* 
 
HINTS TOWARD REFORMS, 
 
 LECTURES, ADDRESSES, 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER WRITINGS : 
 
 BY HORACE OREELEY. 
 
 TI.VSTRN* the day, just Heaven. 
 
 Accomplish thy design, 
 And lot the blessing s Thou hast freely given 
 
 Freely on all mt-n shine ; 
 Till Equal Rights he equally enjoyed, 
 And human power for human srood employed ; 
 Till Law, and not the Sovereign. rule sustain, 
 And Peace and Virtue undisputed rein. HENRY WARK. 
 
 ONCF. the welcome Light ha^ broken, 
 
 Who shall say 
 What the uninmsrined trlories 
 
 Of the day ? 
 What the evil that shall perish 
 
 In its ray ? 
 
 Aid the dawninsr, Tonsrue and Pen 
 Aid it, hopes of honest men! 
 Aid it. Paper! aid it. Type! 
 Aid il, for the hour is ripe! 
 And our earnest must not slacken 
 
 Into play: 
 Men of Thought, and Men of Action. 
 
 rr.FAR THF: WAV! CHAPI.PS MACK AY. 
 
 NEW- YORK : 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, 82 CLIFF-STREET. 
 
 1850. 
 
tl 
 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, 
 
 BY HORACE GREELEY, 
 
 in the Clerk s Office of the District Court of the United States, in nnd for the 
 Southern District of New York. 
 
TO 
 
 THE GENEROUS, THE HOPEFUL, THE LOVING, 
 
 WHO, 
 
 FIRMLY AND JOYFULLY BELIEVING IN THE IMPARTIAL AND 
 BOUNDLESS GOODNESS OF OUR FATHER, 
 
 frnst, 
 
 THAT THE ERRORS, THE CRIMES, AND THE MISERIES, 
 WHICH HAVE LONG RENDERED EARTH A HELL, 
 
 SHALL YET BE SWALLOWED IT AND FORGOTTEN, 
 
 IN A FAR EXCEEDING AND UNMEASURED REIGN OF 
 
 TRUTH, PURITY, AND BLISS, 
 
 Cjbfs Volume 
 
 FS RKHPEr.TFUT.LY AND AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED, 
 
 RV 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 CARLYLE, if i rightly remember, tells us of an impulsive 
 Frenchman, who, in the very crisis of the great Revolution, 
 when the frenzied public mind was intent on nothing short of 
 the world s regeneration, and the due and ample feeding of the 
 Guillotine as essential thereto, rose in the National Convention, 
 full to bursting with an idea which he could 710 longer stifle, 
 and vociferated, " Mr. President, I move that all the knaves 
 and dastards be arrested !" the very thing, you see, that the 
 whole People were intent on, expressed in one very compact 
 sentence. Where prisons could be found to hold the arrested, 
 or jailers to guard them, much more, provisions to subsist 
 them the mover had never stopped to calculate. He saw 
 clearly that the fundamental evil, parent and fountain of all 
 others, was the impunity allowed, the favor manifestly shown, 
 to Knavery and Cowardice, and he was bent on a Radical 
 Reform. A right good fellow, he was, too, at heart, I am sure, 
 though not, perhaps, so practically sagacious, so readily cog 
 nizant of the relations of means to ends, as he might have been. 
 As lie grew older, he doubtless became cooler, sager, more 
 1* 
 
6 PREFACE. 
 
 considerate, more conservative ; .yet one may well doubt 
 whether he ever rose above the moral altitude of his single 
 recorded inspiration, 
 
 Thif? apprehension of all the knaves and dastards, if you but 
 consider, is one of tiie chief ends of Man s existence and effort 
 on earth. A very arduous and tedious work, you may well 
 pronounce it, especially when you observe that they who 
 should combine to do it, including many of those who think 
 they are doing it, with those who make a show of doing 
 it, in the hope of imposing on their cotemporaries if not on 
 themselves, are personally of the very class on whom the 
 operation needs to be performed. It were a study to see 
 the work really effected, and note how many who at the 
 outset were flourishing handcuffs and trying to fit them to 
 their neighbors wrists, holding up ponderous jail-keys and 
 calling out, This way, brother officers ! Here s where the 
 culprits are to be secured till further orders ! would find 
 themselves wearing the ruffles and tenanting cells at the close, 
 with eyes of blank amazement and visages of yard measure 
 Not entirely a novel spectacle would this be, and yet deeply 
 interesting and instructive. 
 
 Yes, the arrest of all the knaves and dastards or rather 
 their thorough cure of knavery and cowardice is a task given 
 us to perform, and each must strive to do his part of it, even 
 though with painful distrust that he himself is not wholly free 
 from the vices he is laboring to eradicate. The more evil ho 
 discerns or suspects in himself, the harder he should labor for 
 the general abolition and extinction of evil, beginning with 
 his own faults but not forgetting that others also deserve and 
 require effort for their eradication. Perchance in the gene- 
 
PREFACE. 7 
 
 ral warfare against injustice, meanness and wrong, the sincere 
 soul finds the best attainable discipline and corrective for its 
 own faults and errors. 
 
 The volume herewith presented is mainly composed of Lec 
 tures prompted by invitations to address Popular Lyceums and 
 Young Men s Associations, generally those of the humbler 
 class, existing in country villages and rural townships. These 
 Lectures were written in the years from 1842 to 1848 inclu 
 sive, each in haste, to fulfil some engagement already made, for 
 which preparation had been delayed, under the pressure of 
 seeming necessities, to the latest moment allowable. A calling 
 whose exactions are seldom intermitted for a day, never for a 
 longer period, and whose requirements, already excessive, seem 
 perpetually to expand and increase, may well excuse the dis 
 traction of thought and rapidity of composition which it renders 
 inevitable. At no time has it seemed practicable to devote a 
 whole day, seldom a full half day, to the production of any of 
 the essays contained in this volume. Not until months after 
 the last of them was written did the idea of collecting and 
 printing them in this shape suggest itself, and a hurried pe 
 rusal is all that has since been given them. The Lecture 
 here entitled The Organization of Labor has been recast in 
 part, to conform it to the existing state of facts ; the others 
 are printed as they were delivered. Some of them are more 
 florid in style than my present mood would dictate that enti 
 tled Human Life especially but they were faithful tran 
 scripts of the mind whence they emanated at the time they 
 were written, and I could not now change without destroying 
 them. Should their diction provoke the critic s sneer, so be it : 
 
8 PREFACE. 
 
 I am tolerably case-hardened to the shafts of periodical wit, 
 and shall receive any that may be in store for me with forti 
 tude if not with complacency. I am quite aware that the 
 Literary merits of this volume are inconsiderable indeed. 
 
 But this work has a loftier and worthier aim than that of fine 
 writing. It aspires to be a mediator, an interpreter, a recon 
 ciler, between Conservatism and Radicalism to bring the two 
 into such connection and relation that the good in each may 
 obey the law of chemical affinity, and abandon whatever por 
 tion of either is false, mistaken or outworn, to sink down and 
 perish. It endeavors so to elucidate and commend what is just 
 and practical in the pervading demands of our time for a Social 
 Renovation that the humane and philanthropic can no longer 
 misrepresent and malign them as destructive, demoralizing or 
 infidel in their tendencies, but must joyfully recognize in them the 
 fruits of past and the seeds of future Progress in the history of 
 our Race. Defective and faulty as these Hints may be found 
 or judged, I feel confident that their tendency is to practical 
 beneficence, and that their influence, however circumscribed, 
 can not be otherwise than wholesome. In the absence of any 
 reasonable ground of hope for personal gain or popularity, this 
 trust must justify my intrusion upon the public, for the first 
 and perhaps for the last time, as the author of a book. 
 
 The great truths that every human being is morally bound, 
 by a law of our Social condition, to leave the world somewhat 
 better for his having lived in it that no one able to earn 
 bread has any moral right to eat without earning it that the 
 obligation to be industrious and useful is not invalidated by the 
 possession of wealth nor by the generosity of wealthy rela 
 tives that useful doing in any capacity or vocation is honor- 
 
PREFACE. 9 
 
 able and noble, while idleness and prodigality in whatever 
 station of life arc base and contemptible that every one 
 willing to work has a clear social and moral right to Opportu 
 nity to Labor and to secure the fair recompense of such Labor, 
 which Society can not deny him without injustice and that 
 these truths demand and predict a comprehensive Social Re 
 form based upon and molded by their dictates these will be 
 found faithfully if not forcibly set forth and elucidated in the 
 following pages. Of course, as the Lectures were written 
 independently of ^ach other, and with intervals of months and 
 often years between them, the reader can hardly fail to find the 
 same proposition restated, the same arguments adduced, the 
 same illustrations employed, in two or more instances. Each 
 Lecture is a separate thesis, deriving (I trust) confirmation and 
 support from others, but not maintaining connection therewith. 
 And ui the arrangement of the volume, so far as any plan was 
 kopt in view, diversity and variety rather than continuity and 
 consecutiveness were deemed desirable. I know how easily 
 the public mind grows weary of dry discussion. 
 
 Of the briefer Essays which conclude the volume, two 
 only that on Death by Human Law and that on Flogging 
 in the Navy have been recast expressly for this work, and 
 these but to give a more compact and methodical expression to 
 views already submitted in other forms to the ordeal of public 
 judgment. Four or five of these essays (mainly of a religious 
 cast) were written from year to year for The Rose of Sharon* 
 Annual, while the residue have in good part appeared at va 
 rious times in the columns of The Tribune. These were 
 generally suggested by some recent event, some apparent pub- 
 
10 PREFACE. 
 
 lie necessity, but I hope they will not be found antiquated nor 
 out of place now and here. 
 
 I trust this explanation of the impulse and character of 
 these Hints will not be mistaken for an apology. I make 
 none, arid solicit no lenity. I inculpate no partial friend, no 
 delighted auditor, as instigating this volume. If there be no 
 true worth in it, let the serious guilt of adding another to the 
 deplorable multitude of books unfit to be read rest on my 
 shoulders alone. But if it shall be found to utter any word 
 calculated to irradiate, however faintly or transiently, the on 
 ward pathway of our Race, then it will stand fully justified, 
 though all the critics should unite to blast it by their fiercest 
 maledictions or their more fatal silence. H. G. 
 
 NEW- YORK, April 20, 1850. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. THE EMANCIPATION OF LABOR : A Lecture PAGE 13 
 
 jr. LIFE THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL: A Lecture 51 
 
 III. THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER : A Lecture 85 
 
 IV. THE RELATIONS OF LEARNING TO LABOR: An Address 112 
 
 V. HUMAN LIFE: A Lecture 149 
 
 VI. THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR: A Lecture 179 
 
 VH. TEACHERS AND TEACHING : A Lecture 20G 
 
 VTIL LABOR S POLITICAL ECONOMY : An Essay 232 
 
 IX. ALCOHOLIC LIQUORS TIIKIR NATURE AND EFFECTS 257 
 
 X. THE SOCIAL ARCHITECTS FOURIER : A Loctuiv 272 
 
 XI. BRIEF REFORM ESSAYS : 
 
 DEATH BY HUMAN LAW 301 
 
 vLAND REFORM 311 
 
 HOMESTEAD EXEMPTION 322 
 
 THE RIGHT TO LABOR 31fl 
 
 LIVING AND MEANS 320 
 
 PITY HIS FAMILY 329 
 
 FLOGGING IN THE NAVY 33 L 
 
 THE UNION OF WORKERS 33.") 
 
 .THE TRADE REFORM 342 
 
 WHAT FREE TRADE is DOING 348 
 
 SLAVERY AT HOME 352 
 
 TOBACCO 357 
 
 COMING TO THE CITY 35!) 
 
 STRIKES AND THEIII REMEDY 3fU 
 
 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE 3(17 
 
 THE AIMS OF LIFE 374 
 
 THE UNFULFILLED MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY 379 
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE AGE 385 
 
 THE IDEAL OF A TRUE LIFE 392 
 
 HUMANITY... 396 
 
HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 i. 
 
 THE EMANCIPATION OF LABOR: 
 
 A LECTURE. 
 
 WORK stands in no need of eulogium. From olden times 
 Priests and Poets have vied with Orators and Statesmen in 
 heaping praises and flatteries on the man of honest, inde 
 pendent, useful toil. Not merely have these resonantly 
 proclaimed that he ought to be, but that he is the most 
 blessed among mortals. Indeed, an unsophisticated listener or 
 reader might well imbibe the notion that all these honeyed 
 eulogists, earth s great and glorious, had been thrust out, by 
 some harsh decree of inexorable Fate, from the plow-field 
 and the work-bench sent sorrowing exiles into forums or 
 senates and there compelled to witness afar off the felicities 
 they too might have enjoyed had they been born under 
 kindlier stars, and to be content, in their sublime self-denial, 
 with but depicting the delights of digging and delving, which 
 only the more fortunate millions must enjoy. 
 
 Yet, in the midst of all this deluge of flattery and felici 
 tation, the Worker of the Nineteenth Century stands a sad 
 and care-worn man. Once in a while a particularly flowery 
 Fourth-of-July Oration, Political harangue, or Thanksgiving 
 
14 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 Sermon, catching him well-filled with creature-comforts and 
 a little inclined to soar starward, will take him off his feet, 
 and for an hour or two he will wonder if ever human lot was 
 so blest as that of the free-born American laborer. He hur 
 rahs, cavorts, and is ready to knock any man down who will 
 not readily and heartily agree that this is a great country, 
 and our industrious classes the happiest people on earth. 
 The hallucination passes off, however, with the silvery tones 
 of the orator, the exhilarating fumes of the liquor which in 
 spired it. The inhaler of the bewildering gas bends his slow 
 steps at length to his sorry domicile, or wakes therein on the 
 morrow, in a sober and practical mood. His very exaltation, 
 now past, has rendered him more keenly susceptible to the 
 deficiencies and impediments which hem him in : his house 
 seems narrow ; his food coarse ; his furniture scanty ; his 
 prospects gloomy, and those of his children more sombre, if 
 possible ; and as he hurries off to the day s task which he 
 has too long neglected and for which he has little heart, he 
 too falls into that train of thought which is beginning to en 
 circle the globe, and of which the burden may be freely 
 rendered thus " Why should those by whose toil ALL com 
 forts and luxuries are produced or made available enjoy so 
 scanty a share of them, ? Why should a man able and eager 
 to work ever stand idle for want of employment in a world 
 where so much needful work impatiently awaits the doing ? 
 Why should a man be required to surrender something of 
 his independence in accepting the employment which will en 
 able him to earn by honest effort the bread of his family ? 
 Why should the man who faithfully labors for another and 
 receives therefor less than the product of his labor be cur 
 rently held the obliged party, rather than he who buys the 
 work and makes a good bargain of it ? In short, Why 
 should Speculation and Scheming ride so jauntily in their 
 carriages, splashing honest Work as it trudges humbly and 
 wearily by on foot ?" Such, as I interpret it, is the problem 
 
THE EMANCIPATION OF LABOR. 15 
 
 which occupies and puzzles the knotted brain of Toil in our 
 day. Let us ponder it. 
 
 But first, let us look at the whole matter in the light in 
 which it presents itself to Conservatism, or the champions of 
 the established order of things. We can lose nothing, we 
 may gain something of insight, by so regarding it, which will 
 reward a few moments attention. Inestimable is the value 
 of a Fact, if we do but rightly apprehend it ; and very strong 
 is the inherent presumption that the shape things have 
 actually, and as we say naturally, taken is the very best they 
 could have taken, all things considered, including the nature 
 of Man. Let us look, then, at this whole matter of Labor, 
 its Condition and Recompense, as it must appear to the men 
 of substance and of thrift all around us. 
 
 All extreme statements begin and end in error, and nothing 
 can be more mistaken than the vulgar presumption that 
 Wealth goes by luck, or in fact that, searchingly regarded, 
 there is any such thing as luck in the Universe. The man 
 of respectability and property, whose blocks of houses adorn 
 the busiest streets of our towns, and whose note goes un 
 questioned in bank, can you think him distinguished by no 
 substantial qualities from those who were his playmates and 
 schoolmates, and who are now his tenants and hirelings? 
 O rely on it, there is no such instance of results without a 
 cause in Nature ! The man may be no better, I readily 
 grant you, than those around him perhaps in the truest 
 sense no wiser but very different he must be, and for that 
 one purpose of accumulating property, a vastly superior being. 
 Tried in History or Geography, in Psalmody or the Cate 
 chism, he might prove of small account ; but in that wisdom 
 which coins dollars from rocks and extracts fertility from 
 marshes and miasms, he must be an adept. Nay, I go 
 farther, and insist that a keen eye would have readily picked 
 him out from among his schoolmates, and said, Here is the 
 lad who will die a Bank President, owning factories and 
 
16 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 blocks of stores ! Now let us see how the questions we 
 meditate must appear to this thrifty, practical man : 
 
 Trace his history closely, and you will find that in his boy 
 hood he was provident and frugal that he shunned expense 
 and dissipation that he feasted and quaffed seldom, unless 
 at others cost that he was rarely seen at balls or frolics 
 that he was diligent in study and in business that he did 
 not hesitate to do an uncomfortable job, if it bade fair to be 
 profitable that he husbanded his hours and made each 
 count one, either in earning or in preparing to work effi 
 ciently. He rarely or never stood idle because the business 
 offered him was esteemed ungenteel or disagreeable he 
 laid up a few dollars during his minority, which proved a 
 sensible help to him on going into business for himself he 
 married seasonably, prudently, respectably he lived frugally 
 and delved steadily until it clearly became him to live better, 
 and until he could employ his time to better advantage than 
 at the plow or over the bench. Thus his first thousand 
 dollars came slowly but surely ; the next more easily and 
 readily by the help of the former ; the next, of course, more 
 easily still ; until now he adds thousands to his hoard with 
 little apparent effort or care. But the germ of all this 
 spreading oak was in the tough acorn whence it sprang. 
 Given the original qualities of the lad, all beyond was plainly 
 deducible therefrom, unless prevented by death or some 
 extreme calamity. 
 
 Now we shall but waste our breath in attempting to con 
 vince this man that the world is not a very good world 
 as it stands, and labor rewarded exactly as it should be. 
 Talk to him of the wants and woes of the Poor, and he 
 will answer you that their sons can afford to smoke and 
 drink freely, which he at their age could not ; and that he 
 now meets many of these poor in the market, buying 
 luxuries that he can not afford. Dwell on the miseries 
 occasioned by a dearth of employment, and he will reply 
 
EMANCIPATION OF LABOR. 17 
 
 that he never encountered any such obstacle when poor ; for 
 when he could find nothing better, he cleaned streets or 
 stables, and when he could not command twenty dollars a 
 month, he fell to work as heartily and cheerfully for ten or 
 five. In vain will you seek to explain to him that his rare 
 faculty both of doing and of finding to do his wise adap 
 tation of means to ends in all circumstances, his frugality and 
 others improvidence are a part of your case that it is 
 precisely because all are not created so handy, so thrifty, 
 so worldly-wise, as himself, that you seek so to modify the 
 laws and usages of Society that a man may still labor 
 steadily, efficiently, and live comfortably, although his youth 
 was not improved to the utmost, and though his can never 
 be the hand that transmutes all it touches to gold. Fail 
 ing here, you urge that at least his children should be guar 
 antied an unfailing opportunity to learn and to earn, and that 
 they, surely, should not suffer nor be stifled in ignorance 
 because of their parent s imperfections. Still you talk in 
 Greek to the man of substance, unless he be one of the few 
 who have, in acquiring wealth, outgrown the idolatry of it, 
 and learned to regard it truly as a means of doing good, and 
 not as an end of earthly effort. If he be a man of wealth 
 merely, still cherishing the spirit which impelled him to his 
 life-long endeavor, the world appears to him a vast battle 
 field, on which some must win victory and glory while to 
 others are accorded shattered joints and discomfiture, and 
 the former could not be, or would lose their zest, without 
 the latter. 
 
 It seems to him quite plain that all might become as rich 
 as he is if they would make the needful sacrifices of ease and 
 mortifications of appetite ; and if they won t, what can he do 
 for them ? To dissipate his fortune in prodigal beneficence 
 would injure thousands and bring lasting good to few ; to 
 reduce mankind to some sort of Agrarian level would, if 
 practicable, render life a tame, plodding, humdrum affair, 
 2* 
 
18 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 hardly worth taking as a gift. In fine, the world appears to 
 him the best that could be for the men and women who in 
 habit it, its usages and laws the plain dictates of Divine 
 benignity contemplating human depravity ; and to all your 
 suggestions of radical improvement he simply shakes his 
 head and turns away to inquire the price of Cotton or the 
 chances of an alteration in the Tariff. 
 
 Him we will leave for a season to his more congenial pur 
 suits, while we inquire and consider in our own way what 
 changes are necessary to the Emancipation and Social ele 
 vation of the laborer. I affirm, then, that there are three 
 important respects in which the condition of the Laboring 
 Mass, even of our own countrymen, may be improved, ought 
 to be improved, and in regard to which it is the duty of the 
 rich and powerful, of the Church and the State, to cowork for 
 the required melioration. Of these I would place first in 
 order, though perhaps not in practical importance, 
 
 Their relation to the Soil. I place this first, because I 
 think Society and Government have been guilty of a positive, 
 not a negative, wrong in regard to it a wrong of usurpation 
 and misdoing, and not merely of neglect and short-coming. 
 God created the earth for the use and subsistence of man 
 kind, and not primarily of a part, and of the rest in sub 
 ordination to these. By Nature s law, use and improvement 
 can alone vest in any individual a right to call some spot of 
 earth his own, and exclude all others from the enjoyment and 
 benefit thereof. Nothing can well be a more palpable sub 
 version of the order of Providence than the assumption by 
 Governments of a right to grant a province or county of 
 virgin soil to some favorite, whether with or without con 
 sideration, to be held by him and his heirs for their own use 
 and benefit, and to be cultivated and improved by others on 
 terms which make the landlord class rich without labor or 
 useful doing, and keep the tenant class mainly poor and sub 
 servient, though they do their best. If there ever was or 
 
EMANCIPATION OF LABOR. ID 
 
 can be a monstrous subversion of the order of Providence, it 
 is here. Man has a natural right to such a portion of the earth 
 not already improved by others as he can cultivate and make 
 fruitful ; the act of Government is simply officious and im 
 pertinent which assumes to give him this, and it is a gross 
 usurpation and moral nullity to undertake to give him more. 
 As well might it attempt to farm out the rain or sunshine, 
 giving to one man all that falls on his own land and several 
 of his neighbors , and directing these to buy so much as they 
 need of him. What Government rightfully may and ought 
 to do in the premises is simply to determine and declare the 
 area of the earth s surface which one man may justly, and 
 therefore legally, appropriate to himself and transmit to his pos 
 terity without encroaching on the equal natural rights of others. 
 In a young and thinly-peopled community, this area may be 
 larger ; as population increases and arts are perfected, it should 
 be gradually reduced and the freehold left vacant to-day by 
 death be divided among the heirs, so as to leave no one in 
 possession of more than the public good prescribes as the 
 maximum for any one man. At first, a mile square might be 
 allowable, there being so much or more for each family in 
 the community ; and we see that this allotment has been de 
 cided upon in the settlement of Oregon. I can not doubt 
 that this is far too much, whether we regard individual or 
 general good ; that the settlers, thus held apart by their 
 mutual grasping, will lose vastly more in education, social 
 intercourse, neighborly kindnesses, than they can possibly 
 gain in ultimate wealth. If the principle of Limitation had 
 been early adopted and maintained, I presume a much 
 smaller area would have been deemed ample. As it is, the 
 emigrant to Oregon grasps not for himself and his children, 
 his flocks and herds only, but with a view to his future 
 aggrandizement by selling off or renting to others. But let 
 a colony on a territory, say of 50,000 arable square miles, 
 begin by allotting to each pioneer a square mile, if he be un- 
 
20 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 wisely greedy enough to desire so much, with the express 
 understanding, however, that this area is to be diminished to 
 future occupants so soon and so fast as the increase of pop 
 ulation shall demand it, and that meantime no person shall 
 be allowed upon any pretext to acquire more than the 
 maximum prescribed by law. 
 
 1 What ! says an objector, would you take away a part 
 1 of a man s land, honestly acquired by inheritance, gift or 
 purchase, and give it to some one else who needs it ? 
 No, sir ! there is no call for this. Let every man keep 
 through life what the law has once decided to be his. But 
 when the landlord of thousands of acres shall die, it is per 
 fectly just, it is urgently expedient, that the Law which has 
 assured and guarded his ample possessions shall say with 
 regard to Land aggregation, as it has long said with regard 
 to Usury, Thus far and no farther ! Let the dying rich 
 man leave all his wealth to his heirs, but let him not perpet 
 uate the Land Monopoly which reason conspires with expe 
 rience in pronouncing, prejudicial to the dearest interests 
 of mankind. The law may say, and should say, Take the 
 property, Messrs, heirs, and share it as you shall agree, or as 
 the ministers of justice shall decide ; only it is decreed that 
 none of you shall take and retain beyond a certain limit, say 
 320 acres, of arable soil : whatever falls to any one in excess 
 of that must be sold within a year to some person who will 
 still have less than the legal maximum. After a few years, 
 this will have been entirely adjusted, and, no man having 
 more than the maximum quantity, none will be restricted in 
 disposing of what he has ; only the man who has already as 
 much as the law allows him will be required, on coming in 
 to possession of more, to choose what portions of the whole, 
 not exceeding the legal maximum, he will retain, selling the 
 residue to some one who has no land, or less than the legal 
 allowance, within the term specified by law. When population 
 shall have grown considerably more dense, a narrower limit 
 
EMANCIPATION OF LABOR. 21 
 
 may justly be enacted, to which possessions shall he required 
 gradually to conform, as we have already seen. 
 
