SPECIE HUH BUG, 
 
 • OR THE 
 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF FERRET SNAPP N£WCRAFT,E3Q. 
 
 Being a full exposition and exemplification of “the credit system. 1 * 
 Published in the National Laborer, from the United States Magazine and Democratic 
 
 Review. 
 
 I designedly omit the place of my birth, that which my father wrought on the credulity of 
 being a matter of some doubt to myself, inas- these egregious blockheads, that sense of jus- 
 much as from my earliest recollection I led a tice which I used to believe innate in the na- 
 sort of miscellaneous life, seldom remaining ture of man, would rise against such mischiev- 
 long in the same place, and moving about as ous deceptions; and I remember I once ventur- 
 occasion made necessary or convenient. My ed to express myself rather ingenuously on the 
 family, though poor, was of great antiquity, subject. His reply at once opened my mind 
 and withal respectable, since I have often to that new and sublime theory which has 
 heard my father say, not one of his ancestors ever since been the governing principle of my 
 had ever, to his knowledge, degraded himself life. 
 
 by following any regular occupation. The on- “My son,” said he, “what do you suppose 
 ly tainted limb of the family tree was our constitutes the superiority of man over all oth- 
 grandfather, who was ignominiously bound ap- er animals V 1 
 
 prentice to a cobbler ; but thank Heaven, he I mustered up my scholarship, and repli- 
 
 ranaway before he took a degree, and became ed—- 
 
 distinguished as all our race have been by”liv- “His reason, sir,” 
 
 ing by their wits”~an expressive phrase which “Good you are right. It follows, then, that 
 distinguishes the happy few from the misera- reason being his great characteristic, it was 
 ble many, who are justly condemned to live by the design of Providence, that he should live 
 the sweat of the brow, seeing they cannot live by his reason—in other words, by his wits— 
 by the sweat of the brain. The consequence and that, therefore, it is his bounden duty t© 
 is, that the latter have a foolish prejudice against make the most of them. Do you understand?” 
 the former, arising, no doubt, from an innate “I think I do, sir. But he should not make 
 sense of inferiority. use of his wits to deceive others. Justice—” 
 
 My early education was like my mode of “Justice ? Where did you get these queer 
 life, rather miscellaneous. In fact setting aside notions, boy ?” 
 a little smattering of reading, writing, and cy- “From nature, I believe, sir.” 
 phering, that I obtained, at various times, it “Nature is a son of a-—tinker !—and the 
 consisted principally in the example and pre- sooner we turn it out of doors the better. This 
 cepts of my father. As we rambled about from is the object of all education. The impulses 
 town to town—for my father seldom remained of nature are the mere errors of ignorance and 
 long in one place, on account, he said, of the inexperience,and whatpnilosophers caUa know- 
 envy and ill will he excited by the superiority ledge of the world—which, by the way, is 
 of his wits—he would stop and call my atten- worth all other knowledge—consists solely in 
 tion to a fall of water,a little murmuring river, sharpening our wits, and preparing us to take 
 . a particular point of land, or some other matter advantage of the dullness of others. Scrupu- 
 and tell me what a capital speculation he could lous blockheads call this deception, but you 
 make out of it if he only had the money. In one may depend upon it, it is nothing but a justifia- 
 place he would ere^t a great manufactory; in ble use of our wits. Nay,it is not only justifiable, 
 another, make the river navigable; in a third, but obligatory; for not to make use of the fa- 
 found a city; and in a fourth, cut a canal that culties bestowed on us by nature, or acquired 
 would enrich the whole country. So far as I by experience, would be flying in the face of 
 could judge, at that time, his sole dependence our Maker, It would be a most criminal nc- 
 was on these castles in the air, which he rea- gligence. Do you remember the parable of the 
 lized, except in the way of now and then per- talents ?” 
 
 suading some poor dolt of a workingman, who “ I think I have some sort of recollection of 
 .1 had saved a little money, to embark it in some it.” 
 
 one of his speculations, which I confess almost “Well, what is the moral of it? Is it not that 
 always failed, for want, as my father said, of a the great duty of man is to turn a penny, and 
 proper credit system founded on paper-money, make money as fast as he can ?” 
 
 But though they failed,my father always man- “But, sir, I think he ought to make it honest- 
 aged to take care of hi mself v which he affirmed ly.” 
 
 was the first duty of man, and to save enough “ Pooh—you're a blockhead. There is not 
 from the wreck to serve him till he could hatch one word about honesty in the whole parable,** 
 some other speculation. This, and various similar conversations, t®. 
 
 When I grew gjd enough to think a little for gether with the daily example of my father, 
 myself, and observed the ingenious devices by and his perpetual turmoil about speculations, 
 
 A 
 
2 
 
 gave a radical turn to my mind, and fixed my 
 destiny for life. I saw very clearly that man¬ 
 kind were condemned to labour, not for their 
 own benefit, but that of others; and that inas¬ 
 much as the wits of a man were the noblest 
 part of him, it was but just they should live at 
 the expense of those democratic physical pow- 
 eis, which were undoubtedly intended for that 
 special purpose. 
 
 One of the great resources of my father, who 
 was a decided enemy to hard work, was the 
 invention of labour-saving machines. I re¬ 
 member to have heard him boast that he had, 
 during his life, taken out patents for a hundred 
 and thirty-seven contrivances of this sort, ma¬ 
 ny of which he sold out to the country farmers 
 and village mechanics, for he had a most slip¬ 
 pery tongue, and a keen wit, which he often 
 assured me were specially given to enable him 
 to earn an honest livelihood. I have long ago 
 forgot the greater portion of these labor-saving 
 machines; but I remember there was one for 
 scalding pigs without heating the water, and 
 another for churning butter by an ingenious 
 application of the well-pole, while the good wo¬ 
 men were lowering and hoisting the bucket. 
 We lived comfortably three months on these 
 inventions, at the end of which time the ignor¬ 
 ant country people began to be so jealous of 
 the superiority of my father’s wit3, that they 
 threatened to tnr and feather him, and sub¬ 
 ject me to the new patent scalding machine. 
 
 In short, the country was becoming rather 
 warm for us, and my father determined to 
 seek not only a wider sphere of action, but of 
 impunity, in the principal city of that section 
 of country which had hitherto been the scene 
 of the triumphs of bis wits. 
 
 14 Ferret, my son,” said he, one day, just af¬ 
 ter a great ignorant country booby, who had 
 paid his last five dollars for the use of the pa¬ 
 tent scalding contrivance, had called him vari¬ 
 ous unseemly names, and threatened to prose¬ 
 cute him for swindling—“Ferret, my son, there 
 is no longer any living among these hard-work- 
 ing Cyclops, who have no respect for the tri¬ 
 umphs of superior intellect, and prefer brute 
 force to mother wit. Besides, these ‘big-paw- 
 edjfellows’—my father was the inventor of this 
 phrase—have such a stupid respect for indus¬ 
 try, that they are apt to despise their betters, 
 who live by their wits,according to the instinct 
 of reason, and the decrees of Providence. I 
 am going to the great city of Ragamuffinville, 
 where there is elbow-room for the exercise of 
 one’s wits, and I can turn dollars where I now 
 only turn pennies.” 
 
 Accordingly we departed for the great city 
 o seek our fortunes in a more enlarged sphere 
 of action As we proceeded along, my father 
 whiled away the time by pointing out a varie¬ 
 ty of excellent speculations. I had but a con¬ 
 fused notion of the precise meaning of this 
 word; and to thia day I confess the distinction 
 
 between making a great speculation and ‘tak¬ 
 ing in’ a fellow creature, is not precisely clear 
 to my mind. How far a man may use his su¬ 
 perior wit or experience in getting the better 
 of ignorance and simplicity, is a question, as 
 my father used to say, which every one must 
 decide for himself. 
 
 “There, now,” said he, as we passed the 
 house of an honest farmer—“There is a fellow 
 who might double the value of his farm,, and 
 live like a fighting cock, if he would only 
 drain that great swamp, blow up that ledge of 
 rocks, sprinkle a few hundred bushels of plas^ 
 ter over it, lay it down in grass, and stock it 
 with the short horn breed.” 
 
 I replied in the simplicity of my heart— 
 
 “I suppose sir, he his not the means of doing 
 this.” 
 
 “Ah! Ferret, there’s the thing. The whole 
 world is, as it were, standing still for want of 
 means. There is not half enough money in the 
 world to supply the new developementsof specu¬ 
 lation; and the possibility of supplying this want 
 so to keep pace with the spirit of the age—do 
 you understand me, boy?—is what employs my 
 mind day and night. The difficulty of getting mo¬ 
 ney has always appeared to me a great defect in 
 the schemes of Providence, and were that onfy 
 got over, man would be all but omnipotent 1 
 believe this to be possible, and have a sort of dim 
 conception working its way in my brain, which 
 if I can only bring it to maturity will produce the 
 greatest rev obit ion that has happened in the world 
 since the deluge, and relieve mankind from that 
 cruel denunciation that he should earn his bread 
 by the sweat of his brow, which always gives me 
 an ague whenever 1 hear it from the pulpit." 
 
 I requested my father to explain his project, but 
 he only replied,patting his forehead—“It is hore r 
 boy, here, but can’t explain it yet, at least to-youp 
 mind. One of these days I may let you into the 
 secret—at present we have other fish to fry-' r 
 This conversation set my thoughts in motion. I 
 pondered almost without intermission on tho sub¬ 
 ject, which gradually opened upon me as I ad¬ 
 vanced, step by step, until I conceived the sub¬ 
 lime idea, which, as will appear in the sequel, I 
 afterwards carried into effect, and with such con¬ 
 sequences as have astonished and confounded the 
 world. 
 
 Just as my father concluded his last remark,we 
 came in sight of a little tailor’s shop, i» a village 
 by the road side, through the open window of 
 which, we could see the owner stitching away 
 with great animation, and jerking his elbow in a 
 most spasmodic style. Observing that he had 
 some business with the tailor, who, as it soon ap¬ 
 peared, w as a simple good-natured soul, of great 
 faith and little experience, my father told me to 
 follow him, say nothing, ami be sure not to laugh. 
 Several suits of clothes were hanging out of doors 
 as a lure for customers. 
 
 My lather saluted the master of the shop, who 
 stopped his elbow for an instant, raised his eyes, 
 gave him a nod, and then w ent on at a great rate, 
 as if he wished to make up for lost time. My fa¬ 
 ther then inquired if he had any ready made 
 clothes to suit himself and son^at which the lit¬ 
 tle man picked his ears, stuck his needle into hi* 
 work, and jumped from his shop-board with the 
 elasticity of a bull-frog. 
 
d 
 
 -"Suits? Fit ? my dear sir, I have clothes to fit 
 any body, from a giant to a dwarf.” 
 
 He began to.pull down his paraphernalia with 
 his usual celerity; and to make short of a long story 
 we were soon fitted. I wondered how they were 
 to be paid for, as I happened to know my father 
 had at all times considerably more wit than 
 ■money. But 1 was soon enlightened on the sub- 
 
 AJ 
 
 ject. 
 
 “Friend Dibdill,” said he, “your clothes fit bet¬ 
 ter than if they had been made for us; what 
 would they have done had you actually taken 
 measure ?’* 
 
 can see my brother, the Squire, or take an order 
 on him for the money. What say you ? decide 
 quick—for if you wont do either, 1 must e’en take 
 up with the bungling work of your neighbour 
 yonder, who almost forced his trumpery upon my 
 back.” 
 
 The tailor considered a moment, moving his 
 elbows backwards and forwards, from the mere 
 force of habit, as if he was stitching, and then, 
 modestly, and rather hesitatingly, as if fearful of 
 giving offence, decided in favor of the order on 
 Squire Pumpelly. This was accordingly given, 
 and we departed in triumph, in a quick step. The 
 
 The little man showed hts teeth at the compli- tailor slipped upon his shop board, and the last l 
 
 ment, but made no answer, except repeating the 
 word 44 friend,” three or four times with great ra¬ 
 pidity, in a tone of interrogation, to which my fa¬ 
 ther responded— 
 
 “Aye. friend Dibdill, but I believe you don’t 
 recollect me, though we have met several times 
 at the Rev. Mr. Snortgrace’s meeting. Don’t 
 you remember what a refreshing time we had 
 about seven years ago at the great sermon about 
 earthquakes ?” 
 
 “ Bless me!” cried the tailor—“To be sure 
 I do, but I don’t remember to have seen you 
 there/’ 
 
 saw of him he was stitching it away with infinite 
 glee. 
 
 I am not ashamed to confess—for I am grown 
 wiser now—that I felt a sort of vague perception 
 that this operation of my father was not altogeth¬ 
 er justifiable. Indeed, I ventured to hint as much, 
 but his answer silenced my scruple* for ever. 
 
 “Ferret,” said he, “I ougift to have bound you 
 apprentice to the simpleton of a tailor, for I fear 
 I shall never make a gentleman of you. The 
 world will say I have cheated the fellow, for it 
 is always taken things by the wrong handle, and 
 you seem to think so too. I maintain on the con- 
 Sure—you don’t say so ? Why I was one of trary, that I have paid him double and treble the 
 those who lifted you up, brother Dibdill, when value of these clothes in the lesson I have given, 
 you were struck down, and carried you into the The experience he will acquire before many days 
 air where you waked up, singing Hallelujah, are over, will answer him two most valuable pur- 
 Don't you remember ? poses; it will guard him from future losses of the 
 
 The tailor reflected awhile. kind, and if he makes a proper use of it, enable 
 
 “Why, yes. now I think of it, I think I do. I’m him to practice the same game on others. The fact 
 much obliged to you, brother. What a shaking is, boy, in the scale of strict justice, he owes me 
 there was among the dry bones that day,” rub- for half a dozen suits,instead of my being indebted 
 bing his hands. “But may I crave your name V* to the stupid hard-working blockhead. How 
 “Pumpelly,” answered my father, looking sig- I hate to see a rascal’s elbow moving at such a 
 nificantly at me. rate.” 
 
 “Oh! ves—may be a relation of Squire Pum- “Had’nt we better go back, father, and dun him 
 pelly, the rich old codger that lives across the riv- for the balance he owes you ?” asked I. 
 er. I’ve heard he’sas rich as King Solomon. Any “Hum—not just now, my son, I’m in too great 
 
 relation ?” a hurry to get to Ragamuffinville.” 
 
