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Title: True Civilization Author: Josiah Warren Date: 1863 Language: en Topics: civilization Source: Retrieved on 30th August 2021 from http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/warren/truecivtoc.html
The present condition of our country, and of many other parts of the
world, calls out and places before us, as in a panorama, whatever there
is of thought; whatever there has been of progress or retrogression, and
displays to us at a simple glance, as it were, the present state of
civilization in so vivid a manner that we are enabled to weigh and
estimate what we have and what we need with a degree of certainty that,
in a state of repose, no one’s lifetime might enable him to measure; and
which may reasonably inspire even the humble with a boldness suited to
the time, and with a hope that discoveries indispensable to true
civilization, that could scarcely gain a single ear while the
adversities of life could be borne, may now receive some attention where
all confidence in the tried is lost.
Those who have not leisure or inclination to follow all the subtle
intricacies of the following subjects will at once appreciate the relief
promised by the “Tribunals” proposed in this first chapter following, to
which everything of the kind can be referred with a prospect of
obtaining as reliable opinions as could be expected from any quarter; at
least, as reliable as opinions that are not authoritative need to be.
But, I implore my fellow-men not longer to commit themselves to
indiscriminate subordination to any human authority or to the fatal
delusions of logic and analogies, nor even to ideas or principles (so
called), but to maintain, as far as possible, at all times, the FREEDOM
to act according to the apparent merits of each individual case as it
may present itself to each individual understanding. There is no other
safety for us--no other security for civilization.
If I should prove myself right in ninety-nine points in this work, do
not, therefore, conclude that I am right in the hundredth without
examination and your own sanction: that one point might be the one in
which I was wrong or misunderstood.
While a small portion of mankind can see, at a glance, the prospective
workings of a principle or natural law, and only want to know what to do
in order to do it, and have not time to study new things, there are
others who have time and who want to study the philosophy, and follow
the train of thought which gave rise to whatever is proposed for their
adoption, and make it, as it were, their own, before they are ready to
act. The first class of persons may be content for a while with the
following chapter on government; while the latter class may find
immediate interest in tile chapters which follow.
present deplorable condition, like that of many other parts of the
world, is in consequence of the people in general never having
perceived, or else having lost sight of, the legitimate object of all
governments as displayed or implied in the American “Declaration of
Independence.”
Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness;” “and it is solely to protect and
secure the enjoyment of these rights unmolested that governments can
properly be instituted among men.” In other terms, SELF-SOVEREIGNTY is
an instinct of every living organism; and it being an instinct, cannot
be alienated or separated from that organism. It is the instinct of
Self-Preservation; the votes of ten thousand men cannot alienate it from
a single individual, nor could the bayonets of twenty thousand men
neutralize it in any one person any more than they could put a stop to
the instinctive desire for food in a hungry man.
absolute right to its exercise that he has to his complexion or the
forms of his features, to any extent, not disturbing another; and it is
solely to prevent or restrain such disturbances or encroachments, that
governments are properly instituted. In still shorter terms, the
legitimate and appropriate mission of governments is the defence and
protection of the inalienable right of Sovereignty in every individual
within his or her own sphere.
But what is it that constitutes encroachment?
hands of a passer-by, without waiting to explain or ask leave--this
would be one degree of encroachment, but perhaps the owner would excuse
it on the ground of its necessity. Suppose a man walks into my house
without waiting for leave--it may or may not disturb or offend me, or
constitute a degree of encroachment. If I find that he has no excusable
errand, and require him to retire and he refuses, this would be a degree
of encroachment which I might meet with a few words, and might need no
government to assist me. If he proceeds to rob the house, I may have
reason to think that he is driven to desperation by having a starving
family, and I may not resort to violence; or I may perceive that he is a
wanton and reckless robber or fillibuster, and that this is an
unnecessary encroachment, which, in defence of my own rights, as well as
the same rights in others, I am justifiable in resisting; and if I have
not sufficient power to do so without endangering myself or property, I
will call for help: --this help, whether in the form of police or an
army, is government, and its function is to use force, to prevent him
from using force against me and mine; it interferes, with my consent, to
prevent interference with my sovereign right to control my own:-- its
mission is “intervention for the sake of non-intervention.”
compelled, without any unnecessary violence, to give it up; and,
perhaps, to compensate the police; and, till I had learned better, I
might have approved of his being confined in prison till he had done
this, and compensated me for being disturbed: but there are objections
to proceeding to these complicated measures. There is no principle
(generally) known, by which to determine what constitutes
compensation!--He could not get properly compensated for his work, which
might be a greater injustice to him than he had done to me; and it would
inflict on his innocent father, mother, brothers, and sisters, his wife
and children, and all his friends, incalculable injustice and suffering,
and this would be no compensation to me: besides, I (as a citizen of the
same world) am a partner in the crime by not having prevented the
temptation to it.
the best present expedient to put up with the restoration of my purse,
as he gains nothing to tempt the continuance of the business. The word
expedient may look loose and unsatisfactory: but, among all the works of
mankind there is nothing higher than expedients.
of man; but to keep it constantly in mind as a sacred right in all human
intercourse is highly expedient.
necessarily set aside all imperative or absolute authorities, all
sanguinary and unbending codes, creeds, and theories, and leave every
one Free to choose among expedients: or, in other words, we place all
action upon the voluntary basis. Do not be alarmed, we shall see this to
be the highest expedient whenever it is possible.
employment of force is expedient or justifiable.
beforehand, what will constitute an offensive encroachment--what one
will resist another will excuse, and the subtle diversities of different
persons and cases, growing out of the inherent individualities of each,
have defied all attempts at perfect formulizing excepting this of the
Sovereignty of every individual over his or her own; and even this must
be violated in resisting its violation!
determined; but until it is clearly defined, we can never tell what
constitutes encroachmont-- what may be safely excused, or what may be
profitably resisted.
individual may legitimately, rightly exercise supreme power or absolute
authority. This sphere would include his or her person, time, property,
and responsibilities.
the end in view-- the end in view here is permanent and universal peace,
and security of person and property.
violence and destruction result from a want of appreciation of this
great right of Individual Sovereignty, and its defence by government.
be the natural consequences of bearing these two ideas all the time in
mind as the regulators of political and moral movements, and holding
them, as it were, as substitutes for all previous laws customs,
precedents, and theories.
shall not be guilty of the ill manners of attempting to offensively
enforce any of my theoretical speculations, which has been the common
error of all governments! This itself would be an attempted encroachment
that would justify resistance.
and property against offensive encroachments, it must have force enough
for the purpose. This force necessarily resolves itself into the
military, for the advantages of drill and systematic cooperation: and
this being perhaps the best form that government can assume, while a
coercive force is needed, I make no issue with it but only with the
misapplications of its immense power.
government or military power, if this sole purpose was instilled into
the general mind as an element of education or discipline, no force
could be raised to invade any persons or property whatever, and no
defence would be necessary.
Sovereignty, had been commonly appreciated a year ago in the “United
States,” they would not now be disunited. None of the destruction of
persons and property which has blackened the past year would have
occurred, nor would twelve hundred thousand citizens now be bent on
destroying each other and their families and homes in these States!
government whatever for himself or herself, and to test it by experiment
within equitable limits; an issue would be raised only where this sacred
right was denied, or against any who should have undertaken to enforce
any theory of government whatever upon any individual against his or her
“consent.” The frank and honest admission of this “inalienable” right
would even now change the issue of this present war, and carry relief
and protection to the invaded or oppressed, and war or resistance to the
oppressor only, whether he were found on one side or the other of a
geographical line. Mere theorists say that “the laws of nations decide
that a state of war (between two nations) puts all the members of each,
in hostility to each other:” and that “the laws of nations justify us in
doing all the harm we can to our enemies.” We need no death-warrant from
“authority” against these barbarian theories-- the very statement of
them becomes their execution.
there can be, consistently, no limits or exceptions to the title to
protection in the legitimate exercise of this sacred right, whether on
this side or the other side of the Atlantic, and whether “in a state of
war” or not: and, as soon as we take position for this universal right
for all the world, we shall have all the world for us and with us and no
enemies to contend with. Did military men ever think of this? Did
governments ever think of it?
encroachments, or unnecessary violence to persons and property, or
enforcing compensation therefor: but if, in the exercise of this power,
we commit any unnecessary violence to any person whatever or to any
property, we, ourselves, have become the aggressors, and should be
resisted.
We here arrive at the pivot upon which all power now turns for good or
evil; this pivot, under formal, exacting, aggressive institutions or
constitutions, is the person who decides as to their meaning. If one
decides for all, then all but that one are, perhaps, enslaved; if each
one’s title to Sovereignty is admitted, there will be different
interpretations, and this freedom to differ will ensure emancipation,
safety, repose, even in a political atmosphere! and all the co-operation
we ought to expect will come from the coincidence of motives according
to the merits of each case as estimated by different minds. Where there
is evidence of aggression palpable to all minds, all might co-operate to
resist it: and where the case is not clearly made out, there will be
more or less hesitation: Two great nations will not then be so very
ready to jump at each other’s throats when the most cunning lawyers are
puzzled to decide which is wrong!
every individual does unavoidably measure it and all other words by his
own peculiar understanding or conceits, whether he understands himself
or not, and should, like General Jackson, recognize the fact, “take the
responsibility of it,” and qualify himself to meet its consequences. The
full appreciation of this simple but almost unknown fact will neutralize
the war element in all verbal controversies, and the binding power of
all indefinite words, and place conformity thereto on the voluntary
basis! Did any institution-makers (except the signers of the
“Declaration”) ever think of this?
organization, if every subordinate were allowed to judge of the
propriety of an order before he obeyed it? I answer that nothing could
be accomplished that did not commend itself to men educated to
understand, and trained to respect the rights of persons and property as
set forth in the “Declaration of Independence;” and that here, and here
only, will be found the long-needed check to the barbarian wantonness
that lays towns in ashes and desolates homes and hearts for brutal
revenge, or to act office or a little vulgar newspaper notoriety.
coincidence between the subordinates and the officers? I answer, Drill,
Discipline,-- of mind as well as of arms and legs,-- teaching all to
realize their true mission. The true object of all their power being
clearly defined and made familiar, there would at once be a coincidence
unknown before, and but slight chance of dissent when there was good
ground for co-operation.
is all voluntary.
locality or party, there can be no hostile parties or nations!-- Nothing
to betray by treason!-- Nothing to rebel against!-- No party to desert
to! Then, whose fault is it that there are persons called “Traitors,”
“Rebels,” and “Deserters”?
restrain or repair all unnecessary violence, then the conclusion is
inevitable that all penal laws (for punishing a crime or an act after it
is committed except so far as they work to compensate the injured party
Equitably) are themselves criminal! The excuse is that punishment is “a
terror to evildoers;” but those who punish instead of preventing crime
are themselves evildoers; and according to their own theory they should
be punished and terrified; but the theory is false: consistently carried
out, it would depopulate the world. Such are the fogs in which we get
astray when we trust ourselves away from first premises and substitute
speculative theories in their stead. Had our military been properly
educated to know its true function and purpose, Ellsworth would not have
been shot for taking down a flag; the shooting of him did not restrain
him, nor did the shooting of Mr. Jackson compensate Ellsworth: but it
caused Mrs. Jackson to become insane with grief, and has spread a
hostile spirit to an incalculable extent among millions, which will
descend to future generations; all of which originated in the denial to
Mr. Jackson of his “inalienable right” to choose his own government,
which the “Declaration” guarantees in explicit terms to every one.
was not necessary to shoot Ellsworth for bad manners; failing to educate
him or to prevent him, one party was as much in fault as the other. The
barbarian habit of shedding blood for irreparable offences (“as a terror
to evil-doers”) was acted upon in this case-- carried fully out, mutual
slaughter would have continued till there would not be a man, woman, or
child, living upon the earth.
of Independence as well as with the teachings of the wisest and best of
our species? I invite thought on the subject. I make the assertions not
because they are implied in that “Declaration,” but because they are
just such as are demanded at this hour as the only possible means of
salvation from barbarism.
manliness and consistent thought than such as commonly prevail, then
Instruction, Drill, Discipline, are as necessary for the minds as for
the bodies of our military forces: but even in this discipline, the
principal labor will consist in keeping the mind’s eye steadily upon two
ideas so simple as the right of Sovereignty in every person and its
judicious defence.
everything to Individual decision and action: and we cannot, therefore
safely dispense with an ever-watchful DISCRIMINATION and a strong
Self-government in every person in proportion to the magnitude of his or
her sphere of action. Practical experience in this country in less than
one year has driven us, against the hopeful theory of Democratic
government, under the dreaded government of military despotisms, which
is merely placing the deciding power in a few persons, and the persons
and property of all the people at their disposal; while the Declaration
of Independence and the instinct of Self-preservation assert the
absolute and “inalienable right “ of every one to control his own!
Man-made powers are arrayed against NATURE’S LAW! Here we have the fatal
issue! What can be done? Are we again at the eve of a long night of
desolation, or is there some untried element in modern thought which can
reconcile the seeming contradiction between instinct and experience?
rights, if introduced into military discipline, would solve, not this
great problem only, but others of even greater magnitude?
Sovereignty by joining the military or any other combination-- the
assumption that this is possible has produced all our political
confusion and violence, and will continue to produce just such fruits to
the end of time, if the childish blunder is not exposed and corrected.
Individual, at all times and in all conditions, one will not attempt to
govern (but only guide or lead) another; but we shall trust to principle
or purpose for a general and voluntary coincidence and co-operation.
Military officers will then become directors or leaders,-- not
“commanders,”-- obedience will be all the more prompt because it is
rendered for an object-- the greatest that can inspire human action,
RESISTANCE TO ALL ATTEMPTS AT OFFENSIVE AND UNNECESSARY GOVERNING OR
ENCROACHMENTS upon ANY persons or property whatsoever, as the great
guarantee for the security of each and every individual. Then every Man,
Woman, and Child in the world is interested in acting for and with such
a government!
and its sublime magnitude bewilders-- — Let us take time!
necessity for Individuality in the directing mind when numbers wish to
move together; but it does not necessarily imply any superiority of
judgment or motive in the director of a movement beyond those of the
subordinates, any more shall the driver of an omnibus is presumed to
know the road better than the passengers; they may all know the road
equally well, but if they all undertake to drive the horses, none of
their purposes will be answered; and it would be equally ridiculous for
the driver, under the plea of upholding subordination, to insist on
carrying his passengers where they did not want to go, or refuse to let
them get out when they wanted to “secede.”
lead, or director, where numbers are acting together to attain an object
in view, is so self-evident, or can be so easily explained, that where
there is a walls of this promptness, it implies that the fault is in
having a bad cause, or unfit associates in a good one.
good cause, and in our modern military it will require more true manhood
to make a good subordinate than it will to be a leader; for the leader
may very easily give orders, but they take the responsibility of that
only, while the subordinate takes the responsibility of executing them;
and it will require the greatest and highest degree of manhood, of
self-government, presence of mind, and real heroism to discriminate on
the instant and to stand up individually before all the corps and future
criticisms, and assume, alone, the responsibility of dissent or
disobedience. His only support and strength would be in his
consciousness of being more true to his professed mission than the order
was, and in the assurance that he would be sustained by public opinion
and sympathy as far as that mission was understood.
in obedience to the mere wantonness of authority, or of the ferocity of
a crude discipline, and have thus, like William Tell, entitled
themselves to the lasting gratitude and affection of generations.
regulate: and that principle must be THE PREVENTION OR REPAIR OF ALL
UNNECESSARY VIOLENCE, OR WANTON DISTURBANCE OF PERSONS OR PROPERTY, if
we are ever to have order or peace on earth.
simply the true Democratic idea), would become an ever-ready police to
protect each other and the gardens, fruits, and other property around
them, instead of being, as they often are, the Imps of disturbance and
destruction. The height of their ambition being to play “soger,” and
fight somebody or destroy something.
American institutions, has never been introduced into our military
discipline, nor into our courts, nor into our laws, and only in a
caricatured and distorted shape into our political system, our commerce,
our education, and public opinion.
especially in the military department, and our country is saved:--
Otherwise, it is LOST.
close discrimination, real heroism, and gentle humanity are known to be
necessary to membership in our military corps (or government), these
qualities will come into fashion, and become the characteristics of the
people; and to be thought destitute of them, and unworthy of membership
in the military would cause the greatest mortification: while to be
known as a member in good standing would be an object sought as the
highest honor.
in the “Declaration of lndependence,” or is it all a romantic dream?
to the true mission and form of Government-- To the most perfect, yet
harmless subordination-- The reconciliation of obedience with FREEDOM--
To the cessation of all hostilities between parties and Nations-- To
universal co-operation for universal preservation and security of
persons and property. We have found a government, literally in the
people, of the people, for the people-- a government that is the people:
for Men, Women, and Children can take some direct or indirect part in
it-- a ready police or army adapted to all demands for either-- a
self-protecting “Party of the whole.”
trained in the constant reverence for the “inalienable right” of
Sovereignty in every person, would be habituated to forbearance towards
even wrong opinions and different educations and tastes, to patient
endurance of irremediable injuries, and a self-governing deportment and
gentleness of manner, and a prompt but careful resistance to wanton
aggression wherever found, which would meet with a ready and an
affectionate welcome in any part of the world.
in some manlier, to the great common cause.
government! A government so simple that children will be first to
comprehend it, and which even they can see it for their interests to
assist: and then would as readily play “soger” to prevent mischief, as
to do mischief.
and object, let us immediately commence the agitation of the idea of
forming companies of home-guards on this principle.
co-operation of persons sufficiently intelligent to comprehend the
object to form a nucleus. (The known habitual regard to the “inalienable
rights” of persons and property would be the best title to membership).
Then, commence Drill and Discipline, keeping in mind all the time the
kind of discipline required, which would be partly in the form of
lectures; taking as texts, the details of the destruction of persons an
I property going on all around us, and showing with how much less
violence the same or better objects could have been accomplished: and in
the drill, giving some orders to do some unnecessary harm, on purpose to
be disobeyed in order to accustom the subordinates to “look before they
leap” or strike!
other words, its “sabbath would be made for man-- not man for its
sabbath.” To be under instead of within discipline is a mistake as fatal
as that of getting under water in stead of within water.
constantly in view, and made, as it were, the guiding star, scarcely
anything can go seriously amiss; and NVC need no other guide for the use
of a governing force: nor will it answer to allow any theories or
“precedents” to override this one supreme consideration.
which would be all the general organization required for a world-wide
co-operation.
protect and not to invade; a government that can include the whole
strength of the world-- when might would be for the right, and no
enemies to contend with!
unity of dress and of movement in military displays, now so seductive to
purposes of destruction and degradation, would entice to the highest and
noblest objects of human ambition, which would never need a field of
activity as long as wanton oppression (even of a single individual) has
footing on the earth.
that it has to deal only with offensive encroachments upon persons or
property: like a volunteer guard on a wrecked vessel in the confusion of
disaster, the frenzy of hlunger, and the fear of starvation, to prevent
unnecessary destruction of life or property,-- an expedient choice of
evils where there is nothing but evils to choose from.
day a mere assemblage of wrecks thrown against each other on a
tempestuous sea without pilots, charts, rudders, or compass.
wrecked by the very element that moves it on a successful voyage; and
the first form of general society is yet to be developed that would not
be liable to destruction from the instinctive “pursuit of happiness,”
without which no society would exist.
a man, while governed with his own consent, is not governed at all.