 I might well despair of impressing on any mind which has 
 not hitherto reflected on this subject the vital importance and 
 vast beneficence of the principle of Land Limitation. To 
 me it seems the very key of the arch which is destined 
 to upbear the unportioned millions from their measureless 
 degradation and abounding misery. I trace the frequent 
 lack of employment, the scanty reward, and the meager sub 
 sistence, often accorded to Labor, directly to the resistless 
 influence of Land Monopoly. Here, for example, is a new 
 community, just emerging from barbarism or just planted on 
 a virgin soil. For a season all goes well with it ; no man 
 stands idle for want of employment, and Industry reaps what 
 it has sown. But population gradually increases ; the land 
 is all appropriated ; and good arable soil gradually rises in 
 market value from ten to one hundred dollars per acre, and 
 perhaps higher. Is it not inevitable that it is now far more 
 difficult than formerly for the portionless young man to buy 
 a farm and become his own employer "? and that he who 
 cultivates as the tenant or hireling of another must now 
 receive for his labor a far smaller share of its product than 
 of old ? Suppose the crop be Corn, and the average 
 yield thirty bushels to the acre, worth fifteen dollars ; one 
 dollar of this, or a fifteenth part of the product, would have 
 paid the rent when the land was valued at ten dollars ; but 
 now it takes six dollars, or two fifths of the entire product. 
 But population still increases, and its increase steadily 
 carries up the market value of land, until at length the corn 
 field becomes worth three hundred dollars per acre, from 
 sheer force of competition and necessity acting upon those 
 who have no land and yet must live. Now the tenant can 
 no longer afford to grow Corn, unless he can immensely in 
 crease the product, or unless he is willing to perform all the 
 labor and run all the risks of blight, hail, drouth, frost, &c., 
 
22 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 and give the entire avails of a full harvest for the privilege 
 of cultivation. It seems to me impossible, with Land station 
 ary and incapable of increase, Ownership naturally tending 
 to fewer and fewer hands, and population inimitably increas 
 ing, that the subsistence of the Laboring Mass should not 
 become more and more meager and precarious, and their 
 condition more and more depressed and hopeless. 
 
 For the last half-century, this tendency has been partially 
 counteracted by the invention of Labor-saving Machinery 
 and the immense development of natural and mechanical re 
 sources. Thus it is computed that the labor now annually 
 performed in England would have required the best efforts 
 of at least twenty times the present population of that island 
 two centuries ago. Yet such is the evil influence of the 
 Land Monopoly so fearfully prevalent there that, though the 
 present Laboring Class of England accomplish twenty times 
 as much as did their ancestors two centuries back, they yet 
 receive a more scanty reward, (computed not in money, but 
 in the necessaries of life,) are worse fed, lodged, more severely 
 worked, and hardly better clad nor taught, than those ances 
 tors were. Capital, monopolizing Land and Machinery, 
 takes all the profit of Labor to itself. The recompense of 
 Toil has not increased, but the rent and valuation of Land 
 have immensely. And the number of substantial proprietors, 
 inconsiderable since the fatal Norman Conquest, is still sen 
 sibly diminishing. A Scotch Duke owns a tract 100 miles 
 by 70, while twenty-nine thirtieths of the whole People re 
 main on the island at the good pleasure and sufferance of 
 the other thirtieth, and might be legally driven into exile by 
 that inconsiderable fraction at any time it chose. 
 
 In this country, things have come to no such pass 
 as yet, thanks to our Republican institutions and to the 
 Republican spirit which generally pervaded and directed 
 the first settlers on these shores. There are portions of 
 our continent where a vicious system of granting vast 
 
EMANCIPATION OF LABOR. 23 
 
 tracts of wilderness to some favorite of the British crown 
 or of some provincial governor, or the sale of millions of 
 acres at a nominal price by some step-mother State to 
 one or more speculators, has engendered some portion of 
 the evils whereof unhappy Ireland affords the most con 
 spicuous example ; but, in the main, land has been com 
 paratively easy of acquirement, and the vast stretch of still 
 untamed forest has operated as a perpetual check on the 
 cupidity of forestallers. Yet this exemption has been com 
 parative only. I am personally acquainted with extensive 
 regions which, having fallen within the grasp of monopoly, 
 have been parceled out in small allotments to indigent 
 pioneers on credit at two or three dollars per acre ; and these 
 pioneers, after wrestling from ten to twenty years with priva 
 tion, hardship, fevers, the giant forest and the prowling wild 
 beast, until fertility and beauty were beginning to smile on 
 their little openings, found themselves utterly unable to pay 
 the stipulated price and accumulated interest while maintain 
 ing their families, and thus were compelled to abandon their 
 hard-won homes and plunge afresh into the wilderness, often 
 with broken constitutions and in the evening of their days. 
 Some are now hard at work on their third or fourth experi 
 ment of this kind in Wisconsin or Iowa. I do not say that 
 all of them have been as industrious, frugal, temperate, as 
 they should have been. I know well that many have not, 
 and that others are justly termed bad managers. I give full 
 force to all this, and still say that the State should have se 
 cured to these poor men, for their families sake if not for 
 their own, the homesteads which they first wrested from the 
 wilderness, so that no clutch of speculator or whisky-seller 
 could have torn those homes from under them. And I can 
 not doubt that the errors of the past, once detected and 
 vividly portrayed, will be guarded against in future. 
 
 A limitation of the area of arable land which any man may 
 acquire and hold, and an exemption of a far more restricted 
 
24 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 Homestead of a family from involuntary transfer by mortgage 
 or execution, are twin measures which, after a few years of 
 denunciation and abuse, will be understood, approved, and 
 enduringly engrafted upon our Constitutions and statutes. 
 That these will do much to secure employment and adequate 
 reward to labor, wherever adopted, I can not doubt. Few 
 have any idea of the extent to which Labor is now obstructed 
 by Land Monopoly. The starving poor of Great Britain 
 and Ireland might be abundantly employed and subsisted on 
 the rich soil now uselessly, ostentatiously devoted to im 
 mense Parks, Forests, and Game-Preserves. I was, in 1845, 
 discussing with an eminent Western Statesman the effects 
 of Protection and Manufacturing on the welfare of the 
 country, when he casually observed that he owned twelve 
 hundred acres of the finest river bottom land in Ohio, richly 
 worth fifty dollars per acre, yet which he could find nobody 
 to purchase and improve because the floating capital of the 
 country was all attracted to and locked up in Eastern 
 factories. It seemed to me, and I could not help telling him, 
 that the obstacle and the wrong in the case was his attempt 
 ing to exact fifty dollars per acre for land to which nothing 
 had been done except possibly to divest it of some of its 
 most valuable timber since it was purchased of the Nation for 
 a dollar and a quarter per acre. Yet the Great West is 
 covered with such reservations, to the serious obstruction of 
 settlements and detriment of settlers. One or two such 
 may deprive a school district of any fit school for twenty 
 years ; three or four will keep a township destitute of the 
 preaching of the gospel, miserably provided with roads and 
 bridges, scantily supplied with mechanics and artisans. Such 
 a reservation is by no means a mere blank it is a positive 
 blight and discouragement. It has usually been selected as 
 soon as the lands of that district were offered for sale, and 
 comprises some of the very best in its vicinity. Often two 
 long prairies, each twenty or thirty miles wide, are separated 
 
EMANCIPATION OF LABOR. 25 
 
 by a small river or mill-stream with a fringe of timber half a 
 mile wide. Speculation early fastens its grasp upon this 
 belt of timber, including all the water-power, fencing and 
 fuel of one or more counties. Soon settlers begin to arrive, 
 and find good prairie abundant and likely to remain so at 
 the Government price, ten York shillings per acre. But 
 this is utterly unavailable, uninhabitable, without timber and 
 water, which can only be had by paying the speculators their 
 ten to twenty dollars per acre, with a thousand or two dol 
 lars for a mill-site, which must ultimately be had at whatever 
 price. There are other sections wherein Speculation kindly 
 disposes of the land to settlers who have no money, only asking 
 a liberal share of the first four or five crops in payment. Mil 
 lions of acres are now occupied by the preemption claimants, 
 under articles binding the speculators who have bid them oft 
 at the Government sales to convey them to the occupants 
 upon the payment of the principal cost with twenty-five to 
 fifty per cent, interest. It is a moderate estimate that every 
 dollar put into the Treasury by public land-sales has taken 
 three to four dollars from the pockets of the actual settler 
 and cultivator. 
 
 Still, the remedy required is not so much the substitution 
 of gift for sale as the limitation of the quantity which one 
 man may acquire. Reduce the Government price to ten 
 cents per acre, and you but facilitate the operations of 
 Monopoly, and hasten the day when the great mass shall be 
 beggars for the privilege of cultivating God s earth, and 
 general scarcity of employment shall lead surely to penury 
 of reward and scantiness of food. But establish the principle 
 that no man shall acquire but a limited area of the land yet: 
 public, and whether that land be still sold at a moderate 
 price or allotted for the bare cost of survey and transfer to 
 the settler, the Nation s chief peril will have been averted, 
 and a broad and strong foundation laid for ihe edifice of 
 Social Justice and Industrial Emancipation. 
 3 
 
20 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 I urge the application of this salutary, vital principle first 
 to the Public Lands, because there it can not be parried by 
 any pretence than its adoption will interfere with Vested 
 Rights. He who does not choose to settle on Public Lands 
 on such terms as the Nation shall see fit to impose has all 
 the world before him; he may hire or work on shares or buy 
 wherever else he pleases. If he does see fit to remove from 
 lands made private to those yet public, he can not reasonably 
 object to the conditions which the Public Will shall impose. 
 He must assent to them and prepare to obey them in good 
 faith. Butin truth there is not a township so old nor so 
 new that the principle of Land Limitation therein would not 
 prove a great blessing to its whole people. Into the midst 
 of a sluggish or careless community is born a stirring and 
 sharp-dealing man, possessed by the twin demons Avarice 
 and Ambition. He betakes himself to Trade or Speculation, 
 or Usury ; or possibly he makes large annual gains by sheer 
 industry, sharp bargains, and good management. The spirit 
 of territorial aggrandizement soon awakes within him ; he finds 
 his patrimony too narrow to afford scope for his energies. 
 And the same Providence which gave being to foxes ordain 
 ed geese also. Here a family has encountered a succession 
 of calamities, finding their climax in the death of its head ; 
 heavy debts hang over it, and the Homestead must be sacri 
 ficed just when it has become vitally necessary to save the 
 mother and her babes from dispersion and servitude. The 
 next farm is held by a drunkard* or prodigal, and this is soon 
 brought to the hammer. In the next house lives a foolish 
 father and mother, whose darling son must be sent to Col 
 lege, which in the end sends them to the Poor-House. All 
 these, and more, fall successively into the hands of the gen 
 eral devourer of widows houses, who goes on expanding 
 and amassing till death stops him. In the course of one or 
 two generations, all will very probably be dissipated, but the 
 evil already done is not thereby remedied. The displaced 
 
EMANCIPATION OF LABOR. 27 
 
 families are very rarely restored. A new accumulator starts 
 up, perhaps in the same school district, perhaps in the next; 
 and runs the old race over again. Thus the children of the 
 poor and the prodigal are constantly falling into homelessness, 
 and more generally as the community grows older ; while 
 the ability and energy which, properly directed, would have 
 made one farm a model and a spur to the whole township 
 which could hardly have failed to do this if the law had not 
 proffered to the possessor the fatal facility of adding broad 
 acres to a domain already too extensive are worse than 
 wasted in acquiring the farms of others instead of rendering 
 fruitful and beauteous his own. One hundred acres might 
 have been rendered as valuable and as productive as the 
 many hundreds now are, and been made to give employment 
 to as much Labor ; but the larger territory sounds louder 
 in the public ear, and to own the most land of any man in 
 the County is, unfortunately, a greater distinction than to 
 work a moderate farm the best. All this must be amended, 
 and it will be.- Land Reform is the natural and sure basis 
 of all Social and Industrial Melioration. 
 
 Next in order to Land Reform stands the question of 
 Labor Reform, or the regulation of the hours of daily manual 
 toil. I am - not aware that any noted writer on Social 
 Economy, or on the sanitary and moral condition of the 
 Laboring Classes, has failed to condemn the exaction of 
 twelve to thirteen hours labor per day as excessive and per 
 nicious an offence against general well-being, and even 
 against the self-interest of the Employers. One* of the most 
 eminent British manufacturers of the last generation, who 
 retired from business twenty years ac;o with a large fortune, 
 the fruit of thirty years faithful assiduity and exertion, and 
 who still lives to enjoy the competence he so fairly won, in 
 forms me that he for twenty years neither exacted nor 
 
 * Robert Owen. 
 
28 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 allowed more than ten hours labor per day of any one in 
 his employment, and that he prospered as well and amassed 
 property quite as fast as any of his competitors or rivals, who 
 kept their mills running from twelve to sixteen hours per day. 
 It is his deliberate judgment that even less than ten hours 
 per day will ultimately be found better for all parties.- In 
 Scotland, it is the rule in some counties to work twelve 
 hours per day at Farming, in others but ten ; and impartial 
 testimony establishes the fact that the shorter term is fully 
 as effective as the longer. But I do not propose here to 
 discuss, much less to settle, the precise number of hours 
 which should be held as constituting a usual or regular day s 
 work. That question will properly come up after we have 
 settled the prior and more important point that there shall be 
 some definite and uniform meaning to the term day s work, 
 so that an agreement to work a month or week shall imply 
 some precise and well-known term, and not remain subject 
 to be stretched or contracted at the mere pleasure, con 
 venience, or fancied interest of one of the parties. This is 
 a Reform which seems to me not only important but in 
 evitable. It would be as sensible and just to prescribe that 
 a pound of meat, of sugar, or of coffee, should consist of just 
 so many ounces as the buyer should see fit, after the price 
 had been settled, to exact, or that a bushel of grain should 
 consist of an indefinite number of quarts, as that a day s 
 work should consist of ten, eleven, twelve, or thirteen hours 
 faithful labor, just as the purchaser of that labor should think 
 proper to require. Labor in our day has become so ex 
 tensively a commodity a marketable product, like cheese 
 or chocolate that it is most essential to all fair dealing that 
 it be measured as definitely and equally as possible. And, 
 when it is settled that it shall be so measured, I understand 
 it to be the uniform testimony of impartial men who have in 
 vestigated the subject, that, at least in all employments not 
 liable to interruption by the elements, the number of hours 
 
EMANCIPATION OF LABOR. 29 
 
 constituting a day s work must be reduced as well as defined 
 and equalized, so as to afford opportunity not merely for de 
 liberate meals and ample rest, but for study, reading, and 
 relaxation, also. Man was not made merely to eat, to work, 
 to sleep. He has faculties which such a routine does not 
 develop wants and aspirations which it does not satisfy. 
 Especially where the fixed attention of the mind as well as 
 a constrained attitude of the body is exacted by the nature 
 of his labor, and where that labor is continued from day to 
 day, week in and week out, without interruption by storm 
 or frost, it seems manifest that the regulation of the hours of 
 labor should respect the mental no less than the physical 
 demands of his nature, and that the day s toil should be 
 broken off before the body has been so wearied and ex 
 hausted as to leave no strength nor spirit for mental improve 
 ment or exertion. Such I understand to be the essence of 
 the demand for a general Reform in the hours and con 
 ditions of Labor. 
 
 I am encouraged to hope for an early and favorable action 
 on this subject by recent action in England. It is sometimes 
 made a reproach to our influential and wealthy class that they 
 pattern closely after England, and copy her fashions, her 
 laws, habits, and thoughts, with servile alacrity. I will not 
 here stop to consider how far this ought to be esteemed a 
 reproach if it were admitted to be a truth. It seems to me 
 that we might learn much from that same England, both by 
 way of example and of warning. Be this as it may, the fact 
 that the British Parliament has passed a law decreeing a re 
 duction of the Hours of Factory Labor to eleven, and after 
 one year to ten per day, will doubtless do much to pave the 
 way for and hasten the adoption of some kindred measure 
 here. Such action on the other side of the Atlantic will be 
 effectual not merely as an example, but by removing the 
 dangers, real or fancied, of unequal Foreign competition, in 
 case of a reduction of hours on this side. And I may fairly 
 3* 
 
30 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 presume that the most ferocious hater of British laws and pre 
 cedents will make little objection to our imitating this. 
 
 Yet a Limitation of the Hours of Labor seems to me a 
 secondary though most important Reform. So long as un 
 employed Labor crowds the market and the street, eagerly 
 chaffering and underbidding for opportunity to earn a bare 
 subsistence, I fear any stringent legislation on this point 
 could not be enforced. Indeed, the difficulties environing 
 the subject are by no means few nor trivial. The evil re 
 sembles in character the compound fracture of the physical 
 man. We can all agree at the outset that ten hours faithful, 
 skillful labor per day ought to enable any man to support his 
 family comfortably and respectably. But here are men 
 whose personal burdens are excessive who owe debts in 
 curred by past sickness or misfortune in business ; who have 
 sick or disabled relatives cast upon their hands, and who 
 choose to labor excessively in order to meet manfully the de 
 mands made upon them. Can the law wisely interfere to say 
 that such men shall not work twelve or fourteen hours if 
 they choose ? Again : a dam gives way, the machinery of a 
 mill breaks, and five hundred workers must stand idle and 
 incur expense until a few can make all right again. Would 
 it be wise and just to prescribe that these few shall be in 
 flexibly restricted to ten hours labor per day ? These 
 instances might be multiplied, but enough. Since it is con 
 fessedly impolitic and indeed impossible to fix by law the 
 price of any service or commodity, it is not without reason 
 that some have honestly doubted that any law prescribing 
 arbitrarily the boundaries of a day s work would be effective 
 or useful. The end aimed at is at last to be reached, in my 
 judgment, from the other side by such a change in the 
 Social Condition of the mass of Laborers and in their relation 
 to the Soil, as will leave them really free to accept an offer 
 of employment, in view of all its conditions, or decline it. 
 Secure to them this, and they will enforce a suitable limitation 
 
EMANCIPATION OF LABOR. 31 
 
 of the Hours of Labor without the aid of positive, peremptory 
 statutes ; but so long as this is not, I apprehend that no law 
 can surely and uniformly accomplish the desired end. 
 
 But, now that we have considered the natural difficulties 
 and limitations to be encountered, I think we are prepared 
 to state clearly what the law can and may do in the premises. 
 All must allow that there should be some definite limit to an 
 ordinary day s work, and that that limit should not be fixed 
 and changed as the mere pleasure or interest of the Employ 
 ing Class shall dictate. I intend by this no reflection on the 
 character of that Class. That would ill become me, since to 
 that Class I at present belong. I do not believe it less wise, 
 humane, or considerate, in the average, than the Employed, 
 nor less likely to do right where the interests of the two may 
 seem to conflict. But the sound general rule that no man 
 is a proper judge in his own case applies here as well as 
 elsewhere. There should always be two parties to a bargain, 
 and to every part of it, otherwise it is apt to prove a hard 
 one. And while I hold that the State can not properly pre 
 scribe that no man shall in any case work more for another 
 than ten hours in any one day still less can it in my view, 
 make one law for Corporations and another for Individuals 
 it may yet, as the general Protector of the Weak against 
 the Strong, do much, and ought to do much, to mitigate the 
 evils of excessive hours of daily toil. The action I would 
 recommend, and which in one State* has already in part re 
 ceived the sanction of the Legislature, is substantially as 
 follows : 
 
 1. An act forbidding absolutely the employment of 
 children or minors, whether Apprentices or Hired, for more 
 than ten hours per day. The State has a right to see, and 
 ought to see, that the frames of the rising generations are not 
 shattered nor their constitutions undermined by excessive 
 labor. She should do this for her own sake as well as 
 
 * New Hampshire. 
 
HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 Humanity s. She has a vital interest in the strength and 
 vigor of those who are to be her future fathers and mothers, 
 her defenders in war, her cultivators and artisans in peace. 
 She may safely make this limitation imperative, since for 
 whatever service it may be necessary to employ labor for a 
 longer term per day there will always be found an abundance 
 of adults, if proper inducements are offered. 
 
 2. A simply declaratory act that in all cases where no 
 other term is specified, the Law shall presume and decide 
 that an agreement to work a week, a month, a year, or any 
 other term, implies ten hours faithful work on each secular 
 day, and no more. It may be expedient to vary this term in 
 certain out-door employments, especially Farming, making it 
 nine hours between October and March, and eleven between 
 April and September, the four months named standing at 
 ten hours ; but this would be in perfect consistency with the 
 general principle that ten hours should constitute a legal 
 day s work, wherever the parties, being responsible and in 
 dependent adults, do not see fit to vary this by express 
 agreement. The moral effect of such an act, in inducing 
 a very general conformity to its dictates, would be great, 
 and I can not believe that much hired labor would ultimately 
 be performed otherwise than in accordance with the rule it 
 prescribed, save in pressing emergencies. 
 
 To the ardent and dogmatic Reformer, who holds the 
 Ten-Hour Rule the chief and sufficient means for the 
 Emancipation of Labor from thraldom and depression, this 
 suggestion will seem tame and halting ; but I confidently 
 believe such an act as it contemplates would effect more 
 enduring good than would one that took the more arbitrary 
 and inflexible form. Yet I would see with pleasure the two 
 tried side by side, in sister States, by way of experiment. 
 
 ; A Limitation of the Hours of Labor, once accomplished, 
 will be valuable mainly for the Opportunity it proffers the 
 
EMANCIPATION OF LABOR. 33 
 
 prospect it opens. The end is not yet very far from it. 
 If the worker, released from excessive drudgery in the mill 
 or the shop, shall misimprove his new-found leisure in the 
 groggery, the cigar-store, the gambling den, or some other 
 haunt of vileness, it were well for him if he had remained a 
 patient, abject drudge for life. And herein is the discour 
 agement of many from all effort to improve the physical and 
 temporal condition of the less fortunate Laboring Class. 
 They can only see that more wages give more liquor, and 
 more leisure incites to more dissipation. Alas ! let us con 
 fess in deep humility and sorrow that there is a deplorable 
 truth at the bottom of this. Yet no I think it is not at the 
 bottom, but nearer the surface. Fearfully true it is that many 
 of those whose lives are mechanical merely whose days 
 are consecrated to drudgery, and the gloom of whose nar 
 row tenements is rarely softened by the sun of Hope do 
 usually spend their hours snatched from toil in degrading, 
 brutalizing sensualities, so as to give plausibility to the con 
 clusion that they would be better if they had no leisure at 
 all and no resources beyond the means of supplying the 
 barest necessaries of life. But the logic which thence infers 
 that the victim of incessant toil and meager recompense 
 ought ever to remain such is that which exalts Slavery into 
 a Divine and beneficent institution, and proves War a gen 
 eral blessing by demonstrating the average worthlessness 
 or worse of those it employs and consumes. We must stop 
 this arguing from existing evils in support of the abuses and 
 wrongs which created them. Let us give Human Nature a 
 fair trial, and see if it utterly lack sense as well as any 
 glimmering of virtue, before we pronounce it a hopeless 
 failure, to be managed only with the strait-jacket and the 
 halter. Let us have a fair and full trial of a Laboring Class 
 thoroughly educated, not overworked, fairly remunerated, 
 with ample leisure, and adequate opportunities for Social, 
 Moral, and Intellectual culture and enjoyment, and then, if 
 
34 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 the hard-handed multitude shall still persist in squandering 
 their leisure and their means in riot and dissipation, we must 
 sadly, reluctantly, but utterly, abandon all hope of a better 
 day coming for the Toiling Millions, and leave them to the 
 tender mercies of the miser, the forestaller, the pawnbroker, 
 the grog-seller, as fair game. Whether the land-pirate strip 
 the wreck or the sea swallow it, what matter ? But I can not 
 doubt that a better Social condition, enlarged opportunities 
 of good, an atmosphere of Humanity and Hope, would insure 
 a nobler and truer Character, and that the dens of dissipation 
 will cease to lure those whom a proper Education has quali 
 fied, and whom excessive Toil has not disqualified, for the 
 improvement of Liberty and Leisure. At all events, the 
 momentous consequences depending should impel a speedy 
 trial of the experiment, and insure a fair trial. 
 
 I should be most unfaithful to my own convictions, and 
 leave room for false inferences and misstatements which I 
 claim the right here to repel, if I omitted to rank War among 
 the scourges which a pure Christianity, a true Civilization, 
 must banish from off the face of the earth, before the Eman 
 cipation of Labor from depressing want and unmerited suf 
 fering can be permanently effected. War, indeed, elevates 
 as well as depresses, expands as well as crushes ; but those 
 refreshed and gladdened by its golden showers are never the 
 humble workers the men whose bread is moistened by their 
 own daily sweat, and won by the peaceful might of sturdy 
 sinews for these, War has showers of grape and canister 
 only, not of eagles and doubloons. Their bodies serve 
 passably to fill trenches, shrouded in their own blood but 
 their names are rarely deemed good enough to fill half a line 
 in the most inflated and deceitful bulletin. War destroys in 
 a day the fruits of many years peaceful effort, fills the world 
 with destitute cripples, widows and orphans ; it ravages prov 
 inces to fertilize a single battle-field, and leaves barbarism 
 instead of refinement, idleness in place of industry, weeds in 
 
EMANCIPATION OF LABOR. 35 
 
 place of gardens ; blood, ashes, and tears, instead of fertility, 
 beauty, and joy. Not till the Laboring Millions shall have 
 become wise enough to loathe the glory which wreathes the 
 brow of Carnage, and admire one Franklin or Clarkson 
 more than twenty Napoleons or Wellingtons, may we reason 
 ably look for the Elevation of Labor to its proper condition 
 and dignity. Hopeless is the degradation of the slave who 
 idolizes the chains and trappings which hold him in perpet 
 ual bondage. 
 