 “His brother.” replied my father, witii an air of Accordingly we mended our pace, and in due 
 conscious dignity. time arrived safe at the great city qf Ragamuffin- 
 
 “Well, if ever ! who’d have thought it V* cried ville, where my father took lodgings in one of the 
 the other, looking rather significantly at my fath- most expensive and fashionable establishments of 
 er’s costume, which was somewhat weather-bea- the place, observing to me, “that persons who 
 ten. lived by the superiority of their wits, should al- 
 
 “Yes, his youngest brother. I’m on my way ways go to such places in preference to obscure 
 there now, after an absence of several years, in taverns. The very Fact of stopping at a splendid 
 which I have been rather roughly handled, as you hotel, was a sort of letter of credit among those 
 see. But my brother has written to me to come two-legged animals, who were created as objects 
 and live with him.” Here my father began rum- for men of wit to practice upon, 
 maging his pockets. “Plague take it! what can The day after our arrival, my father gave me 
 have gpne with the letter ? O, now I remember three dollars, telling me, at the same time, that 
 I left it in my trunk at the Ferry House down f or the present I must expect nothing more Irom 
 yonder. But to business, friend Dibdill. I did’nt him but good advice and good exemple. 
 like to appear before my brother, the Squire, in n a . 
 
 such a poor pickle as this, and so 1 thought I’d . y ou se / tka ‘ * ,ttl ? red fla £ 0Tcr 
 
 rig myself and my boy out a little, that we might the door yonder ? That is a place where great 
 not digrace him. I went first to the shop down bargains can sometimes be made. Go and try 
 yonder by the ferry, but the fellow’s clothes, I your wits against the auctioneer, and if you 
 believe, were made with a marlinspike, after come off triumphantly, I predict your fortune 
 measuring with a broomstick.” U ma de. You will be a match for the greatest 
 
 rhe tailor rubbed hi. hands and chuckled at ghaTer the land » 
 
 h^ivai magnanimity not to run down j ol>eyed hig command s, and came back a 
 
 ■•Now' to come to the point, my good friend,” “ ,amc duck >” * s father called me - T h * 
 continued my father. “I have net quite enough tsian of the hammer had made a specultiona 
 cash, at present, to pay for these things, and so out of me, that is, he had taken me in. The 
 I will give yeu the choice, either to wait till I mode in which he circumvented me was worth 
 
 103031 5 
 
4 
 
 ten times the money, and was, in fact, the 
 foundation of the vast property I afterwards 
 possessed, and which, if I could only have paid 
 for, would have made a little German Prince 
 of me. But I lost all, as will appear in the se¬ 
 quel, by some unlucky democratic experiments, 
 which I revenged myself upon, by calling them 
 “Specie Humbug,” “Infamous Schemes ” &,c. 
 The maiaceuvres of the auctioneer are too pre¬ 
 cious to be detailed to the public. I keep them 
 lor the special use of myself and confidential 
 friends. 
 
 My father scolded, and laughed at me at the 
 same time. “Ferret,” said he, “I did not in¬ 
 tend to give you another cent as long as I liv¬ 
 ed. But the first error of inexperience is ex- 
 curable. Here is two dollors more—go and 
 try your fortune again ; but recollect, if you 
 suffer yourself to be bamboozled this time, you 
 are no longer a son of mine. Take care 
 how you disgrace yourself by another bad bar¬ 
 gain.” 
 
 I took the money, and proceeded somewhat 
 disconsolate and mortified along the street, run¬ 
 ning over the process by which I had been 
 taken in by the little auctioneer. All at once, 
 the lecture of my father on the advantage the 
 tailor had derived from the experiment on his 
 credulity, occured to me, and 1 determined to 
 turn the sharp edge of my newly acquired ex¬ 
 perience against others, the first opportunity. 
 This soon presented itself, and by a process 
 which I shall keep to myself for the reasons 
 just specified, I succeeded, not only in retriev¬ 
 ing my former loss, but making a snug penny 
 besides. My father received me in triumph, 
 and such was his awakened confidence in the 
 superiority of my wits, that from that hour he 
 predicted my future eminence. This incident 
 was, indeed, the first step in the ladder. 
 
 By good luck an eminent broker happened 
 to hear the particulars of my last exploit. He 
 was struck with the masterly genius it display¬ 
 ed; and being a most liberal patron of merit, at 
 once offered to take me into his employment. 
 Accordingly, I descended into his cellar, where, 
 for a time, I was told to look sharp, listen to 
 every thing, and say nothing. Here was a no¬ 
 ble school to awaken the powers of my mind, 
 and the exercise of my wits. The head of the 
 house, or rather the cellar, was one of the most 
 profound men of his time, as a proof of which 
 it is only necessary to state, that he began bu¬ 
 siness with no capital but his wits, lived like a 
 prince for several years, without ever being 
 worth a dollar, and finally failed for some mil¬ 
 lions. Here was a sublime genius for you. 
 “Here”—to use the words of my father—“Here 
 is the great Archimedes who can move a world 
 by putting his lever upon nothing.” 
 
 This great man watched me narrowly for 
 some months after my first entering into his 
 employ, preparatory to trusting me in his af¬ 
 fairs. There was an old woman who had a 
 
 table where she sold apples, cakes and othef 
 small wares, which frequently excited my long* 
 ing, and she carried on the business just at the 
 window of our cellar, I was tempted to trade 
 with her whenever I had money. On these 
 occasions, my master watched me closely, and 
 the result of his investigations was exhibited 
 in an increasing confidence. By degrees, he 
 opened to me the mysteries of the shaving bu¬ 
 siness,and displayed to my mind all the wonders 
 of an invisible world, appealing to the imagina¬ 
 tion instead of the senses. 
 
 The glorious mysteries of kiting, race-hors¬ 
 ing, and other occult matters connected with 
 the sublime science of raising the wind ; the 
 manner in which the credit system is built up 
 and sustained, without anything but itself to 
 stand upon; the masterly process by which any 
 amount of ideal money may be conjured out of 
 nothing, like the spirit from the cloud, and 
 made to represent ten times the amount of the 
 same sum if it were real; these and some other 
 of the “great principles,” which constitute the 
 sublime of the new credit system, he could not 
 present to me, for as yet they had no existence, 
 except in the heated chaos of my mind, which, 
 from the period in which I received this first 
 practical insight into the great money, or rath¬ 
 er credit, kingdom, continued to boil and bub¬ 
 ble with the fever heat of grand conceptions 
 fighting their way from a faint embryo to a glo¬ 
 rious maturity. 
 
 But the lessons of my master were of the 
 highest use to me, notwithstanding. Like 
 streaks of sky, at early dawn, they prepared 
 the way for the god of light and lustre, and, at 
 the same time, taught me to take advantage of 
 the mid-day splendor, which soon after opened 
 upon me. 
 
 The city of Ragamuffinville, just about this 
 time, suddenly awakened to a perception of its 
 future greatness, and it come to pass that every 
 body began to live on anticipation. They look¬ 
 ed forward about a hundred years, and saw at 
 the end of the long vista, a vision of grandeur 
 and prosperity that set them all mad. They 
 forgot that a hundred years was a long while 
 and that he who incurred a debt, in the expec¬ 
 tation of receiving a great profit at the end of 
 that time, was very likely to die before he could 
 realize his anticipations. 
 
 Suddenly, there was a great and increasing 
 demand for money, for all the world had be¬ 
 come borrowers, to invest in lots, in order to 
 take advantage of the great rise in value 
 a hundred years hence. The precious metals 
 not being of a ductile nature, and incapable of 
 expanding fast enough to suit these great exi¬ 
 gencies, it became indispensable that some sub¬ 
 stitute should be found, more suitable to the 
 spirit of the age, and the newly discovered 
 wants of the community. 
 
 My master every day lamented to me the 
 contracted sphere of operations to which his 
 
5 
 
 genius was confined, by what he called the 
 “infamous Specie Humbug,” meaning the stu¬ 
 pid attachment mankind had inherited from the 
 dark ages, to what they called a standard of 
 value. “If I could only make money out of 
 nothing,” would he exclaim in a paroxysm of 
 enthusiasm, “I would, in a short time, possess 
 the world !” 
 
 i brooded on this idea from morning till 
 night,and sometimes lay awake for hours, think¬ 
 ing on the glorious hope of its successful ac¬ 
 complishment. I often asked myself what was 
 the basis of the value of every thing in the world 
 and at length came to the conclusion that it 
 was the general estimation of mankind. I then 
 proceeded to investigate the possibility of sub¬ 
 stituting an imaginary, for a real, value, and 
 appealingto human credulity as its basis. Man¬ 
 kind, thought I, worship false gods, adopt false 
 opinions, and arrive at false conclusions. Many 
 believe the moon is made of green cheese ; is 
 it not possible to make them believe that what 
 is worth nothing intrinsically, is just as good 
 as u thing of inestimable value, provided it will 
 exchange for just as much ? What, proceeded 
 I, was the intrinsic value of a fathom of Wam¬ 
 pum, and yet, in old times, you could purchase 
 a farm with it from the Indians, I forgot at 
 that time that this Wampum was the product, 
 of labor, and therefore represented the value of 
 all the labor bestowed upon it. 
 
 While my mind was struggling to emerge 
 from the twilight of these conceptions, into the 
 meridian day, my master began, by degrees, 
 toemploy me in transactions which became,eve¬ 
 ry day, more important and consequential. In 
 the course of them, I daily acquired new ideas 
 and new r experience. I learned the art ofevad- 
 ing the law* against usury, without subjecting 
 myself to, the penalty of their violation; I 
 mastered all the mysteries of the business in 
 which I was engaged; and in good time became 
 such an adept, that I could practically define 
 to a hair, the precise line which separated a 
 lucky speculation from an act of downright 
 swindling. I could tell to the utmost nicety, 
 how far it was lawful to play on credulity and 
 ignorance, and the extent to which deception 
 might be carried without constituting a fraud. 
 In short, I could see my way clear in the dark¬ 
 est transaction, and split a hair with my eyes 
 shut. 
 
 I was gradually, though not actually a part¬ 
 ner, admitted sometimes to a share in the pro¬ 
 fits when I had made a good hit, and soon found 
 myself in possession of a snug little sum. With 
 this, having the approbation of my master, I 
 commenced business on my own account, and 
 considered iny fortune as good as made, when 
 by his influence, I was admitted a member of 
 the Board of Brokers, which, under the present 
 severe laws against every other species of play, 
 enjoys a monopoly of gambling 
 
 In truth, it was carried on upon a great scale. 
 
 A2 
 
 Not a day passed that some one of us, who, per* 
 haps, was not wortli one-fiftieth part of the 
 money, did not play stakes for thousands, and 
 buy or sell what neither possessed, or vvliat, in 
 fact, had no existence. But every thing was 
 done in the most gentlemanly manner, and all 
 the members were strictly governed by the 
 point of honor, which consisted in taking every 
 possible advantage of each other. 
 
 The entire process was a war between buyer 
 and seller. One' member would, for example, 
 offer a thousand shares of some fancy stock; 
 that is, a stock which had no definite value, 
 and another accept the offer, although the form¬ 
 er had not a single share, and the latter 
 not a single dollar to pay for one. The 
 stock was to be delivered at a certain specified 
 time, and here commenced a great struggle on 
 the part of the buyer and seller, one to depress, 
 the other to raise the price of the stock, by 
 rumors calculated to affect it one way or the 
 other. It was on one occasion of this kind that 
 I made my first great speculation. 
 
 Happening to overhear a bargain of this 
 kind, for a vast number of shares in a certain 
 contemplated rail road, a lucky thought came 
 into my mind. Without losing a moment, I 
 went and purchased, on time, every share of 
 this gtock in tire market, and of consequence, 
 the person who had contracted to deliver the 
 amount of shares, which was very large, was 
 under the absolute necessity of applying to me 
 when the period of delivery arrived. You may 
 depend, I made him pay handsomely, knowing 
 that he would ever after lose the chance of did 
 dling others, if he forfeited his honor on this 
 occasion, by being expelled the Board. By this 
 operation he lost, and I gained, a little fortune, 
 and what wa3 of no less consequence, a great 
 accession of reputation, on account of my su¬ 
 perior sagacity and forsight. 
 
 The affair recommended me to a certain 
 bank, which soon after installed me in the of¬ 
 fice of its chief broker, that is, furnished me 
 with money to shave all the good notes which 
 the directors refused to discount at legal inter¬ 
 est. In this situation it was that I invented 
 the famous mode of dodging the law against 
 usury, by charging all premiums above the le¬ 
 gal interest as a commission for my services. 
 
 Being now in a prosperous and honorable 
 situation, I began to sigh for the enjoyment of 
 domestic felicity, as I could now afford myself 
 that expensive luxury. I accordingly sought 
 a partner, and being guided by prudence, a* 
 well as inclination, married a lady of a certain 
 age, who had great family interest. Her fath¬ 
 er was president of a bank, and three of her un¬ 
 cles hank directors. This at once initiated me 
 into mysteries of the “Credit System,” as it 
 existed at that time. 
 
 I at once saw its defects, and my mind again 
 reverted, with increasing force and vigour, to 
 the question of a currency founded exclusive- 
 
6 
 
 ly on public credulity. It is true, the banks, 
 as they then existed, possessed great advanta¬ 
 ges in furnishing a currency, two-thirds or 
 three-fourths of which was not represented by 
 real value. Still, this was not the beau ideal 
 of my imagination. I reflected, and believed 
 in the possibility of perfecting the Credit Sys¬ 
 tem, so that it should consist solely of credit, 
 without being adulterated by a single particle 
 of real value. 
 
 The period was now come for realizing this 
 long cherished vision of my imagination. I 
 wa?rich in credit and paper-money ; the great 
 city ofRagamuffinville was turning wild with 
 visions of what was going to happen a hun¬ 
 dred years hence ; and there was such a de¬ 
 mand for money, as all the gold and silver 
 mines of the universe could not supply. I had 
 also bank influence; and now set about acquir- 
 ing political distinction as indispensable to my 
 purposes. I turned a furious democrat, that 
 party being then uppermost; attended every 
 ward meeting, and made speeches in favour of 
 Equal Rights; until, by degrees, 1 rose to be a 
 member of the general committee for nominat¬ 
 ing members of Assembly. When this measure 
 came up, there were so many candidates, and 
 so great a diversity of opinions, that we settled 
 the matter by nominating ourselves, and were 
 triumphantly elected. 
 