Courts, etc., are not, scientifically speaking, are not government,
which is simply coercive force. But, inasmuch as that force should never
be employed without a deliberate reference to its legitimate object, and
upon which all available wisdom should be brought to bear, a
Deliberative Council, acting before or with the government, seems highly
expedient if not indispensable.
which, by timely forethought, violent issues may be prevented from
arising, and many most important subjects may be adjusted by counsel
alone, without any appeal to force.
honors, nor by compensation measured by the necessities or weakness and
defencelessness of their clients; nor should they consist of those who,
like editors of news, can make more money by wars and other calamities
than they can by peace and general prosperity, but let the Counsellors
be those who are willing to wait, like tillers of the soil, for
compensation according to the quantity and quality of their work. Let
compensation or honors come in the form of voluntary contributions AFTER
but not before benefits have been realized.
coincide with this proposition, and who feels competent to give Counsel
in any department of human affairs, publicly announce the fact, as
lawyers and physicians now do, or permit their names and functions to be
made accessible to the public in some manner, so that whoever may need
honest counsel on any subject may know where to find it. If a meeting of
such Counsellors is thought desirable by any interested party, he or she
can invite such as are thought to be most competent for the occasion,
according to the subject to be considered.
assembly, or advisory tribunal. It might consist of both sexes or either
sex, according to the nature of the subject to be deliberated upon.
make up an opinion, let him or her write it down with the reasons for
it, and present it to the Counsellors and the audience, for their
signatures, and let the document go forth to the public or to the
interested parties. If there are several such documents, those having
the signatures of counsellors or persons most known to be reliable would
have the most weight; but, in order to ensure any influence or benefit
from either, let compensation come to the Counsellors like that to
Rowland Hill, in voluntary contributions after the benefits of the
opinions have, to some extent, been realized.
counsels to bear upon any subject without satisfying all parties, every
person has a Sovereign right to differ from all the opinions of the
tribunal while not invading or disturbing other persons or property.
is acceptable to both parties, the decisions may be laid before the
military (or government) to act at its discretion; selecting that course
which promises the least violence or disturbance. If any member declines
to act, his “inalienable right” to do so, being sacredly respected,
would tend to confirm and illustrate the only principle that can
regulate, at the very moment that it should regulate, the action of the
others!
subject than the one for which it is called should be introduced without
unanimous consent; as each and every one has a sovereign right to
appropriate his own time and to choose the subjects that shall occupy
his attention: and a constant regard to the same right, fully
appreciated by all, will suggest the careful avoidance of all
unnecessary disturbance which might prevent any one from hearing
whatever he or she prefers to listen to. This sentiment becoming
familiar to all as a monitor, but little disturbance would occur-- when
it did occur, the principle itself would immediately prompt its
appreciators to stop it with as little violence as possible.
than this great Democratic principle!
from the necessity for any disagreeable personal disputations on
subjects which so often lead to violence or lasting enmity between
individuals and Nations! All of the doubtful and unsettled can at once
be referred to the highest tribunal, with the assurance of obtaining the
best decision that present attainments within our reach can furnish.
tribunals in the world, and their decisions brought to every city,
village, and neighborhood, and to every door; and the relief from all
disturbing controversies would be felt at every fireside.
would place its author or inventor fairly before the public for their
patronage, instead of being left to starve for want of attention; while
the absence or want of such sanction would put a sudden stop to the
swarms of impostures and fallacies that now wear out the attention to no
purpose, and render valueless the announcements of even valuable things:
while with such a sanction, the public might fool; at advertisements
with some prospect of benefit therefrom.
her person, time, and property is the only rule or principle known to
this writer that is not subject to exceptions and failures as a
regulator of human intercourse. It is very often, however, impossible in
our complicated entanglements, for one or some to exercise this right
without violating the same right in others. We will ask our Counsellors
to examine DISINTEGRATION as tile remedy!
them for the least violent mode of securing land to the homeless and
starving. Also, what would constitute the just reward of LABOR? We shall
invite them to consider what ought to be the circulating medium, or
Money? How it happens that the producers and makers of everything have
comparatively nothing? And we shall ask them for some mode of Adapting
Supplies to Demands-- For a better Postal system-- For a more Equitable
system of buying and selling-- For a programme of Education in
accordance with the Democratic principle.
Legislatures, and Courts of Law.
minds, if the “American Experiment” is not to prove a total failure. Not
to say that the best minds have not been employed upon them, but that
the required solutions were impossible without the aid of very recent,
though very simple, developments.
of the tribunal decisions and other contributions to public welfare will
be preserved for reference and diffusion; and the world will begin to
know its benefactors.
transitionary stage of society from confusion and wanton violence to
true order and mature civilization.
out the complicated and entangled CAUSES of avarice, of robberies, of
murders, of wars, of poverty, of desperation, of suicides, of Slaveries
and fraud, violence and suffering of all kinds, and shall have found
appropriate and practical means of PREVENTING instead of punishing them,
then the Military will be the fitting messengers of relief and
harbingers of security and of peace, of order and unspeakable benefits
wherever their footsteps are found; and, instead of being the desolators
of the world, they will be hailed from far and near as the blessed
benefactors of mankind.
the “inalienable right” which has no exceptions; and they may perceive
that they are thus assisting in the scientific inauguration of EQUITABLE
FREEDOM.
to put forth, in the fewest possible words, thoughts which seem to
promise the relief required by all classes, parties, and Nations, and
have not dwelt upon existing errors and wrongs they being, sufficiently
evident by contrast with tile right, any prolonged attack upon them is
unnecessary.
an Absolute Principle of right, as a guiding star to our path, along
with expedients entirely consistent therewith. If this search after the
narrow path has been more fortunate than that of our predecessors, it is
owing to circumstances so peculiar that they may be excused for being
less successful. If we are self-deluded, with all our best energies
devoted to general benefit, we shall need all the forbearance that we
exercise towards them.
or her share of the deciding power or government as proposed, the great
“American idea” may be practically realized; and that the
ever-disturbing problem of the “balance of political power” becomes
solved, and security for person and property (the great proposed object
of all governments) prospectively attained.
attempt be made to urge them into conformity, but let them freely and
securely await the results of demonstration.
things.
but it gives us no adequate idea of the goods within; no one would order
any quantity of them before going within to examine the things to which
the sign referred.
the best-chosen and best-arranged words are full of ambiguity and
imperfections, and it is unsafe for a reader to take it for granted that
the writer on a subject of v vital interest can do everything for him.
There is a part which the reader is obliged to act for himself; that is,
to look beyond or within the mere words or signs for the idea intended
to be conveyed With this precaution kept vividly before the reader, the
mere execution of the sign is of secondary importance. Delicious foreign
fruits and spices are brought to us in very rough and crude envelopes;
but they are the best the conditions of their producers afford, and we
are content to get our figs, our dates and cinnamon without much regard
to the mats in which they are conveyed to us.
let us prepare ourselves with all the spirit of forbearance which the
case allows, that we need not add any unnecessary pangs to the already
exhausted and dying patient.
there not some indication of the Divine Law in the large fishes eating
up the little ones, and in spiders spinning webs to entrap flies? Is not
this the work of the Deity, who is all perfection, and can we hope to
alter these things permanently for the better?
the law for fishes and insects is also the law for cultivated, civilized
man!
suppose we admit that the same law governs men, fishes, and insects —
What is that law which is inherent and indestructible in all? It is the
instinct of self-preservation. Fishes and insects would not perhaps eat
each other raw and alive, if, like man, they had the means of
preparation and cooking; nor would they run the risk, nor take the
trouble of pursuing each other in continuous warfare, if, like men, they
had more safe or expeditious modes of preserving their existence. It is
our particular privilege to have an abundance of superior modes, and it
is only for want of the appreciation of them, or when cut off from them
by casualties that we are driven to the level of fishes and spiders.
Although we cannot tall: at all without resorting to analogies to
illustrate our meaning, nothing is more likely to lead us astray when
they are too readily accepted as parallels.
peculiarities, which constitute its, his, or her INDIVIDUALITY: and it
is not safe for us to lose sight of this for a moment in our intercourse
with each other. The fishes, the insects, and perhaps all animals, man
included, act according, to their external and internal CONDITIONS.
primitive law. The modes of living and eating are not laws, but customs,
or habits, or expedients, and are subject to modifications as conditions
change.
who would take pains to extricate a fly from a spider’s web, or who
would Sit up all night to keep the flies away from a sick infant, or to
wet its lips occasionally, and who from pure humanitary feelings would
almost sicken at the idea of eating the smallest morsel of nicely cooked
veal, might, in the frenzy of starvation on a wrecked vessel,
involuntarily seize and devour with frightful voracity a portion of a
fellow-passenger, even a dear friend, from the sheer, uncontrollable
instinct of self-preservation!
work in both opposite cases: in the most delicate attentions to the
happiness of others, pleasure is derived in proportion to the pleasure
conferred or the pain averted; which, for want of better phraseology,
may be ranked as one of the modes of pursuing happiness, or of the
promptings of the instinct of self-satisfaction or self-preservation —
exactly the same instinct that leads to such opposite results under
other conditions.
Women, but let us take care that we do not assume an accident to be a
law, and so content ourselves to remain on a level with worms and bugs.
Our immense resources are as natural, as much (the law) to us as the
want of them is to insects; and it is by using them that we have thus
far ameliorated our condition; and, by still greater and better uses of
them, we may reach an infinitely higher plane, or modes of life, than
any ever yet realized. It is the difference in our capacities for
improvement, not in the fundamental or primitive laws, that lead to such
different results.
made a villain by his conditions; he does not deserve punishment but he
must be restrained.
among Lions, Tigers, Hyenas, Orang-Outangs, Gorillas, Reptiles, and
insects, all making war — (no — not making war — they have not sunk so
low), but from the unregulated instinct of self-preservation, and the
pressure of conditions, all preying upon each other.
against outside aggression. Having once formed a tribe or clan, Clanship
becomes looked upon as the warrant for safety, and all outside of any
particular clan or tribe become, by degrees, ranked as enemies, aliens,
or foreigners, to be weakened, conquered, or exterminated; and he who
proves most expert in the work of murder or of plundering the outsiders,
is considered the one most fit to secure and administer peace, justice,
and true order within his own tribe, and is at once proclaimed as the
great Matiambo, Moene, Chief, King, or President of the tribe or clan.
regulate the internal affairs of the Clan, this great Matiambo is, they
think, a necessity, and it is equally a necessity, that, having a
Matiambo, every one should render unhesitating obedience to his will, or
all would be “anarchy and confusion.”
Logic and therefore there is no fault seen in the results. The Matiambo
becomes drunk with power of which he knows not the true use. He may
become crazy with vanity or with embarrassing cares, and they see him in
the streets with drawn sword in his hand, cutting off the heads of
whomsoever he meets[2] to test the “loyalty” of his subjects! Loyalty
even to a crazy savage being the highest virtue known, and disloyalty
punished with the most wanton barbarity. Thus the Matiambo proves a more
destructive enemy than all the foreigners put together could prove, if
each one was left; to defend himself: but horror-stricken as the poor
barbarian subjects may be, and trembling in every limb (for no one knows
whose turn may come next), as a kind of propitiatory offering they break
out in chorus: —
Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!
Hurrah for Hug-ga-boo-jug!
Hurrah for Hug-ga-boo-joo!
The king of the world is the great Hug-ga-boo.
Hurrah for the son of the sun!
Hurrah for the son of the moon!
If he ever dies, he will die too soon.
Buffalo of Buffaloes, Bull of Bulls,
He sits on a throne of his enemies’ skulls,
And if he wants more to play at foot-ball,
Ours are at his service — All, all, all.
Hug-ga-boo-jug — Hug-ga-boo-joo!
The king of the world is the great Hug-ga-boo.
attempt to prolong their miserable existence.
liberating and exalting banner! We have had this banner in the breeze
for many centuries. We kill only those who belong to the wrong clan, or
those who rally under the wrong nag! and those who won’t think and do
right, and who refuse to join in our chorus. — O God! enough of this
sickening parallel. We are at this moment in the midst of barbarism.
Civilization has made no advance ill the political sphere beyond the
most crude and savage tribes. It has made little progress except in
mechanism. Take that away, and what should we exhibit as civilization?
Even in mechanism the arts of destruction have gone beyond those of
preservation; and the best military commander is announced, without
blushing, to be he who can most adroitly mislead, deceive, entrap, and
kill his fellow-men, who are at least his equals in every view of
manhood and worth ! And these are the model precedents and model men
held tip for imitation by the coming generations! and such they will be
unless a countercurrent gets in motion.
unhesitatingly follow any leaders without thinking where they are going.
We want a Luther in the political sphere — and another in the financial
sphere, — another in the Commercial, --another in the educational
sphere, to rouse the people to use their own experience. Now is the day
and the hour, while there is no man, nor any idea, nor principle before
the public that can command general confidence, and while the want is so
pressingly felt for something to rely and repose upon.[3]
principles, even by a few humble men and women, may result in
unspeakable blessings to the future race and even to the present
generation as well as to themselves immediately.
honestly acknowledge that barbarism is the inevitable normal condition
of man.
class, or nation, no harm to any persons or properly. Every step is
self-regulating and confers only benefits to all concerned. Each
successive step leading to greater and greater benefits, and no
proposition requiring even a violent change of habits.
Lamb’s account of the progress of the invention of “Roast pig,” and
perhaps he intended it for that purpose. The story is somewhat modified
to adapt it to the “meridian” of 1862.
in a log house. The boy had a little pet pig that used to share his
dinner and his bed at night. One day, the mother and son were absent
some hours, and when they returned, they found that their cabin had been
burned down. The boy looked around for his pig, but not finding it, went
sorrowfully to poking among the ashes to divert his mind from his
troubles, and ran Iris fingers into something so hot that he
involuntarily thrust them into his mouth to cool them; and he found
himself rather pleased shall otherwise with the taste that he found
there, and he ran to his mother to let her taste his fingers. Then they
both went to explore among the ashes for the explanation of the
agreeable taste. After clearing away a while, they found the remains of
the poor pig; that explained all. They took the remains out of the ashes
and secretly ate of them till they were all gone, and then the mother
(being a genius) conceived the bright idea of building another cabin and
putting another pig into it and setting that on fire; and she continued
to do so till the neighbors, seeing a fire so often in that direction,
naturally began to be curious and to inquire into the cause. By some
means they found out the secret, and that it furnished something good to
eat, and so began to try the experiment themselves; and the pow-wows
made no objection. So the custom of building cabins and putting a pig in
each, and then setting it on fire, spread, in the course of fifty years,
over a space of ten miles round! At this period, some labor-saving
genius suggested that there was no need of building complete finished
cabins — that it would answer just as well, after hewing the logs square
and straight, to pile them up without locking their ends; but this was
at once rebuked as an “innovation” — it was not according to
“precedent.” “One innovation would lead to another.” “Toleration of the
first would only lead to boldness and continuous innovation that would
never stop short of “universal Anarchy.” That, in fact, toleration of
the first would be the “inauguration of universal confusion.” Thereupon,
the labor-saving genius found his cabin surrounded with the zealous
“preservers of order,” ready to tear him to pieces as soon as they could
get into his cabin. While they were endeavoring to get in, he slipped
into a hole under the matting, which hole led out into the woods, while
the preservers of order were watching every outlet of the hut.
escape to another neighborhood, and there introduced his innovation. And
this mode of roasting pigs prevailed in that neighborhood or tribe for
some sixty or seventy years; when another innovator appeared and
proposed to kill the pig before roasting him; but this was immediately
denounced as such an unfeeling and horribly cruel proposition towards
the poor pig: and this innovator, also, had to escape for his life, and
introduce his improvement where both innovations were unknown as such
but were supposed to be the true, orthodox way of getting roast pig.
neighborhood in seventy or a hundred years, when some other innovator
proposed to clean the pig before roasting him; and also that there was
no need of hewing the timbers, nor getting them all of one length, nor
of putting them together in the form of a house. He said that, with all
duo deference to the fathers, he did not see why the same quantity of
logs piled up around the pig so as to enclose him would not answer as
well as to build them into the form of a house.
of the history of roast pig, and of the persecution of those who bad
risked their lives in bringing to their doors that savory blessing and
they were then agitating the idea of erecting a monument to the memory
of their benefactors. But the idea of the monument was suddenly dropped,
and nothing was heard but “virtuous” denunciations against such
“sweeping end wholesale innovations.” They would be the “inauguration of
universal confusion,” and this innovator, like all the rest, was obliged
to fly for his life; but where he went, or what course roast pig took
after that, is unknown; but it is supposed that he, too, introduced it
with his innovations into the country to which he fled, and that in the
course of four thousand five hundred years, seven calendar months, and
two days, which have elapsed since that time, the process of roasting
pigs has progressed to what we now have, and, except mechanism, it has
been the grand achievement of the civilization of this day.
---
tribes are formed, each member prefers, or is compelled to profess to
prefer, his own clan or tribe to all others, on pain of being murdered
as a “traitor.” His motto must be, like that of Daniel Webster, My
tribe, my whole tribe, and nothing but my tribe! That of Daniel Webster
was, “My country, my whole country, and nothing but my country!”
other; and hostilities once commenced between them, they are increased
and perpetuated for retaliation or revenge, and excused as “terrors to
evildoers.” In this way it becomes equivalent to a death-warrant to
belong to any clan or party; and yet, if one belongs to none, but wishes
to discriminate and do justice by acknowledging the right that there may
be among either party, then all parties are against him; for, say they,
“whoever is not for us is against us.”
of clanship, or tribeism. One portion of the tribe (or nation) wanted to
form a tribe or nation by itself, but the other portion undertook to
prevent them. They said that the “fathers had said that the tribe should
remain one and inseparable now and forever.” That the fathers had
spoken, and that it was the duty of all of us to obey.
too — they said that whenever the government of a tribe was not
satisfactory to the governed, they have a right to ‘alter or abolish
it.’”
the constitution.” But, says the second, “we don’t choose to be ruled by
your constitution — it is no longer our constitution. It does not suit
us — we propose to have one of our own. “But, says the first party, “you
must get a majority of the tribe to consent to that.” But, says the
second, “we do not consent to ask leave of your majority; and if you
insist on that, you deny all right of political freedom, which is a
direct return to barbaric government, or to the right of the strongest.
the consent of the majority is to “inaugurate universal confusion.”
formed at all, or had it continued no longer than the occasion for it,
this war would never have arisen, — other disturbances might have come
from other causes, but never from this.. But, to preserve this clanship
unbroken, and retain all its members in peaceful repose, the advocates
of “unbroken Union” abruptly refuse to negotiate with the receding party
(who offer compensation for what they must take with them), thereby
finally denying their right to become a separate parley, and pronouncing
the final word that the Union recognizes no two parties who can
negotiate with each other; which is equivalent to saying that the
political Union (or clanship) is more sacred than persons, or property,
or freedom, or any other inalienable human right. Thus completely
destroying the last vestige of union between the parties, and forcing
both into hostile attitudes, and both prepare to destroy each other.
filled with accounts of brutal violence on both sides — villages burning
— men hanging — ferocity let loose in every horrid shape and form. The
heated passions on both sides become more and more ferocious, — a
curious way to promote “Union”! A frenzy of rage sweeps over the land
while I write. The last step of despotism has been taken by both
governments. Freedom of action and speech are annihilated in “the land
of the free and the home of the brave.” Even these written words may
prove the death-warrant of the writer. Nothing but the clamor of war and
the fear of prisons and violent deaths, smother, for the moment, the low
moan from desolated hearths and broken hearts from the depths of the
hell we are in!
