so well deserving of our
notice, that every new revision of an American constitution--whether it
be that of a State or of the entire Union--is invariably distinguished
by an increase of strength or latitude given to the democratic
principle. This is particularly observable in the new States, where
the settlers, consisting in great part of exiles forced from Europe
by poverty and tyranny, have carried out with them an intense hatred
of the systems they fled from, and therefore take all the democratic
precautions they can to keep down the aristocratic leaven.
But not even America herself, we predict, will escape the _régime_ of
Europe, unless she reform her social institutions while she is yet
young and healthy. Her agrarian laws are not a jot better than those
of France or England; and her commercial spirit is even more ravenous
and unscrupulous. In one respect she is worse than either. We allude
to her preference of metallic money to symbolic money; which is a
result of the fraudulent paper-systems she has so often smarted under.
There is no subject upon which the American working-classes are so
lamentably at fault as the subject of money. They fancy that an honest
paper-system is impossible, because they have been so often cheated by
the worthless rags of fraudulent usurers; and in this suicidal delusion
the bullionists and usurers take good care to confirm them. Next to
their want of sound views upon the Land question, this delusion as to
the real nature and proper functions of Money is the greatest foe to
American progress. On the subject of _Credit_--that most potent of all
levers of modern production--the same ignorance prevails in America
as here and in France. In truth, were it not that universal suffrage
is the fundamental law in France and America, while it is scouted in
England, we should be at a loss to know what advantages the French
and Americans possess over us, so deplorably similar are the three
countries in respect of social rights.
But we shall better comprehend these matters when we come to analyze
the propositions of the National Reform League, and to test their value
by showing their equal applicability to, and desirability for, all
three countries,--indeed, for all civilized countries under the sun.
[Illustration: Decoration]
CHAPTER XVII.
RELIEF TO UNEMPLOYED OR DESTITUTE A RIGHT, NOT A CHARITY.
Inability of a People ignorant of Social Rights to choose
Representatives--Duties of a wise Democracy--Omnipotency of a
Knowledge of Social Rights--Facility of Application of Social
Reforms--Exposition of the three Provisional Measures necessary.
We have stated, in a former chapter, that the repeal of unjust laws,
and the enactment of a few just and salutary ones, upon Land, Credit,
and Equitable Exchange (the latter including Currency), are all that
is wanted to terminate poverty and slavery for ever; and that nothing
is easier than for Parliament to enact such laws without infringing
the rights of private property, without confiscating to the value of a
shilling of any man’s estate, or otherwise dealing with property than
in the legitimate way of taxation and commutation which the laws of all
countries recognise and practise, and none more so than our own.
The resolutions which we have before cited show clearly how it may
be done. An honest Parliament is of course presupposed; for, without
an honest legislature to begin with, reform is all moonshine. The
first article of the League’s creed is, therefore, a full, free,
and fair representation of the whole people. To that end it demands
the enactment of the “People’s Charter”--not because it regards the
Charter’s plan of representation as perfect, but because that plan is
sufficiently so for all practical purposes, and because, having already
received the sanction of millions of the population, it would be unwise
and mischievous to risk dividing the people by the propounding of any
fresh scheme, the more especially as any defects in the “Charter” may
be easily enough remedied hereafter by a parliament or convention
elected upon Chartist principles.
But although the “People’s Charter” is a _sine qua non_ with the
League, it is, after all, but a machinery for providing the _means_
to an _end_. The _means_ is parliamentary reform; the _end_ is social
reform, or a reformation of society through the operation of just and
humane laws. The “Charter,” in fact, but aims at restoring to the
people the undoubted right of self-government--the right of making the
laws according to which, and to which only, they are to be ruled. It
leaves to the people themselves to do all the rest. It gives them the
power to elect what sort of representatives they choose, and to exact
from them what pledges they like in the way of social and political
reform. With the people themselves, however, it must ultimately rest
whether even the “People’s Charter” shall give them veritable political
and social rights.
If they know how to choose their legislators, and are resolute
to enforce the law, they will have both. But if, from ignorance,
corruption, or other causes, they know not how to make a proper choice,
they will but have escaped Scylla to fall into Charybdis, and, mayhap,
make bad worse. The very men they elect to save them may prove their
direst enemies. These, with the aid (out of doors) of the ignorant
and depraved of all classes, may accomplish the ruin of their best
friends, and then (as the French Convention did, after murdering
Robespierre) destroy universal suffrage itself, under pretence that it
had led to nothing but folly, blood, and crime. These are no imaginary
suppositions. We are but supposing for England, and the present time,
what has heretofore occurred in most other countries and in all times
under similar circumstances. A people ignorant of their true political
and social rights will never elect a Parliament of real political and
social reformers; they will only elect declaiming demagogues and crafty
adventurers, who will promise everything and perform nothing,--who,
professing to be doing everything for the people, will, in reality,
do nothing for them but make them stepping-stones to their own
aggrandisement, and who, as usual, beginning with frightening the
aristocracies of land and money, will end with compromising and going
shares with them for the public spoil, after establishing a reign of
terror over the people for their own conjoint security. How easily
might we demonstrate this by _à priori_ reasoning, were it necessary.
The history of all past revolutions, however, dispenses with any such
necessity. Indeed, the bare fact that universal suffrage is nowhere to
be found now-a-days amongst those ancient states and communities where
it formerly flourished is proof sufficient. A truly intelligent people
would ever remain a self-governing people. A people fully conscious of
the value of their political and social rights could never lose the
franchise. In the first place, they would so use it as to remove or
prevent the growth of those unnatural interests and institutes which
are incompatible with its free exercise and permanent security. In the
next place, they would use it to establish the social rights of the
people upon a basis as broad as the population itself. And, lastly,
they would so know how to appreciate the blessings of self-government,
from a consciousness that they owed their liberties and happiness
to no other source, that they would fight like lions, and die to a
man, rather than surrender their franchises. Such a people might be
exterminated; it could not be enslaved or disfranchised. Xerxes, with
his innumerable hordes, was not a match for a few thousand Greeks
inspired with the love of freedom. A Persian army could not force the
pass of Thermopylæ against three hundred freemen under Leonidas, till
treachery leagued with numbers for his overthrow; and even then the
handful of freemen had to be exterminated, because they could not be
taken alive, nor subdued to slavery. We have a still more striking
example of this in the present day. Of all the European States that
enjoyed universal suffrage a few years ago, France is now the only
one in which it survives. And why? Because France is the only one of
them in which a large proportion of the working-classes are imbued
with a knowledge of their _social_ rights, and consequently the only
one in which the working people are determined to maintain the right
of self-government by fire and sword, if necessary. In Prussia,
Austria, and in most of the German and Italian States the mass of
the people had heard little or nothing of their _social_ rights, and
consequently attached too little value to them to fight for them, or
for the political power through which alone they could be securely
established. Hence their comparative non-resistance to the overthrow of
their respective constitutions. It is otherwise in France. There, at
least two millions out of eight millions of adult males understand so
well the value of their political and social rights that Louis Napoleon
and his _bourgeoisie_ dared not overthrow universal suffrage by their
_coup d’état_. The upper and middle classes hate universal suffrage
quite as much in France as their feudal and money-grubbing brethren
hate it in England, Germany, and Italy. Nevertheless, they dared not
strike the blow, lest it should recoil fatally upon themselves. There
are full two millions of _social_ democrats in France who are resolved
to set the whole country in flames, and, if needs be, perish in the
conflagration, rather than suffer a traitorous conspiracy of landlords
and money-lords to put down their constitution by force. It is in the
stern determination of these two millions that rests the sole real
security for universal suffrage in France. The number of these social
democrats increases, too, every day with the spread of knowledge,
and with their greater experience of the baseness and perfidy of the
commercial villains who seek to eject them from the constitution, and
at whose instigations the present government is continually persecuting
their party, and seeking to goad it into premature insurrection in
order to create an occasion for establishing a pitiless military
despotism. With the increase of social democracy, increases the
security for universal suffrage. Every Social Democrat is essentially a
freeman in heart and soul, in conviction and sentiment. Such men will
fight when slaves would not. They were the freemen of Athens and Sparta
that overthrew the hordes of Xerxes. Had the helots and bondsmen been
sent against them, they would have succumbed to the barbarians, even as
they had to their own masters. The helots of Sparta and the bondsmen
of Athens knew nothing of _political_ and still less of _social_
rights. Hence did they all die, as they had lived, bondsmen and slaves.
For the same reason did the chattel-slaves of the ancient world live
and die in bondage for forty centuries before the Christian era. For
the same reason the serfs and _villains_ of the middle ages suffered
themselves to be _adscripti glebæ_, and quietly transferred from lord
to lord as estates changed hands, just the same as the other live
stock on the lands. For the same reason, and no other, were the modern
serfs of Russia, Poland, &c., no better off than their predecessors
of mediæval times; and precisely for the self-same reason are the
wages-slaves of modern “civilization” so tractable under a system
which, for real though disguised savagery, throws Oriental barbarism
and chattel-slavery completely into the shade.
Impressed with these convictions, the National Reform League sees no
hope for the successful establishment of the “Charter,” and for the
permanent enjoyment of its legitimate fruits, but in the diffusion,
amongst the people at large, of sound political and social knowledge.
Real _political_ they believe to be inseparable from real _social_
power, and the converse. To make the people appreciate universal
suffrage, we must teach them what they lose by the want of it, and
what they may fairly expect from a wise and legitimate use of it. In
answer to Sir Robert Peel and the House of Commons, we repudiate their
doctrine that legislation is not responsible for the sufferings of the
people; and the terms of our repudiation are made good in the seven
resolutions or propositions of the League.
What is, then, demanded in those seven propositions that is not within
the easy compass of a few acts of Parliament? What is there in them
incompatible with the acknowledged rights of individuals or with the
public peace or public security? In what respect can they endanger,
ever so remotely, life, liberty, property, religion, family, home, or
any other thing held sacred amongst men? On the contrary, do they not
go to secure all these with stronger guarantees than they can ever
derive from coercive laws or from the corruption of public opinion?
The “People’s Charter,” unaccompanied by the social reforms we demand,
might possibly prove a danger for all classes, through the poor, in
their ignorance, demanding what they had no right to, and through the
rich, in their selfishness, refusing everything to an enfranchised
people armed with power to take more than their own. But we challenge
the world to prove that the “Charter,” accompanied with the social
reforms we ask, could be a danger or an injustice to any class, or
that it could fail to work out the complete emancipation of the whole
people, politically, socially, morally, and intellectually.
What are the social reforms we demand? They may be classed under two
heads. The three first propositions demand reforms of a provisional
kind, to meet temporary evils. The remaining four are of a permanent
kind, to cure permanent evils. Resolution I. is as follows:--
“A repeal of our present wasteful and degrading system of poor-laws,
and a substitution of a just and efficient poor-law (based upon the
original Act of Elizabeth), which would centralize the rates, and
dispense them equitably and economically for the beneficial employment
and relief of the destitute poor. The rates to be levied only upon the
owners of every description of realized property. The employment to be
of a healthy, useful, and reproductive kind, so as to render the poor
self-sustaining and self-respecting. Till such employment be procured,
the relief of the poor to be, in all cases, promptly and liberally
administered as a right, and not grudgingly doled out as a boon; the
relief not to be accompanied with obduracy, insult, imprisonment in the
workhouses, separation of married couples, the breaking up of families,
or any such other harsh and degrading conditions as, under the present
system, convert relief into punishment, and treat the unhappy applicant
rather as a convicted criminal than as (what he really is) the victim
of an unjust and vitiated state of society.”
