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 THE RICH AGAINST THE POOR. 
 
 THE 
 
 LABOURING CLASSES, 
 
 BY 
 
 REPRINTED FROM THE 
 
 BOSTON GtUARTERLY REVIEW, 
 
 OF JULY, 1840. 
 
 READ AND DIGEST. 
 
 SOLD AT ELTCKVS PUBLICATION OFFICES, 
 13 DIVISION-STREET, 104 NASSAU-ST., CORNER OF ANN, 290 BOWERY, AND ALL 
 
 I THE PRINCIPAL BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Six Cents single. 
 
 Four Dollars Per Hundred. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 The following article is repnWiehed from the Boston Quarterly Review to meet the preg- 
 ing demand tor it, which a needless excitement about it has produced. 
 
 The writer ofthia article makes it a duly to read all that he can find written against either 
 him or his doctrines ; but he feeis under no obligations to reply. The doctrines of the arti- 
 cle in question have been objected to, but he will now enter into no defei ce of them. He 
 will only say that he has seen no criticism upon them that indicates that the critic had even 
 the most distant conception of the thought of his author. The majority of those who ob- 
 ject to the article, are respectfully commended to the care of the instructors in our primary 
 schools ; for if they could read they would find that the article itself refutes most of the ob- 
 jections they urge. 
 
 In regard to what is said of the hereditary descent of property, it may be well for refders 
 to bear in mind that the article contains but a brief statement of a doctrine without any ex- 
 planations or details ; and, also, that in proposing the abolition of hereditary property, it 
 merely does it as a prospective measure, as a measure which will ultimately be found neceg^. 
 sary to the complete enfranchisement of the proletary. The writer of the article recognizes,! 
 in its fullest extent, man's natural right to property, and he would be the last to suffer the 
 legislature to interfere with any of the natural rights of man. He advocates no wild scheme 
 of a community of goods; he holds to individual property. Within the limits of the moral law, 
 he would leave every free ma., to do what he will with hip own. But it is an admitted prin- 
 ciple that a man's natural right to property ceases when he ceases to exist. In other words, 
 man can own property only during his life. It is alo an admitted principle, that it is not by 
 virtue of a natural right that the child inherits from the father. Consequently, the right by 
 which a man disposes of his property by a will effective after his death, and by which a child 
 ucceed to the paternal estate, M not a natural right, but a legal right. It exists by virtue of * 
 positive law, which society has enacted. Now the writer of the article in question obj 
 
 to thi? law, and contends that another and better law regulating the descent of properly from 
 one eeneration to another, may be devised, and must he before the true elevation and inde- 
 pendence of the laboring classes can be effected. This point will be good hereafter. AH 
 that fee would say now is that\he makes no attack on the right of property, thai he proposes 
 to dist- rb no man in his possessions, nor to plunder any man of aught he hap. 1 He simply 
 coft'ends that in the future progress of the race it wll he necessary to change the mode by 
 which property descends. The change he contends for i* precisely the same in principle 
 with that, by which primogeniture and entail were abolishrd. By contendins that property 
 flhoold go to the state at a man's deceas", h by no means intends to convey the idea, lhat 
 the private property of a man on bis decease becomes pub'ic property, and may therefore go 
 into the public treasury, or be used for public purposes. It goes to he state in point of fact 
 no more than now. AH the writer means is, that th state *o Tar takes the control of tha 
 matter, as by a uniform and equitable law, to say how what has cfwed to be one man's 
 propertv phall be r^-appropriated, or become the property tii another. Toi would in reality 
 give the state no more control over property than it now in theory claims and is admitted to 
 have. 
 
 Bur However this all may be, no on can read the article wiih^uf perceiving that the writnr / 
 would by no means prooose this as a measure for the immediate action of the community. J 
 There is' a time for all things. The time for discussion is whenever the public can be inter- 
 ested in the subject discussed. The time for carry.ng a measure into execution is only when 
 the public very generally demand it, when the public conscience cannot do without i% and 
 when ir can be introduced with some prospect of its being permanent and <ff c'ive. But the 
 writer is pleased that he has alarmeH our staunoh conservativea. It will do them good, and 
 compel them by and by to set their feces towards the future. 
 
 Boetoa, July 23 ; 1840. O. A. B. 
 
THE LABOURING CLASSES. 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE * unquestionably ranks among the ablest writers of the 
 "day. His acquaintance with literature seems to be almost universal, and 
 there is apparemly no art or science witn which he is not familiar. He 
 possesses an unrivalled mastery over the resources of the English tongue, a 
 remarkably keen insight into the mysteries of human nature, and a Jarge 
 share of genuine poetic feeling. His works are characterized by freshness 
 and power, as well as by strangeness and singularity, and must be read with 
 interest even when they cannot be with approbation. 
 
 The little work, named at the head of this article, is a fair sample of his 
 peculiar excellencies, and also of his peculiar defects. As a work intended 
 to excite attention and lead the mind to an investigation of a great subject, 
 it possesses no ordinary value ; but as a work intended to throw light on a 
 difficult question, and to afford some positive directions to the statesman 
 and the philanthropist, it is not worth much. Carlyle, like his imitators in 
 this country, though he declaims against the destructives, possesses in no 
 sense a constructive genius. He is good as a deinolisher, but pitiable enough 
 as a builder. No man sees more clearly that the present is defective and 
 unworthy to be retained ; he is a brave and successful warrior against it, 
 whether reference be had to its literature, its politics, its phriosophy> or its 
 religion; but when the question comes up concerning what ought to be, 
 what should take the place of what is, we regret to say, he affords us no 
 essential aid, scarcely a useful hint. He has fine spiritual instincts, has 
 outgrown materialism, loathes skepticism, sees clearly the absolute necessity 
 of faith in both God and man, and insists upon it with due sincerity and 
 earnestness ; but with feelings very nearly akin to despair. He does not 
 appear to have found as yet a faith for himself, and his writings have almost 
 invariably a skeptical tendency. He has doubtless a sort of faith in God, of 
 an overwhelming Necessity, but we cannot perceive that he has any faith in 
 man or in man's efforts. Society is wrong, but he mocks at our sincerest 
 ^and best directed efforts to right it. It cannot subsist as it is ; that is clear : 
 but what shall be done to make it what it ought to be, that he saith not. Of 
 all writers we are acquainted with, he is the least satisfactory. He is dis- 
 satisfied with every thing himself, and he leaves his readers dissatisfied with 
 everything. Hopeless himself, he makes them also hopeless, especially if 
 they have strong social tendencies, and are hungering and thirsting to work 
 out the regeneration of their race. 
 
 Mr. Carlyle's admirers, we presume, will demur to this criticism. We 
 have heard some of them speak of him as a sort of soul-quickener, and pra- 
 
 * Chartism. By Thomas Carlyle. 
 
6 
 
 fess to derive from his writings fresh life and courage. We know not how 
 this may be. It may be that they derive advantage from him on the 
 homoeopathic principle, and that he cures their diseases by exaggerating 
 them ; but for ourselves we must say, that we have found him anything but 
 a skilful physician. He disheartens and enfeebles us ; and while he eman- 
 cipates us from the errors of tradition, he leaves us without strength or 
 courage to engage in the inquiry after truth. We rise from his writings 
 with the weariness and exhaustion one does from the embraces of the Witch 
 Mara. It is but slowly that our blood begins to circulate again, and it is 
 long before we recover the use of our powers. Whether his writings pro- 
 duce this effect on others or not, we are unable to say ; but this effect they do 
 produce on us. We almost dread to encounter them. 
 
 Mr. Carlyle would seem to have great sympathy with man. He certainly 
 is not wanting in the sentiment of Humanity ; nor is he deceived by external 
 position, or dazzled by factitious glare. He can see worth in the socially low 
 as well as in the socially high ; in the artizan as well as the noble. This 
 is something, but no great merit in one who can read the New Testament. 
 Still it is something, and we are glad to meet it. But after all, he has 
 no true reverence for Humanity. He may offer incense to a Goethe, a 
 Jean Paul, a Mirabeau, a Danton, a Napoleon, but he nevertheless looks down 
 upon his fellows, and sneers at the mass. He looks down^upon man as 
 one of his admirers has said, " as if man were a mouse." [But we do not 
 wish to look upon man in that light. We would look upon him as a brother, 
 an equal, entitled to our love and sympathy. We would feel ourselves 
 neither above him nor below him, but standing up by his side, with our feet 
 on the same level with his. We would also love and respect the common- 
 place mass, not merely heroes and sages, prophets and priesfsT] 
 
 We are, moreover, no warm admirers of Carlyle's style ~oi writing We 
 acknowledge his command over the resources of oar language, and we enjoy 
 the freshness, and occasional strength, beauty, and felicity of his style and 
 expression, but he does not satisfy us. He wants clearness and precision, 
 and that too when writing on topics where clearness and precision are ail but 
 indispensible. We have no patience with his mistiness, vagueness, and 
 singularity. If a man must needs write and publish his thoughts to the 
 world, let him do it in as clear and as intelligible language as possible. We 
 are not aware of any subject worth writing on at all, that is already so plain 
 that it needs to be rendered obscure. Carlyle can write well if he chooses ; 
 no man better. He is not necessarily rrmty, vague, nor fantastic. The 
 antic tricks he has been latterly playing do not spring from the constitution 
 of his mind, and, we must say, do by no means become him. We are dis- 
 posed ourselves to assume considerable latitude in both thought and expression ; 
 but we believe every scholar should aim to keep within the general current of 
 his language. Every language receives certain laws from the genius of the 
 people who use it, and it is no mark of wisdom to transgress them ; nor 
 is genuine literary excellence to be attained but by obeying them. An 
 Englishman, if he would profit Englishmen, must write English, not French 
 nor German. If he wishes his writings to become an integral part of the 
 literature of his language, he must keep within the steady current of what 
 has ever been regarded as classical English style, and deny himself the 
 momentary eclat he might gain by affectation and singularity. 
 
