Victoria C. Woodhull leaves this country shortly for Europe, and has prepared a lecture, which will be her farewell utterance. Those who heard Mrs. Woodhull recently at Paine Hall bear unanimous testimony to the humanitarian character of her address; she is the advocate of peculiar, because novel and original, views. A Times reporter has obtained a full report of her farewell address, and it is so full of instruction, and presents new social ideas in so fresh and thoroughly effective a manner, that no apology is needed for submitting it, in extenso, to the public. It is entitled “The Review of a Century; or, The Fruit of Five Thousand Years,” and is as follows:—
A hundred years ago, in an upper room in Philadelphia, five men were gathered—men of noble bearing, of brilliant intellects, of undoubted character. Their faces wore a look of stern determination, as if the theme of their consideration was of matters of grave import; was of matters destined to be the beginning of the most important era that had ever dawned upon the earth. A century and eighty years before, a single ship-load of men, women and children, had landed on this virgin soil at Jamestown in Virginia; and a few years later, another one at Plymouth-Rock in Massachusetts. To these, additions had been made until the thirteen States then numbered fully three million souls, upon whom “the king” had imposed onerous taxation, and over whom he had placed obnoxious rulers. The tea had been destroyed in Boston harbour, and the people were wrought up to the intensest pitch by their oppressions. They had come from their native lands to escape from tyranny, and were not disposed to brook it here. In this wild, free land, they had become pregnant of liberty, and were even then struggling in the throes of travail. These five men had met to find a way in which the delivery might be safely made, so that both the mother and the child should live to bless the world.
Washington, Adams, Franklin, Rush, Paine—every one of them immortal names—struggled with the task with which God had entrusted them. They felt the great responsibility, and their faces, as they looked into each other’s eyes, spoke their anxiety. Each knew that every other as well as self had something in his heart that he dared not utter. They looked inquiringly again and again for some yielding in some face. But they hesitated all. And well they might; for it was not the fate of three million people merely that was in their hands, but the future destinies of the world. One of these men had said but little; but the set features of his face showed a stern resolve; showed that he was waiting for the proper time in which to speak. He knew that it would fall to him to break the way; to say the words which each one felt but dared not speak; and speak at last he did; and they were the words of mighty import that came forth from him; words that were to deliver the people who had come to their full time—a birth that should herald a new race of people to the world; and they came forth from him as if all his powers were concentrated in the effort; as if that effort were the last struggle of the mother to bring forth her child; and the “four” caught up the child and became god-father to it, and they bore it to the people. The people recognised it as their own; took it to their hearts, and at once adopted it. Its name was—Revolution—Independence; and the words rang up and down the wave-washed shores, and fired the people with their inspiration—revolution as the means, independence as the end.
One hundred years have come and gone since that eventful day, great with the future’s destinies. Its hundredth anniversary has passed, and forty million people have commemorated the work of those five men, of those three million people:—commemorated it by reaffirming the truths that then were uttered for the first time in the new world; commemorated them by brilliant flights of oratory, by firing cannons and profuse displays of “stars and stripes” harmoniously blended with the flags of almost every other nation of the globe, whose sons and daughters were participating in the glory of the day; with feasting, fireworks; with general rejoicing everywhere. As if with a universal assent, these swarming millions re-echoed with a will the words that that stern man had uttered on that never-to-be-forgotten day a hundred years ago.
But those three million people have expanded into forty-four million; and the thirteen States to thirty-eight, besides ten territories and one district. The country now, excepting the stretch from the west shore of Lake Superior, and from the south-west point of Texas westward to the ocean, has available for commercial purposes, a continuous water-front of not less than fifteen thousand miles, equal to that of the whole of Europe. It is five thousand miles from east to west, and four thousand from north to south. It contains vast ranges of mountains, the longest river in the world, and the most fertile plains. Its climate is so varied and extensive that it produces almost everything that is grown anywhere in the world—the fruits of the tropics as well as of the latitudes north and south; and it will be the granary from which the world must ultimately draw its bread. It has all the different forms of mineral wealth—gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, besides coal, oil and salt. No other country on the globe can begin to compare with it in the variety of its products; it combines the utility of them all. It is as if all others had contributed their choicest seeds, as they have their peoples, to fill up the variety with which this should be blessed. In whatever sense it may be regarded, it is the great country of the world. No other can for a moment enter into comparison with it save in some single sense—while this combines the greatnesses of them all. Blessed with such a country—with a land such as God promised to His chosen people—“a land flowing with milk and honey,” how ought the people to have returned their gratitude to Him Who gave it? Or rather, how have they done so?
