aV •/> w* ^ 4 A A ,-fc V c ^ y* - ^ f ■^ . V ^. <*• ^ <* <£> &> -4 " « >. •%• *a$t> Let us see how far this under- taking has already proceeded. All the towns of the Atlantic seaboard and of the Missis- sippi valley are connected by thirty thousand miles of tele- graphic wire; despatches are transmitted in a few minutes from Boston to New Orleans, a distance of three thousand miles, equal to that separating Europe from America, 'without intermediate stations. The British American system is con- nected (as at Halifax) with the American. All the towns of California are to be put in communication, and in a year or two the connection will be established, by way of the Rocky Mountains, with the Mississippi valley and the Eastern coast. The California news, which now consumes four weeks in its passage, will then arrive in as many minutes ! In Mexico, a SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 145 wire is in operation from the capital to Vera Cruz. On the Isthmus, Navy Bay and Panama will shortly be connected. Brazil already entertains a project for netting its vast terri- tory with these nerves of steel. All these systems will of course be connected with each other, and thus reduce the American continent to perfect universality of place and time. The Old World is not for from the same goal. In England, France, and Germany, the organization is already perfect. Submarine lines connect the former country with Ireland, France, Belgium, and Holland. From Marseilles, in France, a wire is to be laid to Corsica, thence by way of Sar- dinia to Tunis. From Tunis a branch line is to go to Algiers, and another to Alexandria. India is being drawn into these magnetic meshes. A report on this subject contains the fol- lowing : — " A magnificent system of magnetic telegraph is to be immediately introduced into Hindostan. For some time past, Dr. O'Shaughnessy, of the medical staff, has been engaged in trying various experiments with short lines, with a view to ascertain the best form of wires and poles for traversing the vast spaces of that couutry. These trials have given com- plete satisfaction to the Board of Directors, and orders have been issued to commence the works forthwith. The lines will commence at Calcutta, and make the tour of the peninsula. From the " City of Palaces" they will traverse the province of Bengal, following more or less regularly the course of the Ganges to and through the holy suburbs of Benares, and up to the conjunction of that river with the Jumna at Allahabad ; thence they will pursue a pretty direct route to Agra, the ancient cap- ital of the Mogul empire while Delhi was but a provincial town. From Agra they will branch off in a north-westerly direction through Delhi to Lahore, to form the final fetter for the subject kingdom of Runjeet Singh. With this immense line of telegraph other lines are to be in connection, traversing the entire length and depth of the peninsula, aa 7 146 T HE NEV/ ROME. these will run from the banks of the Hoogley to the Coromandel coast ; and thence will stretch across the Caraatic, traverse Hyderabad, and issue on the shores of the Arabian Sea. The three Presidencies of Bombay, Madras, and Bengal will be thus brought into direct and instan- taneous communication with each other and with the remote provinces lying under the Himalaya Mountains, or about the sources of the Indus." The integration of this system with that which takes its start at Alexandria, will of course speedily ensue. Then will be verified the prediction of the English cabinet minister when interrogated on a matter relating to Indian affairs, on which he had no precise information, that a telegraph would soon be finished to Calcutta, which would enable him to trans- mit all puzzling questions asked of him in a session, and report the answer in the same session a while afterwards. Switzerland, Italy, and Austria, all have their systems. Russia is weaving a net over her immense dominions, from Poland to the eastern coast of Siberia. An expedition of savans is just setting out from St. Petersburg to make a scientific exploration of the eastern peninsula of Kamschatka, and select the telegraph stations there. But we cannot stop here. The connection must not unite humanity into two halves, but into a single whole. The wires are already forging which shall rivet America to Europe and to Asia. The English house of Harrison has received from that, and from the Danish government, a monopoly of a submarine telegraph running from Scotland to the Shetland Isles, thence by way of the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Green- land to Labrador, which is to form the point of union with our continental system. This, be it observed in passing, is SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 147 the route taken by the first discoverers of America, the Northmen, when they skipped from island to peninsula, until they set foot on " Vinland." The Russian government will carry the line from Kamschatka, by way of the Aleutian Isles, to Alaska and her American possessions, whence it will be continued to California, closing the magic tircle of the earth. From India the wires will enter China, and connect with the Siberian lines ; they will cross the sea to the new- found Australian Eldorado, stringing the islands like pearls upon the necklace of the sea. From the north coast of Africa they will engirdle that continent, meeting at the Cape. From these outer circles the tendrils will quickly insinuate themselves into the interior of the continents. The batteries constantly charging, are constantly necessitating a discharge, and the societary electricity will have built its own cause- ways in a few short years, from pole to pole, and along the whole stretch of the equator. The fire that glides upon them will scorch away the differences of race and nation, and the fetters of custom and tradition, and their light will illumine man with a wisdom he has never known. Let the prediction be recorded, that the results produced by the magnetic tele- graph will infinitely transcend the conceptions which can now be formed by the most sanguine prophet. It will facilitate commerce to such an extent as in a measure to dissolve it, — for the pursuit of commerce as a separate employment can only be profitable while there are difficulties in the way of its incidental prosecution. It will equalize and regulate ex- changes, and raise credit to the level of capital ; it will place 148 THE NEW ROME. the unculled treasures of the earth at the command of the penniless, and thus bring on the solution of the great social problem, to make every man rich. By the attraction of interest it will rivet the political forces of the earth to their natural centre, and produce a unity of political forms and political liberty. It will displace representative government by a direct democracy ; enabling the assembled world to dis- course on their common affairs with the same freedom with which the populace of Athens and Rome ruled the world from their market-places. It will break the force of the crisis of 1854. But power- ful as it is, even this is not the only corrective. The earth has herself opened her bosom, and poured out its fulness. In 1S47, the reports of Colonel Mason, the military governor of California, began to teem with marvellous accounts of " fields of gold," said to have been discovered there. No- body believed him, until the report leaked out that a whole garrison, commander and all, had deserted in quest of the treasure. They were immediately followed by a strong deputation from the Atlantic cities, which has ever since gone