 We can. however, pardon Carlyle altogether more easily than we can his 
 American imitators. Notwithstanding hi& manner of writing, when continued 
 
for any considerable length, become* monotonous and wearisome, as in 
 his History of the French Revolution, a work which, with all its brilliant 
 wit, inimitable humour, deep pathos, and graphic skill, can scarcely be read 
 without yawning, yet in his case it is redeemed by rare beauties, and marks 
 a mind of the highest order, and of vast attainments. But in th-a hands of his 
 American imitators, it becomes peurile and disgusting ; and what is worthy 
 of not3 is, that it is adopted and most servilely followed by the men among 
 us who are loudest in their boasts of originality, and the most intolerant to its 
 absence. But enough of this. For our consolation, the race of imitators is 
 feeble and short lived. 
 
 The subject of the little work before us is one of the weightiest which can 
 engage the attention of the statesman or the philanthropist. It is, indeed, 
 here, discussed only in relation to the working classes of England, but it in 
 reality involves the condition of the working classes throughouf the world, 
 a great subject, and one never yet worthily treated. Chartism, properly 
 speaking, is no local or temporary phenomenon. Its germ may be found in 
 every nation in Christendom ; indeed wherever man has approximated a 
 state of civilization, wherever there is inequality in social condition, and in 
 the distribution of Jhe products of industry. And where does not this ine. 
 quality obtain ? JW here is the spot, on earth, in which the actual producer of 
 wealth is not onfrttf the lower class, shut out from what are looked upon as 
 the main advantages of the social state^l 
 
 Mr. Carlyle, though he gives us fewTacts, yet shows us that the condition 
 of the workingmen in England is deplorable, and every day growing worse. 
 It has already become intolerable, and hence the outbreak of the Chartists. 
 Chartism is the protest of the working classes against the injustice of the 
 present social organization of the British community, and a loud demand 
 for a new organization which shall respect the rights and well-being of the 
 labourer. 
 
 The movements of the Chartists hcve excited considerable alarm in the 
 higher classes of English society, and some hope ia the friends of Humanity 
 among ourselves. We do not feel competent to speak with any decision on 
 the extent or importance of these movements. If our voice could reach the 
 Chartists, we would bid them be bold and determined ; we would bid them 
 persevere even unto death ; for their cause is that of justice, and in fighting 
 for it they will be fighting the battles of God and man. But ws look for no 
 important results from their movements. We have little faith in a John Bull 
 mob. It will bluster, and swagger, and threaten much ; but give it plenty of 
 porter and roast-beef, and it will sink back to its kennel as quiet and as 
 harmless as a lamb. The lower classes in England have made many a move 
 since the days of Wat Tyler for the betterment of their condition, but we 
 cannot perceive that they have ever effected much* They are, doubtless, 
 nearer the day of their emancipation than they were, but their actual condition 
 is_ficarcely superior to what it was in the days of Richard the Second. 
 ] There is no country in Europe, in which the condition of the labouring 
 classes seems to us so hopeless as in that of England. This is not owing to 
 the fact, that the aristocracy is less enlightened, more powerful, or more op. 
 pressive in England than elsewhere. The English labourer does not find his 
 worst enemy in the nobility, but in the middling class'.'} The middle class is 
 much more numerous and powerful in England than in any other European 
 country, and is of a higher character. It has always been powerful ; for by 
 means of the Norman Conquest it received large accessions from the old 
 Saxon nobility. The Conquest established a new aristocracy, and degraded 
 
8 
 
 the old to the condition of Commoners. The superiority of the English 
 Commons is, we suppose, chiefly owing to this fact. 
 
 The middle class is always a firm champion of equality, when it concerns 
 humbling a class above it ; but it is its inveterate foe when it concerns ele- 
 vating a class below it. Manfully have the British Commoners struggled 
 against the old feudal aristocracy, and so successfully that they now constitute 
 the dominant power in the state. To their struggles against the throne and 
 the nobility is the English nation indebted for the liberty it so loudly boasts, 
 and which', during the lasl half of the last century, so enraptured the friends 
 of Humanity throughout Europe. 
 
 But this class has done nothing for the labouring population, the real prole- 
 tarii. It has humbled the aristocracy; it has raised itself to dominion, and 
 it is now conservative, ^-conservative in fact, whether it call itself Whig or 
 Radical. From its near relation to the workingmen, its kindred pursuits 
 with them, it is altogether more hostile to them than the nobility ever were 
 or ever can be. This was seen in conduct of England towards the French 
 Revolution* So long as that Revolution was in the hands of the middle 
 class, and threatened merely to humble monarchy and nobihty, the English 
 nation applauded it ; but as soon as it descended to the mass of the people^ 
 and promised to elevate the labouring clashes, so scan as the starving work* 
 man began to flatter himself that tiere was to be a revolution for him loo 
 as well as for his employer, the English nation armed itself, and poured out 
 its blood and treasure to suppress it. Every body knows that Great Britain, 
 boasting of lier fieedom and of her love of fieedom, was the lite and soul 
 of the opposition to the French Revolution ; and on her head almost alone 
 should fall the curses of Humanity for the sad failure of that glorious up. 
 rising of the people in behalf of their imprescriptible and inalienable rights. 
 Yet it was not the English monarch}', nor the English nobility, that was 
 alone in fault. Monarchy and nobility would have been powerless, had 
 they not had with them the great body of the English Commoners. 
 England fought in ths ranks, nay, at the head of the allies, not for monarchy, 
 not for nobility, nor yet for religion ; but fo;- trade and manufactures, for her 
 middle class, against the rights and well-being of the workingman ; and her 
 strength and efficiency consisted in the strength and efficiency of this class. 
 
 Now this middle class, which was strong enough to defeat nearly all the 
 practical benefit of the French Revolution, is the natural enemy of the 
 Chartists. It will unite wit! > the monarchy and nobility against Ihem; and 
 spare neither blood nor treasure to defeat them. Our despair for the poor 
 Chartists arises from the number and power of the middle class; We dread 
 for them neither monarchy nor nobility. Nor should they. Their only real 
 enemy is in the employer. In all countries is it the same. The only enemy 
 of the labourer is your employer, whether appearing in the shape of the 
 master mechanic, or in the owner of a factory. A Duke of Wellington is 
 much more likely to vindicate the rights of labour than an Abbot Lawrence, 
 although the latter may be a very kind-hearted man, and liberal citizen, as 
 we always find Blackvvood's Magazine more true to the interests of the poor 
 than we do the Edinburgh Review, or even the London and Westminster. 
 
 Mr. Carlyle, contrary to his wor;t, in the pamphlet we have named, com- 
 mends two projects for the relief of the workingmen, which he finds others 
 have suggested, universal education, and general emigration. Universal 
 education we shall not be thought likely to depreciate ; but we confess that 
 we are unable 10 see in it that sovereign remedy for the evils of the social 
 state as it is, which some of our friends do, or say they do. We have little 
 
faith in the power of education to elevate a people eompelled to labor from 
 twelve to sixteen hours a day, and to experience for no mean portion of the 
 time a paucity of even the necessaries of life, let alone its comforts. Give 
 your starving hoy a breakfast before you send him to school, and your tat- 
 tered beggar a cloak before you attempt his moral and intellectual elevation. 
 A swarm of naked and starving urch.ns crowded into a school-room will 
 make little proficiency in the "Humanities." Indeed, it seems to us most 
 bitter mockery for the well-dressed and well-fed, to send the schoolmaster 
 and priest to the wretched hovels of squalid poverty, a mockery at whch 
 deviis may laugh, but over which angels must weep. Educate the working 
 classes of England; and what then? Will they require less food and less 
 clothing when educated than they do now ? Will they be more contented or 
 more happy in their condition ? For God's sake beware how you kindle with- 
 in them the intellectual spark, and make them aware that they too are tnen, 
 with powers of thought and feeling which ally them by the bonds of broth- 
 erhood to their betters. If you will doom them to the external condition of 
 brutes, do in common charity keep their minds and hearts brutish. Render 
 them as insensible as po-sible, that they may feel the less acutely their deg- 
 radation, and see the less clearly the monstrous injustice whi^h is done them. 
 