What is there unjust or impracticable in this proposition? Who ought,
by right, to support the poor? Clearly, those who have most profited by
their labour, and whose enormous revenues (derived from the aggregate
labour of the people every year, without yielding any equivalent) are
the main cause of so many labourers falling into pauperism. And who
are these? Clearly, the owners of _realised_ property,--the owners
of lands, houses, mines, collieries, turbaries, fisheries, docks,
wharfs, canals, bank-stock, railway-shares, consols, and every other
description of property yielding an annual income independently of any
labour or service or risk on the part of the proprietor. It is not
upon mechanics, tradesmen, or professional men who have but their own
exertions to trust to for a living, and who may or may not be worth
a groat, that the burden should fall. These parties are supposed to
render to society an equivalent for what they get, and consequently
ought not to be made responsible for keeping others whose poverty they
have not caused. At all events, it will be time enough to tax them
when they have realised something by their respective callings. But
as the others render to society no equivalent for their incomes, as
their incomes are purely and wholly the _creation of law_, and not of
their own labour or services, and as they are therefore the parties
who _make_ the poor, both common sense and common justice demand that
they should be made to _keep_ the poor, or at least enable the poor to
keep themselves by remunerative labour. Moreover, it was upon these
classes, and these only, that the original Act of Queen Elizabeth
contemplated the levies should fall. The 43rd Elizabeth extended the
rate to every other description of _realised_ property, as well as
mere _real_ property; but owing to the comparatively small amount of
_realised_ property (other than what falls within the legal description
of _real_) which existed in Elizabeth’s time, and for 150 years after,
and owing to the difficulty of ascertaining it for assessment purposes,
it escaped its due share of the burden; and, indeed, until about eight
years ago most people fancied that it was _real_ property only, and not
_realised_, that was contemplated in the original Act. The enormous
strides, however, that other descriptions of _realised_ property
(besides lands and houses) have made of late years have opened people’s
eyes to the true intent and purport of the Act; and hence moneymongers,
scrip-holders and annuitants must no longer expect to escape and throw
their burden upon shopkeepers, mechanics, and needy professionals.
In truth, it is not their interest to do so, unless they choose to risk
their all for the sake of a beggarly saving of a few pounds a year,
which they, of all others, ought least to begrudge the poor, their
especial victims. As to centralizing the rate, the selfish conduct of
landed proprietors and others has made such a step almost inevitable.
By preventing the building of cottages on their respective estates
in town and country, and by working the law of settlement to their
own selfish ends so as to debar the poor from having any legal claim
in their respective townships, they have so effectually overcrowded
some parishes with paupers, to spare their own, that nothing but a
centralised rate (to be dispensed according to the number of claimants
in each) can now restore justice as between parish and parish and
union and union. But let those who may entertain any doubt as to the
expediency or necessity of centralization but read Mr. Hutchinson’s
admirable work on the subject, and we think they will at once admit
that such an arrangement ought no longer to be deferred.
As to the liberal and kindly treatment we demand for the unemployed
and destitute poor, it is no more than a fraction of their right. If
they had _justice_ done them they would need no _charity_, and, till
justice is done them, we demand that their treatment shall be what our
resolution describes, and that it shall be considered their _right_,
and not grudgingly doled out as a boon.
Thus far for Resolution No. 1. In the following chapter we shall show
cause for Resolution No. 2.
[Illustration: Decoration]
CHAPTER XVIII.
GRADUAL RESUMPTION OF PUBLIC LANDS BY THE STATE.
Necessity of Agrarian Reform--Crown Lands, Church Lands, and
Corporation Lands to be immediately resumed, and their Rent
applied to the relief of Taxation--The Rich have no right to
meddle with them--Needed, by the exploited Millions, as a Fulcrum
to raise them from the Earth.
The first three resolutions of the National Reform League affirm
(as already observed) only provisional or temporary measures to
redress temporary grievances. They apply to pauperism, public and
private indebtedness, and to onerous and unequal taxation, which,
though great and oppressive evils, are nevertheless but natural and
inevitable consequences of the gigantic social wrongs they emanate
from, and which are grappled with in the four last resolutions. But
for radically bad agrarian and commercial laws, there would be no
pauperism, no overwhelming public and private debt, no oppressive
and unequal taxation. It is these laws that are at the bottom of all
the mischief; it is these laws that have produced the pauperism, the
indebtedness, the taxation, and that would produce them again were
they extinguished this hour. Therefore, to have a permanent cure of
our social evils we must radically reform our agrarian and commercial
systems. Resolutions 4, 5, 6, and 7 show how this may be done. But,
meanwhile, the evil consequences of our agrarian and commercial systems
cannot brook delay: they must be dealt with provisionally and summarily
before the permanent remedy can be applied. Paupers cannot be left to
starve, debtors to be overwhelmed with usury and law expenses, and
struggling millions to be ground down with oppressive rates and taxes,
while our agrarian and commercial systems are being reformed by the
slow operation of the measures suggested in Resolutions 4, 5, 6, and
7. These several classes must have speedy relief; else relief will
come too late. The effect of Peel’s monetary and free-trade measures
in aggravating the burdens of debts and taxes while it diminishes the
means of meeting them, and in multiplying paupers while it impoverishes
ratepayers, renders it absolutely necessary to deal speedily and
summarily with the evils of pauperism, indebtedness, and taxation.
Hence the three first resolutions of the League. By perusing them
attentively, the reader will find that they, at one and the same time,
go to mitigate the evils of pauperism, indebtedness, and taxation by
just and efficient provisional measures, and to prepare the way for
those larger and permanent measures by which Resolutions 4, 5, 6, and 7
seek to extirpate social evil altogether.
In the preceding chapter we have shown cause for Resolution No. 1; we
now proceed to show cause for Resolution No. 2, which is as follows:--
“In order to lighten the pressure of rates, and, at the same time,
gradually to diminish, and finally to absorb, the growing mass of
pauperism and surplus population, it is the duty of the Government to
appropriate its present surplus revenue, and the proceeds of national
or public property, to the purchasing of lands, and the location
thereon of the unemployed poor. The rents accruing from these lands to
be applied to further purchases of land, till all who desired to occupy
land, either as individual holders or industrial communities, might be
enabled to do so. A general law, empowering parishes to raise loans
upon the security of their rates, would greatly facilitate and expedite
the operation of Government towards this desirable end.”
If it be but an act of justice to paupers and ratepayers that the
rates should be levied and dispensed as Resolution No. 1 suggests;
it is no less an act of justice to both that the rates should be
expended in the most beneficial manner for all parties, and finally
dispensed with altogether when no longer necessary. Resolution No. 2
has this end in view. It asks the government and ratepayers to use
the _public_ money in the most advantageous way for the _public_. It
does not ask them to take money from one class to give to another,
nor to relieve the pauperism _that is_ at the risk of what may be
elsewhere. All surplus revenue in the hands of government is clearly
public property: it is raised from the whole body of the public. The
proceeds of crown lands, corporation lands, church lands, and various
other descriptions of public property are also clearly amenable to
public uses, without infringing the rights of private property or
vested interests. The seven or eight millions of rates raised annually
for the relief of the poor are also _public_ property,--only with this
important distinction, that being a legal substitute for the share
which the poor formerly enjoyed of the tithes and other ecclesiastical
revenues, their destination for the poor has _equity_ as well as _law_
for its sanction. The celebrated William Cobbett estimated that, if
everything that was titheable formerly were titheable now (that is,
if lay-impropriators had not converted to their own use the “great
tithes,” and if they had not also taken possession of the abbey-lands
at the time of the Reformation), the poor’s share of the tithes, &c.,
would be now upwards of ten millions sterling per annum. For this,
which was their ancient patrimony, the present poor’s rate is but a
substitute. Surely, then, it is not asking too much for the poor to ask
that the eight millions arising from this rate should be appropriated
to the best advantage for them.
And how could it be better appropriated than by purchasing land,
whereon to employ them productively, and locate them in comfortable
habitations? At present their lives are a burden to themselves and
others. Upon the land they would enjoy independence and happiness--the
natural result of their own industry and thrift. After the first
year or two they would be able to subsist themselves in comfort. The
rents paid by them would, in the first instance, go to liquidate the
loans contracted on the credit of the rates; and, these discharged,
they would be afterwards available for the purchase of other lands
as they came into the market. Thus paupers and ratepayers would be
both benefited,--the former made independent, the latter relieved
permanently from a grievous and growing burden on their respective
parishes. Then, as to the surplus revenue and the proceeds of public
property, to what better use could the public possibly apply them
than to the location of the industrious poor on the land? Talk of
repealing the duty on bricks! talk of a sinking fund to reduce the
National Debt!--no sensible man has any faith in these schemes. Every
such man knows that no reduction of taxes can possibly benefit those
who cannot command employment, or an adequate remuneration for it when
they have it. Every such man knows, too, that as long as landlords
and capitalists can create what “surplus population” they like, by
keeping the people from cultivating land _on their own account_, there
can be no security either for regular employment or adequate wages.
Farmers and manufacturers will employ only those they want--those they
can make a profit by. The rest will be left to the union bastile or
to starvation. But let the surplus revenue and the proceeds of public
property be applied in the way we speak of, and, from that moment,
the surplus population diminishes with every fresh location on the
land; the food of the country is increased in amount and cheapened
in price; employment and wages are augmented for the unlocated; and
a new and never-failing home market is created for the benefit of
all, through the conversion of unemployed paupers (half-starved upon
workhouse diet) into substantial husbandmen able to give agricultural
produce in exchange for manufactures. There is a vast deal of public
property in this country, a portion, at least, of whose proceeds a
universal-suffrage parliament would be sure to employ in this way.
There are the crown lands; there is still a good deal of unenclosed
common (though not less than 6,000,000 acres have been filched from
the people during the reigns of the 2nd and 3rd Georges); there are
the lands belonging to the church, the universities and the colleges;
there are the tithes, too; there is a deal of property in the hands of
corporate bodies, and attached to various educational and eleemosynary
establishments, and most of these endowments have been altogether
perverted from their original destinations.
A universal-suffrage parliament would secure to the poor their full
share of benefit accruing from the revenues of all this property. What
belongs to the whole public ought to be applied for the advantage of
the whole public; and it is only a majority of the whole public that
is competent to decide how corporate bodies elected upon property
qualifications have a right to dispose of property which equitably
belongs to the non-electors as much as to the burgesses having votes.
The same remark applies to schools, charities, and other endowments,
the original founders of which intended them principally for the
benefit of the poor. The crown lands do not belong to the higher
or middle classes, more than they do to the working-classes or to
the paupers in our union workhouses. Yet the aristocracy and their
retainers alone derive any benefit from them. The lands and revenues
of the church are _public_ property. A parliament which represents
only a fraction of the public has no right to appropriate these lands
and revenues to the Established Church, or to any church, if the vast
majority of the population desire they should be differently applied.
And who can doubt that such majority is totally averse to their present
appropriation? Many, like ourselves, might not like to dispossess the
present incumbents. But why should not their revenues, as they die off,
revert to the public for public uses, and their successors be left
(like the ministers of other churches, and like all other professional
men) to their own congregations and their own resources? Suppose this
had been done twenty or thirty years ago--the revenues of bishopricks
and livings, as the incumbents died off, thrown into a common fund
for the purchase of lands, and the rents of these lands again applied
in the same way--what a goodly slice of the soil, and what a goodly
revenue, would be now in the hands of the public! And who would be
wronged by such appropriation? Clearly not the then clergy, for the
reform would not have taken effect till after their death. Clearly
not their present successors; for these would have no legal title to
a property which the public and the law had chosen to appropriate
otherwise. Indeed, the majority of them--the poor curates--would have
been even benefited by the change; for, if left to the voluntary
principle, their congregations would provide better for them than does
the present Establishment. At all events, they could not be said to
have lost what they never had; and even if they fared worse than they
do now, they could not blame the public for having “done what it liked
with its own.” What was not done twenty or thirty years ago ought to
be done now: the public should now insist that church property and
every other description of property belonging to the public, should
be henceforward devoted only to such public uses as a majority of
the public may sanction. Any other application of it is robbery. A
parliament has no more right to rob the public for the benefit of
individuals, than it has to rob individuals for the benefit of the
public. This is their own maxim, and they should be held to it.