 JSo on a kindred though apparently opposite point. To 
 me it seems indispensable to the just recompense, steady 
 employment and sure elevation of Labor, that the Industry 
 of each community or People be rendered as various and 
 diverse as is consistent with efficiency in production that 
 everywhere Agriculture, Manufactures, Mechanic Arts, &c., 
 should intermingle and blend with each other, so as to afford 
 employment for the greatest possible diversity of tastes and 
 capacities in regard to industrial pursuits. You may agree 
 with me that it is the proper duty of Government to strive for 
 and as far as possible secure such diversity, by fostering and 
 upholding the introduction of such departments of Useful 
 Labor as are yet unestablished or in their infancy or you 
 may incline to the opposite theory, that this matter will bet 
 ter take care of itself, and that Government can not act; 
 more wisely, beneficently, than to let it entirely alone. I 
 will not here discuss the relative soundness of these anta"-- 
 
 o 
 
 onist theories : but I insist that the condition of the Labor 
 ing Class can never be independent and comfortable while a 
 Nation buys its bread, or its clothing, its wares or its fabrics, 
 mainly from abroad. I know well that National landmarks 
 are, in the eye of Philanthropy, as if they were not : I look 
 only to the inevitable consequences of carrying Grain across 
 halt a continent and an ocean, and bringing back Cloths in 
 return ; and I say that this is, in general, at deadly war with 
 the permanent interests of Labor, which unerringly demand 
 
30 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 that the exchanges of products should be in the main as 
 direct and simple as possible, and as nearly as may be be 
 tween producer and produced, with but one or two inter 
 mediates at most. So long as the Grain grown in the great 
 Valley of the Mississippi is in good part exchanged for the 
 Cloths of England, the Linens of Ireland, the silks and wines 
 of France, the glass, the toys, the knick-knacks of Germany 
 all which, if needed, might as well be produced in our 
 own country as elsewhere so long will the bulk of Amer 
 ican Labor be deprived of more than half its just reward 
 through the depression of its great staples at the point of pro 
 duction and the exactions of a superfluous Traffic. At this 
 moment,* Corn sells abundantly for twenty cents per bushel 
 in the most productive sections of our Great West, though 
 famished Ireland eagerly pays for it two dollars per bushel ; 
 and so with other things. The shipper charges twice to 
 thrice as much for conveying each bushel from New York to 
 Liverpool as the farmer receives for growing it. The ulti 
 mate remedy for this effect it as you will is the natural 
 ization of the arts, and if need be the artisans, of the Old 
 World along-side of the fertile prairies of our boundless 
 West, thereby securing them twice as much grain for the 
 product of each day s labor as they now receive, while 
 benefiting in equal measure our farmers, and diverting the 
 non-productive labor now employed in needless transporta 
 tion into the channels of productive Industry. Call this, if 
 you please, a digression to me it seems unavoidable if 
 misapprehensions are to be prevented. I proceed with my 
 general statement. 
 
 Unquestionably the Emancipation of Labor is to be 
 effected through or in conjunction with the mental and moral 
 improvement of the Laboring Class. So far, all are of one 
 mind. But whoever argues thence that nothing is to be 
 done, nor even attempted, in the way of physical or circum- 
 
 * December, 1R4G. 
 
EMANCIPATION OF LABOR. 37 
 
 stantial melioration, until the Laboring Class shall have 
 wrought out its own thorough spiritual development and 
 moral renovation, might as well declare himself a champion 
 of the Slave-Trade at once. The internal and external 
 renovation are each necessary to the completeness of the 
 other. Merely lightening his tasks and enlarging his com 
 forts will not raise a groveling, sensual, ignorant boor to the 
 dignity of true manhood ; but no more can just and lumin 
 ous ideas of his own nature, relations, duties, and destiny, be 
 expected often to irradiate the mind of one doomed to a life 
 of abject drudgery, penury, and privation. " Tom," said a 
 Colonel on the Rio Grande to one of his command, " how 
 can so brave and good a soldier as you are so demean him 
 self as to get drunk at every opportunity ?" " Colonel !" 
 replied the private, " how can you expect all the virtues 
 that adorn the human character for seven dollars a month V" 
 The answer, however faulty in morals, involves a grave 
 truth. Self-respect is the shield of Virtue ; Comfort and 
 Hope are the hostages we proffer the world for our good 
 behavior in it ; take these away, and Temptation is left 
 without counteracting force or influence. Without hope 
 and without God in the world, says an inspired Apostle ; 
 let not the sequence or its significance be forgotten. Show 
 me a community, a class, a calling, wherein poverty, dis 
 comfort, and excessive, unrewarded toil have come to be 
 regarded as an inexorable destiny, and I will tell you that 
 there the laws of God and man. are sullenly defied or stupidly 
 disregarded. 
 
 The Industrial Education of the Poor is a matter of the 
 very highest and most pressing Social concern. Here are 
 hundreds on every side of*us toiling their lives out for some 
 beggarly four to six shillings per day, and barely existing in 
 want and wretchedness thereon, when others, intrinsically no 
 wiser and better than they, earn thrice as much, and live in 
 ease and comfort. This immense disparity has its origin in 
 4 
 
38 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 the slight and unregarded circumstance that the one class 
 were in youth so fortunate or so provident as to be enabled 
 to acquire trades or callings in which labor is well rewarded, 
 while the others have grown up at random, doing what came 
 handiest, or rather that which in the general scramble was 
 left to them ; and now they are qualified only for such em 
 ployment as none beside them will take. Nothing can be 
 more culpably thoughtless in a parent than to let his son or 
 daughter grow up unfitted for some sphere of decided and 
 fairly-rewarded usefulness. A good trade is an estate out 
 of which the most confiding can not be swindled, and which 
 is almost beyond the reach of adverse fortune. 
 
 But it is not merely desirable that each child should be 
 trained to decided efficiency in some branch of Industry 
 it is essential also that each should be incited to a constant 
 exertion of all his faculties in devising and perfecting im 
 provements therein. The son should not be satisfied with 
 doing as well as his father did he should begin there, 
 resolved to do better and better. Herein is the radical dif 
 ference between Free and Slave Labor, which is already 
 rendering Slavery unprofitable, and is destined to blot it out 
 of existence. Slavery controls the sinews and the limbs 
 only ; the brain and the will are beyond its power. The 
 world has as yet hardly known what Free Labor is it has 
 had few or no full and fair specimens of it, such as it 
 must and shall have. And it seems to me that one great 
 means toward the promotion of a more intellectual and effi 
 cient Laboring Class than the world has yet seen is the 
 adoption of a law of Proportion or rateable dividend to Cap 
 ital and Labor in place of the present system of fixed and 
 arbitrary wages. I know that no such change can be effected 
 suddenly, but I believe some approximation might imme 
 diately be made to it with decided benefit to all. Let us 
 suppose, for instance, that a manufacturing company, in 
 addition to the payment of the usual wages, were to set apart 
 
EMANCIPATION OF LABOR. 39 
 
 a small proportion of its net earnings say five or ten per 
 cent, to begin with to be divided among all its permanent 
 workmen on some predetermined scale at the close and set 
 tlement of each year s business. Does any man believe that 
 such company would be a cent the poorer for this, in view 
 of all the probable consequences ? I am confident it would 
 be richer ; and that the dividend of profits to Labor would, 
 after a few years, be increased, to the signal advantage of all 
 parties. And the effect of this system upon the industry, 
 fidelity, and skill of the workmen, it would hardly be possible 
 to exaggerate. 
 
 The difficulties which impede any plan of Radical and 
 thorough Reform are never slight, and can not be surmounted 
 at a breath. And, unfortunately, when our machinery fails 
 to work out the desired result, we are usually too imperfectly 
 acquainted with the subject of our high emprise to detect the 
 real cause of our disappointment. The shortness of vision 
 which caused our failure disables us for correcting it. Here 
 a fond father of small intellectual attainment, having been 
 often rendered painfully conscious of his own deficiencies, 
 resolves to lavish his hard-earned coin to give his son the 
 very best that is, the most expensive Education. He 
 pushes him sturdily through school, academy, and university, 
 qualifies him (so far as money can) for a profession ; and 
 after all, young Hopeful turns out a blockhead or a black 
 guard, a drunkard or a swindler. Forthwith the sorely 
 disappointed parent rushes to the conclusion that Education 
 is a curse and a cheat that an honest man is better with 
 out it than with it. He does not consider that his failure has 
 proved, not that Education is worthless, but that his son has 
 not been educated that the training he has paid so much for 
 was not true education, or that it has been counteracted and 
 overborne by the false and pernicious teaching of the street, 
 the bar-room, the revel very possibly of the paternal fire- 
 
40 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 side itself. So we, when we affirm that this or that change 
 would be beneficial, can not say that other influences may 
 not take simultaneous effect, and more than counterbalance 
 all the good effects of this. Nay, more : That which is 
 good in itself has often fallen upon evil ground, and been 
 turned to evil by the baleful conjunction. From no partial 
 data can we predict the formation of a true and genial charac 
 ter. It must be the product of the whole circle of influences 
 surrounding the individual from birth to intellectual and 
 physical maturity. 
 
 Here, then, is the basis of our demand for that integral and 
 all-pervading reform in the circumstances and conditions of 
 human existence which we term ASSOCIATION, and in which 
 rests my hope of a better day at hand for the down-trodden 
 millions. Association affirms that every child born into the 
 world has a rightful claim upon the community around him 
 for Subsistence until able to earn for himself; for an Educa 
 tion which shall enable him to earn efficiently as well as 
 rightly to improve and enjoy ; and for Opportunity to earn 
 at all times by honest Industry steadily employed and justly 
 remunerated. These it affirms as the common Rights of 
 Humanity, denied or subverted as to many by our present 
 Social arrangements, but which Society ought to be and 
 must be so recast as to establish and secure. It wars upon 
 no Rights of Property, would take nothing from the Rich to 
 bestow on the Poor, nor does it ask that any shall abandon 
 his elegant private mansion and Social exclusiveness until 
 and unless he shall see fit of his own motion to do so ; but 
 it does solicit the Wealthy, the Refined, the Philanthropic, 
 the Religious, to invest something of their pecuniary means 
 in and give something of their countenance and good wishes 
 to all earnest efforts of the Laboring Class to emancipate 
 and elevate themselves. The endeavor will be resolutely 
 . and perseveringly made, even though Wealth coldly frown 
 and Theology mistakenly denounce ; and it will ultimately 
 
EMANCIPATION OF LABOR. 41 
 
 succeed, though a thousand failures should be encountered, 
 and the present generation of its advocates be long previously 
 laid in obscure, unhonored graves. To short-sighted human 
 impatience, it now seems deplorable that Philanthropy and 
 Christianity do not instantly rally the influential and the 
 affluent to our aid, and enable us to demonstrate the feasi 
 bility of a vast and beneficent Social Reform forthwith ; but 
 I doubt not that those who shall ultimately reap where we 
 have sown will clearly perceive that the Providential direc 
 tion was far wiser than our haste, and that our rebuffs and 
 disappointments were a part of the necessary agencies 
 whereby their success was rendered perfect and enduring. 
 
 Every manufacturing village, every extensive manufactory, 
 is a striking evidence of the immensely increased efficiency 
 which ORGANIZATION imparts to Human Labor. A pop 
 ulation of Thirty Thousand, whose efforts are controlled and 
 directed by a few superior minds, accomplish results which 
 One Hundred Thousand laboring separately, and thus 
 capriciously, ineffectively, fail to achieve. In like manner, 
 we see an ably commanded Army of Two Hundred Thou 
 sand veterans overrun and subdue with ease a Kingdom of 
 Ten Millions of People, as brave perhaps and as robust in 
 dividually as their conquerors, but lacking unity, discipline, 
 and competent leading. Thus, too, the manufacturing city 
 or village usually accumulates wealth faster than the sur 
 rounding country, its command of natural forces being much 
 greater, and its labor being far better organized and therefore 
 more efficient. Hence the appearance of one of our manu 
 facturing villages, standing like some magical exhalation on 
 a plat of ground perhaps familiar to my boyhood as a waste 
 of rock or sand, is to me a cheering spectacle, not so much 
 for what it actually is, as for what it suggests and fore 
 shadows. I reflect by whose labor and toil all this aggre 
 gation of wealth, this immense capacity of producing more 
 wealth, have been called into existence ; and I say, If these 
 4* 
 
42 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 rugged toilers are able to accomplish so much for others, 
 why may they not ultimately do even more for themselves ? 
 Why may not they who cut the timber, and burn the brick, 
 and mix the mortar, and shape the ponderous machinery, 
 ultimately build something like this of their own ? Why 
 may not their sisters and daughters in time spin and weave 
 as the partners rather than the hirelings of the mill-owners ? 
 Why may we not give to Labor a republican organization, as 
 we have, in defiance of a croaking world, given one to 
 Government, so that the workers shall freely choose their 
 own chiefs or overlookers, regulate their own hours of daily 
 toil, and divide the general product according to a precon 
 certed scale whose sole end shall be mutual and universal 
 justice? Is Labor so intractable, so senseless, that it can 
 never run its appointed race without a rider ? Let us at least 
 hope not. 
 
 Let me rudely sketch you a village, township, school dis 
 trict, or whatever you may term it, organized as we would 
 have it, and as we hope many ultimately will be. The basis 
 is a faith among the associates or members that they can live 
 harmoniously with and deal justly by each other, treating any 
 casual imperfections which may be developed with forbear 
 ance and kindness. One hundred families, animated by this 
 spirit, resolve to make an attempt toward a more trustful and 
 genial life, and to that end sell off as they can their immov 
 able possessions and resolve to seek a new home together ; 
 we will say in Michigan or Wisconsin. They send out two 
 or three chosen leaders, who, after careful examination, 
 select and purchase a tract of one to five thousand acres, as 
 their means will warrant, embracing the largest circle of 
 advantages Timber, Prairie, Water-Power, convenience 
 for Transportation, &c., &c. They have carefully foreseen 
 that proper building-materials, including brick or stone, lime 
 and timber, are to be obtained with facility. Mills are 
 erected and various branches of Manufacturing established as 
 
EMANCIPATION OF LABOR. 43 
 
 fast as they are needed, or as there is any labor which can 
 be spared for and advantageously employed therein. New 
 members who bid fair to be desirable accessions are received, 
 on due probation, as fast as there may be accommodations 
 for them, and so they can be profitably employed. If a 
 blacksmith, a carpenter, a brickmaker, or glazier, is wanted, 
 he is obtained by hiring until, among the wide circle of 
 friends or acquaintances of the members, one is found who 
 would like to unite his fortunes w r ith the Phalanx, and who 
 is deemed a worthy associate. Thus they go on, producing 
 abundant food and other raw staples, steadily extending the 
 bounds of their cultivated area, and increasing its product ; 
 enjoying at least the necessaries of life and doing without the 
 superfluities until they are enabled to obtain them without 
 running in debt. Soon an edifice, intended for the per 
 manent home of them all, is commenced and finished piece 
 meal in the most substantial manner fireproof so nearly 
 that fire could not spread from one section to another, and 
 so planned that the whole may be warmed, lighted, supplied 
 with water, and cleared of refuse by arrangements answering 
 as well for a thousand persons as for one. Three or four 
 large and spacious kitchens, barns, granaries &c., c., sup 
 plied with every convenience, would answer the purpose of 
 three or four hundred under our present economy, saving 
 vast amounts now lost by waste, vermin, the elements, &c. 
 &c. A tenth part of the labor now required for Household 
 service, procuring Fuel, c., would suffice, while that now- 
 consumed in journeys to the mill, the store, the blacksmith, 
 the shoemaker, and the like, would be saved entirely. There 
 would be abundant employment in the various branches 
 of Industry pursued for all ages, capacities, tastes, and all 
 that would be saved in the kitchen and the woods could be 
 advantageously and agreeably employed in the gardens and 
 nurseries, the mills and factories. The productive force of 
 this population would be vastly greater than under existing 
 
44 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 arrangements, while its economies in other respects would be 
 immense. For a brief season, admit that these advantages 
 would be counterbalanced by inexperience and perverseness 
 that some would refuse to work where they were needed, 
 and insist on working where they would be comparatively 
 inefficient, or nowhere that bickerings and jealousies would 
 arise, and that some would feel that their work was not 
 adequately credited and remunerated I foresee all these 
 difficulties, and more. Yet I see also, the end being kept 
 steadily in view that of having no unproductive labor or 
 as little as possible, rewarding all work done according to its 
 absolute worth, and charging each head of a family the simple 
 cost of what he had the rent of his exclusive rooms and 
 the actual outlay for the subsistence and education of his 
 family in short, establishing Social Justice throughout 
 there would be a constant tendency and approximation toward 
 the state of things desired and the harmony which must re 
 sult from it. The defects of one year would suggest the 
 remedies of the next, and each year s adjustment of accounts 
 would be more satisfactory than the last. 
 
 The immense advantages of such an arrangement with 
 reference to Universal Education need hardly be pointed out. 
 I am not accustomed to take desponding views of Human 
 Progress and Destiny, yet I confess that the existing con 
 dition of the children of destitution and vice with regard to 
 Education is most appalling. Grant that the means of Edu 
 cation be rendered ever so abundant and accessible, how are 
 the denizens of cellars and garrets, subsisting precariously on 
 the products of chance employment and beggary, ever to 
 be truly and thoroughly instructed ? The angel may trouble 
 the waters incessantly, but who shall guaranty that these 
 cripples get down to the pool ? They are unclad, uncouth, 
 with the manners and feelings which befit the Pariahs of 
 Society nay, they must devote to their poor ways of getting 
 a living the time demanded by the school, or sink into still 
 
EMANCIPATION OF LABOR. 45 
 
 deeper misery. Make schools as free and abundant as pos 
 sible, and there will still be a class I fear, increasing in 
 number who will be withheld by extreme poverty and 
 consequent shabbiness by the stolid ignorance or brutal 
 drunkenness of their parents by infirmities which forbid 
 their attendance on a school located at some distance from 
 their homes by the thousand consequences of Want, 
 Uncertainty, Disease, and Vice from the acquirement of a 
 proper Education. But in an Association such as we con 
 template, the thorough Intellectual, Moral, and Physical 
 Education of each will be the direct and palpable interest of 
 all a matter of the highest and most intimate concern. The 
 cost of the books now thinly scattered in five hundred dwel 
 lings will procure one ample and comprehensive Library, 
 with the apparatus and materials required to demonstrate the 
 truths of Chemistry and the whole range of Natural Science. 
 The best teachers in every branch will in time be selected 
 those who unite a natural capacity for teaching with the 
 fullest attainments, and who do not need the stimulus of high 
 salaries to induce them to devote some hours of each day to 
 the inculcation of Knowledge, Industry, and Virtue. Ere- 
 quent and agreeable alternations from the school-room to the 
 garden, the factory, the halls and grounds set apart for exer 
 cise and recreation, will benefit alike teachers and scholars, 
 giving a zest to learning as well as industry unknown to our 
 monotonous drudgery, whether of work or study. In short, 
 I see no reason why the wildest dreams of the fanatical 
 believer in Human Progress and Perfectibility may not 
 ultimately be realized, and each child so trained as to shun 
 every vice, aspire to every virtue, attain the highest practi 
 cable skill in Art and efficiency in Industry, loving and pur 
 suing honest, untasked Labor for the health, vigor, and peace 
 of mind, thence resulting as well as for its more palpable re 
 wards, and joyfully recognising in universal the only assu 
 rance of individual good. 
 
46 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 Doubtless, the realization of such visions is yet afar off, 
 for the Actual and the Possible of Human Character are still 
 immensely separated. We can not wonder that Heaven 
 seems so distant while Hell is so near. To the slave 
 dancing to the music of the lash in some Carolina rice- 
 swamp, idleness with abundance of victual is the highest ideal 
 of existence ; not so to Oberlin or Wilberforce. The dingy, 
 back-bent hireling in some gloomy, unwholesome den of 
 Mammon, whither he is summoned from his sleep by a bell 
 while his bones yet ache with yesterday s protracted toil, will 
 have most difficulty in realizing that he, too, might, under 
 different auspices, take delight and pride in the very task he 
 now performs so grudgingly. But give him a true Edu 
 cation, an unfailing Home, a direct interest in the product of 
 his labor, and thus in its excellence, an equal voice in 
 choosing his superiors and an equal chance to be chosen if 
 found worthy; workshops planned and constructed with 
 express reference to his health and comfort ; let him realize 
 that himself and family are the Social equals of all around 
 them, and his children as well educated as any, with equal 
 chances of attaining distinction and honor, and you will find 
 him an entirely different being. Idleness and dissipation are 
 the paradise of the overtaxed body and the vacant mind ; for 
 the rightly trained and developed they have no fascinations. 
 
 Whenever the class of Hired Laborers shall^e brought to 
 realize that a beneficently Radical Reform in its condition and 
 its relations is practicable, then that Reform will be on the 
 high road to its accomplishment. It is the desperate 
 character and complication of the disease that renders its 
 cure so difficult. So long as the mass of those who must 
 live as hirelings by rude manual toil have no minds above 
 their lot no aspirations beyond Blue Monday, it will be 
 difficult indeed to achieve any substantial improvement in 
 their condition. It is a melancholy fact that while it has 
 
EMANCIPATION OF LABOR. 47 
 
 hitherto required comparatively no effort to rally the Millions 
 in behalf of an effort to rend and destroy to tear down and 
 scatter abroad it has been difficult to bring them to realize 
 that the work to be done in their behalf is one of patience not 
 of wrath ; of construction, not destruction ; of elevation not 
 abasement; and that the absolute extinction of the Capitalist 
 class would avail them nothing for good, very much for evil, 
 so long as the principles which exalt the few and depress the 
 many are left in unchecked operation. Marat was sure there 
 was no other way to make good Sans Culottes of the Rich 
 but to strip them to their shirts. But stripping them could 
 avail little for good without clothing those already naked ; 
 and then these have become proper subjects for the stripping 
 operation in turn. You thus wear out what clothes there 
 are, while restraining every one from making more, yet 
 nobody is permanently clad. All is confusion, violence, 
 unthrift, uncertainty ; until by-and-by some strong-armed 
 soldier throws his sword into the scale, and Anarchy is sup 
 planted by Despotism. Such is the unvarying history of 
 revolutions impelled by hatred and the envious passion 
 for tearing down the same anciently, recently, now and 
 evermore. 
 
 True Reform has its origin in a different spirit and con 
 templates a different end. It recognizes all men as brethren, 
 and desires the emancipation of the miser and monopolist no 
 less than of the hireling and drudge the slave of his own 
 
 o O 
 
 money-bags no less than the slave of another s water-wheel. 
 It recognizes the truth that the Social evils which afflict man 
 kind have their origin in the errors not of a part but of all, 
 and that by the cooperation of all should they be overcome. 
 It compassionates not more the weary servitor of the loom or 
 the hod than the plethoric victim of dyspepsia or hypochondria, 
 dying by inches for the want of that healthful exercise of 
 body and mind which nothing but the consciousness of 
 sinews usefully employed and time laudably spent can really 
 
 
 
48 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 give. It wars with no existing Rights it would deal gently 
 even with established Wrongs, where it can do so without 
 treason to Human Well-being. Its aims are not narrow, nor 
 envious, nor vindictive, and it would be led to distrust itself 
 if those from time to time won to its standard were not 
 elevated and purified thereby. When the strong arms and 
 stout hearts of the men of rugged toil shall have rallied 
 round its standard, it hopes that, however long deferred may 
 be its triumph, their gain will be immediate and certain ; for 
 it will have commenced in themselves. 
 
 But sad necessity ! Esau must have pottage. Price 
 less is his birthright, but its use seems distant, while Hunger 
 is sorely pinching him now. We must not be surprised nor 
 provoked that those who most palpably need a true Social 
 Reform seem most indifferent to its accomplishment, and 
 least willing to make the efforts and sacrifices essential 
 thereto. The hopeless infidelity of the most depressed as to 
 any real improvement in their Social condition is one of the 
 strongest demonstrations of its necessity, and of the duty of 
 those a little less unfortunate to struggle manfully and un 
 grudgingly in the cause of Universal Reform. 
 
 Let us take courage from the evidences of Progress all 
 around us. It is not half a century since the Slave-Trade 
 was in its glory, and men eminent in Church and State 
 made fortunes by engaging in it without reproach or scruple. 
 We have yet Doctors of Divinity who justify laws which 
 authorize the buying and selling of mothers from their chil 
 dren ; but this is evidently dying out; and, in a few years, 
 Sermons proving Slavery a Bible institution will be adver 
 tised as antique curiosities. So of Privateering, War, and 
 the traffic in Intoxicating Liquors. To our impatient 
 spirits, the march of improvement often seems mournfully 
 slow ; but when we consider where the world is and where 
 it has been how recently, for instance, a man could only 
 speak against Slavery, however temperately and guardedly, 
 
EMANCIPATION OF LABOR. 49 
 
 at the hazard of personal violence and defilement, while 
 press after press, on bare suspicion that it would be used to 
 disseminate Anti-Slavery, was destroyed by mob violence, 
 and in one instance the life of its heroic owner and defender 
 along; with it and now, the strolling Abolition lecturer is 
 more likely to be mobbed for asserting that any body in the 
 Free States justifies or palliates Slavery than for condemn 
 ing it himself we ought to be assured that the age which 
 has given us Railroads and Locomotives, Steam Presses and 
 Electric Telegraphs, will not pass away without having 
 effected or witnessed a vast change for the better, alike in the 
 moral and the physical condition of mankind. 
 