 General emigration can at best afford only a temporary relief, for the col- 
 ony will soon become an empire, and reproduce all the injustice and wretch- 
 edness of the mother country. Nor is general emigration necessary. Erg- 
 land, if she would be just, could support a larger population than she now 
 numbers. The evil is not from over population, but from the unequal re- 
 partition of the fruits of industry. She suffers from over production, and 
 from over production, because her workmen produce not for themselves but 
 for their employers. What then is the remedy 7 As it concerns England, 
 we shali ieave the English statesman to answer. Be it what it may, it will 
 not be obtained without war and bloodshed. It will be tound only at the 
 end of one of the longest and severest struggles the human race has ever 
 been engaged in, only by that most dreaded of all wars, the war of the poor 
 against the rich, a war which, however long it may be delayed, will come, 
 and come with all its horrors. The day of vengeance is sure ; for the world 
 after all is under the dominion of a Just Providence. 
 
 No one can observe the signs of the times with much care, without per- 
 ceiving that a crisis as to the relation of wealth and labor is approaching. 
 It is useless to shut our eyes to the fact, and like the ostrich fancy ourselves 
 secure because we have so concealed our heads that we see not the danger. 
 W or our children will have to meet this crisis. The old war between the 
 King and the 8arons is well nigh ended, and so is thai between the Barons 
 and the Merchants and Manufacturers, landed capital and commercial 
 capital. The business man has become the peer of my Lord. And now 
 commences the Lew struggle between the operative and his employer, between 
 wealth and labor. Every day does this siruggle extend further and wax 
 stronger and fiercer; what or Avhen the end will be God only knows. 
 
 In this coming contest there is a deeper question at issue than is common- 
 ly imagined , a question which is but remotely touched in your controversies 
 about United States Banks and Sub- Treasuries, chartered Banking and free 
 Banking, free trade and corporations, although these controversies may be 
 paving the way for it to come up. We have discovered no presentment of 
 it in any king's or queen's speech, nor in any president's message. It is em- 
 braced in no popular political creed of the day, whether christened Whig or 
 Tory, Juste-milieu or Democratic No popular senator, or deputy, or peer 
 
10 
 
 seems to have any glimpse of it ; but it is working in the hearts of the mil- 
 lion, is struggling to shape itse f, and one day it will be uttered, and in thun- 
 der tones. Well will it be for him, who, on that day, shall be found ready 
 to answer if. % 
 
 What we would ask is, throughout the Christian world the actual condi- 
 tion of the laboring classes, viewed simply and exclusively in their capacity 
 of laborers ? They constitute at least a moiety of the human race. We 
 exclude the nobility, we exclude also the middle class, and include only ac- 
 tual laborers, who are laborers and not proprietors, owners of none of the 
 funds of production, neither houses, shops, nor lands, nor implements of la- 
 bor, i>eing therefore solely dependent on their hands. We have no means of 
 ascertaining their precise proportion to the whole number of the race ; but 
 we think we may estimate I hem at one half. In any contest they will be as 
 two to one, because the large class of proprietors who are not employers, 
 but laborers on their own lands or in their own shops will make common 
 cause with them. 
 
 Now we will not so belie our acquaintance with political economy, as to 
 allege that these alone perform all that is necessary to the pi eduction of 
 wealth. We are not ignorant of the fact, that the merchant, who is literally 
 the common carrier and exchange dealer, performs a useful service, and is 
 therefore entitled to a portion of the proceeds of labor. But make all ne- 
 cessary deductions on his account, and then ask what portion of the remain- 
 der is retained, either in kind or in its equivalent, in the hands of the orig. 
 inal producer, the workingman? All over the world this fact stares us in 
 the face, the workingman is poor and depressed, while a large portion of 
 the non-workingmen, in the sense we now use the term, are wealthy. It 
 may be laid down as a general rule, with but few exceptions, that men are 
 rewarded in an inverse ratio to the amount of actual service they perform. 
 Under every government on earth the largest salaries are annexed to those 
 offices, which demand of their incumbents the least amount of actual labor eith- 
 er'memal or manual. And this is in perfect harmony with the whole system 
 of repartition of the fruits of industry, which obtains in every department of so- 
 ciety. Now here is the system which prevails, and here is its result. The 
 whole class of simple laborers are poor, and in general unable to procure any 
 thing beyond the bare necessaries of life. 
 
 In regard to labor two systems obtain ; one that of slave labor, the other that 
 of free labor. Of the two, the first is, in our judgement, except so far as the 
 feelings a.-e concerned, decidedly the least oppressive. If the slave has never 
 been a free man, we think, as a general rule, his sufferings are less than those 
 of the free laborer of wages. As to actual freedom one has just about as much 
 as the other. The laborer at wages has all the disadvantages of freedom and 
 none of its blessings, while the slave, if denied the blessings, is freed from the 
 disadvantages. We are no advocates of slavery, we are as heartily opposed 
 to it as any modern abolitionist can be ; but we say frankly that, if there must 
 always be a laboring population distinct from proprietors and employers, we re- 
 gard the slave system as decidedly preferable to the system at wages. It is no 
 pleasant thing to go days without food, to lie idle for weeks, seeking work and 
 finding none, to rise in the morning with a wife and children you love, and 
 know not where to procure them a breakfast, and to see constantly before you 
 no brighter prospect then the'almshouse. Yet these are no unfrequent incidents 
 in the lives of our laboring population. Even in seasons of general prosperity, 
 when there was only the ordinary cry of " hard times," we have seen hundreds 
 
11 
 
 of people in a no very populous village, in a wealthy portion of our common 
 country, suffering for the want of the necessaries of life, willing to work, and 
 yet finding no work to do. Many and many is the applicat.on of a poor man 
 for work, merely for his food, we have seen rejected. These things are little 
 thought of, for the applicants are poor ; they fill no conspicuous place in socie- 
 ty, and they have no biographers. But their wrongs are chronicled in heaven. 
 It is said there is no want in this country. There may be less than in some 
 other countries. But death by actual starvation in this country *s we appro, 
 hend no uncommon occurrence. The sufferings of a quiet, unassuming but 
 useful class of females in our cities, in general sempstresses, too proud to beg 
 or to apply to the almshouse, are not easily told. They are industrious ; they 
 do all that they can find to do ; but yet the little there is for them to do, and the 
 miserable pittance they receive for it, is hardly sufficient to keep soul nd body 
 together. And yet there is a man who employs them to make shirts, trousers, 
 &c., and grows rich on their labors. He is one of our respectable citizens, 
 perhaps is praised in the newspapers for his liberal donations to some charitable 
 institution. He passes among us as a pattern of morality, and is honored as a 
 worthy Christian. And why should he not be, since our Christian community 
 is made up of such as he, and since our clergy would not dare question his pie- 
 ty, lest they should incur the reproach of infidelity, and lose their standing, and 
 their salaries ? Nay, since our clergy are raised up, educated, fashioned, and 
 sustained by such as he ? Not a few of our churches rest on Mammon for their 
 foundation. The basement is a trader's shop. 
 
 \Ve pass through our manufacturing villages ; most of them appear neat and 
 flourishing. Tho operatives are wellVJressed, and we are told, well paki. They 
 are said to be healthy, contented, and happy. This is the fair side of the pic. 
 ture ; the side exhibited to distinguished visitors. There is a ddrk side, moral 
 as well as physical. Of the common operatives, few, if any, by their wages, 
 acquire a competence. A few of what Carlyle terms not inaptly the body-ser- 
 vants are well paid, and now and then an agent or an overseer rides in his coach. 
 But the great mass wear out their health, spirits, and morals, without becoming 
 one whi better off than when they commenced labor. The bills 01 mortality 
 in these factory villages are not striking, we admit, for the poor giris when they 
 can toil no longer go home to die. The average life, working life we mean, of 
 the girls that come to Lowell, for instance, from Maine, New Hampshire, and 
 Vermont, we have been assured, is only about three years. What becomes of 
 them then ? Few of them ever marry ; fewer still ever return to their native 
 places with reputations unimpaired. " She has worked in a Factory," is almost 
 enough to damn to infamy the most worthy and virtuous girl. We know no sad- 
 ,der sight on earth than one of our factory villages presents, when the bell at 
 break of day, or at the hour of breakfast, or dinner, calls out its hundreds or 
 thousands of operatives. We stand and look at these hard working men and 
 women hurrying in all directions, and ask ourselves, where go the proceeds of 
 their labors ? The man who employs them, and for whom they are toiling as 
 so many slaves, is one of our city nabobs, revelling in luxury ; or he is a mem. 
 ber of our legislature, enacting laws to put money in his own pocket ; or he is 
 a member of Congress, contending for a high TarifTto tax the poor for the bene- 
 fit of the rich ; or in these times he is shedding crocodile tears over the deplora- 
 ble condition of the poor laborer, while he docks his wages twenty.five per 
 cent. ; building miniature log cabins, shouting Harrison and "hard cider." 
 And this man too would fain pass for a Christian and a republican. He shouts 
 for liberty, stickless for equality, and m^ horrified at a Southern planter who 
 keeps slaves. 
 