on increasing. The following figures will give some idea of the effect of the discoveries in California and Australia upon commerce and society : — The amount of California gold coined in the mints of the United States, was. In 1848 $44,177 1849 6,147,509 1850 36,074,062 1851 55,938,232 SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 149 The amount coined in 1852 maybe safely estimated at $75,000,000. This, however, is by no means the entire yield of the mines, which may be set down in the aggregate, at $200,000,000. The Australian mines are found to exceed those of California in productiveness ; the golden age is an undeniable reality. — It is worthy of remark, that in conse- quence of this liberality, gold, the king of metals, will be compelled to doff his royal robes, and mingle with his baser brethren on terms more approaching to equality. The produc- tion of gold bore the following proportions to that of silver : — ■ Silver. Gold. In 1800 1 45 1847 1 18 1851 1 6 1852 1 3 In other words, the proportionate yield of gold is at present fifteen times greater than it was fifty years ago. As the value of these metals is inseparable from their rarety, this must be attended with an alteration in their relative value. The pro- duction of silver increases with great regularity, one and a half per cent, in every year, while the production of gold, ever since the discovery of the Siberian, Californian, and Australian mines, advances with more rapid but less even strides. It is evident that its present value, as compared to silver, is tradi- tional and factitious. If the legal valuation of gold, and its sufficiency as a tender be removed, as the dictates of justice to the owner of silver demand, we shall have a steady fall in the comparative value of gold corresponding to its increasing supply. How well this fact is understood by the holders of 150 THE NEW ROME. the two metals, may be gathered from the fact that the Bank of England had in its coffers, In 1S4T. In 1852. Silver £1,000,000 £19,000 Gold 7,000,000 21,000,000 The effect of this supply is distributive and therefore equalizing ; not only because it opens new markets, drains surplus labor, and discovers new countries, but because money is in itself the representative of intercourse, the pivot of business, and because those who handle it are taught by its very glitter the mysteries of business. Capital is hoarded labor; credit anticipated labor ; money represents the imme- diate transition from labor to enjoyment. It makes credit unnecessary and capital useless ; its tendency is, however, to elevate credit and reduce capital, where, as at present, capital is ordinarily in the ascendant; making men rich, not in pro- portion to what they hold back, but to what they pay out. It is only when turned from its legitimate purpose, business, and diverted into its opposing channel, of speculation, that it assumes itself the form of capital, and conduces to a social stagnation, if the continued supply does not preserve the motion of the current.* The miners of the Pacific set the final seal upon the triumph * It will scarcely be necessary to refute the possible objection to this argument, that money, or currency, and capital, are identical. Capital means the power derived from withholding money; currency, the ability to dispense with capital. He who gathers water in a tank, fares best in seasons of drought ; while the rain lasts, he is on a level with others. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 151 of free trade. When all surplus labor found its ample re- wards ; when prices were found to rise, by the emigration of the laborer, immeasurably faster than they ever had by the exclusion of the fabric; when the discord arising from the un- equal distribution of men, land, and money, which would never give way before the quackeries of exclusiveness and national competition, were found to resolve themselves by the freedom of intercourse ; when it was seen that the raw product and the manufactory were nearer to each other after the article had run the round of six thousand miles of unin- terrupted trade, than when the prohibition of trade had dun- geoned the seed in its native soil, and imprisoned the spirit of enterprise in its own furnace; when a community richer, happier, and better than the world had ever known, sprung from the brain of this new king of Olympus, without a gov- ernment, without a colony, without a corporation ; then it was found that society had in itself the corrective, developing principle, which governments could only hamper, and not promote ; then the sentiment of Jefferson, that that govern- ment is best which governs least, took the form of a societary canon, and the separation of state and commonwealth be- came the duty of a world which had just accomplished the other duty of the separation of church and state ; — and Gene- ral Pierce was elected with an overwhelming majority. His election is the emancipation of American business from the tutelage of the Federal Government. Previous to this (1851) the ocean world had held its first Olympic festival. Where, since men live and move, was 152 THE NEW ROME. there ever such a fane, such an oblation, such an assemblage of worshippers ! Vast as the sea, pellucid as the heavens, teeming with riches as the soil ! Earnestly offered, reverent- ly celebrated, and replete with blessings. All mankind as- sembled, all in unison, all returning ennobled and enriched ! Transitory because ubiquitous, fleeting because eternal, short- lived, yet unforgotten, who shall tell when the wonders of the "World's Fair shall have end ! We have brought down the stream of social history to the present time. If, in pursuance of our leading thought, we strive to discern its bearings upon the future, we shall also adhere to our other principle, not to teach the world our theory, but to learn our theory from the world. A phe- nomenology of facts, to use the abstruse but adequate He- gelian term, will enable us to sketch with some certainty the limits which the future development of humanity must conserve, since it most probably will proceed upon the same fundamental laws which have hitherto determined its course. Business is the hero of modern history, free trade its latest achievement. The harvest of the fruits of free trade will occupy our nearest future. But already Americans are dis- covering that the free trade which consists in the non-inter- ference of our own government, is very little, so long as it still leaves our trade subject to the annoyances of foreign governments. The protectionists were right in saying that a free trade which cuts a people loose from their own govern- ment, which might have coincident interests with them, but SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 153 leaves them open to the spoliations of other governments, whose interests are likely to be antagonistic, is as much of a curse as of a blessing. Americans will want to enjoy the blessings of free trade by exchanging with the busy workmen of Japan the products of their industry. The Japanese gov- ernment will forbid them. Americans will desire to enjoy free trade by going to the rich fields of Cuba and of Hayti, and drain wealth from their teeming soil. The Emperor and the Captain-General will interfere. Americans will ask, " Is this free trade ? If our government has no right to restrict our trade, have these despots the right to restrict that of those with whom we desire to hold commerce 1 Have they a right to trammel us as well as them ? Suppose America had from the first insisted upon this alleged right of governments, where