In the mean time, where is the “Union”?
and inevitable result of clanship! If the clan or “Union” had never been
formed, or bad it continued no longer than was agreeable to the parties
to it, this war would never have occurred.
is nailed to a tree — absolutely crucified and left, gagged — starving
to death for several days; not for any of his own acts, but for the acts
or theories of his clan or party! Immediately the cry of “revenge” is
heard — not against the particular perpetrators of the horrid deed, but
against the party or clan to which he belongs! — the innocent portions
of whom are more likely to suffer for the crime than the perpetrators of
it. Thus clanship, annihilating all individual responsibility leaves
rapacity and cruelty unrestrained.
number on the enemy’s side. The town of S--- in ashes; N--- is
threatened; the village of B--- in flames within sight, and old men,
children, and women screaming frantically, and running in all
directions!”
father, or husband is found on the field, or amid the ruins of once
peaceful homes. Frenzy and despair take possession of some, and a
desperate spirit of revenge inspires other women who will soon be
mothers; of the children born in the midst of these horrors, many will
be stillborn, others wholly or partly idiots, others with an
uncontrollable hereditary disposition to shed blood — to destroy
whatever or whoever comes in their way. Thenl come more wars, murders,
and violence beyond computation ! What then, is the prospect for the
next generation and their descendants! Let it be observed that, before
displaying such shocking prospects, the preventive has been already
presented in the first chapter. Let us see if the preventive is really
there.
political “Union” (clan), if the other portion had said, according to
the Declaration of Independence, “As the right of any people to alter or
abolish any government is absolute and ‘inalienable,’ of course, you
have the whole of the deciding power in your own hands. We can have no
voice in the matter unless you desire it as counsel. We think it would
be a dangerous and difficult expedient for both parties; but this
opinion we submit only as advice. If you decide on leaving us, we have
some forts, mints, and other communistic property to divide, but we
anticipate no difficulty in regard to that. Each party, or both
together, can call councils of the best-balanced minds to deliberate on
the subject and suggest the best modes of adjustment, and we dare say
that this will not be difficult.”
applied in the right time, have prevented all these horrors and this
destruction?
it would “encourage disintegration and be the ‘inauguration of universal
confusion’?” That the war is “to preserve the nation as a nation and the
‘Union’ unbroken?” These statements, uniformly insisted on, even by the
executive himself, prove decidedly and fully that the war has been
inaugurated and prosecuted merely to preserve clanship, as I have
stated, for nationality is no more or less than clanship, and clanship
is the worst feature of barbarism. I do not accuse any one of
intentional wickedness nor of wantonness or indifference to the horrors
that surround and involve us; on the contrary, I see the whole to be a
lamentable mistake, the unavoidable result of a blind reverence for
precedents, for legal technicalities and formal institutions, instead of
for the deep underlying principles which gave rise to the institutions.
Now look at the results! If we are now in civilization, what is
barbarism ?
as two individuals disintegrated from all party or partial trammels.
regard to the councils of deliberation or reference, and feel happy to
think that the great idea underlying our institutions is not forgotten
or ignored, but that it even instructs us what to do in the greatest and
most difficult trial. But wily do you think that an immediate separation
would be a bad expedient for both of us?”
our interests which may be very difficult to disentangle suddenly. Then
there is your slave system. The right of self-sovereignty in every human
being, which gives you the supreme right to leave us without asking our
leave gives to your slaves the same right to leave you, and also gives
to every man, woman, and child the same supreme right to sympathize with
an 1 assist the distressed or oppressed whereever they are found as the
greatest and holiest mission of life; and this might lead to new
disasters for which we have no preventive or remedy provided. You have
been born under the system, and your habits make you entirely dependent
upon slaves. I do not blame you for the circumstances under which you
were born; I hardly know which of the two classes is most enslaved, or
most to be pitied, slaves or masters.
perfectly unassailable it is the ‘inalienable’ right of self-sovereignty
but it extends farther than you may have contemplated it. It is a full
and complete warrant for any one of your citizens to place himself above
all your legislation, above the whole confederacy, and appeal to the
world for protection: and having asserted the principle in your own
favor, you cannot successfully deny it to others. Properly and fully
understood, it is the great and final solution of all political, and I
may say all strife among men; but it might work disastrously among an
ignorant population, without preparation.
to others, without denying their right to think; and decide for
themselves; but while I assert the right of freedom to all slaves, black
and white, I will exert myself to foresee and prevent, as far as
possible, all unnecessary violence to you from slaves or from any other
source.”
to it, in the ‘Union’ or out of the ‘Union.’”
of probabilities with regard to other individuals as far as I know them.
No other person is in any way pledged to or responsible for anything I
may say or promise.”
within me. The right of self-sovereignty in every individual is my
constitution.”
is in perfect accordance with the spirit of all constitutions. I find
myself in union with you at any rate; on that principle there never can
be secession et all. There can be no secession from the freedom to
secede!”
and at a future time, if you desire it, I will present to you some
thoughts regarding a practical and easy mode of emerging from all
slaveries of all colors.”
violence from any quarter, let me know it immediately: we have ;a force
already drilled and disciplined, whose sole aim it. is to prevent or
restrain all wanton violence towards ANY person or property, without
regard to tribe, clan, class, sect, color, or nation.”
wish to withdraw from what is called the “Union,” what would probably
have been our condition now compared to what it is? Yet no compromise
has been made of human rights, but on the contrary the fullest
vindication of them has been maintained from the beginning to the cud:
but because this course was not pursued, we are committed to unlimited
mutual destruction.
neighbors, families, and the dearest friends are not only disintegrated,
but made enemies to each other from natural and unavoidable differences
of opinion and politics, because there is no central idea, no principle
known round which they can rally and agree, and in no party has FREEDOM
TO DIFFER been practically established as a regulating thought.
Self-sovereignty is the central idea or principle required.
as self-respecting men, but to frankly acknowledge the blunder, and make
all lint’ reparation in our power not inconsistent with tire regulator
itself.
us, but must probe a little farther.
criminal to escape, and expose the innocent of his tribe to retribution.
Six men are hung on one tree for daring to be of the other party, and
those who hung them belonged to the party professing to be contending
for Freedom! Others are forced to expose their lives and die fighting
against the party of their choice! They must do this or be shot by order
of their rulers!
difference of political preferences? Which party is it that forces men,
with “inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness,” to fight against their own wills or be shot? Which party is
it that murders men for taking flown a flag, or preferring one flag to
another? Which party is it that professes to be fighting for Freedom?
civilization! And what a position to place one in who undertakes to
answer them!
contending for Freedom!
new, but that all the powers of both parties should be bestowed in
destroying instead of preserving life, property, and Freedom can be
accounted for only by the blind readiness with which the present
imitates the past, without any reference to the inevitable consequences
that are sure to follow. Which party is it that does not suppress the
freedom of action, of speech, and of the press and punish with
imprisonment or death an honest avowal of an opinion in favour of the
opposite party ?
death, the admission of a single point wherein the opposite party may be
right, as “giving aid and comfort to the enemy”? In other words, which
party is it that does not threaten to punish with death that single item
of justice? Who would ever think of introducing quell monstrous rules if
they were new? But they are found among the “precedents,” the “usages of
governments!” “the laws of war,” “the laws of nations,” and are
therefore blindly followed though they lead the very leaders into the
ditch or over the precipice. This blind repetition of barbarism must be
criticised and stopped, or one continuous round of mutual murder and
destruction will continue to the end of time.
strict logical accordance with the barbarian “laws of war,” which are an
ever-ready excuse for every wild and shocking atrocity that rapacity,
revenge, or wantonness may prompt. The “laws of war,” say these
barbarians, put all the members of a tribe (nation) in hostility with
each other! and when at war we may properly “ do all the harm we can to
our enemies.” Both parties take their texts from the same authorities.
‘The “laws of war,” “military necessity,” the laws of nations, are
constantly in the mouths of both parties as excuses for all their
barbarian acts, and yet, when one commits an atrocity in strict
accordance with these admitted axioms, the other party forthwith talks
of revenge!
less in accordance with these “laws of war ;” and if one individual is
more civilized or humane than the rest of his party, or both parties, he
is not at home in either; on the contrary, for his beautiful humanitary
feelings, for his high sense of honor, justice, and discrimination, he
has two chances of being murdered, where blind, headlong party ferocity
has only one!
illustrated by the case of General Patkul, who was broken on the wheel
by order of Charles XII., of Sweden, under a charge of “treason,” for
attempting, by pacific negotiations, to bring about a cessation of
hostilities between his country and its antagonist. The humanity of
Patkul did not show sufficient loyalty to Charles’s “authority”!
necessities, nor laws of men, that ought to command a moment’s respect
or attention, unless they tend to diminish suffering instead of
increasing it: and true civilization will discard everything, that
prompts or excuses any unnecessary violence to any person or property.
may possibly have led to the shocking ease of crucifixion mentioned;
perhaps it was prompted by the common blunder as a “terror to
evildoers,” perhaps the horrid thought was first suggested to the
perpetrators by the precedent so painfully familiar to all Christendom.
woman only for being of the other party, a fact over which she had no
control, was also crucified. Her feet were spiked to the ground, wide
apart, and she was made to stand by a tree, to which she was bound, and
a slow fire was placed and kept under her till she died in the most
excruciating torture.
or by a continuous, unhesitating copying of the past, what can we do
better than to step up at once above these horrid precedents and
authorities, and interfere to prevent all unnecessary and wanton
violence? This was probably the original design of making laws, as it is
celled, and trial by jury, etc., but they have all failed; for barbarism
and insane violence reign triumphant throughout the misnomer of
civilization.
forming themselves into clans or nations? When the passions or
propensities have possession, the intellect sleeps, and responsibility
being annihilated, there is nothing too horrible to expect. I venture
the assertion that there is but OIIC way to emerge from this otherwise
endless chaos of misery and degradation; that is, directly to bestow all
practicable energies in the direction indicated in the first chapter,
and to solicit the cooperation of all persons, without regard to party,
sect, theories, sex, or nation, to consider in leisure and in calmness
the basis of true civilization.
other insects, and among the crude clans of men, who like ants, bees, or
dried herrings on a stick, have no individual development, but who are
all alike. When the mental eyes they had have been punched out by
barbarian power in the process of stringing them on the stick of
subordination or loyalty: and if no intellectual expansion were
possible, clanship would continue to desolate the earth; but just in
proportion to intellectual expansion, individuality makes its
appearance, and begins to conflict with the dried-herring subordination,
and naturally gives rise to the first steps indisintegration or the
commencement of true civilization!
Take a hundred persons as completely “unitized,” and as destitute of
ideas as dried herrings, and place them within a building having iron
wells three feet thick, and guarded by a thousand men, ideas may find
their way among them that can liberate them from that condition, or
destroy them.
same dish with twenty others, all obstructing each other’s movements,
conceives, perhaps, the idea of a wooden paddle or a pointed stick to
use in the communistic dish — but it’s not “ the fashion “! It is not “
according to precedents”! It is not what “the fathers intended”! But he
may say to himself, “ I am not one of the fathers, — I am another
person. I don’t see why I should not have my way as well as they,
provided I do not put the fathers, nor anybody else, to any
inconvenience.”
to the dried-herring subordination, to Loyalty, and the Hug-ga-boo
chorus, for true civilization has begun. He may be obliged to fly from
his clan or country, but that itself forces upon him the individual dish
— the conveniences of which will not be willingly resigned, and the
example of which might prove as contaminating as roast pig.
expands so far that he sees that a separate sleeping apartment would be
more agreeable to all in a hot climate than sleeping in one nest with
twenty or thirty others, like a litter of pigs; but then this would be “
disintegration,” and might not be permitted by the “majority,” for it is
“isolation” and “selfishness,” and not according to the “precedents” and
“best authorities;” “society has a right to the society of all its
members.” “ Well,” says the savage, “I will not then be a member of any
society — I will be an individual.”
possession of a piece of land disintegrated, individualized from the
communistic domain, has been considered one of the greatest and most
indispensable features of civilization, and so it is. But beyond this,
society has attained little or nothing by the way of adjustment.
accidentally picks up a little shell that is rather new to him, and he
shows it to another savage, who, for the sake of the novelty, offers to
give him for it the beaver which he has just caught, and the exchange is
made; and so, like the progress of roast pig, the second owner of the
shell, when his curiosity its satisfied, gives it to a third person for
a tortoise-shell. A ship arrives on the coast in search of
tortoise-shells, and gives this savage beads, nails, and a hatchet for
his shell. Immediately every savage abandons his hunting of beavers and
every other pursuit for the hunting of tortoises; in the course of which
they find more of the little shells, and give them the name of
“cowries.” One “cowry” once having purchased a beaver, this “precedent”
is accepted as “authority “ for the “market-price” of a beaver; so as
many “cowries” as each finds, so many beavers he considers himself
“worth,” and, by degrees, as this “roast pig” progresses, these
“cowries” are given and received for ivory, fish, etc., and become a
circulating medium, or money. But, in making these exchanges no
reference whatever is had to the time or trouble in procuring either the
“cowries” or the articles exchanged for them; it being altogether a
matter of accident, no calculations can be made. There is no basis for
calculation; but the “cowries” prove very convenient; for they enable
each one to confine his attention and preparations to one particular
pursuit, and to exchange its products for all the things he needs,
instead of being obliged to do everything for himself to disadvantage.
By only catching Beavers and giving them for “cowries,” he can procure
fish, tortoise-shells, ivory, muskrats, moccasins, mats, spears, etc.,
which is an immense saving of time and trouble to him. Others, seeing
this, imitate his example, and as the accumulation of “cowries” affords
a prospect of everything needed, the pursuit and accumulation of
“cowries” becomes the rage of all; shell every savage abandons his
beaver-hunting, or his fishing, his musk-rat traps, etc., and all rush
to the hunt for “cowries.” They get a large supply, but there is nothing
to buy with them! There are no fish caught, no muskrats, no mats made,
no ivory found, no mellons raised. The ship has carried away all the
tortoise-shells, and the “cowries” are comparatively worthless!
“cowries,” had taken advantage of it and “bought up” all the fish,
musk-rats, ivory, mats, spears, nails, etc., against their return. He
now has all in his own power, for “whoever feeds can govern,” and he
demands the whole of their cowries for the few supplies that they are
obliged to have to supply present necessities; and the population give
him all the cowries they have gathered alone, the whole coast for
months, in exchange for a few necessaries which they could have made for
themselves in as many hours. They feel that they are wronged, but do not
see where the wrong is.
for revenge, and no one being disposed to help him, they and all their
contents are consumed — “cowries” and all, and he is reduced to beggary;
but no one relieves him. The cowries have all been collected for miles
along the beach and he can get none: he is not qualified to make mats,
nor spears, nor nails, nor to catch beavers, and he wanders about a
miserable and despised savage, having made himself miserable by
overreaching his fellow-savages.
this day of the Christian era, 1862, unless it is in substituting little
bits of copper, or other comparatively worthless metals with the
semblance of a man’s head or some animal upon them, instead of the
“cowries,” as a circulating medium.
were not the means of defrauding as well as of deluding the public,
would be an improvement upon metals, as being more convenient of
carriage, and costing less trouble in many ways; but, being, as they
are, the means of innumerable and constant frauds and delusion, they are
barbarian money barbarized. All the crudity in principle remains, with
intentional frauds added.
costs the one who first obtains or produces it, but whoever stumbles in
his rambles upon a lump of any of these metals, has, forthwith,
according to the size of the lump, a demand upon every product and
service under the sun!
quantity of these metals, which should be given in exchange for any
service or commodity, the whole is left to accident, or else to some,
like the cunning savage, to take advantage of the necessities of others,
and a general scramble ensues to get the advantage or to escape being
overreached. In this general strife, those with the longest purses, or
the most cunning, or who are most unscrupulous and false, prevail. Those
who have few or no cowries and the less crafty are trodden under foot,
and ground to powder and what is called society has blundered on into a
universal scramble for the largest possible accumulation of “ cowry “
metals, as offering the best among poor chances of security against the
general rapacity.175. In this melee the instinct of self-preservation in
each one is almost wholly bent On keeping uppermost, instead of being
crushed below. Political power and money are the principal means of
attaining ends, and these are therefore pursued with unscrupulous
desperate ration.
have less,, till those with less have none to take. Then woe to those
who are found in such ranks. Nobody will be found there who can avoid
it. Driven to work for whatever money-holders choose to give, they take
the pittance rather shall starve, and starve when they cannot get the
work or the pittance. Then who that can avoid it will belong to the
ranks of starved, ragged, abused, insulted labor? Whoever can avoid it
will do so, and the burdens fall upon the weak who have no means of
escape.
that civilization has not yet proceeded far enough to discover what
would be a proper, legitimate, equitable compensation or price even for
a barrel of flour!
intensified between the few who have monopolized money and the governing
or political power. ‘The mass become mere ciphers to be placed by the
sides of these figures, only to increase their magnitude and power in
their contests with each other. The right of might is the only umpire
known or acknowledged, and conquest becomes the object of all.
self-preservation, who wonders at the miser? Who wonders at the borders
of black or white slaves? Who wonders at burglary, highway robbery,
thefts, frauds, bribery, and corruption in office? or at the general
distrust of man in his kind? or at the extremes of waste and walls that
are so often found face to face?
wire-workers in a mock funeral of a bribed lawyer, — bribed to uphold a
policy that has brought this horrid war upon us, although at the time of
this hypocritical parade multitudes of boys and girls — some of them of
marriageable age — in rags and tatters, not half clad, shivering with
cold, were swooping away the snowy mud that the hypocrites might pass
comfortably, and occasionally, with an imploring look, holding out their
hands with, “Please, sir, give me a penny to get something to eat.” — I
can proceed no further. Any one can extend the picture for himself to
any magnitude by consulting any of the newspapers of the day.
money.
the first chapter; but until a principle is found and accepted which can
harmoniously regulate compensation for labor (or regulate prices), and
establish an equilibrium of the money power, we can hardly assert that
civilization has fairly commenced.
Analogous to this is the often-noticed fact that things with which we
are most familiar attract the least attention
of greater magnitude than an other that can occupy the mind of this
generation ; and yet, children are the first to comprehend it! The
principal obstacle to the appreciation of it is its extreme simplicity!
increasing in blind ferocity every hour, and which threatens to desolate
every hearth in it, and that other countries are in continuous
convulsions, -all from INJUSTICE TOWARDS LABOR; and when we reflect that
the whole of what is called civilization rests upon labor, and that it
is everywhere prostrate — starving — groaning, and imploringly lifting
Up its hands in silent agony for help; that it has no longer the
strength to give voice to its sufferings, and that as it dies
civilization dies with it ; and that this frightful con. dition is the
natural and inevitable result, not so much of de. liberate design as for
want of the means of determining what would constitute justice towards
labor, and how to apply a remedy, we catch a glimpse, and only a
glimpse, of the immense magnitude of the subject before us.
other principle or formula for the regulation of prices than that 11 the
price of a thing should be what it will bring” or that the price should
be measured and limited by the demand, or the necessities of the
receiver. Therefore John Al. Searing (in a case on trial by the U. S.