 It was now that 1 grasped the reality of what 
 1 had so long anticipated. Before proceeding to 
 the seat of government, 1 had projected a 
 scheme for a bank, founded on the great prin¬ 
 ciple of making money out of nothing; a self- 
 constituted,self-existent,perpetual-motion bank- 
 machine, entirely independent of any represen¬ 
 tative of real value, and which, like a spider, 
 would spin its web for catching flies out of its 
 ewn bowels. On opening my scheme to sev¬ 
 eral of my confidential friends, who had sub¬ 
 mitted to the disgrace of being called demo*, 
 crats for a time, in order that they might make 
 use of their support in the attainment of their 
 objects, they were delighted with it,—most es¬ 
 pecially when they found that my bank requir¬ 
 ed not a dollar for its specie basis. They ea¬ 
 gerly joined me in a memorial to the Legisla¬ 
 ture, stating that there was a great necessity 
 for an increase of capital in the great city of 
 Ragamuffinville, and a great surplus capital 
 having no profitable means of investment; and 
 that the applicants being great friends to the 
 Equal Rights of the sovereign people, had come 
 forward, actuated solely by the public good, to 
 request a charter, conferring on them certain 
 privileges, which though the people were pro¬ 
 hibited from exercising, were exclusively for 
 their benefit. This charter, 1 employed a friend 
 of mine, a lawyer unequalled in drafting laws 
 for the purpose of being evaded, to draw up in 
 such a manner as that it would require no capital 
 to pay up the stock, and authorize the corpora¬ 
 tion to do directly the contrary of what the 
 
 Legislature intended. With this, I proceeded, 
 in anticipated triumph, to the fountain of legis¬ 
 lation. 
 
 On my arrival, 1 found that almost every 
 member of that honorable body had some 
 scheme or other on the anvil for the public 
 good, and in the benefits of which he expected 
 to participate, only, as one of the people. 1 made 
 it my first object to become acquainted with 
 the individual interests of every member, and 
 set about reconciling them all, if possible. This 
 however, was a task beyond my power to ac¬ 
 complish,and it then occurred to me that though 
 1 could not reconcile, 1 might unite them all, 
 and thus produce perfect harmony. This plan 
 was accordingly adopted, and produced the 
 most beneficial consequences. Each member 
 proceeded on the great and only just principle 
 of reciprocity, that is, each one promised to 
 support every one of these schemes, provided 
 all the others would support his, and thus, the 
 whole batch was carried triumphantly through 
 our honorable body with only three dissenting 
 voices, consisting of three members who had 
 been guilty of the unpardonable negligence of 
 coming thither without a single project for the 
 public good. This was the origin oi' that great 
 modern improvement in legislation, called log¬ 
 rolling, of which 1 flatter myself 1 am the sole 
 inventor. 
 
 My bank went through with the rest, and 
 with it commenced the new and most.glorious 
 era of that great Credit System, of which it has 
 been truly said, that its destruction would be 
 immediately followed by universal ignorance 
 and barbarism. My lawyer had incorporated 
 into our charter a phrase of my own invention, 
 and which, m my opinion,—and 1 hope 1 am 
 not misled by vanity,—-embodies the greatest 
 improvement ever maddfin the system- of bank 
 ing, 1 allude to the provision that the capital 
 of our bank should be either paid in, “on secur¬ 
 ed TO BE PAID.” 
 
 Under this convenient and salutary provision, 
 on the breaking up of the session we returned 
 to Ragamuffinville, and immediately commenc¬ 
 ed operations. We began with engraving and 
 filling up notes to the amount of twice our no¬ 
 minal capital, with which we paid the first in¬ 
 stalment on our subscriptions for stock, the 
 whole of which,with the exception of a few hun¬ 
 dred shares—assigned to some members of the 
 Legislature as a compliment for voting accord¬ 
 ing to their conscicncos-was distributed among 
 ourselves. For the remaining instalments, as 
 they became due, we first issued the stock, 
 then gave our notes of hand for the amount, 
 and then pledged the stock as collateral securi¬ 
 ty. 
 
 Here then was the credit system brought to 
 that perfection which I had long imagined pos¬ 
 sible, and now saw realized. It was the ideal 
 representation of a pyramid reversed j nothing 
 at the bottom, and a vast expansion of surface 
 
7 
 
 at the top. It was credit founded on credit, 
 paper on paper, and promise on promise. It 
 might, consequently, be extended to an infinite 
 series, or at least so long as human credulity, 
 that great beast of burden, could be brought to 
 stagger under the blessing. 
 
 We had some difficulty in finding a cashier 
 to make oath that our capital was thus “paid 
 in , or secured to be paid'” but, at length, were 
 lucky enough to catch a man exactly suited to 
 our purposes ; one just emerged from the er¬ 
 rors of the dark ages, and who recognised the 
 distinction between the letter and spirit of an 
 oath. He saw clearly that “secured to be paid,” 
 was an indefinite phrase, and, consequently, 
 meant just what a man pleased to make it. He, 
 therefore, swore most manfully, and our bank 
 proceeded to business, by, in the first place, 
 lending twenty-five per cent, more than tile 
 whole of its capital to the directors, the cash¬ 
 ier, and the president, to wit, myself,who claim¬ 
 ed, and received, one-third of the whole, as my 
 lawful share. 
 
 Having thus achieved the grand desidera¬ 
 tum of making money out of nothing, my next 
 step was to turn the discovery to the greatest 
 advantage by changing what was worth no¬ 
 thing for something of real value. The truth 
 is, 1 could never entirely discard from my mind 
 certain unpleasant intruding doubts of the sta¬ 
 bility of my system, and therefore resolved to 
 make hay while the sun shone. Accordingly, 
 J conceived another grand scheme for the em¬ 
 ployment of the surplus funds of our institu¬ 
 tion. 1 proposed to a certain number of t he 
 members of the Legislature, to which 1 now 
 no longer appertain, a plan for a great public 
 improvement, that is, a rail road of a few hun¬ 
 dred miles length. 
 
 The thing was kept perfectly snug, while, 
 by means of the funds furnished by our Bank, 
 which was capable of expanding like an emp¬ 
 ty bladder, we proceeded quietly to purchase 
 all the land in the immediate vicinity of the 
 line of the contemplated improvement, which 
 was intended however solely for the public 
 good. We then once more commenced the 
 system of log-rolling, to which 1 added another 
 lever of my own invention, to wit, the agency 
 of lobby members, and the law passed by a 
 great majority : although sturdily opposed by 
 an ignorant, old Dutch member, who insisted 
 that the public good had come to signify noth¬ 
 ing but private interest. 
 
 Our project went on swimmingly, and such 
 was the rise of property along the contemplat¬ 
 ed improvement, that it was sold, and resold, 
 on credit, so many times that it was afterwards 
 ascertained it had become the representative 
 of more paper promises of one kind or other, 
 than the whole district of country through 
 which it passed, would sell for, after, the great 
 improvement was made. Such was one of the 
 first triumphs of my new Credit System, the 
 
 gre^t advantage of which is, that it enables peo¬ 
 ple to run in debt indefinitely, and property to 
 represent fifty times as much paper as it is 
 worth. 
 
 As a sort of interlude to this, I became a 
 purchaser of vast tracts of public land in the 
 West, which I paid for in the notes of our 
 bank, on which J. expected to realize immense 
 profits, and which, even thougli it fell in price, 
 would still be worth more than our paper pro¬ 
 mises, the chief recommendation of which was, 
 that the moment they parsed from my hands, 
 as a private person, in payment of a debt, the 
 debt was paid, though they might become ever 
 so worthless afterwards. This is another great 
 advantage of my newly invented Credit Sys¬ 
 tem, if not to those who receive, at least to 
 those that pay. In this case, as I purchased 
 of Uncle Sam, my conscience was quite easy, 
 for in case the worst came to the worst, the old 
 fellow could afFo d to lose the money. 
 
 I was now rolling in wealth ; the idol of the 
 brokers ; the oracle of financiers ; th'* control¬ 
 ler of the stock market; the envy of all that 
 miserable race, which lives on real property 
 and labour; and the founder of* cities, for I had 
 laid out six of these on my new lands, or rather 
 on the maps of my lands,some of which threa¬ 
 tened to outgrow even the great emporium of 
 Ragumuffinville. Nay, I don’t know but I 
 may in time become the founder of a great 
 empire on the North Pacific, where I onqc es¬ 
 tablished an Agency for buying muskrat and 
 mink skins. 
 
 But alas ! there is nothing perfect in this 
 world, and my new Credit System, though as 
 near perfection as possible, was unluckily a 
 little out at one of its elbows. It contained a 
 vile principle, by which it is said, by pretend¬ 
 ed philosophers, every thing in the natural and 
 moral world is regulated. I mean the mischie- 
 vous and abominable piinciple of reaction, the 
 greatest enemy to the Credit System which 
 has ever presented itself. Under the operation 
 of this, it is pretended that the affairs of this 
 world resemble the action of a pendulum, which 
 the farther it is driven one way the farther it 
 will recede on the other, thus ever returning 
 to opposite extremes. 
 
 Whether there be such a law of nature, or 
 necessity, or not, certain it that I now be¬ 
 gan to experience the existence of some cause 
 or other by which the equilibrium of rny new 
 Credit System was sadly disturbed. At first I 
 ascribed it to the great number of banks which 
 had grov/n out of the system, with capitals 
 “paid in , or secured to be paid ” in a similar 
 manner to ours; and the operation of the old 
 saying that “too much pudding will choke a 
 dog.” This however was so contrary to rny 
 first principle, namely, that it was utterly im¬ 
 possible to have too much of a good thing, and 
 of course an excess of credit and paper-money, 
 that 1 discarded it with contemptuous indigna- 
 
8 
 
 tion. At length 1 hit the nail on the head. 1 
 discovered the origin of all the dangers which 
 now began to threaten my system in two great 
 sources, namely, the “Specie Circular and the 
 Specie Humbug.” These two humbugs pla¬ 
 gued me J exceedingly. The former interfered 
 with the founding ot my cities in the West,by 
 striking at the root of my Credit System, which 
 contemplated the entire extension of every 
 tiling but promises to pay instead of payments; 
 and the hitter was a serious obstacle to my 
 plan of causing the people to give up their ab¬ 
 surd prejudices in favour of silver and gold,by 
 keeping the latter outofsiglit until they should 
 actually forget such things ever existed. J al¬ 
 ways considered specie as the great plly of ignor¬ 
 ance and barbarism, and was convinced in my 
 own mind that an extensive paper circulation 
 representing nothing, and which nobody was 
 obliged to redeem, was the sole agent of refine¬ 
 ment and civilization. And here 1 must do 
 myself the justice to state that the idea winch 
 a “Great Financier” of the present day has 
 since carried into practice, of issuing the notes 
 of defunct institutions, upon the above princi¬ 
 ple, was suggested by me in a confidential con¬ 
 versation. 
 
 Be this as it may, these two mischievous 
 humbugs caused a sudden revulsion in the 
 flood-tide of my affairs. The dunderheaded peo¬ 
 ple, 1 mean th£ big-pawed Farmers, and the 
 hard-handed Mechanics and Labourers, began 
 once more to recall to mind those demoralizing 
 substitutes for paper-money, silver and gold, 
 which are well denominated in the Scriptures 
 the root of all «vil, Certain mischievous fel¬ 
 lows, out of revenge for being disappointed in 
 getting discounts at my bank, began to write 
 essays in some of the newspapers whose editors 
 were in a similar predicament, full of the most 
 disorganizing principles. They maintained 
 the enormous heresy of Equal Rights; denoun¬ 
 ced Monopolies; denied that a promise was the 
 actual substance of the thing promised, and 
 cancelled the obligation; and dared to insinu¬ 
 ate that a superstructure that had no founda¬ 
 tion would be very likely to fall to the ground, 
 the first stoim it encountered. Nay, they had 
 the hardihood to assert that of nothing, nothing 
 could come, and thus struck at the very heart 
 of my system. In vain did I marshal my for¬ 
 ces, consisting of editors of newspapers whom 
 1 had conciliated by my generosity, and who 
 repaid me with gratitude ; politicians whom 1 
 had linked body and soul with the existence of 
 my system, and who lived and breathed in that 
 alone ; and legislators who had grown out of 
 it like toad stools from rotten wood. In vain 
 did 1 set on foot the cry of Loco Foco, Fanny 
 Wright, Robert Dale and Jack Cade ; equally 
 vain that 1 called on the people who owed moie 
 than they could pay; the people who sighed to 
 make promises they could not fulfil, and all 
 those who desired to live by their wits instead 
 
 of their labour, to come forth and defend their 
 possessions, their morals and their religion. All 
 would not do. The stubborn ignorance of the 
 mass of mankind, which prevents them from 
 knowing when they are well off, or properly 
 distinguishing betwixt happiness and misery, 
 resisted the efforts of reason and virtue, and it 
 became evident that the crisis of my great Cre¬ 
 dit System was at hand. 
 
 It behooved us, therefore, to make ready for 
 the shock; and according we preceeded to pre¬ 
 pare ourselves for a run upon our Bank. We 
 had only specie enough in our vaults to pay 
 the postage of our letters, and onr capital con¬ 
 sisted entirely of the followed items : 
 
 Firstly.—The notes of hand which represent¬ 
 ed the stock of the bank. 
 
 Secondly.—The stock of the bank which re¬ 
 presented the notes of hand. 
 
 Thirdly.—The debts due to the bank, to wit, 
 the notes of the president, directors.and editors 
 and politicians, we had thought it prudent to 
 make friends of, in order to resist the stupid, 
 ignorant hostility of the 4 big-paws’ and others. 
 1 had almost forgot to mention that somewhat 
 rising one-third more than the whole amount 
 cf the nominal capital of our bank, was loaned 
 to myself and the Directors, of which 1 had 
 by far the largest share, as was but just, see¬ 
 ing 1 had not only invented the great improve¬ 
 ment in the Credit System, but likewise the 
 means of carrying it into execution by log-roll¬ 
 ing. 
 
