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genuine glory, and finds its expression in a Tell or a Washington; the glory that induces another to take arms for the invasion of his neighbours is false, and finds its expression in a Tamerlane or Napoleon. The love which leads to the union of the human couple is true, because the equal division of the sexes indicates that one man should be the husband of one wife; but the love which assigns many wives to one man is false, because it is evidently a violation of the natural law of the numerical equality of the sexes. So with property. That which is the product of man's labour, in any department of his activity, ought to be the most sacred thing in the world, next to mau's life. What, indeed, is the product of man, but a portion of himself manifested in an external object-the expenditure of muscular or nervous power? Any encroachment upon, or subtraction from, production of this kind, is, indeed, a violation of the right of property, and may even be considered as an attempt upon the life of the producer; for the productions of a man being that by which he lives, every abatement of them, no matter under what legal phraseology it may be smoothed over, is to that extent a diminution of his life. We now ask our readers seriously, and with their hands on their hearts, whether this is not a property that is violated every day in the form of perpetual rent of land, perpetual interest on capital, and inadequate remuneration for labour. We call the land owner who lends the use of the land, the primary stratum in the formation of wealth; the capitalist who lends money, the secondary stratum in the formation of wealth; and the employer of labour who lends what may be termed the tertiary powers of production, powers derived from the other two, men of property. We never think of calling the labourer, whether of hand or head, and who subsists from day to day on so much of his products as the other three classes of persons leave him, a man of property. Landlords, then, money-lenders, or usurers, and employers of labour-men who subsist by appropriating to themselves a portion, and a large portion, of the products of labour-that is to say, who subsist by taking away the property of others, are confessedly and notoriously the men of property, whilst the men who create the property, and whose property is taken away, are as confessedly and as notoriously men of no property. When, therefore, one man says "property is robbery," he means the property of the landlord, the money-lender, and the employer of labour; but by no means the property of the labourer or original producer, which, in his eyes, as in ours, ought to be the most sacred and inviolable thing in the world; and when another man says that 66 every violation of property is a robbery," he means also that original property which is the produce of labour, and not that derivative or legal property which is an abstraction from the products of labour. Every one knows that the rank, pride, education, wealth, and energy of the southern planter are derived from his abstraction of the products of the slaves. He is called a man of property, and his property is what is guarded and protected in the code book of the once United States. We do not hesitate in this country to call the property of the southern planter "slavery;" but we ask if the rank, pride, education, wealth, energy of the man of property in this and other European countries have any better foundation. The proprietory class of the southern

and

states of America are perfectly well aware of this; and when we taunt them with the condition of the blacks, they retort by a reference to the condition of our wage class and the accounts of murder, infanticide, abortion, suicide, burglary, robbery, thievery, embezzlement, bankruptcy, short time, strikes, riots, and assaults; the depravity and ignorance in every shape and form with which our society teems, but too well justify them in their retaliation upon us.

Keeping this distinction then clearly before the mind, that there is a property which OUGHT TO BE the most sacred and inviolable thing in the world, next to human life, and IS NOT; and that there is another property which is the most sacred and inviolable thing in the world, frequently more so than human life, and ought not to be so, we can readily explain the seeming contradictions of these writers who assert that "property is robbery," and that" property ought to be inviolable," and why the Roman Catholic theologians of Germany declared that, with the fall of the Pope's temporal power, the right of property in Europe would be destroyed.

These learned theologians are perfectly well aware that, by the law of Moses, the Jews were forbidden to lend money at interest to Jews, but were permitted to lend it to strangers, thereby indicating that interest was an instrument of destruction. "Thou shalt not lend money, fruit, nor any other article to thy brother at usury, but to the stranger." (Deut. xxiii. 19.) "Will the man who lends at usury, and who receives increase, live? He will not live." (Ezekiel xviii. 13.) They know that Christ has said in the New Testament, as Moses in the old-"Lend, hoping for nothing thereby." (Luke vi. 35.) And that Paul, the apostle of Christ, like Ezekiel, the prophet of God, has said-"If any would not work, neither should he eat." (2 Thess. iii. 10.) They know that the early church was persecuted because it denied the form of Roman society, which was founded on a system of property that was unnatural; that the church was pure as long as it kept itself in antagonism to property, and that it became vicious and corrupt the moment it acquired proprietorial rights by its alliance with the state; what Dante truly calls the fatal gift of Constantine. They know that the most able and the purest fathers of the church have denounced the taking of interest as one of the greatest of sins, and one of the most fatal principles to society. They know that, as Saint Bernard preceded Proudhon in the enunciation of the celebrated formula, " Property is robbery," Pope Clement anticipated Malthus when he said, in his apostolic constitutions, "Those who do not labour have no right to sit at the common table." Well knowing these things, these Roman Catholic theologians turn round upon our proprietory society, and say, "Beware! The property of the church has precisely the same basis as your own, and if you disturb the church's property, we will preach from our pulpits, as we did in the primitive age, anathema to property; woe to the Ananiases and Sapphiras of the age." Such is the meaning of the language of these astute and subtle men, who are better acquainted with the springs on which society moves than our flippant journalists, who regard then as the representatives of antiquated and tattered ideas 3; and judge of them by what they say of themselves. "The church," says M. Giraud, Archbishop of Cambrai, the worthy