Government against another party for extortion against itself ), when
questioned about price, replied, 11 If I thought the Government wanted
the property and must have it, and could not possibly do without it, if
I had given only fifteen dollars for it, I would ask two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars for it, or as much more as I thought I could get.
I would take advantage of the necessities of the Government just as I
would of the necessities of a private individual in any business
transaction.”
simply that it demands children, or childlike minds that have never
become contaminated by 11 trade,” to understand its inherent iniquity.
It is a simple, clear, frank exhibition of the germ of the Cannibalism
which underlies all the world’s iniquity and confusion. It is said that
Mr. Searing lost his popularity by his frankness; there is, therefore,
some ground to suppose that civilization has not lost all power to
blush, but that when it is generally perceived that this hideous
principle is the root of all public evils, and that rectification is
possible, it will, from the mere instinct of self-preservation, pursue
its interests in a new direction.
humble life, and all unconsciously because so naturally.
190.If a traveller, in a hot day, stop at a farmhouse for a drink of
water, he generally gets it without any thought of price. Why ? Because
it costs nothing, or the cost is immaterial. If the water was brought
from a great distance, over difficult passes, there might be a price set
upon it which every One would sanction, if that price was governed by
its Cost, or the labor of procuring and delivering it.
191.If the traveller asked for wine, he would expect to pay for it,
because it. costs more than water; and if this cost was made the limit
of its price, all would seem just and harmonious. But if the farmer,
when asked for water, were to endeavor to find out how thirsty the
traveller was, and how much money he could induce him to pay for the
water rather than not get a drink, and then charge him accordingly, this
price would be 11 what it would bring; “ and if the farmer were to
monopolize all the water in the neighborhood, or fill up or conceal some
of the springs, and cut off all access to water except through him, and
then charge a fainting traveller a thousand dollars for a drink to save
his life, he would be carrying out the rule that 11 the price of a thing
is what it will bring,” which is the motto and spirit of all the
principal business of the world! It is limiting price by the worth or
value to the receiver instead of the COST to the giver.
give rise to any transaction in the case: but to make this value or
worth the measure of its price, constitutes the glaring iniquity of the
case, and would class the farmer among the wreckers on the coast of
Norway, who first sink rocks in order to wreck. vessels, and then demand
of the crews all their cargoes and vessels for saving their lives! And
it would class him with flour-dealers and every other huckster of
provisions or clothing, with bankers and all other moneymongers and
systematic speculators, from John M. Searing to the huckster of candies
and apples on the sidewalks; they all act on the same principle. The
only difference between them is that the wrecker must know that he ought
to be shot, while the others may suppose that they are following a very
11 legitimate business “!
newspapers in the 11 prices current.” The following is a sample:--
accordingly, since yesterday at twelve o’clock, 25 cts. per barrel. No
change in COFFEE since our last. SUGAR raised on Thursday 1–2 cent in
consequence of news received of short crops; but later arrivals
contradicted the report, and prices fell again. MOLASSES in demand, and
holders not anxious to sell. PORK — little in market, and prices rising.
BACON — Plenty and dull ; fell since our last from 15 to 13 cts. COTTON
— All in few hands, bought up on speculation.” Again, from a newspaper
nearest at hand: —
buoyant. The agents of British houses here assert that instead of
selling their stocks, the English will take, advantage of our panic to
buy more. This stimulates speculators to buy New York Central, Erie,
Illinois Central, and other stocks which are held abroad, and at one
time to-day all these stocks were considerably higher.......The advance
in Cotton was based on the probability of a reduction in the supply,”
etc.
consideration : they show that worth or value to the receiver, rather
than COSTS to the producer and vender, is made the basis and measure of
exchangeable price. They show a systematic watchfulness of the
fluctuations of this value, and that the price is set, accordingly, up
to the last point the receiver can bear ; and we see the degrees of
their wants or necessities as closely calculated as the pulsations of
the victims of torture, where the physician stands to examine and report
how much the victim can bear and live ; and the part which the physician
acts in the one case, the newspapers act in the other.
its supply; and he is the most successful speculator who can create the
most distress and extort the most from it. This is CIVILIZED
CANNIBALISM.
chance of the poor is to suffer, and hence the general scramble to avoid
unpaid labor, and to become rich at any cost; and what is called 41
society 11 resembles a large basket of slimy worms, each one wriggling
and struggling to get at the top rather than to be crushed at the
bottom.
and each struggler would find the natural level and his appropriate
sphere of life.
and exact sense — Signifying the endurance of whatever is distkgreeable.
is Cost. To have our time or attention taken up against our preferences
— to make a sacrifice of any kind — a feeling of mortification — painful
suspense — fear — suffering or enduring anything against our
inclination, is here considered COST.
hours’ labor, then thirty hours of any other labor, whether with the
hands or the mind, which was equally painful, disagreeable, or repugnant
(if Wanted by the other parties), would constitute an equitable and
legitimate price for the flour.
of his life : and if the price of a thing should be what it will bring,
then a vender might demand of the passengers of a wrecked vessel, the
whole of their future lives in servitude, as the proper price of the
bread that saved their lives! But any one who should make such a demand
would be looked upon as insane — a Cannibal; and one simultaneous voice
would denounce the outrageous injustice, and Would cry aloud for
retribution. Why ? What is it that constitutes the cannibalism in this
case ? Is it not measuring the price of the bread according to its value
instead of its cost, or setting a price upon the “thing” according to 11
what it would bring “ ?
hour’s labor upon that given. to each passenger, then one hour’s labor
from each, Which was equally repugnant, would constitute the just
compensation for the bread.
labor bestowed on the minerals in converting them into metals, the costs
(either physical or mental) endured by the workmen in constructing the
watch, the costs in the wear of tools, rent, firewood, insurance, taxes,
clerkship, superintendence, and various other contingent expenses of its
manufacture, together with the labor and other costs of its transmission
to the one who uses it. In some of these departments, the labor is more
disagreeable or more deleterious to health than in others, and therefore
should be higher paid; but all these items, or more, constitute the Cost
of the watch.
the metals or minerals employed; upon the natural principles of its
mechanism; upon the uses to which it is applied, and upon the fancy and
wants of the purchaser, and would be different with every different
purchaser, and would change every day in the hands of the owner, and
with every different use to which he applied it. Now who will undertake
to set a price upon the Value of the watch ? The Cost we can measure and
estimate satisfactorily, but who can determine the value of copper and
zinc ore? or who has any right to set any price upon them, or any other
natural wealth, before he has bestowed any labor upon it? Who has any
right to charge for the principles of mechanism, except for his labor in
applying them? Who has the capacity to measure, and who has any right to
set a price according to this value of the watch? The attempt is as
ridiculous as the principle is iniquitous.
complicated transactions. The value of a thing is no more fit to measure
its price than a floating log is fit for a boundary of a piece of land.
induce any purchase at all; but Cost, not value, should set the limit of
the price.
information may be of great value to the occupants, but to make this a
ground of proportional price, or of an indefinite obligation, would be
setting a price according to the “worth of a thing.”
210.The performance of a piece of music in which the performer feels
pleasure but no pain, and which is attended with no contingent cost, has
no legitimate ground of price, although it may be of great value to all
within hearing.
but to make this value a ground of price, or of an indefinite
obligation, is getting what the “thing will bring,” and contaminating
one of the most holy departments of human intercourse.
security, his personal liberty, or his life. The lawyer who undertakes
his case may demand ten, twenty, fifty, five hundred, or five thousand
dollars, for a few hours’ attendance on the case. This price would be
based chiefly on the value of his services to his client. Now there is
nothing in this statement that sounds wrong, because our cars are
familiarized with wrong. But let us analyze it. The Costs to the lawyer
might be twenty hours’ labor in attendance at court, which, if
repugnant, would entitle him to compensation; and allowing a portion for
his apprenticeship, say twenty-two hours in all, with all contingent
expenses, would constitute a legitimate, a just ground of price; but the
very next step beyond this rests on value, and is the first stop in
Cannibalism.
setting a price upon its future value to the owner; lie only considers
how long it will take him, how hard the ground is, what will be the
weather to which he will be exposed, what will be the wear of the teams,
tools, clothes, etc.; but in all these items he considers nothing but
the different items of cost to himself.
“what they will bring; ‘I and these rents are based chiefly on the value
of the use of the property, according to the necessities of the
occupants, instead of the costs to the owners, which consist of natural
decay, insurance, taxes, and the labor of letting the property,
collecting rents, etc.
twenty days’ labor for the attendance of an hour, and asks, in excuse,
if the sick man would not prefer to pay this price rather than submit to
continuous disease or death. This, again, is basing a price upon an
assumed value of his attendance instead of its Cost. It is common to
plead the 11 skill” required to prescribe for the sick.. Without waiting
to determine how much skill might be employed in the case, it may be
sufficient to show that skill or talents which result from labor of body
or mind, whether employed in cutting wood or cutting off a leg or an
arm, all contingencies considered, so far as they cost the pos. sessor,
are a legitimate ground of estimate and of price; but Skill or talents
which cost nothing are natural wealth, and should be accessible (if at
all), like water in our neighbor’s brook, without price.
author whatever he “can get,” and only what he can get, for his
production: and he may get a thousand times paid, or not a thousandth
part paid. His proper compensation would be an equivalent for the costs
of his physical or mental labor added to that of his materials, the
expenses of experiments, investigations, and other contingencies.
surrounding improvements, made by others, increase its value, and it is
then sold “accordingly,” for five, ten, or a hundred times its original
price; yet this is only “what it will bring;” but, from this operation
of civilized cannibalism whole families live from generation to
generation, in idleness and luxury, upon the labor of the surrounding
people, who must have the land at any price. This is one form of
slavery. Instead of this, the prime cost of land, the taxes, and other
contingent expenses of surveying, etc., together with the labor of
making contracts, would constitute the true basis for the price of land
purchased for sale. If I purchase a lot for my own use, and you want it,
I may properly consider what would compensate me for the sacrifice I
should make, or the cost of parting with it; but this is a very
different thing from purchasing it on purpose to part with it, and when
no such sacrifice is made.
its advantages go chiefly to its owners. If these products were priced
by the wear of the machinery, its attendance, and other contingent items
of cost, the owners would not be interested in grinding down the wages
of its attendants; and in proportion as it threw the working classes out
of employment, it would work for them. Here is the long-sought solution
of the antagonism between machinery and manual labor!
amount of forty thousand dollars. On their arrival he sells them for 11
what they will bring.” Perhaps they “bring” forty-five thousand, perhaps
seventy thousand. If sixty thousand, then, allowing say two thousand for
costs of importation and sale, he obtains eightteen thousand dollars for
perhaps eight or ten hours’ labor or thought in merchandising!
of the hardest working men, or seventy-two thousand times an equivalent
from women who work for twenty-five cents a day, or a hundred and
forty-four thousand times an equivalent from children at twelve cents a
day!
the end of the year he receives back the ten thousand lent, and six
hundred dollars more! For what? Because it was of that or more value to
the borrower. For the same reason, why not charge a thousand dollars for
a box of pills, because they save the life of the patient ?
the capitalist can keep three of the hardest working men constantly
drudging for him a whole year or he could command the constant watchful
and slavish attendance and dependence and labor of eight destitute women
for a whole year, or he could enslave sixteen destitute children for a
whole year, for five or six hours of his labor in lending money. Or for
this five or six hours’ (of not the hardest) labor, he would obtain at
the rate of about a hundred dollars per hour, or about one thousand six
hundred times an equivalent from the hardest working men, or about four
thousand five hundred times an equivalent from the hardest working
women, or nine thousand five hundred times an equivalent from suffering
and defenceless children!
in lending me a hundred, then not six per cent., but twenty dollars, or
twenty per cent., together with pay for your labor, would be your proper
compensation.
equivalent, while another, following the same principle, does not get a
thousandth part paid, while all are involved in a degrading scramble to
avoid the unpaid and more repugnant pursuits, and to crowd into the more
profitable and less repugnant ; and the main business of life is to
conduct this warfare to the best advantage, although the most successful
are never secure from being victimized, upon the same principle by which
they succeeded! Laws and governments are professedly invented to remedy
the insecurity thus produced, but they confirm the very principle that
produces it, and add all their own elements of confusion and violence to
the general anarchy.
disturbing preference for one pursuit rather than another; the Strife
would be at an end — the supply in all departments would be in
proportion to the demand -no disturbing fluctuations in prices would
ever occur — wars for the profits of trade would be at an end -the
poorest would be abundantly richtemptations to frauds and encroachments
of all kinds would cease, and laws and governments for the 11 protection
of person and property” would be unnecessary, and their desolating
career might be brought to a close! This simple justice (cost — the
limit of price) would make it necessary for every one to earn as much as
he consumed, and -would irresistibly abolish every form of slavery under
the sun, even the most degrading of all -the slavery of holding and
depending on slaves!
one of the effects of insecurity of condition, would naturally die away
when the future should repose on a publicly approved principle which
should ensure an abundance to every one at less cost than that of taking
care of large accumulations. In other words, the primary object of large
accumulations of property is for future security. If the future is
secured without it, no such accumulations would be thought worthy of
pursuit.
reduce cost, — to lighten each other’s burdens ! Then, every man’s hand
acts with instead of “against every man,” and HUMAN INTERESTS ARE
HARMONIZED!
behold your most fatal error! You have suffered Value instead of Cost to
become the measure of price in all the business of the world! Hence the
ruinous rage of competition, and the destructive fluctuations in
business, and the remote origin and principal cause of the wars of
nations and of individual antagonisms! Hence, also, the insecurity in
all conditions of life, and the universal scramble for unlimited
accumulations of property, as the highest attainable good! ‘Hence, too,
the teaching and perpetuation of ignorance for the sake of profit, and
all the degradation and crime and the horrors of punishments arising
from these causes! Behold, also, the ORIGIN OF RICH AND POOR! — The
deep- seated germ of speculation, at once the curse of individuals and
of nations!The diabolical charm that works -unseen even by those who use
it!- The fatal pit-fall of the working classes!The people’s mistake! —
The legislative fraud! -The political blunder!--The hereditary taint of
Barbarism — The subtle and all-pervading poison of civilization!
drawn for many minds, but they will be more elaborately considered in
the following pages.
should be.
basis of hour for hour in all pursuits, without any element of
measurement but that of time, according to a suggestion believed to have
originated in England. It soon appeared, however, that the more pleasant
pursuits would be overcrowded by competitors who would ruin each other,
while the equally necessary professions were shunned, and a large
portion of wants would be left unsupplied. For instance, a steam saw-
mill was to be kept running night and day in the winter time. The night
tour was a great deal more disagreeable or uncomfortable than the day
tour. All hands preferred the day tour at the same price. It was
arranged so that the compensation for ten hours at night would equal
that for fourteen hours of the daytime. Here was one recognition of the
element of repugnance or cost as the necessary adjusting power.
matter of invention and the most ingenious inventor would probably
succeed best; but thus far, it has been effected thus : —
is selected as a Unit by which to compare and measure all other labors,
as we now measure them by dollars and cents. For instance, after
ascertaining how many pounds of corn is the average product of an hour’s
labor, say it is ten pounds, then any labor, which the performer of it
considers as costly as corn-raising, would be rated at ten pounds per
hour. If only half as costly, only five pounds, etc.
set, which they are likely to do after investigation, for it is not
exactness so much as it is permanence that we want; because, this
fixedness once attained, security begins.
complete all our exchanges on the spot, and therefore, we need something
that represents these products, which we can carry about us, and give
and receive, and which will procure all these things when we need them.
to the labor costs in a hundred pounds of corn, and I give the shoemaker
my note for carpenter work equivalent also to a hundred pounds.
ten hours of the shoemaker. This would give him ten pounds and me twelve
and a half pounds per hour.
exchanged with every other, each issuing notes representing his or her
labor, and these notes, passing from hand to hand before they are
redeemed, would constitute a circulating medium based on REALITIES--on
the bone and muscle, on the manual and mental capacities, the property
and property-producing powers of the whole of the people (the soundest
of all foundations) ! -a money of the only kind that ever ought to have
been issued!
extraordinary that they make us doubt our own reason, and, if stated,
might subject us to the imputation of insanity. We ask, therefore, the
judgment of others.
usefulness) become a BANKER, and thus equalize money ?
a day, and could there be any inducement to spend the whole day in
contriving uncertain means to swindle or rob the products of labor from
their proper owners ? If not, then would not this principle and this
money peaceably abolish every system of fraud and slavery under the sun?
complete the true and only practical “balance of power,” and solve the
great problem that convulses and desolates the world ?
operation between the individual and the public interests, so much
desired and striven for, -seems so self-evident, that to attempt
illustrations may seem to some minds like the attempts to illustrate the
shining of the sun; but at the risk of obscuring the subject, I Will
furnish a few historical facts.
that, in order to put the labor of the merchant fairly against the labor
of his customers, his compensation must be separated, disintegrated from
the price of the goods. This Was done; and his labor in -waiting on each
customer was measured by the time employed which was Shown by a clock
before the eyes of both parties.
publicly known percentage, sufficient to pay all contingent expenses,
and every possible evidence was furnished to the customers to prove that
they paid only an equivalent in. their own labor for the labor of the
keeper of the store.
them an interest in the principle itself, and another kind of interest
which all could feel; namely, to take up as little of the keeper’s time
as possible, and to volunteer to roll barrels, move boxes, fold cloth,
etc., to abridge the labor to be paid for. In common business, the price
not being limited by costs, there are no such coinciding or co-operating
interests.
Dot to take up the time of the keeper in 11 shopping.” The customers
were not at all troublesome in this respect. The goods were so arranged
that they could see the prices and qualities, and the prices being
positively fixed by a principle which they approved, the buyer and
seller were no longer at war!
a barrel of your mackerel I know they are eight dollars there is the
money and a cent for your time of putting it into the drawer I can get
it into the wagon you needn’t come out good-by.” The profit or
compensation for selling that barrel of mackerel was one cent! Is it
wonderful that such a principle should find co-operators?
sugar — nine hogsheads — for sale at H----‘s auction store, cheap!”
store in particular ? He felt deeply interested in its principle for the
general good, and he was slightly interested as one of the consumers of
the sugar, which lie knew lie would get at cost, whatever the
“market-price” might be. He was interested morally and pecuniarily to
co-operate for the result, which benefited all the other customers to
the sugar as well as himself.
of Equivalents neutralizes the antagonism of interests, and produces
that harmony or co-operation of interests that has always been the
greatest consideration for society, and without which we must look in
vain for true civilization; but with which, it can reach a higher plane
than many minds are now prepared to understand.
the keeper before the store commenced) to offer to become security for
him in the United States Bank. Here was Co-operation without a word of
pledge or promise; or, Co-operation and freedom harmonized! No
organization (as that word is commonly understood) of any kind was
necessary; but on the contrary any proposition of the kind would only
have hindered, and perhaps prevented, co-operation, for both of these
gentlemen belonged to churches which they could not well disregard in
forming new connections, If universal principles move us to our
satisfaction, we need no other connections than such as naturally grow
out of those principles.
have a use for at present. Perhaps you would like to use it in
‘purchasing to the best advantage.” What was his motive?