 This brief exposition will serve better than 
 any other mode, to exemplify the principles of 
 my system. The reader will readily perceive 
 that our Bank had actually no other capital 
 than public confidence, or as the infidel Loco 
 Focos, and Fanny Wright men, who believe in 
 nothing but Specie Humbugs, call it, public 
 credulity. This was the perfection of my sys¬ 
 tem. It is easy enough to found a Banking 
 System on a specie basis, but to raise it upon 
 credit alone, 1 consider the triumph of fiancier- 
 ing. 
 
 Our first act, in order to meet the unreason¬ 
 able demands of the senseless people who held 
 our notes, a great amount of which we had is¬ 
 sued in anticipation to strengthen us against 
 the coming storm, was to discharge a great 
 duty to ourselves. Charity begins at home, i3 
 one of the fundamental maxims of my Credit 
 System. So we unanimously decided to liqui¬ 
 date our own obligations by cancelling all our 
 respective notes, given as security for the ca¬ 
 pital stock. Our next act was, to cancel the 
 certificates of stock pledged by ourselves as 
 collateral security for the stock; and our third 
 to throw both notes and certificates into the 
 fire. Thus at once was cancelled all our re- 
 sponsibilities in the most satisfactory manner. 
 The baftk which, according to my great Cicdit 
 System, originated in nothing, returned to its 
 original element of nothing, and all parties 
 
9 
 
 'were perfectly content, except those eternal 
 and disorganizing grumblers, the Loco Focos 
 and Jack Cade men whom nothing will satis¬ 
 fy, who came with their hands full of our notes 
 to demand payment, and began to talk of tar¬ 
 ring and feathering. But the Mayor had pro¬ 
 videntially ordered out the military to overawe 
 these unreasonable villains, and so my gentle¬ 
 men went home with each a flea in his ear. 1 
 dare say some of them suffered considerably 
 by the loss of a pitiful sum, unworthy the no¬ 
 tice of the great inventor of the Credit System, 
 but 1 have since quieted my conscience by sub¬ 
 scribing liberally to soup-houses,and thus fairly 
 quit scores with these wretched, irreligious, de¬ 
 moralized beings. 
 
 This equitable adjustment of our affairs plac¬ 
 ed me on the very pinnacle of prosperity. 1 
 had paid all my debts to the people, and might 
 now have sat down in the enjoyment of a quiet 
 conscience amid unbounded wealth, but the 
 truth is, 1 longed for a single hundred thousand 
 dollars more, to make up two milUons, and un¬ 
 fortunately an opportunity seemed to present 
 itself just in the nick of time. 
 
 1 had a particular^friend,—one with whom 1 
 had done business for years past, and regularly 
 got to windward of two or three times a year ; 
 but with all this the fellow crept along prosper¬ 
 ously by some inconceivable means beyond my 
 comprehension. There ara such men in the 
 world, and of all beings in the creation they 
 most puzzle me to account for their prosperity. 
 They themselves pretend to explain it by quot¬ 
 ing that sale maxim about honesty being the 
 best policy; but for my part 1 never saw ho¬ 
 nesty achieve such wonders, and accordingly 
 it does not constitute one of the elements of 
 my Credit System. It is at war with the 
 spirit of the age and the progress of improve¬ 
 ment. 
 
 Be this as it may, when in consequence of 
 the “suspension” of cur Bank, I had got rid of 
 all my responsibilities in the most satisfactory 
 manner, and felt myself perfectly independent 
 of panic and pressure, my worthy friend came 
 to me one day with a proposition to sdll a tract 
 of new land, comprising three millions of acres 
 and several large towns in perspective. This 
 tract 1 had originally sold him at a pretty con¬ 
 siderable profit, and now thought it would be a 
 capital operation to purchase back again under 
 the depression of the panic which 1 was con¬ 
 vinced would blow over again and be followed 
 by a corresponding reaction of prices. 
 
 My worthy friend was excessively alarmed 
 and consequently very desirous to sell his land, 
 and realize the proceeds, as soon as possible. 
 I took advantage of his opprehensions, and fin¬ 
 ally purchased back my land at somewhat less 
 than half of what 1 received for it, paying him 
 cash in hand. The poor creature went away 
 highly delighted, and what is not common on 
 such occasions, both parties were perfectly sat¬ 
 
 isfied. He rejoiced in selling,and 1 in purchas¬ 
 ing, what I was assured would enrich me a few 
 hundred thousands in the end. 
 
 This would undoubtedly have been the case, 
 if it had not been for the obstinate ignorance 
 and stupidity of our outlandish Government, 
 which about this time began a series of diaboli¬ 
 cal experiments which played the very mis¬ 
 chief with my Credit System, and gradually 
 undermined its only support, namely, the pub¬ 
 lic credulity. It undertook to refuse my bank 
 notes in payment of the public lands, which, 
 operated against my system like a two-edged 
 sword, right and left. It injured its credit and 
 depressed the price of lands, by demanding pay¬ 
 ment in specie instead of what all people of 
 good breeding call its “representative.” 
 
 It embarrassed me terribly, and was the 
 commencement of the downfall of one of the 
 greatest estates ever acquired by a single man 
 in the United States. People when they found 
 themselves obliged to give real value instead 
 of its respectable representative for lands, be¬ 
 gan to calculate the cost, etc., which they never 
 did before, when they paid in promises which 
 neither themselves nor any body else ever ex¬ 
 pected to redeem. Land began to descend ra¬ 
 pidly, and like a wagon running down hill, the 
 nearer it got to the bottom the faster it went. 
 Not content with aiming this blow at the na¬ 
 tional prosperity, this outlandish Government 
 not long afterwards proposed the “Infamous 
 Scheme” of a divorce of Bank and State, which 
 completed my downfall. 
 
 “Infamous Scheme,” indeed, for what could 
 be more infamous than withdrawing the Gov- 
 vernment from a partnership in which it furn¬ 
 ished a great portion of the capital, and all the 
 credit, while the other parties received all the 
 profits? It was in fact a base conspiracy 
 against my system, and accordingly all the 
 really honest patriots raised a hue and cry the 
 moment it made its appearance. I was one of 
 the first that moved in the business by calling 
 a meeting of every man who owed more than 
 he could pay, in the city of Ragamuffinville— 
 and they were not a few in number—which 
 denounced the Specie Circular, the Infamous 
 Scheme, and the outlandish Administration, 
 which had, by its stupid folly, arrested the ca¬ 
 reer of my Credit System, and ruined the coun¬ 
 try by prematurely experimenting on the ca¬ 
 pacity of mankind, to continue the practice of 
 running in debt through an infinite series, as 1 
 am convinced can be done, if no mischievous 
 attempts are'made to appeal to their common 
 sense and experience. 
 
 But 1 have neither temper nor patience to 
 detail all the mischievous follies and stupid ex 
 periments of our outlandish Government, and, 
 besides, the details of my decline are by no 
 means so agreeable to my recollection as those 
 of my tise. Suffice it to say, that the great 
 land speculation 1 made out of my simple friend 
 
10 
 
 it 1 thought him at the time, was the primary 
 eause of my catastrophe. The blunders of this 
 outlandish Government had arrested the glori¬ 
 ous career of speculation, which like a top the 
 moment it ceases to whirl round, falls to the 
 ground. 1 had risen with speculation, and 1 
 fell with speculation. 1 had lived for years in 
 the anticipation of a rise in the value of every 
 thing on the face of the earth, except paper- 
 money, and as soon as prices declined 1 
 became to all intents and purposes u a lame 
 duck/’ 
 
 It is unnecessary to enter into details, as my 
 object is not to record my descent, but my as¬ 
 cension. Suffice it to say, that the vile perse¬ 
 cutions and egregious blunders of our outland¬ 
 ish Administration at length brought me to a 
 “suspension,” that being the genteel phrase for 
 what used to be called bankruptcy. And hce 
 1 will pause a moment to observe on the truth 
 of the Conservative theory, that my Credit Sys¬ 
 tem is the parent of all that is pure and refined 
 in human society. In nothing is this more 
 strikingly exemplified than the refinements it 
 has brought about in our language. In the 
 “iron money and black broth” days of specie 
 circulation, when a man could not or would not 
 pay his debts he was called a bankrupt ,—now 
 he has only suspended; taking in another in a 
 bargain, was called swindling, now it is specu¬ 
 lation ; running in debt without paying, or 
 having any prospect of doing it, is now enter¬ 
 prise; crime is imprudent, and murder, a great 
 misfortune. 
 
 But if any doubt remains of the beautiful 
 perfection of my system, it will be found in the 
 following fact which 1 record as the consum¬ 
 mation of its triumphs. 1 had for more than 
 fifteen years lived in the greatest luxury and 
 splendor; 1 had spent in that time upwards of 
 two hundred and fifty thousand dollars; 1 had 
 held property to the amount of between two 
 and three millions, and yet when 1 came to in¬ 
 vestigate my affairs critically,I found that at no 
 period of my prosperity had 1 ever been worth 
 a dollar in the world ! 1 n short, 1 had been 
 
 over head and ears in debt every moment of 
 that time. 
 
 Can any one after this doubt for a single 
 moment the perfection of my Credit System ? 
 Can any man that loves his country or his 
 species, refrain from joining with me in de¬ 
 nouncing the Specie Circular, the Specie Hum¬ 
 bug, the Infamous Scheme, and the tissue of 
 blundering ignorance exhibited by our outland¬ 
 ish Administration ? But for these 1 might 
 have gone on accumulating “ responsibilities” 
 and spending money like dirt, to the end of my 
 life, and what if my debts had increased all 
 that time ? It would only have been a few 
 
 hundred thousand dollars more issues of paper 
 money, by some body or other, and tlw vacuum 
 would have been supplied. This is the great 
 beauty of my system. It works by an infinite 
 series, as it were, and there is only one trifling 
 thing wanting, namely, that there should be 
 all debtors, and no creditors, i»» the would. I 
 don’t despair of bringing this about, when, as 
 will certainly be the case a couple or three 
 years hence, our ignorant outlandish Adminis¬ 
 tration is replaced by my disciples of the Credit 
 System. Then shall we see the age of Inter¬ 
 nal Improvements, unexampled exquisite re¬ 
 finement, and unlimited public prosperity, for 
 then will every body owe and nobody pay; 
 then will the wealth ot the nation, like that of 
 England, be demonstrated by the amount of its 
 debt; then will the true Agrarian principle be 
 in practical operation, for a man who borrows 
 a hundred thousand dollars will be as rich as 
 the one that lends it; and then there will be 
 no occasion for a bottom to the sea, for the 
 whole world will be adrift on its surface. 
 
 Such are the anticipations with which 1 so¬ 
 lace the lazy hours of my temporary retirement 
 from the business of the world. My other 
 auxiliary comfort is in recalling the busy 
 scenes of my former career, and either suggest- 
 ing great speculations to others, or imagining 
 the muse for myself. In this way 1 endeavour 
 to get rid of the desperate ennui of a life free 
 from the perplexity and distraction of being of 
 out of debt. 1 have compounded with my cre¬ 
 ditors at a pistareen in the pound,and the leaden 
 depression consequent on being freed from the 
 excitement of getting up every morning, with¬ 
 out knowing whether 1 should not be “ sus¬ 
 pended” before night; and going to bed every 
 night with the anticipation of being a lame 
 duck the next morning, is now the principal 
 evil of which J complain. It is inconceivable 
 what interest such vicissitudes communicated 
 to life, and were it not that 1 look forward to 
 the speedy downfall of our ignorant outlandish 
 Administration, and the resuscitation of my 
 Credit System in more than its past glory, 1 
 really believe i should be obliged to turn phil¬ 
 anthropist, to pass away the time. 
 
 P. S. I forgot to mention that on my retire¬ 
 ment from the presidency of my bank, the Di¬ 
 rectors unanimously voted me a service of 
 plate, worth twenty thousand dollars; and that 
 my father, to whose lessons 1 am indebted for 
 every blessing 1 have enjoyed or anticipated, 
 has lately been appointed by the Federal Com¬ 
 mon Council of Ragamuffinville, Chairman of 
 the Finance Committee,on account of his great 
 talent at “raising the wind” which is now the 
 principal employment of our States and Corpor¬ 
 ations. 
 
fROM THE NATIONAL LABORER, 
 
 bank representatives. 
 
 Of late years there is a desire manifested by 
 the wealthy few to change their relation to the 
 great body of the people, by withdrawing their 
 wealth from property which is tangible, and the 
 value of which is easily known and ascertained, 
 and investing the same in a species of property or 
 securities or whatever else it may be denomi¬ 
 nated, called stocks, with the value of which the 
 great mass*is wholly unacquainted; whereby 
 they obtain great and unbounded advantages 
 over the people, and control over the public in¬ 
 stitutions of the country—all of which they have 
 been enabled to accomplish by means of the 
 various charters of incorporation granted to asso¬ 
 ciated bodies of wealthy citizens, by Congress 
 and the Legislatures of the several States, with¬ 
 out any sufficient safeguards to protect the many 
 against the avarice, cupidity, folly or frauds of 
 this favored few. This fearful tendency towards 
 the entire prostration of popular rights, is well 
 calculated to create a belief and the apprehen¬ 
 sion throughout our country, that those advan¬ 
 tages so conferred on the favored few, have not 
 been fairly and properly obtained from their Re¬ 
 presentatives; and the means whereby such 
 charters are obtained, or sustained, and continued 
 in existence, demand the strictest scrutiny, not 
 only on the part of the great body of our citizens, 
 but also from such portion of our Representatives 
 as prefer duty to ease ; and are willing to en¬ 
 counter the abuse and defamation of monopolists 
 and their corrupt supporters, rather than forfeit 
 lhe confidence of the just, the patriotic, the dis¬ 
 interested. and the betrayed public. 
 