now would be America and Europe ? Will America draw any profit or advantage from the observance of this right in other powers, which she has renounced for herself? Will it not be to her a constant source of loss and vexation 1 Is it not her interest to dispute that right 1 Is not her interest, and that of the people of the so-called-" foreign" states, coin- cident? Are not rights, national as well as private, insti- tuted for the benefit of those who observe them, and should they not be discarded when they lead to their detriment 1 Are not governments instituted for the benefit of the gov- erned, and should they not be abrogated for the same pur- pose 1 Are not all governmental rights fictions, and should fictions ever be allowed to do harm 1 Is it not madness or superstition to sacrifice the rights of real persons, of men 7* 154 THE NEW ROME. and women, to the claims of governments, of corporations, of nonentities ?" Thus will the existence of foreign governments come in conflict with American enterprise, and with the true interests of foreign peoples; and thus will universal annexation come upon the heels of unfettered commerce, resolving into a higher unity the antagonism of free trade and protection. The surface of the earth thus opened to business is, how- ever, too large for its present powers of subjugation. Electricity answers well for the transmittance of thoughts only ; the motive powder of steam has a reverse application. Railroads are radically imperfect and incapable of perfectibil- ity, on account of their costliness and immovability. Yes, we shall not long rest easy under the discrepancy which leaves us more remote from the inland districts of " our own" con- tinent — the road, throughout its whole length, alive with our active fellow-men — than from the shores of distant " foreign" lands, separated by three thousand miles of a barren sea. It seems unfair that that which feeds us should separate us. Nor will it be less irksome to be compelled to wait four weeks for the arrival of men or things from California, when we have been informed by the telegraph of their departure five minutes after it took place. The telegraph demands a method of locomotion which shall in some degree correspond to it. To solve this problem, men will revert to the ship, the ancient engine of wealth because of freedom, and of freedom because of intercourse. Our modern steamers have sails to SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 155 resist the air, and a motive power to impel them forward. What 7iiore has the condor, when he launches his ponderous frame into the thin atmosphere* that surges around the sum- mits of the Andes 1 A little alteration of adjustment, and these iron swans will leave their native element and ride in mid-air. We are on the eve of aerial navigation. The experiment of steaming and towing in the atmosphere by means of a screw-propeller, raised and supported by a balloon, has been tried successfully at Paris. The balloon, which is a toy, must be discarded, and then we shall have the practical navigation of the air. The civilization of mankind has always been regulated by their navigation ; the earliest was potamic, as attained on the banks of the Nile and the Euphrates, the Indus, the Ganges, and the streams of China. This expanded into the Mediter- ranean, which bore the bright fruits of Greek and Roman industry, art, and power. The Northmen broke the spell that seemed to bind humanit}^ to this charmed sea, and gave it a rival in the German Ocean and the Baltic. This was the piebald condition of the Middle Ages, terminated by the admiral who unchained the oceans, and initiated the system perfected by the settlement of California and the occupation of the Pacific. But, The first four acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day ; Time's noblest offspring is the last. * The mercury of the barometer at fourteen inches. 15G THE NEW ROME. The sea is less confined than the river, the ocean more ubiqui- tous than the sea, but the air alone is fitted for a universal civilization. Its shores are every where; it can penetrate the poles ; it will settle the wilds of Tartary and the valleys of Central Africa. It will know no harbors and no ports, no depots and no entrepots. It will make all parts of the earth alike passable and alike accessible. It will give us the vic- tory over Russian continentalism. Freedom is now limited to the oceanic world, to England and America ; Russia, with its continental dependencies, is despotic ; it has no ships, and therefore no freedom ; no freedom, and therefore no navy ; having no navy, it can never do great injury to the seafaring world. But its despotism gives it an army, and its army will protect its despotism. The seafaring nations, on the other hand, have their navy to protect their freedom, but they will never have a large standing army to extend their system. To suppose this, would be to deny every leading characteristic of Americanism. This would keep the two halves of the world in a state of perpetual isolation, did not the navigation of the air restore them to a common element. American air-privateers will be down upon the Russian garrisons — to use our own expressive slang — " like a parcel of bricks ;" and the Russian serfs will fasten to their skirts, and be elevated to a share in their liberties. To descend from the sublime to the ridiculous, we are led to consider a question of politics which presents itself in this connection. The annexation of the world, and the navigation of the air, or either of them alone, will make it impossible to SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 157 collect duties, even " for purposes of revenue." How, then, would the President's salary be paid 1 The question of revenues and expenditures will reduce itself to little more than this. The United States will never have a considerable standing army. Still less will it ever be necessary to maintain a large navy in times of peace. " Foreign relations" will be vastly simplified when there shall be no " foreign" country except Kussia ; and the " outfits and hints" will be curtailed. The custom-house officers will no longer have an opportunity of serving their country. The average government expenses will not be likely, at any time, to exceed the amount of $60,000,000, which they reached in the fiscal year ending June 30th, 1851. This must not be levied in such a shape as to become a tax upon business, as is the case with duties, excises, and licenses, for business must be unfettered. Nor must it in- volve an encroachment upon the sovereignty of the indi- vidual, in the shape of an inquisitorial examination into his private affairs, in the shape of an income or inheritance tax, or a per centage on debts and credits. Yet it must be upon all alike, or rather upon every individual, not in proportion to his wealth, for that may be the result of his enterprise, and enterprise should not be discouraged, but in proportion to the bounty he receives from nature, our common parent. All men are entitled to the land, but all cannot use it ; let those then that do so pay for this privilege. The burden will not rest on them, for they are at the fountain head of wealth, and will levy the cost of what they pay upon the productions 158 THE NEW ROME. which others must buy of them. For the same reason it is not necessary to graduate the tax according to the quality or location of the soil, but simply to. measure its extent. This will give certainty, and dispense with assessments. If -gradu- ally introduced it would have no social effect whatever. The whole quantity of improved