Harmony, 1842, 111 had resolved that I never would credit another man
with a dollar’sworth of goods; but as you seem to be doing the safest
business of any man in the world, if you want more goods than you can
pay for at once, take them, and pay for them when they are sold.” The
keeper did take seven hundred dollars’ worth, and continued to do SO.
What was this merchant’s motive? You may suppose that it was solely to
get a quick market for his goods. It is very well if this motive also
co-operates with a great beneficent revolution; but he had said, with
much feeling and emphasis, in a conversation on the subject, 11 If such
principles as those could be generally introduced, I would give
ninety-nine dollars in every hundred I possess! “ and he was reputed to
be very rich.
frankly offered to assist with his capital, but the keeper did not Wish
to undertake the management of any larger business than he already bad.
What was this gentleman’s motive? He had retired from business, and did
not want to accumulate more money. While all these gentlemen were co-
operating from their own private motives, they put it in the power of
the keeper to supply hundreds who co-operated from various motives, the
whole being moved and regulated by a principle, and not by any formal
organization or Clanship whatever.
shall do so, if conditions allow of it. To see it for our interest and
to install the conditions, then, is what we need, but to make an effort
to obtain co- operation by any other stimulus is vain, wasted labor. But
what do we mean by our interests? Do we mean the money we can make or
get at the present moment, disregarding the sacrifice of all future
opportunities? or do we mean the most money we can make now and in the
future taken together? or do we mean that it is for our interest to have
conditions fit for ourselves and human nature generally to live in ?
Different people will act from all these different motives, and all
these motives, and various others, brought multitudes to Co-operate in
those stores, showing that there was no need of any conformity of motive
to ensure cooperation. But any such demand would have driven the
customers away; while freedom to differ made them feel free to come! But
what was of still greater importance, this diversity of motive and
character prevented clanship from taking root and growing up.
where there is not compensation in some form, — either in similar
sacrifices being made on occasion by the benefited party, or
compensation in ‘the pleasure derived from promoting good and great
objects. Uncompensated sacrifices would contradict the instinct of self-
preservation, and would not long continue.
expenses, and the keeper had given out word that this might be used (if
wellSecured) for general purposes without interest. A cooperator
introduced a stranger (a friend of his), saying, 11 You tell us that you
have on hand a surplus fund. accumulated beyond expenses, which you
propose to use or have used in various ways, for the benefit of the
dealers here who have thus overpaid the Equitable demand upon them ; and
that all you require is that it should be kept safe. and available when
you may be obliged to call on it to sustain losses. Therefore, if You
will lend to my friend here thirteen dollars, I will guarantee that it
shall be returned in two weeks.”
stranger returned, and laying down the money said, that, as it had saved
him and his family from so much loss and distress, he wished to
compensate the keeper in proportion to the benefits they had received.
11 And now,” added he, 11 1 am ready to pay you any premium you may
choose to ask.”
done here,” said the keeper.
feel myself absolved from obligations to you at any price. Take whatever
you please, I shall not question it.”
operations of the new principles as applied to lending money. The
compensation or interest has no reference to the benefit conferred upon
the borrower, but it is based on, and limited by, the costs to the
lender. I employed about five minutes in lending you the money; I shall
employ about five more in receiving it back again. It was secured and
there was no risk or loss. I have not been obliged to borrow money in
its place; you have Only to compensate me for my labor ! If you could
give me an equivalent in your own labor, this would make all right; but
as you cannot, I will receive ten cents instead.”
The money has saved me and my family from the mortification of being
turned into the street, and having our furniture sold for rent. I am a
stranger here, disappointed in my expectations of business, which
brought me from Philadelphia. Pay what I may to you, I can never feel
absolved from the greatest obligations.”
ten cents. Don’t you think I might be satisfied with sixty cents per
hour for my labor in lending money, when the hardest working men get
only fifty cents for working a whole day at the most disagreeable labor,
and get abused and insulted besides for being obliged to do it?”
money by being paid only for the labor of it, without taking any
advantage of the necessities of the borrower?
hour for my labor, as that theworld should have gone on for so many
centuries in Setting the prices of things according to the neccessities
of the receivers? This principle followed out in your case would have
sustained me in asking you as much for the use of the thirteen dollars
(which it cost me no sacrifice to lend) as you could be induced to give,
rather than have your family turned out into the street, and your
furniture sacrificed by the constable; which might have been as much as
you could have earned in years of anxiety and labor! This would have
left you little to choose between absolute ruin and borrowing thirteen
dollars, -little to choose between the prison, starvation, and the
usurer. No wonder that men have looked on each other as natural enemies,
seeing that, whether they turn to one or another, the result is nearly
the same. The landlord gets all he can from your necessities. If you
turn to the usurer for relief, lie devours you on the same principle.
them will even tell you that the great law is for the big fish to eat up
the little ones, never suspecting anything wrong in their ethics till
they happen to be the little ones ! The fact is that they know nothing,
the world knows nothing worth knowing, on these subjects; principally
for the reason that their starting--points have been wrong,
consequently, all their conclusions are wrong. They have started with
saying that the price of a thing should be what it will bring. It is
equivalent to saying that it is right and just to demand a price for a
thing proportioned to the distress of the receiver of it. This is the
root of all the cannibalism of civilization, and men fall to eating each
other; but, as no one lilies to be eaten, they agree to protect each
other against the operation of their own principles and daily practices,
and form a combination called a State, for the purpose; -the multitude
cannot conduct the business of a State, but they set apart a few to see
to the protection of all, and they protect all as we protect chickens,
that we may eat them without the trouble of catching them.
correct thought on the subject, and never will be till we begin right.
The beginning of correct thought for justice, peace, security, and
successful society is, that the price of what you receive from me should
be limited, not by its value to you, but by the trouble or sacrifice it
has cost me. When we begin to think from this starting- point, we see
that the all-pervading viciousness of trade, and dire confusion and
distress that everywhere prevails, have originated, not in our primary
nature, as has been so extensively thought and taught, but in this
subtle and undetected error in one of the starting-points of our
intercourse with each other. That this being corrected, the cannibalism
ceases;-the demand for ‘protection ceases along with it, and we begin to
emerge from darkness and confusion into light, order, and repose.’ ”
what — what to say.” Here the gentleman became too much affected to
speak distinctly, but in a low and very tremulous tone he very
respectfully took his leave.
wherever he may have been, though not belonging to any formal
organization or clan, in the spread and strengthening of the principle
of Equivalents, so far as he understood and felt its practical bearings?
and secure all the desired cooperation without clanship, and neutralize
all antagonism of interests, and give to all exertion its just reward,
the greatest of all human problems is solved by it.
receive the labor of his customers in exchange for his own. They could
not pay iron work, mason work, doctor’s work, washing, sewing, etc., on
the spot in the store, and, therefore, for these kinds of labor they
gave their notes, payable on demand, which the keeper issued out again
to shoe. makers, tailors, woodsawyers, etc., and he had at one time, the
notes of five different physicians, promising a certain number of hours
of their services to the holders of the notes, and these notes passed
out to washerwomen, seamstresses, draymen, woodsawyers, carpenters,
masons, etc., any of whom could go to the physicians and get their
services for these notes, which had cost them only equivalents in their
own labor; and though the washerwoman paid, perhaps, not more than a
hundredth part as much labor as the doctor’s services had generally cost
her, yet the physicians were content and pleased with the operation.
Some customers could bring articles to the store which were in demand,
the labor in which had been previously ascertained and settled, before
the articles were brought. The keeper took these, and gave either some
other articles which 11 cost “ the same amount of labor (deducting the
time of delivery), or he gave notes of other professions, or his own
notes, payable in merchandising; and these notes for merchandising would
circalate among all the customers of the store; and as nearly everybody
within reach wished to be a customer, they were ready to take the notes
for anything they had or could do, and the keeper could have issued any
amount of them; and here is a danger to be guarded against. All is made
safe by each one using such notes as he cannot make himself, and the
printer or maker of them keeping an account of all the blanks issued to
each person; and this amount is stated on the note itself, so that the
receiver of it may know what amount the signer of it has issued,-the
notes all having the printer’s address upon them. If any doubt arises,
the public can resort to the printer, who can tell at once what quantity
of blank notes have been issued to any person.
money was simply what is required of it, namely, a circulating medium.
As soon as it becomes capital to lay up, — it being in a close, compact,
portable form, — it is easily stolen and carried beyond recovery! It is
useless to expect improvement in the morals of public functionaries
while they possess power and can be tempted to defraud the public
Swartwout only established a fashion which has raged more and more ever
since his treachery down to this present writing. To make such frauds
impossible, as well as to secure many other great ends, when capital is
to be laid by, it should consist of something as nearly imperishable as
possible; something intrinsically valuable, which value can never become
neutralized, nor superseded. It should be something the source of which
cannot be monopolized, and which, therefore, can never be raised in
price beyond compensation for the labor bestowed upon it; and if made
the basis of a circulating medium, it should at all times be within
reach of the public eye, subject at all times to public inspection and
estimate, without danger of its being stolen. Iron is a commodity
answering all these demands.
legislators of continuous ages — should so long have admitted the
cannibal principle as the basis of their operations, is a striking proof
of the astonishing docility with which the human race receive traditions
unquestioned, and follow precedents and self-erected authorities
unexamined; and it exposes a weakness that lowers our respect for
existing customs, and gives to the careful student of human affairs a
courage and strength equal to the demands for them: but what a field it
furnishes for the reckless and unscrupulous! What confusion this ready
credulity and conformity bring upon all!
law supersedes all other laws.” If this is true at all, it is true in a
sense not understood by readers in general. It is true only in the sense
that military force is the last and final appeal, or the absolute
government: but the mere opinions, or rules, or statutes of men are not
laws at all. All that were ever constructed in the world, and all the
military power in the world concentrated against one individual, could
not for a moment overcome or 11 supersede 11 the law of self-
preservation in that individual while he retained life. It is this
primitive or Divine law which rises above and 11 supersedes all other
laws.”
the members of each nation enemies to each other. This is not only
inhuman but false. There are persons belonging to different nations,
thanks to simple common sense, that can never be made enemies to each
other; but, to remain friends, say the newspapers, is 11 treason.” Thus
the newspapers destroy all respect for themselves from any whose respect
is worth having.
freedom of speech we want now is the speech for freedom.” I ask whose
speech for freedom is it that is wanted just now; is it yours or mine ?
One paper having spoken, others of the same party or Clan copy; the clan
repeat and join in the chorus, and confusion follows; and where
confusion abounds the ignorant are noisy, the prudent are silent, and
impostors triumph.
particular consideration. While some assert that it is the regulator of
trade, others may ask where or when trade was ever regulated!
Competition in trade, manufactures, and in every other pecuniary
department, grinds the weaker parties to powder, while those who can
move at all are in constant warfare and struggle with each other, in
which the longest purses are sure to prevail; all others must yield, and
what is called society, promises, even by pecuniary competition alone,
to become divided into only two classes — capitalists and criminals; and
the capitalist with the longest purse of 11 cowries 11 will be master of
all at last, only to be ruined at last.
for money, offered a lot of shoes for six cents less per pair than they
had usually been sold for. But as the keeper’s compensation was entirely
separated from the prices of the goods, and the goods sold at 11 costs,”
he could not put this extra six cents into his own pocket without
violating the very principle upon which he preferred to act, and,
therefore, had no interest in getting the shoes cheaper than usual, as
long as his customers were satisfied with the prices. He therefore re
paid the full usual price to the shoemaker, who, in this case, got three
dollars more than he expected, at the very time that he needed money
most. There was no contest or competition between buyer and seller here
to reduce the price below what the customers were willing to pay. And
again, had the shoes been of poor quality, such as to cheat and
disappoint the customers, there was no temptation to purchase them at
any price, for let the price be whatever it might, they were to be sold
at cost. Competition could not act to reduce the price of the shoes, and
grind down this shoemaker or his competitors, nor tempt the keeper by
large profits to cheat the customers with a worthless article.
hogshead of excellent sugar which was in danger of being sacrificed to
pay the expenses of its storage, and if the keeper would take it, he
should have it at a cent less per pound than the lowest price that had
been known that season. The keeper having a full supply of sugar on hand
declined taking it; but the owner urged it so earnestly, he consented to
look at it, and found it to be of unusually good quality and concluded
to take it; but he told the owner that as he had no interest, except as
one of the consumers, in taking advantage of his necessities, he should
give him the full price for the sugar; and he paid him eleven dollars
more than he expected to get for his hogshead of sugar; and yet the
price was so low when sold at costs, that the customers were perfectly
willing to pay it.
enough to prevent him from being entirely indifferent to the price, but
it was not enough to induce him to take advantage of the necessities of
the embarrassed owner. At the same time, if he had given much more than
the usual price for the sugar, he could not have sold it in competition
with the other sugar that he had on hand. Competition here took the
sugar away from the one who was laying his plan to have it sacrificed to
him at auction, and gave to its owner the usual price.
under contract with the owner of the land that he would hold the lots at
a fixed price (named in the bond) for three years. He fulfilled his
contract, but at the expiration of the time, he began to raise the
prices of the lots according to their increased value. One man stepped
in and purchased a half of all the unsold lots, and gave a bond to the
inhabitants that the lots should be held at the price he had paid for
them (it being mentioned in the bond) without interest, and with no
addition to the price named, except taxes and other contringent costs of
deeds, etc. This immediately checked the rise in the prices of the other
lots, for it was impossible for the owner to sell them at any higher
rates than those sold for costs. Now competition began to 11 regulate
trade,” some of these lots have remained for sale ten years at costs;
and though a railroad has been surveyed directly through them, this has
made no difference in their prices.
which no statutes or devices of legislators have ever been able to
reach, where check is most needed (in house lots), and thus, too, this
competition may and would necessarily become a regulator in every
department of business, while it would oppress no one.
compensation mixed up and combined with their prices, without any fixed
limit to his income, he is interested in getting the goods or articles
at the lowest rates, and selling them at the highest rates, because all
that is gain over costs goes into his own pocket. The manufacturer or
producer must then underwork his competitor in order to get the custom
of the vender: then comes his own dangers, anxieties, and risks, and the
grinding down of wages to the lowest living point.
and all this becomes changed. Competition is divested of its destructive
power, yet there is still interest enough felt among all (and that
interest co-operates) to get modes of production sufficiently
labor-saving to afford all the leisure or exemption from drudgery that
can be desired.
machinery, without any prospect of gain over and above pay for their
oversight or cares, which might not amount to more than each of the
humblest workmen received?
see any value in all that has been said in this work, which is a poor
compliment to him or to the author. However, this is a question that
every person has a sovereign right to decide for himself ; but it is
very questionable whether many capitalists, engaged in any useful
business, are in the steady receipt of more than from four to eight
dollars per day; and on the principle of equivalents, the compensation
to workmen would probably be equivalent in value to a sum between these
two, depending on the repugnance of the labor performed; and what he got
would be secure from theft, fraud, and destruction by wars and ruinous
taxation. It is well, too, to consider, in the mean time, what motive
any man can have to keep up the present barbarism when the means of
civilization come to be understood. Equitable competition has power to
regulate all unmistakably, and the mere capitalist will be the weakest
and most dependent of men as soon as true, scientific, equitable money
gets into vogue. Then the hardest worker will become the greatest real
capitalist, and any quantity of “cowries” or mere bits of comparatively
useless metal, will give no assurance for bread for any length of time.
their 11 cowries.” One of the richest men in Cincinnati, in a
conversation relative to the experimental store then in operation on the
corner of Fifth and Elm Streets, said, 11 If such a state of society
could be produced, I should want to be one of the first in it.”
who was quite familiar with it, said to a friend, 61 You and 1, Mr.
C---, may not live to see it; but the time will come when all the
business in the world will be conducted on that principle.”
true and the only true principles for the regulation of business. The
sooner they prevail the better. I despise myself for the manner in which
I am obliged to get my living out of my customers.”
fault with the principle. I was telling Mr. C----. the other day, that
it was not to be successfully disputed.”
disputing that that is the true principle for the basis of all business.
I cannot work on it as I am situated. I wish I could.”
business in Indiana, said, in 1842, with great earnestness and manly
feeling, 11 If such principles as those could be introduced, I would
give ninetynine dollars out of every hundred I possess.” Yet, at the
very time of making this remark, the equitable store in New Harmony,
twenty-five miles distant, had just broken up his retail trade, and he
acknowledged that he could do nothing in that line! His particular
pecuniary interests did not blind him to greater general interests.
trial, and criticism, and to set them. before the public in a practical,
demonstrated attitude, previously to forming model villages; and to get
cooperators for that purpose, with the idea that one successful model
village would do the work- required more expeditiously than any other
step that could at that time be taken; whereas mere storekeeping was but
a small item, a Single wheel in the vast machinery of society; and,
moreover, these stores very soon bring all surrounding prices down to
their own level, when there is nothing left for them to work upon!
dollars cash capital, in the course of the first year, by its
irresistible competilion broke up five out of the ten stores that were
in operation in that town at its commencement, and brought down the
prices at the remaining stores to its own level, although some of them
could command unlimited capital. But, having done this, and brought the
other stores in the neighboring country to the level of equivalents, the
equitable store, like the 11 governor 11 of a steam-engine (not of 16
state “), ceased to operate where there was nothing to rectify; and the
next purpose was to form a model village, taking it for granted that
principles so very simple, so unassailable, so capable of scientific
demonstration, and so indispensably necessary to order, peace,
abundance, and 11 security,” only needed to be seen in their beautiful
and consistent symmetry to be at once approved and adopted. But that
model village has never been permitted. The most subtle and (to general
observation,) the most incomprehensible obstacles have been placed
directly and indirectly across its path. It is probably seen, by those
who can see nothing- else, that such a model village would
“Like a whirlwind, scatter in its breeze
The whole dark pile of human mockeriers”
and they think this would not bring them 11 cowries nor offices.