 Why has chartered monopolies been so multi¬ 
 plied of late without securing the public against 
 abuse from such extraordinary privileges ? If 
 an hundred men in their separate and individual 
 characters, as citizens, have not one dollar of 
 surplus cash to lend, can an act authorizing them 
 to issue paper money add one dollar to the cash 
 circulation of the coqntry ? And will not any 
 paper they may issue for such purpose corrupt 
 the circulation and produce a public injury? 
 
 Suppose on the other hand, that the hundred 
 persons are each wealthy, with cash capital, are 
 they not then doing well enough in the world to 
 let them take their chance with the great mass 
 of citizens who are without surplus cash ? Should 
 their powers and advantages be greatly enhanced 
 by uniting them together as a corporate body, 
 unless intended for public as well as for private 
 
 good, and should not every such act secure the 
 public, against the abuse of extraordinary powers 
 granted to this body of associated wealth ? Has 
 this been done? have our public men become 
 careless in relation to the rights of the many T 
 Have they become willing to sacrifice the inter¬ 
 ests of the great body for the favor of the wealthy 
 few ? Are they connected with the incorporated 
 wrealth of the land, in the character of STOCK¬ 
 HOLDERS. DIRECTORS, AGENTS, or FEED 
 COUNCIL, whilst assuming to perform the most 
 solemn duty of Representatives of the people? 
 
 It has been alleged that many of them sustain 
 at present this inconsistent and incompatible re¬ 
 lation. It has been alleged that for the twenty 
 years which the late Bank of the United States 
 was in existence, every member in Congressfrom 
 Philadelphia (except two) was connected in in¬ 
 terest with that institution, as DIRECTOR, 
 STOCKHOLDER, COUNCIL, or AGENT. 
 And that frequently he who was looked upon by 
 the public as a Representative of the people, had 
 probably been only induced to offer them his 
 services, with a view to look after the interest of 
 the Bank. 
 
 How far other districts may have been subject 
 to the same abuse, either in Congress or in the 
 Legislatures of the States, we are not informed f 
 but we think it high time that this alleged con¬ 
 nection between the peoples’ Representatives 
 and the Banks and other incorporations of asso¬ 
 ciated wealth should be examined into and fully 
 understood. Let the public assemblies be purged 
 from even a suspicion of this poison at the foun¬ 
 tain of all of our systems, and put the public 
 mind at rest upon the subject. 
 
 Let all Stockholders, Directors , Agents and 
 Council for the Banks and other incorporations of 
 associated wealth, whether in Congress or the 
 State Legislatures, make their connection with 
 such incorporations known, and let the Legisla¬ 
 tive bodies respectively, by rule, debar such in¬ 
 terested members from voting on any question 
 affecting the interest of such corporations. 
 
 This would shew the people who were their 
 Representatives, and who were the Representa¬ 
 tives of INCORPORATED WEALTH. 
 
 44 Laws are only the terms by which men have 
 agreed to live together in society.” Infractions 
 should be punished according to the nature of 
 the crime, by the sentence of impartial Judges, 
 and the verdicts of disinterested and impartial 
 
s 
 
 jtifufa. In a case of life and death, who ever 
 heanl or read of an interested judge or juror be¬ 
 ing allowed to sit and determine the cause ? Who 
 it prepared to tolerate such gross enormity? Who 
 could look on and see a trial of life and death 
 conducted by a judge or jury who had received 
 lar^e sums to save the life of the criminal ? Or 
 who could bear or tolerate a system which would 
 permit his feed council, who had received a large 
 sum to save his life, to act as judge or as «juror 
 on the trial ? 
 
 If a community of freemen could not tolerate 
 such enormity, how do they look patiently on and 
 hear the “ feed council,” the director , the stock¬ 
 holder, or agent of a bank #r other incorporation, 
 argue, debate, contend and vote in a legislative 
 body, on the trial and arraignment of such cor¬ 
 poration, where the issue is life or death to such 
 artificial person ? 
 
 Can any person, connected in interest with 
 such, whether as judge, juror, or representative, 
 be fit to sit or vote on the trial ? 
 
 Can a lawyer, with a fee of only an hundred 
 dollars, be incompetent by Teason thereof, to sit 
 on the trial of his client; and a bank council who 
 has received his thousands, and expects his tens 
 
 of thousands, hereafter be allowed to tif sod' 
 vote on the trial of his client ? 
 
 We are unable to comprehend the difference 
 in. principle, in the cases; and we understand 
 that in England, where privilege and chartered 
 monopoly has been carried to the highest pitch, 
 no member of parliament would dare vote or act 
 in his representative capacity, in any case where 
 his personal interest was to be affected by such 
 vote, or where he had been connected with the 
 case as council. 
 
 Surely, we have need of as much purity in the 
 legislative bodies of our republican institutions. 
 We, in Philadelphia, the seat of the old mam¬ 
 moth, have a deep interest in this question. We, 
 who ha\ & been slain with the jaw bone of an 
 ass, wielded by a little bank representative, who 
 frets hi# hour on the congressional stage. This 
 inquiry should be made, and at once; and as 
 congress, the real focus of Bank politicians, is 
 now in session, it should be commenced there. 
 All that is required is an open expression of public 
 sentiment in a tangible shape, and we feel con¬ 
 fident that there are independent Senators and 
 Representatives, at Washington, who will probe 
 this sore of the body politic to the bottom. 
 
AN EXPOSURE OF THE ERRORS AND EVILS OF THE PRESENT 
 ARRANGEMENT OF SOCIETY; WITH A PARTIAL DEVEL¬ 
 OPMENT OF A NEW ARRANGEMENT. 
 
 ’"Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit, 
 Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 In proportion as a nation advances in knowl¬ 
 edge, m the same proportion it ought to advance 
 in happiness. Knowledge is only useful so far as it 
 tends to this end ; and that knowledge which 
 has not this tendency, is no knowledge at all, but 
 mere trash and nonsense. 
 
 Man has been boasting for ages about his no¬ 
 ble endowments, his vast intelligence, his won¬ 
 drous inventions and discoveries, while all the 
 time he has been sinking deeper and deeper in 
 wretchedness and vice. What use are his noble 
 endowments,if they tend not to increase his happi¬ 
 ness? What use are his vast intelligence, and 
 his wondrous inventions and discoveries, if they 
 tend not to lessen the amount of his misery? With 
 all his endowments he is the most wretched ani¬ 
 mal in existence. What other animal undergoes 
 half the amount of suffering that he does? Toil¬ 
 ing incessantly day after day, and year after year, 
 and with all his toil can scarcely obtain the ne¬ 
 cessaries of life. At other times, when denied 
 the privilege of toiling, he wanders about the 
 country in beggary and in want, enduring all 
 the sufferings that hunger and utter destitution 
 must occasion. And while this is the case, he 
 talks and boasts of his wisdom and intelligence I 
 Just as if beggary and starvation were an evi¬ 
 dence of them. If wise and intelligent, why not 
 happy? If superior to other animals, why endure 
 more misery than other animals ? If possessed of 
 nobler endowments, why so vicious and wicked ? 
 But the real fact is, man has been in a sort of 
 dream from the period of his existence up to the 
 present time. He has been labouring under the 
 grossest delusions. When a mere infant, or when 
 about one remove from a state of monkeyism, he 
 conceived certain notions, and these have guided 
 him in all his crazy wanderings from that day to 
 this. These notions were gross errors, as might 
 be expected, and the consequence has been that 
 the world now abounds with want and beggary, 
 fraud and deception, robbery and murder, and 
 every other species of crime and iniquity, that a 
 perversion of human nature is capable of. How 
 was man in those days to understand human na¬ 
 ture ? How was he to draw conclusions on mat¬ 
 ters of which he was as ignorant as any animal 
 in creation ? How was he to form arrangements 
 of the best kind to promote our happiness ? Yet 
 his monkey notions have been handed down to 
 us as genuine and infallible truths. His stupid 
 arrangements have been maintained age after 
 age, not because they promoted our happiness, 
 but (wisdom like) because they were “ancient 
 and venerable!” Look even at the House of 
 Commons in the pesent day. There we see men, 
 whose business it is to promote the happiness 
 and welfare of the people, acting in a manner the 
 most ignorant and irrational. When a measure 
 is brought forward, their first consideration is, 
 not how much happiness or misery it will pro- 
 
 is hewn down, and cast into the fire.”—Christ’s 
 
 duce, but how will it harmonize with existing ar¬ 
 rangements ? Will it interfere with any of our 
 venerable iinstitutions? Is it in accordance with 
 the wisdom of our ancestors ? Is there any pre¬ 
 cedent for it? And in this way they decide as 
 to its adoption or rejection. Now can anything 
 be more ridiculous ? Can anything be more ab¬ 
 surd and irrational ? If the measure will promote 
 our happiness, what do we care about existing 
 arrangements? What need we care ? If it will 
 lessen the amount of vice, and crime, and misery 
 amongst us, what do we care whether it inter¬ 
 feres with “ our venerable institutions” or not ? 
 Yet these men are called the “collective wisdom 
 of the nation!” And I suppose this is a sample 
 of it. Such wisdom may be worthy the parties 
 who are blessed with it, but very different is the 
 wisdom of rational beings. If we are to be guid¬ 
 ed and governed by the “ wisdom” of our ances¬ 
 tors, why call us progressive beings ? And if 
 we are progressive beings, why fasten us down 
 to their ignorant and irrational arrangements, 
 and especially when we see such vice and mise¬ 
 ry springing out of them ? 
 
 The only object of our existence is happiness, 
 and if existing arrangements confer not happiness 
 why then, put an end to them and make better 
 arrangements. This is what reason and ration¬ 
 ality would suggest. The more “venerable” (as 
 they call it) any thing is, the more reason there 
 is for its alteration. Man is progressive; he ac 
 quires fresh knowledge daily ; and the arrange¬ 
 ments made to day may be greatly improved to¬ 
 morrow ; and when this is the case, how ridicu¬ 
 lous it is to hear men talking about maintaining 
 our “venerable institutions;” “our glorious con¬ 
 stitution in church and state ;”and all such blurt¬ 
 ing nonsense ; but what is most singular is, that 
 the wisest men in the nation, or at any rate those 
 who ought to be the wisest, are the very men who 
 are continually using these ignorant expressions. 
 All things ought to be estimated by the good or 
 the evil they produce, and if we see an institu¬ 
 tion producing evil, reason and rationality would 
 order its removal. 
 
 Paine says that “governments are for the ac¬ 
 commodation of the living, and not the dead 
 and so it is with all institutions and all arrange¬ 
 ments whatever. The living alone are concern¬ 
 ed and not the dead. What then have our an¬ 
 cestors to do with our wants and wishes ? Why 
 consult them as to what sort of institutions we 
 shall have ? Their institutions might suit them¬ 
 selves perhaps, but is that any reason why they 
 ought to suit us ? 
 
 Let us, then, rise from our slumbering delu¬ 
 sions, and devote ourselves to the grand and only 
 object of our existence ; that of making ourselves 
 happy. Let us discover the causes of human 
 suffering and all human ills; let us trace them 
 to their source, and whatever institutions may 
 
4 
 
 occasion them, however “ancient and venerable,” 
 let us remove them in all possible haste, and sup¬ 
 plant them with better. Let us value institutions, 
 not by their age, but by the amount of good or 
 evil they produce. If we find them producing 
 good, let us support them ; but if we find them 
 producing evil, let us remove them. Let us do 
 these things, and then will the human race show 
 their intelligence and wisdom. Then will they 
 remove themselves from a state of vice, poverty, 
 and wretchedness, to a state of virtue and happi¬ 
 ness. Then, indeed, we may boast of our intel¬ 
 ligence and wisdom, our inventions and discove¬ 
 ries. Then we shall have something worthy of 
 exultation. But to be boasting of these while 
 thousands of people are starving,—while thou¬ 
 sands are driven to theft, robbery, and murder, is 
 a species of brutal insanity that man alone is ca¬ 
 pable of. 
 
 With this beginning, I shall now proceed to 
 the object of this publication. I shall first prove 
 that the present arrangement of society is a bad 
 one; that it is based upon error of the grossest 
 kind, and that, as a natural consequence, it pro¬ 
 duces all the misery, and vice, and crime, and all 
 the other evils, that everywhere abound. I shall 
 then explain the principles on which alone the 
 happiness of man can be founded. I shall de¬ 
 scribe a few of the arrangements that are neces¬ 
 sary to this end, and show their vast superiority 
 over any of the arrangements which now exist. 
 
 To prove then that the present arrangement of 
 society is a bad one, we have only to look at its 
 fruits. Jesus Christ says, “If a tree bring not 
 forth good fruit, hew it down, and cast it into the 
 fire and applying this principle to the present 
 arrangement of society, let us examine its fruits. 
 If we find that it bringeth not forth good fruit, 
 why, according to Christ himself, we are to put 
 an end to it; we are to hew it down and cast it 
 into the fire. Now I would ask any man whether 
 the present arrangement of society bringeth forth 
 good fruit; or wht ther it does not, on the contra¬ 
 ry, bring forth the very worst fruit that any state 
 of society could possibly produce ? It luckily 
 happens, that this is a case that admits of no dis-' 
 pute, for it rests not on argument alone. It needs 
 no reasoning to decide it. These fruits are be¬ 
 fore the eyes of every man ; every man can see 
 them, and what is worse in another sense, every 
 man can feel them. These fruits are, in the first 
 place, anger, hatred, and all kinds of uncharita¬ 
 bleness. In the second place, beggary and star¬ 
 vation ; groups of people wandering about the 
 streets and roads, clad in miserable rags, without 
 homes and without food, and hundreds die week¬ 
 ly through hunger and utter destitution. Our 
 houses are scarcely ever freed from some object 
 of want and wretchedness. Thousands of people 
 are driven to the commission of all manner of 
 crimes. Theft and robbery, and murder, and 
 prostitution, and suicides, everywhere abound ; 
 our gaols are crammed with these unfortunate 
 victims. It has even become dangerous to be out 
 in the dark ; robberies are committed in the open 
 streets; no man is safe; although policemen and 
 watchmen are stationed in all quarters. People 
 are reckless of their fate; enduring all the suffer¬ 
 ings of hunger and want, while they see an abun¬ 
 dance around them, they are excited to the com¬ 
 mission of any crime; and they care not the con¬ 
 sequences of it. If they are sent to gaol, it is more 
 a relief than a punishment, and if they escape, 
 they are obliged to continue their dreadful pur¬ 
 suits. In short, none of us are happy; those who 
 
 have wealth are afraid of losing it; they are tor¬ 
 mented with all kinds of fears and anxieties; and 
 those who have none are either starving, or in a 
 state approaching to it. 
 