land in the Union was ascertained by the census of '51 to be 112,042,000 acres. A tax of one cent to the acre would yield a revenue of $1,120,420 ; the sum would, however, be increased by levy- ing at least one cent upon every parcel smaller than an acre. Without allowing for this increase, doubling the ratio annu- ally, the sum would rise in six years to $70,580,400, — cer- tainly equal to $60,000,000, — with a very large margin for the expenses of collection. The tax would then be sixty-three cents to the acre ; so that the largest Northern former would be held to pay $120, the mere houseler twenty cents, and the Southern planter $030. As it is evident, however, that the improvement of land will extend very rapidly, even* leaving annexation entirely out of the question, while the government expenses will rather be diminished than swelled, it follows that the tax may be made to rise in far slower gradations, and yet attain the end. Supposing the number of improved acres to increase as fast as the population, it would require but forty-two cents to the acre to produce the revenue required ; so that a tax of four cents to the acre, increased by an additional four cents from year to year, would in ten years enable us to dispense with other means of raising re- venue. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 159 This calculation is wrong, in so far as it makes no allow- ance for the taxes imposed upon the vast expanse of unim- proved land which is now withheld from improvement by the grasp of speculators ; and one great argument in favor of the measure is certainly to be drawn from its tendency to dis- courage this embargo upon cultivation. But a glance at our land tenures, and the modifications to which they will be ere long subjected, will show that property in the wilderness is an invention which will soon be known no more. Judge Reed, in the Pennsylvania Blackstone, is particular to remark that our tenures are purely allodial ; but his very earnestness of reiteration is a sign that he does not consider his position impregnable. The constitution of New York agrees with him, but in spite of these authorities, and a host of others, the fact can only be concealed from the wilfully blind, that our tenures are, in all essentials, feudal. They are derived by legitimate succession from the feudal lord para- mount, the king ; even where the revolution caused a violent transfer, it was but a transfer and not an extinction, a change of possession, not of quality ; the declarations of assumption by the states are express in saying that they succeed to all the rights of the proprietary, or the king. The essential characteristics of feudal tenures are, that they originate in a fictitious assumption of property by the governing power, that they pass by grant of that power in return for a render, and that the purchaser, or vassal, purchases the right of re- quiring a like render from his purchasers, or sub-vassals. The form of these renders has undergone many changes, but 160 THE NEW ROME. they have never affected the character of the tenure. At first they consisted in a general duty to do service, military or agricultural ; then, in certain definite services, annually ren- dered ; subsequently, in the surrender of certain natural or agricultural productions, yearly. These were commuted into pecuniary rents, and, finally, these rents were bought off by the payment of a certain gross sum or purchase money paid once for all. This is one present form. But now, as at first, the government claims the right, without using the land itself, of keeping out of it any individual who has not paid it black mail for a dispensation from the privilege ; and now, as then, it conveys to such purchaser the liberty of playing this dog- in-the-manger policy over again, and exacting black mail from whoever denies to make the land available to himself and his fellows. To say that this policy perpetuates a desert, the usual argument of the land-reformers, is to assail its least vulner- able points. We have seen that property in land, as now understood, consists in the right to exclude humanity from a certain portion of earth and air, and to compel society to buy the liberty of entering upon it. But the purpose of such entrance is industry ; and hence our moral form of feudalism is nothing more nor less than a purchaseable embargo upon the labor of the community. The value of the real estate of the Union, by the census of 1850, was $3,270,733,093. Im- agine all this amount of capital divested from the embarrass- ment of industry to its furtherance ! Railroads, steamboats, telegraphs, the blood-vessels of society, which preserve its SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 161 health and avert its convulsions, are " poor stock," and there is no inducement for the capitalist to embark in them ; — all the energy of Philadelphia could hardly build the Pennsyl- vania Railroad. But real estate is " good six per cent, invest- ment of the best security ;" it pays admirably for the man who has made his fortune in spite of the difficulties interposed hy capitalists to use his fortune so as to interpose the same obstacles to the efforts of others. What proportion of those $3,270,733,093 would be required to build the Pacific Rail- road % Oh protection to home industry! Oh rivers and harbors ! Where the individual asserts his sovereignty against the government, where business is recognized as the great social regulator, a revolt against the feudal system is unavoidable. This has been carried on publicly since 1828. It will lead to the vindication of allodial tenures. These are marked by characteristics exactly opposite to those just sketched. This latter doctrine asserts that land possessed by no one belongs to no one ; that the actual occupation of land by an indi- vidual, or any bona fide association of individuals, guarantees an undisturbed continuance of that occupation, so long as it is not discontinued by the freewill of the parties; that a voluntary discontinuance of occupation leaves the land again without an owner, as before, open to the occupation of the first man who enters it with that intention ; that the exit of one occupant, to make room for another, is a business trans- action, legitimately attended with the payment of money ; but that a man cannot receive rent for land from another 1 62 THE NEW ROME. because rent is a payment for the right to occupy, and the fact of receiving payment for the right of occupancy from another, is conclusive evidence that the payee is not in occu- pation himself; and he cannot be deprived of his land for debt, because as a man cannot live without having where to live, it is not to Jdq presumed that any consideration would induce him to make a contract involving the loss of this indispensable element of existence. Compare the following passage from the Report of the Commissioner of Public Lands, of 1852 : " While on the subject of the land offices in California, I would recom- mend that the township lines alone should be extended over the valuable deposits of the precious minerals, and that the lands containing those de- posits be left free to the enterprising industry of all citizens of the United States, and those who have declared their intention to become such, to work and mine at their pleasure, without let or hindrance, except so far as local. legislation may be necessaiy to preserve the peace of the country, and to secure persons in their possessory rights; and if any benefit is claimed by the government from the product of these lands, further than that which is general to all our citizens, by