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successor of the gentle Fenelon, in a comparatively recent pastoral, "will make no compromise with the white slave trade any more than it did with the black, or that of any other creature made in the likeness of God; and if her motherly voice be disregarded, she will appeal to the conscience and the pity of mankind, and upraise the cry of the oppressed to the very tribunal of Him who will render to each according to his works." We could easily quote the testimony of other priests to the same effect, but we prefer to cite the opinion of an economist of no small authority, and a member of the French Academy of Moral and Political Science; that of M. Blanqui, who says, in his "History of Political Economy," "There are political, economical questions, which will remain without solution till the church gives her aid. The equitable distribution of products, and many other questions, will not receive a complete solution till the church interferes therein. And this is but justice; for she, in truth, can only solve the questions which she has so well raised."

(To be continned.)

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.-This imperial "chaff cutting. "machine is to be set in motion again on the 6th Feb. It is stated that the machine has undergone some slight mechanical changes during the few months it has been allowed to stand dormant, and that new materiel will be supplied to those parts that time and recent events have caused to be removed through decay. We shall watch the working of the thing, without being too sanguine of detecting compensatory improvement.

POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTION.-Among the several places of amusement catering for public favour at this season of the year, we are glad to notice this excellent institution sustaining its prestige with unabated vigor. Mr. Pepper temporarily drops his natural philosophy, to add flavour perhaps to the cuisine, and the time usually allotted to him is occupied by a Mr. and Mrs. Matthews, the former demonstrating a variety of clever tricks in natural magic, whilst the lady, who is "gifted" with "second sight," disposes of questions put to her with such accurate raciness as "puzzle the will" of the obdurate and uninitiated. The pantomime of "Mother Goose," which is "done" on canvas, is well "got up," and there are several good scenes and clever transformations. The scene representing the assembly of London Monuments, caged and uncaged, was, we think, a good bite at the "pig-tailed" absurdities that disfigure and block up our streets and squares; whilst the vocal description of the motley group gives a decided pleasure to the audience. On our last visit this scene was withdrawn, which deprives the pantomime of one of its best bits, and the audience of Mr. Cooper's vocal descriptive power, which has a tendency to make the entertainment tame. The "house" draws well, and we wish the management success and a happy new year.

COLOSSEUM.-This commodious building we fear is situate in a locality "too far north" ever to become a favourite promenade. On entering its long, naked, and dreary corridor, its large and sombre halls, for the first time in our lives, we hesitated to know whether we had not by some mistake entered some "Haunted Castle," some subterranean cavern. Between the different parts of the entertainment there are unnecessary long intervals. The storm scene in the Panorama of Lisbon is one of the best things of the entertainment. "Paris by Night" must be old, as we could not discern any of the recent Napoleonic "improvements," A journey through Switzerland, and a pleasing trip down the Rhine to Cologne, on canvass, brings us to a "comic monologne" by Mr. Righton, who, as a "Christmas Box," gave us two or three droll impersonations of character with Harlequin, Clown, Pantaloon, and Columbine, which relieved us of a heavy three hours stroll, We shall be glad to see improvement,

RADICAL REFORM-WHAT IS IT?

BY HENRY H. WILTSHIRE.

(From the Cosmopolitan Review.)