The proceeds of public property and the poor’s rate would, if honestly
applied, be amply sufficient to locate the unemployed poor upon the
land. Estates are every day coming into the market for sale. To the
owners it matters not a straw who buys their lands, so long as the full
price is paid for it. They are willing to sell, and the public are
willing to buy. The funds wherewith to buy are the surplus revenue,
the proceeds of public property, and some £8,000,000 of poor’s rate.
Assuredly, here is ample means of restoring their own to the people,
without robbing anybody. All that is wanted is an honest parliament to
legalize the work.
If it be said that such application of public property would benefit
the poor only, and be an injustice to the rich, the answer is that
the lands so purchased would not be the property of the poor, but the
property of the whole nation--rich and poor; and that, inasmuch as
the rents accruing therefrom would be applicable to public uses only,
the whole public, and not the poor alone, would have the benefit
in the remission of rates and taxes. The only disadvantage the rich
would suffer from such reform is that it would gradually emancipate
industry from their iron grasp. Now that disadvantage is its best
recommendation. The rich _may_ have a right to use their own _private_
property as they like (though with respect to _land_ they have no
such right), but they can have no right to use the _public_ property
otherwise than as a majority of the public may decide--much less to use
it for the enslavement and degradation of the great majority.
As to the present parliament doing anything like what is here
recommended, it would be madness to expect it. A parliament which
represents only those who thrive by labour’s wrongs will never
recognise labour’s rights, nor legislate for labour’s emancipation.
Such a parliament will never apply public property otherwise than to
the injury and enslavement of the industrial classes. If it had a
surplus of twenty millions, these classes would not derive a shilling
benefit from it. Indeed, not even the distressed portion of the middle
classes can command its sympathies where aristocratic interests stand
in the way: of this we have a remarkable instance in the result of a
motion for the repeal of the window-tax--the tax on air and light. At
the same time there was an opportunity of saving about a million a year
by calling home the African anti-slavery squadron. But no; the precious
House would neither repeal the tax on air and light nor disband the
anti-slavery armament. Everybody is now aware that this blockading
squadron on the Gold Coast was the veriest humbug that ever provoked
derision.
In the next chapter we shall treat of the 3rd Resolution. We are on
the eve of great changes, and nothing but a clear understanding by the
people of their social rights can enable them to profit by what may
occur.
[Illustration: Decoration]
CHAPTER XIX.
NATIONAL DEBT A MORTGAGE ON REALISED PROPERTY.
Necessity for Adjustment of Public and Private Debts--Their
overwhelming Burden must result in Civil War--Third Resolution
the only Remedy--Opinion of Cobbett--Enormous Increase of Debt
through Improvements in Manufactures--Only just Claims of Public
and Private Creditors.
Resolution No. 3 of the League proposes an equitable settlement of
questions of grave moment--of questions which will ere long be settled
by force out of doors, unless Parliament adjusts them within by fair
legislation. It is to the following effect:--
“Pending the operation of these measures, it is desirable to mitigate
the burdens of taxation and of public and private indebtedness upon
all classes who suffer thereby--the more especially as these burdens
have been vastly aggravated by the recent monetary and free-trade
measures of Sir Robert Peel. To this end, the Public Debt and all
private indebtedness affected by the fall of prices should be equitably
adjusted in favour of the debtor and productive classes, and the
charges of government should be reduced upon a scale corresponding
with the general fall of prices and of wages. And as what is
improperly called the National Debt has been admitted, in both Houses
of Parliament, to be in the nature of a _bona fide_ mortgage upon
the realised property of the country, it is but strict justice that
the owners of this property, and they only, should be henceforward
held responsible for both capital and interest. At all events, the
industrious classes should not be held answerable for it, seeing the
debt was not borrowed by them, nor for them, nor with their consent;
and that, even had it been so, they have had no assets left them for
the payment of it. Moreover, the realised property of this country
being estimated at eight times the amount of the debt, the owners or
mortgagers have no valid excuse or plea to offer, on the score of
inability, for refusing to meet the claims of the mortgagees.”
The questions here dealt with are those which, in all probability,
are destined to involve England in the great European revolution. If
not adjusted somehow in an early session of parliament, we predict
they will cause a civil war between the agriculturists and the town
“interests”--between the men of acres and the fund and money lords.
And should that war ensue, it will merge into a general social war of
classes, in the progress of which all will be losers, but the final
issue of which will be the extinction of “vested interests” and the
proscription of all who would maintain them. Resolution No. 3 is
intended to avert such a catastrophe for the sake of all parties. Let
us see if we are just in our demands.
The Public Debt is estimated, in round numbers, at £800,000,000. The
private indebtedness of the country is calculated at more than three
times the amount of the Public Debt--say £2,500,000,000. The interest
of the Public Debt is at least £30,000,000 per annum, including the
expenses of collection. The annual interest of private debts is
believed to exceed £100,000,000. Here is a fearful deduction to be made
from the aggregate earnings of the people every year, before a shilling
can be set aside for wages or profits. This mass of £130,000,000 per
annum is all sheer usury--a sheer plundering of the productive classes.
Yet it is only a part, and by no means the major part, of the annual
sacrifice entailed upon the industrious orders by our agrarian and
commercial systems. There is acknowledged to be upwards of £700,000,000
of property insured with our several insurance companies, who of course
receive premiums on the whole, varying in the per-centage charged,
according to the nature of the property insured, but amounting in the
aggregate to an enormous annual sum. This sum, like the interest of
the public and private debts, must be provided for every year before
wages and profits can begin. Then there is the unmortgaged portion of
the incomes derived from lands and houses. Then there is the public
and private taxation of the country (not included in the £30,000,000
set aside for the payment of the interest of the debt). There are the
tithes; the losses accruing from bad debts; the revenues of railway
companies, canal companies, water companies, gas companies, dock
companies, mining companies, banking companies, cemetery companies, and
countless other companies; the whole of which must be deducted from the
annual production of the country before the mechanic and labourer can
receive a farthing of wages, or before the mere employer and tradesman
can enter upon that margin to which wages and profits must look for
their share of the general produce. If we assume our present annual
production to be £630,000,000, one-third of this, or some £200,000,000,
must be set aside for the interest of public and private debts, the
revenues of companies, the claims of taxation, &c. The capitalists
and tradespeople may be supposed to pocket some £300,000,000 more,
and the miserable remnant, some £130,000,000 per annum, is probably
the _maximum_ of what the working-classes receive for producing the
whole. At all events, the latter do not average above 10s. per week for
each family; and supposing the number of working families to be about
5,000,000, this would give them a gross income of about £130,000,000
per annum.
We pretend not to perfect accuracy in these figures: we profess to deal
only with round numbers. An approximation to the actual state of things
is all we aim at; for that is all we require to elucidate our position.
But if we deviate from arithmetical exactness (as must needs be in such
calculations), the deviation will be found to be rather _in favour_ of
the producer than against him; and therefore our argument must be held
so much the stronger, the less exact we are in figures.
That the producer does not, upon the average, receive a fourth of his
produce is a certain fact. If the producers got back £125,000,000
out of a gross annual produce of £600,000,000 and odd, it is the very
extreme of their good fortune. Some of them, we know, get far more
than in this proportion--more than a fourth or than a third,--nay,
mayhap one-half. But the majority, on the other hand, get less than a
fourth; and millions of them less than a sixth or even an eighth of
their produce. An Irish labourer or a London needlewoman does not,
probably, receive a tithe of the value of their labour. Estimating in
this way--striking a balance between all the various descriptions of
producers--we do not understate their income when we average it at 10s.
per week for each family, or at from £125,000,000 to £130,000,000 for
the whole, out of a gross annual production of, say, from £600,000,000
to £630,000,000 sterling. Small as is this proportion allotted to the
producer out of his own earnings, it is becoming smaller and smaller
every year, as prices and wages decline under the operation of Peel’s
monetary and free-trade measures. The reason is obvious. To make money
scarce, on the one hand, and to invite foreign competition on the
other, must of necessity lower prices. Whatever lowers prices swells
the burden of debts, taxes, and of all other fixed money obligations.
In the same ratio it must reduce the aggregate of profits and wages;
for the more the producers (employers and employed) have to give out of
the common stock to pay taxes and the interest of public and private
debts, the less there must be left for themselves.
Peel’s monetary laws of 1819 and 1844-45 have made money scarce, and
will keep it permanently so while they remain in force. His free-trade
measures of 1846 go to aggravate competition in our home markets, and
tend directly to the lowering of prices and wages in favour of the mere
annuitant or idle consumer. The effect of both measures, conjointly,
is to increase the pressure of debt and taxes to a degree that is
already felt to be unbearable. If persevered in, the inevitable result
is revolution--violent revolution. Under the conjoint effects of his
measures, wheat has already gone down below 40s.,--nay, as low as 36s.
Bankruptcies have reached an appalling figure; and estates are rapidly
changing hands (passing from mortgagors to mortgagees), and not a few
of them are going out of cultivation altogether. The Encumbered Estates
Commission was sitting hardly three months in Dublin before one-twelfth
of the landed property of Ireland, measured by rental, came within its
jurisdiction. Scores of Scotch landlords and hundreds of Irish are no
longer able to pay interest on their mortgages, owing to the reduced
prices of agricultural produce. For the same reason, farmers cannot
pay rents, nor the interest of borrowed capital. In England they are
universally reducing, or threatening to reduce, wages. In Ireland
they are throwing up their farms, or falling into arrears with their
rent. In Scotland the same may be said. In all three countries the
poor labourers are ground down so low that lower they can hardly be.
Hence the agricultural risings and incendiarisms in England; hence
the midnight outrages and murders in Ireland; hence the unprecedented
tide of emigration from all three countries. No farmer can possibly
pay rent, taxes, tithes, and interest of capital with wheat below
40s. No landlord, having his estates encumbered, can make head against
his liabilities with existing prices. No labourer can have any other
prospect before him but starvation and crime under such a system. To
have to pay some £200,000,000 a year (out of £600,000,000) to usurers
and tax-eaters would be a dire enough infliction even with wheat at
60s. and all other commodities at proportionally high prices. But to be
saddled with such a liability in the face of wheat at 36s., and of the
like downward progress of prices and wages in every other department
of industry, is what the country cannot bear. No country on earth
could stand it: England will not stand it. A furious civil war--a
downright revolution--must, we repeat, be the inevitable consequence of
perseverance in such a system.
Our third resolution offers the only just and feasible way of averting
such revolution. We cannot restore corn-laws; we cannot go back to
Protection: it is too late for that. The country has no more sympathy
with the landlords than it has with the moneymongers. It wants not to
bolster up one interest at the expense of the other, but to compel
both to adjust their conflicting claims without robbing the public. If
parliament will insist upon “keeping faith with the public creditor,”
let it do so at the expense of the parties properly liable. Let the
owners of _realised_ property be the only parties responsible for the
“National” Debt. Sir Robert Peel and Lord Brougham declared, amid
the cheers of both Houses, that this debt is a _bona fide_ mortgage
upon the whole realised property of the country. Very well. Let the
mortgagors, then, be made to do as all other mortgagors do;--let them
either redeem the mortgage (as they may do), or pay the interest till
they do. And if they will not pay interest or capital, let the mortgage
be foreclosed, and their estates sequestered. This is but common
sense and common justice. It is only the most shameless and hardened
dishonesty that could saddle such a liability upon the non-propertied
classes, seeing they never borrowed the money, had no advantage from
its expenditure, and have had no assets left them wherewith to pay that
or any other debt. Speaking of this monstrous injustice--the injustice
of taxing the working-classes for the interest of this debt--the late
Mr. Cobbett indignantly asked, “What would be said of a law that
should compel the children to pay the debts of the father, he having
left them nothing wherewith to pay?--of a law that should make the
children work all the days of their lives to clear off the score run
up by a profligate and drunken father?--of a law which should say to
the father, ‘Spend away; run in debt; keep on borrowing; close your
eyes in the midst of drunkenness and gluttony; imitate the frequenters
of Bellamy’s all your life; and your children and children’s children
shall be slaves to pay Bellamy and others, with whom you have run up
the score?’ Would not the makers of such a law be held in everlasting
execration? And in what respect does this case differ from that of a
prodigal and borrowing nation which would make its working-classes
responsible for debts they had no share in borrowing or spending?”