an abundant supply of the precious metals, that it be in the shape of a nominal charge for refining the ore and coining the metal, Which may be required to be done in the country, before permitting it to become a subject of traffic, barter, or exportation." This is the system of allodial tenures, which will triumph when the obliquities of the present land reform movement have been smoothed off by time and reflection. Occasioned, as that movement is at present, by a desire to escape from the evils concomitant to extensive, combined manufacturing industry, it meditates a relapse into the semi-culture of those sentimentally-idealistic times, when every man sits " under SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 163 his own vine and fig-tree," and mankind are divided into innumerable little familistic societies of three or four indi- viduals, separated by the width of a farm from the rest of the world, plodding and vegetating, without progress or de- velopment. Let us have nothing of land limitation ; large capital and large enterprise is as much needed in agriculture as in other pursuits and free business will as surely counter- act all its dangers. It is indeed a remarkable fact that the enormous strides of manufacturing enterprise of the last fifty years have been attended with no corresponding advance in the sphere of agriculture. The latter is still hampered by the want of combination, and consequent reckless waste of labor and scantiness of profit, with which it was pursued before the opening of the present era. At this moment butter and eggs are as high in price in some of the secluded agricultural regions and lumbering districts of Pennsylvania, as in the metropolis ; and the same articles are actually imported from the neighbouring province of Canada. This is partly to be accounted for by the inadaptability of steam machinery to these purposes. Steam is like its parent volcano, cumbrous, heavy, expensive, often dangerous, ami always destructive ; its appetite is unquenchable. Carbonic acid gas may prove a better motor. Another obstacle for the development of our industrial society is found in that relic of European barbarity, our patent laws. These insensate enactments, by preventing the com- merce of ideas, paying the individual for withholding, instead 164 THE NEW ROME. of imparting his discoveries, and by cutting off the division of labor among inventors, and compelling each individual to retrace the same ground which hundreds have probably trav- elled before him, have done as much to retard contrivance, and, consequently, industry and wealth, than all the wars that were ever waged. Inventors themselves are coming out in opposi- tion. When they have been repealed, the march of intellect will accomplish the perfection of machinery, and the greatest possible dispensation of labor. This consummation will lead to the removal of the last remaining shackle interposed by government interference to obstruct the free development of the business community. The present crudities of the social system are generally ascribed to the conflict between capital and labor. Be that as it may, it were idle to hope that the strife will lead to a harmonious adjustment of the claims of these two elements. The days of old-fashioned labor are evidently gone by, never to return ; the wand of invention is erasing the curse which compels man in the sweat of his brow to eat his bread, and what of the task is yet undone will certainly not fail of its accomplishment. The doctrine of the divinity of labor will not hold ; — action is divine; — but labor unavoidably smacks of servitude; — the "damned spot" will not out. The direct or indirect title to the products of machinery of some sort will henceforth be the only avenue to wealth. To obtain this, mere naked labor will be daily more inadequate. But there is a far better balance to the power of capital, or accumulated labor; and that is found in the anticipation of labor, — in SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 165 credit. Credit, unfettered, is as much better than capital, as the future is greater than the past. The Democratic party have overthrown federal banks, and federal corporations, but in state politics their action has been confined to professions ; they talk of limiting banks and restricting corporations, but are themselves not sufficiently assured of the soundness of their own principle to reduce it to practice, without exception. And, in fact, it is not to be denied that, in the present state of things, banks and cor- porations of some kind, and to some extent, are not to be dispensed with. Business would be at a stand-still without them. The necessity of an evil proves the existence of a greater evil which the lesser is required to palliate. The need of an evil exception shows the iniquity of the rule. The purpose of the exceptions made to the general law in bestowing char- ters, is to provide a means of raising credit, which would be otherwise unattainable. Thus capital is endowed with extra- ordinary privileges, to enable it to overcome, in the given case, the obstacles to the attainment of credit presented by the ordinary course of affairs. But these ordinary privileges of capital consist in the power of monopolizing all credit to itself. A man with money can always borrow more, while a man without money can borrow none without spending even what he has. In thus overcoming the ordinary preponderance of capital by investing certain specified capital with a capacity to absorb a portion of credit greater than would otherwise fall to its rightful share, the practice of forming corporations 106 T II B NEW ROME. undertakes to expel the devil by Beelzebub, the prince of devils. How is it that capital absorbs all credit 1 Why can a man with money always borrow more, while a man without money can borrow T none without spending even what he has 1 Because the law lends a helping hand to the collection of the debt owed by the moneyed borrower, which it cannot lend for that incurred by the needless one. Because it guarantees the debts of the capitalist to the extent of his capital, leav- ing those of the non-capitalist unguaranteed ; because it not only prevents the absorption of capital by credit, but assists the consumption of credit by capital. The laws for the collection of debt are by no means necessary to the existence of society, for they are not even co-existent with it. The earlier part of the Middle Ages knew nothing of them. They can hardly be fitted into the ancient system of English law. The action of debt is com- paratively recent, and originally inappUcable to what are now called business transactions. The action of assumpsit is founded on a fictitious trespass. These writs have come into use with and- by the rise of capital, and their universal appli- cation marks its greatest ascendancy. The legal impregna- tion of debtors is a Roman element of our polity, against which the individualistic genius of the Germans has ever rebelled. The old Germanic code proceeded upon the rational prin- ciple, that whoever trusts a man's honesty and good fortune, should look to that honesty and good fortune combined, for SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 167 his return. This was giving a bounty to honesty and activity, and thus the adage, " A man's word is as good as his bond," was more than a sentiment. They had good reason for tear- ing out the tongues of the lawyers that were found in Varus' camp." When the issue of the French revolution had re- stored the independence, if not established the supremacy, of the Germanic race, these knots