 For that change let us faithfully labor and undoubtingly 
 hope. Whether its consummation shall take the precise 
 form which you or I now anticipate or prefer, who shall say ? 
 Nay, who need seriously care ? Enough that we know well 
 that all things are wisely ordered by One whose observation 
 no sparrow s fall can escape : in whose providence no gen 
 erous effort can fail of its reward. It can not be that the 
 vastly-increased Intelligence, Philanthropy, Productive Ca 
 pacity, and Industrial energy of our age shall fail to leave 
 their impress upon the condition of even the most abject and 
 least fortunate of our Race. We could not retard the great 
 forward movement of Humanity if we would ; but each of 
 us may decide for himself whether to share in the glory of 
 promoting it or incur the shame of having looked coldly and 
 indifferently on, preferring present ease and pleasure to the 
 stern calls of Duty, the soft pleadings of Human Brotherhood, 
 bidding us remember those in bonds as bound with them. 
 Each age summons its own heroes ; ours demands those 
 who will labor and if need be suffer reproach in behalf of a 
 Social Order based on Universal Justice, not the dominion 
 of Power over Need ; on the spirit of Christianity, not the 
 supremacy of Mammon. The struggle may be long, but 
 the issue can not be doubtful. Fortunate shall they be es- 
 
50 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 teemed hy future generations who are privileged to stand 
 in Earth s noblest Thermopylae and battle for the rights, for 
 the hopes, for the enduring good, of Humanity in all time to 
 come. It is a distinction to which the loftiest might well as 
 pire, but which proffers opportunity alike to the humblest. 
 Who would slumber through life ingloriously when such 
 crowns are to be won ? 
 
LIFE THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. 51 
 
 II. 
 LIFE THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL: 
 
 A LECTURE. 
 
 THIS dry, old mummy Life, so weird and withered, so 
 parched and hlackened, so hackneyed and threadhare, shall 
 I be able to draw from it a single idea or thought worthy of 
 your patient regard ? Doubtless, there is warm blood yet 
 lingering within the worn tenement, despite the incessant 
 phlebotomy to which it has been subjected ; now and then 
 by skillful leech, but always by swarms ay, clouds of 
 minute, but indefatigable musquitoes. Should I fail utterly 
 in my attempt, blame the operator, not the subject. 
 
 Human Life unlike what we know of the lower creation, 
 unlike what we fairly presume of the higher is twofold, 
 the Actual and the Ideal. Our daily deeds, our daily aspi 
 rations, clash with each other are the positive and negative 
 poles of our being. Desire and Duty are the centrifugal 
 and centripetal forces whose counterbalancing attractions hold 
 us firm to our appointed orbit in the grand career of exist 
 ence. A lofty discontent with the Actual is the main impulse 
 to whatever is noble and heroic, as a mean dissatisfaction 
 with physical conditions a pining for richer food, or dress, 
 or ampler service is the incentive to the ignobler efforts of 
 the million. A thoroughly contented man, could such be 
 found, rnijjht have his uses. He would tend to moderate 
 
52 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 the fierceness of Aspiration and soothe the pangs of Disquiet, 
 so prevalent in the human breast ; but a thoroughly con 
 tented community would be a blank, a failure, a practical 
 nonentity. China affords us some idea of it, by approxi 
 mation ; and to what purpose those Three Hundred Millions 
 of Chinese have lived these forty centuries, who beneath 
 Omniscience can say ? The divergence of the Ideal from 
 the Actual liberates the electricity of life. 
 
 This discrepancy pervades alike the cottage and the 
 palace. The swart laborer discerns the conditions of hap 
 piness only in the luxuries and dainties of the man of 
 millions ; while Croesus, though he hugs his possessions, 
 finds them a heavy and thorny burden. Ease, the grand 
 desideratum, visits neither the rude pallet on which the one 
 rests his toil-worn, aching limbs, nor the downy couch 
 whereon the other nightly struggles with the twin demons 
 Dyspepsia and Hypochondria, to whom his sumptuous fare 
 and exemption from physical labor have rendered him a 
 helpless prey. " O that I were a man !" cries the impatient 
 child, " then I should no more be tyrannized over, and 
 treated as a helpless idiot ! Childhood is allowed no scope 
 no respect ; its joys are few and trifling : haste, haste ! 
 hour of my emancipation !" " O that I were a child again !" 
 responds the man ; " that this load of consuming cares and 
 duties were lifted from my burning, boiling, half-distracted 
 brain ! Childhood ! glad season of innocence and bliss ! 
 when simple life was pleasure, and any casual grief was 
 quickly chased from the mind s dial by whole troops of 
 dancing joys !" The king often looks on the beggar with 
 something akin to envy he would not exchange conditions, 
 as a whole ; but he would give much, very much, to be rid, 
 for a few days, of his tiresome, never-ending round of dull 
 formalities, and absurd, exacting ceremonies, and unloved 
 but inevitable associates, and harassing councils, and state 
 dinners to be eaten with a headache instead of an appetite, 
 
LIFE THE IDE AT, AND THE ACTUAL. 53 
 
 and turbulent provinces, and unreasonable yet tenacious 
 suitors, and murmuring ministers or allies, with death-war 
 rants, demagogues, and a thousand shifting causes of life 
 long disquiet. He would not be a beggar pride and fear 
 forbid the beggar might do very well as a king, while the 
 king would starve as a beggar but, oh, what would he not 
 give for a week s free roving through forest and heather, 
 plucking the fruits fresh and juicy from the branches, instead 
 of having them handed him, dead and tasteless, in golden 
 vessels borne by supple slaves. Food they may still be, but 
 that the palled appetite rejects ; fruits they ceased to be when 
 Cod s sky no longer bent unobstructedly above them, and 
 the ripple of the brook and sighing of the winds through the 
 branches blent no longer with the blithe carol of the birds all 
 around. Not even for a king will nature be defrauded ; and 
 the truant boy, who, by long watching, has found the gold 
 finch s nest, shall vainly consent to sell his prize to another. 
 The nest and its twittering tenants may be carried to my 
 lady s window and made fast there, but that which made 
 their charm remains with the wood and its urchin ranger.* 
 
 It was no hyperbole, therefore, no windy pretense of 
 Macedonia s madman, when he said of the cynic of the 
 tub, " If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes." Ft 
 was his impulse to illustrate Manhood thoroughly in a par 
 ticular direction ; lacking this impulse, he would have been 
 driven to that different sphere illustrated with equal thorough 
 ness by his stoical cotemporary. Perchance he dimly appre 
 hended, through all the pomp and glitter and physical power 
 and fulsome adulation surrounding him, that the philosopher 
 who needed nothing, wished nothing, but his personal share 
 of God s sunshine, was truly mightier than the lord of con 
 tinents who could weep for more kingdoms to conquer. 
 Possibly he discerned that, after a score or so of centuries, 
 
 * Of course, this idea must have been suggested by a passage in Emerson s iiiK 
 poem, " Each in All," though unconsciously. 
 
54 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 the truth should be made apparent even to the common 
 understanding, so that the era which witnessed the overthrow 
 of Darius and Persia, should come to be regarded as the age, 
 not of Alexander, but of Diogenes. But, even if this be ex 
 alting too far the prescience of the son of Philip, let us never 
 distrust his sincerity. He, too, was a veritable man in his 
 perverse, bad way, and knew how to reverence simple Man 
 hood. In a world of Alexanders, a Diogenes would never 
 lack sunshine. 
 
 Have we not here an explanation of the charm which 
 Literature exercises even over the most simple, unlettered, 
 and prosaic ? The Arab circle gathered around the evening 
 fire, hang breathless on the lips of the narrator, as he re 
 counts the wondrous adventures of some Haroun, Saladin, 
 or Rustam, because each listener is engrossed in the devel 
 opment of qualities which he feels stirring within him, and 
 which propitious circumstances might have ripened into 
 deeds like those which challenge his admiration. In the 
 wildest flight of imagination, the least credible adventure of 
 paladin or genii-aided hero, we recognise some before un- 
 discerned possibility of our own nature. The wonder-worker 
 has not yet vaulted far above our heads ; he has ascended, 
 indeed, but has drawn us up with him. I think the ultimate 
 lesson of History is not dissimilar. What do we read with 
 more delight, even in the polished, glittering pages of Gib 
 bon or Robertson, than their narratives of the resignation of 
 empire, the glad exchange of unrivaled power for powerless 
 retirement and seclusion, by Dioclesian and Charles V. ? 
 These are true heroes, because recognised by our hearts as 
 brethren, and brethren of all mankind. Of narrow, one-sided 
 persons mere plowmen, pedagogues, generals or kings 
 the world is full enough ; but the True Man is universal 
 includes all these and more, and he it is we would have 
 brought palpably before us him we would grapple to our 
 hearts with hooks of steel. " Equal to either fortune," 
 
LIFE THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. 55 
 
 was the talismanic expression of a mighty though erring 
 spirit ; the thought would almost redeem a life of crime. It 
 is this sentiment which has made, and will long make, 
 Byron s gloomy heroes popular, in defiance of their misan 
 thropy and utter want of conscience. Childe Harold and 
 Lara have great faults their lives have "little relish of 
 salvation" in them but they display a wide range of capa 
 cities, and are at home in any environment of circumstances 
 they are men, and regard all around them with searching, 
 manly gaze, looking straight through gauds and trappings to 
 the unclothed heart, and testing all things by absolute 
 standards. Misanthropic themselves, they yet inspire in us 
 a deeper confidence and a loftier pride in humanity. We 
 see their error, and avoid it if we choose ; the trust they in 
 spire in the yet unfathomed capacities of our nature endures. 
 The military leader who, having won by his ability a mighty 
 and conclusive victory, shuns the parade of triumph, the 
 roads strewn with flowers, and lined with grateful, adoring 
 thousands, the civic banquets and the munificence of rescued 
 kings, choosing rather to commune with himself in the deep 
 forest, or retire to the dim cloister, there to ponder over 
 Man s career and destiny this is the hero our hearts yearn 
 to, for by him they are chastened and exalted. He has 
 added something, by exploration at least, to the common 
 domain of our race. And thus our Washington, achieving 
 no brilliant or astonishing success as a General or Statesman, 
 vaulted at once to the topmost round of greatness by sin 
 cerely, steadfastly refusing a continuance of power, exalting 
 himself above all conquerors and autocrats by simply decli 
 ning their company, and refusing to be accounted more or 
 other than a man. 
 
 Rare indeed are the individuals who live exactly the life 
 they would whose Ideal and Actual exist in congenial, 
 blended harmony. The son but seldom finds the conditions 
 he seeks beneath the kindly, paternal roof; as Manhood 
 
56 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 opens to his gaze, he quits its warm shelter, and strikes off 
 into the bleak world without, to find or make his future 
 sphere and home. Art, Trade, Adventure, Professional 
 Life, present their varied attractions, and each wins some ; 
 while to others, the stormy, heaving Ocean wears a winning 
 smile, and even grim and horrid War finds votaries. A dis 
 content with the Actual is pouring Europe s surplus millions 
 on the Western shore of the Atlantic, and thence over the 
 whole surface of our continent. It is dotting the prairies of 
 Illinois with the cabins of the. sons of New-England, and 
 year by year the smoke of the squatter s lodge rises nearer 
 and nearer the Rocky Mountains, wiiile hardy bands have 
 already passed those formidable barriers, and are lining 
 with their tents the shores of the mighty Pacific. Torrid 
 heats and Arctic snows are lightly braved by thousands at 
 all times, eagerly courting any change from the wearisome 
 inanity of their past existence. Daily the city s crowded 
 streets are pressed by thousands fresh from the plow and the 
 rural workshop, who mind not how thronged the course on 
 which they are entering, so that they can but secure a foot 
 hold upon it, and Hope beckons to them from the distant 
 goal. But intermingled with that host of eager, sanguine 
 strivers, I see another, it seems an older, thinner, feebler 
 band, who also have their trunks and portmanteaus beside 
 them : they are the sated or oftener disappointed seekers of 
 Wealth or Fame, who, having sped their arrow and spent 
 their strength in the rugged rivalry of the mart, are seeking 
 once more the country s green lanes and shady quiet for 
 health, perchance, or peace, or space to breathe, and time to 
 think or pray at all events for grassy graves. Not theirs 
 the firm, elastic step, the gallant, sturdy bearing ; the soul 
 intent on stern encounter and high achievement. No more 
 is * Excelsior their motto, but Implora pace; their 
 youth s Ideal, whether realized or not, has faded, flickered, 
 disappeared, giving place to one less lofty, more readily 
 
LIFE THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. 57 
 
 attainable. A snug cottage and a few pliant acres would 
 now be happiness to him whose ambition once clutched at 
 mines, or squares, or kingdoms. Who shall say that career 
 has been a failure which, though it has won no golden store, 
 has wrought this change of spirit ? 
 
 A discontent with the Actual is the mainspring of most 
 that is noble in human endeavor. It spurs the traveler into 
 the darkest dens of African barbarism or Tartar cruelty, and 
 sends the Missionary to spend his life rapidly in sickly Bur 
 mese huts or frozen Esquimaux lodges joyfully dying that 
 those he never saw till now may live for ever. The same 
 spirit is now lighting the dens of loathsomest vice with the 
 unwonted presence of angel purity and pity, and braving the 
 filth and noisomeness of prisons, heedless of aught save the 
 human hearts there shackled and pining for sympathy and 
 freedom. Not even the scaffold s grim appointments can 
 repel its fearless approaches, for wherever it sees Humanity, 
 however scarred and ulcerated, however defiled or blasted by 
 sin s ravages, it recognises the lineaments of a brother. 
 
 But a revolt against the tame insipidity of common life 
 impels to evil as well as good hurls the warrior, the slaver, 
 the pirate, on his fell career, and blackens earth with carnage 
 and ruin. It is not enough that man, as he is, should act up 
 to the standard of his aspirations, for these also need to be 
 corrected and exalted. 
 
 Two antagonist thoughts Self and All lie at the bot 
 tom of the many warring tendencies in the breasts of man 
 kind. Their symbols may be found in the geocentric and 
 heliocentric theories of planetary motion. The advocates 
 of the former appeal with success to the human senses unin- 
 stmcted by Science to our eyes to bear witness that the 
 Sun does truly move around the earth to our position and 
 that of all unfixed, gravitating bodies, to prove that the 
 Earth is a vast plane and does not turn over day by day. 
 
58 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 The evidence for this theory is such that its truth may be 
 said to be intuitively perceived by every infant. But by- 
 and-by comes along the Astronomer with his telescope, the 
 Mathematician with his Geometry and Algebra, and reverses 
 this conviction, enlarging the bounds of the visible Universe, 
 and developing Laws of which the child knew nothing. Yet 
 by far the larger part of mankind still live and die, as all 
 formerly lived and died, in the undoubting belief that the 
 Earth is daily circled by the Sun and Stars. 
 
 So with human character and effort. The child is born a 
 citizen of the great Commonwealth of Man, but his entrance 
 to it is through the narrow gate of the Family. His practical 
 education there, during the most impressible and important 
 period of his life, stamps into his mind three cardinal maxims, 
 namely : 
 
 1st. To take special good care of himself in all cases, and 
 shape everything he can control to his own enjoyment or 
 uses ; 
 
 2d. To bestow whatever he does not thus need, or can 
 not make available to his personal ends, on the narrow circle 
 by which he is surrounded ; 
 
 3d. To give all beyond this his blessing, for instance 
 to the general good of mankind. 
 
 Who can fail to see that the soul is distorted, shriveled, 
 dwarfed, by this schooling ? that the boy becomes a selfish, 
 sensual, grasping man in fact, only a politer beast of 
 prey? The influences most immediately surrounding him 
 from the cradle have all tended to this. Mine and Thine 
 the former to be prized and treasured the latter to be ac 
 quired or left to take care of itself are the first distinctions 
 impressed on his unfolding intellect. All within this narrow 
 tenement, within these encircling fences, is ours, to be 
 guarded, toiled for, beautified ; all without is others , to be 
 obtained, envied, or disregarded. The stranger child who 
 oversteps that magic ring in search of some fruit or herb, 
 
LIFE THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. 59 
 
 which, though enjoyed to satiety by us, would be luxury to 
 him, is to be saluted with a stone or mastiff for his depraved 
 temerity, and driven back to sate his gnawing hunger on the 
 nettles of the highway. Now I am not quarreling with this 
 as a fault of the individual, or a wanton exhibition of churl 
 ishness. On the contrary, I recognise it as a necessary 
 feature of a system necessary while the system shall en 
 dure. I am but regarding it in the light of its influence on 
 the molding of Human Character. And in this light I do 
 not hesitate to say that the Family and Social influences 
 surrounding our youth are most unfavorable to the develop 
 ment of manly, generous, sympathizing natures. These in 
 fluences tend to educate the human race into two classes, 
 thieves and constables to foster an eternal antagonism be 
 tween Wealth and Want and throw every one into the 
 attitude of a scout in an enemy s country, pressing cautiously 
 forward with eyes piercing the thickets around him and rifle 
 in the hollow of his arm. Here and there an individual tri 
 umphs over all these influences, by the force of rare qualities 
 or a singularly happy training, and shows us what Mankind 
 might be, give them but fair play. But a race of Heroes of 
 Humanity a People elevated to Love and Universal Bles 
 sing such we have not and can not expect until the influ 
 ences which overshadow Childhood, our modes of training 
 youth for [Manhood, are radically changed. 
 
 And a race of Heroes was never more needed on earth 
 than now. The old manifestations of Heroism have become 
 effete or abhorrent, but the Nineteenth Century has need of 
 many a Hercules, a Hector, an Achilles, who shall be all its 
 own. Its Patriotism demands relief from the vain boasters, 
 the self-seekers, the noisy braggarts, who, reckless of general 
 misery and ruin, would fain involve nations wantonly in 
 butchery and deadly hate, that they may chance to riot in 
 the spoils of the universal devastation. Its religion pleads 
 for release from the stifling bondages of Cant and Formalism 
 
b O HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 from sour asceticism and a pestilent wrangling on points 
 of non-practical belief. It protests against laying emphasis 
 on any article of a creed which can not be embodied and 
 evinced in a life. Its Philanthropy, pointing to new, vast, 
 slightly-explored fields inviting effort for Human Well-being, 
 calls on the generous, the hopeful, the ardent, to engage 
 heartily in the work of securing to the next generation a bet 
 ter world than that which we received from the last. 
 
 Ah ! if we had but a few regiments of life-enlisted volun 
 teers in the service of Humanity, who, having first graduated 
 their own physical wants to the standard of real necessity, 
 should consecrate all their powers, mental and physical, to 
 the persistent, unwearied, unshackled increase of Human 
 Happiness and diminution of the causes of Suffering, the 
 world could not remain where it is, but must move forward 
 swiftly to that fairer future which can not be merely a Poet s 
 dream. The history of Lot s sojourn in and escape from 
 Sodom is not without its enduring lesson. States, cities, 
 communities, are preserved from destruction, so long as pre 
 served at all, by so much virtue as they embody ; when that 
 wanes to insufficiency, the remnant may escape or linger, 
 but the destruction of the depraved mass is inevitable. And, 
 as the absolute lack of moral good is inexorable ruin, so is 
 its unusual prevalence the sure occasion of strength and 
 prosperity. There is no habitable portion of our globe 
 where a thoroughly virtuous population might not reconstitute 
 the Garden of Eden. 
 
 But to the formation of such a people, few influences con 
 duce, while those which forbid it are incessant and innumer 
 able. There has been little systematic training to heroism 
 of any sort since the days of the Spartans. Our children are 
 steeped in selfishness from their cradles, and nine-tenths of 
 them are practically taught to dread Useful Labor as odious 
 and degrading, and to regard idleness, with sensuality and 
 ostentation, as the summitm bonum of life. I know that some- 
 
LIFE THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. CI 
 
 thing different from this is stolidly dealt out, though never 
 pointedly, consistently taught, from the Catechisms ; but I 
 am speaking of the every-day lessons, and not those which 
 are inculcated only on Sunday, if ever. How many chil 
 dren in a thousand, whether rich or poor, are taught to re 
 gard virtuous poverty in humble garb as really more to be 
 honored and desired than wealth undistinguished by worth ? 
 How many are taught to heed God s appointment, " Six days 
 shalt thou labor," as plainly directed to them, and by them 
 to be joyfully and faithfully obeyed, irrespective of riches or 
 station ? How many are early taught that they can have no 
 right to squander on their own appetites or pride that which 
 the law of the land says is theirs, but for want of which an 
 other suffers ? What reverend monitor now says, habitually and 
 earnestly, and not unheededly, to the child of affluence and 
 luxury, Sell all thou hast, and give to the Poor, then follow 
 Him, whose only personal disciples were the poor? Alas ! 
 the flower of life is cankered in the bud, and what should be 
 beauty and fragrance is turned to deformity and death ! 
 
 Next to the lessons of infancy come those of the School, 
 with its constant bickerings and ardent, envious rivalries for 
 advancement and honors. All is intensely individual 
 egotistic. The school-boy s triumphs are won over and not 
 for his comrades. His glory is their mortification and 
 shame ; his disasters the theme of their undisguised, un 
 checked exultation. Thence he passes into some sphere 
 of active life, and finds the same law everywhere prevailing, 
 and producing its natural- results. The brilliant leader at the 
 bar makes a rapid fortune, but the unknown hundreds of 
 middling counselors are left to starve ; and the popular 
 physician who is supposed to cure everybody dooms his fellow 
 practitioners to that consumption for which Falstaff could 
 get no remedy. Everywhere the victor in the grand battle 
 of Life advances to grasp the laurel over piles of unheeded 
 G 
 
62 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 corpses. He can not afford to calculate too nicely the moral 
 nature and consequences of each act he must live ; and 
 the more flagrant and palpable the guilt of the felon whom 
 the lawyer s skill saves from justice, the more brilliant is that 
 lawyer s triumph, the more extravagant his fee, the more 
 rapid his march to fame and fortune. 
 
 But perhaps the most imperative of the influences of 
 practical life to narrow and distort the man is that exercised 
 by Traffic. To obtain More for Less this is the aim and 
 the impulse of Trade. The game of the counter, like that 
 of the boxing-ring, places two persons opposite each other at 
 proper distance, and bids them shake hands and begin. 
 That each may be a gainer by the bargain is of course practi 
 cable ; (though which of them naturally cares for this ?) that 
 both may be honest men is freely conceded. The criticism 
 impeaches not the men but the attitude in which they are 
 pitted against each other. Where Wealth is the object of 
 general and eager desire, where Labor is loathed and Luxury 
 coveted it is too hard on frail Human Nature to place it 
 where a slight departure from rectitude may win its 
 thousands. The temptation may be resisted it doubtless 
 often is ; for Trade has furnished its full quota of the upright 
 and more than its share of the benevolent of our race ; but 
 while these may probably have owed to Commerce the means 
 of being liberal, I doubt whether any have been indebted to 
 it for their integrity. Of that, a man must carry all into a 
 life of buying and selling that he expects to bring out again, 
 and he can hardly afford to commence business on a small 
 capital either. If a man of unsettled or weak principles 
 ever trafficked five years without becoming a rogue, he 
 must present a striking evidence of the sustaining, saving 
 mercy of an overruling Providence. 
 
 The position and sphere of the independent, virtuous, con 
 tented Farmer has from earliest time been pointed at as one 
 
LIFE THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. G3 
 
 of the most fortunate and healthful, mentally as well as 
 physically, that earth can afford. Living in the immediate 
 and visible presence of the all-embracing Heavens, directly 
 dependent on the Author of all for whatever blesses him, he 
 would seem to be marked out for integrity and elevation of 
 sentiment. Nature will not be cheated ; whoever shall under 
 take to palm upon her a single bushel of chalk for lime, for 
 instance, will find her incapable of relishing his ingenuity. 
 So much for so much, is her invariable law ; no shams nor 
 appearances avail anything with her even her children the 
 crows are not half so often taken in by them as the contrivers 
 imagine. With unequaled advantages for the maintenance 
 or attainment of health and vigor, with a thousand silent 
 preachers of the blessedness of Temperance, Exercise, 
 Justice, and Truth, constantly attending him, the Farmer s 
 character would seem insensibly, irresistibly moulded to 
 probity and honor. In his vocation, a bow and a smirk avail 
 not ; that which comes not from the core is nothing and 
 passes for nothing. Only where he ceases to be a worker 
 and begins to be a trader in other men s labor or the fruits 
 of his own, does the temptation to injustice and insincerity 
 begin. Living ever in the presence of Heaven, and in 
 direct, visible dependence on its free bounties, we should 
 say that the Farmer s bearing should ever tell of the free, 
 bland breezes, and his countenance reflect the stars. 
 