Misapprehension, misrepresentation, direct falsehoods, insinuations,
slanders, and cunningly contrived devices to set the public against the
developmentof such a model, have resulted in a change of mode, and the
adoption of one which, though demanding greater resources, is more in
accordance with the universality of the objects in view and the
principles to be introduced.
in every city, town, village, and neighborhood, to invite those supposed
to be most competent to unbiassed and correct investigation to assemble
as councils, or courts of inquiry, or deliberative tribunals, to
investigate these subjects in the presence of all the inhabitants who
choose to attend as listeners, and to continue these investigations till
a general, clear understanding is had of the most important interests of
life. An intelligent and correct public opinion will then become, as it
were, a great balance-wheel, to regulate progress, and to nurse and
protect true civilization in its infantile struggles for existence.
stimulated and set going by traders who were afraid of a free port being
opened at the South while Northern ports would be hampered with tariffs,
and by office-seekers and by speculators looking forward to the
advantages to be taken of the necessities that would arise from war.
that, in the course of a thousand years or more, the example of Louis
Napoleon of France will have so far progressed as to induce the “pioneer
governments “of civilization to employ agents, at a fixed and limited
salary, to do their large purchasing and forwarding, instead of
employing men whose gains increase in proportion to the necessities of
the governments, and the extravagance of the prices which they, as
agents, pay for ships, etc.
extra in one day by the announcement of “TWENTY THOUSAND MEN KILLED AND
WOUNDED!” While the editorship of newspapers is the direct road to
office, and while the “cowry “ and office are the all-absorbing objects
of pursuit, who will expect common newspapers to advocate any principle
tending to put an end to wars? Who will expect them to cease inflaming
party against party and nation against nation ; or to pay any attention
to the responsibility of public counsellors?
the public, giving evidence that his income was limited to a certain sum
per week, even if this limit was not quite down to the level of
Equivalents, -that paper (at least its advertisements) would command the
confidence of the public, and could, therefore, have all the advertising
patronage so far as it could supply the demand, and, as all the
unprincipled papers are sustained chiefly by their advertisements, the
host of these corrupt disturbers of the public peace would sink as
rapidly into oblivion as did the swine of old into the sea, and its
editor would find himself installed in an office of moral power and
grandeur from which no vulgar temptations could seduce him. Such is the
irresistible regulating power of Equitable competition. As a first step
towards Equivalents, this simple one of setting a public limit to
compensation will be an immense regulating power; and it is, perhaps, as
great a step as can be immediately taken in the confusion of cities.
Provision dealers, coal dealers, clothing stores, furniture stores, dry
goods and fancy stores, lawyers, manufacturers, patentees, bankers, and
speculators of all kinds, set no known limit to their demands upon the
public, and hence the blind warfare everywhere carried on between them.
Let every profession have some known limit set to its demands upon the
public, so that competition can act understandingly, and all would soon
come to the peaceful level of Equivalents, even though the principle of
Equivalents might not be understood.
artist, the inventor, the skilful mechanic to exchange equally with the
woodsawyer, the needlewoman, the poor boy or girl, the washerwoman?”
etc. The question implies that these professions can be moved by nothing
but mercenary considerations, and that they would necessarily have less
incomes than they now have. It is probable that the principle of
Equivalents would result in greater incomes to these professions than
they now receive. They may not come down in their prices; it is the
depressed that would come up to perhaps what would be equivalent to from
three or four to eight or ten dollars a day, depending on the repugnance
of their labors. These prices are probably more than these professions
steadily receive. If they see no temptation to exchange Equitably,
neither from their direct pecuniary interests nor from the beautiful and
sublime tendencies of such justice, then EQUITABLE COMPETITION will do
all that is needed.
already done it), he puts it out of the power of others to get more than
equivalents, provided that he can supply all the demands for that kind
of labor ; but if not, he can commence to instruct others who are
suffering for employment. Physicians, artists, mechanics, one of each,
acting on the same principle, doing the same, those who had ‘ never
dreamed of anything but a life of drudgery and abuse will find
themselves becoming lawyers, physicians, merchants, bankers, shoemakers,
tailors, engineers, owners of homes, and responsible and comfortable
citizens -each village or neighborhood where the ideas are acted on,
growingby almost imperceptible degrees into a POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY for
the education, or re-education, of all who desire to prepare themselves
for life, or to change their pursuits.
with different rooms, and tools in each for different arts, trades, or
studies, where any one, young or old, can come and learn any branch of
busiHess, paying for rent, use of tools, and instruction, by the hour,
on the principle of Equivalents, which the poorest can often easily pay
in their own labor. Does this look remote and improbable? It is, as
already being done.
Juggernaut of Civilization, crushing its victims of all ages and
professions and of both sexes at every turn of its bloody wheels, it
comes to a halt on the ground of Equivalents, and becomes converted into
a very comfortable carriage for the conveyance of passengers to the Holy
Land! i.e., the land not cursed with unscrupulous speculation.
AND WITHOUT CONFLICT WITH FREEDOM.
similar motives — the universal desire for sympathy, the need of mutual
assistance, and other expected benefits. But while clanship, with its
usual concomitants, is more destructive to the very ends proposed than
any external enemy could prove, organization without these concomitants,
and in accordance with the great primitive laws, may enable us to
realize more than Utopians ever dreamed of.
kind, there is no cost too great to pay for it.
wretched when in continuous collision with the feelings, tastes, or
opinions of others, it is not surprising that we often fall in with
customs and fashions without examination, and go with whatever current
is running rather than array ourselves hopelessly against them.
appearing at church in the mode. She was arrested and sent to prison,
and her self-respect destroyed for life, because her desire for the
sympathy of her kind was stronger or more directly present to her than
the fear of the prison! Does not this instinctive propensity also
explain that which otherwise remains without explanation? The word
“Glory,” what does it mean but the public sympathy or notice that one
gets by a public act ? The incendiary who set on fire the Temple of
Ephesus, in order, as he said,,” to immortalize himself,” was contented
to get even that degree of “Glory “ which followed from giving the
public an “ event” to talk about. His name was necessarily in many
mouths, and that was enough to tempt him to the crime, as he could get
“glory” in no other way.
heads, and never change its position during life, or fold both across
their breasts, and keep them so for years; or Simon Stylites who
remained on the top of a high naked column for thirty years, day and
night, exposed to all weathers; and the devotees who voluntarily suspend
themselves on hooks stuck through the flesh of their sides, and allow
them. selves to be suspended high in the air and swung around for hours,
exposed to public gaze, all, probably, are or were actuated by similar
motives to the one under contemplation.
calamities — the destruction of life and property. They make everybody
talk with each other; they find themselves, for the moment, on the same
plane — the starved sympathies are fed.
say, “ Oh, pray the gods send us a criminal for the lions to tear, or
the holidays will be good for nothing.”
probably arise from this same desire for “Unity,” “Harmony’” or
Sympathy. This may explain the involuntary repugnance to even needed
innovations or improvements; -the tardiness in adopting them, and even
the persecution of them; the spirit is, perhaps, the same — the desire
for general sympathy, commonly called “ Unity “ or “ Union.” Probably
this is the explanation of the pertinacity with which it is insisted on
that “ the Union must and shall be preserved,” though compulsion is
directly against the great principle that gave rise to it, and stabs all
union to the heart! The same impulse prompts thousands to join any
movement, or noise of any kind, without much conscious design, or to do
anything which feeds this natural yearning for sympathy or
companionship. The misfortune is that this beautiful tendency to general
sympathy is unregulated — wild — erratic -blind. It has no durability,
and can have none till it is reconciled to universal diversity or
INDIVIDUALITY. After such reconciliation, difference cannot disturb it.
no opinion? Yet it holds, -as it were, all the governments in the world
between its thumb and finger, and in its hand the destinies of the race.
life, property, and happiness, this sympathetic element, a thousand-
fold stronger, will work for instead of against true civilization.
discover that the precedents, traditions, authorities, and fictions upon
which society has been allowed to grow up, do not coincide with each
other, nor with the great unconquerable primitive or divine laws.
of human happiness, or to place one unnecessary obstacle in its way. The
great problem is, How can this great, universal Divine desire for
sympathy be harmlessly exercised to its full satisfaction, and continue
undisturbed?
man.
intellectually, can live in comparative peace and sympathy, having but
few subjects to dispute about; but just in proportion to culture or
expansion of the feelings, tastes, and intellects is the necessity and
the tendency to take more room; so that each person, like a planet,* can
move in his own orbit without disturbing others. This is DISINTEGRATION.
necessity of agreement and conformity, and some must be more or less
pained by the collisions of opinions, tastes, wishes, etc., between
them. Not, perhaps, any more at the sacrifices required of one’s self
than from perceiving that others make sacrifices for us. One or the
other is inevitable, just in proportion to the number or magnitude of
the interests held in common.
schoolhouse built by neighborhood subscription. The subscribers,
however, as might have been expected, soon began to differ about the
choice of a teacher; but there was no room to differ within the combined
interest. Only one party could possibly have its way. The very best of
reasons and arguments were furnished on both sides, and “irresistible
logic “ showed how right and how wrong both parties were; but none of
the arguments had any other effect than to make the breach between them
wider and wider; for, whereas they differed about only one thing at
first, they differed about twenty things in as many minutes of
disputation. Difference took them by surprise! They, like “
communities,” had calculated on “unity” of opinion, and difference
became a disturbing and unmanageable element in the “Union.”
degrees, a hostile feeling on both sides, so that, although both parties
were “ professors of religion,” one man rushed at his antagonist with a
huge club, but was in his turn subdued by an overpowering force,” and
the meeting broke up in anarchy.” That night some one, seeing no better
means of “ putting an end to the war,” set the valuable house on fire,
and it was burned to ashes. The root of the whole of the trouble was “
communism,” or Union” of property in the schoolhouse.
Freedom to differ would have admonished them not to have had the
schoolhouse in partnership, at least until they had first ascertained
that there could not, in the nature of things, be a difference of
opinion between them on an important point where it would be necessary
to agree. Nothing short of absolute, unchangeable truth or primitive
laws furDish such security for permanent agreement or coincidence.
teacher acted on his individual responsibility with his patrons, the
difficulty and destruction would not have occurred, whatever diversity
there might have been between the parties. But having taken the first
erroneous step in communism of property, if it had been fashionable in
the neighborhood to have referred the case to judicious tribunals (as
proposed in the first chapter) who understood the philosophy of the
difficulty, these tribunals might, perhaps, have given such advice as
would have averted all the trouble.
in a room next to my own, two girls disputing and crying for a long
time. Passing by their door I learned that they had some playthings in
common! Mary said that Annie wouldn’t let her handle the cups and
saucers, though their “ governess told them that they must be
accommodating to each other.”
accommodating as well as me, and when I want to put up the things you
ought to let me.” Here was another “ Union “! Both were really
distressed to find themselves quarrelling, and I said to them, “ Don’t
blame yourselves nor each other, girls; the fault is not in either of
you ; it is in having your playthings in common. There should be only
one owner to one thin,-. Whatever was given to you should have been
given to one or the other, or divided between you. I advise you at once
to divide your things between yourselves, and that each should sacredly
respect the absolute right of the other to control her own in any manner
whatever, and not to set up any demand on each other to be any more “
“accommodation” than she is at the time. Such a demand is a partial
denial of her right of control over her own,which not only makes you
disagreeable companions to each other, but raises disputes that never
can be settled by words.”
but it is unseen, overlooked in the irresistible yearning for the
harmony and repose, or sympathy, which is supposed (but never realized)
to result from them.
built by subscription among the neighbors, who happened to agree in that
one particular idea, that a house of worship was necessary. It was built
of logs, in the loghouse fashion, and locked together at the corners. It
was no sooner built than their coincidence was at an end, for there was
immediately a difference among them with regard to the doctrine that
should be advocated there. Here, as usual, diversity took them by
surprise, and it being a disturbing element under the circumstances, it
was looked upon as an “ enemy, and each strove to conquer it in himself
and in his opponents. They did not know that diversity was any part of
Divinity, but they looked upon it as a proof of perversity, or the
workings of the old virus of original depravity, and supposed that in
warring against each other they were vindicating 66 unity; “for to admit
of schism and diversity unrebuked was to encourage disintegration, which
would “ inaugurate universal confusion.” So the parties contended with
each other till they had exhausted all their resources, and destroyed
all their “ Union,” and one man was so exasperated at the crude attempts
to put him down, that he went home and got a yoke of oxen, hitched a
chain to one of the logs in the side of the house, tore it out, and
dragged it home for firewood, as his share of the communistic property!
never would have occurred? But having committed the blunder of getting
into communism, or “ Union,” had the case been referred to an
intelligent and disinterested neighborhood-council before building the
house, it probably never would have been built on the communistic
principle; but having committed this first mistake, it had become too
late to exercise the right of individual ownership over one log, because
this could not be done without doing greater violence to the same right
of the other owners, whose property was seriously injured thereby. Had
there been a clear idea among them of what the absolute right is, they
would all have seen that they were equally partners in a blunder in
forming the “ Union,” and not a violent word would probably have been
spoken, and they would have talked only of individualizing or
disintegrating their claims to the property. Different expedients might
have been suggested, such as one party buying the other out, or some
individual buying the whole out. A disinterested neighborhoodtribunal
might, no doubt, have suggested some mode less destructive than the one
adopted, and if not accepted the “ government “ might, with propriety,
have “ intervened,” and prevented the unnecessary violence done to the
building, and restrained the man from taking the log out, but at the
same time require him to be paid for his trouble in putting it in.
been rendered impossible by the ‘,.Union “ of the property, would
restrain the persisting in its exercise in the particular form adopted
by the desperate man, and might have required him to take an equivalent
for his log, over which lie could exercise his right of ownership
without damaging the other parties.
between expedients when the right has been rendered impossible, but it
does not rise above absolute human rights, and it is rendered safe by
being dependent on the voluntary action or sovereign will of those who
are required to execute any decision.
to sell it, and the other was opposed to selling it. They argued and
disputed till they grew hot, and then one carried the case to the
courts, and kept it there till more than the price of the house had been
consumed in litigation, but all without decision, for the “ precedents “
and statutes were silent on the subject, and nothing could be done
outside of “precedents” and “statutes.” Finally, desperation took the
case in hand; -one party sawed the house in two from top to bottom, and
moved his part away! Not a dollar would have been spent in litigation,
and no feeling of desperation or enmity would have arisen, if both
parties had known at first that disintegration was the remedy required;
or had they referred the case to a neighborhood council called for the
purpose (not elected to judge the case before it occurred), who were not
trammelled by unbending precedents, statutes, and wordy forms, and who
were not biassed by the prospect of votes for office, or a large fee for
making trouble, they might have given advice founded on a knowledge of
the root of such difficulties, and most likely the parties would have
been saved their quarrels, their expenses, and the desperate remedy
resorted to. The whole originated in Communism of property —
Disintegration was the end of it, as far as an end could be put to it;
but the enmity arising out of it may have continued for years, or until
each party may have learned the philosophy of the trouble.
Miles from his home, and said, “You are surprised, no doubt, to see me
here, but you cannot be more surprised than I am to find myself here. I
have left home probably forever, with nothing but what you see upon me.
I have left everything — money, clothes horses, farm, and now throw
myself upon the world to begin it anew. I am ashamed to tell you the
cause, but I must. I will, if it is only in justice to you who have
labored so much to show us the cause of such serious disturbances, and
which is so strikingly illustrated in my own case.”
composed moments to explain; and he afterwards gave me the following
statement: —
she remarked that I had set them crooked. I replied, I No matter, they
are well enough; I but she said that, as we were foreigners, the
neighbors were all the time criticising our farming and gardening, and
she wanted everything to look so as to defy their criticisms. I replied
that I would not trouble myself to silence them; for the spirit of
faultfinding, when it. existed, as it did in that neighborhood, would
always find some excuse for venting itself, and if we did not rise above
it, we should enslave ourselves to it. But she was not inspired with my
philosophy, and insisted. I became a little irritated, and made some
reply that brought from her an allusion to an old sore between us, that
I felt to the quick, and replied with severity: to which she retorted —
with such biting provocation, that, before I knew what I was doing, I
had thrown a billet of wood at her, which fortunately did not hit her;
but, alarmed and disgusted at my own conduct, as well as at her, I
rushed out of the house, and here I am.”
responsibility in a row of onions!
against offending each other.”
at any rate, they had both heard that injunction from their childhood,
and it had had all the effect that it could have in the case. Present
civilization has nothing else to say that is any more to the purpose.
Individually, the case never would have occurred. At the request of
both, I gave such counsel as induced him to return home, where he
remained till the death of the wife.
one would think, in this generation to render a few hints sufficient for
our present purposes. But all the failures and ruin that have been so
prominently before the public in the last forty years seem not to have
taught the radical defect in its principle.
from their burnt, disabled, and prostrate companions, and never know
that the flame can kill till it is too late to profit by the knowledge;
and the opposers, while they can reason like philosophers against the
principle of communism, will advocate exactly the communistic principle
in their political “ Unions, organizations, confederacies and other
combined interests.
its objections to communism, and in insisting on individual ownership
and individual responsibilities both of which communism annihilates;
conservatism has also shown wisdom in its aversion to sudden and great
changes, for none have been devised that contained the elements of
success.
Individuality, is not inherent in, but only incidental to, it; which
antagonism is completely neutralized, and all. the co-operation and
economies aimed at by communism grow naturally out of the principle of
Equivalents, or simple justice! And the same principle, by compensating
only for COST, opens all primary land, waters, minerals, spontaneous
fruits, and all other natural wealth, free from all price, thus meeting
the common-property idea half-way, but in the sense in which water in a
river is now common: that is, while every one may take what he can use
without price, when he has once got it into his possession, no other
person must have any claim upon it without the owner’s consent, or
confusion would follow So, though the property or wealth is common to
all, there is no communism or joint ownership between any.
many painful disappointments in communistic combinations, both social
and political, which have ended so disastrously for many of the best of
men and women, who were willing to sacrifice everything for the 46 Unity
“ or “ harmony “ of the race, and also to suggest to careful readers the
unexposed root of our present political anarchy, and many of the most
painful conflicts and disappointments of life. Let us be disappointed no
more; let us be sure that we have got the right germ before we plant our
seed.
neighbors to help him. They are willing to do so, either from sympathy,
for the enjoyment of the companionship of the occasion, or for pecuniary
compensation, or without any particular conscious motive. Whether they
are moved by one motive or another, their movement is voluntary, and the
raising of the house is the point of coincidence between them -the
object which brings them together, and which gives rise to the
co-operation between them.
whole twenty undertake to give directions.
counteraction. Primitive or Divine law does not tolerate anything more
or less than INDIVIDUALITY in any lead. Who should be the lead on this
occasion but he who takes the risks and bears all costs ? He may prefer
to delegate his function, but may with propriety resume it at any
moment.
but they cannot lift together till some word or sign is given. Select
three of the wisest or most experienced of the company to give that word
or sign, and confusion would result, but let only one (Individual),
though a mere child, give the word, and the timber moves.
Monarchy and despotism. But why have they proved so destructive of the
ends proposed by them ? It is because of the unconscious attempt to
unite or combine the lead and the deciding power or sovereignty in one
person ! Let us see.
raising, and though the motives were different, this difference did not
prevent their coinciding or co-operating action in that one individual
thing to be done. The owner of the house did not undertake to decide
that these men should help him! Each decided for himself supremely
(sovereignly) that he would help, and these coinciding, individual
sovereign decisions only wanted a lead, and all was well.
lead and the deciding or sovereign power IN ONE PERSON! instead of
recognizing the deciding power where divine law has irrevocably fixed
it, in every individual of the race ! DISINTEGRATION of these two
elements must rectify this fatal error before there can be any security
for persons or property, and before any government can perform its
legitimate function as illustrated in the first chapter.
numbers can be properly done. It is on this account that diversity of
views or motives has been looked upon and treated as an evil, because it
tends to neutralize the desired “Unity” of action. Therefore, as
intellectual culture and expansion give rise to this dreaded diversity,
culture is looked upon as dangerous, and the expression of opinions
adverse to the governments are forbidden and punished with heavy
penalties or cruel deaths. Thus order becomes converted into chaos by
trampling the end under foot in pursuit of the means! The professed end
is security and protection of person and property, and the means adopted
destroy both!
that the deciding power is inevitably fixed in, and inseparable from,
each individual, who is therefore presented with an assortment of evils
to choose from and decide upon! If he desires to disobey orders, he may
calculate the value of his life to himself or others, his repugnance to
pain and death, his chances of escape, and on these calculations he
decides for himself (sovereignly) at last. Where, then, does the
sovereign power rest ?
wrested from the multitude, nor from a single Individual -it is
“INALIENABLE; “ and to make the attempt to alienate it is one of the
most fatal political fallacies ever attempted. And a fallacy equally
fatal is that of supposing that this deciding power can successfully be
vested in a majority over a minority, or over a single person.
they put themselves thenceforth, for a specified time, under the
commands of their officers, with whom rest all deciding power as to
their movements ; and this power is supposed by officers and-men to be
absolute, unqualifies and final, and either would stare at calling the
idea in question.