began to be disentangled. The constitution of Pennsylvania, of 1790, provides that " the person of a debtor, where there is not strong presump- tion of fraud, shall not be continued in prison after deliver- ing up his estate for the benefit of creditors ;" and the same enactment, in substance, was passed about that time, in most of the other states. In 1842, the legislature of that state, following the example of New York, went so much further as to decree that " no person shall be arrested or imprisoned for the recovery of any money due upon contract, or for damages incurred by the breach of any contract." This had been preceded by the exemption from sale or execution of sundry indispensable articles of furniture and necessaries of life ; and in 1849, the efforts of Colonel Small were success- ful in carrying an exemption of real or personal estate to the value of three hundred dollars. These laws follow the current of history, and are not likely, for that reason, to be drifted back to its source. At the same time, the very objections which have been urged against them contain in themselves the guide to further im- provements. The exemption, while preventing the relapse into utter penury of those who enjoy its benefits, hinders 1 G8 THE NEW ROME. their advancement by curtailing their credit, or rather by leaving them at a disadvantage as compared with those who have imexempted property as a purchase for the lever of their enterprise. To remove this discrepancy, a public meet- ing, held at Cincinnati, in 1847, proposed the abolition of all laws for the collection of debt. The project, with very little agitation, has been slowly but surely gaining ground with the masses ; it will be carried, piecemeal, perhaps, and slowly, but certainly and entirely. With this consummation of the divorce of state and commonwealth, political agitation will come to an end. The supremacy of the state, the organization of force, will be suc- ceeded by the organization of interest ; " commonwealth" is the legitimate designation of that idea, the common term society being more comprehensive, and, for that very reason, too vague, for the present purpose. But this supreme society, the commonwealth, is not to be regarded as a mere reproduction of the state with new components, making new laws, and compelling their observance. The great distinction between state and commonwealth, is that the latter proceeds, not upon statutes, but upon agreements ; not upon the outer law of dictation, but upon the inner, of self-interest ; not by compulsion, but by liberty. It is a great mistake to suppose that society is destined ultimately to take the form of a single great joint-stock concern, managed by a great president and board of directors. Even supposing this form adopted, it would not be preserved, because a corporation having no an- tagonistic interests of other corporations or of individuals out- SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 169 side of its pale, would fall asunder from want of external pressure. The commonwealth will be a self-managing, self- adjusting organization, in which the last shall be first and the first last, which will have no visible head and no personal management. " The organizing principle of the commonwealth," the Socialists will say, "is association." But this is to be under- stood with many qualifications. Association is one of the highest functions of human nature, and the individual must have attained a very high stage of moral and intellectual cul- ture, of tact, skill, and experience, of means and of liberty, to be qualified for this elevated sphere of exertion. Associa- tion was begun by kings, nobles, and wealthy merchants, in the formation of the East and West India Companies; it was continued by merchants and bankers, in our banking and in- surance institutions ; by merchants, engineers, and landed proprietors, in the construction of railroads and canals ; by manufacturers, in the erection of cotton mills and furnaces ; by the sprigs of our moneyed aristocracy, in the mining companies of California. It has always succeeded when undertaken by men in good circumstances, in pursuit of afflu- ence ; never yet, when resorted to by the suffering, in pursuit of comfort. It has made gods of men, but it has not yet been found capable of making men out of drudges. Let not association be considered a royal road from the bottom of society to the summit; it is one of those narrow bridle- paths, over which he who has the fortune to ride may trust his mule to carry him in safety, but on which the foot- 8 170 THE NEW HOME. man is in constant danger of losing his hold and tumbling over the precipice. That Socialism which confines its teachings to association is contracted, because it embraces but one form of the rela- tions of individual interest. What is it that makes associa- tion advantageous'? The more intimate connection of the parties. Association is a form of intercourse ; and intercourse for the furtherance of interest, business, is the electric fluid which restores the fitness of human relations. In all its phases it tends ultimately to this result, however it may seem, at first, to contravene it. — Josiah Warren has stated the social problem with the same clearness as the political. " Value is the 'measure of price; but cost ought to be the measure of price. The difference between cost and value, then, is the evil ; to identify them, the remedy. Now, what is it that deals with the difference between value and cost? Business. The business man makes his fortune out of the difference be- tween what his goods cost him and what they are worth to others ; between the sacrifice he made to obtain them, and the loss others would suffer through not having them. But in thus occupying the gap, he fills it. In so far as his earnings go to the comfort and enjoyment of him and his, they are the legitimate results of a legitimate system. It is only in so far as they go beyond this, and furnish him with capital, thus, while capital confers the privilege of hampering credit, mak- ing him a drag-wheel upon the business community, that they overshoot the mark. Strip capital of its privileges, enfranchise credit, and unfetter business, and the evil is prevented. Yet SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 171 even so, business has a constant self-corrective in it. Every new line of business begins with enormous profits, because cost and value are then far asunder ; as it conies into use, profits are reduced, or, in other words, cost and value approx- imated ; until it becomes ' over-stocked,' yielding no 'living profit, 5 which, when formalized, means that the value has become less than the cost. The business energies thus thrown out of employment are then free to post themselves into some new gap between cost and value, produced by the unequal advance of population, improvement, legislation, invention, or intellect, and to fill it up in like manner as they did the other." The " sovereignty of the individual," the great securing principle centered in politics, is thus compensated and com- pleted by the " equalization of cost and labor in business," the sum of Socialism. The point, then, is, to make every one a business man. The last political obstacle is removed when we abrogate the political preponderance of capital over credit. The intellec- tual obstacles are removed by the diffusion of information. Every one, now a days, is able to learn to read. Our steam- presses diffuse more intelligence in a day than was formerly communicated in a century. The moral obstacles will give way before constant intercourse and