 And yet, on practical acquaintance, we find him quite 
 often another being narrow, prejudiced, and selfish ; per 
 verse, sensual, and depraved ; a foe to other men s good and 
 his own. And not this merely, but his sons have no love 
 for his vocation ; they too generally escape it w r hen they can, 
 or embrace it only because they have not the ability or detest 
 the study necessary to make them anything else. From the 
 noblest and richest rural homestead, you will see the youth 
 ful heir eagerly hieing to the distant city, there to consecrate 
 years to the exhibition of sarsnets to simpering, shopping 
 
64 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 misses, or to the service of some six-by-eight subterranean 
 money-changer s den, which a hedgehog would disdain to 
 inhabit. Where one youth is heartily seeking the Farmer s 
 life from choice, there are forty striving or pining to escape 
 it. Thus are our cities overgrown and bloated with a re 
 dundant, thriftless population, who, having no legitimate 
 sphere of exertion, underbid each other for employment, and 
 are too often driven by want and despair into depraved and 
 forbidden courses. Talent, knowledge, and skill, which are 
 greatly needed in the sphere of rural life, crowd and jostle 
 each other on the city s pavements, and often sell to Capital 
 for a month s livelihood some happy invention or combination 
 which should have insured a competence for life. Alas for 
 human frailty, beset by ravening hunger or pinching frost ! 
 full-pursed depravity is enabled oft to drive still harder 
 bargains than these ! 
 
 Facts abundantly indicate that the actual position of the 
 cultivator is not what it might and should be. He ought to 
 be, by science and wisdom, the master of the elements, yet is, 
 through ignorance and imperfection, their slave. The floods 
 which should fertilize his soil, often wash it away, and with 
 it the fruits of his labor. The winds, which should drive 
 the plow through his naked fields, or spend their force on 
 smoothing away any undesired irregularities of surface, do 
 far oftener prostrate his granaries and fences. The electric 
 currents, which should push forward his vegetation with a 
 rapidity and vigor unimagined save by the initiated few, are 
 left to shatter his house or barn, perhaps only destroying 
 therewith his annual harvest, perhaps finishing himself 
 and his labors. Instead of being, as in Manufactures or 
 Navigation, the director and controller of the blind forces of 
 Nature to his own use and profit, the Farmer allows these to 
 escape him in uselessness or mischief, and feebly, inefficiently 
 supplies their place by overtaxing his owasinews. Hence 
 weariness, disgust, and meager recompense ; hence the 
 
LIFE THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. 65 
 
 accomplished or longed-for escape of countless thousands 
 from the paltry drudgery of the hoe and spade to the larger 
 hopes and more intellectual sphere of effort elsewhere 
 afforded. 
 
 It is the mission of our age to regenerate and dignify 
 Agriculture, by rendering it practically an intellectual and 
 expansive vocation. Within its sphere lie yet enfolded 
 the germs of future conquests far mightier and nobler than 
 those of any Caesar or Napoleon. These petty, cramped 
 enclosures, these deforming, dwarfing fences, which render 
 the landscape so insipid and characterless, shall yet be swept 
 away by the genius of Improvement, through the application 
 of the truths of Science to the daily economies of life. Then 
 the brook shall no more brawl idly down the declivity while 
 the laborer delves wearily yet ineffectively by its side, and 
 Man will no more stoop doggedly to burdens which the free 
 breezes would gladly bear to their appointed destination. 
 We stand but on the threshold of the world of Science made 
 practical, and our vision rests on and is bounded by its appli 
 cation to Manufactures alone. Wondrous as is the progress 
 which half a century has witnessed in this direction, it is as 
 nothing to what remains to be accomplished for the whole 
 circle of Human Industry, and especially in the department 
 of Agriculture, to which nearly all the Natural Sciences, as 
 well as Mechanical forces, shall yet advantageously minister. 
 The farmer of the coming age master and manager of 
 steam rather than tyrant of enslaved, toil-worn, hungry beasts, 
 shall not need painfully to heave the ponderous rock from 
 its base, but will rather, by some simple chemical solvent, 
 pulverize it to fertile dust where it lies. To his informed, 
 observant mind, the changes of temperature, the succession 
 of calm and storm, shall bring no surprise, no disaster, being 
 unerringly foreseen and profited by like the rotation of the 
 seasons. For his behoof the plow shall pursue its unguided, 
 resistless course across the spacious landscape, and the 
 6* 
 
66 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 following seed shall fall regularly into its appointed place, 
 without need of special oversight or guidance. The in 
 equalities of surface and of soil shall disappear before the 
 steady, unexpensive action of natural forces thereon ; steam 
 giants shall loosen and deepen the soil to any extent de 
 sirable, sweeping down forests as a fire does the dry grass 
 of the prairies, and extracting roots like a tornado. There 
 is no practical limit to the powers at all times presenting them 
 selves to do the bidding of Man, had he but the talent and 
 genius to adapt and apply them. Nature wills that the plow, 
 the sythe, the axe, the harvest-wain, shall move forward on 
 their proper errands, as irresistibly, inexpensively as the saw, 
 the throstle, the shuttle, and with equally beneficent results. 
 Actually, the capacity of human labor to produce fabrics has 
 been increased some twenty-fold within the last century, 
 while in its application to rural pursuits it has not been more 
 than doubled, if so much. This disparity is not necessary, 
 but factitious, and must be overcome. Half a century will 
 suffice to bring forward Agriculture to the point which 
 Manufacture has now reached, banishing for ever the still 
 lingering fears of occasional famine, and rendering food as 
 abundant and accessible as the common elements. 
 
 Yet the Farmer s vocation needs something more than in 
 creased efficiency and mastery of Nature to reconcile it 
 with a lofty and generous ideal. We need a change in the 
 man himself, and in those circumstances which vitally affect 
 his character. He is now too nearly an isolated being. His 
 world is a narrow circle of material objects he calls his own, 
 within which he is an autocrat, though out of it little more 
 than a cipher. His associates are few, and these mainly 
 rude dependents and inferiors. His daily discourse savors 
 of beeves and swine, and the death of a sheep on his farm 
 creates more sensation in his circle than the fall of a hero 
 elsewhere. Of the refining, harmonizing, expanding in 
 fluences of general society, he has little experience. For 
 
LIFE THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. 67 
 
 extensive travel or intercourse with minds which have 
 profited by a large comparison of nations, climates, customs, 
 he has but rare opportunities. The family circle, precious 
 as are its enjoyments, and healthful as are its proper 
 influences, is not alone sufficient to form the noblest 
 character or satisfy all the aspirations of the human heart. 
 The lofty, ingenuous soul revolts at the idea of wearing out its 
 earthly career mainly in the rearing of brutes and the com 
 posting of manures, shut out from all free range of congenial 
 associates and obedience to nobler impulses. It feels that 
 a human life is ill spent in the mere production of corn and 
 cattle. Hence our youth of largest promise too generally 
 escape from the drudgery of their paternal acres to court the 
 equally repulsive slavery of the office or the counter not 
 because it is preferable in itself, but because it gives scope to 
 larger hopes, suggests larger possibilities, and at all events is 
 supposed to afford larger opportunities for observation, for 
 intellectual development, and choice of companions. Here 
 is one cause of the inferior development and progress in 
 Agriculture, as compared with other departments of industrial 
 effort. The genius and intellect which should have taught 
 
 o 
 
 us to * speed the plow with Titanic energy has been attracted 
 to other vocations, leaving that of the old patriarchs as sterile 
 as some bald mountain on which every rain levies tribute to 
 fertilize the surrounding valleys. Not till the solitary farm 
 house, with its half-dozen denizens, its mottled array of mere 
 patches of auxiliary acres, its petty flock and herd, its 
 external decorations of piggery, stable-yard, etc., making it 
 the focus of all noisome and villainous odors, shall have been 
 replaced by some arrangement more genial, more expansive, 
 more social in its aspects, affording larger scope to aspiration 
 and a wider field for the infinite capacities of man s nature, 
 may we hope to arrest the tendencies which make the farmer 
 too often a boor or a clod, and the cultivation of the earth a 
 mindless, repugnant drudgery, when it should be the noblest, 
 
68 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 the most intellectual and the most desired of human employ 
 ments. 
 
 But in truth the whole atmosphere of our better education, 
 the influence of our higher seminaries, tends to unfit our 
 noblest youth for lives of peaceful industry, and win away 
 their affections therefrom. The young man acquires or is 
 given an education, as it is technically called, in order that 
 he may be something else and better than a farmer. The 
 mother s darling, the hope and pride of the family, must be 
 fitted for some career less insignificant and slavish than that 
 of his progenitors. So the cracked sugar-bowl is relieved 
 of its slowly-gathered dollars, and the budding genius is 
 sent to the academy and thence to college, not with a view 
 to his becoming a larger, better man in any abstract sense 
 still less with the remotest notion of making him a better 
 farmer but purely that he may escape his father s grovel 
 ing, despised vocation, and become something nobler and 
 more exalted than a tiller of the soil. His first lessons of 
 contempt for all the ways of manual industry are therefore 
 taken by the paternal fireside ; and these are quickly rein 
 forced by those of the University, with its courtly airs and 
 lily fingers. With all the wisdom hoarded in and dispensed 
 from those classic halls, the wisdom of God in making Man 
 dependent for the satisfaction of his most inevitable wants on 
 his habitual toil the wisdom which decrees, In the sweat 
 of thy face shalt thou eat bread is not perceived and ac 
 knowledged. Under the auspices of a President and 
 Faculty, whose lives have almost necessarily been given to 
 books, to ideas and words, to the exclusion of manual exer 
 tion with whom the extraction of roots has uniformly been 
 a mathematical, never a horticultural process half of whom 
 are paying, through dyspepsia, gout, or nervous derangement, 
 the penalty of violating the law aforesaid the youth enters 
 upon his new career. Should he cherish some lingering 
 regard for that wise ordinance which demands labor of all as 
 
LIFE THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. GO 
 
 the inexorable condition of health and vigor, he speedily 
 succumbs to the genus loci the atmosphere and the senti 
 ment which surround him. The student in one of our pop 
 ular colleges must be daring and wilful who would venture 
 even to saw or carry up his own wood, however convinced 
 of the wholesomeness or necessity of such occupation. But 
 instead of work he is admonished to avail himself of that 
 vague, illegitimate something or more commonly nothing 
 termed (after the similitude of Bottom s dream) Exercise, 
 which, to a prisoner chained to a dungeon wall, is very com 
 mendable. And tnus, giving some ten hours per day to 
 study, as many to food and rest, and the balance to recrea 
 tions which are recreations only and hardly, the divorce of 
 Learning from Labor of Science from Practice of Man 
 the Thinker from Man the Worker is rendered complete, 
 and the educated youth goes out into the world to preach, 
 or plead, or physic, with such success as may attend him, 
 but with an implanted, usually inveterate repugnance to regu 
 lar Manual Labor in all its departments a feeling that his 
 position is above it, and that he would be degraded by de 
 scending to it a fixed resolution to avoid it evermore if 
 possible. The evil consequences of this mistake are more 
 numerous than could be compressed into a volume. The 
 young physician or attorney who has spent his last shilling, 
 and perhaps incurred onerous debts, in pursuing his studies, 
 must not devote his leisure hours, while awaiting the slow 
 approaches of business, to downright, practical labor in the 
 fields or workshops around him, where other men work and 
 earn, although his circumstances pressingly require and his 
 health might be re-established by such a course. - Should he 
 do so, he would be adjudged sordid or mean-spirited, and 
 his attempt to establish himself professionally a conceded 
 failure. But far worse than this are the jealousy and aver 
 sion aroused in the breasts of the working class by the visible 
 repugnance to and disdain of their pursuits by the educated, 
 
70 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 and the desire evinced to keep the intellectual distinction of 
 caste as broad and rigid as possible. Hence, in part, the 
 failure of the liberally educated to exert their due influence 
 over the opinions and course of the more numerous classes 
 the want of any quick and cordial sympathy between the 
 learned and the unlearned, as members of the same social 
 body. In fact, the common impulse of the larger mass is to 
 oppose rather than support whatever the more fortunate and 
 better informed appear to favor a most deplorable and 
 calamitous impulse, especially in a Republic. We must 
 learn to vanquish this, and the removal of its cause is its only 
 effectual remedy. 
 
 Bear with one more illustration of the pernicious con 
 trast created in thB unfolding mind between the ideas 
 awakened by our present or indeed any thorough course of 
 Intellectual Culture, and the pursuits of gainful Industry, as 
 they appear and are carried on around us. An ardent, ingen 
 uous, impressible youth, leaves his parental fireside for the 
 academy and college, where he is made master of the Dead 
 Languages and their rich treasures becomes acquainted 
 with Classical Antiquity, and imbued with its spirit. But 
 of that Antiquity, History has borne down to us only or 
 mainly the bloody aspect it delights in and expatiates upon 
 the doings of daring and violent men. The victory of Marathon 
 the defence of Thermopylae the passage of the Granicus 
 the exploits of Achilles, Alexander, Hannibal, and 
 Caesar these and the like are the staple of the student s 
 daily contemplations and nightly dreams. Regarding the 
 really great events in man s annals the first use of Iron, 
 the Invention of the Plow, the Spindle, the Loom, the Mari 
 ner s Compass, History is almost if not entirely silent. 
 Archimedes is rescued from oblivion by the accident of his 
 connection with the defence of Syracuse while the inven 
 tion even of Printing, so recent and so mighty a trans- 
 
LIFE THE ACTUAL AND THE IDEAL, 71 
 
 former of the mental world, is claimed by different nations 
 for different and still obscure men, though we know well 
 who first compounded Gunpowder, where Cannon were 
 first used, and where the Bayonet was invented. The 
 most peaceful and gentle youth is thus insensibly taught, by 
 the influences surrounding him in school and college, to re 
 gard Fame with a passionate longing, from observing that the 
 heroes of History have been and still are the theme of study 
 and admiration in every seminary throughout the civilized 
 world, and that upon their lives as models the characters of 
 the educated class in all time are molded. Not merely the 
 love of Fame, for itself, is thus taught, but that Fame is a 
 child of Courts, and Camps, and Cabinets, visiting rarely 
 or never the humble dwellings wherein unselfish Philan 
 thropy labors to soften anguish and remove from lowly souls 
 the stains of Vice and Sin. At length, from years of fasci 
 nating familiarity with whatever is most dazzling and theatri 
 cal in human annals, the young man is at once recalled to 
 the practical realities of life he has finished his education 
 at least, his studies. He reenters the work-day world a 
 very different being from that which he left it. He has now to 
 choose a pursuit and a sphere of life-long effort. The range 
 for selection is wide ; for, if his education has been real and 
 thorough, he is by it better qualified for any useful vocation. 
 But how tame, how monotonous, how frivolous, seem the 
 common ways of mere productive labor, to a mind so trained 
 and occupied ! How insipid, after years of battling and con 
 quering with Scipio or Maryborough, to come down to mere 
 mowing and gardening with Jones and Jenkins ! The im 
 patient, aspiring soul revolts at it not so much that the 
 work itself is fatiguing and repugnant, as that it seems unwor 
 thy to engross a lifetime a glaring misuse and waste of 
 its capacious, sharpened faculties. Nor is this feeling con 
 fined to the graduates of our universities. From every 
 country village, every rural hamlet, the better class of youth 
 
72 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 are fleeing, they care not whither, to escape the insupport 
 able exactions of a life of toil which has ceased to bear due 
 relations to or satisfy the wants of their enkindled souls. In 
 vain do plodding, old-school fathers grumble at the wayward 
 and preposterous ambition of their children in vain do they 
 attribute their perversity to laziness or folly, and wish the 
 march of Mind, would keep away from honest poor men s 
 houses, and not spoil their sons. The simple truth is, 
 that the Intellectual Culture of our age has outgrown its 
 Physical and Social Progress, creating anarchy and confu 
 sion. Idle is all grumbling at or lamenting this advance 
 the shadow will not go back on the dial. What we have to 
 do is not to draw back the van, but to bring up the rear. 
 We must renovate and reanimate our Industry, by bringing 
 to bear upon its processes all the powers of Science, all the 
 forces of Nature, all the vast economies of Combination. 
 We must call on the college, the closet, the office, to send 
 out their ablest and wisest to lead the advance of the grand 
 army of Industrial Progress, as its engineers, staff, and offi 
 cers of the line. We must replace the grim Knights of old 
 War with a Chivalry of Industry, as honored and beloved as 
 any Knightly Order, and infinitely more deserving of honor 
 than the best. We must rearouse and redirect that enthu 
 siasm which for centuries precipitated myriads after myriads 
 of Christendom s best and bravest to perish by sword or 
 famine on the rocky wastes of Palestine, battling to the last 
 to rescue the Redeemer s sepulchre from the defiling tread 
 of the Infidel, and must bring its compact, resistless 
 phalanxes to bear upon all the physical and tangible causes 
 of Man s degradation and suffering. Guided by Science, 
 impelled by a lofty devotion to Human Good, sustained by 
 the sympathies and supplies of the whole civilized world, let 
 us hope to see the vast armament of this new Chivalry ad 
 vance to the draining of pestilent marshes by a single week s 
 animated, arduous exertion a triumph nobler than any 
 
LIFE THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. 73 
 
 Cannae or Waterloo the reclamation of swamps, deserts, 
 and sterile regions, until Sahara shall rejoice once more in 
 verdure and fragrance, the Campagna become a garden, and 
 stately forests belt the vast, bare plains which stretch away 
 from either declivity of the Rocky Mountains. Of the phys 
 ical improvement, whether as regards fertility or accessibility, 
 whereof the Earth is susceptible, we have begun to entertain 
 some glimmering notion ; but of the facility with which Sci 
 ence, Experience, and Combined Effort shall enable us to 
 effect this improvement, no adequate idea has yet been 
 formed. The true idea, once formed and disseminated, will 
 but briefly precede the consummation. 
 
 Enough, for the occasion, of the definitive and the critical. 
 Let us bestow a few moments in closing on some broader, 
 more animating aspects of Life in the Nineteenth Century. 
 
 Say what we will and justly may of the incurable depravity 
 of Man, as evinced in the universality of Sin and Crime, this 
 world is better and more hopeful than it has been. The 
 robber and the murderer still skulk and prowl among us, in 
 sulting the lone majesty of Night with revealments of their 
 hideous presence, but Murder in the face of Day and Heaven 
 the wholesale butchery of Nations, the robbery of Cities 
 and Provinces is no longer perpetrated without shame nor 
 witnessed without indignant horror. The stifling to death 
 of a few hundred Arabs in a cave, though shielded by the 
 panoply of undoubted and relentless war, shocks the sensi 
 bilities of Christendom, and all apologies are instinctively 
 rejected as adding sophistry to crime. The world regards 
 admiringly the protracted defense of their homes and hearths 
 by the bold mountaineers of Caucasus, wishing them a trium 
 phant deliverance from the toils of their mighty oppressor, 
 and every blow well struck at the minions of his power 
 thrills with rapture the general heart. For Poland, the un- 
 
74 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 fortunate, betrayed, crushed and bleeding, the tears of the 
 nations flow in rivers, and the fervent prayers of sympathi 
 zing, sorrowing millions ascend unceasingly to God. And 
 even Ireland, for seven centuries the prey of Domestic trea 
 son and Foreign rapine, prostrate and trampled beneath the 
 heel of a double tyranny of Sword and Creed, at last lifts her 
 eyes in hope and mute supplication, and, discarding the gory 
 weapons of ruffianism and murder, trusts her cause wholly 
 to Humanity and to God even her sublime but less im 
 posing appeal begins to be heeded and felt ; it melts the 
 hard crust of sectarian prejudice and hatred it touches the 
 souls of the generous and manly and the glad shout of 
 Earth s enraptured millions shall hail the swiftly hastening 
 hour of her emancipation. 
 
 Nor am I discouraged by the fact that Kings and Courts 
 still plot against Liberty and Justice, or even that Nations, 
 blinded by rapacity or ambition, are led into the commission 
 of gigantic crimes. I see also that these crimes, if not less 
 atrocious than formerly, are less frequent, less unblushing, and 
 require to be sugared o er with sonorous, captivating phrases, 
 indicating a devotion to Truth and Good. To steal provinces 
 for the sake of stealing or of enjoying them would not pass 
 uncensured now, as in the days of Xerxes, or Norman Wil 
 liam, or Prussian Frederick. It must be styled tranquiliz- 
 ing a frontier, or putting an end to anarchy, or establishing 
 justice, or extending the blessings of freedom, or something 
 of the sort. Hypocrisy, that homage paid by Vice to Virtue, 
 at least testifies the existence of that virtue without which the 
 homage would be vain. In a former age, civilized men uncere 
 moniously robbed savages of their possessions for God s sake 
 and kept them for their own. Now it is deemed meet and 
 decorous to incur the expense of making some few of the 
 intended victims thoroughly insensible from strong drink, 
 and thus procuring what can afterward be pronounced their 
 signatures to a treaty of cession, surrendering lands which 
 
LIFE THE ACTUAL AND THE IDEAL. 75 
 
 they had no more right to sell away from their brethren and 
 their children than to sell the waters and the sky. And, 
 with all this formality and seeming, the operation is often 
 deemed imperfect unless sanctified by the presence and ac 
 tive participation of some Christian divine. These little 
 attentions to the unities and proprieties, which the thought 
 less would pass unheeded or with a sneer of contempt, are 
 indeed cheering signs of Human Progress. They demon 
 strate the existence of an awakening though still drugged 
 and drowsy National and Universal Conscience. They 
 irradiate by contrast the raven darkness, unabashed ferocity 
 and unbridled lust of Man s earlier career. The light they 
 cast on the page of History heralds the dawn of a nobler and 
 grander era, in which nations shall realize that for them no 
 more than for individuals is there any possible escape from 
 the inflexibility of God s Providence, which steadily puts 
 aside all pretences, all shams, and looks intently into the im 
 pulse and essence of every action, awarding to each the 
 exact and inexorable recompense of its merits. In the light 
 of that era, Virtue will walk abroad unshielded by Force, 
 unindebted to Opinion, winning all to obey her dictates if 
 not from intrinsic love of her, then from love of happiness 
 and themselves. 
 
 But this, though an effective defence against wrong-doing, 
 can never be the true impulse to a life of active, positive 
 goodness. That virtue which is based on a conviction of 
 the advantage of virtue as a business investment will naturally 
 waste too much time in calculating chances, to be of great 
 value as a practical incitement to deeds. We need a loftier 
 Ideal to nerve us for heroic lives. Only on forgetfulness 
 of Self, or rather on a consciousness that we are all but motes 
 ia the beam whose sun is God, drops in the rivulet whose 
 ocean is Humanity, can our souls be molded into con 
 formity with the loftiest ideal of our race. To know and feel 
 our nothingness without regretting it ; to deem fame, riches. 
 
76 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 personal happiness, but shadows of which Human Good is 
 the substance to welcome Pain, Privation, Ignominy, so 
 that the sphere of Human Knowledge, the empire of Virtue, 
 be thereby extended such is the soul s temper in which the 
 Heroes of the Coming Age shall be cast. To realize pro 
 foundly that the individual is nothing, the universal every 
 thing to feel nothing a calamity whereby the sum of 
 human virtue or happiness is increased, this is the truest 
 wisdom. When the stately monuments of mightiest con 
 querors shall have become shapeless and forgotten ruins, the 
 humble graves of Earth s Howards and Frys shall still be 
 freshened by the tears of fondly admiring millions, and the 
 proudest epitaph shall be the simple entreaty, 
 
 Write me as one who loved his fellow-men/ 
 
 Say not that I thus condemn and would annihilate 
 Ambition. The love of approbation, of esteem, of true 
 glory, is a noble incentive, and should be cherished to the 
 end. But the ambition which points the way to fame over 
 torn limbs and bleeding hearts which joys in the Tartarean 
 smoke of the battle-field and the desolating tramp of the war- 
 horse that ambition is worthy only of archangel ruined. 
 To make one conqueror s reputation, at least one hundred 
 thousand bounding, joyous, sentient beings must be trans 
 formed into writhing and hideous fragments must perish 
 untimely by deaths of agony and horror, leaving half a 
 million widows and orphans to bewail their loss in anguish 
 and destitution. This is too mighty, too awful a price to be 
 paid for the fame of any hero, from Nimrod to Wellington. 
 True fame demands no such sacrifices of others ; it requires 
 us to be reckless of the outward well-being of but one. It 
 exacts no hecatomb of victims for each triumphal pile ; for 
 the more who covet and seek it the easier and more abun 
 dant is the success of each and all. With souls of the 
 
LIFE THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. 77 
 
 celestial temper, each human life might be a triumph, which 
 angels would lean from the skies delighted to witness and 
 admire. 
 
 And, beyond doubt, the loftiest ambition possible to us 
 finds its fruition in perfect, simple Manhood. A robber may 
 be a great warrior; a pirate an admiral ; a dunce a king ; a 
 slimy intriguer a President ; but to be a thorough and true 
 Man, that is an aspiration which repels all accident or 
 seeming. And let us not fear that such are too common to 
 be distinguished or famous. Could there appear among us 
 a realization of the full idea of Manhood no mere general, 
 nor statesman, nor devotee, but a complete and genuine Man 
 he need not walk naked or in fantastic garb to gather all 
 eyes upon him. The very office-seekers would forget for a 
 moment their fawning, and prowling, their coaxing and 
 slandering, to gather eagerly, though awed, around him to 
 inquire from what planet he had descended. No merman nor 
 centaur giraffe nor chimpanzee, mastodon nor megalosaurus, 
 ever excited half the curiosity which would be awakened 
 and requited by the presence among us of a whole and com 
 plete Man. And to form this character, inadequate as have 
 been all past approaches to it by unaided human energy, the 
 elements are visibly preparing. Men are becoming slowly 
 but sensibly averse to whatever erects barriers between them 
 and cuts them into fragments and particles of Manhood. The 
 priest in his surplice, the militaire in his regimentals, the 
 duke under his coronet, all begin to feel rather uneasy and 
 shame-faced if confronted with a throng of irreverent citizens, 
 hurrying to and fro, intent on their various errands. Among 
 a corps, a bevy of his own order, the farce may still be 
 played by each with decorous propriety, but apart from these 
 it palls and becomes a heaviness. Day by day it is more 
 and more clearly felt that the world is outgrowing the dolls 
 and rattles of its childhood, and more and more disdains to 
 be treated childishly. Direct, earnest speech, with useful 
 
78 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 deeds evincing lofty purpose these are more and more in 
 sisted on, and whatever lacks them is quietly left to perish. 
 -An undeserved popularity, a sham celebrity, may still be got 
 up by due incantations ; but frailer, than the spider s gos 
 samer, the first breath resolves them into their essential 
 nothingness. Gas to gas, they mingle with the blue sur 
 rounding ether, and neither its serenity nor its purity is 
 visibly affected by the infusion. 
 