12 
 
 One thing is certain ; that of the amount actually produced by the operative, 
 he retains a less proportion than it costs the master to feed, clothe, and lodge his 
 slave. Wages is a cunning device of the devil, for the benefit of tender con- 
 sciences, who would retain all the advantages of the slave system, without the 
 expense, trouble, and odium of being slave-holders. 
 
 Messrs. Thome and Kimball, in their account of the emancipation of slave- 
 ry in the West Indies, establish the fact that the employer may have the same 
 amount of labor done 25 per ct. cheaper than the master. What does this fact 
 prove, if noi that wages is a more successful method of taxing labor than slave- 
 ry? We really believe our Northern system of labor is more oppressive, and 
 even more mischievous to morals, than the Southern. We, however, war aga.nst 
 both. We have no toleration for cither system. We would see a slave i man, 
 but a free man, not a mere operative at wages. This he would not be were 
 he now emancipated. Could the abolitionists effect all they propose, they would 
 do the slave no service. Should emancipation work as well as they say, still it 
 would do the slave no good. He woull be a slave still, although with the title 
 and cares of a freeman. If then we had no constitutional objections to aboli- 
 tionism, we could not, for the reason here implied, be abolitionists. 
 
 The slave system, however, in name and form, is gradually disappearing from 
 Christendom. It will not subsist much longer. But its place is taken by the 
 syslem of labor at wages, and this system, we hold, is no improvement upon 
 the one it supplants. Nevertheless the system of wages will triumph. It is the 
 system which in name sounds honester than slavery, and in substance is more 
 profitable to the master. It yields the wages of iniquity, without its opprobium. 
 It will therefore supplant slavery, and be sustained for a time. 
 
 Now, what is the prospect of those who fall under the operation of this sys- 
 tem 1 We ask, is there a reasonable chance that any considerable portion of 
 the present generation of laborers, shall ever become owners of a sufficient por- 
 tion of the funds of production, to be able to sustain themselves by laboring on 
 their own capital, that is, as independent laborers ? We need not ask this ques- 
 tion, for everybody knows there is not. Well, is the condition of a laborer at 
 wages the best that the great mass of the working people ought to be *ble to 
 aspire to? Is it a condition, nay can it be made a condition, with which a 
 man should be satisfied ; in which he should be contented to live and die ? 
 
 In our own country this condition has existed under its most favorable as- 
 pects, and has been made as good as it can be. It has reached all the excellence 
 of which it is susceptible. It is now not improving but growing worse. The 
 actual condition of the working-man to-day, viewed in all its bearings, is not so 
 good as it was fifty years ago. If we have not been altogether misinformed, 
 fifty years ago, health and industrious habits, constituted no mean stock in trade, 
 and with them almost any man might aspire to competence and independence. 
 But it is so no longer. The wilderness has receded, and already the new lands 
 are beyond the rea3h of the me*e laborer, and the employer has him at his mer- 
 cy. It the present relation subsist, we see nothing better for him in reserve than 
 what he now possesses, but something altogether worse. 
 
 We are not ignorant of the fact that men born poor become wealthy, and that 
 men born to wealth become poor; but this fact does not necessarily diminish 
 the numbers of the poor, nor augment the numbers of the rich. The relative 
 numbers of the two classes remain, or may remain, the same. But be this- 
 as it may ; one fact is certain, no man born poor has ever by his wages, as a 
 simple operative, risen to the class of the wealthy. Rich he may have become, 
 but it has not been by his own manual labor. He has in some way contrived to 
 tax for his benefit the labor of others. He may have accumulated a few dollars- 
 
M 
 
 ^hich he has placed at usury, or invested in trade ^ or -he may, as a master 
 workman, obtain a premium on his journeymen ; or he may have from a clerk 
 passed to a partner, or from a workman to an overseer. The simple market 
 wages for ordinary labor, has never been adequate to raise him from poverty to 
 wealth. This fad is decisive of the whole controversy, and proves that ihe sys- 
 tem of wages must be supplanted by some other system, or else one half 
 of the human race must forever be the virtual slaves of the other. 
 / Now the great work for this age and the coming, is to raise up the laborer, 
 and to realize in our own social arrangements and in the actual condition of all 
 men, that equality between man and man, which God has established between 
 the rights of one and those of another. In other words, oar business is to 
 emancipate the proletaries, as the past has emancipated the slaves. This is 
 our work. There must be no class of our fellow men doomed to toil through 
 life as mere workmen at wa^es. If wages are tolerated it must be, in the case 
 of the individual operative, only under such conditions that by the time he is ot 
 proper age to settle 4n life, he shall have accumulated enough lobe an inde- 
 pendent laborer on, his own capital, on his own farm, or in liis own shop. 
 Here is our work. How is it to be done 1 
 
 Reformers in general answer this question, or what they deem its equivalent, 
 in a manner which we cannot but regard as very unsatisfactory. They would 
 have all men wise, good, and happy ; but in order to make them so, they tell us 
 that we want not external changes, but internal ; and therefore instead of de- 
 claiming against society and seeking to disturb existing social arrangements, we 
 should confine ourselves to the individual reason and conscience ; seek merely 
 to lead the individual to repentance, and to reformation of life ; make the indi- 
 vidual a practical, a truly religious man, and all evils will either disappear, or be 
 sanctified to the spiritual growth of the soul. 
 
 This is doubtless a capital theory, and has the advantage that kings, hier- 
 archies, nobilities, in a word, all who fatten on the toil and blood of their fel- 
 lows, will terl no difficulty in supporting it. Nicholas of Russia, the Grand 
 Turk, his Holiness the Pope, will hold ws their especial friends for advocating 
 a theory, which secures to them the odor of sanctity even while they are sus- 
 taining by their anathemas or their armed legions, a system of things of which 
 the great mass are and must be the victims. If you will only allow me to keep 
 thousands toiling for my pleasure or my profit,'! will even aid you in your pious 
 efforts to convert their souls. I am not cruel ; I do not wish either to cause or 
 to see suffering ; I am therefore disposed to encourage your labors for the souls 
 of the workingmen, providing.you will secure to me the products of his bodily 
 toil. So far as the salvation of his soul will not interfere with my income, I hold 
 it worthy of being sought 4 and if a few thousand dollars will aid you, Mr. 
 Pries', in reconciling him to God, and making fair weather for him hereafter, 
 they are at your service. I shall not want him to work for me in the world to 
 come, and I can indemnify myself for what your salary costs me, by paying 
 him less wages. A capital theory ihis, which one may advocate without incur- 
 ring the reproach of a disorganize^ a jacobin, a leveller, and without losing the 
 friendship of the rankest aristocrat in the land* 
 
 1 his theory, however, is exposed to one s&ght objection, that of being con- 
 -demned by something like six thousand years' experience. For six thousand 
 .years its beauty has been -extolled, its praises sung, and its blessings sought, 
 under every advantage which learning, fashion, weal h, and power can secure; 
 ^ind yet, under its practical operations, we are assured that mankind, though 
 totally depraved at first, have been growing worse and worse ever since. 
 
14 
 
 For our part, we yield to none in our reverence for science and religion ; but 
 we confess that we look not for the regeneration of the race from priests and 
 pedagogues. They have had a fair trial. They cannot construct the temple 
 of God. They cannot conceive its plan, and they know not how to build* 
 They daub with unternpered mortar, and the walls they erect tumble down if so 
 much as a fox attempt to go up thereon. In a word, they always league with 
 the people's masters, and seek to reform without disturbing the social arrange, 
 mentji which render reform necessary. They would change the consequents 
 without changing the antecedents, secure to men the rewards of holiness, while 
 they continue their allegiance to the devil. We have no faith in priests and 
 pedagogues. They merely cry peace, peace, and that loo when there is no 
 peace, and can be none. 
 