AND what is radical reform? Is it the absolute necessity so persistently urged, or the dire calamity to be so strenuously averted? Radical reform simply means a complete cure for any evil, and not necessarily a democratic change. It is the practice of the skilled surgeon, who, if a limb be irreparably injured, unhesitatingly lops it off, and thereby saves the body, as opposed to the habit of the impudent quack, who, from want of knowing better, or more often from greed for gain, patches, and mends, and physics, and all along deteriorating the system, ultimately completely destroys the frame. It is the practice of a gardener, who, going into a garden overgrown with weeds, is not content with merely cutting them down level with the earth, but extirpates them wholesale by the roots. It is the practice of the schoolmaster, who, finding a youth committed to his care, has imbibed a set of false ideas, does not endeavour to hide them under the paltry gloss and varnish of a little superficial reading, but crushes them altogether, by placing them in antagonism with the truth, and fills the vacuum in the child's mind from the inexhaustable storehouse of useful facts and the refreshing fountain of real knowledge. It is the practice of the philantropist, who, hopeless of mending the present generation, does all he can to save the next, and by such means to perpetuate a sounder state of things. Then why should it be objected to, as the policy of statesmen in dealing with the constitution of a country? Many people object to it, while admitting its desirability in a general sense, on account of the "inconvenience" they are pleased to consider it would give rise to. The only persons likely to experience any inconvenience, that we are aware of, are those who most immediately profit by the present pretty state of things; the parasites and placehunters, the numerous dependents and hangers-on to the fringed robes of my Lord this, his Excellency that, and his Grace the other; the sons, nephews, and cousins of the Russells, the Elliotts and the Greys, to say nothing of the nominees (a most numerous class), of "ladies" who happen to be very intimate with men of position. To these individuals and others of the like calibre the "inconvenience" would, without doubt, be most unpleasantly tangible, and inconveniently realised; but to suppose that any serious results would be likely to follow from a really radical reform, is a belief which we will not do any one at all capable of taking a dispassionate view of things as they are, and who is willing and likely to give an honest opinion on the subject, the injustice of seriously holding. Do the working men of this country, who as a class attend their daily work so regularly, who as a body are so thoroughly independent, and who on the whole are so moral in their tone, and often truly cultivated in their bearing, look like the ruthless spoliators it is so gracefully said they are, the terrible conspirators against all law and order some affect to regard them as, the wild iconoclasts that perhaps a very few

weak-minded people really consider them to be? If they were anything like this, where, in the name of everything terrible would not society long since have been? It seems impossible to imagine that men whose hearts are full of such black intents, and who are so thoroughly debased-so lost to every sense of honour, would be so punctilious as to pause for the legal formality of a vote to carry out their base designs, to inaugurate this earthly pandemonium, to play all this diablerie. With their superiority of numbers, what an advantage do they not possess; with their unanimity of opinion on all matters-as the opponents of reform insist is the case (what a startling phenomenon-unanimity of opinion on all subjects among 6,000,000 of men!) what could possibly stand in their way? To our seeming here are at least fair answers to these objections, being, we take it, more generous in their applicability, and more logical in their deductions.

On the score of morality, the poorer classes need not fear the strictest scrutiny and comparison, with the self-stiled educated portion of the community. We will say nothing about what superior educational advantages ought to have effected; the benefits derivable from the refining influence of polished society; or the pride of sustaining unsullied a long lineage and often an honoured name, we will go only by the ordinary rule of numerical comparison, and making allowance for the disproportion between the classes, morality generally cannot be affixed to any one class in invidious distinction to the others.

Some interesting statistical facts on various subjects, but all bearing on the general question of the morality and progress of the people, and necessarily their fitness for the franchise, we give here, in the conviction that they will be both interesting and instructive to the reader. It is only fair to premise that they are culled from the very masterly exposition of the member for Leeds, Mr. Edward Baines, on his introduction of a Bill on the six pounds borough franchise, in the session of 1860.

As illustrative of the increased prosperity of the country it appears that during the last thirty years England has nearly quadrupled her foreign commerce, her manufacturing industry, and her navigation. The total amount of exports and imports into the United Kingdom in 1831 was over £97,000,000, in 1860 it was over £373,000,000, an increase of 283 per cent.; at an outlay of £330,000,000, 10,000 miles of railway have been constructed, carrying every year 150,000,000 passengers-without luggage traffic-a distance of 2,000,000,000, miles! general shipping has increased fourfold, and steam shipping fourteenfold; 10,000 miles of telegraph have been laid down, using 50,000 miles of wire; from the English colonies and America £200,000,000 sterling have been imported into this country in gold. It is only natural to suppose that this vast increase of wealth should have tended to decrease pauperism, thus we find that while in 1831 the expenditure for the relief of the poor was 9s. 9d. per head of the population, in 1860 it was only 5s. 6d. The number of children attending day schools in England, in 1833, was one in every eleven, while in 1858 it was one in every seven; the

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