Clyde. At the edge of the stream, the soldiers, rather than walk in and
be drowned, halted without waiting for the order to halt, which was
entirely contrary to the contract and the discipline. Officers and men
were both taken by surprise with the fact that the deciding power was
not with the officers — that it had suddenly made its appearance in an
unexpected quarter; the instinct of self-preservation (or self-
sovereignty) had suddenly assumed its sway, like an irresistible third
party, and annulled the contract of “unqualified obedience to orders,”
contrary to discipline and to the previous understanding and intentions
of both parties!
between men and master; but when they begin to debate, good-by to the
dried-herring subordination. The instinct of self-preservation does not
always wait to consult “precedents nor interpretations of constitutions,
the I right of rebellion ‘ “ nor authorities of any kind. It is its own
authority, from which all others are derived.
power in the hands of certain men appointed to wield it; yet this same
instinct is now at work in every breast in the nation, and every one is
involuntarily debating or deciding in his own mind and feelings,
according to his conditions, and there is no coincidence among any large
portion of us. The deciding power is not in the men appointed to wield
it, nor even have they got the exclusive Individual lead.
possible to divest ourselves of this involuntary instinct of self-
preservation or self-sovereignty, and those who accept or act on such
pledge commit as great an error as those who give it, and all contracts
to this effect being impossible of fulfilment are null and void. We may
delegate the leading function often with advantage, but it is folly,
blindness, self-deception, and may be ruin, to commit ourselves
unqualifiedly to implicit and unhesitating obedience to any personal
lead for a single hour.
successful lead must be an Individuality, this lead should be only a
lead, like the child at the raising — one individual function by itself,
and no attempt should be made to combine it with the deciding or
sovereign power.
particular occasion for it; and as every occasion may be peculiar in
itself, no one personal lead may be equally adapted to various
occasions. A child might lead the lifting of the timbers of the house,
but could not lead in the framing of it. The president of a railroad
company may lead its affairs very satisfactorily, but. might not be
equally adapted to lead a child in the study of music.
man has shown great capacity to lead in one direction or department, he
is, therefore, most likely to prove a good lead in other directions! The
contrary is most likely to be the fact, inasmuch as that the more time
he has spent in qualifying himself for one function, the less he would
have to bestow in others; as illustrated by the very profound
Conchologist who thought that the beans in his garden had come up “ the
wrong end first.”
a thing, an idea, or a principle. A clock or a watch leads or “ governs
“ the movements of many of us more than men do. But two clocks which
should differ widely from each other would neutralize the lead, and make
only confusion. If they harmonized with each other, one would be
superfluous. But a plurality of men to lead any one move ment, having
more elements of diversity within them than unintellectual clocks, are
more likelt than they to differ, and lead to confusion.
it is in vain for us to contend against it.
the inventor of railroads, of steam power, etc.; but if he undertakes to
decide that the public shall patronize or follow him, he will find
himself at once in conflict with the third party — a divine law, from
which, sooner or later, he will be obliged to retire.
sphere of sovereignty cannot harmlessly be extended beyond the person,
time, property, and responsibilities of the one person who exercises
that sovereignty.
property certainly; but if you have heard screams within, and calls for
help, and you have come in to restrain me from invading the life of an
inmate, though it be my own child, you have made a justifiable and
legitimate choice of evils in violating my right of property to prevent
me from violating greater rights. If I would have my absolute rights of
property and person held inviolate, I must observe and hold sacred all
the rights of others.
from oppression. If he invaded a political jurisdiction in protecting
Costza, it was a justifiable choice of evils.
oppression, if he had compelled any slave, by fear or force, to join him
against his will, this would have been oppression or invasion of the
slave. This personal sovereignty should be above all other
considerations.
entered a Nation to protect even one individual from oppression, and has
committed no unnecessary violence in doing so, has made a justifiable
choice of evils. This idea is already sanctioned in the protection by a
whole Nation rendered to any one of its members in any part of the
world.
is recognized as a sovereign member of the party of the whole, the same
idea becomes only extended when the whole of the race should protect one
member of the race from invasion.
throne of their enemies’ skulls “ while those enemies are only the weak
and cruelly oppressed rebellious subjects.
very distinct elements; that for true order, they must be disintegrated
from each other, the one having unlimited scope, and the other confined
to the person, time, property, and responsibilities of one Individual.
absolute sovereignty. We all have a right to sympathize with the
distressed in any part of the world with but not against their consent
or will.
experiments on these subjects, I have arrived at decisions for myself,
and because I think the reader will prefer it as the most convenient
language for him as well as for me, and because I think be will prefer
the assurance which is afforded by placing myself under the
responsibility of definite and positive assertions, rather than that I
should give out vague hints and throw the responsibility of conclusions
upon him. And after and in the midst of continuous reiteration of the
sovereign right of every individual to decide for himself, he will not
suspect me of attempting to decide for him against his consent.
undisturbed where it really is (in the heart or head of every Individual
for himself), it matters but little who undertakes to lead. He who most
addresses himself to the largest coincidence or most pressing wants of
the time will have the most followers.
locking of the cars together the whole move.
movement.
specific, Individual performance; but if the owner had asked the men to
help him in future, without specifiying what help he wanted, no
thoughtful man would have consented. The proposition would have been too
general, too indefinite; this has been the radical fault of all
organizations! The remedy is to Individualize the occasions for
cooperation, leaving every one free to render or withhold his
assistance, according to his individual views of the individual case now
present in hand.
house, and the men placing themselves in position ready for lifting, was
the organization, and the giving the word and lifting were the co-
operation.
on fire; he suddenly abandons the organization and the co-operation to
rescue his family and preserve his property! Who censures him? Yet he
has risen, so to speak, above the organization, above the institution, —
broken his contract.
object it had in view, but beyond that it had no applicability, and to
insist on the man fulfilling his contract under the new circumstances
would be simply absurd and useless. But we will consider this farther by
and by.
This lead is sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, a child, or a thing; it
is also sometimes an idea. This latter has always been practically
admitted by those who have attempted to generalize the experience of
mankind into axioms, rules, written statutes, or (so called) laws,
Constitutions, etc. They intended these ideas as points of coincidence
to lead or force the people into certain modes of action.
GENERALIZATION.
originated may not apply to any other case as well. New cases give rise
to other rules which conflict with the first; which conffict, like that
of the two different clocks, destroys the power of either to lead.
minds) the different interpretations of the same rules or generalisms.
Witness the different interpretations of the Constitution of the United
States and all other constitutions.
diversity not only neutralizes their power to lead, but they become
positive elements of antagonism and violent dissensions and mutual
destruction, because their latent faults are too subtle for ready
detection. They would be harmless and might be beneficial if there was
no attempt to combine in them the sovereign power. To remedy this fatal
defect, the word “ shall” should be expunged, and the word may
substituted.
verbal institutions have provided that the ultimate or final
interpretation of them shall rest in the supreme Courts; the practical
working Of which is to concentrate a coercive power in one person over
the destinies of millions,[4] which is a return to Despotism, and in the
worst form, because it is disguised and hedged round with bewildering
fictions and formulas!
formulas and generalizations, the whole being intended to lead to
prosperity, security, and freedom. The unavoidable difference in the
interpretations of the instrument, being provided for only in a form
which gave the monopoly of the interpreting and enforcing power into a
few hands, has led to the sudden check of all prosperity — has rendered
all persons and property in the States as inse. cure as possible, and
instead of Freedom, they are at this moment under the most unqualified
despotism that exists on the earth !
fact, or Primitive or Divine law, intended to act as a point of
coincidence for the co-operation and harmony of all mankind; but the
same instrument also displays other features more prominent and more
striking to common observation, while the germinal, central idea of the
whole instrument lies bidden within its well-chosen phraseology, like
the life-giving germ of the seed, beyond the external eye, and
cognizable only by the penetrating mental vision.
fact, or Primitive or Divine law, intended to act as a point of
coincidence for the co-operation and harmony of all mankind; but the
same instrument also displays other features more prominent and more
striking to common observation, while the germinal, central idea of the
whole instrument lies bidden within its well-chosen phraseology, like
the life-giving germ of the seed, beyond the external eye, and
cognizable only by the penetrating mental vision.
plurality of elements, which, like the plurality of men, neutralize each
other as a lead according to its noble design.
obstructions, the best minds have been bent on simplifying Hence arose
the formula, “Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you;”
and Christendom rejoiced in the apparent supply of their greatest
ethical want. The men or women of mature culture and experience and of
delicate sympathies, who take pleasure in the pleasure they confer, and
share the pain they are obliged to inflict, will interpret and apply
this formula in a harmless and even a beneficent manner. They are
careful not to inflict unnecessary pain on others nor to require
sacrifices of them without pecuniary or moral compensation.
influence of an ill-digested theory (though well intended), and who are
satisfied with mere Logical consistency, might excuse themselves, by
this formula, for insisting on sharing or distributing the property of
others, on the ground that the owners would be glad to have the same
done for them, if the cases were reversed !
coincidence required, and which in some cases leads to very desirable
results, furnishes, by a different application, the excuse or warrant
for the denial of all rights of property, would stop all stimulus to
industry, foresight, and economy, and, which followed out, would lead to
universal confusion, poverty, starvation, and violence.
laws and formulas, and came to the conclusion that none could be
constructed by man that could regulate human intercourse; and they
abandoned the attempt to construct them, and vested all power in one
person within each certain district of country called a nation, which
was a return to primitive des, potism.
Individual lead required; which, being a living organism, could adapt
itself to the peculiarities (or individualities) of persons and events
as each case arose: but it was soon seen that this “ unit “ was one day
one thing, and another thing another day--that the very possession of
the delegated power so intoxicated or bewildered the despot (though
before a very good person), as to procure for him the titles of “ The
monster,” “ The cruel,” “ The mad,” The scourge,” etc.
Church, also seeing the hopelessness of constructing any successful
formulas, laws, or constitutions, adopted the human “unit” not only as a
lead, but as a final, deciding, sovereign power or “ umpire of peace,”
over all persons within their organization, and beyond which umpire
there was to be no appeal, no dispute; -viewing him as a father, papa,
or pope, and investing him with the power to rescue the smitten and
abused subjects of the intoxicated despots from obedience and from the
oath of loyalty, and to protect them from insane violence; and, to
secure themselves from similar violence and oppression, they selected a
man for the Papa whom they considered more than man — one who was
inspired by Divine influx, and they seem to have supposed that this
divine influx came from a personal existence which was all perfection,
and who would always inspire the papa to do exactly right.
to what constitutes perfection, and though it now appears that the idea
of an influx or inspiration from intelligent beings, above or beyond or
outside of the human organism, was a true one, it seems not to have been
clearly understood.
second stage of existence, analogous to that of the butterfly from the
grub (now called spiritual existence). That in this state there is no
sudden leap to perfection, and that many spiritual inspirations or
communications to us are no nearer to coincidence than our own opinions
and theories are. And, moreover, that the most humble, even children,
are more likely to become recipients of this inspiration than a man or
men set apart for the purpose, because, being less embarrassed by cares
and anxieties, they are more in that state of repose required as a
condition necessary for the influx or communications.
priesthood and laity; but such were the exceeding difficulties of their
undertaking, and the crudity of the people they desired to benefit, and
the immense and incalculable good promised to the race by the abolition
of wars and a universal point of “ unity “ or coincidence, their whole
aim seems to have been to attain this end, even by means that shock us
to think of, on the ground that such means were the least of evils
presented to them from which to choose.
an idea — without a policy — without a lead that can command the assent
of any considerable number of intelligent men or women, or even the
general assent of the uncultivated and careless; but all society (so-
called) is exposed, unprepared, unassisted, and Undefended, to the mere
spirit of reckless adventure, corruption, quackery, and desperation.
naturally lead the race out of its chaos, is DOW, more than ever before,
the great consideration.
therefore, be liable to disappoint or ruin all who might build upon it.
It must be indestructible, or it would be destroyed. It must be an
Individuality, or it cannot lead, except into confusion. It must be an
individual idea (not a plurality) that, notwithstanding the infinite
diversity of minds, motives, and conditions, it will be sure to coincide
with the instinctive action as well as with the natural understanding of
all people. Is not the great fact of SELFSOVEREIGNTY such a unit?
gold! Dissent itself not being antagonistic, but coinciding with it, who
can avoid being in harmony with it practically, whatever he may be
theoretically ?
never otherwise attained in human. affairs!
disturbing disputes “!
every Sunday to hear what I consider destructive theories; but, holding
his sovereignty as sacred, I offer no obstacle other than acceptable
counsel. If I have anything in his way, I will hasten to take it out of
the way. My public duty towards the Catholic and every other persuasion
is the same. I have no issue with either till an attempt is made to
enforce assent or conformity from me or others. And my duty towards all
political creeds and theories is precisely the same. They are all
entitled to forbearance till some attempt is made to enforce them on the
unwilling. This attempt is an encroachment upon the great sacred right
of self-sovereignty — an attack upon the Divine law of Individuality,
and will always beget resistance and war.
conclusions but while the absolute sovereignty of every one (within his
own sphere) is sacredly respected, there will be no serious collision on
this point.
your own sphere) what I may consider wrong, foolish, or inexpedient, is
the vital principle of peace and all progress; for your experiments may
prove that you are right!
will not be complete till it is clearly understood that each and every
person is necessarily invested with an Individuality of his or her own,
that, like the countenance of its possessor, is “ in. alienable ; “ and
therefore that we cannot build theories requiring and depending on
conformity or uniformity of reasoning, without constant liability to
conflict, confusion, and disappointment.
things FREEDOM TO DIFFER in word and in act, and thus approach co-
operation by degrees instead of by any violent or sudden leap.
propensity to have his own way.
outsiders, no foreigners, no hostile tribes or Clans, no political
party, except “ the party of the whole” !
In order to preserve harmony in progress, there must be freedom to
differ in all things where difference is possible.
commonly called organizations leading to Clanship. Our organization will
not consist of subordinating[5] rules or any other external formulas but
will exist in the understanding, internally, in fact and in spirit,
while the external will consist of simply Correspondence or
COMMUNICATION with each other, and that which naturally and
spontaneously flows from it.
tests, and found it only confirmed as a sublime truth, we will begin to
cluster around it other truths to aid that and each other in the
complete solution of the problem of true civilization.
beneficent power to harmonize our pecuniary interests- to neutralize the
destructive power of unregulated competition — to make the interests of
the individual harmonize with the interests of the public.
which will equalize power in the pecuniary sphere. Self-sovereignty in
all departments, especially in the military, will equalize and restore
back to each individual his legitimate share of the governing power, and
(to the mind’s eye) Equilib. rium begins to emerge from chaos.
which will equalize power in the pecuniary sphere. Self-sovereignty in
all departments, especially in the military, will equalize and restore
back to each individual his legitimate share of the governing power, and
(to the mind’s eye) Equilib. rium begins to emerge from chaos.
neutralized, and every new clustering truth becoming a new harmonizer,
the long-stifled yearnings for sympathy with our kind will begin to
expand, and the danger is that we may rush together into disastrous
entanglements, unless preserved by constant, watchful regard to the
fatal errors of Clanship and Communism.
filled with these only will necessarily harmonize; and expectations
founded on them will not be likely to end in disappointment.
of 1ndividuals.
all mankind upon the only possible plane of political Equality. All
being sovereigns, none can be less, none more. This is beautifully
illustrated at every assembly of kings and emperors. Each one is
admitted by all the others to be supreme within his own sphere of
jurisdiction. The supremacy of each constitutes the equality of all,
while anything less than the supremacy of either would constitute so
much political inequality between them, and any attempt of either, or of
the majority, to subordinate any one of them, would at once become an
element of war.
regulating principle, dictate laws or policies to any other, nor attempt
to invade or subdue or plunder a single individual of the race.
exchanges may at once commence, and forever continue to increase,
mutually enriching and blessing each other, — without doing violence to
any class, party, or person.
destruction from the wild promptings of unregulated instinct, we shall
have mutual protection, prompted by an enlightened and regulated self-
interest, harmonizing with universal interest, and giving rise to
universal sympathy. The theme expands under our gaze, but with such
dazzling splendor that the unaccustomed eye cannot dwell upon it.
leave it for the present to be digested with the assistance of a few
desultory remarks.
require more illustration than such as has been furnished, and the point
is too vital to leave unsettled. Other important points may also require
confirmation.
confusion, what principle do we involuntarily resort to to put them in
order? Do we not separate them — putting the unanswered letters in one
place, and those that have been answered in various, different,
separate, disintegrated classification? Do we not disintegrate all the
newspapers, putting all of the same kind in one pile, and others in
other piles, separate from each other?
must not all speak at once, but in a disintegrated or separate order,
one at a time.
not, what can we do better than disintegrate our interests in it by one
buying the other out satisfactorily? On the sidewalks in populous
cities, when many people are going in opposite directions, there is seen
one current going one way and another going in the opposite way, both on
the same sidewalk, quite distinct and separate from each other, and
consequently without confusion.
uncongenial and unprofitable to either, or to anybody; to drop the
acquaintance, to disintegrate, is the common practice, and perhaps the
best expedient.
practical bearings, as a regulator of human intercourse, it cannot be
exercised, except so far as each one’s property, responsibilities, and
person are so far separate from others that he can exercise his
legitimate control over his own without disturbing them. Many of the
most humane and best citizens of the American States have struggled for
years against being responsible for the communistic legislation in favor
of enslaving responsibilities from the general conglomeration.
no responsibility, for there is no responsibility till it becomes
Individual, disintegrated from communism.
harmony, and entangled themselves and their interests together, and
cannot agree, and when they have exhausted all their arguments and
expedients without arriving at coincidence, what do they naturally and
habitually resort to to avoid further disturbances or violence?
has been violated by obliterating the lines of legitimate Individual
jurisdiction, by a conglomeration of interests or “entangling
alliances.”
self-evident as to mortify us at our obtuseness.
brush?” I admitted that I thought it was impossible. “Well,” said he,
“partly fill a barrel with water, measure its depth, put in the brush,
measure the depth again, and calculate the difference.”
are comparatively new; some of them may be anticipated. A simple riddle
may prepare many to answer their own questions better than any one can
do it for them. The riddle is, —
“I’m made at Canterbury and sold at York, I stop a bottle and am called
a ‘cork’.”
once gave this riddle to a lady in presence of her child. She could not
solve it, and gave it up, when the child exclaimed, “Why la, mother, it
is a cork! Don’t he say it is a cork?”
sovereignty above all law and order — obey what pleases him, and reject
or rebel against what does not please him?”
impulses, without any reference to the future? Is everything to be
sacrificed to a wild chase after a distorted freedom, the value of which
when overtaken may not equal the cost of pursuit? Are we to have no
contracts, no order, no system, nothing as a basis for expectations,
nothing to depend upon?
disappoint us.
the great Divine law of order which no one can raise himself above. Your
own questions show you to be exercising this sovereignty in criticising
what is proposed! the act of judging a law or statute raises the critic
above that law or statute. To be under law is to have no opinion, but
only the duty of obedience to it. Criticism, thought, judgment, raises
us above the thing criticised or judged. All the people in these States
are at this moment above all the enactments of the Government at
Washington. But we never can get above primitive or Divine law. It
prompts us to judge, and we obey it in judging everything! — even in
judging itself!
most perfect system of social life that it is possible to conceive.
by the builders,” and the law of confusion mistakingly preferred!