 Yes, a brighter day dawns for us, sinning and suffering 
 children of Adam. Wiser in its very follies, less cruel and 
 wanton even in its crimes, our Race visibly progresses 
 toward a nobler and happier realization of its capacities and 
 powers. Compared century with century, this progress is 
 not so palpable, since what is an age to individuals, is but 
 a moment in the lifetime of the Race ; but, viewed on a 
 larger scale, the advance becomes cheeringly evident. 
 Washington is a nobler exponent of humanity than Epami- 
 nondas or Scipio ; La Fayette eclipses Phocion ; and Burke 
 has a larger nature, a more universal genius than Cicero. 
 Wonderful as are the works of Homer, they bespeak the 
 splendid barbarian, the thoroughly developed physical, 
 animal man ; but their range of imagination, of thought, is 
 infinitely lower and narrower than Shakspeare s ; the man 
 they depict is infinitely poorer and more dwarfed than 
 Goethe s, and I dare add even Byron s. Compare Achil 
 les with Hamlet or Harold ; the first is the more perfect 
 of his kind, but of nature how infinitely grosser and less 
 exalted ! To him the stars are noteworthy but as battle- 
 lanterns they enable him to thrust the spear with deadlier 
 aim to the heart of his enemy. To Harold, the bare pres 
 ence of the stars, so wildly, spiritually bright, would recall 
 the nothingness of terrestrial aims and struggles their 
 searching glances would instantly rebuke and dethrone the 
 fell appetite for slaughter, so that, throwing away the loath- 
 
LIFE THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. 79 
 
 some implements of human butchery, he would stand gazing 
 intently into their serene deeps, regardless of the proximity, 
 forgetful of the existence of a foe. Say, if you will that the 
 former is more natural, I care not ; in the universe of Mind 
 there are scope and call for more than the natural for the 
 spiritual and celestial also. Never are we so truly human as 
 when we most daringly transcend all the vulgar limitations 
 of Humanity ; and thus Hamlet, who, viewed with dispar 
 aging coldness and skepticism, is the most erratic and 
 improbable creation of the brain, is instinctively recognized 
 by all awakened souls as a veritable man and a brother. 
 His unfamiliarity at first blush accused our deficiencies, not 
 his was caused by his combining more of the elements 
 of our common nature than we had been accustomed to 
 see embodied and developed in any one man. Had we 
 but known ourselves, Hamlet had never seemed to us a 
 stranger. 
 
 O 
 
 The ages of darkness of unconscious wandering from the 
 path of Right and Good of that ignorance which we are 
 told God winked at in its earlier and more excusable 
 manifestations are rapidly passing away. That generation 
 is not yet all departed which witnessed the rise, progress, and 
 termination of the struggle regarding the rightfulness and 
 legitimacy of the African Slave-Trade. Commencing in the 
 attacks of a few obscure fanatics on the usages, maxims, 
 gains and respectability of the commercial aristocracy and 
 sea-faring chivalry of nearly all Christendom, it has already 
 become a struggle between nearly all that same Christendom 
 converted, and a few abhorred, hunted, skulking pirates. 
 Can any man rationally doubt that the discussion of Slavery 
 itself, which had a similar beginning, is destined to run a 
 like career, to a like termination ? The fact that the latter 
 is the more strongly entrenched in the interest, convenience, 
 custom and seeming necessity of the superior caste, may 
 somewhat protract the struggle ; yet on the other hand the 
 
80 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 contest already past, the victory already gained in a kindred 
 encounter, immeasurably diminish the difficulties and must 
 abridge the duration of this. Men have learned and tested 
 the applicability of moral laws to general and public as well 
 as individual and private relations to the acts of commu 
 nities as well as of persons. Can any suppose that the 
 application of this principle is to cease with the initial case 
 which has established its efficacy and value ? Far from it. 
 We see it now operating upon rulers and nations, to restrain 
 the most ambitious and blood-thirsty from war by a power 
 far more dreaded than that of hostile bayonets. We see it 
 operating at home in the Temperance agitation of our time, 
 and especially that regarding the rightfulness of the traffic in 
 Intoxicating Liquors. W^hat is this but the Slave-Trade 
 question over again? varied in form, it is true, but 
 differing nothing in substance. The essence of either con 
 troversy regards the right of any part or member of the 
 Human Family to promote or countenance for private gain 
 any practice or business whereby others are naturally de 
 graded, impoverished, enslaved, or made wretched. Once 
 determine that this right does not exist in any one case, and 
 the principle instantly and naturally confronts other cases, 
 and insists that these also shall be tested by its standard. 
 
 Let not the sensual hope, let the good never fear, that the 
 vitality of this principle can be exhausted while moral evil 
 or avoidable suffering shall linger on the face of the earth. 
 The Reforms which have not yet begun to be prominent are 
 vaster and nobler than any w r hich have thus far been favored 
 with the smiles, or even the frowns, of coteries and club- 
 rooms. The world drowsily opens its eyes and yawns 
 assent to the truth that the direct enslavement of Man is re 
 bellion against Him who in His wisdom has endowed us with 
 faculties and desires, with the development, use, and health 
 ful satisfaction whereof the inevitable conditions of Slavery 
 are incompatible. That perfect obedience which God re- 
 
LIFE THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. 81 
 
 quires can rarely be comprehended, and still more rarely 
 rendered, by him who is born, lives, and dies the absolute 
 chattel and convenience of another. And this truth con 
 demns not the chattel relation only, but all relations in which 
 Service degenerates into Servitude. Wherever one human 
 being exists mainly for the convenience and advantage of 
 another, or of others, there the elemental purpose, the 
 essential economy of Providence is defied, and, for the 
 moment, subverted. Wherever one requires of others more 
 service than he willingly renders in turn, requiting it not 
 with his own but the fruits of others exertion, there is a 
 principle asserted which tends to bankrupt the Race and 
 defeat the highest end of its creation. Wherever one fancies 
 himself exempted, by the inheritance or acquirement of 
 wealth, from performing his fair proportion of the Labor de 
 manded by human necessities, there is one whose example 
 justifies the slaveholder on his couch, the absentee landlord 
 rioting in luxury on the last potato of starving penury, the 
 coward fleeing from the post of danger and of duty. In de 
 frauding his kind of the service he owes them, he defrauds 
 himself of the health, strength, and longevity, which were 
 rightfully his portion until " vilely cast away." And the 
 physical evils of luxury and sloth are but faint reflections of 
 the moral. Every household constructed on the basis of a 
 superior and an inferior caste on the assumption that some 
 of us were born to wait and serve, others to be served and 
 waited on that some must work to live, while others may 
 justly live without working the former being the less and 
 the latter the more honorable class Unit household, I say, 
 is built on a foundation of un-Christian slavery and unmanly 
 falsehood, whose tendencies are to eye-service, deceit, 
 envy, hatred, sloth, pride, and all kindred vices. Not 
 without a radical reform of the Household is any real ap 
 proximation of the careers therein commenced to the Ideal 
 of a True Life possible, save as a rare exception a happy 
 
82 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 result of unobserved but potent influences, fortunately con 
 spiring to overrule the more obvious and general laws 
 governing the formation of character. If we are educated 
 slaves or enslavers, we shall rarely and with difficulty out 
 grow our early lessons, and become true men and women. 
 
 As yet, the great Reform which shall abolish all Slavery, 
 as it only can be effectually, really abolished, by leaving 
 none coveting the position of a master, none possessing the 
 soul of a slave, is in its infancy, silently and slowly but surely 
 progressing to matured energy and vigor. ATTRACTIVE 
 INDUSTRY, the dream of the past age, the aspiration of the 
 present, shall be the fruition and joy of the next. The re 
 union of Desire and Duty, divorced and warring since the 
 Fall, restores Man at once to the unchanging, uncloying bliss 
 of Eden. That this is a Moral renovation is indeed most 
 true, but false is the deduction that it is wrought or endures 
 regardless of Physical conditions. Idly do the lips of the 
 widow murmur expressions of contentment and thankfulness 
 when her children pine for bread and have no prospect of 
 procuring it ; vainly does the forlorn wretch essay to thank 
 that Providence whose ways he can not fathom, but whose 
 present results are to him famine, disease, and utter, hopeless 
 destitution. Here and there the keen eye of Faith may 
 pierce the deepest gloom of the Present, and rest exultingly 
 on the compensating glories of the Future ; but such are 
 exceptions to the general law which renders present privation 
 and anguish an Aaron s rod, swallowing up all thought, over 
 clouding all hope, of future bliss. We must know what hap 
 piness is, ere we can rightly appreciate the prospect of it ; 
 we must have exemption from pressing wants of the body, 
 ere we can duly heed and be faithful to the loftiest prompt 
 ings of the soul. The individual engrossed in a constant and 
 arduous struggle for daily bread, makes slow and capricious 
 progress on the path to Heaven. Those who can not obey 
 the Divine precept, " Take no [anxious] thought for the 
 
LIFE THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL. 83 
 
 morrow," can hardly hope to obey any precept relating to 
 their own spiritual growth and elevation. Not till the pressing 
 demands of our outward and bodily nature shall have been 
 provided for, may we rationally look for a general conformity 
 of our Actual State to the Ideal of sentient, intelligent 
 being. 
 
 That the Physical conditions of a calmer and nobler exist 
 ence for the great mass of mankind are slowly but surely 
 preparing, I recognise with gladness ; I will not doubt that 
 the Moral elements are also commingling. In all the forms 
 and shows of present and threatening Evil, I discern the 
 shadows of approaching Good. The age now dawning shall 
 reap in gladness the fields tearfully sown in defiance of tem 
 pests of contumely and reproach. It will have its Statesmen, 
 who may continue to serve their Nations without stooping to 
 flatter their worst and most dangerous passions ; orators, 
 whose trumpet-tones shall be employed to chasten and rebuke 
 whatever is selfish in the thronging multitudes they address, 
 rather than impel them to envy and hate their fellows ; 
 teachers of religion, meek, earnest followers of the carpenter s 
 son of Bethlehem and Paul the tent-maker, who, living, or 
 at all times ready to live, if need be, by the labor of their 
 own hands, shall minister to God in houses unpartitioned to 
 men, asking of a prospective field of labor, not what salary 
 is to be paid, but what sin is to be cured, and setting forth 
 the duties and reproving the delinquencies of Wealth, as 
 few or none have dared to do since He who had not where 
 to lay His head. Under such faithful ministrations, the 
 truth must soon become apparent that Riches are desirable 
 only to widen the scope and enlarge the opportunities of 
 well-doing that they impart no right to live prodigally, 
 selfishly, or ostentatiously still less to avoid the ways of 
 Industry and benign Exertion. With wealth thus possessed 
 and employed, vanish at once the privations and the envious 
 
84 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 discontent of the Poor the dreams and the desire of Agra 
 rian equality since the most abject must then recognise 
 the wisdom and beneficence of the dispensation which 
 qualifies some to be the almoners and benefactors of the less 
 gifted or provident millions, while the more fortunate would 
 learn to feel, in extending the amplest encouragement and 
 aid to the lowly, some faint reflection of the rapture of 
 Creative goodness. Thus harmonized in feeling, exalted 
 in purpose, convergent in effort, the re-united Human 
 Family shall move on to greater and still greater triumphs 
 over Physical obstruction, Elementary perversion, and Moral 
 dissonance, until Evil and Anguish shall virtually be ban 
 ished, our Earth be restored to its primal rank among the 
 loyal provinces of God s empire, and Man, made a little 
 lower than the angels, shall realize in his Actual the noblest, 
 the fairest Ideal of Life. 
 
THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER. 85 
 
 III. 
 
 THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER: 
 
 A LECTURE. 
 
 I STAXD before you this evening to adduce some consid 
 erations connected with the right formation or malformation 
 of the Human Character. It is not improbable that some of 
 the views which to my mind are those of evident truth may 
 to some among you wear the semblance of novelty of 
 extravagance or, more strictly, of what the discreet and 
 proper world has doomed to perdition under the vague but 
 blighting designation of Ultraism. I say it may be so, be 
 cause I am aware that each observing soul forms a world of 
 its own, or at least establishes its own stand-point from which 
 to look abroad on the universe ; while the infinitely larger 
 number who have forfeited by non-use their right of indepen 
 dent thought who, never venturing a glance at Nature 
 and Truth through their own, but always through others 
 eyes whereby that which was Truth to the actual dis- 
 cerner becomes but its faint and imperfect shadow to them 
 will instinctively revolt at any view of the moral universe 
 which professes to discover and hold up to the light that 
 w^hich they have never perceived, and thereby implies a 
 rebuke to their blindness. I desire, therefore, to premise 
 that, essentially, whatever of the philosophy I shall endeavor 
 to set before you this evening shall seem original and pecu 
 liar is not mine by any right of discovery or authorship, but 
 
86 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 only by that cordial acceptance which the inquiring mind 
 gives to all truth. I have shunned rather than sought novelty, 
 so far as is consistent with the lesson I would inculcate ; and 
 if I shall be so fortunate as to present to any of you new ideas 
 or illustrations above all, if any of my view T s shall appear 
 to any of you forcible or striking you \vill do but justice 
 in giving credit for its suggestion to those who have larger 
 opportunities for contemplation and cultivation than I have 
 to the free-spoken, profound thinkers of our age ; and fore 
 most among them to RALPH WALDO EMERSON and the little 
 band of earnest, clear-sighted spirits who are more commonly 
 known by the contemptuous appellation of Transcendental- 
 ists. To these I acknowledge myself deeply indebted both 
 for the perception and expression of moral truth generally ; 
 while my own aim has been to bring the diverging rays of 
 that truth to bear focally on the Practical Education of Man. 
 
 I need not, surely, waste words in demonstrating to you 
 the importance of a right Formation of the Human Character. 
 Everywhere, in all ages, the world assents in \vords to the 
 fact that the True Man is more than the rich man that he 
 who enters upon the stage of active life with all his faculties 
 and capacities harmoniously and maturely developed, is 
 more to be envied than the perverse heir of a principality. 
 All men prize and reverence Knowledge, Wisdom, Virtue ; 
 they would readily add these to their possessions if the price 
 were not too high. Nay, more if that price could be told 
 down on the counter to-day, and that were the end of it, 
 most men would make the sacrifice, and buy. It is the end 
 less effort necessary to preserve and sustain the purchase that 
 discourages and disaffects. Every man, until thoroughly 
 perverted, has his ideal of Truth and Goodness, on which 
 he fixes his anxious gaze, toward which he paddles, or be 
 lieves he is paddling, his frail bark over the Ocean of Life ; 
 but the soft breezes of Temptation, the strong but stealthy 
 
THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER. 67 
 
 tide of Circumstance and Conformity, or the boisterous gale 
 of Passion, is constantly bearing; him farther and farther from 
 his goal ; he will not see that his safety lies in opposing his 
 energies directly to the insidious foe ; it costs less effort to 
 yield ; his vacant, wandering eye still discerns the beacon ; 
 his soul still feebly aspires to it ; he idly trusts that to-morrow 
 the adverse influence will be withdrawn, and he will then 
 speed with case to his haven. Vain, short-lived delusion ! 
 Every hour of non-resistance relaxes his energies while it 
 increases the power of the adversary ; at length the beacon, 
 grown distant, flickers and disappears in the deepening haze, 
 and the voyage whose outset was bland innocence and hope 
 closes in darkness and despair. 
 
 Such is Life to unnumbered millions such has it been 
 through a hundred generations. And shall it so continue 
 ever? Shall the earth weep tears of blood through centuries 
 to come, over the perverseness, the infatuation, the wretched 
 ness of her children ? Let us conclude hopefully that such 
 is not the order of Providence ; let us search intently the 
 nature and the history of our Race for the elements of a 
 higher life. 
 
 All evils are mainly overcome by the eradication of their 
 causes rarely and partially by the administration of palli 
 atives. The proneness to error, to self-abasement, to wrong 
 doing, which stands so prominently out on the page of the 
 annalist as a characteristic of Man, argues an underlying ne 
 cessity, so to speak a steep proclivity in his nature toward 
 the Forbidden. But let us not be deceived into confound 
 ing the superficial, the intermediate, the factitious, with the 
 ultimate and the essential. Let us separate from this mass 
 of tendencies and instincts which we rashly call Human Na 
 ture the super-imposed and the remediable, and we can bet 
 ter judge of the intrinsic and the eternal. I propose first, 
 
88 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 therefore at the risk of being deemed puerile by the 
 puerile to point out to you some of the errors of our mis 
 taken and thoughtless nay, our vicious and destructive 
 Education, to which Man is subjected from his veriest in 
 fancy which are entwined with the tenderest threads of his 
 being, and so grow into and become a part of his nature 
 not a second nature, but his earliest perception of the relation 
 which he holds to his fellow-creatures and the universe. It 
 is by calling your attention, very briefly but frankly, to what 
 we have all observed, with more or less interest, of the influ 
 ences constantly at work to corrupt and pervert the dawning 
 intellect, and insure the Malformation of the Human Charac 
 ter, that I shall best impress you with the nature and magni 
 tude of the evil to be corrected, and determine the basis on 
 which the Practical Education of the True Man, his harmo 
 nious development, and his growth to perfect moral and in 
 tellectual stature, must be established. 
 
 A gentle infant, fresh from the hand of its Creator, without 
 guile, or envy, or stormier passion without Fear, or Pride, 
 or Discontent exists in perfect harmony with Nature 
 with the breeze, the blossom, and the verdure laughing to 
 the glad and glancing sunbeams. The most worldly and 
 artificial are rendered truer and tenderer by its presence, in 
 whose light the wrinkled brow of Age grows smoother, and 
 shadows melt fleetingly from the marble face of Care. In 
 that presence, it scarcely needs a Divine Teacher to assure 
 us that Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. Yet a few- 
 years pass, and all how changed ! On the averted though 
 reckless countenance of Youth we too often see stamped in 
 delibly the vices of mature depravity of Covetousness, 
 which needs but opportunity to become Robbery ; of Sen 
 suality, which has already well nigh effaced the Divine im 
 press, and is hurrying its victim down to an early and 
 shameful grave ; of Cruelty, most hideous monster of all, 
 
THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER. 89 
 
 which may at any moment be incited by passion to imbrue 
 its hands in a brother s blood. Whence has come this rapid, 
 this dreadful transformation ? Alas ! the germs of all this 
 thorny wilderness of Evil are too often planted in tenderest 
 Infancy itself, whose fertile soil nourishes into rapid luxu 
 riance the richest plants or foulest weeds according as the 
 seed is sown. Long before the thoughtless parent has 
 deemed the child susceptible of a moral impression, the 
 plague-spot has fastened upon the tender heart, whence 
 years of patient culture and prayerful discipline may not 
 avail to remove it. 
 
 The first lesson of Evil usually imprinted on the infant 
 mind, is that of Sensuality, or more precisely, Gluttony. An 
 excessive and diseased appetite is commonly created in ear 
 liest childhood, which is never fully conquered. Docs its 
 healthy instincts revolt against bandages which are stifling 
 out its life, or an atmosphere which through stagnation and 
 exhausting combustion or respiration has become noxious 
 and insupportable, its cries are hushed with needless food. 
 Whatever its ailing or source of disquietude, even though it 
 be repletion and oppression, the universal elixir is more food. 
 I need not speak of nourishment which is in itself, regardless 
 of quantity, unsuitable and depraving of sweetmeats, stim 
 ulants and spices. Against these a rational being needs no 
 other caution than such as a moment s reflection must afford. 
 Yet these are soon lugged in to spur the flagging appetite 
 to overcome the repulsion of Nature to a treatment which she 
 feels to be fatally destructive. The sad result too commonly 
 is that the child arrives at the knowledge of good and evil 
 if it be so fortunate or unfortunate as to survive the severe 
 probation of infancy at all completely depraved in all its 
 physical instincts a ready-made sensualist a miniature 
 glutton. To talk, after it has passed this point, of its consti 
 tution requiring this or that, or receivini; benefit from one 
 
90 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 thing or the other, is to talk as blindly and absurdly as 
 though we spoke of the constitution of an opium-eater in his 
 last stages, or that of the victim of delirium-tremens. Would 
 I could hope that the fearful infatuation on this subject in 
 which the great majority are wilfully slumbering is breaking 
 away, but facts will not allow it. The records of mortality 
 in our own time and country undeniably show that, while the 
 average duration of life is somewhat improving, the tenure 
 of infant existence grows gradually frailer ; and already one- 
 half of the human race are consigned to the grave before 
 attaining their fifth year an increase of ten per cent, in 
 half a century. I adduce this fact only to avail myself of 
 its moral bearing ; yet it has other relations which must ere 
 long arrest the attention of the most heedless. 
 
 The second lesson of evil to which the child is subjected 
 is Fraud. With all its perceptions fresh and wakeful, it 
 early learns that human speech and action have two uses 
 the first, indeed, to express or convey ideas and emotions ; 
 but the second, hardly less common, to conceal them. Of 
 what a perpetual comedy is not the little denizen of the cra 
 dle too often the quiet, but by no means unobservant spec 
 tator ! The loud and angry altercation hushed into bland- 
 ness on the appearance of a stranger ; the vinegar aspect 
 exchanged for one of wreathed smiles ; or perchance the 
 slander just playing on the lip in his absence now turned to 
 flattery and compliment in his presence ! But not alone of 
 these grosser forms of Fraud does the young observer, puz 
 zled rather than amused, imbibe the spirit. The yawn of 
 indifference chased by the smile of courtesy ; the spruced 
 appearance of robe or room ; the hollow show of wealth 
 and luxury with which Pride and Poverty, ill-assorted yet 
 frequently inseparable pair, contrive to reconcile the sem 
 blance of their fortunes to the reality of their desires 
 these, and a thousand like incidents, are constantly teaching 
 
THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER. 91 
 
 the infant mind that the world on which it is entering is not 
 single but double a world of things and a world of shows ; 
 and that the latter holds the higher place in the estimation 
 and effort of the multitude. 
 
 The corrupting, fatal effect of this bitter fruit of the Tree 
 of Knowledge can hardly be over-estimated. Half the en 
 ergies and means, with far more of the true nobility of man, 
 are wasted in striving to appear what he is not, but what he 
 would wish to be believed. It is this which makes what 
 ever is painful of the difference between the prince and the 
 peasant, the rich man and his dependent. The latter sits 
 uneasily in the presence of the former, because he is not 
 satisfied with what he is, but would fain be something else. 
 Let the frank, bold ranger of the forest come into that same 
 presence, and, if at peace with himself, he feels no inferiority, 
 dreads no sneer. Precisely because he does not wish to 
 barter himself for something else, he is not afraid of being 
 taken for less than he is worth. 
 
 Vain will be the effort, fruitless the toil, of the pastor, the 
 pedagogue, the philosopher, to teach the Young the value 
 and beauty of Truth so long as the lessons of the cradle and 
 the fireside shall be in practical contradiction thereto. The 
 pupil receives all monitions with a sedate attention, a demure 
 propriety of manner, most edifying to behold. But in his 
 heart he is comparing and classing every precept with those 
 pithy maxims of moral science wherewith his infancy was 
 refreshed, wherein he was daily instructed not to lie by 
 those whose life was a perpetual falsehood, and to refrain 
 from stealing by those who were constantly lying in wait to 
 entrap the good opinions of their neighbors without possess 
 ing the qualities on which those good opinions should be 
 based. The apt youth at once jumps to the conclusion that 
 all these fine words are a part of the same system a corner 
 of the great mask of decorum and propriety behind which 
 the world hides that portion of its selfishness and sensuality 
 
92 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 which could not be openly displayed without creating uni 
 versal anarchy. Thus tutored, he, too, steps behind the 
 mask, and becomes decorous, and has mouthfulls of moral 
 saws at his tongue s end, and takes care not to blazon his 
 vices uselessly, and not to expend any portion of his char 
 acter when the gratification he seeks can be secured with 
 out, or at any rate without securing the full value of it. 
 And thus he walks daintily through life, a fair-seeming, soft- 
 spoken, reputable man, and in the world s facetious diction 
 ary is classed respectable ; and if at last some great temp 
 tation impels him to some great villainy, the town rolls up 
 its eyes in pretended astonishment that so respectable a man 
 has turned out a forger, a libertine, a defaulter, though it 
 has seen him educated for a knave, and at heart known him 
 for one all along ! 
 