Having already entered upon a second century, there can be no more appropriate a time in which to see what use there has been made of the “ten talents” with which the Great Husbandman has entrusted us; to see how we have shown our love for Him by that which we have given to our brethren; to see whether from His bounteous gifts to all, a part has stolen the inheritance from others, and when His servants have been sent whether they have been beaten away empty; whether some, having an abundance, have “shut up their bowels of compassion” though seeing their brothers had need; whether they have “fought the good fight,” whether they have “kept the faith” and whether they are entitled to the crown which St. Paul bespoke for them that love God.
In other words, what is the condition politically, industrially, socially, religiously? Is it such as will make us rejoice in its review? Are our centennial fruits such as He would pronounce good, so that we may rest upon the seventh day from all our labours?
In the first place, what have we done politically? It is to government that people largely owe their prosperity or adversity—a good government meaning continuous prosperity; a bad one continuous adversity, or else alternate seasons of each, in which the latter consume the fruits of the former; in which the people see-saw, up and down each decade; in which, like the Israelites, the people journey in the wilderness “forty years” in search of the promised land, to which God would bring them suddenly, if they would keep all His commandments, and neither worship nor sacrifice to the “Golden Calf.”
The last estimates are, that there are forty-four million people now in the United States. It is by no means, however, to be inferred that these are all citizens who constitute the “sovereignty;” from whom the Government has its source, and upon whom it sheds its benignant rays. For, although the constitution declares that “all persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens;” and although there are unreversed decisions of the Supreme Court, which declare that every person in the country “constitutes a part of the political sovereignty,” and that every such person is entitled to every right, civil and political, enjoyed by anyone in the State,—notwithstanding all this authority and law upon the subject, only a minority of the 44,000,000 are really citizens. For, in the Dred Scott decision, the law of citizenship was declared to be this: “To be a citizen is to have the actual possession and enjoyment, or the perfect right to the acquisition and enjoyment, of an entire equality of privileges, civil and political.” Dred Scott did not possess or enjoy these rights; therefore the court held that he was not a citizen. As this is the law of citizenship now, we must conclude that only those are citizens who have “the actual possession and enjoyment, or the perfect right of acquisition and enjoyment, of an entire equality of privileges, civil and political,” the Constitution to the contrary notwithstanding. The Constitution in the hands of “the few” is a mere toy with the plain language of which they play, making it to mean anything or nothing as it suits them now and then. Later we shall see that this was what it was intended to be; that it was a fraud, a cheat, from the beginning, into which neither the letter nor spirit of the Declaration of Independence ever entered.
But who are citizens? Why, those who possess and enjoy, or who have the right to acquire and enjoy, an equality of political and civil privileges. Only certain classes of men possess these rights. These certain classes having possessed themselves of the machinery of the Government, tread upon the Constitution and spit upon the declarations of the Supreme Court. They have stolen the birthright of the “many,” and, putting their thumbs to their noses, say “Help yourselves if you can.” The despoiled people are not able to help themselves now, but let these usurpers be warned that the judgments of God are upon this nation, and that He will come to help those who cannot help themselves against such tyranny; come to deliver His people out of the hands of the “Egyptians,” who have imposed tasks upon them grievous to be borne; come to send them some “Moses,” who shall cause “Pharaoh” to let the people go, and who shall bring down from “Sinai’s Mount” a new and better code of laws.
But who are not citizens, who neither possess or enjoy, nor have the right to acquire or enjoy, an equality of privileges, civil and political? There are three classes of these people: Indians, Chinese, and women, and these constitute by a million more than one-half of all the people. The political lords have selected nice company for the women to keep politically, and yet they put on such monstrous airs if they are told that in this matter they show no respect for their mothers, wives and daughters. Here is a subject for some Raphael, who should have reduced it to canvas and exhibited it at the Centennial, in honour of the mothers and daughters of the land. Upon the one hand there should have been grouped the women of the country, flanked upon the right and left by Indians and Chinese, and the subject named—Political Slaves; while upon the other the citizens should have been grouped, and labelled Political Sovereigns.
The principles under the inspiration of which this government had its birth, are set forth in the Declaration of Independence. They were when realized by the people, when incorporated into the organic law, to give them independence; and they were thought to be of so much importance that the people fought a long and bloody war to acquire a right to their possession and enjoyment. Who can think of Bunker Hill, of Brandy-wine, of Princeton, of Valley Forge, of Yorktown, think of those long eight years of alternate hope and despair, and not feel that the price paid for independence was too great to have it limited to a mere minority of the people, when it was purchased for the whole; was too great a price to pay for principles that were to be restricted to fewer than half of the descendants of those who paid it. Our fathers would have never fought for the liberty to have a King or an aristocratic ruler of their own. They endured the hardships and privations of that war for independence for themselves and their posterity. Nothing less than this was the inspiration of those years of suffering, nothing less than this could have given them inspiration to gain their independence.