 Now, these are the fruits of the present sys¬ 
 tem ; they are plain and visible before the eyes 
 of all men ; and will any man say they are good 
 fruits? Can any man say it ? No, it is impossi¬ 
 ble. Well, then, what is to be done? Why, “if 
 a tree bring not forth good fruit, hew it down, 
 and cast it into the fire.*’ This is the command 
 of Christ himself. Can anything be plainer? 
 What, then, can out opponents say ? Will they 
 for a moment talk about consistency ? Is it con¬ 
 sistency to believe in the doctrines of Jesus Christ, 
 and, at the same time, act in opposition to them ? 
 Is this Christianity? Yet the whole of those 
 who call themselves Christians do this. Here is 
 a system producing all the evils that any man 
 can imagine, and, instead of putting an end to it 
 according to the direction of Christ himself, they 
 are actually supporting it; they are maintaining 
 the very thing they ought to destroy. And what 
 is the most unaccountable, while we are attempt¬ 
 ing to destroy it, by establishing a better, and 
 thus obeying the commandment of Jesus Christ, 
 our opponents have the modesty to call us Infi¬ 
 dels and themselves Christians. So that, besides 
 this abominable absurdity, here they are outrag¬ 
 ing the very dictionary; they are reversing the 
 meaning of words. According to them, those 
 who practise Christ’s doctrines are Infidels, and 
 those who do not are Christians. But such are 
 their wise and rational proceedings. 
 
 Now, considering for a moment the fruits of 
 this system, the unlimited number of evils that 
 flow from it in all directions, and the severity of 
 these evils, what are we to think of the men who 
 say that such a system is a good one, and that it 
 needs no alteration ? Can such men care a farth¬ 
 ing about morality or virtue ? Can they care a 
 farthing about common humanity ? Above all, 
 can they care a farthing about religion ? Yet 
 (and who could believe it ?) the ministers of the 
 gospel, the promoters of morality and religion, 
 are the very men who are first and foremost in 
 maintaining this system. But I will leave the 
 matter with themselves to settle. Christ says 
 distinctly that such a system ought to be destroy¬ 
 ed, and with him they may settle their differ¬ 
 ence. 
 
 To hear people talk about religion, about mor¬ 
 ality, about virtue, about venerable institutions, 
 and about maintaining our glorious constitution 
 in church and state, in the midst of these things, 
 is truly abominable. Nothing can be more out¬ 
 rageously ridiculous. 
 
 But even .this is a faint description of the evils 
 which surround us ; it is quite impossible to com¬ 
 prehend them, much less describe them. It has 
 been proved over and over again, before commit¬ 
 tees, of the House of Commons, that hundreds of 
 people die through pure starvation and nothing 
 else ; that tens of thousands are laboring for four 
 and five shillings a week; that this sum is all they 
 have to maintain themselves and families; that 
 their principal food is oatmeal and potatoes, with 
 occasionally some salt herrings. Now, in the 
 face of these things, what are we to think when 
 we consider that the people of this country can 
 produce four or five times more wealth than they 
 can consume ? That they can produce more food 
 and clothing than all of us could eat or wear,and 
 yet thousands of us are starving ? Does it not 
 argue ignorance in some quarter ? Does it not 
 
5 
 
 i 
 
 prove that those who manage our affairs are ei¬ 
 ther grossly ignorant or that they grossly neglect 
 their business? One or the other of these it must 
 prove, and whichever it be, neither ought to be 
 suffered to continue. 
 
 Look for a moment into their own newspapers; 
 read their own accounts of the evils that exist. 
 See the anger, and hatred, and strife, and fraud, 
 and deception, and theft, and • robbery, and mur¬ 
 der, and suicides, and crimes, and evils altogeth¬ 
 er unlimited in number, and all proceeding from 
 this brutal arrangement of society. People are 
 driven into all kinds of vice, solely from the want 
 of the means of a livelihood. Thousands of fe¬ 
 males are driven to prostitution through this 
 cause, and no other, and evidence of it is to be 
 found in their own newspapers. Yet we are told 
 by the ministers of the gospel, whose duty it is to 
 put an end to these things, that no alteration is 
 required, that no change is necessary ; and that 
 we are Infidels for desiring it. Now, can any¬ 
 thing be more enormously wicked ? Can any¬ 
 thing be more abominably outrageous ? Because 
 we wish to put an end to want, and vice, and 
 wickedness, we are infidels, and bad men ! They 
 may go on a little longer in this way, but the time 
 is not far distant when very different wilt be their 
 language, and very different their proceedings. 
 The veil which has for ever darkened the eyes 
 of the people, is now being removed. It has been 
 torn from the eyes of thousands, in spite of all the 
 efforts of the priesthood to prevent it. And I beg 
 to inform them, that in the course of a very few 
 years longer, the whole will be as completely re¬ 
 moved, as darkness is removed by the rising of 
 the sun. 
 
 Talk about morality, indeed! My opinion is, 
 that he who would continue the present arrange¬ 
 ment of society, is the most immoral man in exis¬ 
 tence. He might as well tell us at once, that star¬ 
 vation, and theft, and robbery, and murder, and 
 suicide, and prostitution, are all good things, and 
 ought to exist. These are the fruits of the present 
 arrangement, and any man who maintains it, 
 maintains at the same time, a continuance of all 
 its fruits. Can anything be plainer than this ? 
 Can anything be more logical ? Let the parsons 
 who have been at their universities, refute it if 
 they can. 
 
 Now, as to the human suffering that this system 
 must occasion, there is no estimating the amount. 
 It is altogether inconceivable. Look at the num¬ 
 ber of suicides that take place weekly, through a 
 reverse of fortune, embarrassed affairs, and vari¬ 
 ous other causes springing out of this system. 
 Think of the mental agony of the families of these 
 people. Look at the thousands of people walk¬ 
 ing about in utter destitution; driven about from 
 parish to parish; their sufferings mocked instead 
 of relieved. Read the account of a poor woman 
 in London, who had a child dead; read of her 
 wandering about from parish to parish for assist¬ 
 ance, to enable her to bury it; and read of a bru¬ 
 tal overseer, after refusing her relief, telling her 
 to go to the doctor’s and sell it! Think of the 
 distraction of this poor woman, and the outrage 
 thus done to her feelings. Read also of a case 
 which lately happened in Scotland ; a poor man 
 having a child dead, had it buried, but not hav¬ 
 ing the means of paying the burial dues, it was 
 ordered to be taken up again, and the wretched 
 man carried it home under his arm. These are 
 fine samples of Christian charity and benevo¬ 
 lence. These are fine specimens of the benign 
 influence of the Christian religion. Read also of 
 
 a poor woman and her two children, in a state of 
 complete exhaustion and despair, taking refuge 
 among pigs ; read of her children being found 
 next morning dead by her side ; and herself in¬ 
 sensible, and scarcely alive. Read of these things, 
 and thousands of others which happen daily, and 
 then comprehend, if you can, the wickedness of 
 the men who would continue such a system. And 
 in the face of these things, does it become us to 
 talk about our Christian charity and benevo¬ 
 lence ; our “ venerable institutions,” and such 
 like stuff? 
 
 Think also of the sufferings of thousands of 
 people who are confined in prisons, and of others 
 who have been transported from their native 
 country, think of the sufferings of the families and 
 relations of all these people, and then consider 
 that the whole of them might have been made, 
 under wise and rational arrangements, intelligent 
 and virtuous men and women. Consider this, 
 and thfen estimate the wisdom and humanity of 
 those who manage our affairs. Talk about hu¬ 
 manity! Why, if there w ere one particle left 
 among the intelligent part of the people of this 
 country, could they remain silent under such 
 scenes ? Could they see all this misery and suf¬ 
 fering inflicted upon their fellow-creatures, with¬ 
 out attempting to relieve them? Yet they do see 
 it, and they see it apparently with callous indif¬ 
 ference. But the reason is, this brutalizing sys¬ 
 tem has destroyed the best feelings that belong to 
 our nature. It has made man the enemy of man, 
 by the scramble which is going on for wealth. 
 The interest of one man is opposed to that of the 
 other, and hence these scenes of outrage and dis 
 order. 
 
 But the evils of the present system are alto¬ 
 gether unbounded. They are daily and hourly 
 to be seen; and, therefore, to enumerate any more 
 is both useless and a waste of time. I have al¬ 
 ready noticed fifty times more than sufficient to 
 prove that the system is a bad one, and that we 
 ought immediately to alter it. Having then set¬ 
 tled this point, I now come to the errors upon 
 which it is built; the greund and source of all its 
 manifold evils. 
 
 The source, then, of all our troubles, is the be¬ 
 lief of man’s responsibility, in conjunction with a 
 system of individual property. This is the vol¬ 
 cano from which issue all the evils that afflict us. 
 Not an evil can be mentioned, that cannot be 
 traced to this source. All the anger, afl the ha¬ 
 tred, all the revenge, all the deception, all the 
 fraud, all the uncharitableness of every kind, all 
 the vice, all the theft, all the robberies, all the 
 murders, all the wars, all the suicides, all the 
 prostitution, and every other species of evil that 
 exists, can be as clearly traced to this cause as 
 the branches of a tree can be traced to its root. 
 Now this being the case, when we can trace all 
 these evils to the belief of man’s responsibility,^ 
 that alone not sufficient to prove it false ? Truth 
 could never occasion these things. Truth is the 
 source of good, and error alone the source of evil. 
 Were it otherwise, then, indeed, we might com¬ 
 plain of some imperfection in nature; then, we 
 might talk about the fall of man, the depravity of 
 his heart, his inward corruption, and all such 
 .vulgar and ignorant nonsense. But, when we 
 can trace all our evils to gross and palpable er¬ 
 rors; when we find invariably that truth pro¬ 
 duces good, and error produces evil; then, in¬ 
 deed, we are sensible of the beauty and harmo¬ 
 ny of nature’s laws ; then we are impressed with 
 
6 
 
 their grandeur and excellence, and filled with 
 feelings of wonder and admiration. 
 
 Perhaps, of all the absurdities that are to be 
 found in the minds of Christians, the one that here 
 presents itself is the greatest. They tell us that 
 man is a responsible being; that he ought to be 
 punished for his wickedness; and if we ask them 
 what makes man wicked ? “Oh,” say they, “it 
 is his corrupt nature, his depraved heart.” Now, 
 although our opponents say many wild and curi¬ 
 ous things, although they stick not at trifles, sure¬ 
 ly they will never presume to say that man makes 
 his own nature or his own heart. Yet, unless 
 they do this, what are they to do ? His deprav¬ 
 ed heart and corrupt nature lead him into wick¬ 
 edness, and if he did not make these himself, 
 surely they are not so cruel as to make him re¬ 
 sponsible for them. If man has a depraved heart 
 and a corrupt nature, how can he help it ? He 
 did not make them so; he could not make his 
 own nature or his own heart, and if these, are bad 
 why blame him for it ? He could not help it. 
 
 But, besides this, here they are actually charg¬ 
 ing God with making man depraved and corrupt. 
 Now, if we were to do this; if we were thus pre¬ 
 sumptuously to find fault with the works of God, 
 why, all the dictionaries in the world would not 
 afford them language sufficiently expressive to 
 describe our horrible blasphemy, our daring in¬ 
 sult to the Deity. But as it is, as the act is theirs, 
 and not ours, it is all quite right. It is quite pious 
 and quite religious. There is no blasphemy at 
 all in it. They are one thing, and we are anoth¬ 
 er, and this makes the difference. 
 
 Our opponents presume to talk about our prin¬ 
 ciples leading men into vice and crime; but if 
 such notions as these have not that tendency, 
 nothing in this world can have it. Here they tell 
 the human race that they are all made corrupt 
 and depraved, that they are “rotten to the very 
 core,” as Mr, Roebuck said, “that their hearts are 
 deceitful above all things, and desperately wick¬ 
 ed;” which is all blasphemy, if anything can be 
 blasphemy ; and the human race, believing all 
 this, act, of course, as we see them act; they fall 
 into all kinds of vice and wickedness. Were 
 they told the contrary of this, they would then 
 have some encouragement to be good; they would 
 then know that they could be good. But to tell 
 them they are bad bv nature; that they are prone 
 to evil, and especially when practising all kinds 
 of vice, is, in my opinion, a direct encouragement 
 to vice.irlf their tendency to evil is greater than 
 that to good, how can they help it ? It is perfect¬ 
 ly rational that they should be vicious. Their 
 vice is the result of one of the natural laws of the 
 universe. That which is heavy, will always 
 weigh down that which is light. Any man who 
 knows what a pair of scales are, knows this. But, 
 let me ask here, is it possible that men who be¬ 
 lieve this can believe that man is a responsible 
 being ? Can they punish him for that which, 
 they must admit themselves, is a natural result 
 of the immutable laws which govern the uni¬ 
 verse? Yes, it is possible. There are thousands 
 of men who believe this ; and if we venture to 
 express.however mildly our dissent from such no 
 tions ; oh, we are infidels, deists, and a*heists, 
 and bad men ! Such is their wisdom and chari¬ 
 ty- 
 
 Now, were the human race told that all these 
 notions were gross errors, that they were abso¬ 
 lute trash : that man was not prone to evil, that 
 he was not naturally corrupt, or depraved, that 
 his nature was good, but that the source of his 
 
 evil was his ignorance of what that nature is r 
 and not in the nature itself, together with the in¬ 
 stitutions surrounding him, which have arisen 
 out of that ignorance; were they told this, they 
 could then remedy the evil. They would then 
 set about acquiring knowledge of their nature, 
 and this would enable them to alter existing in¬ 
 stitutions, and thus would the source of their 
 evils be removed. But, to tell them that this 
 source is their own bad nature, and not in exist¬ 
 ing institutions, is, as I said before, a direct en¬ 
 couragement to vice, and its present prevalence 
 is a proof of it. They cannot alter their own na¬ 
 ture, and hence they remain in the poverty, 
 the vice, and the misery in which we now see 
 them. 
 