 The third fatal vice of our system of Practical Education 
 is the low estimate which we palpably put upon Labor. On 
 this subject the world is not so specious and hypocritical as 
 upon others, but wears its fault jauntily and with an air. In 
 the Divine order, Labor is not merely a universal duty, but. 
 a universal necessity. Whoso will not work shall not eat 
 is the immutable law, and he who strives to evade it but 
 vainly lacerates himself on the sharp thorns w r hich every 
 where hedge in the narrow path of Right. Take what you 
 need at the bounteous table of Nature, says the decree, 
 but pay its price. Fruitless the effort, preposterous the 
 desire, to obtain by trick what can only come by equiva 
 lent. The fisherman is caught in his net the engineer 
 hoist by his own petard. The schemer reaches forth his 
 eager hand to the fruit that looked so tempting on the 
 bough, and grasps, not that which he coveted, but apples 
 of Sodom fair without, but within bitterness and ashes. 
 What was coveted as luxury, unduly acquired, has become 
 disease, satiety and death. All History, all Tragedy, all 
 
THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER. 93 
 
 Romance, is full of this ; yet the blind world goes on sche 
 ming to circumvent God, and enjoy the pleasure without 
 fulfilling the condition, as though all that the wise have ob 
 served and the good have written for its admonition were 
 but a shallow fable, invented by the cunning of those who 
 have, to secure themselves against the covetous assaults of 
 those who have not. In fact, all vice, all transgression, 
 roots itself in this fundamental error, that the laws of the 
 Universe, which have vindicated themselves from eternity, 
 may in this particular instance be evaded that the good 
 which is coveted may be separated from the condition which 
 underlies it that the magnet will for once have a positive 
 pole and no negative that there shall be summer without 
 winter day without night sun without shade. To de 
 tach the sensual good from the moral good the enjoyment 
 from the use the transient from the everlasting has been 
 the struggle of perverted Humanity through sixty centuries 
 of wretchedness. Monstrous delusion ! idle dreamings of 
 a disordered intellect. The stone rolled with subtlest intent 
 to the summit of the precipice rebounds instantly and 
 vehemently to the bottom, overthrowing the contriver in 
 its headlong career. If the primary requirement may be 
 evaded, the penalty is swift, unrelenting, inevitable. 
 
 Now this first great lesson of Moral Truth, which all 
 clear-sighted experience must teach, is one which is but 
 blindly, imperfectly taught at all, but which is utterly set at 
 naught in our popular inculcations with regard to Labor. 
 What child of affluence or even of want is duly taught that 
 if he would truly enjoy he must so live as to increase the 
 means of enjoyment if he would eat he must work ? Love 
 for love ; truth for truth ; service for service ; this is the 
 coin he must pay ; for none other will be accepted. If he 
 seek to procure these by force or subtlety, he obtains not 
 what he desires, but only the counterfeit, which only his 
 
94 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 own correspondent corruption blinds him from perceiving 
 to be as different from the thing sought as light from dark 
 ness. Let us not wait, then, for the world to teach this 
 great truth through that rugged experience which is but 
 another term for suffering. The child which is practically 
 taught in the little world of Home that Labor is a burden 
 and well nigh a disgrace that Service is rightfully of con 
 straint and not of affection that the great end of Life is 
 not nobly to Do, but skilfully to avoid Doing that the 
 service which requires humbler faculties and a ruder culture 
 than some daintier avocation is therefore less honorable 
 and meritorious that the duties and obligations of the ser 
 vant and the served are not throroughly mutual that child 
 has received already a moral perversity which not thousands 
 of sonorous homilies not years of scowling Pride, and 
 gnawing Disappointment, and the drear vacuity of unloved 
 existence, shall thoroughly efface from his being. 
 
 There remains one other monstrous error of our fireside 
 Education which I can not refrain from exposing, though 
 I am aware it is less common than those I have already rep 
 rehended, and in fact is but an off-shoot from them a 
 branch of that great Upas of false Formation of Character 
 whereof I have endeavored to expose the gnarled and 
 writhing roots to general scrutiny and abhorrence. I allude 
 to the fatal practice of paying for virtue, or rewarding with 
 adventitious indulgence acts of integrity and of duty. As in 
 its nature and origin this is a compound of most of the errors I 
 have enumerated, so it is in its consequences more pernicious 
 than any of them. The child which, for performing a task 
 nimbly and faithfully, or acquiring a lesson rapidly and 
 thoroughly, is rewarded with some dainty confection or 
 glittering toy, you have doubly corrupted ; first, in making 
 that a task which, being a duty, should also be a pleasure in 
 itself ; secondly, in pampering an appetite or a craving which, 
 being factitious, can not fail to be evil. If that task were not 
 
THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER. 95 
 
 properly his if that lesson were not of itself worth acquiring 
 you should not have imposed it. If it were, you have 
 blinded him to its true worth and meaning ; you have taught 
 him to look astray for the reward of well-doing ; you have 
 made that which was a simple and true action no longer 
 such but a finesse a dexterous feat a sinister calculation. 
 The child thus paid to do right will soon have learned 
 not to do right without payment. It will not accept the 
 harvest as the proper recompense of its toil and culture, but 
 will clamor to be paid beside for sowing and nurturing it. 
 Worse even than this is the delusion implanted that daintier 
 food and gaudier toys are of more value than elevating know- 
 ledge and habits of healthful Industry in fact, that they are 
 of any value at all. But time would fail me to trace out all 
 the evil consequences of that one woful folly by which you 
 have polluted all the springs of action, clouded the moral 
 vision, and corrupted the very soul of the victim of your 
 fatally mistaken policy. Let us banish for ever the idea of 
 a reward for well-doing extraneous from and unrelated to 
 itself. There is nothing like it in Nature in the vast uni 
 verse. God never promised a reward thus detached from 
 and alien to the obedience it would recompense ; the Devil 
 promises, but never pays. It is absurdity to desire, madness 
 to expect anything like it. 
 
 I have thus glanced at some of the more prominent errors 
 of Education and defects of Principle which enter into and 
 determine the Malformation of the Human Character. Keep 
 ing steadily in view not merely the errors thus exposed, but 
 the facts which their correction necessarily implies, so as to 
 avoid useless repetitions, we approach the consideration of 
 those principles and qualities which should enter into and 
 govern the formation of a true character. 
 
 You have already anticipated the statement that first among 
 these is Truth itself, or, more precisely, an entire Truth- 
 
96 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 fulness, extending beyond the mere avoidance of verbal false 
 hood to the instinctive and rigid preservation of perfect in 
 tegrity of being. It is not enough that the blush mantles the 
 cheek at the thought of uttering a falsehood the true man 
 revolts equally at the idea of acting, dressing, appearing one. 
 We must extirpate these nice, unmeaning distinctions of a 
 heartless and unprincipled Opinion, the offspring of a lax 
 Morality and a short-sighted Convenience, which teach us 
 that we may swear by the gold upon the altar though not by 
 the altar itself. The man who dresses, lives, entertains, in a 
 style to which his means are properly inadequate, hoping 
 thereby to be esteemed more affluent and thrifty than he is, 
 is not merely enacting a daily lie, but one which comes home 
 to his own door even sooner than the misdeeds of the hardier 
 transgressor. Eternal justice for ever holds its balance true, 
 and laughs at all puny attempts to evade its unerring de 
 cisions. Still the thief robs himself, the swindler defrauds 
 himself, exactly as did his prototype four thousand years ago. 
 The story of Haman and Mordecai is the epitome of uni 
 versal History, could we read its page with the eye of 
 spiritual discernment and with senses unclogged by the 
 grossness of our groveling life. Yet the thief, the burglar 
 has the wretched, demoniac satisfaction of imagining that he 
 has not been the only victim of his own depravity that if 
 he has doomed himself to lasting misery he has at least in 
 flicted some injury on another. But the hypocrite wears out 
 his life in a constant effort to exchange his substance for 
 shadows to barter the stubborn wealth of his granary, his 
 house, his heart, for its evanescent semblance in other 
 men s eyeballs. Thus living in a world of shows and 
 mockeries, he becomes a mockery to himself ; to him there 
 i. no reality, no good, no knowledge ; and God, Virtue, Con 
 fidence, Love, are but the bubbles with which men, them 
 selves hardly more real, strive ever to delude and overreach 
 each other. Thus deceived and mocked when he fancies 
 
THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER. 97 
 
 himself deceiving, the hypocrite stands forth a perpetual 
 alien in the earnest and kindly domain of Nature the 
 sorriest, saddest jest on the broad face of Creation. 
 
 I plead not for eccentricity, for roughness of manner I 
 am no stranger to the bland amenities and suavities of life. 
 I acknowledge a fitness to time, and duty, and circumstance, 
 in dress and in incidents of even lighter moment. I accept 
 the common sense of mankind as the arbiter between what is 
 real and natural and what is assumed and fantastic. The 
 banker, the capitalist, the merchant, who should ape the 
 dress of the carman, the hod-carrier, would be justly the 
 ridicule of every healthy mind, and of none more than the 
 carman himself. No man enjoys more keenly the stage- 
 shown absurdities of the footman bedecked with his master s 
 delegated authority, the valet personating the prince, than do 
 footmen and valets. This is but the error condemned in 
 another shape the pendulum at the other extremity of its 
 range. I would have no man do this or refrain from that in 
 contradiction from the world, any more than in consistency 
 with it. Nay, more : I admit and counsel acquiescence with 
 the ordinary, the prescribed, the established, in all matters 
 essentially indifferent or trifling. I loathe perverseness it 
 is at war with harmony and the supreme good. Convince me 
 that the Quaker remains stubbornly covered in the presence 
 of his equals, his seniors, from mere mulishness or whim, 
 and I abandon him to your rebukes ; I will second them 
 with my own. But let me realize that that rude non-coin- 
 pliance stands to him for a vital fact that it symbolizes to 
 him a great principle, to wit, the stern uprising of a true 
 manhood against servility and fawning adulation, and I will 
 defend him to the last gasp I will do him such reverence 
 as befits a manly self-respect, for his stout fidelity to a con 
 viction. 
 
 9 
 
98 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 But in truth the vice of our time, and I apprehend of all 
 times, with rare exceptions, is of opposite tendency, and it is 
 to oppose this that our shields should be locked and our 
 spears pointed. There is a simpering and dapper conformity, 
 a blind deferring to other men s estimates, habits, tastes, 
 which robs life of its freshness, its originality, its masculine 
 strength. Where all are content to dress, to dine, to walk, 
 and most to think, to feel, to act, as some dozen or score 
 shall see fit to dictate, what wonder that invention is checked, 
 that genius is caged, that existence becomes tame and vacant, 
 or, if not torpid, still unmeaning as an idiot s tale ? The 
 waters of this dead sea of complaisance and barren formality 
 need to be visited now and then by the rough gales of 
 Heaven, even though they be shocked, and agitated, and 
 driven helter-skelter thereby ; better this than that they should 
 become stagnant and putrid. Do not mistakenly imagine 
 that you must go out of yourself that you must become 
 eccentric and extravagant to produce this effect. In the 
 midst of universal ducking, and sidling, and compromise, 
 you will seem sufficiently rigid and angular if you walk 
 simply and naturally on. 
 
 The danger of this dead compliance of living not your 
 own genuine thought but other men s opinions, which even 
 if true for them are not wholly so for you is one of the 
 most subtle and pervading of the many which track the in 
 genuous and timid through life. It is an evil which magni 
 fies as our social relations become more artificial, and com 
 plex, and penetrating. It assails us even on the side of our 
 virtues. Each of us is attached to some party in politics, 
 some sect in religion, some coterie in morals, philanthropy 
 or culture ; and this is well, so long as that party, that cote 
 rie, shall represent to us the highest attainable good in that 
 particular province which it contemplates. But the impulse 
 which says, Do not proclaim that certain truth which you 
 
THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER. 99 
 
 have discovered because other men have not discovered it, 
 and your bold advocacy will be wielded to the prejudice of 
 your sect or party, deserves only to be scouted and trampled 
 under foot. What right has sect or party to intermeddle 
 with your free thought, save to accept or reject it ? What 
 right to subject the line of your truth to the orbit of its pol 
 icy perchance its narrow policy and low though correct 
 aims ? O fear not to be wholly true and manful, and the 
 devotees of policy and craft shall be driven into conformity 
 with your lofty and earnest endeavor ! 
 
 I have hesitated to place Temperance next to Truth as a 
 primary element of a just character, in view of the low idea, 
 the negative insignificance, to which the term has been de 
 graded. Well may that Temperance which is satisfied with 
 restricting its disciples and votaries to such quantities of an 
 infatuating poison as shall not quite suffice to drown the 
 reason and paralyze the frame or even that better modifi 
 cation which counsels the entire abandonment of that one 
 especial bane of life, leaving all others to work destruction 
 at will, become the scoff of drunkards, the by-word of 
 debauchees. But in that comprehensive and consistent sig 
 nification, which implies the absolute subjection of the appe 
 tites to the government of the reason in all things the 
 satisfaction of each healthful and true desire with reference 
 to the end of its creation and in obedience to the moral law 
 of its existence and, by consequence, the stern rejection 
 of every proffered gratification, the repression of every ap 
 petite, which finds its consummation in itself, and shrinks 
 from the thought of to-morrow none can fail to recognize 
 in Temperance a necessary moral as well as physical basis 
 of the full and proper development of our being. I have 
 already treated somewhat of this subject, though inversely; 
 and I will not dwell on it here. That Man should be tem 
 perate, the vilest drunkard will agree ; the great difficulty 
 
100 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 which meets us is that of awaking in him a whole and con 
 sistent idea of what Temperance is. When he shall no 
 longer be schooled from the rostrum by lecturers themselves 
 the slaves of tobacco-chewing and the like filthy vices, but 
 in the language of consistency and love, I will hope that his 
 restoration to manhood, its dignity, its healthfulness and true 
 enjoyments, can not long be deferred. 
 
 Having established the basis of a true character in the 
 elements of perfect Truth and Temperance in all things, 
 we are ready to advance boldly toward the great central 
 idea of Virtue. And here, as I deem the definitions of 
 the Schools, and to some extent of the Pulpit also, imper 
 fect and unsatisfactory, I shall not hesitate to expatiate fear 
 lessly, and, accepting the best lights that are afforded, search 
 vigorously for a true and solid foundation. You tell me 
 Man should be virtuous, reverend Divine, and I ask you 
 why he should be, not to dispute your self-evident propo 
 sition, but to aid me in determining what Virtue is. If you 
 stop my inquiry with the crusty answer that he must be so 
 because God commands it, you have neither satisfied nor 
 profited me at all. I still need to know why He has com 
 manded it to know it not from arbitrary dogma but serene 
 perception or I shall be lost in a whirlpool of babbling 
 sects, of unedifying jargon. I bow reverently to the axiom 
 that God is to be obeyed, but I am still driven to inquire 
 which God, or rather which of the thousand warring expo 
 sitions of His will. Tell me, most self-sufficient Philoso 
 pher, tell me, pale Anchorite, absorbed in penitence and 
 holy meditation, why am I to walk sternly in the jagged 
 and dusty highway of Honor and Good, while a thousand 
 flowery by-paths, more inviting to my wandering gaze, are 
 opening on every side, and proffering ease and dalliance ? 
 Do not attempt to frighten me with the danger that if I di 
 verge I shall not be able to return ; for do I not see thou- 
 
THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER. 101 
 
 sands in the path before me who have so diverged, and yet 
 have made good their return? Do n<H attempt to- frighten 
 me with the chances of perdition ; ihe gambler often knows 
 that the chances are against him; yety, leave hrm tajt a hojpfe 
 of gain, and he plays eagerly, recklessly on. Once grant 
 that there is a chance, though it be one in a thousand, to profit 
 by wrong-doing, and you have confirmed millions in the 
 way of error and ruin. 
 
 The true deduction of far-seeing wisdom imports that 
 Virtue, in itself and for itself, is the most desirable thing, 
 above all consequences, aside from all results, spurning all 
 mercenary calculations of profit and loss. Whoso has per 
 formed an act of genuine love and service has no thought 
 to look anxiously around and above him to discern if God 
 and Man are taking heed of his sacrifice ; for he already 
 feels himself exalted and blessed by His deed. He has not 
 climbed toilsomely a day s journey nearer to Heaven, but 
 its radiance and bliss have come down to him ; they have 
 already shed a halo around his brow, a rapture in his breast. 
 Well knows he from the depths of his own being that in the 
 way of Truth and of Life there is no self-denial nor suffer 
 ing ; that Virtue is the one only thing too precious to be 
 bought and sold. What is it to him that houses, lands, 
 honors, power, are offered him in exchange for it? all this 
 is not temptation, but absurdity. It is enough that he has 
 already solved for himself that Divine problem, of univer 
 sal and not particular application What shall it profit a 
 man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? 
 
 I must be permitted to linger upon the homely enforce 
 ment of this Truth to multiply and vary its illustrations 
 Ritice its practical denial through grossness of perception is 
 the one great error of perverse Humanity. Come not to me 
 with your absurd repinings that you have lost by integrity 
 some temporal advantage which your rival through greater 
 9* 
 
102 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 suppleness has secured ; if you had had any integrity worth 
 preserving, yon would -rather thank God that you were not 
 abandoned to temptation. Nay, more : were your eye 
 sittgle a ftd yoTkr spirittuH.) vision unobscured, you would have 
 seen that a base success is the worst of discomfitures, 
 dragging after it an interminable chain of miseries and mor 
 tifications. Swift and terrible is the retribution which follows 
 him who has by violence or indirection succeeded to station, 
 honors, affluence, which he has not deserved. The rustle 
 of every leaf is to his ear the trump of the Archangel. 
 
 History has borne down to us the relation that the last and 
 noblest Brutus, commending himself to death after the 
 crowning disaster of Philippi, quoted this line from Euripides, 
 4 O Virtue ! I have followed thee through life, and I find 
 thee at last but a shadow ! " I doubt not (says Emerson,) 
 that the hero is slandered by this report. The great soul 
 does not sell its nobleness. It does not ask to dine nicely, 
 nor sleep warm. The essence of greatness is the perception 
 that Virtue is enough. Poverty is its ornament. Plenty it 
 does not need, and can very well abide its loss." I heartily 
 accept this judgment, and would push it to its natural con 
 clusions. I will not doubt that the last of the free Romans 
 rendered up his spirit with a prayer for the country he had so 
 truly served to the utmost, and a disdain akin to pity for her 
 marble-hearted enslavers that he scorned, even more than 
 their parricidal ambition, that obtuseness which blinded them 
 to the perception that in the fall of the Commonwealth they 
 too fell irretrievably that the enthroned, empurpled despot 
 is but the first slave in his dominions, and that Fear and 
 conscious Guilt are the most exacting and cruel of masters. 
 
 But this tradition would never have floated thus far adown 
 the tide of time if it had not been founded in fact. False 
 hood has never this vitality. Foul slander as it is to the 
 spent and dying patriot, it is a pregnant truth as regarding 
 
THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER. 103 
 
 the age which invented and perpetuated it. I read in that one 
 line of practical Atheism the prophecy of a thousand years 
 of dwarfing, darkening Humanity of receding Civilization 
 and deepening Night. By its lurid light, I see the haughty 
 Mistress of the World sunken and still sinking in sloth, sen 
 suality, corruption, and slavery ; a military banditti selling 
 her publicly in the market ; the slaves of fools her capricious, 
 exacting masters ; a horse her Consul. I see the hordes of 
 barbarians, so lately routed and panic-stricken, gathering 
 again at the scent of her stiffening corpse ; I see them 
 pouring across the Rhine, the Alps, the Danube, which they 
 so lately invoked to shield them from the terrible onslaught 
 of her invincible legions. Barrier after barrier gives way 
 before them ; army after army melts like snow upon the 
 sunny slopes of April ; panic and despair precede them ; 
 desolation, blood, and ashes are behind ; the steed in whose 
 track grass springs never again drinks the water of the 
 Rhone, the Po, the Tiber ; and Rome, long tottering to her 
 foundations, falls at length a gory wreck, an everlasting ruin. 
 Her sons become the slaves of strangers, the scoff and foot 
 ball of barbarians. So perish they who in the fullness of 
 lust, and pride, and sensuality, have vainly imagined Prov 
 idence a delusion and Virtue an empty name ! 
 
 I shall not err in commending a generous Self-Trust as an 
 essential element of a manly and earnest Character ; though 
 chattering Conceit stand ready at the door, and strive to pass 
 itself for that thing it would be but is not. They two are 
 wide asunder as the poles. Conceit is founded in a low 
 idea of the capacities of Human Nature of brother, neigh 
 bor, countrymen. The coxcomb does not so much magnify 
 his own abilities for he has sounded their shallow depths 
 and traced their narrow boundaries as he depresses and 
 distrusts those of others. Living ever in a home atmosphere 
 of pretenre and falsehood of tinsel drapery, covering 
 
104 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 shabby raiment and ragged walls he cheats himself into 
 the belief that the possessions of others are alike hollow and 
 meretricious and that his assurance passes for knowledge, 
 his insolence for authority:, his impertinence for wit, so long 
 as the world through complaisance or decorum refrains from 
 laughing in his face ! Miserable deception ! that ostler who 
 bowed to him in feigned deference has accurately weighed 
 and measured him at a single glance ; that chimney-s\veep 
 on whom he fancies he has made so profound an impression 
 is already laughing at his folly. Let him betake himself to 
 what market he will, he can not sell himself for one penny 
 more than he is worth. But a genuine Self-Trust entrenches 
 itself in the largest possibilities of Humanity. How shall it 
 discourage you, faint heart and faithless, that Alexander 
 conquered, that Columbus discovered, that Washington nobly 
 withstood? That these have well done but proves that you 
 too may do if you will, and to that end only do they exist 
 for you. Excuse not your inglorious sloth by the assertion 
 that the precise act of daring or endurance which was theirs 
 can not be yours that you have not the qualities, or it may 
 be the opportunities, which have made their names immortal. 
 You were not created to perform their acts but your own. 
 If the deeds which they made theirs had remained unacted 
 till now, they might have devolved on you ; but the universe 
 can not halt in its eternal career for needless iterations that 
 you may gratify your petty and senseless ambition. But 
 whatsoever act is truly yours, lies broad and palpable before 
 you, if you will but turn from your mousing and heed it. 
 For that act all the Ages have been silently, unerringly pre 
 paring ; the wisdom of Omniscience, the power of Omnip 
 otence, are pledged that your strength shall be equal to your 
 day. Accept, then, with alacrity your position in the 
 Eternal Order of things ; and seek not to hide your sloth and 
 sensuality beneath vain regrets that you are yourself and not 
 another, and thus bury your talent in a napkin. 
 
THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER. 105 
 
 In truth, they who have put their heart into their work at 
 the outset are rarely troubled with these qualms of incapacity. 
 The traveler oftenest finds his road impassable as he sits by 
 the tempting fireside, and listens shuddering to the howling 
 of the storm. Let him but breast it with a smile of gay 
 indifference, of conscious power, and the gale sweeps less 
 fiercely, the darkness is no longer Egyptian. And thus, too, 
 of our timid sensitiveness to Opinion. Ridicule, that weapon 
 of fools, is harmless, save against themselves; it never yet 
 pierced the solid armor of an upright and manly purpose. 
 When Chivalry became a dead form, a cloak for rapacity and 
 license, a senseless cumberer of the ground, Cervantes ex 
 tinguished it by a romance ; yet all the wits of Christendom 
 could not have shaken it one iota so long as it remained a 
 reality a vital existence. Are you tempted to abandon 
 your idea because a gaping multitude who can not realize, 
 condemn, and make mouths at it ? then it was never truly 
 yours. You but borrowed it, in the silly hope that as it wns 
 novel and startling it might become popular. Vain imagin 
 ing ! if it had been worth anything to you, you would not 
 have come by it so easily. Were it now truly your own, 
 you would be ready to follow it over burning plowshares. 
 
 And yet we are deceived by our superficial philosophy in 
 the presumption that Truth is rejected by the world. That 
 it is not readily embraced and assimilated that the good 
 seed falls oftenest on rugged and thorny ground, or at least 
 on that where the harvest is tardy, it needs no argument to 
 show. Still is its utterance never without witness or efficacy; 
 and the reverberation of its forgotten tones comes back to us 
 from the opposite horizon to rebuke our hot impatience, our 
 fragile faith. In our short-sighted leaping to conclusions, we 
 misjudge and misinterpret. A wild, uncouth person sud 
 denly appears among us, and begins haranguing in advocacy 
 of Repentance, or Temperance, or Abolition, or some other 
 revolt against established abuses. Forthwith there are com- 
 
106 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 motion, and indignation, and violence ; every voice and 
 hand are raised against him ; and we rashly decide that 
 Public Opinion has condemned him. Not so : he has sum 
 moned Public Opinion to the judgment-seat, and condemned 
 it. Incoherent and irrational his speech may mainly be, 
 three parts error to one of truth ; unsound and preposterous 
 his theory ; but not for this is the multitude incited to hiss 
 or stone him. He might have babbled nonsense or raved in 
 delirium till doomsday, and hardly have provoked a smile. 
 But through all his folly there have gleamed rays of pier 
 cing truth ; and this it is which has excited the uproar ; not 
 what the mob rejected, but what they unwillingly believed 
 and dreaded. I would counsel you, then, give fearless utter 
 ance to your whole convictions ; give free scope to your 
 strongest energies, in the faith that whatever you shall do 
 truly, simply, and uprightly, could be no better done by men 
 nor angels, and will surely commend itself to the understand 
 ings of the highest, the consciences of the most perverted. 
 