But this was scarcely more than won, before those from whom this inspiration came were doomed to see their work robbed of half its value. At the convention that met to frame a government, there were men whose minds were too narrow to grasp the significance of the truths which had been the inspiration of the people; and which had sustained them through the war. They were men bred and born in English customs. They were not willing to make a complete departure from the established legal forms of the mother country, and make the Declaration, the inspiration of the Constitution, as it had been of the revolution. That inspiration came from these truths, and they were declared to be self-evident, “that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” No trace of any single one of these truths is to be found in the Constitution as then adopted; nor in any of the Amendments that have since been added, save in Sec. I., Art. XIV., which the self-constituted citizens have rendered nugatory.
Our constitution and laws have nothing specifically American about them. They are copies from the English, modified in some particulars, which have been the inducement “to gather the spoils while we may.” The President is an English king under another name, selected by the “caucus,” the worst element in politics, and elected by the people, because, under the vicious methods that are in vogue they have no way to vote save for one of the two at whom ten thousand papers vie with each other in throwing mud during the campaign. Many who have come to know how Presidents are made have abandoned the polls in disgust. The Senate is a badly abridged edition of the House of Lords, while the House of Representatives is the same of the House of Commons. In the law of primogeniture only do our laws differ materially from those of England, this good feature having been borrowed from another source. Nor have we any political literature save the Declaration of Independence which has a distinct national character about it that is purely American, and it is this that we celebrate year after year; it is this and this only that calls out the patriotism of the people.
As far as the Constitution is concerned it is Dead Sea fruit. It is an old and musty English sermon to which we have prefixed a new and vital text, the text and sermon having no common ground or meaning. The condition of the people and the country could scarcely have been worse had we had Kings and Parliaments, instead of Presidents and Congresses. A tree, let it be called by whatever name, is known by the fruit it bears. If we are to judge the political tree in this country in this way, shall we not be forced to say that we have gathered thorns from grapes and thistles from figs? In purity in the administration of justice, our Government can stand no comparison with that of England. Money here is king, and judge and jury also. Then must there not be something radically wrong somewhere, and what can this be, except the engrafting of a new political idea into an old political system? This is what is the matter, and cringe as we may, there can never be a change greatly for the better until the institutions of the country are remodelled by the inspiration of that which led to their establishment.
Had there been any really great men among our statesmen they would have discovered the cause of the alternate “ups and downs” in the prosperity of the country, and, at least, have attempted some remedy. But we may look in vain through the whole list of those who have, one after another, prominently occupied public attention, for a great mind in the sense of instituting reforms in government; in replacing vicious by beneficent legislation. Washington, who will always be deservedly revered, was in no sense a great man save in goodness. As a general or statesman he has been excelled by dozens since his time, not one of whom has left anything behind him that will make his name immortal. To be immortal in history requires that there shall be some basis for it living in the Government, or in the industrial habits of the people, or in their religious faiths or rites. Buddha in India, Confucius in China, Zoroaster in Persia, Mahomet among Mahomedans, and Jesus amongst Christians, have immortality. But the religious element, per se, never would have civilized the world. Indeed the nations most under the influence of religious sentiments have done the least to spread civilization into unknown countries. It is the warlike and intellectual, in contradistinction to the religious and æsthetic, nations to whom we owe the almost world-wide enlightenment of the present, while the latter have remained shut up within themselves, and are nothing but what their religion makes them. The contrast between Egypt and India or China is, in this respect, most striking. Egypt, becoming great at home, pushed out into the surrounding world. With its immense armies under Sesostris and its no less potent power emanating from the wise men who made the Alexandrian library a possibility, it left its impress so fixed upon the world that, even to this day, there are many things in the habits and customs of the nations, especially in their literature and philosophies, that are Egyptian. It was an Egyptian colony which laid the foundation in Greece at Athens for the splendid civilization that was there developed; for the glory, the military renown and the arts and sciences that afterwards made Greece at once the admiration and wonder of the world.
The Egyptians were also a maritime people who made voyages for discovery. It was under the instructions of one of its kings—Nechos—that some skilful Phœnician sailors first sailed round the coast of Africa. Six hundred years B.C. an attempt was also made to do what the French engineer Lesseps has since done—to cut a canal across the Isthmus of Suez. I mention these facts to show how all the really great things that have done the world most good have had their origin in some one great mind, who still lives in the immortality of his creations, having impressed himself inexpungibly upon the descent of the race and on civilization; and by this showing to call attention to the further fact that the number of the great who live in the present is extremely small, and finally to show that this country has not produced even one such mind outside the purely intellectual plane. The names of Fulton and Field will live until steam, as a motor power, shall be superseded by some more potent agent, and until the telegraphic wires shall be no longer required to transmit the thoughts of one to another at the antipodes of the earth; but in government the list is blank.