There is no getting over this. Cobbett’s reasoning is the reasoning of
every just and honest man who knows anything of the subject. The case
is even stronger than he puts it. The bulk of the debt was contracted
to force unjust taxation on the American colonies and to force back
Bourbon royalty upon France. These are the very last objects upon which
the working-classes would expend money or incur liabilities. It is, in
fact, making them pay for crime and murder, as well as for their own
impoverishment and enslavement!
These views, we rejoice to say, are making way in all quarters, high
and low. Mr. Isaac Buchanan (formerly President of the Boards of Trade
of Toronto and Hamilton in Canada, and who represented the metropolis
of Upper Canada in the Canadian parliament) has boldly demanded
that all connection shall cease between the National Debt and her
Majesty’s Exchequer, in a pamphlet issued by him, entitled “The Moral
Consequences of Sir Robert Peel’s Unprincipled and Fatal Course,”
&c. The same view is taken by the democrats of Ireland, and has been
successfully promulgated at sundry Chartist meetings in town and
country. By-and-by it will be the creed of all classes, as well as of
the Chartists and National Reform League.
But while we insist that the owners of realised property shall be
held solely responsible for the National Debt, we assert that justice
to them demands that the debt be equitably adjusted for them before
they are called upon to liquidate it. Peel’s monetary and free-trade
measures have more than doubled the debt. We say nothing of the
£27,000,000 which our “reformed” parliament has added of late years to
the debt; let that pass. We speak of the change made in the value of
money by the Act of 1819, restoring cash payments; and of the complete
revolution in prices effected by the tariff and corn-law repeal. These
measures have more than doubled the value of the pound sterling, and
more than trebled the original value of Consols. For example, the
average price paid for £100 stock in the 3 per Cents. during the war
was £60 of depreciated bank paper, worth then only £40 in silver. The
holder of that stock is now entitled to receive ninety-seven sovereigns
for it. Every individual pound of the £60, at the time it was lent,
would only buy one-fourth of a quarter of wheat. Every pound paid back
now will buy more than half a quarter--more than twice as much. It will
buy more than three times as much of London or Birmingham goods, and
more than four or five times as much of Manchester and Glasgow goods.
Here, then, we have the value of the pound more than doubled, on the
one hand; and, on the other, we find the fundholder entitled to receive
£97 for every £60 he lent in rags! Combine these two alterations: mark
their conjoint effect in favour of the public creditor. Observe the
difference to him of going into market with ninety-seven sovereigns
wherewith to buy wheat at less than 40s. and going with only sixty rags
to buy wheat at upwards of 80s. (the average price during the war, when
he lent his money); and then bear in mind that what is clear gain to
him is so much clear loss to us, the taxpayers. The difference is, in
fact, so much downright plunder taken from the industrious and given
to the idle and useless.
Not even at the expense of the owners of realised property are the
fundholders entitled to any such advantage. They are entitled to their
own (to receive it from the proper parties, the borrowers), but they
have no just claim for more than their own. What was borrowed should
be paid back, and no more. Peel’s measures give them thrice their own,
while they work in an opposite direction against land and labour. Let
there be a fair adjustment, then. Let the £800,000,000 of capital be
reduced according to the change in the value of money and the fall in
prices, and let the owners of every description of property be made to
pay their equitable share of the adjusted burden; but on no account let
another shilling of taxes be raised on account of the debt. No doubt
the Chartists will have an eye to this when their day comes; and it is
coming fast.
Private obligations affected by Peel’s measures should be adjusted
upon the same principle as the public debt. Not to do so is to rob one
class to enrich another: to persevere in such a course is to invite
convulsion. Law is intended to _protect_ property for all; not to
_create_ property for any. To pervert it from this, its legitimate
function, into an instrument of rapine for the injury and ruin of those
it should shield is to arm the nation against the law. This is the very
effect Peel’s measures are now producing. Hence the necessity for a
timely adjustment. The Act of 1819 ought to have provided against any
such necessity; and when he introduced his free-trade measures in 1846,
he ought to have made provision in his Acts that all public and private
liabilities, involving fixed money payments, should be dischargeable
only upon a reduced scale to be calculated upon the general fall of
prices. Upon this principle all mortgages, leases, contracts, &c.,
would be open to easy readjustment, and the whole of our taxation might
be reduced upon a scale corresponding with the fall of prices, without
any necessity for a fresh enactment on the subject. If prices fell
_one-third_, upon the average, all salaries, pensions, &c., would be
reduced one-third; and the same in respect of public and private debts,
mortgages, leases, &c. As it is, we see no remedy for the mischief but
what is pointed out in our third resolution. We said so before Peel’s
measure became law; and some of the ablest and most experienced men in
the kingdom have since publicly expressed a similar opinion.
But enough on the _provisional_ or _palliative_ measures that are
needful ere the four resolutions, embodied in the succeeding chapters,
shall have had time to operate a full reform of our present iniquitous
agrarian and commercial laws and institutions.
CHAPTER XX.
NATIONAL LANDS AND CREDIT FOR THE USE OF THE PEOPLE.
Unjust Laws to enable the Few to deprive the Working Class
of their Earnings--Private Property in Land the Basis of
Wages-Slavery--Raw Materials of Wealth belong to all--Land and
Money Lords govern the World--Right of Working Class to the Use of
Credit--Surplus of Earnings of Working Class beyond Consumption
the Source of all Capital.
To provide a full, adequate, and permanent remedy for the manifold and
all-pervading ills that are the consequence of land-monopoly and usury,
the people must reclaim their right to the National Territory, which
has been gradually and surreptitiously usurped by private and sinister
interests; the enactment of laws to secure for all, co-ordinately
therewith, the mighty engine of Credit, which must be utilized for the
industrious orders of society, who are the strength and mainstay of the
nation, and therefore the most entitled to its benefits.
The fourth and fifth resolutions of the League run as follows:--
“The gradual resumption by the State (on the acknowledged principle
of equitable compensation to existing holders or their heirs) of its
ancient, undoubted, inalienable dominion and sole proprietorship
over all the lands, mines, turbaries, fisheries, &c., of the United
Kingdom and our Colonies, the same to be held by the State, as trustee
in perpetuity for the entire people, and rented out to them in such
quantities as the law and local circumstances may determine; because
the land, being the gift of the Creator to ALL, can never become the
exclusive property of individuals; because the monopoly of the land
in private hands is a palpable invasion of the rights of the excluded
parties, rendering them, more or less, the slaves of landlords and
capitalists, and tending to circumscribe or annul their other rights
and liberties; because a monopoly of the earth by a portion of mankind
is no more justifiable than would be the monopoly of the air, light,
heat, or water; and because the rental of the land (which justly
belongs to the whole people) would form a national fund adequate to
defray all charges of the public service, execute all needful public
works, and educate the population, without the necessity of any
taxation.
“That as it is the recognised duty of the State to support all those of
its subjects who, from incapacity or misfortune, are unable to procure
their own subsistence--and as the nationalisation of landed property
would open up new sources of occupation for the now surplus industry
of the people (a surplus which is daily augmented by the accumulation
of machinery in the hands of the capitalists)--the same principle
which now sanctions a public provision for the destitute poor should
be extended to providing a sound system of National Credit, through
which any man might, under certain conditions, procure an advance from
the national funds arising out of the proceeds of public property,
and thereby be enabled to rent and cultivate land on his own account,
instead of being subjected, as now, to the injustice and tyranny of
wages-slavery (through which capitalists and profitmongers are enabled
to defraud him of his fair recompense), or being induced to become a
hired slaughterer of his fellow-creatures at the bidding of godless
diplomatists, enabling them to foment and prosecute international
wars, and trample on popular rights, for the exclusive advantage of
aristocratic and ‘vested interests.’ The same privilege of obtaining a
share in the national credit to be applicable to the requirements of
individuals, companies, and communities in all other branches of useful
industry, as well as in agriculture.”
What is it that creates poverty--the mother of slavery, ignorance, and
misery--but unjust laws, by which the many are robbed for the benefit
of the few? A poverty-stricken people can never be a free, a happy,
a religious, or an educated people. No reform that will not give the
people the means of acquiring property by honest industry--which will
not enable them to be independent of wages-slavery--which will not
enable them to live in houses of their own, and allow them free access
to the soil of their country, is worth their serious attention.
We defy all the genius and statesmanship in the world to save a
population from being the slaves of middle-class vampires so long as
land is private property. We defy all the learning and ability in the
United Kingdom to show me how we can be extricated from poverty and
premature death in this country without a radical reform of our land
and money laws. It is assumed that land, mines, rivers, &c., are fit
and proper subjects of private property, like bales of cloth, pottery
wares, or any other product of man’s skill and industry; and that,
accordingly, the works of God’s creation may be bought and sold in the
market, the same as if they were the works of human hands. This is a
principle so utterly abhorrent to common sense and reason--it is, on
the face of it, so gross a perversion of natural justice, that the
rights of property cannot possibly be reconciled with it, nor coexist a
moment in presence of it. Once allow the soil of a country, which God
made for all its inhabitants, and for all generations born upon it, to
be bought up, or otherwise monopolized or usurped by any particular
section of any one generation (be that section large or small), and
that moment your community is divided into tyrants and slaves--into
knaves who will work for nobody, and into drudges who will have to work
for anybody or everybody but themselves. No subsequent legislation--no
possible tinkering or patchwork in the way of remedial measures--can
sensibly affect a system based upon so hideous a foundation. You may
talk of forms of government, or of reforms of parliament; but we
hesitate not to say that no reform of parliament, no reconstruction
of the government, can be of the slightest avail towards amelioration
whilst that glaring and gigantic injustice constitutes the basis of
private property; and for this simple reason, because the rights of
labour and the rights of property, which ought to be really one and the
same, are utterly irreconcilable under such a system. As long therefore
as it shall prevail, so long must the rich be insecure, and the mass
miserable, whatever may be the form of government, from monarchy to
democracy the most pure and unlimited.
No man, not a fool or a knave, will deny that the _raw materials_ of
all wealth belong to all men alike in their natural state: to assert
the contrary, would be to assert that God, like a capricious human
despot, dispenses His favours regardless of justice or of the wants
of His creatures. The only question is this--Can the lands, mines,
turbaries, collieries, fisheries, &c., containing all materials of
wealth in every country, be restored to its inhabitants without
injustice or undue suffering to the present possessors, whoever they
may be? If this could not be done, there might be some excuse for
the present monstrous system. But no government need have the least
difficulty on this point. Our own government, for instance, has only to
do, in respect of landed property, for the benefit of the nation, what
it does every day to promote the speculative interests of individuals
and private companies. Owners of real estate are compellable now, by
existing laws, to exchange such property for a money-compensation
when the public interest requires such change. Does anybody consider
that a wrong is done to the owners of such property so long as the
money-compensation to them is sufficient to satisfy the public
conscience represented by a sheriff’s jury? Now, if it be right to do
this for the sake of a company or a few speculating individuals, how
much more justifiable is it to do it for the just benefit of millions,
and to produce thereby such a reformation, materially and morally,
as no pen nor tongue could adequately describe? Indeed, in order to
restore its land gradually to the nation, it would not be necessary
to go so far in expropriation or forcible dispossession as existing
laws authorise in favour of companies chartered by parliament to make
railways, canals, docks, barracks, or any other public works. There
would be no need to dispossess any proprietor during his lifetime,
nor even his successors, without their own consent; it would be quite
sufficient for all useful national ends and purposes to buy up the
land as it comes into the market in the ordinary course, either by the
voluntary act of the seller or by due legal process, such as a decree
of the Court of Chancery, &c., and then make the land so bought with
the public money the inalienable property of the nation ever after, as
it by right should be.