 We admit the importance of what Dr. Channing, in his lectures on the sub- 
 ject we are treating, recommends as "self-culture." Self-culture is a good/ 
 thing, but it cannot abolish inequality, nor restore men to the r rights As a 
 means of quickening moral and intellectual energy, exalting the sentimen's, and 
 preparing the laborer to contend manfully for his rights, we admit its importance, 
 and insist as strenuously as any one on making it as universal as possible ; but 
 as constituting in itself a remedy for the vices of the social state, we have no 
 faith in it. As a means it is well- as the end it is nothing. 
 
 The truth is, the evil we have pointed out is not merely individual in its cha- 
 racter. It is not, in the case of any single individual, of any one man's pro- 
 curing, nor can the efforts of any one man, directed solely to his own moral 
 and religious perfection, do aught to remote it. What is purely individual in 
 its nature; efforts of individuals to perfect themselves may remove. 'But the 
 evil we speak of is inherent in all our social arrangements, and cannot be cured 
 without a radical change of those arrangements. Could we convert all men to 
 Christianity in both theory and practice, as held by the most enlightened sect of 
 Christians among us, the evils of the social state would remain untouched. Con. 
 tinue our present system of trade, and all its present evil consequences will fol- 
 low, whether it be carried on by your best men or your worst. Put your best 
 men, your wisest, most moral, and most religious men at the head of your paper 
 money banks, and the evils of the present banking system will remain scarcely 
 diminished. The only way to get rid of its evils is to change the vsystem, not 
 its managers. The evils of slavery do not result from the personal characters 
 of slave masters. They are inseparable from the system, let who will be mas- 
 ters. Make all your rich men good Christians, and you have lessened not the 
 evils of existing inequality in wealth. The mischievous effects of this inequality 
 do not result from the personal characters of either rich or poor, but from itself, 
 and they will continue just so long as there are rich men and poor men in the 
 same community. You must abolish the system or accept its consequences} 
 No man can serve both God and Mammon. If you will serve the devil, ydu 
 must look to the devil for your wages, we know no other way. 
 
 Let us not be misinterpreted. We deny not the power of Christianity. Should 
 all men become good Christians, we deny not that all social evils would be 
 cured. But we deny in the outset that a man, who seeks merely to save his 
 own soul, merely to perfect his own individual nature, can be a good Christian. 
 The Christian forgets himself, buckles on his armor, and goes forth to war 
 against principalities and powers, and against spiritual wickedness n high places. 
 No man can be a Christian who does not begin his career by making war on the 
 mischievous social arrangements from which his brethren suffer. He who 
 thinks he can be a Christian and save his soul, without seeking their radical 
 
15 
 
 change, has no reason to applaud himself for his proficiency in Christian scienca, 
 nor lor his progress towards the kingdom of God. Understand Christianity, 
 and we will admit, that should all men become good Christians, there would be 
 nothing to complain of. But one might as well undertake to dip the ocean dry 
 with a clam-shell, as to undertake to cure the evils of the social state by con- 
 verting men to the Christianity of the Church. 
 
 The evil we have pointed out, we have said, is not of individual creation, and 
 it is not to be removed by individual effort, saving so far as individual effort in- 
 duces the combined effort of the mass. But whence has this evil originated? 
 How comes it that all over the world the working classes are depressed, are the 
 low and vulgar, and virtually the slaves of the non-working classes? This is an 
 inquiry which has not yet received the attention it deserves. It is not enough to 
 answer, that it has originated entirely in the inferiority by nature of the working 
 classes; that they have less skill and foresight, and are less able than the upper 
 classes to provide for themselves, or less susceptible of the highest moral and in- 
 tellectual cultivation. Nor is it sufficient for our purpose to be told, that. Pro- 
 vidence has decreed that some shall be poor ancUwretched, ignorant and vulgar 
 and that others shall be rich and vicious, learned and polite, oppressive and 
 miserable. We do not choose to charge this matter to the will of God. " The 
 )!ishness of man perverteth his way, and his heart fretteth against the Lord." 
 has made of one blood all tlu nations of men to dwell on all the face of the 
 earth, and to dwell there as brothers, as members of one and the same family ; 
 and although he has made them with a diversity of powers, it would perhaps, 
 after all, be a bold assertion to say that he has made them with an inequality of 
 powers. There is nothing in the actual difference of the powers of individuals 
 which accounts for the striking inequalities we every where discover in their con- 
 dition. The child of the plebian, if placed early in proper circumstances, grows 
 up not less beautiful, active, intelligent, and refined than the child of the patri- 
 cian ; and the child of the patrician may become as coarse, as brutish as the 
 child of any slave. So far as observation on the original capacities of individuals 
 goes, nothing is discovered to throw much light on social inequalities. 4 
 
 The cause of the inequality we speak of must be sought in history, and be re- 
 garded as having its root in Providence, or in human nature, only in that s^nse 
 in which all historical facts have their origin in these. We may perhaps trace 
 it in the first instance to conquest, but not to conquest as the ultimate cause. 
 The Romans, in conquering Italy, no doubt reduced ma;iy to the condition of 
 slaves, but they also found the great mass of the laboring population already 
 slaves. There is every where a class distinct from the reigning class, bearing 
 the same relation to it that the Gibbeonites did to the lews. They are princi- 
 pally colons, the cultivators for foreign masters, of a soil of which they seemed 
 to have been dispossessed. Who has dispossessed them? Who has reduced 
 them to their present condition a condition which, under the Roman dominion, 
 is perhaps even ameliorated ? Who were this race ? Whence came they ? 
 They appear to be distinct from the reigning races, as were the Helotse from the 
 Doric. Spartan Were they the aborigines of the territory? Had they once 
 been free ? By what concurrence of events have they been reduced to their 
 present condition ? By a prior conquest ? But mere conquest does not so reduce a 
 population. It may make slaves oi the prisoners taken in actual combat, and re- 
 duce the whole to tributaries, but it leaves the mass of the population free, except in 
 its political relations. Were tht-y originally savages, subjugated by a civilized 
 tribe 1 Savages may be exterminated, but they never, so far as we can ascertain, 
 become to any considerable extent "the hewers of wood and drawers of water" to 
 their conquerors. For our part, we are disposed to sekthe cause of the inequality 
 
re 
 
 of conditions of which we speak in icligion, nncP to charge it to the priesthood^ Anc? 
 we are confirmed in this by what appears to be the instinctive tendency of every, or 
 almost every social reformer. Men's instincts, in a matter of this kind, are wor- 
 thier of reliance than their reasonings. Rarely do v e find in any age or country, a 
 man feeling himself commissioned to labor for a social teform,. who does not feel 
 that he must begin it by making war upon the priesthood. This was the case with, 
 she old Hebrew reformers, who are to us the prophets of God with Jesus, the 
 Apostles, and the early Fathers of the Church with the French democrats of the 
 last century; and is the case wifh the Young Germans, and the Socialists, as they 
 call themselves in England, at the present moment. Indeed, it is felt at once that 
 no reform can be effected without resisting^ the priests, and emancipating the peo- 
 ple from their power. 
 
 Historical research, we apprehend^ will be found to justify this instincf r and to au- 
 thorize the eternal hostility of the reformer, the advocate of social progress-Jo the 
 priesthood. How is it, we asfc. that man coraes out of the savage state? /In the- 
 savage state, properly so called, there is no inequality ot the kind of which weSspeak. 
 The individual system obtains there Each man is his own centre, and is a whole 
 in himself. There is no corrrmunhy, there are rro members of society ; for society 
 is not. This individuality which, if combined with the highest possible moral and' 
 intellectual cultivation, would be the perfection of man's earthly condition, must be- 
 broken down before the humaji race can enter i-ato the path of civilization, or com- 
 mence its- career of progress. But it cannot be broken down by material force. It 
 resists by its nature the combination of individuals necessary to subdue it. It can 
 be successfully attacked only by a spiritual power, and subjugated only by the re- 
 presentatives of that power, that is to say, the priests. 
 