Our basis must, however, be made still broader. Greece was founded upon principles brought from Egypt; but in that small country a new era was born. Egyptian achievements were the culmination of an era of civilization of which Greece was fruit, and became the seed for the next. Not only did Greece dim the splendour of Egyptian warfare, but she also surpassed her in intellectual attainment. The names of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Archimedes, Xenophon, will live in philosophy as long as there is a literature; while Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, Platea and Mycale will stand for ever unapproachable in military and naval glory, conclusive evidence of the power of order and organization over mere numbers and brute force.
There was, however, another power behind this one of order which made it invulnerable, irresistible. Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, testified of this power in these words: “The eloquence of Demosthenes did me more harm than all the armies and fleets of the Athenians. His harangues are like machines of war, and batteries raised at a long distance, by which all my projects and enterprises are ruined. Had I been present and heard that vehement orator declaim, I should have been the first to conclude that it was necessary to declare war against me. Nor could I reach him with gold, for in this respect, by which I had gained so many cities, I found him invulnerable.” Antipater also said of the same power: “I value not the galleys nor armies of the Athenians. Demosthenes alone I fear. Without him the Athenians are no better than the meanest Greeks. It is he who rouses them from their lethargy and puts arms into their hands almost against their wills. Incessantly representing the battles of Marathon and Salamis, he transforms them into new men. Nothing escapes his penetrating eye, nor his consummate prudence. He foresees all our designs; he countermines all our projects and disconcerts us in everything. Did the Athenians confide in him and follow his advice we should be irredeemably undone.”
’Tis true that this was in the days of the declining Grecian glory; but it is none the less true that it was the same power in others previously that lifted a whole people to sublime achievements and into grand and noble character. It was here, also, that patriotism had birth; here that men devoted their lives to their country for the country’s sake rather than for private gain or glory. In this respect the character of Grecian generals and statesmen has never been approached by any other nation. It was this character that gave the Greeks as a nation, and to the world as an example, the first code of laws; gave a Constitution as a conservatory of the people’s rights, and made a Lycurgus possible, the principles of whose Spartan code are only now beginning to be appreciated. It is to this code that we must look as the prime source of political economy, and it has been the inspiration of all the modifications of laws ever made in the interests of the people. In this respect, Lycurgus will be known in the future ages as the Spartan law-giver of the world.
Roman history is a second edition of Grecian, enlarged in its sphere of operations, and in its influence over the world. Rome, however, would never have been possible, had Greece not first been a fact. But Rome was vitiated in the character of her public men, as compared with those of Greece, in about the same ratio that she was greater in other respects. Greece was the admiration of the world, but Rome was its astonishment. All that she was, sank with her as she went down into the dark ages. The best of what made Greece, still lives in the people of the world. Greece was the garden of modern civilization and will remain its inspiration until three elements of character—the religious, the intellectual and the social—shall join their powers to construct the future government of the world.
Charlemagne was the basis of the first great national character that evolved after the dark ages, and Otho the Great laid the foundation for the present dominance of Bismarck and Von Moltke in Central Europe. Cromwell, more than any other, is the inspiration of English character, modified by its respect for the political rights of women by the influence of Queen Elizabeth, under whom England reached the acme of its power and glory. But in French history is to be found the most distinct evidence of a communication to a whole people of the character of a single individual that there is to be found anywhere. The French character, both as a nation and as an individual, may be summed up in one word—Bonaparte. With the advent of this giant mind came a crisis over all modern Europe. Under his influence not only did the national character of the French people change, but the individual character also underwent many modifications. Nor was this confined to France, for this man’s genius was felt in every capital in the world. He conquered the nations and compelled them to change their laws, while to France he gave an entire new code, to which, more than to anything else, France owes her position among nations. It was the result of these laws that gave to France the capacity to rise from the disaster inflicted upon her by Prussia. Her immense loans came in small sums from the peasantry, and when paid will remain in France, which will not suffer the double impoverishment that most nations suffer from a public debt. The possibility of this was due to the far-reaching statesmanship of Napoleon Bonaparte, when he changed the laws regarding the inheritance of property, taking the estate from the deceased and dividing it equally among all the children—the greatest innovation that had ever been made upon the old feudal system, and together with other reforms, fixing France in a position to become more prosperous internally than any other European nation. Bonaparte also broke down the barriers that divided the nations and races of Europe, and opened up the way for closer commercial and literary relations, and performed, during the twenty years that he was in France, a greater service for the advancement of civilization than was ever performed by any other person who ever lived. In a sense, and in a good sense, too, it may be said that he dictated to the world, because the changes that he instituted and compelled have produced a modifying influence over the whole world. Taken as a whole, Bonaparte was the greatest man who ever lived. Certainly he equalled the greatest generals, and his campaigns, with those of Hannibal and Scipio-Africanus, will be the textbooks for military students as long as the art of war remains a study; while as a statesman he stands at the head of the greatest. He was Lycurgus, Alexander, Hannibal, Talleyrand, Bismarck combined. He represented, if he did not excel, the greatest of all ages, save Confucius and Jesus, save Demosthenes and Cicero. He never taught morality, per se, but he believed that a well-governed and industrially-thrifty people would necessarily be also moral, and he never made a speech except to point out the enemy to his soldiers. The treachery of a single man—Grouchy—who permitted Blucher to hurl the Prussian army unopposed upon his wearied troops after they had defeated Wellington at Waterloo, changed the whole future destiny of Europe, and prevented Bonaparte from becoming the beneficent law-giver of the world as he had been of France. For behind all his ambition in which only he is known to the world, and, therefore, not known at all, he had an unalterably fixed purpose to raise the common people of Europe to their proper position; but this he could do only by first conquering the rulers who stood in his way.