communication. Whoever would better mankind, let him bring them together. Our contrivances for enjoying life, when contrasted with our opportunities, are to this day most wretched. One half of us live in towns, so closely and so awkwardly packed, that we 172 THE NEW ROME. are constantly in each other's way, and yet have so little in common as to derive hardly any compensating advantages from the contact. Parcelled off into innumerable petty households, we reproduce in each the same blunders, the same imperfections, the same littlenesses, the same restraints, the same waste of labor and materials, the same scantiness, the same squabbles, the same follies, and the same monotony. Nothing is learned, and nothing forgotten. From this bond- age we fly to the country to find purer air indeed, and more freedom of motion, but still less of cultivation and progress, because still less of intercourse. American contrivance has found the means of exterminat- ing this relic of European barbarity also from the structure of society. The following article, taken entire from the New York Tribune, of December 8, 1850, will show to what phenomenon we refer : — " The St. Nicholas Hotel. — One of the most beautiful buildings in the whole extent of Broadway is that new edifice of six stories, whose white marble front on the west side of the street, just below Spring street, attracts the attention of every passenger. It is more richly and elaborately ornamented than Stewart's — which is of the same material, but in a less striking and ornate style — and has the great advantage of standing in the full light of the morning sun, which brings out all the brilliancy of the stone, and all the beauty of the sculptured decorations. On the other hand, it suffers from an excessive number of windows, which injures the effect, and it is not quite broad enough to give full scope to so elaborate a style of architecture; its front should be two or three times the hundred feet it now covers ; this defect will, however, be somewhat remedied by an extension of the edifice in precisely the same style, seventy-five feet further down Broadway, which will soon be done. It is a pity it could not cover the entire block down to Broome street. SOCIAL O JIG A In I Z ATI ON. 173 " The building of which we speak is to bear the name of the St. Nicholas Hotel. As we have said, it now occupies a front of one hundred feet on Broadway, the ground floor on that street affording room for four stores, in addition to the entrance and reading-room of the hotel — and when the proposed extension is completed, its front will be one hundred and seventy- five feet. It also includes a back building on Mercer street, and a middle building of the same dimensions as the front, but only five stories high. Broad and handsome halls running through the first, second, third, and fourth stories connect these three divisions of the establishment. " The entrance on Broadway is through a wide and elegant hall, at the lower side of which stands the reading-room. In the rear of the hall aim the reading-room is the office, and turning a corner into rather a private place, the visitor discovers the bar. The front rooms of the second story are arranged as public parlors and reception-rooms. On the same floor is the dining-room, some eighty-five by forty-five feet, with its ceiling about twenty-five feet high. In the middle building is a ladies' ordinary — a room of very handsome proportions. The third and fourth stories of the front building are devoted to suites of rooms for families ; the fifth and sixth to rooms for single gentlemen. The middle building and the fourth story of the back building, above the dining-room, are similarly arranged. The lodging-rooms for servants are in the fifth story of the back building. The halls and public rooms are heated by steam-pipes, and in the upmost story of each building are vast tanks for hot and cold water, for the use of lodgers, and also for deluging the house in case of fire. The establish- ment will be lighted with gas made in a separate building belonging to it, in the vicinity, in which are also the stables of the house. " The suites of rooms for families differ in that some have a parlor with one, and others with two bedrooms, with bath and water-closet. The rooms for single persons do not possess these conveniences. The house is generally decorated and furnished (though but a part of the furniture and upholstery is yet put in) with a lavishment of expenditure unpar- alleled in auy hotel in this country or Europe. The furniture is of rosewood in the public rooms and the rooms for families ; in those for single persons it is of mahogany. The carpets, the hangings, the mir- rors, the chandeliers, the gilding, the decorations in plaster and in fresco, are the ne plus ultra of expense, of richness, of luxury. Palaces may have more spacious apartments, but nothing more showy and sumptuous in their furnishing. Whatever of splendid and gorgeous in this way money could procure seems to have been obtained for this 174 THE N E W R OMJE. hotel, with a view to outdo every other in elegance and splendor. Nor is comfort neglected ; the beds are quite perfect ; they consist of a sommier elastique or spring mattrass, with a heavy hair mattrass upon it : better could not be. The house at present will afford accommodations for some three hundred and fifty lodgers, aud will employ about a hundred and thirty waiters, chambermaids, and other servants. But when the additions contemplated shall be finished, there will be room for a thousand lodgers. •• Attached to the dining-hall is an ante-room where the meats arc carved. This is provided with large tables heated by steam, in which the dishes are kept hot. The kitchen, storerooms, laundry, and servants' dining-room are in the basement. The kitchen is no doubt large enough to do the work, but would be better were it considerably larger. The ranges are compact and convenient, but still much inferior, as we think, to the French. A large part of the heat for the cooking is derived from steam, furnished by a steam-engine in the wash-room. The same power drives the washing machines, two in number, — one holding about as much as two hogsheads, and the other about two barrels, — and the drying machine. By this apparatus we are told that shirts can be washed and dried ready for the ironers in ten minutes. The most laborious work of the laundry will thus be performed by machinery, as it ought to be. " We do not undertake to describe in more detail the arrangements and the sumptuousness of this hotel. That it will be a favorite with the public, is insured by its position and its splendor. In the last respect it is evident that a new era has begun for these great metropolitan caravan- series. Henceforth they must be furnished without regard to cost ; the days have gone by when quiet comfort, mere neatness, and a good table were sufficient. Persons from the country, and from other cities, who henceforth visit New York, especially if they bring their families with them, will now desire to experience the full extent of palatial magnificence in their lodgings and entertainment, and to have something to tell about on their return to the untravelled at home. " Hotel-building and furnishing has, however, not yet reached perfec tion, as we proceed tc indicate by a little criticism on the St. Nicholas. " In the first place a word which applies to all our buildings : they are too slightly made. We remember often noticing the walls of the St. Nicholas, as they were going up, with the reflection that they might be strong enough to stand, and doubtless