 Man is naturally a religious being, and disposed to stand in awe of invisible pow- 
 ers. This makes, undoubtedly, under certain relations, his glory j but when cou- 
 pled with his ignorance, it becomes the chief source of his degradation and misery. 
 He feels within the workings of a mysterious nature, and is conscious that hidden, 
 and superior powers are at work all around him, and perpetually mriuencing his 
 destiny j now wafting him onward with a prosperous gale, or now resisting his 
 course, driving him back, defeating his plans, blasting his hopes, and wounding his. 
 heart. What are his relations to these hidden, mysterious, and yet all-influencing 
 forces ? Can their anger be appeased ? Can their favor be secured? Thus he asks 
 himself. Unable to answer, he goes to the more aged and experienced of his tribe, 
 and asks them the same questions. They answer as best they can. What is done 
 by one- is done by another, and what is done once is done again. The necessity of 
 instruction, which each one feels in consequence of his own feebleness and mexpe- 
 lience, renders the recurrence to those best capable ot giving it, or supposed to be 
 the best capable of giving it, frequent and uniform. Hence the priest. He who is 
 consulted prepares himself to answer, and therefore devotes himself to the study of 
 man r s relations to these invisible powers, and the nature of these invisible powers 
 themselves. Hence religion becomes a special object of study, and the study of it a 
 profession. Individuals whom a thunder-storm, an earthquake, an eruption of a- 
 volcano., an eclipse of the sun OF moon, any unusual appearance in the hea-vens or 
 earth, has frightened, or whom some unfoBseen disaster has afflicted, goto the wise- 
 man for explanation,, to know what it means, or, what they shall do in order to ap- 
 pease the offended powers- When reassured they naturally feel grateful to this 
 wise man;, they load him with honors, and in the access of their gratitude raise him, 
 far above the common level, and spare him the common burdens of life. Onee thus- 
 distinguished, he becomes an object of envy. His condition is looked upon as su- 
 perior to that of the mass. Hence a multitude aspire to possess themselves of it. 
 When once the class has become somewhat numerous, it labors to secure to itself 
 the distinction it has received, its honors and its emoluments, and to increase them- 
 Hence the establishment of priesthoods or sacerdotal corporations, such as the 
 Egyptain. the Brarnanical, the Ethiopian, the Jewish, the Scandinavian, the Druidi- 
 cal, the Mexican, and Peruvian. 
 
IT 
 
 The germ of these sacerdotal corporations Is found in the savage state, and 
 exists there in that formidable personage called a jongleur, juggler, or conjurer. 
 But as the tribe or people advances, the juggler becomes a priest and the mem- 
 ber of a corporation. These sacerdotul corporations are variously organized, 
 but everywhere oiganized for the purpose, as that arch rebel, Thomas Paine, 
 says, " of monopolizing power and profit." Ttif effort is unceasing to elevate 
 them as far above the people as possible, to enable them to exert the greatest 
 possible control over the people, and to derive the greatest possible profit from 
 the people. 
 
 Now if we glance over the history of the world, we shall find, that at the 
 epoch of corning out of the savage state, these corporations are usually institu- 
 ted. We find them among every people ; and among every people, at thi 
 epoch, they are the dominant power, ruling with an iron despotism. The real 
 idea at the bottom of these institutions, is the control of individual freedom by 
 moral laws, the assertion of the supremacy of moral power over physical force 
 a great truth, end one which can never be too strenuously insisted on ; but 
 a truth which at this epoch can only enslave the mass of the people to its pro-- 
 fessed representatives, the priests. Through awe of the gods, through fear of 
 divine displeasure, and dread of the unforseen chastisements that displeasure 
 may inflict, and by pretending, honestly or not, to possess the secret of averting 
 it, and of rendering the gods propitious, the priests are able to reduce the peo- 
 ple to the most wretched subjection, and to keep them there ; at least fur a 
 time. 
 
 But these institutions must naturally be jealous of power and ambitious of 
 confining it to as few hands as possible. If the sacerdotal corporations were 
 thrown open to all the world, nil the world would rush into them, and then there 
 would be no advantage in being a priest. Hence the number who may be 
 priests must be limited. Hence again a distinction of clean and unclean is in- 
 troduced. Men can be admitted into these corporations only as they descend 
 from the priestly race. As in India, no man can aspire to the priesthood un- 
 less of Braminical descent, and among the Jews unless he be of the tribe of 
 Levi. The priestly race was the ruling race ; it dealt with science, it held 
 comnnunion with the gods, and therefore was the purer race. The races ex- 
 cluded from *he priesthood were not only regarded as inferior, but as unclean. 
 The Gibeonite to a Jew was both an inferior and an impure. The operation 
 of the principles involved in these considerations, has, in our judgment, begun 
 and effected the slavery of the great mass of the people, ft has introduced 
 distinctions of blood or race, founded privileged orders, and secured the re- 
 wards of industry to the few, while it has reduced the mass to the most degrad- 
 ing and hopeless bondage. 
 
 Now the great mass enslaved by the sacerdotal corporations are not eman- 
 cipated by the victories which follow by the warrior caste, even when those 
 Victories are said to be in behalf of freedom. The mil'tay order succeeds 
 the priestly ; but in establishing, as it does in Greece and Rome, the supre- 
 macy of the state over the church, it leaves the great mass in the bondage in 
 which it finds them. The Normans conquer England, but they scarcely touch 
 the condition of the old Saxon bondmen. The Polish serf lost his freedom, 
 before began the Russian dominion, and he would have recovered none of it, 
 had Poland regained, in her late struggle, her former political independence. 
 The subjection of a nation is in general merely depriving one class of its popu- 
 lation of its exclusive right to enslave the people ; and the recovery of political 
 independence is little else than the recovery of this right. The Germans call 
 
1* 
 
 their r rfig agtuAot Napoleon a rising for liberty, and so- it wa'3, liberty for Ger- 
 man princwi and German nobles; but the German people were more free un- 
 der Napoleon * supremacy than they are now, or will be very soon. Conquest 
 may undoubtedly increase the number of slaves ; but in general it merely adds 
 to the number and power of the middle class. It institutes a new nobility, and 
 degrades the oidto the rank of commoners. This is its general effect. We 
 cannot therefore abcnbu to 1 conquest, as we did in a former number of this 
 journal, the condition in which the working classes are universally found* 
 They have been reduced to their condition by the priest, not by the military 
 chieftain. 
 
 Mankind came out of the savage state by means of the priests. Priests are 
 the first civil izers of the race. For the wild freedom of the savage, they sub. 
 stitute the iron despotism of the theocrat. This is the first step in civilization, 
 in man's career of progress. It is not strange tlven that some should prefer 
 the savage state to the civilized. Who would not rather roam the forest with a 
 free step and unshackled limb, though- exposed to hunger, cold, and nakedness, 
 than crouch an abject slave beneath the whip of the master ? As yet civiliza- 
 tion has done little but break and subdue man's natural love of freedom ; but 
 tame his wild and eagle spirit. In what a world does maty even now find him- 
 self, when he first awakes and feels some of the workings of his manly nature ? 
 He is in a cold, damp, dark dungeon, and loaded all over with chains, with the 
 iron entering into his very soul. H.? cannot make one single free movement. 
 The priest holds his conscience, fashion controls his tastes, and society with her 
 forces invades the very sanctuary of his heart, and takes command of his love, 
 that which is purest and best in bis nature, which alone gives reality to his exist- 
 ence, and from which proceeds the only ray which pierces the gloom of his 
 prison-house, ; Even that he cannot enjoy in peace and quietness, nor scarcely 
 at all. He is wounded on every side, in every part of his being, in every rela- 
 tion in life, in every idea of his mind, in every sentiment of his heart. O, it is 
 a sad world, a sad world to the young soul just awakening to its diviner in- 
 stincts ! A sad world to him who is- not gifted with the only blessing which 
 seems compatible with life as it is absoki-te insensibility. But no- matter. A 
 wise man never murmurs. He never kicks against the pricks.- What is is, 
 and there i an end of it ; what can- be may be, and we will do what we can to 
 make life what it ought to be. Though man's first step in civilization is sla- 
 very, hi* last stfp shall be freedom. The free soul can never be wholly sub- 
 dued ; the etherial fire in man's nature may be smothered, but it cannot be ex- 
 tinguished. Down, down deep m the centre of his heart it burns inextinguisha- 
 ble and forever, glowing intenser with the accumulating heat of centuries ; and 
 one day the whole mass of Humanity shall become ignited, and be full of fire 
 within and all over, as a live coal ; and then slavery, and whatever is foreign 
 to- the soul itself, shall be consumed. 
 
 But, having traced the inequality we complain of to its origin, we proceed to 
 ask again what is the remedy 1 The remedy is first to be sought in the destruc- 
 tion of the priest. We are not more destructives. We delight not in pulling 
 down ; but tbe bad must b^ removed before the good can be introduced. Con- 
 viction and repentance precede regeneration. Mo > cover we are Christians, 
 and it is only by following out the Christian law, and the example of the early 
 Christians, that we can hope to effect anything. Christianity is the sublimest 
 protest against the priesthood ever uttered, and a protest utterod by both God 
 and man ; for he who uttered it was God-rnan. In the person of Jesus both 
 God and man protest against the priesthood. What was the mission of Jesus 
 
id 
 
 but a solemn summons of every priesthood on earth to judgment, and of the 
 human race to freedom ? He discomfited the learned doctors, and with whips 
 of small cords drove the priests, degenerated into mere money-changers, from 
 the temple of God. He instituted himself no priesthood, no form of religious 
 worship. He recognized no priest but a holy life, and commanded the con- 
 struction of no temple but that of the pure heart. He preached no formal 
 religion, enjoined no creed, set apart no day for religious worship. He 
 r reached fraternal love, peace on earth, and good will to men. He came to 
 the sou' enslaved, " cabined, cribbed, confined," to the poor child of mortality, 
 bound hand and foot, unable to move, and said in the tones of a God, * Be free ; 
 be enlarged ; be there room for thee to grow, expand, and overflow with the 
 love thou wast made to overflow with." 
 