It is, therefore, to Lycurgus and to Bonaparte, more than to any others, to whom we must look as the master-minds in government; as those who instituted sweeping changes in the political institutions of the world, and in this sense they are the greatest of all the great who live in profane history. Many slight reforms have been effected; but they alone conceived and reduced to a system the changes that revolutionized and replaced the old beneficently to the people.
Bonaparte himself recognized that his greatness consisted in this, for, when he asked his friends to which of his achievements he would owe his life in history, and they replied, naming some campaign or battle, he corrected them and said; “I shall go down in history with my Code Napoleon in my hands.” So it was not Marengo, not Wagram, not Austerlitz, not Dresden, not any nor all his great victories to which he looked as his best achievement; but it was the code of laws by which he made France the happiest country in Europe. It is not to be wondered at that his name lives in the hearts of the French and moves them as no other name ever moved a people.
Great as Bismarck may be, he is not great in the true sense of greatness, for he is building up a power that the next fifty years will have to overthrow. True greatness works in the direction of and not against progress, and its works live. Compared with him, Disraeli may after all, should his intentions toward India have a humanitarian tendency, turn out to be the greater man.
In this view of greatness, to whom shall we look among our statesmen for any of its evidences? Beyond the legislation that the abolition of slavery forced upon us, the homestead act and one recently introduced by Gen. Banks, enlarging its scope in the interests of the settler, and some concessions to the people, like the eight hour law, we may search the legislation of the country through in vain for any evidence of humanitarian tendencies in our legislators. On the contrary, the inspiration of the privileged classes, the power and use of wealth will be found everywhere; ’tis true that we have a Republican Government in name and form, but it is also true that money rules, that it elects the officers and controls the legislation. The people who are outside of the privileged classes, outside of the offices and the press, are powerless to help themselves. The machinery of the government is in the hands of those who want things to continue as they are, while the few in power who are devoted to the public welfare, beat the air in vain attempts to strike either the causes of, or the remedy for existing evils.
But they may be summed up in a few words. The causes lie in the fruitless attempt to run a Republican Government upon an aristocratic code of laws, and the remedy is to remodel the code by the principles of the declaration, which should be made the inspiration of every provision, as well as the key to its construction. I might enumerate the special evils that have grown out of the error made in the Constitution—the vicious legislation for which this error laid the foundation—that the rule of the majority is not a Republican idea; that “the majority” is another name for the despot; that minorities are entitled to, and can be represented; I might show that the United States is, after all, nothing but a confederation of equal and antagonistic powers, and not a Federal Union; that Washington is more a place in which representatives from the several States assemble to quarrel over the spoils of office and to lay the ropes for the succession, than it is the capital of a free and mighty people; that there is such a contrariety of laws in the several States upon any given subject, that it puzzles a Philadelphia lawyer to tell whether a given act is a crime, a misdemeanour, or whether actionable at all in the different States; if people be married in one State, whether they are so legally in any other, or if divorced the same. I might show that taxation is unequal and oppressive, and the revenue unjust; and if there were need of it, which there is not, that official patronage is a polite name for public plunder, and that the public service is a vast system of organized corruption. Had the original error not been made, had the fountain been kept pure, none of these baneful things could have been engrafted into the system. But they have now obtained a root so deep that they can never be exterminated save by uprooting the system. They are the Canada thistles in the fertile meadow, that spread themselves until they absorb the whole vitality of the soil and thrust out the useful harvest. These thistles have spread and seeded in the government until they have thrust out every honest servant of the people, and until one who has any care for his reputation cannot afford to meddle with the government.
How can such a state of things be remedied save by a revolution? The people may listen to the “outs” who pretend to tell them that it may; but should they come to the “ins” they would follow in the footsteps of their predecessors. The machine is running down hill too fast to be now stopped; the tide of power has set too strongly toward corruption to be reversed; the political body is too thoroughly impregnated with the poison to make its purging possible by any change of medicine. The disease is incurable because it is in the system more than in the individual men who run it. It has had its youth, its manhood, and is now in its old and decaying age. No power can save it; and those who think they can, who think that they can patch it up with tonics for a time, are only preparing for a worse ruin when the crash shall come.