Unquestionably, land-usurpers and money-changers, taking both terms
in their widest sense, must _in foro conscientiæ_ be distinguished
from all other sinners. We know of no great social evil in civilized
life that is not clearly traceable, directly or indirectly, to these
two classes. It is they that govern the world everywhere, and that
have always governed it since the first dawn of civilisation; it is
they that make all revolutions and counter-revolutions, all false
systems of religion and education, all State-Church establishments,
all standing armies of soldiers, constables, priests, and lawyers, and
that impose on all peoples the burdens requisite for the maintenance
of those armies; in a word, it is landlords and profitmongers that
have everywhere organised society as we find it, and that uphold this
organisation for their own advantage, at the cost of more wrong and
wretchedness to mankind than tongue or pen ever did or ever will be
able to describe. And amongst the greatest of their crimes against
humanity is this, that, in addition to the machinery of brute force
they keep in pay to uphold their domination, they have rendered an
effectual exposure of their system next to impossible through the
legions of venal journalists, mercenary orators, and unprincipled
_littérateurs_ they subsidise to corrupt public opinion and to mystify
the people on every subject that bears upon their weal or woe, as also
to hunt down by calumny, and to destroy by private persecution, any and
every man that shall dare to lift the veil that hides from the millions
their horrible policy.
We must _live_ somewhere; and we must have the _needful things_ to live
on. But landlords and profitmongers claim to own every rood of ground
in the kingdom, and every house on the land; and we cannot procure
the commonest necessaries of life except through some profitmonger.
We must therefore either go without homes and without meat and drink
altogether, or we must have them from the landlord and profitmonger
on their own arbitrary terms. To have them on _any_ terms, too many
persons are often obliged, in times of difficulty and danger, to
connive at and even laud what they abhor. Again, the wrongs done by
ordinary criminals are in general superficial and ephemeral in their
effects. The man who steals my watch, or robs my house, does me only
as much wrong as I may repair at the cost of earning the price of
another watch or of the goods stolen from my house. But they who rob a
people of their territory rob them of a priceless possession, for which
all the labour and labour’s worth in the world would be no adequate
compensation. It is not only a robbery of the existing generation, but
a robbery of all generations to come; for it is depriving the whole
posterity of the disinherited of their fair legitimate share of the
_raw materials_ of wealth, which God made equally for the use of all,
in order that the descendants of the wrong-doers, so far as human
laws can determine it, may be able to grow richer and richer in every
succeeding age, by letting out for rents that raw material which is by
natural right the inheritance of all.
Perhaps the most extortionate system of legal robbery, in connection
with private property in the soil, is found in what are called _ground
rentals_. By virtue of this system, a man like the Duke of Westminster
is enabled to realise an income greater than the queen gets for her
services (and she does something for her money, but the duke does
absolutely nothing for his), merely because the land on which certain
houses are built is _said_, by a fiction in law, to belong to him;
and, after a certain number of years, the houses themselves become his
property, and he forthwith proceeds to grant fresh leases of them at
increased rents.
As to the right of _occupation_ of the land, we should make it the
same for all, giving the tenancy to those who would pay most rent to
the State, only taking care that no man held more than one farm, or a
larger one than he could cultivate himself whilst there were others in
want of small ones. As a matter of course, we should guard against too
great a subdivision as well.
Another false principle at the root of our politico-commercial system
is, that Credit should exist only for the rich, and not at all for the
poor. This is a most atrocious principle, both in theory and practice.
As between citizen and citizen, or between subject and subject, the
principle might be defensible enough on prudential grounds; but as
between the citizen and his country it is wholly unjustifiable, and
calculated to keep subordinates subordinate, and to fatten tyrants
and usurers with the sweat and blood of slaves. If the _rents_ of
the country were public property, as they ought to be, no honest,
industrious man should be refused a temporary advance or loan from them
for productive purposes; and it is not in the power of man to conceive
a better security for the repayment of the same than the skilled
labour of an industrious, sober freeman protected by laws made with
his own consent. There is no other security _now_ for the repayment
of loans, public or private, than the known capacity of working men
to produce a _surplus_ over and above their own consumption. If
they could not, or did not, do this, there would be no interest for
fundholders, mortgagees, or money-lenders of any sort. Indeed, there
is no other source than the said surplus for the payment of rents,
taxes, dividends, premiums on insurance policies, and the interest of
upwards of two thousand millions of private debts. Out of the same
source, and no other, comes also the enormous income annually received
by capitalists and traders under the name of Profits. Upstarts, who
have made fortunes in trade, invariably make the worst landlords--the
least social and hospitable, the most grinding and exacting. This is
exemplified in every country in Europe, where rents are continually
becoming heavier, and small farms more difficult of attainment by the
poor, in proportion as the mercantile body and master-manufacturers
increase in numbers and in wealth. In all such countries, national or
public debts, provincial debts, and corporation debts are never-failing
concomitants of increased commerce and manufactures, as are also
banking and other joint-stock companies, which absorb so much of the
produce of the soil for profits, discounts, dividends, and interest
of money, that there would be nothing left for the landlords and
cultivators, if it were not that the working-classes are dispossessed
altogether both of their _proprietary_ and their _occupancy_ rights in
the soil, and turned into mere drudges or wages-slaves to the landlords
and tenant-farmers, who work them harder, and feed them worse, than
their cattle. The difference between what the labourers and mechanics
actually produce in value and the miserable pittance allowed to them
is the plunder-fund out of which are kept in comparative ease and
luxury the worthless classes that enslave and prey upon them. Yes,
the whole and sole security for all is the labourer’s capability to
produce a surplus over and above what he consumes during the period
of production. It were strange, then--passing strange, indeed--if
that surplus, which is now sufficient security for everybody else,
should not be as good a security for himself, when the very object of
the advance or loan is neither more nor less than to furnish him with
the means of repayment, by at once enabling him to produce, and by
making him the master of his own products. Yet, in the teeth of this
well-known capability on his part, the man whose surplus productions
enable others to get loans, and repay both capital and interest, is the
only man who can get no loan for himself, because, by our atrocious
system, the Credit as well as the Land of the country is hermetically
sealed against him. To support the system of the landlords and the
profitmongers, it is absolutely necessary to place millions of the
population in positions and situations wherein they cannot possibly
earn their bread without breaking one or other of the Ten Commandments
and running counter to the injunctions of the Gospel.
Partington tells us, in his Encyclopædia, that the history of every
country in Europe goes back to the time when its land was public
property. Did that state of things obtain now, all the mines, as
well as all the land that covers them, would be the property of the
public, agreeably to the old law maxim, “Cujus est solum, ejusdem sunt
omnia quæ infra sunt, ad imam terram, et omnia quæ supra sunt, usque
ad cœlum,”--“Whoever owns the soil, to the same belongs all that is
beneath the soil, down to the bottom of the earth, and all that is
overhead, even up to the sky.” If this maxim prevailed now-a-days, the
rents of mines would go to public uses only. After due examination
and survey by public authority, they would be let out to companies of
actual workers by public tender, and all they realised above the rent
to the State would go only to those who risked their lives in working
them. There would be few accidents, we suspect, under such arrangement;
and if there were any, the workers alone would be to blame for their
greed in not sinking more shafts and taking the other necessary
precautions for their safe working.
In the manufacturing districts of England it has been ascertained
that half the children born to the artisans die before they complete
their fifth year, and that the average duration of human life amongst
the working classes is only some 17 or 18 years, while it averages
38 years amongst the “better classes,” _i.e._, amongst the landlords
and profitmongers who reap the best fruits of their toil. This is an
arbitrary confiscation or squandering of human life not to be found,
even in time of war, in any other country not manufacturing, mining,
and commercial. The men composing the master-class in these callings
are, with hardly an exception, open and even avowed enemies of the
political and social rights of the working classes. They have literally
expelled the people from every institution in the State. They and
their accomplices, the landlords and tenant-farmers, have usurped and
absorbed all the prerogatives of the Crown and all the rights of the
people. They have turned the producers out of parliament, out of the
corporations, out of the vestries, out of the juries, out of the
magistracy, out of the church, out of the public press, out of all
the public boards--in a word, out of every department of the State,
and left them without a single legislator, magistrate, administrator,
common-councilman, vestryman, or public organ of any kind to represent
or protect their interests. But it is not simply of what are called
their organic or political rights that these tyrants have despoiled
the working classes; they have also robbed them of all _proprietary_
and _occupancy_ rights in the soil, combining for that purpose
with the landlords and the tenant-farmers, to whom the sight of an
agricultural labourer putting a spade or a plough into the land on his
own account, or in any other capacity than that of a wages-slave to
some bull-frog farmer, is the horror of horrors. Just as farmers in the
rural districts will take vacant farms they do not want, and at rents
by which they know they must be losers, merely to keep out labourers
or exclude from occupancy the men they want for slaves, so will these
mining and manufacturing tyrants rent on long leases, or actually
buy up outright, lands in the neighbourhood of the towns where their
factories are, to prevent their toiling slaves from having the chance
of renting them, or any portion of them, however small, lest they
might be able to escape the slavery of the mill through comparative
independence.
We doubt if there be a single recorded instance in the whole history
of civilized society of any king, ruler, statesman, legislator,
prophet, philosopher, orator, or other public man, seeking honestly,
and with probabilities of success, the reign of justice, humanity, and
fraternity for his fellow-countrymen, that was not overwhelmed with
calumny, overpowered by faction, and ultimately either put to death or
forced to fly for his life and bury himself in poverty and obscurity
to escape the malice of the oppressors of his country. But who were
those oppressors? The same everywhere--the same now as ever--the idle
rich, who prey on their industrious fellow-creatures through the
inventions of rents, profits, interest of money, dividends, taxes,
and so forth--all arising out of usurpations of the soil, and making
money grow money. The ancient prophets and apostles suffered for causes
not essentially different from those which destroyed the Gracchi
at Rome and Agis and Cleomenes of Sparta. Romulus and Julius Cæsar
were victims of the same spirit that beheaded Paul and sawed Isaiah
asunder. Heraclides and Hippo of Sicily perished through landlordism
and profitmongering, in no other sense than did John the Baptist under
Herod; St. Stephen, by the Jewish rabble, let loose upon him by the
middle-class Pharisees; and Socrates, by the hypocritical “property”
classes of Athens; nay, the Saviour himself, whose crucifixion was
perpetrated by like influences on behalf of like interests. All
honest reformers, spiritual or temporal, must necessarily be foes to
landlordism and usury, though not to the persons of landlords and
usurers. The latter, however, have ever considered attacks upon their
system to be attacks upon themselves: and, accordingly, they have
crushed or murdered every honest reformer whose influence has hitherto
threatened to supplant their own with the millions. And so it ever will
be--until the millions shall become wise enough, and moral enough, to
be able to dispose summarily of landlordism and usury without further
preaching or teaching. Any one who will take the trouble to read over
a list of the laws proposed by Julius Cæsar, in any book of Roman
antiquities (say Adams’s “Antiquities”), will see by their titles that
they were all essentially popular, and designed to protect the citizens
from the cupidity of land-monopolists, usurers, and dilapidators of
the public revenue. In this we have the true _secret_ of his murder by
the patrician conspirators, headed by Brutus, who, with all the stoic
virtues attributed to him, was a rank aristocrat in grain, and a usurer
to boot; for, according to the testimony of his friend Cicero, he used
to charge interest for his money at the rate of 48 per cent., and
gather it in, too, with the sabre’s edge when necessary.