 In the name of Jesus we admit there has been a priesthood instituted, and 
 considering how the world went, a priesthood could not but be instituted ; but 
 the religion of Jesus repudiates it. It recognizes no medi;tor between God 
 and man but him who dies on the cross to redeem man ; no propition for sin but 
 a pure love, which rises in a living flame to all that is beautiful and good, and 
 spreads out in li^ht and warmth for all the chilled and benighted sons of mor- 
 tality. In calling every man to be a priest, it virtually condemns every possible 
 priesthood, and in recognising the religion of the new covenant, the religion 
 written on the heart, of a law put within the soul, it abolishes all formal wor- 
 ship. 
 
 The priest is universally a tyrant, universally the enslaver of his brethren, 
 and thereforo it is Christianity condemns him. It could not prevent the re-esta- 
 blishment of a hierarchy, but it prepared for its ultimate destruction, by denying 
 the inequality of blood, by representing all men as equal before God, and by in- 
 sisting on the celibacy of the clergy. The best feature of the Church was in its 
 denial to the clergy of the right to marry. By this it prevented the new hie- 
 rarchy from becoming hereditary, as were the old sacerdotal corporations of 
 India and Judea. 
 
 We object to no religious instruction ; we object not to the gathering toge- 
 ther of the people on one day in seven, to sing and pray, and listen to a discourse 
 from a religious teacher ; but we object to everything like an outward, visible 
 church ; to evefy thing that in the remotest degree partakes of the priest. A 
 priest is one who stands as a sort of mediator between God and man ; but we 
 have one mediator, Jesus Christ, who gave himself a ransom for all, and that is 
 enough. It may be supposed that we, protestants, have no priests ; but for our- 
 selves we know no fundamental difference between a catholic priest and a pro- 
 testant clergyman, as we know no difference of any magnitude, in relation to 
 the principles on which they are based, between a protestant church and the 
 catholic church. Both are based upon the principle of authority ; both deny in 
 fact, however it may be in manner, the authority of reason, and war against 
 freedom of mind ; both substitute dead works for true righteousness, a vain show 
 for ihe rea'ity of piety, and are sustained as the means of reconciling us to God 
 without requiring us to become Godlike. Both therefore ought to go by the 
 board. 
 
 We may offend in what we say, but we cannot help that. We insist upon it, 
 that the complete and final destruction of the priestly order, in every practical 
 senst^ of the word priest, is the firs' step to be taken towards elevating the labor- 
 ing classes. Priests are, in their capacity of priest, necessarily enemies to free- 
 dom and equality. All reasoning demonstrates this, and all history proves it. 
 There must be no class of men set apart und authorized, either by law or fashion, 
 
to speak to us in the name of God, or to be interpreters of the word of God, 
 The word of God never drops from the priest's li|s. He who redeemed man 
 did not spring from the priestly class, for it is evident that our Lord sprang out 
 of Judea, of which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning the priesthood. Who 
 in met were the authors of the Bible, the book which Christendom professes to 
 receive as the word of God ? The priests ? Nay, they were the inveterate 
 foes of the priests. No man ever berated the priests more soundly than <iid Jere- 
 miah and Ezekiel. And who were they who heard Jesus the most gladly ? The 
 priests ? The chief priests were at the head of those who demanded his cruci- 
 fixion. In every age the priests, the authorized teaehers of religion, are the 
 first to oppose the true prophet of God, and to condemn his prophecies as bias, 
 phemies. They are always a let and a hindrance to the spread of truth. Why 
 then retain them ? Why not abolish the priestly office ? Why continue to sus- 
 tain what the whole history of man condemns as the greatest of all obstacles to 
 intellectual and social progrsss. 
 
 We say again, we have no objection to teachers of religion, as snch ; but let us 
 have no class of men whose profession it is to minister at the altar. Let us leave this 
 matter to Providence. When God raises up a prophet, let that prophet prophecy &a 
 God gives him utterance. Let every man speak out of his own full heart, as he is 
 moved by the Holy Ghost, but let us have none to prophecy for hire, to make preach- 
 ing a profession, a means of gaining a livelihood. Whoever has a word pressing up- 
 oa his heart for utterance, let him utter it, in the stable, the market-place, the street, 
 in the grove, under the open canopy of heaven, in the lowly cottage, or the lordly 
 hall. No matter Vrho or what he is, whether a graduate of a college, a shepherd from 
 the hill side**, or a rustic from the plough. If tie feels himself called upon to go forth 
 in the name of God, he will speak words of truth and power, for which Humanity 
 shall fare the better. But none of your hireling priests, your " dumb dogs" that will 
 not bark. What are the priests of Christendom as they now are ? Miserable pan- 
 ders to the prejudices of the age, loud in condemning sins nobody is guilty of, but 
 silent as the grave when it concerns the crying- sin of the times ; bold as bold can be 
 when there is no danger, but miserable cowards whon it is necessary to speak out for 
 God and outraged Humanity. As a body they never preach a truth till there is none 
 whom it will indict. Never do they as a body venture to condemn sin in the concrete, 
 and make each sinner feel "thou art the man." When the prophets of God have 
 risen up and proclaimed the word of God, and, after persecution and death, led the 
 people to acknowledge it to be the word of God, then your drivelling priest comes 
 forward, and owns it to be a truth, and cries, " cursed of God and man is he who be- 
 lieves it not." But enough. The imbecility of an organized priesthood, of a hireling 
 clergy, for all good, and its power only to demoralize the people and misdirect their 
 energies, is beginning to be seen, and will one day be acknowledged. Men are be- 
 ginning to speak out on this subject* and the day of reckoning is approaching. The 
 people are rising up and asking of these priests whom they have fed, clothed, honored, 
 and followed, What have ye done for I he poor and friendless, to destroy oppression, 
 and establish the kingdom of God on earth ? A fearful question for you, O ye priests, 
 which we leave you to answer as best ye may. 
 
 The next step in this work of elevating the working classes will be to 
 resuscitate the Christianity of Christ The Christianity of the Church has done 
 its work. We have had enough of that Christianity. It is poweiless for good, 
 but by no means powerless for evil. It now unmans us and hinders the growth 
 of God's kingdom. The moral energy which is awakened it misdirects, and 
 makes its deluded disciples believe that they have done their duty to God when 
 they have joined the church, offered a prayer, sung a psalm, and contributed of 
 their means to send out a missionary to preach unintelligible dogmas U the poor 
 heathen, who, God knows, have unintelligible dogmas enough already, and more 
 than enough. All this must be abandoned, and Chiistrariity, as it came from 
 Christ, be taken up and preached in simplicity and in power. 
 
21 
 
 According to the Christianity of Christ, no man can enter the kingdom of 
 God who does not labor with all zeal and diligence to establish the kingdom of 
 God on the earth ; who does not labour to bring down the high, and bring up the 
 low ; to break the fetters of the bound and set the captive free ; to destroy all op- 
 pression, establish the reign of justice, which is the reign of equality, between 
 man and man ; to introduce new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth 
 righteousness, wherein all shall be as brothers, loving one another, and no one 
 possessing what another lacketh. No man can be a Christian who does not 
 labour to reform society, to mould it according to the will of God and the 
 nature of man ; so that free scope shall be given to every man to unfold himself in 
 all beauty and power, and to grow up into the stature of a perfect man in Christ 
 Jesus. No man can be a Christian who does not refrain from all practices by 
 which the rich grow richer and the poor poorer, and who does not do all in his 
 power to elevate the labouring classes, so that one man shall not be doomed to 
 toil while another enjoys the fruits; so that each man shall be free and independ- 
 ent, sitting under " his own vine and figtree with none to molest or to make 
 afraid." /We grant the power of Christianity in working out the reform we de- 
 mand ; we agree that one of the most efficient means^Lelevating the workingmen 
 is to christianize the community. But you must cmWianize it. It is the gospel 
 of Jesus you must preach, and not the gospel of the priests. Preach the Gospel 
 of Jesus, and that will turn every man's attention to the crying evil we have 
 designated, and will arm every Christian with power to effect those changes in 
 social arrangements, which shall secure to all men the equality of nosition and 
 condition which it is already acknowledged they possess in relation to their 
 rights. But let it be the genuine Gospel that you preach, and not that pseudo- 
 
 fospel which lulls the conscience asleep, and permits men to feel that they may 
 e servants of God while they are slaves to tne world, the flesh, and the devil ; 
 and while they ride roughshod over the hearts of their prostrate brethren. We 
 must preach no gospel that permits men 10 feel that they are honourable men and 
 good Christians, although rich and with eyes standing out with fatness, while the 
 great mass of iheir brethren are suffering from iniquitous laws, from mischievous 
 social arrangements, and pining away for the want of the refinements and even 
 the necessaries of life. 
 