But the people would not care so much about the government; they would be willing to let the politicians run it as they please, and enjoy its spoils as they have for a century; they would even endure, as they have, uncomplainingly, any extortion that their earnings would permit without reducing them to the starvation point; but when in addition to the absorption of all their earnings to pay the debts of official extravagance and vicious legislation it is threatened to foreclose the mortgages on the industries and sell them out, and thus take away their means of livelihood, they have a right, indeed it is their duty, to object, and they are beginning to do it in real earnest.
I do not say this in the interest of the workmen, but speak in appeal to the non-productive classes, those who live without labour, to show them that through their servants, the Congress and the administrators of the laws, they are repeating the folly of the Southern slave-holders, who could not have found a more effectual way to rid themselves of slavery than that which they adopted. Looking upon it now, it seems that they could not have been satisfied with the progress of abolitionism in the North, under the lead of Garrison, Phillips and Douglass, and therefore they stirred up the war at home to precipitate the end, and succeeded admirably. The heartiness with which the Southern members of the St. Louis Convention recently accepted “the results” is evidence that this is a proper view to take of it. It is only a wonder that, going so far as they did, they did not fall into the arms of the Cincinnati Convention and thank its party for the services rendered them. But this aside. Had they been content to keep the power they had, they might have retained their slaves for years to come; but they wanted more! more! more! Nothing less than the whole country as slave territory would satisfy their morbidness upon the subject. Perhaps they did not know what they were doing; but they must have been blind indeed if there were not among them one sagacious mind who understood it.
But when, through promises from northern doughfaces, they had brought on the war, then those who had been gradually getting rich, quietly extending their mortgages, through railroad and other speculative schemes and exorbitant rates of interest, saw an opportunity to extend, at a single effort, their grasp over the whole property of the country, and reduce the masses to servitude for all time to come, as they are reduced in England. The classes to whom I speak knew that the government would have to have money; and that it would have to come to them to get it; and they also knew that the longer the war continued the more money would be required. So, while the copper-headed bankers of the North gave the rebels all the encouragement they dared, their English brethren furnished them with arms and ammunition, and thus the war was prolonged and made a costly one. The plan was well conceived and nicely executed; the productive classes were saddled with a debt of $3,000,000,000, for which the government received little more than half that sum.
But they who were engaged in this scheme over-reached themselves as the South had done before them. They over-estimated the vitality and endurance of the industries, already carrying a debt of $4,000,000,000 in railroad, State, county and municipal bonds, besides paying interest on individual loans to a still larger amount. They could not bear the added burden. With gold at par with which the interest was paid on this enormous debt before the war, they managed to get along; but when the war had raised the price of gold and had added $3,000,000,000 to the debt, it was more than they could stand. On this $11,000,000,000 debt, with the interest on some parts of it at 8, 9, 10 and even 12 and 15 per cent. per annum, and allowing for the large discounts that were frequently extorted, and adding to this the premiums paid for gold and including the dividends on stocks, the industries of the country were, and still are, taxed $1,300,000,000 every year to pay interest! Think of it, you who take this interest! Think of the toiling millions who, beneath the broiling sun, or in the murky mines, or dismal shops, or in the frozen forests, give up their lives to toil! Think of it! Taxed $1,300,000,000 annually for interest, part of which goes to enrich European bankers, and the remainder to those who, in luxurious ease, idle their lives away at home. Think of it, I repeat again, and then wonder, if you can, that industry is prostrate beneath the heel of capital! Say, if you can, whether the wonder is not rather, that there is a wheel in motion in the country, or that there is a plough moving in the soil.
The total products amount to but $5,000,000,000 annually. Out of this, there is first to come the subsistence of the 44,000,000 population. On an average it cannot be said that it costs less than $100 a year per capita to support this mass. Some people spend more than that for cigars in a single month, and others double for wines and other liquors, to say nothing about establishments costing thousands upon thousands to maintain; and yet there are so many who live upon less than $100 a year, that the average cost of subsistence may be placed at that sum. This would consume $4,400,000,000 of the $5,000,000,000 products, and leave but $600,000,000 with which to pay the $1,300,000,000 interest. Hence it is plainly to be seen that the productive interests of the country are running into debt to the capitalists at the rate of $700,000,000 every year; that their mortgages on the property of the country are increasing yearly by that amount. This is a frightful showing, but it is a true one; it is one that the labouring classes are beginning to understand; it is one that you who are oppressing them should also understand, for, by ignoring it, you are challenging swift destruction. The only question is, how long can these things go on, with the wealth of the country increasing at the rate of two and a half per cent. per annum; it is a simple thing to calculate how long it will require for money, increasing at the rate of 6, 8, 10, and even 15 and 20 per cent. per annum, to consume the wealth.