were, for no architect would be fool enough to make a building otherwise, but that if they were ours, we SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 175 should add a brick or two to their thickness. Walls six stories high, which have to bear so great a weight of furniture, fixtures, and persons as these will contain, ought to be strong enough to stand, not only in ordinary circumstances, but even if a fire should consume their interior supports. Next, in respect to ventilation, we find the St. Nicholas deficient. Its apartments and single lodging-rooms, have no means of ventilation except by opening the door or windows. This is none the less a great fault be- cause it is so universal. Every good house should be so arranged as that the body of air in its apartments should be changed regularly, though im- perceptibly. Next, there are not baths enough. The single rooms are almost entirely without them, and a man lodged in the fifth story has to go out of the way down stairs to take a bath. In a hotel of such character and pretensions, though it is not necessary that baths should be attached to every single chamber, they should still be easy of access to all the occupants of such rooms. And then in respect to furniture, hangings, &c, though we do not wish to speak decisively about the St. Nicholas, inas- much as it is not yet completed, and we cannot judge of the final effect, still the tendency is to seek for splendor in the style of the showy North River steamboats, rather than for real elegance, and solid, luxurious, good taste, such as a gentleman of high culture, refinement, and love of art would exhibit in fitting up a palace for his own use. And yet this and not the North River method is the true one. There is also another defi- ciency which we had hoped here to see remedied. In a house six stories high, five weary flights of stairs have to be climbed in order to gain the upper story. This is an awful toil for the human legs, and unnecessary. There is steam power at hand, and there are ingenious brains enough to invent an elegant and convenient apparatus to convey skyward the upward bouud, and earthward the descending, without such excessive labor of mortal muscle. " We add that the St. Nicholas is owned by Mr. D. H. Haight, and will be kept by Messrs. Treadwell & Acker. As a further index of its luxury, we may say that merely to furnish it costs some $125,000." In closing this chapter with the statements of a contem- porary periodical, we offer the best proof that our farthest reaches into the future have not carried us away from our moorings in the serene haven of the present. III. — LANGUAGE rpHE tower of Babel frowns heavily upon the course traced out for the history of the future in these pages. Let us see how the last misgiving as to the power of humanity to satisfy its own requirements, is to be removed. How will the World's Republic escape a confusion of tongues % Rome has left a legacy of her power, in her language, to all the nations that once owned her sway. The New Rome will universalize the tongue which " proclaimed liberty to the nations, and to the people thereof." The English language is manifestly destined for all mankind. At this day it is spoken in England by twenty-seven millions of people ; the Celtic idioms of Wales, the Scotch Highlanders, and Ireland, are dead or dying. The English colonies unite in adopting the parent tongue, not even excepting Canada, which, in its origin, was exclusively French. In India, one hundred and twenty millions of souls are learning it. A new England is growing up in Australia. In the United States, however, the 8* 178 THE NEW ROME. process is most interesting ; here the English is the received organ of intercourse among twenty-five millions of people, of the most heterogeneous extraction. Spanish, French, Dutch, and German, are compelled to give way before it. Its onward progress is, of course, as rapid as that of the American people. It leads the way in the Sandwich Islands, and the Chinese are learning it in California, to carry it to the Celestial Empire. No language on earth receives so much attention from foreign- ers as the English : some millions of emigrants in the United States are bent upon acquiring it. In Germany, the study of English, until within the last five years, was limited, and bore no proportion to that of the French. At present it re- ceives close attention from all the friends of freedom, and from all who desire to emigrate, the French having been cast into the shade. The number of those who converse in this idiom is now estimated at seventy millions, while, a hundred years ago, it was just seven millions, a progress surely without a parallel. None of the languages of civilized Europe is used by so many individuals as this. The English literature already exerts an overpowering influence over all the other litera- tures of the world. Nothing is more certain than that the English language will extend over all the earth, and will very shortly become the common medium of thought — the language of the world. The most profound linguist of the time, Jacob Grimm, speaks in the following terms of the English lan- guage :* * In an essay, " Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache." Berlin, 1852. LANGUAGE. 179 " Of all the modem idioms, none has derived from the very surrender and demolition of the old laws of tone, from the almost entire disuse of inflection, a greater force and power than the English ; and the unconfined fullness of its medium tones gives it an essential command of expression, such as never yet fell to the lot of a human tongue. Its entire highly intellectual and happy design and finish, are the product of a marvellous alliance of the two finest languages of later Europe, the Romanic and the Germanic, which, as is well known, have divided the field in such a man- ner that the sensuous foundation is taken from the latter, while the former has furnished the superstructure of intellectual abstractions. In point of wealth, balance, and sinewy knitness, no living language will bear com- parison with it. Yes, the English, not accidentally the mother and the nurse of the greatest poetical genius of modern times, in contradistinction to ancient classic art, — I of course refer to none other than Shakspeare, — is fully entitled to the dignity of a World's language, and seems destined, like the people who call it theirs, to govern, even in a greater degree than at present, at every corner of the earth." THE END. Biiain & Bbothekb, Printers and Stereotypers, 20 North William street, N. Y. ERRATA Page 70, line 7, from top, for " unsuccessfully," read " successfully." " lines 16 and 17, for " general," read " govt aed." 72, line 3, for "sound," read "second." 73, next to last line of text, for " orbis," read " orbit." 75, last line of first paragraph, for " part of," read "past." 90, line 6, for " inactivities," read " inanities." " " 16, for " part," read " past." 99, 4th line from bottom, for " confidence," read " coincidence.' 101, line 11, for " arrayed," read " arranged." 113, " 1.2, for " Excited," read " Exiled." 125, next to last line, for " 2,500,000," read "25,000,000." 129, line 21, for " denied," read " desired." 130, " 13, for " on," read "as." 135, " 6, for " uncurrent," read " concurrent." " " 16, for " forms," read " forces." 138, " 7, from bottom, for " Disencumbered," read " Encumbered. 143, 4th line from bottom, for " obtained," read " chained.'' 149, in the table transpose the words " Gold" and " Silver." 160, line 8, for " one," read " our." 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