In a well-ordered state of society there would be neither land-usurpers
nor money-changers; that is, no persons living by letting out land as
_private_ property (since all land would be public property solely,
the rents going to the public for public uses only), and no persons
living upon what Lord Bacon called “the bastard use of money,” that
is, upon profits, usury, dividends, &c. In other words, the whole
people would be sole landlord, every individual of the people having
the same _proprietary_ and the same _occupancy_ rights as every
other individual; and with respect to money, it would be a mere
_representative_ of wealth or value, which would disappear altogether
when the wealth or value it represented disappeared; money would not
grow money, as it does now. In a just and rational state of society,
all the money in the world could not purchase an acre of land, nor
would it enable the owner to add one pound more to his heap, unless he
earned it by producing a pound’s worth of wealth, or doing a pound’s
worth of service for society, such as society would recognise. To speak
downright, plain English, landlords and money-changers have no right
to be in the world at all. Instead of governing society absolutely, as
they do now, they have no right to form a recognised part of society at
all, no more than wolves and crocodiles have to invite themselves to
our Christmas parties that they may devour our children, or than wens,
tumours, ulcers, cancers, running sores, or deformities of any sort
have to constitute themselves parts of our natural bodies, and to claim
to invade, overrun, and subject our whole systems to their pestilential
domination. All the talent and all the sophistry in the world could not
show any legitimate use for landlords or profitmongers _as such_, or
anything they do for society that could not be better done without them
than with them, and at less than a hundredth part of their cost.
CHAPTER XXI.
NATIONAL SYSTEM OF CURRENCY AND EXCHANGE REQUIRED.
Inadequacy and Absurdity of present Medium of Exchange--Necessity
for new National Currency for Home Trade--Example from Iron
Currency of Sparta--Labour Notes of Guernsey--Gold and Silver mere
Commodities--All four Reforms must be combined.
In this chapter we shall elucidate the remaining two propositions of
the League, on the important complementary reforms necessary to be
introduced for the expulsion of human slavery from the face of the
land, and the full emancipation of industry from the trammels of a
false and pernicious system of Currency and Exchange. The sixth and
seventh resolutions read as follows:--
“That the National Currency should be based on real, consumable wealth,
or on the _bona fide_ credit of the State, and not upon the variable
and uncertain amount of scarce metals; because a currency depending on
such a basis, however suitable in past times, or as a measure of value
in present international commerce, has now become, by the increase of
population and wealth, wholly inadequate to perform the functions of
equitably representing and distributing that wealth; thereby rendering
all commodities liable to perpetual fluctuation in price, as those
metals happen to be more or less plentiful in any country; increasing
to an enormous extent the evils inherent in usury, and in the banking
and funding systems (in support of which a legitimate function of the
law--the PROTECTION of property--is distorted into an instrument for
the CREATION of property to a large amount for the benefit of a small
portion of society belonging to what are called vested interests);
because, from its liability to become locally or nationally scarce or
in excess, that equilibrium which should be maintained between the
production and consumption of wealth is destroyed; because, being of
intrinsic value in itself, it fosters a vicious trade in money, and a
ruinous practice of commercial gambling and speculation; and, finally,
because, under the present system of society, it has become confessedly
the ‘root of all evil’ and the main support of that unholy worship of
Mammon which now so extensively prevails, to the supplanting of all
true religion, natural and revealed.
“That in order to facilitate the transfer of property or service, and
the mutual interchange of wealth among the people, to equalise the
demand and supply of commodities, to encourage consumption as well
as production, and to render it as easy to sell as to buy, it is an
important duty of the State to institute in every town and city public
marts or stores for the reception of all kinds of exchangeable goods,
to be valued by disinterested officers appointed for the purpose,
either upon a corn or a labour standard; the depositors to receive
symbolic notes representing the value of their deposits, such notes to
be made legal currency throughout the country, enabling their owners to
draw from the public stores to an equivalent amount, thereby gradually
displacing the present reckless system of competitive trading and
shopkeeping,--a system which, however necessary, or unavoidable in
the past, now produces a monstrous amount of evil, by maintaining a
large class living on the profits made by the mere sale of goods, on
the demoralising principle of buying cheap and selling dear, totally
regardless of the ulterior effects of that policy upon society at large
and the true interests of humanity.”
Add to the gigantic fraud of the land-usurpers the hardly less
monstrous fraud of the money-changers in daring to make two particular
metals (falsely called precious) the sole basis of that currency which
is the life’s blood of society, without which exchanges cannot be
safely effected, and you see capped before you the climax of iniquity.
These precious metals being articles of commerce--mere merchandise,
like iron or cotton, at the same time that they are made the sole basis
of our instruments of exchange, it follows, as a necessary consequence,
that whoever can, by commerce, monopolise these precious metals can, by
so doing, monopolise at the same time the basis of our currency, and so
leave us without any instruments of exchange at all, but what may be
convertible, upon their own fraudulent terms, into those two favoured
metals, which their commercial wealth has enabled them to monopolise.
The false principle at the root of our present system is, that _money_
or the _medium of exchange_ should be itself a thing of intrinsic
value. By this false principle there must be an expenditure of labour
equal to what is required to produce the equivalents it exchanges
for; and besides the absurdity of such misplaced, because wholly
useless, labour, it is manifestly ridiculous to suppose that any one
commodity (more especially an exceedingly scarce one, like gold) can
ever be obtained in sufficient abundance to represent adequately all
other commodities which may be produced _ad libitum_, to any extent
demanded by consumption, and which, without the intervention of gold
at all, might be interchanged from hand to hand, in one single week,
to an amount equal to fifty times the value of all the gold in the
country. It is like supposing a part of a thing to be equal to the
whole. Gold may be a good measure of value, and, as such, is perfectly
unobjectionable; but as an exclusive representative of value, or as the
sole basis of representation (which our present laws have virtually
made it, by constituting it the sole basis of our circulating medium),
it is to our productive and trading population what a single blanket or
a single suit of clothes would be, applied to the use of a whole family
consisting of divers persons of all ages and sizes. The strongest and
most important members of the political family get the best share of
the blanket; the others get the least, and some get none at all. As
well might the garments of a dwarf be expected to fit a giant, as
well might our legislators attempt to restore a full-grown bird to
the egg whence it was hatched, as attempt to tie down the population
and commerce of this great country to the Procrustean bed of Peel’s
monetary system as established by his laws of 1819 and 1844. That
system alone, were there no other causes in operation, _must sooner
or later produce a convulsion in this country, if it be not speedily
unmade by wiser and better men than its authors_. To pretend that the
rights of property exist in a country where such a monetary system
coexists with private ownership of the soil, is a monstrous perversion
of language. It is not the rights of property, but the wrongs of
robbery, that these land and money laws tend to conservate.
The prime necessity of man is to live: he cannot live without corn,
unless in the lowest condition of the savage; but he may not only live,
but live in comfort, without gold or silver. They are not the “staffs
of life,” however in our ignorance we may bow the knee to them as to
graven images. We invest them with supreme power, as superstition
invests its idols. The ancient fabulist who sketched the character of
_Midas_ seems to have written, by anticipation, a satire on modern
credulity. _Midas_ enjoyed the fatal gift of turning all he touched
into gold; his food was transmuted into the precious metal, and
starvation taught him that corn was the true standard of all that was
physically valuable. _Midas_ was the prototype of modern bullionists
and moneymongers. The Bank of England can now pave its floors with
gold; but what does it avail to the people? And yet was it not the
industry of the people that raised the ore from the mines, and brought
it hither by the sale or exchange of their labour, sustained by corn,
the produce of labour in another form? What was the _intrinsic_ value
of gold to _Midas_?
We must not confound the _qualities_ of a mineral with its
_properties_. Undoubtedly, the precious metals possess durability,
sameness, great value in small bulk, portability, resistance to wear
and tear, in a greater degree than any other substances; but these
qualities _per se_ do not constitute them _money_,--they do no more
than recommend them to mercantile nations as the best instruments of
their kind out of which money can be manufactured; it is the act of
the legislature, and that alone, which gives them the character and
force of a _legal tender_, without which they would not form part of
the currency of a nation. The legislature could confer the same power
on any other material, even the most worthless, as Lycurgus did on
iron, deprived of its malleability; and yet Sparta flourished with that
circulating medium; nay, more, Sparta fell into ruin when the precious
metals superseded the worthless iron, which its rulers were compelled
to revive before the Republic was restored to prosperity. Some Eastern
nations have used _cowries_ (small shells) as money; and the Russians,
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, employed the skins of
squirrels and martens. We ourselves use paper, and have used it without
the condition of convertibility. In fact, if gold and silver had never
been deposited in the bowels of the earth, or had been suffered to
remain there, the wealth of nations would not have been deteriorated
one farthing. They are the _signs_ of the thing signified, made such
by Act of Parliament; they will neither feed us, nor clothe us, nor
house us through their _own inherent qualities_. It is we ourselves
who give them all their gigantic power; we make them a legal tender.
Thus credulity set up graven images in the temples of old; and Labour,
having deposited all its earnings on the shrine, bent its knee before
the shining metal, and implored food and raiment from the idol carved
with its own hands. Common sense would have appealed to the _plough_
and the _loom_.
We have said that the precious metals, when made a legal tender by
the legislature, are still no more than signs of the thing signified;
what, then, is the thing signified, whose value they measure, and
in measurement represent? We answer, all those things of value
which, in return for a sufficient inducement, are capable of being
transferred from one person to another. These are expressed by the
terms Property, Capital, Stock. All these possess _intrinsic_ value,
for they represent accumulated labour; and accumulated labour is
the result of a continuous consumption of corn--the standard of all
values--the staff of life, without which neither property, capital,
nor stock could be accumulated, without which, indeed, the race of
civilised man could not be perpetuated. A granary full of corn, or a
warehouse full of cottons and woollens, are examples of _real money_:
they may exist while the proprietors of them have not an ounce of
gold or silver in their coffers; and, in a mercantile sense, they may
be poor, nay, necessitous, with all this wealth in their possession;
because corn, cottons, and woollens are not legal tenders according
to Act of Parliament,--no man is _bound_ to take them in acquittance
of a debt,--they are not a satisfaction to the sheriff. It is idle to
say that such persons may obtain relief through a banker: the very
application shows a state of dependence into which the holder of
real money ought never to be reduced: for he who produces the thing
signified ought not to be under the control or caprice of him who
merely deals in its sign. Moreover, the banker himself may be unable
to give any accommodation: gold and silver may have left the country;
even the Bank of England may be so crippled as to have borrowed
some millions of the precious metals from France: we may be within
twenty-four hours of barter. Is this a picture of the imagination? No;
it is a faithful sketch of what _has_ happened; and why should it not
happen again, the same causes remaining in readiness to act?
What is the lesson that such considerations ought to teach? It is this,
that a nation, rich in real money, may be thrown into bankruptcy,
and perhaps revolution, by adopting a false representative of value,
through the privation of that gold which its legislature recognises
as the sole legal tender. Let the gold go, what remains? Our land,
retaining its fertility; our machinery, capable of continuing its work;
our vessels, as seaworthy as before; our skilled industry, with its
intelligence unimpaired; our unskilled labour, not a whit enfeebled in
its natural productive powers. These are the elements of real money.