We come now in logical order to the grand and fundamental error that has been made which lies at the back of all political fallacies, and to which are to be primarily attributed all industrial and financial ills from which we suffer, both as a nation and as individuals, since, let the Government be as good as it may, with this error lying between it and the industries, it were impossible that evil should not come upon the people. Hence, let the Government and the public service be as bad as they may; let the people suffer from bad legislation as much as they have; the fault is, after all, more to be charged against the system than against the individuals who, for the time, are its administrators. No matter how skilful the engineer may be, nor how watchful the fireman; if the engine itself be faulty in construction, it will explode; or if the engine be perfect in itself, but connected with other machinery that is not fitted to run at the same speed as the engine, then the machinery will fly in pieces. The same is true of the relations between the Government—the political organisations of the people—and the wealth producers—the industrial organisation of the people, as we shall see, for the Government is a machine constructed after the highest known principles of political mechanism, while intimately connected with it is the industrial organisation, running upon the very lowest—the rudimental—industrial mechanism. Consequently, when the political machinery runs at a high rate of speed, requiring an extra amount of fuel and water, the industrial machinery, in its efforts to supply this demand, and urged on by its connection to keep pace with the rapid motion, flies in pieces; becomes prostrated and useless, as we see it everywhere in the country now, when to keep the political machinery running at the present high rate of speed, it has to draw upon its accumulated stock of fuel, as it is doing now to the amount of $700,000,000 annually.
If we go back and examine the evolution of government and industry, all this will be made clear; so clear that all may understand it. Certain fixed laws direct and regulate the growth of everything, and they are the same for all departments in the universe. The statement of the laws by which the sidereal and solar systems have evolved, will also describe those which the earth has obeyed, and are the laws of all material, governmental, industrial, intellectual, social, moral and religious change. This law as applied to government and industry may be stated in philosophic terms, thus: The progress of government and industry is a continuous establishment of physical relations within the community, in conformity with physical relations arising within the environment, during which the government, industry and the environment pass from a state of incoherent homogeneity to a state of coherent heterogeneity; and, during which, the constitutional units of the government and industry become ever more distinctly individualized.
If we examine the growth of industry and government, and the relations that exist between them now, in this country, we shall discover how far they have advanced from incoherent homogeneity toward coherent heterogeneity. Looking through the dim vistas of the past into the pre-historic time, we find a time when there were no aggregations of individuals larger than the family; that the family was the only government and the only organization for industry; that its head ruled with arbitrary sway, having no one to whom he was accountable, each family having to depend wholly upon itself for subsistence. The people then were in the same state politically and industrially, and this was the homogeneous or original state. Afterwards we find that, for protection or for conquest, two or more families combined in a political sense and formed tribes, having an absolute head, but remaining in the rudimentary state industrially; next, tribes came together and built cities, and cities then coalesced and constituted nations (the rulers of which still using arbitrary power), until single rulers aspired to the dominion of the world; and in a sense succeeded. But all this time, industrially, the people remained in the original state. There had been no coalescing for the purpose of subsistence as there had been for government. While politically the people had evolved through several stages of progression, industrially they were still in the rudimentary state.
Having arrived at the culmination of growth in the line of absolute power, one man having controlled the destinies of the world (thus typifying the future yet to be when the world shall be united under a humanitarian, in place of a despotic government; under the rule of all instead of that of one), a new departure was set up in the direction of this future condition, and the power to which one man aspired began to redistribute itself in limited and constitutional monarchies, down through kings and queens, nobility and republics, to the people generally, in this country advancing so far as to be divided practically among nearly one-half of the people, and theoretically among the whole. Evolution on this line will go on till every person in the world shall form a part of the government. Then the great human family will be a possibility.
But up to the present time, what have the people done industrially? Almost nothing, save to subsist themselves on the rudimental plane! Nothing, save to make a few experiments at coalescing. There are a few illustrations of the first step in progress in this respect, which correspond to the coming together of families politically. But there are no industrial cities, to say nothing about nations. There were Brook Farm, New Harmony, and several other attempts at industrial tribes, and there are Oneida and a dozen lesser attempts still in existence, besides numerous cooperative movements. There are the railroad, the telegraph, insurance companies, banks and other corporations, all evidences that a real departure is about to be made in industrial organization; that is, that the people are preparing to depart from the homogeneous state industrially. The grange movement is the most positive evidence of the moving of the people generally in this direction, in which to protect themselves against the rapacity of merchants and railroads, they combine to purchase from first hands and realize a saving of from twenty to fifty per cent. This is an illustration of coalescing for protection. Most of the other illustrations, such as railroads, banks, etc., are for aggressive purposes; are means by which the people, while being seemingly accommodated, are really being robbed. Nevertheless, they are all evidences of progress in the industrial sense, those for aggression in the end compelling others for protection. That there are so many forms of coalescings for aggressive purposes, is conclusive evidence that the time is near when the people will be driven into organizing themselves into industrial communities, cities and nations, and eventually into one nation for the whole world. The first departure having been made, nothing can prevent industry from passing through the same stages of progress through which government has passed, and eventually becoming “at one” with government.