“Union” of interests is this root of confusion, and disintegration is a
necessary step back towards individuality which is the great Divine law
of order everywhere. Where or what would the objector be if he was not
free to criticise these statements? Simply a slave. Objecting to them,
he is exercising the very sovereignty to which he objects! Remember the
riddle.
his shop, or the chemist in his laboratory, who has no partner to
consult, can arrange his tools or his materials in any manner whatever
that he pleases, and can change his system any time he pleases. He is
thus above or sovereign of his system, but if he has a partner, he must
consult that partner’s wishes, and if they happen not to coincide,
neither of them can exercise this individuality without violating the
individuality of the other. If he has three partners he must consult the
wishes of all, and the chances of agreement are diminished by every
additional partner to the communistic interest or “Union,” and by the
magnitude and importance of the interests held in common; and there may
be so many partners that there cannot be found points of coincidence
enough to found any system upon. True order and system are found only
within the individual sphere, or in proportion to the coincidences
between different parties.
have them only where they are wanted, and understandingly consented to
by the persons involved in them.
providing for such contingency.
letter (instead of the spirit), though they take the pound of flesh from
the heart.
those who make them. A contract which can be forseen to be contrary to
divine law, and may prove impossible of fulfilment, is null and void. A
contract by a child to grow twenty feet high is null and void.
all written constitutions), is null and void, because they have not
consented to the same thing.
fulfil, may be broken by unforeseen events, over which neither of the
parties could have any control. The man that abandoned the lifting of
the timber to save this family, broke his contract, which, but for that
accident, he would have fulfilled. The sudden abandonment of the timber
might have been of serious consequence to the other parties who were
lifting it. Would it not have been well for the leader to have a man or
two in reserve to meet such contingencies? But they were not thought of.
What is to be done with the case as a violation of contract? Does it not
force us to admit that they are, often unavoidably, imperfect devices,
like our own structure, and that their defects have to be borne, like
the toothache, as misfortunes, and that to insist on the absolute
perfection and sacredness of all contracts is an error?
and extract from it whatever suits him, and then abandon it, and
disappoint the other parties to it, on the plea of unforeseen
contingencies?
o’clock; you have no means of judging of my resources; there is but
little within our experience to forbid the expectation of the money,
when it is known that it is for my own interest to fulfil the contract.
As I alone know my own resources, I take the whole responsibility of the
promise. To-morrow afternoon I lose all my money by being tempted into a
bad speculation. I fail to pay you, and you are obliged to go to a
usurer to borrow the money. You call on me and state your grievance. I
say that unforeseen contingencies prevented me from fulfilling my
contract; but the explanation does not satisfy you, and I refuse to give
further satisfaction. What next? Present civilization fails to give a
satisfactory answer. We must go farther than it has gone.
neighborhood to deliberate on the case, giving me the opportunity to
represent myself, and with an invitation for all the public to attend as
listeners. You state your case. What can I do? Perhaps I refuse in the
face of all self-evident rectitude to abide the decision of the
tribunal, — on the ground of my right of self-sovereignty. But the
tribunal decide that I have indirectly invaded your sovereignty, and
that I ought to repair damages; that I have put you to trouble and cost
for my convenience, and wantonly refuse to make Equitable reparation,
which is in my power. I still refuse. The opinions of more or less of
the tribunal are handed over to the military (or “the Government”), and
if there is sufficient coincidence there to take enough of my property
to compensate you, it will be done. What would be compensation in the
case? 1^(st), Whatever it cost you to borrow the money; 2d, compensation
for disappointment; 3d, compensation for your time consumed in getting
judgment from the tribunal; 4^(th), contingent expenses of room where
they met, and the costs, if any, of the aid of the Government or police.
me to have fulfilled my promise to you, or to have endeavored to have
given satisfactory or excusable reasons for not doing so?
afternoon, that was just on the point of ruin, and you could save him
from it by letting him have the twenty dollars. How then?”
responsibility, to pay the former debt and run the risk of satisfying
you.
come as early as possible to you, state the circumstances, and offer at
once to pay all the costs that you have incurred by my non-fulfilment of
contract. No tribunal and no resort to the government would then be
thought of. But there is a better way than any of these, when that way
is possible, and that is to “owe no man anything,” but settle every
transaction in the time of it. But this not being always practicable,
the expedient here recommended is to settle, at the time of the
transaction, what is due, and give a note with conditions that will not
seriously disappoint any one. (See “Equitable Money.”) Careful as we may
be, contracts are but human devices, and, unavoidably, more or less
imperfect.
non-fulfilment of legitimate contracts, we shall be careful how we enter
into them, and equally careful to fulfil them. Contracts will not then
be the tyrants of men, but the servants of men.
of agreement there may be expected between them; the larger the number,
the less points of coincidence will be found.
have no assurance of universal coincidence, expect where DISSENT ITSELF
CONFIRMS THE COMPACT. Such is our point of coincidence!
of lectures to show the fallacy of the “self-sovereignty” idea.
it for him; invited the people to hear him, and, but for disturbing the
audience, would have laughed aloud to see him so vehemently exercising
his “Individual sovereignty” in attempting to expose the idea as a
fallacy!
The idea of self-sovereignty had become, as it were, an institution; and
this institution itself protected opposition itself, and the things
called “SCHISM,” and “TREASON,” and “REBELLION,” were IMPOSSIBLE.
Freedom, and “crushing out rebellion” is CRUSHING OUT LIBERTY!.
Loyalty, Disloyalty, Rebellion, etc., stab to the heart the very germ of
liberty, and the spirit of American institutions. It is the spirit only,
and not the institutions, that can survive the wounds!
to L----? No, certainly not. He has an absolute right in his sovereignty
to oppose self-sovereignty or anything else proposed for his or any
one’s adoption. There is no ground for opposition till he attempts to
enforce his views upon other sovereigns.
ever so effectually restrained and regulated the instinctive and
impulsive pursuit of our own ends, and invested Freedom with such
beautiful and enchanting symmetry as the sacred and constant regard to
this absolute right of unqualified sovereignty in others over their own;
and so inspires a ready spirit of forbearance and accommodation where
the mutual exercise of this divine absolute right is impossible; and the
most polite, benevolent, Equitable, charming deportment in the highest
cultivated circles, is characterized in every step, word, and deed, as
if this idea was the divine regulator of all.
own, over which he may harmlessly exercise this unqualified
jurisdiction, or sovereignty, especially with regard to property.
great obstacle to harmonic adjustment is overcome.
not been fully and exactly stated, but if each one becomes so
conditioned that he can exercise this jurisdiction over his or her own
person, responsibilities, time, and property, without disturbing others,
true order will have commenced, and future wisdom may supply
deficiencies.
“isolation,” “selfishness,” “unsociableness,” etc.
perceives the sublime importance of it, as a regulator of human
intercourse, could find a motive to misrepresent it. Education, drill,
on this great theme, seem to be indispensable.
order and as a preventive of confusion and violence, could scarcely
begin to do it justice, and all that can be done here is to excite
thought towards it as a study, by a few hints, in addition to those
already given, and leave it to the after experience of the reader for
continuous illustration and confirmation.
the same voice, the same stature, so that one could not be distinguished
from another, what could equal the confusion to which it would
immediately lead? What prevents this confusion but the individualities
of countenance, voice, gait, stature, name, etc.?
confusion it would make.
letters? To prevent confusion.
nothing; we should destroy all written language and deprive ourselves of
all it benefits.
many of the words we are obliged to use, are alike in sound and in their
orthography, while the words themselves mean different things. The
remedy, if it were possible, would be in having each word to represent
only one Individual thing. Hence the necessity of controversialists
defining and defining and defining the terms they use, till both parties
understand the particular definite Individual idea which the word is to
represent in their controversy. The simple perception of this would
almost annihilate controversies and disputes and often end in most
disastrous results, or, perhaps, which never ends! Our every day and
every hour’s conversation — almost every remark, is invested with more
or less confusion, because one word may mean more than one thing, and
common education has not trained us to the habitual consciousness or
perception of it.
in disintegration from concentrated power and dominion; but it has led
to other steps in the same direction — to more divisions and
subdivisions of sects, till theological sectism is nearly harmless; but
the Reformation will not be complete till it is clearly and universally
understood that each mind is an indestructible individuality which may
or may not coincide with other minds in more or less particulars; but
that to attempt to enforce conformity when this coincidence is wanting
is a fatal undertaking, which will proceed in violence and confusion,
and end in disappointment. And the same is true throughout the political
sphere. We shall see divisions and subdivisions of political parties
till partyism destroys itself by the insignificance of each; the
ultimate step of division landing us, as in the theological sphere, in
INDIVIDUALITY: the same process in the different spheres resulting in
every one being his own sect and party, or “Priest and King,” or his own
sovereign.
political “Unions,” “Confederacies,” Combination and Organizations of
States, Nations, sects, tribes, clans, or parties, and directly away
from all the confusions, violence, crime, destruction, and desolation
which necessarily attend them.
“Starting fresh, as from a second birth, Man in the sunshine of the
world’s new spring, Shall walk transparent, like some holy thing.”
to be the only possible remedy against a whole city or a whole nation
being destroyed for the words or acts of two or three of its members!
One, and perhaps more, of the ferocious partisan newspapers openly
advocated the destruction of the whole city of Baltimore, on account of
the acts of five or six of its inhabitants! Education on this subject
would hold those five or six alone responsible for their acts, unless
others voluntarily assumed responsibility for them, and no greater
element of confusion and violence exists in our midst than holding every
one responsible for all the opinions or acts of those with whom they may
be occasionally associate. No one would be willing to be responsible for
all the acts of the best friend he may have, and the axiom, “Tell me
what company you keep, and I will tell you what you are,” is true only
with those who have no Individuality — no self-hood, no private
judgment, and it has done, and is continually doing, more harm than can
ever be estimated.
Clanship-responsibility for each other’s words or acts, is to force
them, for self-preservation, to attempt to enforce an outward conformity
of speech and act to the pattern struck out by the crude editor of a
paper, or to some other one pattern, which, being impossible, leads
directly to confusion and violence, intensified to the last degree.
the laboring man, whether white or black!” We cannot measure the evils
that may have grown to a great extent out of this remark having been
taken as the sentiments and designs of all the South. To have held the
writer of it alone Individually responsible for it would have been only
Equitable, and to have treated all similar cases in the same way might
have averted the present desolating internal war.
the representative of the American people in the “Trent” and Mason and
Slidel case, to which a large portion of Englishmen, supposing that he
told the truth, very justly took great umbrage, and were ready to make
war on the whole of the Americans, all from the single mistake of
assuming that the Americans were responsible for that one reckless man’s
words! The practice of holding every one alone Individually responsible
for his ASCERTAINED acts and words would avert such dangers.
responsibilities which they do not choose to assume! Very well; then we
have at last found a remedy for an evil as great as any other. What,
then, becomes of National debts, forced on future generations without
consulting them?
and appropriate the Loans, and who alone should be held responsible.
subject to various and conflicting interpretations, all growing out of
the inherent and indestructible Individuality of different minds. A
compact between parties who do not understand it alike is null and void,
because they have not consented to the same thing, even if they have
signed it! What is to be done with this fact? We can do nothing with it
but accept it as an irrefutable truth, and provide means of dispensing
with whatever conflicts with it.
exposes and rebukes these poor devices, itself dispenses with them, and
practically accomplishes the objects vainly attempted by them!
base of all security against incessant confusion, conflict, repression,
and violence. Communism is its exact antipode, and on this account was
reasonably objected to by the French Government, in the time of St.
Simonism, on the ground that it worked against security of condition.
street of Greytown, in Central America, — one man throws a bottle at Mr.
Borland’s nose (it seems that bottles were nearest at hand), and
forthwith the whole town is reduced to fragments and ashes by a North
American ship-of-war lying in the harbor! Had the men who worked the
guns been educated to know the value of Individual responsibilities,
instead of being reduced to mere machines by the dried-herring
subordination, they would not have had any hand in that wanton outrage,
but would have waited till they understood something of the quarrel, and
then would have said, we will do nothing to unnecessarily add to the
violence already done. Let the disturbance be confined to the
individuals who voluntarily too part in, and who alone are responsible
for it.
be stated that there was, at the time, an involuntary and extensive
outburst of indignant protest against the ruffian outrage, and that the
Government itself has since (I believe) entered into negotiation for
reparation of damages.
which) candidly acknowledged to him that his most prominent reasons for
going to war with the Queen of Bohemia, were, that he had an army that
was tired of inactivity; and ambition, interest, and the desire to make
the world to talk of him!
he takes on himself the risks, costs, and natural penalties of his own
acts and decisions. If this should become one of the regulating thoughts
among men, what would become of such wars, or any wars?
Co-operative reconstruction have arisen chiefly from the parties having
pledged themselves to co-operation, without understanding the word
alike. One, perhaps, had thought only of the economies that would result
to him; another of the general harmony that he saw would result from it;
another saw in it only the opportunity of making speeches and getting
into office. As soon as they commence operations, they find that there
is no coincidence, and consequently no co-operation between them. The
attempts appear to have been partially successful, just in proportion as
they have confined themselves, like most common partnerships, to the
co-operation in one particular, individual thing. For instance,
store-keeping, and saving and accumulating money or property; but
success itself in this particular alone, as illustrated by Rapp’s
Society at Economy, and by the Rochdale co-operators, by furnishing a
communistic fund to differ about, tends to discord, dissolution,
disappointment, and insecurity of condition, which latter is the
greatest evil to be remedied.
shall co-operate so far as our conditions admit of it. Nothing further
need be expected. The understanding, as well as the hands, should
co-operate. If we attempt to generalize co-operation, we shall fail to
get the required co-operation of understanding.
others, and leaving every one FREE to co-operate in THAT PARTICULAR CASE
IN HAND OR NOT, that we avoid the discordant collisions, and secure
co-operation so far as each one expects to be benefited by it, or so far
as his interests prompt him.
that I recognize MORAL interests as taking precedence of pecuniary
interests; and yet I would have it clearly understood and settled that I
will not make pecuniary sacrifices unless I feel myself compensated in
the moral interest I feel, or the pleasure I derive, from the
contemplation of the good promised by it.
co-operative action has already been illustrated.
order, and herein Monarchists are right; but this individuality of the
sovereignty is not INDIVIDUAL as long as it can be divided! and is not
attained until it rests in each person over his or her own only.
is, that the disputants do not confine themselves to the one individual
thing in which the dispute originated, till that is settled and disposed
of, but they draw in new points just as disputable, one after another,
till the whole becomes conglomerated confusion. The remedy can be found
only in discussing one individual thing or point at a time.
John Villars is an excellent man. Both may be equally correct. Under
some conditions John might have acted the part of a rogue, and under
other conditions the same John Villars might have performed the part of
an angel. The individuality or diversity of conditions explains all
this. And there is probably no greater effort of self-government
required, no greater moral victory to attain, than that of
individualizing each case, — judging and treating each according to its
own apparent merits; condemning one act of our neighbor at one moment,
and the next minute being ready to approve another act of the same
neighbor! Yet this is only Individualizing or exercising discrimination!
Individuality is the vital principle of order, it would have generally
seen and admitted that Government has, properly, but one (Individual)
function, which is to resist or restrain encroachments upon the rights
of Individuals. That it is not the true function of governments to
prescribe opinions, either moral, religious, or political; to meddle
with manufactures or importations; to prescribe the cut of the citizen’s
hair, the employment of his time, or the disposal of his life or his
property, but simply and solely to protect him against such
impertinences.
purpose than to resist or restrain violence, is, itself, an encroachment
which should be resisted. This would give the absolute right of
secession, per se, to any extent whatever, leaving nothing to talk about
but the entangled or communistic property between the parties, and the
present ruin of all parties would not have occurred. A war for the
protection or relief of the oppressed might or might not have arisen in
time, but not the present war.
considered one thing at a time till that thing was settled, the war
would not have arisen; but we are now discussing the right or wrong of
secession, the rights and wrongs of slaves, the expediency of Tariffs,
the right to collect revenue, the right to compel citizens to fight
against their wills, the navigation of the Mississippi River, possible
foreign relations, and several other subjects all at once, and never
settle one of them. The issue of the war arose on the absolute right of
secession. If that had been dwelt on Individually till it was settled
(as “nothing is ever settled till it is settled right”), the war would
not have arisen, because the absolute and inalienable right of
self-preservation or self-sovereignty, according to the Declaration of
Independence, having been arrived at and admitted, would have ended all
controversy. And I therefore assert that, if the public mind had been
properly educated to discuss one thing at a time till it was settled,
instead of a conglomeration of things, and never settling one of them,
we should have averted the ruin that has followed.
understanding none thoroughly, and ludicrously commit ourselves on both
sides of the same issue, and then exclaim, “Whoever is not for us is
against us!”
whites of the South and to their white subordinates at home, and in the
same breath assert that right in favor of the blacks of the South!
to their white subordinates, and to the black people of the South! This
is the difference between the parties! That is, no difference at all.
Both fatally contradict themselves, and become entangled in a web of
confusion, from which nothing but the simple admission of that great
inalienable right of sovereignty in every person (within his or her own
sphere, as explained) can possibly extricate them.
admission of this great universal right, political slavery of all colors
is logically at an end; but the enslavement of Labor is another subject
which concerns whites and blacks alike, but which can find no solution
till the Equitable compensation for labor is understood. If I get an
hour’s labor of you more than I am justly entitled to, I have enslaved
you pecuniarily to that extent; but how can we tell what I am Equitably
entitled to for an hour of my services?
[1] The Divine, as I understand and use the word, means, simply, the not
human. The sun, the winds, the tides, electricity, and whatever else
exists without the aid of man are of Divine origin — that is, not of
human origin.
I prefer however, in order to avoid ambiguity and misunderstanding, to
distinguish all these as belonging to primitive nature, and the works of
man as of the secondary nature. Hence may arise the phrases primitive
sphere, and secondary sphere.
[2] Rev. Mr. Briar’s “Africans at Home.”
[3] The glorious Kossuth said, “The future of mankind can repose only on
principles.”
[4] Witness the Dred Scott Decision.
[5] Those rules, laws, or institutions, which demand obedience against
the inclination of the subject, subordinate or enslave man; while those
rules, laws, or institutions to which conformity is understandingly and
cheerfully rendered, may be said to be subordinate to man, and with
them, man is free. In present civilization institutions are above men;
in true civilization man will be not under but within institutions or
above institutions.