 We speak strongly and pointedly on this subject, because we are desirous of 
 arresting attention. We would draw the public attention to the striking contrast 
 which actually exists between the Christianity of Christ, and the Christianity of 
 the church. That moral and intellectual energy which exists in our country, 
 indeed throughout Christendom, and which would, if rightly directed, transform 
 this wilderness world into a blooming paradise of God, is now, by the pseudo- 
 gospel which is preached, rendered wholly inefficient, by being wasted on that 
 which, even if effected, would leave all the crying evils of the timgs untouched. 
 Under the influence of the church, our efforts are not directed to thq reorganization 
 of society, to the introduction of equality between man and man, to the removal of 
 the corruptions of the rich, and the wretchedness of the poor. We think only of 
 saving our own souls, as if a man must not put himself so out of the case, as to 
 be willing to be damned before he can be saved. Paul was willing to be accursed 
 from Christ to save his brethren from the vengeance which hung over them. 
 But nevertheless we think only of saving our own souls ; or if perchance our 
 benevolence is awakened, and we think it desirable to labour for the salvation of 
 others, it is merely to save them from imaginary sins and the tortures of an ima- 
 ginary hell. The redemption of the world is understood to mean simply the 
 restoration of mankind to the favour of God in the world to come. Their 
 redemption from the evils of inequality, of factitious distinctions, and iaiquitous 
 social institutions, counts for nothing in the eyes of the church. And this is its 
 condemnation. 
 
 We cannot proceed a single step, with the least safety, in the great work of ele- 
 vating the laboring classes, without the exaltation of sentiment, the generous sym- 
 pathy, and the moral courage which Christianity alone is fitted to produce or quick- 
 en. But it is lamentable to see how, by means of the mistakes of the Church, the 
 
moral courage, the generous sympathy, the exaltation of sentiment, Christianity 
 does not actually produce or quicken, is perverted, and made efficient only in pro- 
 ducing evil, or hindering the growth of good. Here is wherefore it is necessary on 
 the one hand to condemn i the most pointed terms the Christianity of the Church, 
 and to bring out on the other hand in all its clearness, brilliancy, and glory, the 
 Christianity of Christ. 
 
 Having, by breaking down the power of the priesthood and the Christianity of the 
 priestn, obtained an open field and freedom for our operations, and by preaching the 
 true Gospel of Jesus, directed all minds to the great social reform needed, and quick- 
 ened in all souls the moral power to live for it or to die for it ; our next resort must 
 be to government, to legislative enactments. Government is instituted to be the 
 agent of society, or more properly the organ through which society may perform its 
 legitimate fuctions. It is not the master of society ; its business is not to control 
 society, but to be the organ through which society effects its will. Society has never 
 to petition government ; government is its servant, and subject to its commands. 
 
 Now the evils of which we have complained are of a social nature. That is, they 
 have their root in the constitution of society as it is, and they have attained to their 
 present growth by means of social influences, the action of government, of laws, and 
 of systems and institutions upheld by society, and of which individuals are the slaves. 
 This being the case, it is evident that they are to be removed only by the action of 
 society, that is, by government, for the action of society is government. 
 
 But what shall government do 1 Its first doin< must be an wndoing. There has 
 been thus far quite too much government, as well as government of the wrong kind. 
 The first act of government we want, is a still further limitation of itself. It must 
 begin by circumscribing within narrower limits its powers. And then it must pro- 
 ceed to repeal all laws which bear against the laboring classes, and then to enact 
 such laws as are necessary to enable them to maintain their equality, We have no 
 faith in those systems of elevating the working classes, which propose to elevate 
 them without calling in the aid of government. We must have government, and 
 legislation expressly directed to this end. 
 
 But again* what legislation do we want so far as this country is concerned? We 
 want first the legislation which shall free the government, whether State or Federal, 
 from the control of the Banks. The Banks represent the interest of the employer, 
 and therefore of necessity interests adverse to those of the employed ; that is, they 
 represent the interests of the business community in opposition to the laboring com- 
 munlty. So long as the government remains under the control of the Banks, so long 
 it must be in the hands of the natural enemies of the laboring classes, and may be 
 made, nay, will be made, an instrument of depressing them yet lower, It is obvious 
 then, that if our object be the elevation of the laboring classes, we must destroy the 
 power of the Banks over the government, and place the government in the hands of 
 the laboring classes themselves, or in the hands of those, if such there be, who have 
 an idenity of interest with them. But this cannot be done so long as the Banks 
 exist. Such is the subtle influence of credit, and such the power of capital, that a 
 banking system like ours, if sustained, necessarily and inevitably becomes the real and 
 efficient government of the country. We have been struggling for ten years in this 
 country against the power of the Banks, struggling to free merely the Federal go- 
 vern.nent from their grasp, but with humiliating success. At this moment, the con- 
 test is almost doubtful, not indeed in our mind, but in the minds of no small portion 
 of our countrymen. The partizans of the Banks count on certain victory. The 
 Banks discount freely to build " log cabin ," to purchase " hard cider," and to defray 
 the expense of manufacturing er thusiasm for a cause which is at war with the inter- 
 ests of the people. That they will succeed, we do not for one moment believe ; but 
 that they could maintain the struggle so long, and be as strong as they now are, at 
 the end of ten years constant hostility, proves but all too well the power of the 
 Banks, and their fatal influence on the political action of the community. T^he pre- 
 sent character, standing, and resources of the Bank party, prove to a demonstration 
 that the Banks must be destroyed, or the laborer not elevated. Uncompromising- hos- 
 tility to the whole banking system should therefore be the motto of every working 
 man, and of every friend of humanity. The system must be destroyed. On this point 
 there must be no misgiving, no subterfuge* no paliation. The system is at war with 
 
23 
 
 the rights and interest of labor, and it must go. Every friend of the system must be 
 marked as an enemy to his race, to his country* and especially to the laborer. No 
 matter who he is, in what party he is found, or what name he bears, he is, in our 
 judgment, no true democrat, as he can be no true Christian. 
 
 Following the destruction of the Banks, must come that of all monopolies, of all 
 PRIVILEGE. Theie are many of these. We cannot specify them all ; we therefore 
 select only one, the greatest of them all, the privilege which some have of being 
 born rich while others are born poor. It will be seen at once that we allude to the 
 hereditary descent of property, an anomaly in our American system which must be 
 removed, or the system itself will bedest r oyed. We cannot now go into a discus- 
 sion of this subject, but we promise to resume it at our earliest opportunity. We 
 only say now, that as we have abolished hereditary'monarchy and hereditary nobility, 
 we must complete the work by abolishing hereditary property. A man shall have all he 
 honestly acquires, so long as he himself belongs to the world in which he acquires it. 
 But his power over his property must cease with his life, and his property must then be- 
 come theproperty of the state, to be disposed of by some equitable law for the use of the 
 generation which takes his place. Here is the principle without any of its details, and 
 this is the grand legislative measure to which we look forward. We see no means 
 of elevating the laboring classes which can be effectual without this. And is this a 
 measure to be easily carried? Not at all. It will cost infinitely more than it cost 
 to abolish either hereditary monarchy or hereditary nobility. It is a great measure, 
 and a startling one. The rich, the business community, will never voluntarily con- 
 sent to it, and we think we know too much of human nature to believe that it will 
 ever be effected peaceably. It will be effected only by the strong arm of physical 
 force. It will come, if it ever come at all, only at the conclusion of war, the like of 
 whhh the world as yet has never witnessed, and from which, however inevitable it 
 may seem to the eye of philosophy, the heart of Humanity recoils with horror. 
 
 We are not ready for t iis measure yet. There is much previous work to be done, 
 and we should be the last to bring it before the legislature. The time, however, has 
 come for its free and full discussion. It must be canvassed in the public mind, and 
 society prepared for acting on it. No doubt they who broach it, end especially they 
 who support it, will experience a due share of contumely and abuse. They will be 
 regarded by the part of the community they oppose, or may be thought to oppose, as 
 " graceless varlets," against whom every man of substance should set his face. But 
 this is not, after all, a thing to disturb a wise man, nor to deter a true man from tell- 
 ing his whole thought. He who is worthy of the name of man speaks what he 
 honestly believes the interests of his race demand, and seldoms disquiets himself 
 about what may be the consequences to himself. Men have, for what they believed 
 the cause of God or man, endured the dungeon, the scaffold, the stake, the cross, and 
 they can do it again, if need be. This subject must be freely, boldly, and fully dis- 
 cussed, whatever may be the fate of those who discuss it. EDI roR> 
 
 APFLEfcATE, PRINTER, 17 ANN STREET. 
 
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