Has the evolution of government proved a blessing to the people? Are we, as a people, in a better condition politically? Are we nearer the ultimate condition than they were of ancient time, when the family was the highest form of government? If we are, then we should be equally improved, industrially, if we were upon the same plane in this respect. There are no contradictions in natural growth. Like degrees of evolution bring equal good in all; the same to government, to industry, to intellect, to morals, to religion. But this development does not mean for the rich what it is inferred by them to mean, unless, indeed, they attempt to resist its progress, which if they do, the same fate will overtake them that came upon those who attempted to stay the tide of political growth. It means for them just what the development of government meant for those who held and exercised its power. The political relations of the monarch and nobility are repeated in the industrial relations of the capitalists and working men. The “levelling” politically has not been down but up. Instead of the rulers having been degraded into serfdom, the serfs have been elevated to the plane of rulers in this country. In the place of one man ruling over others, all men rule themselves, at least in theory. In this transformation no one has been deprived of anything that of right belonged to him; but the masses have received their natural rights from those who held them from them by the right of might. When the industries shall rise to the stage of growth which the government occupies, a like “levelling up” will take place; a like relinquishment of industrial power will be made in favour of the toiling masses. None who are independent now will be made dependent then; but the dependent will rise to independence. Hence the alarm of the rich is wholly without foundation. Such a move does not mean the slightest harm for them; it means equal good for all. It does not mean the taking away of any comfort or luxury from anybody; but the extension of every comfort and luxury that any have to all—to those who suffer, be it from hunger, from nakedness, from want of shelter, or other cause.
If this analysis be applied to the present situation we shall see what is the matter with the industries. When the South rebelled, the North was compelled to resist, or else permit the national unity to be destroyed. Let it be borne in mind what stress was put upon the necessity of preserving the oneness of the people politically. To do this an army was required. When volunteers ceased to offer in sufficient numbers to keep the army to its necessary strength, the government, acting upon the right of a representative of a politically united people, resorted to drafting to determine which of the members of this unity should go into the army and jeopardize their lives for its preservation. This was in perfect harmony with the principles of government upon which this order rests, and was fully endorsed by the people. But what did the government do to subsist these men, and to provide the munitions of war? Did it proceed the same way that it did to secure the men? Not at all! It borrowed the money from the bankers of New York, Hamburg and London, and agreed to pay them a rate of interest double that demanded of any other first class nation, parting with its bonds to them at “60.” In other words, it borrowed $1,800,000,000, at 10 per cent., and gave $1,200,000,000 in bonds as bonus for making the loan.
Now this was the error that was committed, for, although the people were industrially upon a lower order of development than they were politically, nevertheless, since necessity knows no law save that of its own conditions, the government should have proceeded as if we were upon the same plane in both respects. When it called for volunteers to raise an army, and the ranks of industry responded liberally, it should at the same time have also called for volunteer assistance from the ranks of wealth, to subsist that army; and as it resorted to drafting to maintain the necessary number of fighting men when volunteering failed to do it, so should it have resorted to drafting the means with which to pay their expenses when volunteer assistance should have failed to do it. Had the people been one industrially as they were politically; had the industrial organization of the people been upon the same plane as their political organization, this would have been done naturally, and there would have been no bonded debt incurred.
What does this show? This clearly; that, while the government can command the lives of the working men and put them in jeopardy, even sacrifice them without stint to maintain itself, it has no power over the property of the rich to compel them to assist in that maintenance. Had it been so that the government could not have borrowed any money, it would have fallen from this disparity between the political and industrial development. Is not this clear? And if it is, does it not show a very great and grave defect in the wisdom of our institutions?
But what has been the effect of this error in this instance? The present prostration of industry, necessarily: and it has come about in this way: The armies were made up from the ranks of industry; the “rank and file” were so many men taken away from producing, and, therefore, from adding to the accumulated wealth; but the maintenance of the army was borrowed at an exorbitant rate of interest from the accumulated wealth, which was wholly in the hands of those who never fired a shot in defence of the country, nor added a dollar to its aggregate wealth by labour. While the war continued, the men who were left in the ranks of industry were called upon to pay this interest; and when it was over, those who had survived the war and returned to productive toil were included with them. And it is expected that the industrial classes will continue to pay this interest until the bonds mature, and then the bonds themselves, as I shall show you that they do hereafter; or what is more to the point, for the $1,800,000,000 that the government borrowed from the money-lenders it would compel the people to return them as bonus, interest and principal, the enormous sum of $5,000,000,000.