In the island of Guernsey it was proposed to build a meat-market, and
the estimates amounted to about £4,000. As all taxes in that island are
raised by a direct assessment on property, the rich protested against
the expenditure, though they desired the proposed accommodation. Here,
then, was a dilemma, since they who willed the end would not will the
means, and without the means the structure could not be erected. Had
such an emergency arisen with us, our Chancellor of the Exchequer would
unhesitatingly have thrown all the burden on the working-classes,
by taxing the commodities they daily consumed; but the rulers of
Guernsey have notions of honour and justice which do not permit them
to relieve the rich at the expense of the poor, and they are too well
instructed in the principles of commerce to crush trade by customs
and excise; these contrivances, as iniquitous as they are bungling,
would be disdained by the legislatures of the Channel Islands. How,
then, did they proceed in building the meat-market? They issued paper
notes, _guaranteed by the States of Guernsey_, this national paper
_not bearing interest_; and the better to show the nature of this
currency, the words “Meat-market Notes” were inscribed upon them, and
they were numbered so that no more could be put into circulation than
represented the sum agreed to be expended on the undertaking. On the
first instalment being due to the contractor, he was paid in these
notes, which he again paid away to his workmen and others, who passed
them to the shopkeepers; the landlords took them for rent, and the
treasurer of the States and the constables received them in discharge
of dues and taxes. At length the building was completed, when butchers
took the stalls at an annual rent, and as that rent was received the
meat-market notes were destroyed. In due course of time this rent
wholly extinguished the notes; and the market remains, to this day,
a permanent source of national revenue, applicable to other national
improvements; and, strange as it may sound, no individual has been
taxed one farthing for its construction! Here, then, is a practical
illustration of the uses of a symbolic currency, and of the mode in
which it may be made to work. Not an ounce of gold was employed; not a
shilling of interest was paid. The States of Guernsey were their own
guarantees for their own paper; they created the substance with the
symbol, realising the allegory of Aladdin’s lamp.
As bullion, the precious metals are mere commodities, and therefore
possess no more intrinsic value than any other commodity, under the
laws of supply and demand; as coin, they are still bits of bullion,
and it is the act of ourselves, or of the legislature who represents
us, that gives them the character and the power of a legal tender. And
yet we have the folly to kneel down to this graven image, and measure
individual happiness and national greatness by its presence or its
departure. Foreign trade, however valuable, must ever be subsidiary to
the home trade. This doctrine none will contest; being admitted, then
it follows that the chief care of the government should be to provide a
currency suited to the home trade, and leave to merchants the care of
adjusting the foreign exchanges, which never, for any long period, can
be adverse or favourable; for what the ebb tide takes away the flood
returns. It is an axiom in political economy that a favourable state of
the exchanges acts as a _bounty on imports_ and as a _duty on exports_,
while the reverse takes place when the exchanges are unfavourable.
The true _par_ forms the centre of these oscillations, and though
peculiar circumstances will rarely allow that _par_ to be _exactly_
hit, yet the tendency to approach it is constant, and the divergence
from it is always evanescent. But the home trade is governed by very
different influences; for, while we pay taxes on all we consume, the
foreigner pays none on what he purchases from us, since he deals with
us according to the measure of value, while we deal with each other
according to price. Gold represents the _natural_ price of commodities,
not the taxed price. Therefore, we ought to have two sorts of currency;
let bullion serve for foreign trade, but let us have government paper,
convertible into gold at the _market price_--not the _Mint price_--as
the medium of internal exchanges. When gold is scarce, let it rise in
value measured in the Bank or National note, and we need not fear a
drain of bullion.
There can be no freedom nor safety, much less prosperity, for any
people till they obtain just laws to regulate landed tenures, credit,
and commercial interchange. With such laws there could not exist
a bad government, nor would oppression in any form be possible.
Without such laws there cannot be a good government, be its form,
its administration, its institutes, or its franchises what they may.
Land, and whatever else the Deity has made for man’s use, must be
expropriated, by commutation, on equitable terms for the general good,
and never again be made private property. Credit must be accessible for
every member of the community, on terms beneficial for the individual,
and just and safe for the public. And all commerce must be gradually,
reduced to equitable exchange on the principle of equal values for
equal values, measured by a labour or corn standard.
Under the systems of Landed Tenures, Currency, and Commerce which at
present prevail in England and in France, it is no exaggeration to say,
that those who live upon _rents_, _profits_, _usury_, _discounts_,
_dividends_, _commissions_, _fees_, etc., absorb from 300 to 350
million pounds sterling worth of the people’s produce in each country
every year, over and above what they give the people any value whatever
for, in money or service of any appreciable kind. In fact, for this
enormous annual drain the useful classes of both countries receive no
consideration whatever. It is sheer robbery, disguised under plausible
names and forms. The Seven Propositions of the National Reform League
present what would seem the only feasible means of ridding the country
of this crushing incubus, consistent with acknowledging legal rights
and vested interests. Unless some such compromise be agreed on between
rich and poor, both in England and in France, a convulsion, sooner or
later, that will engulf both, must be the inevitable consequence. No
country could long sustain two such existing drains by the idle and
baneful classes upon the laborious producers--drains equal to from 300
to 350 millions every year in each country--without at last collapsing
after protracted agonies to preserve national life. The system of
equitable Exchange substituted for the present nefarious one of
profitmongering would save the _souls_ as well as the _bodies_ of both
nations; but _that_ is absolutely impossible without such antecedent
laws on Land and Currency as we have pointed out.
It is the same with Currency. You may, for instance, by repealing
Peel’s Currency Acts of 1819 and 1844, by making an annual issue of
Exchequer paper, equal to the taxation, our legal tender, and by
superadding to this the advantage of a free but sound commercial
currency, in the form of private and joint-stock paper issues
adequately secured,--you may by such a reform as this, and by
making gold a mere merchandise to rise and fall in the market like
all other merchantable commodities according to the law of supply
and demand,--you may by this means make money more plentiful and
come-at-able for trade purposes, and thus relieve society of a large
proportion of its distress,--you may do all this and so far effect
much good for society without any other accompanying reforms; but
the benefits of such a reform _per se_ would, we contend, be only
_temporary_; they could not be permanent, for want of the other
reforms. For a time money would be plentiful, employment abundant,
prices and wages high, and trade what is called prosperous; but this
very prosperity would soon work its own destruction; it would lead to
increased speculation, increased production, increased competition,
increased rents for lands and houses, increase of expenditure and
taxation, and to a terrific increase of what are called vested
interests; it would soon overstock the markets, and glut the warehouses
with unsaleable goods. Then would come a crash--a fearful, ruinous
crash; mills would run short time or stop; the factories and the
workshops would dismiss their hands; multitudes accustomed for some
time to full employment and good living would be cast suddenly adrift
to beg, borrow, or steal; the workhouses would overflow as the mills
and workshops became empty; the shopkeepers would be ruined by forced
sales and the lack of legitimate custom. This would react on the
manufacturers and merchants, and, through them, on the artisans and
labourers. Meanwhile the increased pressure of inflamed rents, taxes,
and vested interests would be found intolerable by a people without
trade and without employment. Down would go prices and wages again,
in despite of the superabundance of money, which would have found its
way to and accumulated in the hands of usurers, fixed-income men,
and non-productive, overgrown capitalists. In short, we should see a
repetition on a larger scale than ever of one of those periodic crises
in the commercial world which, under the present system, we invariably
find to follow close upon the heels of every great development of our
manufacturing and trading prosperity.
It is with Land-reform as with Currency; it would be of comparatively
little use to nationalise landed property with the view of throwing
open the land to labourers and small farmers, unless you at the same
time enabled them, by a sound system of Credit, to procure implements
and stock for their holdings, and to subsist themselves till after they
gathered in the first year’s crop. And even with competent allotments
of Land and Credit to stock them, the occupants’ condition would be
still but a very indifferent one without the aid of an efficient
Currency wherewith to effect easy and equitable exchanges of their
surplus agricultural produce for money or for other produce, as their
wants might require. In short, each element is imperfect in itself as
the means of social reform. But all, from operating conjointly and
harmoniously, go to make social reform perfect. And seeing that it
is just as easy to legislate upon all forms conjointly as upon each
separately, it appears to us a sad waste of time and labour to agitate
for any one without including the rest at the same time, the more
especially as the peculiar virtues of each are only brought into full
play and development by being made to operate in unison with the other
three.
There is not one warrior that ever fought for king, people, or
commonwealth: they have all fought for landlords and profitmongers,
to whom alone they could look for pay and promotion; consequently, no
good to the human race ever accrued from their conquests or victories.
Nor will the millions ever gain by any war not waged by themselves on
their own account, nor by any victories not won by themselves over
their hereditary eternal foes, the landlords and profitmongers--over
the latter especially, the more numerous, deadly, and irreclaimable of
the two. Profitmongers are, indeed, perfectly irreclaimable enemies
of the human race, because as such they can possess no one virtue, no
one quality of head, heart, or conscience, by which they could be won
over to God or humanity. In all the higher professional callings--in
those associated with the arts and sciences--the pursuit of truth, and
the culture of a taste for the Sublime, the Beautiful, the Chaste,
the Sympathetic, form an essential part of their studies and the very
foundation of success. Such is the case with engineers, architects,
sculptors, painters, musicians, historians, mathematicians, physicians
and surgeons, artists of every kind, orators, poets, professors of
science, advocates, &c. The higher qualities of the human mind must be
more or less cultivated by all those descriptions of persons, if they
would excel; and it is in the very nature of their studies to generate
in them some appreciation of truth, taste, sympathy, or refinement.
But the profitmongering devils of society neither need nor care for
such ennobling pursuits. Indeed, the less they are tinctured with
them, the more fitted they are for their nefarious callings. Genius,
taste, culture, are not required for buying in the cheapest markets
and selling in the dearest, for lying, deceiving, adulterating goods,
giving short weight, or cheating our fellow-creatures out of their
substance, either by underpaying them for their work or giving them
less than the value for their money. Still less are the superior moral
qualities required in profitmongering pursuits; indeed, such qualities
are only drawbacks and impediments in the way of success in business.
Hence no clever profitmonger ever thinks of encumbering himself with
them. True, mercantile men have a proverb which has become trite
from use--“_Honesty is the best policy_;” but they use it, like
other good things, only to improve their opportunities of cheating.
A tacit understanding not to cheat one another is often necessary to
their success in cheating the rest of mankind, which, after all, is
the main business of their lives. As this iniquitous class can grow
rich only by grinding and cheating their fellow-creatures, that is,
by robbery and oppression, they are, by the very nature of their
pursuits and practices, irreconcilable enemies of society. It is their
interest that the working-classes should be always at variance amongst
themselves--always a prey to ignorance--given to mutual jealousy and
mistrust--and filled with prejudices and superstitions, by which they
may at all times have their passions inflamed against those who would
unite, enlighten, and emancipate them from bondage. It is the interest
of this class, too, that the mass of the people should never own a
house, nor even rent an acre of land, so that they may be forced to
become wages-slaves to profitmongers, and pay to them every few years
in rent more than the value of their wretched tenements. In short,
profitmongers, as the main supports of all aristocracies and of all
tyrannies in the world, are constrained by the very necessities of
their position and by the very nature of their pursuits, to ignore the
Ten Commandments in practice, and to trample under foot the Gospel of
the Saviour. There cannot, then, be even a semblance of real reform
in society without beginning with clipping the claws and drawing the
teeth of the profitmongers. The human race is, indeed, without hope
of salvation either in this world or the next, until their present
unlimited and irresponsible power of murder and robbery over the mass
of mankind shall be wrenched from profitmongers and landlords.
[Illustration: Decoration]
CHAPTER XXII.
EVILS OF MONOPOLIES AND EXPLOITATIONS OF INDUSTRIES.
False Principle of Law-made Property--Absurdity of Funding
System and Borrowing from Investors--Evil of Public Works in
hands of Profitmongers and Speculators--Rapacity of Predatory
Classes--Efforts of Robespierre to abolish the nefarious
System--his legal Assassination in consequence--All Evils of
Society the work of Landlords and Profitmongers.
Another false principle at the root of our system (mark it well! for
it is a most diabolical one) is, that laws may legitimately _make_
property for one set of people at the expense of another set, without
the consent of the latter, and without giving them an equivalent.