 But I must now return more immediately to 
 my subject. These absurdities presented them¬ 
 selves so glaringly, that I thought I would finish 
 them off before I proceeded further. Hitherto, I 
 have only asserted that man is not a responsible 
 being, but now I shall proceed to prove it. As 
 some disputes have arisen as to what we really 
 mean by this word, “responsibility,” I will de¬ 
 fine it before I go further. Man, we say, is not a 
 responsible being. By this we mean,that he is nei¬ 
 ther to be blamed nor praised, rewarded nor pun 
 ished for either his thoughts, feelings, or actioris. 
 This is the utmost extent of our irresponsibility 
 And the reason is, that all these are given to man 
 independent of himself. That society has the 
 power to give to each individual, good thoughts 
 or bad thoughts, good feelings or bad feelings, and 
 good actions or bad actions, and^ in short, to make 
 for each individual any sort of character it pleases. 
 Now, when this is the case, we say it is unrea¬ 
 sonable, irrational, and, at the same time, cruel,, 
 to make man responsible; that is to say, blame 
 him or praise him, reward him or punish him, 
 whatever his character may be. 
 
 Now, that man's character is formed for him, 
 and not by him, I shall now proceed to prove. 
 When a child comes into the world, its character 
 depends, in the first place, upon its physical or¬ 
 ganization; and, in the second place, upon the 
 particular training up that it shall receive, and 
 all external circumstances that shall surround it 
 from birth. Now, that the child had no power 
 in forming its physical organization, ho man, for 
 a moment, can doubt. Its brain,and everything 
 else were given to it altogether independent of 
 itself, and therefore it cannot be responsible for 
 these. Its particular training up is the next 
 thing to look at. Has it any power over it ? Can 
 it direct its parents how they are to manage it ? 
 The thing must be evident. It has no more pow¬ 
 er in this case than it had in the other, and that 
 was none at all; and hence it follows that its 
 character was given to it independent of itself, 
 and, therefore.it is not a responsible being; 
 
 Is it not plain and simple that if it have a good 
 organization, and a good training up, and placed 
 in good circumstances, that it will have a good 
 character ; and if it have the opposite of these,is 
 it not equally plain and sinfple that it will have 
 a bad character ? How is it that the English have 
 one general character, the Scotch another, the 
 Irish another, the French another, the Italians 
 another, and so on through all the nations of the 
 world ? Is it because each nation has willed its 
 particular character, or that it desired it in pre¬ 
 ference to any other ? No. It is entirely because 
 the circumstances surrounding each are different 
 the training up is different, the education differ¬ 
 ent, the religion different, the habits different, the 
 
7 
 
 manners different, and so on; and hence the dif¬ 
 ference of characters. And if we confine our¬ 
 selves to our own country we shall see, in the 
 same way, a variation of characters according to 
 the variation of circumstances, only on a smaller 
 scale. How is it that one man is virtuous and 
 another is vicious? Is it because the parties will¬ 
 ed having these characters; or is it not owing to 
 the different circumstances ofe.ich? If I have 
 a good organization and placed in good circum- 
 stances, I am sure to have a good character; 
 but then I did not form it myself. I did not form 
 my own organization, nor did I place myself in 
 these good circumstances ; and if these form my 
 character, what nonsense it is to say that I form¬ 
 ed it 
 
 But what is very singular, while our opponents 
 say that man forms his own character, they are 
 actually practising the opposite doctrine. In 
 bringing up their children, how careful they are 
 in keeping them out of bad company * and how 
 particular they are as to the school they send 
 them to. They inquire into the moral character 
 of the master, his religion, and various other mat¬ 
 ters ; and they do all this for fear their children 
 should be liable to contract bad habits, see bad 
 examples, and thus acquire a bad character. Yet, 
 in the face of all this, they tell us that man forms 
 his own character. Why, if he did, what is all 
 for this ? Why exercise all this care in preserv¬ 
 ing their children from bad company, bad prac¬ 
 tices, bad examples, and other unfavourable cir¬ 
 cumstances? What effect ean these have upon 
 them if they form their own characters? And if 
 these have some effect upon them, as they evi¬ 
 dently believe they have, is not that proof 
 enough that they do not form their own charac¬ 
 ters? 
 
 Now, can our opponents call this consistent ? 
 Can they pretend there is nothing irrational here? 
 Practising the very thing which they deny ; act¬ 
 ing upon our principles, and at the same time de¬ 
 nying their truth. Is this consistent ? Is it ra¬ 
 tional ? But the whole of their practices and pro¬ 
 fessions are a jumble of contradictions from be¬ 
 ginning to end. 
 
 Another instance of absurdity of a similar kind is 
 to be found in a report of a committee of the House 
 of Commons, to inquire into the condition of the 
 laboring classes. Among the witnesses who were 
 examined was a parson ©f the Church of Eng¬ 
 land, which circumstance by no means renders 
 the absurdity anything the less. After proceed¬ 
 ing a while he says, “ The effect of the present 
 system of employing laborers has been dreadful; 
 it has totally demoralized the lower orders: it 
 has made them poachers, thieves, and robbers.’’ 
 What, the system has! The system has made 
 them poachers, thieves, and robbers! Why, I 
 thought people formed their own characters. 
 Now just look at this absurdity. Here is this par¬ 
 son believing that man forms his own charac¬ 
 ter, and, at the same time, telling the House of 
 Commons that the characters of the laboring 
 classes were formed, not by themselves, but by 
 the particular system under which they were 
 employed ; that the system had made them into 
 thieves, poachers, and robbers. Can anything be 
 plainer than this? Was absurdity ever more glar¬ 
 ing or palpable ? 
 
 Besides this, here is the “collective wisdom of 
 the nation” receiving evidence that their mea¬ 
 sures have made people into poachers, thieves, 
 and robbers, and the next moment they go to work 
 as coolly as possible, and enact severe laws for 
 
 their punishment; and while this is going on, the 
 parson is busy in his pulpit telling the people that 
 God has provided a heaven and a hell for the 
 good and the bad; that the bad will go to the 
 latter place, and there endure everlasting tor¬ 
 ments for their wickedness. And what is best of 
 all, if we should venture to express our doubts as 
 to the justice or consistency of such severe pun¬ 
 ishment, especially when we considered that the 
 “system had made the working classes into poach¬ 
 ers, thieves, and robbers,” as the parson told the 
 House of Commons ; O ! we are infidels, deists, 
 and atheists; we are all that is bad! we are quite 
 ignorant and visionary. Yes, I dare say we are; 
 and it is very well we are nothing worse; for if 
 we are to judge of people by their thoughts and 
 actions, I should say that the parties who can ex¬ 
 hibit such rare signs of wisdom as these, cannot 
 be very far inferior to Solomon himself. Now I 
 merely mention these instances of absurdity to 
 show that even our opponents admit, on some oc¬ 
 casions, the truth of our principles, and that they 
 actually act upon them. In the case of training 
 up their children we see them acting exactly in 
 accordance with the principle that man does not 
 form his own character. And as to the parson 
 before the House of Commons* he says outright 
 that it was the system that formed the charac¬ 
 ters of the labouring classes, and not themselves; 
 which is precisely our doctrine. So that, besides 
 our own arguments in the matter, even our oppo¬ 
 nents furnish us with arguments in proof of our 
 doctrines. 
 
 But some people will exclaim, “If the charac¬ 
 ter of man is formed for him, and not by him, 
 would you let people go unpunished when they 
 do that which is wrong?” Now, in the first 
 place, it is unjust to punish them, because their 
 characters were given to them independent of 
 themselves; but as long as this irrational system 
 continue, some means must be used to deter them 
 from the commission of crime, and although pun¬ 
 ishments are resorted to for this purpose, they by 
 no means have the desired effect. People still 
 do wrong. They still rob and murder, in spite 
 of all their punishments, either in this world or 
 the world to come. Let the advocates of punish¬ 
 ments remember this. But in the second place, 
 (and let our opponents take notice of this r ) when 
 we have the power to make people either good 
 characters or bad characters, either virtuous or 
 vicious, would it not be a thousand times more 
 wise and more just to make them into the former 
 rather than the latter? Would it not be better 
 to make them all wise, virtuous, and happy, than 
 ignorant, vicious, and miserable ? Let oui eppo 
 nents give us an answer to this. Let them tell 
 us whether it be wise and just to make people in¬ 
 to bad characters, and then punish them for be¬ 
 ing so? Let them point out to us the wisdom 
 and justice of this. Let them show us the human¬ 
 ity of. everlastingly torturing their fellow-crea¬ 
 tures, when the whole might be avoided by wise 
 and rational arrangements. And the next time 
 Mr. Stowell lectures against what he calls Infi¬ 
 delity, let him tell us whether these are the 
 blessed effects of the Christian religion; whether 
 these are specimens of its benign influence ; its 
 mercy, its charity, its forbearance, and its bene¬ 
 volence ? 
 
 When we think of the miseries the human race 
 have to suffer, owing to these irrational arrange¬ 
 ments, how limited does the intelligence of man 
 yet appear! And how ridiculous are all his pre- 
 
8 
 
 tensions to knowledge, while groaning under 
 these vast and monstrous evils. 
 
 I have now, I thing, fully proved that man does 
 not form his own character; that it is altogether 
 formed for him; and therefore he is not a responsi¬ 
 ble being; that to blame him, to praise him, to 
 reward him, or to punish him, whatever his char¬ 
 acter may be, is altogether absurd and unjust. 
 Upon the opposite of this principle society is 
 now built, and, as I said before, this error, in con¬ 
 nection with a system of individual or private 
 property, is the sole and entire cause of all the 
 evils which now afflict the human family. 1 
 have said that these evils can be as clearly trac¬ 
 ed to this cause, as the branches of a tree can 
 be traced to its root, and I shall now proceed to 
 prove it. 
 
 The greatest and most prolific of all our evils 
 is that of poverty, or the want of the necessaries 
 of life. Now, this is as clearly the product of in¬ 
 dividual property, as smoke is a product of fire. 
 Individual property engenders the disposition to 
 grasp or accumulate, and it is owing to this that 
 so many are in poverty and rags. Some possess 
 these qualifications in a higher degree than oth¬ 
 ers, and some have better opportunities than oth¬ 
 ers, and hence it is that some are immensely rich 
 while tens of thousands are starving. And ob¬ 
 serve, it is not owing to a scarcity of provisions 
 in the country ; it is not owing to this that peo¬ 
 ple are starving. On the contrary, it is owing, 
 as the collective wisdom of the nation have more 
 than once declared, to a superabundance of these. 
 What! a superabundance of the necessaries of 
 life in the country, and people starving; Yes; 
 but, then, those who are starving cannot get 
 them. What! cannot get them I what for? Why, 
 their humane and charitable fellow-Christians 
 have them locked up in vast warehouses, and 
 they thus withhold them from them. And is this 
 Christianity ? Is this an evidence of its benign 
 influence? Is this loving their neighbors as them¬ 
 selves? Is this abounding in love and charity 
 one towards another ? But we blame them not 
 for it; the system is the cause of it and not them¬ 
 selves. 
 
 How different would everything be in a 
 Community! All would be rich alike; no 
 private or individual property ; what belong¬ 
 ed to one man would belong to the whole, 
 and what belonged to the whole would be¬ 
 long to each. The more wealth we pos¬ 
 sessed the better would each of us be off, which 
 is the very reverse under the present arrange¬ 
 ment. People are starving because we possess a 
 superabundance of wealth. They have worked 
 so much that they have produced more food and 
 clothing than we require, and they cannot get 
 these because they cannot get work, and they 
 cannot get woik because they have already work¬ 
 ed too much. Now, who can help admiring an 
 arrangement so evidently sensible ; so abounding 
 in marks of intelligence and wisdom, and at the 
 same time so beautiful and harmonious! We 
 must not find fault with it, or we are infidels and 
 Atheists. Such is the wisdom of the age. 
 
 In a community all would be different; being 
 all equal, we should work aboul four hours 
 a day and no longer, which would be quite suf¬ 
 ficient to supply us all with an abundance of 
 every necessary and comfort of life. And instead 
 of living in the filthy, confined, and unwholesome 
 towns in which we now are, we should have the 
 most healthy situations the country could afford. 
 Only look at the filthy hbles that human beings 
 
 now live in ; see them creeping under ground, 
 and there eating and sleeping in the most confin¬ 
 ed and unhealthy atmosphere; see some of them 
 without beds and without food, and covered with 
 miserable rags ; see them enduring all the mise¬ 
 ries and sufferings that hunger and want occa¬ 
 sion, and then say who is the Christian or the In¬ 
 fidel ; he who would continue such things or he 
 who would put an end to them ? 
 
 Poverty, then, or a want of the necessaries o{ 
 life, clearly proceeds from individual property, 
 and no other cause. And as poverty is the cause 
 of an unlimited amount of vice and crime, it fol¬ 
 lows, that by removing it from the world the 
 whole of its mighty evils will also be removed. 
 Now, as to theft, and murder, and suicide, and 
 prostitution, they so evidently proceed from indi¬ 
 vidual property and responsibility, that I haidly 
 need show it. No man can thieve in a Commu¬ 
 nity,—all would be his own ; and, therefore, to 
 thieve would be ridiculous; it would be a robbe¬ 
 ry committed upon himself; and even that is an 
 absurdity. And as to murder, the very idea is 
 absurd. How can a man murder, if he believe in 
 irresponsibility ? If a man be offended by another, 
 he would have no anger or malice towards him for 
 it; he would freely forgive him : he would know* 
 that his character had been formed for him, and 
 not by him; and, therefore, to injure him would 
 be both absurd and unjust. And as to suicides, if 
 we could suppose that in a Community there 
 could be any reverses of fortune, by one man rob¬ 
 bing another; if we could suppose people would 
 become bankrupts and such like; if we could 
 suppose there would be horrible workhouses, 
 where husbands would be separated from their 
 wives, and wives from husbands, and children 
 from parents; if we could suppose these and ma¬ 
 ny other things, then we might imagine the pos¬ 
 sibility of suicide, but not until then. And as to 
 prostitution, every body knows that poverty is 
 the cause of that, and therefore that is at once 
 put an end to. 
 