This principle lurks insidiously at the root of scores of different
sorts of property, well known to exist in this country, and to be
wholly and solely the offspring of class-legislation. The dividends
payable on the National Debt are of this class of property; so are
railway dividends; so are the dividends or revenues accruing from
canals, docks, wharfs, fisheries, insurance offices, gas-companies,
water-companies, mining-companies, and private companies of all sorts,
which are chartered by private Acts of Parliament to do for the public
what the public ought to be empowered to do for themselves. There
is no subject upon which more gross and general ignorance prevails
than upon this. Most people imagine that a man may as legitimately
possess property of the kinds here alluded to, as he may possess a
house, a horse, or a gross of Birmingham buttons. No delusion can
be more ridiculous. Parliaments are chosen, and laws are designed,
not to _make_ property for people, but to _protect_ it for those who
have made it for themselves, or obtained it from those that _did_.
If a man builds a house, or buys an ox, it is his rightful property
irrespectively of Acts of Parliament. The law did not give him the
house or the ox; neither has it a right to take it away, unless for
a good and sufficient reason, and then only upon awarding adequate
compensation. The same principle applies to every other legitimate
description of property. All such legitimate descriptions of property
are acquired or made by the owners themselves, and not by the law. The
law only _protects_ such property; it does not _create_ or _make_ it.
The State plan of borrowing money from its subjects on the
perpetual-interest system is replete with folly and extravagance;
unless it be admitted to be an artful scheme for robbing the
wealth-producers, by taxing them with the payment of the interest of
money which they never borrowed. An honest government would quickly set
about paying this debt off, by offering life annuities to a certain
number of stock-holders every year. A real State power ought never
to _borrow_ money; it ought to _make_ it when required to cancel its
obligations, receiving the same money back in the form of taxes, so as
to prevent depreciation. The government practice of borrowing money on
Exchequer bills is also absurdly wasteful; surely the credit of the
State ought to be above that of any of its subjects!
What is true of funded property is equally applicable to the various
other descriptions of property referred to. Railroads should not be
private property; neither should canals, docks, fisheries, mines, the
supplying of gas, water, etc. Works of this sort, designed for the use
of the public, should be constructed or executed only at the public
cost, and the public, and the public only, should have the advantage.
They should not be suffered to fall into the hands of private
speculators, for whom they are only a legal disguise to enable them to
rob the public. A universal-suffrage parliament would never sanction
such a system, unless it were stark mad. Like the funding system, it
only tends to breed idle schemers to prey upon the industrious classes.
All profits upon their outlay received by such private companies,
while they preserve their capital intact, is in reality so much public
plunder handed over to them by the law. Indeed, not unfrequently the
profits for a single year are greater than the outlay itself, whilst
the original shares are proportionately enhanced in value. Thus, shares
in the New River Company, originally worth £100, are now worth £16,000;
in other words, the annual interest is equal to eight times the
original capital. It is superfluous to say such _property_ is the sole
creation of law, which, whenever it deviates from its original function
of _protecting_ property, to that of _creating_ or _making_ it, only
robs one set of people to enrich another--a species of act which laws
are intended to punish, and not to set the example of.
The mercantile middle-classes are everywhere organizing chartered
companies to give themselves perpetual vested interests in the
labour of the working-classes, and mortgage the latter to posterity,
through public loans and State indebtedness. Wars are now got up or
waged every year merely to create fresh batches of “_stocks_” or
“_public securities_” to be thrown, as marketable wares, upon the
stock-exchanges of the world, in order that lazy, worthless, swindling
villains, who have got rich by profitmongering, may be able to convert
definite money-capitals into interminable annuities, or perennial
streams of income wrung from the labouring classes in taxes, for which
the said classes never receive a particle of consideration or value
in any shape, while the “_investors_,” as they are called, not only
retain their money-capitals under the name of stock, but, as a general
rule, can always sell that stock at a premium, or for more than the sum
originally lent or invested; while, till they choose to sell out, they
are privileged to live securely on the taxes.
All slavery in all countries called civilised is the work of
landlords and profitmongers. These two classes, which have no right
to form an integral portion of society at all, have everywhere made
themselves masters of society, and are everywhere in a state of
permanent conspiracy against the rest of the community, allowing no
man to hold his proper rank or position in the world unless he makes
common cause with them in keeping the poor and the labouring class
in ignorance, poverty, and slavery. There is no age nor country in
which they have not shown themselves murderers or assassins the moment
any large section of the public began to see through their system of
self-licensed rapine. They have invariably either murdered the leaders
and teachers of the creed which menaced their usurpations, or else
got up sham wars with neighbouring States (the belligerents being
co-conspirators), under colour of which they procured the intervention
of foreign arms in aid of their own, to crush the new creed and its
abettors before they had time to take root. No one nation on earth has,
up to the present time, been permitted to _learn_, much less establish,
honest laws on Land, Credit, Currency, and Exchange, so as to secure
its permanent freedom and happiness, owing to malignant combinations
of these two classes, which seem to exist for no other purpose than to
keep the human race in eternal chains and misery.
Robespierre is the only legislator and statesman known to history who
sought a radical reformation of society for the millions, through just
fundamental laws on property, with analogous institutions to reach and
purify every department of the State, so that the poorest man in France
might get rich through his own industry if he chose to work, and have
the whole armed power of society to guarantee to him the exclusive
ownership and enjoyment of his earnings and accumulations. But at the
same time he left to the rich all they had, depriving them only of the
power of future robbery. To this end were directed articles 6, 7, 8,
9, 10, 11, and 12 of his “Declaration of Rights:”--“Art. 6. Property
is the right which each citizen has to enjoy and to dispose of, at his
pleasure, the portion of fortune or wealth that is guaranteed to him
by the law. Art. 7. The right of property is limited, like all other
rights, by the obligation to respect the rights of others. Art. 8. It
can prejudice neither the safety, nor the liberty, nor the existence,
nor the property of our fellow-citizens. Art. 9. All traffic that
violates this principle is essentially illicit and immoral. Art. 10.
Society is under obligation to provide subsistence for all its members,
either by procuring employment for them or by ensuring the means of
existence to those who are incapable of labour. Art. 11. The relief
indispensable to those who are in want of necessaries is a debt due by
the possessors of superfluities. It belongs to the law to determine
the manner in which the debt should be discharged. Art. 12. Citizens
whose incomes do not exceed what is necessary to their subsistence
are dispensed from contributing to the public expenditure. The rest
ought to contribute _progressively_, according to the extent of their
fortunes.”
Although Robespierre and his party were ostensibly murdered by the
Convention, it was the landlords and profitmongers of France that
were really and substantially his murderers in chief; for it was in
their interest the Convention murdered him, well knowing beforehand
that these classes wished for his death, in order to eject the
working-classes from the constitution, and re-seize the whole powers
of the State for themselves, as they had done under the Constituent.
The 9th Thermidor was as much a _coup d’état_ as Louis Napoleon’s
2nd December, and both for the same classes--for landlords and
profitmongers, who never yet submitted to any laws not made exclusively
by themselves or for themselves, at the cost of slavery to the masses.
Real liberty will never exist in the world until these two murderous
classes are made to disappear from society under the operation of just
laws on Land, Credit, Currency, and Exchange. It is to such laws that
Robespierre points in articles 6, 7, 8, and 9 of his “Declaration of
Rights;” and it is to their operation upon society he points in that
magnificent passage here quoted from his report, on _Pluviose, An II._,
the parallel of which was never before uttered by statesman:--“We
desire an order of things in which all the mean and cruel passions
shall be chained down--all the beneficent and generous passions
awakened by the laws; in which ambition shall consist in the desire
of meriting glory, and serving our country; in which distinctions
shall spring but from equality itself; in which the citizen shall
be subject to the magistrate, the magistrate to the people, and the
people to justice; in which the country shall ensure the prosperity
of every individual, and in which each individual shall enjoy with
pride the prosperity and glory of his country; in which every soul
shall be aggrandised by the continual intercommunication of republican
sentiments, and by the wish to merit the esteem of a great people; in
which the arts shall flourish as the decorations of the liberty that
ennobles them; and in which commerce will be a source of public riches,
and not of monstrous opulence to a few great houses only. We desire to
substitute in our country morality for egotism, probity for honour,
principles for usages, duties for conventionalities, the empire of
reason for the tyranny of fashion, contempt of vice for contempt of
misfortune, manly pride for insolence, greatness of soul for vanity,
love of glory for love of money, honesty for respectability, good
people for good society, merit for intrigue, genius for wit, truth
for display, the charms of happiness for the _ennui_ of pleasure, the
greatness of man for the littleness of the great; a people magnanimous,
powerful, and happy, for a people amiable, frivolous, and miserable; in
a word, we desire to substitute all the virtues and all the miracles
of the Republic for all the vices and all the ridiculous fopperies of
the Monarchy. We desire, in short, to fulfil the vows of nature, to
accomplish the destinies of humanity, to absolve Providence from the
long reign of crime and tyranny; that France, heretofore illustrious
amongst enslaved countries, may, by eclipsing all the free States that
ever existed, become a model for nations, the terror of oppressors, the
consolation of the oppressed, the ornament of the world; and that, in
sealing our work with our blood, we may at least witness the breaking
dawn of universal felicity.” It was these articles and his speeches
at the Jacobin club, showing Robespierre’s determination, if he got
the power, to put _property_ on a proper basis, that determined the
landlords and profitmongers of France to murder him the moment the
state of parties and divisions of the people gave them the chance of
doing so with safety to themselves.
It is idle to attribute the evils of society to any other source but
the ascendancy of these two accursed classes; for no other component
parts of society have any interest in oppressing mankind or in
debasing humanity. Examine the other constituents of society, and
you find them all to be naturally friends and benefactors of their
fellow-creatures, and their callings to be essential to the public
welfare. All truly Christian ministers give full value for what they
get; so do physicians and surgeons; so do engineers, architects,
builders, draughtsmen, designers, artists of every kind, sculptors,
miniature and portrait painters, musicians, composers, mechanics, and
artisans of every description, whether engaged on works of usefulness
or ornament, professors and teachers of science and _belles lettres_,
more especially the higher class of scientific men, to whom we owe
inventions and discoveries, and the higher class of philosophers,
poets, historians, and critics, to whom we owe taste, refinement,
and a thousand sources of quiet enjoyment. In short, every man that
contributes, either by the labour of his brain or of his hands, to
the wealth and enjoyments of society is a valuable member of it, and
cannot possibly have an interest in keeping his fellow-creatures in
ignorance and bondage. In virtue of their callings, they, and all
other persons employed in art and education, as in production and
distribution, are naturally interested in just and good government,
and in seeing equal rights and equal laws exist for all. But not so
landlords and profitmongers: their class-interests are diametrically
opposed to the well-being, independence, and happiness of society, of
which they have not a right even to form an integral part. We cannot do
without Christian pastors, physicians, engineers, architects, builders,
professors, artists, and able men devoted to the sciences, without
relapsing into barbarism and savagery. But where is the earthly use of
a landlord, as a landlord; of a profitmonger, as a profitmonger? All
the ingenuity in the world could not point out any legitimate use for
these classes. What functions do they perform that could not be better
performed without them than with them, and at less than a hundredth
part of the cost? What business have they in society at all? They have
no lawful business whatever. They are no more a necessary part of the
body politic than are wens, tumours, or ulcers necessary parts of
the natural human body. Their presence in it is only a proof of the
diseased state of the body politic; just as the presence of the others
attests an impure state of the blood or functional disorganization.
They have no more legitimate right to obtrude themselves on society
than a wolf or a tiger has to join and make one of a Christmas party.
They exist only for the impoverishment, corruption, enslavement,
and destruction of the human race. They are the sole authors of all
the calamities known to social existence; and the history of our
race is little else than a harrowing record of their wars, plots,
conspiracies, invasions, massacres, famines, conflagrations, and
atrocities of every sort, to blot the image of God out of man, in order
to turn him into a beast of burden or a beast of prey for their own
use. It is only by just laws on Property that the human race can be
delivered from these two hellish classes; and all reform is a farce
which points not to that paramount object.
[Illustration: FINIS.]
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