 Now, when we think of the ministers of the 
 gospel, and know that their sole business is to 
 put an end to vice, and crime, and wickedness 
 of all kinds, what are we to think of them when 
 we see them going on as they are ? Instead of 
 putting an end to the causes which produce these, 
 they are actually supporting those causes with 
 all their might. They are supporting the very 
 things they ought to destroy. What are we to 
 think of such men ? Can we believe them to be 
 sincere? If they desire to put an end to vice and 
 crime, why do they not remove the causes which 
 produce them ? These causes are clear before 
 their eyes; they cannot plead ignorance of them; 
 why, then, do they .pot remove them ? Preaching 
 and praying are of no use, at least they are not 
 adequate to the task. They have preached and 
 prayed for nearly 2000 years, and mankind are 
 more vicious now than ever they were. And 
 surely 2000 years are long enough to try an expe¬ 
 riment. That experiment is an evident failure 
 and the unbounded prevalence of vice is a proof 
 of it. And how should it be otherwise? Nature 
 is uniform in all her operations; where certain 
 causes exist, certain effects will always exist; and 
 therefore, if we want to remove vice and wick¬ 
 edness from the world, we must first of all re¬ 
 move the causes which produce them. But the 
 ministers of the gospel, far otherwise enlightened, 
 go in the very face of nature, and support these 
 causes. And while they do this, they imagine 
 they can frighten people from vice and wicked 
 
9 
 
 ness, by telling them that God will punish them 
 eternally after they are dead. Now, that this is 
 silly ana stupid in the extreme, we have the most 
 decided proofs. The first is, the absurdity of sup¬ 
 posing that effects can be removed withopt the 
 causes; and the next is, that notwithstanding all 
 their efforts to frighten people into morality, they 
 are more immoral than ever. 
 
 The only way, then, to remove vice and wick¬ 
 edness from the world, is to remove the causes 
 which produce ihem, and this can only be done 
 by the means of Communities. Let, then, the 
 ministers of the gospel preach this to the people; 
 let them apply their churches and chapels to this 
 purpose, instead of the useless purposes to which 
 they are now applied; let them teach the people 
 a knowledge of their own nature, instead of a 
 knowledge of things altogether imaginary; let 
 them explain to them the formation of the human 
 character; let them show them that the character 
 of every man is formed for him,and not by him,and 
 therefore, all men ought to “abound in love and 
 charity one towards another;” let them tell their 
 congregations that the reason this precept of Je¬ 
 sus Christ has never yet been practised, is be¬ 
 cause they have hitherto believed that man form¬ 
 ed his own character, which is a decided and 
 palpable error; let them describe to them the fa¬ 
 tal effects of this error; let them tell them that it 
 alone is the source of all the anger, all the ha¬ 
 tred, all the malice, all the revenge, and all the 
 ill feeling and uncharitableness of every kind that 
 have ever existed between man and man, and 
 the whole of those would be at once annihilated 
 by the explosion of this error alone; let them 
 teach the people these things, and they would do 
 more in one year, in putting a stop to vice and 
 wickedness, than they have done in 2000 years of 
 preaching and praying. 
 
 What use is it in giving people commands when 
 they cannot obey them ? What use is it m pour¬ 
 ing out precept after precept, when people can¬ 
 not practise them ? And who can practise the 
 precepts of Jesus Christ under the present sys¬ 
 tem? Can any of those who call themselves 
 Christians do it? Do any of them do it ? Not a 
 soul of them. Then, is this not a proof that the 
 system is bad ? If men were to practise these 
 precepts, the whole scene would be changed ; no' 
 anger, or malice, or hatred, or revenge, or theft, 
 or murder, or beggary, or want, would ever be 
 heard of But people cannot practise these pre¬ 
 cepts under the present system. The Christians 
 themselves acknowledge it. And how 7 is it likely? 
 Man is endowed with a principle called self-pre¬ 
 servation, and he is compelled to act under its 
 influence. It is that principle which preserves 
 his existence, and if he did not possess it his ex¬ 
 istence would cease. Let not, then, the Chris¬ 
 tians tell us that it springs from his depravity. In 
 its operations it compels man to seek that which 
 is beneficial to him, and avoid that which is hurt¬ 
 ful. All men, therefore, are striving to benefit 
 themselves. Now, the present arrangement of 
 society is such, that while one man is benefiting 
 himself he is injuring another; and this is owing 
 to an opposition of interests, or individual proper¬ 
 ty. If, therefore, we could arrange society so 
 that the interest of one man would be the inter¬ 
 est of the whole, the thing would be accomplish¬ 
 ed at once; for, while one man, under the influ¬ 
 ence of this same principle of self-preservation, 
 was benefiting himself, he would at the same 
 time be benefiting the whole, and thus all would 
 be peace and harmony. Now, it fortunately hap¬ 
 
 pens that we can arrange society in this way* 
 We can establish communities all over the coun¬ 
 try, such as proposed by Robert Owen, contain¬ 
 ing about 2000 people each, or more if conveni¬ 
 ent. In these Communities every man would be 
 equal, and there would be no individual property, 
 or no clashing of interest. Every man, therefore, 
 in benefiting himself, would benefit the whole, 
 and thus would there be effected a greater amount 
 of good for the human race than ever was effect¬ 
 ed by all the warriors, and heroes, and conquer¬ 
 ors, and patriots that ever lived. 
 
 How can a man love his neighbour as himself* 
 when that neighbor is swallowing up ail his cus¬ 
 tom ? And how can one shopkeeper love another* 
 when he sees him resorting to all sorts of schemes 
 to take away his trade ? How can a workman 
 love his employer, when he sees him reducing 
 his wages! Or, how can the employer love his 
 workman, when he sees him striving to prevent 
 him ? How can a tenant love his landlord, when 
 he sees him selling off his goods for rent, and thus 
 casting him into the streets to starve? How can a 
 debtor love his creditor, when he sends him off 
 to gaol for a debt he cannot pay ? How can there 
 be any love at all under the present system ? 
 Tradesmen of All kinds have to practise all man¬ 
 ner of deception and fraud; they have to lie, and 
 cheat, and deceive, or they cannot carry on. They 
 affect friendship for each other, merely as a cloak 
 for their fraud and deception. 
 
 And, as to “ doing unto others as you would 
 wish others to do unto you,” there is nothing in 
 the whole world even approaching to it. The 
 system itself is a burlesque upon the precept; a 
 complete mockery. Its very existence would 
 cease, were the precept practised. Not an offi¬ 
 cer or functionary of any description could act* 
 Judges, jurors, magistrates, lawyers, witnesses* 
 attorneys, constables, policemen, and fifty others, 
 would all be at a stand still; not one of them 
 could act. Their duties would be wholly at an 
 end, and the system would be blown to atoms. 
 And as to tradesmen, and all other description 
 of people, they also would be equally fast. Now 
 is this very circumstance not sufficient to show 
 the beauty of the present system ? How har¬ 
 moniously it works with the precepts of Jesus 
 Christ! 
 
 Only think of a hundred and thirty thousand 
 men, called soldiers, being spread all over the 
 country 7 ; and just think What they are for. Christ 
 commands them to love their neighbors as them¬ 
 selves. And what does the system do ? Why, 
 slaughter them. They are hired and kept by 
 their fellow-christians, for the express purpose of 
 slaying those whom Christ says they ought to love 
 as themselves. Now, can we have a finer speck 
 men than this, of the beauty and harmony of the 
 present arrangement ? Can we have more evi¬ 
 dent marks of profound wisdom and solid sense? 
 But we are infidels if we find fault with it; we 
 must, therefore, be very cautious. 
 
 If any man want to witness absurdity altogeth¬ 
 er incomprehensible, let him follow the soldiers 
 to church on a Sunday. Let him enter the church, 
 and deposit himself in a pew (if his fellow-chris* 
 tian will allow him,) where he can have a view 
 of both parson and soldiers. Let him listen a 
 while, until the parson come to, “Love thy neigh¬ 
 bor as thyself; do unto all men as you would 
 they should do unto you ;” and then let him look 
 at the soldiers full in the face. What is he to 
 think ? Here is the parson telling them to love 
 their neighbors as themselves, while both parson 
 
io 
 
 arid congregation have them hired for the express 
 purpose of slaying people, What is any man to 
 think of such an exhibition? Why, that the con¬ 
 cern altogether is truly abominable. Another dis¬ 
 play of absurdity is exhibited by Christians pro¬ 
 fessing to forgive men their tresspasses, while 
 they practise the very reverse. The parson rhymes 
 over every Sunday, “Forgive us our trespasses 
 as we forgive them that trespass against us,” and 
 so on. Mo vs can anything be more abominable? 
 Calling upon the Deity to forgive them their tres- 
 asses, because they have iorgiven those who 
 ave trespassed against them, which is one of the 
 greatest falsehoods that ever was uttered, i'hey 
 talk about the Deity being omnipresent and om¬ 
 niscient. Why, if this be the case, how could 
 they ever muster up assurance enough to talk 
 this way in his presence ? If he posess these at¬ 
 tributes, he must know that they are telling him 
 that which is the very opposite to truth: he must 
 know that they do not forgive men their trespass¬ 
 es, but that they punish and persecute them in 
 all manner of ways; and, therefore, to ask his 
 forgiveness, in consequence of them forgiving 
 others, is one Of the most abominable abomina¬ 
 tions that man can conceive. Talk about blas¬ 
 phemy ! Why this is fifty thousand times worse. 
 There is no word in the dictionary suitable for it. 
 It positively excels all. What! forgive men their 
 trespasses, and thousands upon thousands of peo¬ 
 ple suffering all manner of punishments? Thous¬ 
 ands suffering in gaols, for debts they are unable 
 to pay ! Millions suffering minor punishments of 
 all sorts ! and telling the Deity that you forgive 
 .men their trespasses ! Nothing can equal it. It is 
 a total eclipse of all. 
 
 Christ says distinctly in his sermon on the mount 
 that “Unless ye forgive men their trespasses, nei¬ 
 ther will your heavenly Father forgive you.” 
 Now what in the name of all that is merciful, is 
 to become of all the Christians? Not one of them 
 will forgive men their trespasses. To the infer¬ 
 nal regions the whole of them are doomed; at 
 least if this be true, and they say it is. What an 
 awful idea! They will not only not forgive men 
 their trespasses, but they actually abuse us if we 
 do it. We are teaching a doctrine that will lead 
 all men to forgive each other their trespasses ; 
 that will make them all kind and charitable, one 
 towards another; and for doing this they call us 
 infidels, atheists, deists, and ail the bad names 
 they can think of. But we do not blame them 
 for it; we know that their characters have been 
 formed for them, and not by them; and, therefore 
 we freely forgive them all their trespasses. But 
 is it not strange and unaccountable that, while 
 we practise this precept of Jesus Christ, and they 
 do not, they call us infidels, and themselves Chris¬ 
 tians, and that we will go to hell, and that they 
 will go to heaven ? Can anything be more my¬ 
 sterious ? But such is their rationality. 
 
 We are preaching to the world the formation 
 of the human character; w’e are telling all men 
 that it is unjust and absurd to make man resposi- 
 ble for either his thoughts, feelings, or actions ; 
 that these exist in every individual independent 
 
 of himself; that his character is altogether formed 
 for him, and not by him ; and that, therefore, we 
 can never be angry with each other, but must al¬ 
 ways forgive one another our trespasses, which 
 is precisely the precept of Jesus Christ; only we 
 give reasons for it, and he does not; and for doing 
 this we are infidels and bad men, and will be 
 sure to go to hell. And what makes the thing 
 fifty times worse, while those who do not prac¬ 
 tise this precept, although they profess to believe 
 it, are Christians and good men, and will be sure 
 to go to heaven. Such is the power of error and 
 delusion. 
 
 I recollect speaking to a Christian on this par¬ 
 ticular point, of forgiving men their trespasses. I 
 asked him how they could expect to go to heaven 
 as long as they punished people as they did ; for, 
 said I, Christ says, “Unless you forgive men their 
 trespasses, neither will your heavenly Father for¬ 
 give your trespasses.” He replied, ‘ We do for¬ 
 give men their trespasses.” “ What,” said I, 
 “sending men to prison for paltry debts; trans¬ 
 porting them, and punishing them in all manner 
 of ways; is tfyis forgiving men their trespasses?” 
 “Oh,” says tie, “but we forgive them in our 
 hearts.” “Oh, indeed,” I replied, “ then, I sup¬ 
 pose, if God sends you to hell, and if he only for¬ 
 give you in his heart, you will be quite satisfi¬ 
 ed.” His answer came from his looks instead of 
 his mouth. 
 
 Such is a specimen of the masses of error and 
 absurdity which yet fill the minds of millions of 
 men; and such are the sources of all the miseries 
 the human race are suffering. A change, how¬ 
 ever, is at hand. The eyes of the people are 
 opening; error and delusion are taking flight. 
 The veil is being withdrawn, and there is no 
 power on earth adequate to replace it. 
 
 I have now, I think, accomplished my task. I 
 have exposed the errors and evils of the present 
 arrangement of society; I have traced the vice 
 and crime to the source from whence they spring; 
 I have shown that that source is not in the de¬ 
 pravity of man, as the priesthood allege, but in the 
 ignorant and irrational arrangements around him; 
 I have shown that as long as these arrangements 
 last, so long will man be ignorant, vicious, and 
 miserable; and that as soon as these arrange¬ 
 ments shall cease, and Communities be establish¬ 
 ed upon ihe plan proposed by Robert Owen, so 
 soon will man be transformed into a wise, virtu¬ 
 ous, and happy being. 
 
 In conclusion, I beg to call upon the Clergy of 
 all Denominations; I respectfully demand that 
 they either clear up all these masses of errors and 
 contradictions, or at once abandon them for ever. 
 It is their duty to remove error wherever they 
 see it; and if I am in error, I beg they will show 
 it; and if l am not in error, I demand that they 
 will acknowledge it, and give up their present 
 proceedings. One or the other of these they are 
 bound to do, and which ever it may be I *hall 
 feel contented. Truth only can prevail and ifour 
 opinions are not truth, the sooner we are without 
 them the better.