 I approach with diffidence the consideration of Heroism, 
 not as an element but as the complement and capital grace 
 of the Human Character, in view of what has been so well 
 said of it, as it were but yesterday, by Carry le in a glorious 
 volume ; by Emerson in a transcendent essay. In the light 
 of these, all truth that may be offered on the subject must 
 seem but imitative, or at best the tame and needless elucida 
 tion of a transparent and living text. Of such as are familiar 
 with these I can only expect pardon for my temerity in the 
 event that it shall prove not wholly unsuccessful and use 
 less. 
 
 By Heroism, then, I understand the overflowing of a gen 
 erous and exalted nature into all acts of lofty daring and 
 endeavor. In its purest condition it is Virtue militant ; in 
 any, it is Human Energy rising superior to inconvenience, 
 obstacle, and the petty limitations which seem to hedge in 
 our mortal condition ; against the cobwebs by which Timid- 
 
THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER. 107 
 
 ity and Sloth consent to be caged. Virtue calculates ; 
 weighs consequences ; deliberates ; while Heroism moves 
 due on to the attainment of that good, the overthrow of that 
 evil, which stands in the attitude of resistance before it. It 
 does not stop to measure and balance its forces with those 
 opposed to it, because it recognizes no terrestrial force high 
 er than itself, and feels the soul superior to whatever of acci 
 dent, circumstance or custom may oppose it. Virtue is 
 cairn, collected, forbearing; Heroism, impetuous, defying, 
 advances eagerly to the combat with Fraud, with Wrong, 
 with Oppression, instinctively recognizing in each its mortal 
 foe. It is Michael and his angels battling the whole host of 
 Darkness, and with not less but more of energy that they 
 know intensely that the struggle can have but one result. 
 
 4 Life, says Emerson, is a festival only to the wise. Seen from 
 the nook and chimney-side of Prudence, it wears a rugged and danger 
 ous front. The violations of the laws of Nature by our predecessors 
 and our cotemporaries are punished in us also.**** Insanity, war, 
 plague, cholera, famine, indicate a certain ferocity in Nature, which, 
 as it had its inlet by human crime, must have its outlet by human suf 
 fering.**** Our Culture, therefore, must not omit the arming of the 
 man. Let him hear in season that he is born into the state of war, 
 and that the Commonwealth and his own well-being require that he 
 should not go dancing in the weeds of peace, but warned, self-collected, 
 and, neither defying nor dreading the thunder, let him take both rep 
 utation and life in his hand, and, with perfect urbanity, dare the gibbet 
 and the mob by the absolute truth of his speech and the rectitude of 
 his behavior. 
 
 Times of heroism (says this profound observer) are generally times 
 of terror, but the day never shines in which this element may not work. 
 The circumstances of man, we say, are historically somewhat better 
 in this country, and at this hour, than perhaps ever before. More 
 freedom exists for culture. It will not now run against an axe at the 
 first step out of the beaten path of opinion. But whoso is heroic will 
 always find crises to try his edge. Whatever outrages have happened 
 to men may befall a man again, and very easily in a republic, if there 
 appear any signs of a decay of religion. Human virtue demands her 
 champions and martyrs, and the trial of Persecution always proceeds. 
 
108 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 It is but the other day that the brave Lovejoy gave his breast to a 
 mob for the rights of free speech and opinion, and died when it was 
 better not to live ! 
 
 I think these true utterances of a serene spirit justly mod 
 ify, in perfect accordance with what I have already urged 
 when speaking of Virtue, the casual remark of the same 
 writer, that * every heroic act measures itself by its contempt 
 of some external good. Undoubtedly is this true in the 
 sense in which it is intended that, seen through the eyes 
 of the prudent, the soul of the soulless, the action of the 
 Hero is clean contrary to a sensual prosperity. It is a rid 
 dle, a madness ; at least a trap, an ambuscade. But from 
 the consciousness of the Hero himself no idea is farther than 
 that of relinquishment, or self-sacrifice. He has but accepted 
 his place in Nature ; had it been another s, he had not 
 courted it to make a parade of his devotion or daring. A 
 Washington never scores up the hours he has given, the 
 perils braved, the sweet food and soft indulgence he has 
 missed, in struggling for the salvation of his country. If he 
 has been able to serve her triumphantly, it is well ; if not, 
 he has at least by action ripened and defined the capacities 
 of his own being. Caesar puts away the proffered crown 
 with a sigh of regretful longing ; Washington brushes it 
 aside as the phantom of an abhorred, unnatural dream. 
 
 Human Virtue is generally tinged and not seldom utterly 
 perverted by Human infirmity ; yet I think we are inclining, 
 with our easy assumption of immense superiority for our 
 time and culture, to rate too meanly, to condemn too broadly, 
 the ruder, harsher shapes in which the Heroism of earlier 
 ages developed itself. In this w r e fall into the one great 
 error of narrow and ungenial Criticism, in scanning the act 
 of the individual on which we pass judgment, not from his 
 point of departure but our own. We see the conqueror 
 hurled on his path of carnage and conflagration, and our 
 
THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER. 109 
 
 hearts revolt within us we almost chide God for permit 
 ting so vast and wanton a ravage. But had we half the 
 wisdom and insight our presumptuous judgment supposes, 
 we should doubtless see in every state overturned the finale 
 of myriads of rank and crying oppressions in every City 
 desolated, not one merely but ten thousand righteous retri 
 butions. Mourn not, then, sir philanthropist, over the de 
 vastating career of Alaric, the onward surge of the Saracen 
 wave from Mecca to Vienna ; nay, water not with your tears 
 the grave even of hapless Poland ; for, rely on it, if any 
 true and healthful vitality had there existed, it would have 
 vindicated itself in the hour of peril. Witness Greece, 
 blackened, not subdued, by the innumerable hosts of Xerxes; 
 witness Prussia withstanding the force of Europe under the 
 lead of the Great Frederick. A nation is not surprised, is 
 not circumvented into slavery ; it can fall only beneath the 
 weight of its own corruptions. It needs a Darius to make 
 the fortunes of an Alexander. The inroad of a hostile force 
 is to a stout-hearted people an electric shock, a ferment, a 
 renovation. Cast your eye over the continent of Europe, 
 and in that territory where Freedom and Culture are fore 
 most, where the rank, accumulating abuses of many centu 
 ries have found their grave in this, you will recognize the 
 soil which has latest echoed the tread of the invader. I trust 
 the clay has passed when the blood of civilized man required 
 to be quickened and purged by this severe cathartic ; but 
 we need not therefore deny that War, too, had its uses in 
 its day. Far hence be the infatuation which hailed the con 
 queror as a demigod ; let us not err as widely by rashly 
 pronouncing him a demon. 
 
 But happily to the Heroism of the Present and the Fu 
 ture is vouchsafed a higher pathway of duty a holier en 
 deavor. It is called no longer to thunder at the gates of 
 capitals to batter down the walls of citadels, in which 
 10 
 
110 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 venerable Abuse has entrenched itself. Though its mission 
 is still as ever the abasement of pride, the redress of wrong, 
 the vindication of unshielded right, the exaltation of the 
 lowly, it moves no more to the field of conflict with lumber 
 ing catapult or echoing culverin. Its soul responds not now 
 to the blast of the air-piercing trumpet ; it starts not at the 
 rude summons of the doubling drum. It troubles itself no 
 more with ordnance, and towers, and armies, and Bastiles ; 
 for it knows that these dry bones of what were once dominion 
 and power shall not protect their wielder an hour from the 
 resistless might of offended Opinion. It sees the king sit 
 to-day in proud security on his throne, surrounded by all of 
 strength there is in walls and gates and weapons, and it 
 smiles at his pomp and blazonry as it realizes that to-morrow 
 he may be a friendless outcast and fugitive, fleeing from the 
 stroke of a jest, a ballad, a newspaper. To-morrow the 
 demagogue shall revel in his halls in utter blindness to the 
 moral of yesterday ; and the next day he too shall have van 
 ished and been forgotten. But the ear of true Heroism is 
 bent to catch the feeblest wail of suffering Humanity its 
 eye is fixed intently on the morning-star which heralds a 
 brighter day for the enduring, the abject, the down-trodden 
 millions of earth. It stretches forth an ungauntleted but 
 sinewy and steady hand, and takes decided hold of this vast, 
 ungainly framework of Society, and says to what end is this, 
 and this ? and does it remain here as a vital significance or 
 only as a dead cumberer of the ground ? It recoils not at 
 the shriek of pain or the yell of indignation ; for it knows 
 by this that it has touched an ulcer ; and, unhappily, it 
 can hardly avoid touching one. It questions with firm 
 speech all institutions, observances, customs, that it may de 
 termine by what mischance or illusion thriftless Pretence 
 and Knavery shall seem to batten on a brave Prosperity, 
 while Labor vainly begs employment, Skill lacks recom 
 pense, and Worth pines for bread. Its answer to that search- 
 
THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER. Ill 
 
 ing question of Divine arraignment, Where is thy brother 
 Abel ? reverses that of the first murderer and all who are 
 heirs of his spirit. It says to ostentatious Affluence and 
 Splendor, Vaunt not to me of your icy charities, your gifts 
 ill-sown because without heart ; but rather ask pardon of 
 God that as yet you have diverted so large a portion of his 
 stewardship from the great end to which he designed it, and 
 amend. You owe to the desolate, the crushed, the despair 
 ing, not the reluctant dollar, doled out with coarse and un 
 just upbraidings, but cordial sympathy, and the rekindling 
 of hope in the benighted breast. It says to timid and dis 
 trustful Power, Trouble not yourself with these labyrinth 
 ine passages of mazy policy, but lend your brawny arm to 
 extend far and wide the blessings of Plenty, Culture, Im 
 provement, and strengthen the fabric of your sway by laying 
 broader and deeper its foundations in universal Happiness 
 and Content. It says to Genius, Immerse not yourself in 
 these vain trifles of Convenience or Economy to which your 
 best energies have so long been given. Why shall you 
 waste your life in devising means for the better lighting or 
 warming of the stately mansion, while you give not a thought to 
 the utter darkness and inclemency in which the denizens of 
 ten thousand adjacent hovels are groping and shivering? 
 Thus fearlessly the Heroism of the Nineteenth Century erects 
 its judgment-seat in every breast, and weighs in its ready bal 
 ances all custom, authority, assertion. From its serene ex 
 altation above the low r ambitions, the mousing schemes, the 
 gross apprehensions of the sordid, it smiles benignly on the 
 impotence of purblind hostility the despot s bayonet, the 
 bigot s scowl, the witling s sneer. This spirit shall yet ren 
 ovate the world. Before the calm earnestness of its gaze 
 shall W T rong, Slavery, and Ignorance vanish from the face 
 of the Earth, and a pervading Intelligence, a clearer Insight, 
 a higher Life, shall irradiate the future pages of the History 
 of Man ! 
 
112 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE RELATIONS OF LEARNING TO LABOR: 
 
 A COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS.* 
 
 FROM the fierce turmoils and hot strifes of the passing 
 day, I come at your bidding, to spend an hour with you in 
 the interchange of more quiet thought, returning on the 
 morrow to my wonted sphere and calling. I appear be 
 fore you, not as a scholar among his equals, to descant on 
 themes common and dear alike to all, but as one whose 
 chief teacher has been the rugged world, and whose little 
 all of knowledge has been gathered amid its rude jousts and 
 stern encounters. You will not expect me, therefore, if 
 you give me credit for sincerity and purpose in embracing 
 this opportunity, to address you in the language nor unfold 
 to you thoughts peculiar to the halls of learning. Were he 
 some specimen of our fading Aboriginal Race whom you had 
 thus summoned before you, you would hardly anticipate any 
 thing more than an outward deference to the genius of the 
 place a relinquishment, for the occasion, of the blanket, the 
 tomahawk and the war-paint not of whatever is intrinsic 
 and essential. He could only hope to justify your daring 
 choice by speaking to you his own words by an utterance 
 from the depths of his own being. And thus I, standing be 
 fore you in some sort a humble representative of that large 
 class sometimes termed the se//"-educated, by others (perhaps 
 more properly) the ?^weducated, shall speak to you from the 
 
 * Before the Literary Societies of Hamilton College, July 23d. 144. 
 
THE RELATIONS OF LEARNING TO LABOR. 113 
 
 heart of that class truths which may or may not have long 
 since resounded through the halls of our Universities, agita 
 ting their venerable dust, but which in either case are certain 
 ere long to make themselves heard and respected. 
 
 I have not hesitated to choose for my theme on this occa 
 sion THE DISCIPLINE AND DUTIES OF THE SCHOLAR, 
 vast and lofty though it be, and imperfect as have been my 
 opportunities for its thorough appreciation and discussion. 
 Few as are the fragments of hours that I have been able to 
 seize for its contemplation, I am well aware that on its proper 
 apprehension depends, in great degree, the Progress and the 
 Well-being of the Human Race. You need not fear, my 
 friends ! that the advantages of a thorough Education, nor of 
 a thoroughly educated Class, will be undervalued in our day, 
 and especially by us weary marchers and combatants along 
 the parched highways, beneath the fervid sun of active life, 
 who have been able but to scoop, as it were, here and there 
 a handfull from the grateful, invigorating waters of Know 
 ledge, as they danced and bubbled across our too eager, head 
 long course. O, not from our panting ranks will ever arise 
 the cry that solid and symmetric Learning is a boon to be re 
 jected or lightly prized ! The small coins of knowledge which 
 we awkwardly handle and dispense are constantly reminding 
 us of the priceless ingots of golden treasure which for us lie 
 buried in the far recesses of halls like these, from which a 
 grim Fate has forever debarred us. Limited as may have 
 been our opportunities, it is not to us a sealed truth that the 
 Present is only to be rightly read and interpreted in the full 
 light reflected from the Past. We are not unaware that this 
 uneasy, jostling throng of to-day is but a reproduction, with 
 slight permutations, of the sweating, striving crowds of a thou 
 sand yesterdays, to be again and again represented, in the 
 several throngs of countless to-morrows. We are well aware 
 that faithful, graphic History is a diviner as well as a judge 
 that her magic mirror gives back the faces glowing around us 
 10* 
 
114 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 as well as the forms in dust beneath us, and that he who 
 rightly, intelligently, reads of Aristides and Cleon, of Brutus 
 and Catiline, of smooth Augustus and deified Nero, may turn 
 at once from the musty chronicle and see the living charac 
 ters stalking eagerly around him. Must he not discern the 
 Phocion of our Republic in that noble relic of our heroic 
 elder time, the oft-baffled, defeated, decried, but dauntless, 
 bravely struggling, unconquerable octogenarian of Quincy ? 
 Might he not be tempted at last to suspect that the difference 
 between one age and another exists quite as often in its chron 
 iclers as in its actors, and that the perishing hieroglyphics 
 of Tlascala and Quito would reveal heroism as devoted and 
 admirable as any of that more felicitously recorded by Homer 
 or Polybius, had we but the skill to interpret them as thor 
 oughly ? In short, it is not alone the Educated who have 
 learned that a knowledge of Man is the central truth, to 
 which the study of men and their acts must be subsidiary ; 
 and that the mingled web of Divine beneficence and Human 
 infirmity, termed History, is to be rightly scanned only in pro 
 portion as we apprehend its beginning and its destined 
 conclusion. 
 
 There is, there must be, a preeminently Educated Class 
 among us I do not merely admit the notorious fact ; I per 
 ceive the vital necessity. Whether the distance between that 
 class and the many should or should not be as broad and 
 palpable as at present, is not now the question. My theme 
 implies its existence, and assumes that the greater number are 
 relatively uneducated. However we might desire the universal 
 diffusion and possession of the knowledge now confined to 
 this class, we know it is, and long must be, impossible. Its 
 attainment exacts a devotion of time and of means, to say 
 nothing of tastes and habits, which can only be given by the 
 comparatively few. My theme, then, involves the compound 
 inquiry What should be the nature vt the education of the 
 more cultivated class? Under what conditions should Learn- 
 
THE RELATIONS OF LEARNING TO LABOR. 115 
 
 ing be acquired ? What ends should it contemplate ? What 
 advantages secure to its possessors ? I shall proceed to dis 
 cuss it. 
 
 I would insist, then, as the primary requisition in the 
 Discipline of the Scholar, on a THOROUGH AND HARMONIOUS 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE PHYSICAL MAN. I place this first, not 
 as more important than Moral and Intellectual culture, but as 
 the proper foundation of all culture unto perfection. You need 
 not cite me to instances of intellectual giants who are physi 
 cally dwarfs of puny Genius and hypochondriac Wit you 
 may -as well tell me that the foetid, pestilent purlieus of a great 
 City are favorable to health and longevity, because men have 
 grown there to stature and vigor and died in hale old age. As 
 well tell me that the bivouac and the battle-field are favorable 
 to long life, because men have died peacefully at ninety, after 
 a half century of camps and sieges. These are exceptions, 
 which rather establish the rule than invalidate it. A sound 
 mind in a sound body that is the order of Nature you 
 may find a sound mind elsewhere, but it will be most un 
 fitly and inconveniently bestowed. The body can endure a 
 divorce far better than the mind. In fact, we see bodies 
 breathing, moving, acting all around us, which seem to per 
 form their proper functions tolerably with the aid of very little 
 mind almost none but a healthful, clear mind in a dis 
 eased, decrepit, decaying body is a far more pitiable spectacle. 
 It is a diamond in the clutch of a lunatic to be gazed at a 
 moment in wonder, then hurled into the depths of the sea. 
 It is a freight of the wealth of the Indies, embarked in a tot 
 tering wherry, which is certain to sink in the first tempest. 
 W T hen I look around me, and recall the many noble, and 
 brilliant, and greatly useful, who have sunk after a meteor- 
 like career into premature graves, under the assaults of 
 diseases insensibly contracted during their years of study 
 and mental acquisition diseases from which any tolerable 
 knowledge, any careful investigation, of the laws of Man s 
 
116 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 physical being must have preserved them lam impelled to 
 sound the alarm of danger alike to teachers and to students 
 to plead for the generation now in process of develop 
 ment and the generation to follow and to warn the direc 
 tors of Education of the fearful responsibility which rests 
 upon them a responsibility which it is but charity to pre 
 sume very many of them do not even dimly comprehend. 
 For, assuredly, they could not know that the hundreds of 
 young men committed by anxious love to their charge were 
 growing up in almost total ignorance even that they had 
 physical constitutions to nurture and bring to vigorous matu 
 rity in utter ignorance, quite commonly, of many of the 
 inflexible laws on which their physical well-being depend 
 and not adopt some adequate measures to counteract and 
 avert the danger. And yet, how little is systematically done, 
 how little is even consistently, authoritatively said, in our 
 seminaries of Learning, of the necessity and nature of a true 
 Physical Education ? Shall this deficiency continue ? 
 
 True Education is Development. It does not create the 
 statue from the marble it only finds it therein and exposes 
 it to the unimpeded, admiring gaze. But in what do our 
 Educational processes tend to develop the physical man? 
 From the high, uncomfortable bench on which the child sits for 
 hours at the common school in abhorred constraint and suffer 
 ing, watching in envy the flitting of every bird by the window, 
 to the highest University, so called, we find scarcely a recog 
 nition that his mind is encased in a tenement of flesh and 
 blood. He has teachers of Reading and of Grammar Pro 
 fessors of Mathematics and of Ethics of Languages and of 
 Metaphysics but the teachers of the laws of his own struc 
 ture and relations to Nature the Professors of Health, of 
 Strength, of Longevity, I think are mainly yet to be appoint 
 ed. Yet this ought not to be. The position of the young 
 student is surrounded by peculiar perils. From the field, the 
 forest, the bustling ways of home and neighborhood, he is 
 
THE RELATIONS OF LEARNING TO LABOR. 117 
 
 transplanted at once to academic shades, whose genius de 
 mands quiet, meditation, seclusion. No longer is the climbing 
 of rugged hills, or the levelling of stubborn woods, the prep 
 aration for the evening s study and the night s repose. He is 
 instantly confronted by two formidable dangers that of 
 falling into habits of physical indolence and excessive study, 
 inducing indigestion and its long train of enfeebling horrors ; 
 or his lithe frame revolts at the galling bondage, and he 
 becomes a hater of books, a neglecter of studies, and gradu 
 ally addicts himself to habits of turbulence and wild excess. 
 Henceforward his career need not be indicated its course 
 and its end are inevitable. 
 
 I must press this point farther, for I feel that a reform with 
 regard to it is most essential to the usefulness and honor of 
 our seminaries. In too many instances has a Collegiate 
 course, in view of all its consequences, proved a positive 
 curse to a large proportion of the Class which sanguinely 
 entered upon it as the unmistakable liijrh road to eminent 
 usefulness, recompense and fame. Alas ! a deadly serpent 
 lurked in those calm, bright bowers which seemed to their 
 first eager glances so alluring. A few days of eager study 
 jaded their spirits and unstrung their nerves ; a languor and 
 lassitude crept over them ; they fell into the company of those 
 who had traveled that road before them, who suggested 
 "All study is dry work let us solace ourselves this evening 
 with a bottle and a feast." Thus is laid the foundation of 
 habits which have dragged too many a youth of rare promise 
 down to an untimely and dishonored crave which have 
 quenched the fond, proud hopes of admiring relatives in a 
 deluge of sin and shame. 
 
 Now it is the idlest folly to waste words in declaiming 
 against these evils we must trace them to their source and 
 apply there an adequate preventive. We must begin by 
 teaching our Young Men the nature of their own frames, and 
 the shocking violence they do to that nature by overtaxing its 
 
118 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 powers, and then drugging it with narcotics and stimulants to 
 reanimate them. We must demonstrate to them the fact that 
 any use of stimulants is a certain and fearful evil that the 
 effect we term drunkenness is only a benevolent effort of 
 Nature to expel the monster which has been treacherously ad 
 mitted to her most sacred and vital recesses and that the 
 evil commences with the first particle of such substances 
 which is thrust upon her, and the penalty is signal and cer 
 tain although the second glass were never taken. All these 
 truths and the kindred objections to narcotics, may easily 
 enough be scientifically demonstrated the mischief is that 
 they are not. A man properly instructed, and as yet un- 
 corrupted, would no more think of swallowing Alcohol than 
 live coals or arsenic. And yet many have actually acquired 
 the basest of habits that of partaking of notoriously hurtful 
 substances merely to produce a temporary and pernicious 
 elevation of the spirits within the precincts of our very 
 Universities ! Shame is it to human ignorance shame es 
 pecially to those whose duty it was to dispel that ignorance in 
 the case of these victims, and yet neglected it ! They .can 
 not be excused, but we may drop a tear of pity for the vic 
 tim of their neglect, so distorted and misdeveloped that he 
 knows how to construe Greek, yet does not know enough to 
 reject and loathe Tobacco ! 
 
 You have already anticipated my statement that, to a true 
 and healthful development of the Man, I deem a constant 
 participation in Manual Labor indispensable. Labor ! blessed 
 boon of God, to alleviate the horrors and purify the tenden 
 cies of our fallen state ! when shall its benefits and its joys be 
 brought home to each and to all ? We may make it a curse 
 and a burden by so regarding it, as we may any other bless 
 ing from Heaven, but the truth is irrepressible that only he 
 who is familiar with Labor and loves it can either improve or 
 enjoy life. The man whose only stimulant to exertion in 
 any field is the hope of individual gain, can hardly have risen 
 
THE RELATIONS OF LEARNING TO LABOR. 119 
 
 above the condition of a slave. We must learn to be true 
 workers our frames need it our unperverted impulses 
 demand it our very souls, if unstifled, cry out for it. Most 
 earnestly, then, do I record my protest against the all but 
 universal prescription which divorces entirely profound Study 
 from Manual Labor which, in its attention to the intellec 
 tual and moral nature of the student, forgets that he has also 
 a physical frame to be developed and invigorated. Of course, 
 you will not understand me as assuming that the usual routine 
 of student life forgets or disregards the necessity of physical 
 exercise I know better. I will not doubt that wlieiwrr 
 thoughtful, conscientious and cultivated men have clwruv of 
 the education of youth, there are, there must be, abundant 
 inculcations of the necessity of exercise and the value of 
 health ; also of the danger of losing the latter through the 
 neglect of the former. I will not doubt that abundant oppor 
 tunities and facilities for exercise arc everywhere afforded. 
 Yet what is the result? Do the mass of our young men 
 finish their studies with stronger constitutions, sturdier frames, 
 more athletic limbs, than they brought away from their pa 
 rental firesides ? Not within the sphere of my observation 
 far otherwise. I have known many dyspepsias, consumptions, 
 debilities, which traced their origin to seminaries : I do 
 not remember any that were cured there ; I have known the 
 stout lad in the district school who graduated a feeble invalid 
 from the university. My conviction is that the Physical de 
 partment of Education has decidedly retrograded since the 
 days of Greek freedom and glory. Our prevalent error is not 
 one of method and detail it is fundamental. We have lost 
 the true basis ordained of God for the harmonious and health 
 ful development of the whole human being, in separating the 
 education of the Head from the education of the Hands. We 
 have dared to disregard that Divine fiat, first of punishments 
 and therefore first also of mercies In the sweat of thy 
 face shalt thou eat bread ! Shunning this appointed path. 
 
120 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 we have sought out inventions, which we term Exercise, 
 Recreation, Relaxation. Heaven placidly but inexorably disal 
 lows them. I do not say that for the cramped, soul-dwarfed, 
 undeveloped miner, delving for six days of each week in some 
 stinted Egyptian labyrinth in the bowels of the earth, there 
 may not be appropriate recreation in the free air and sunshine. 
 Malign Circumstance has grudged him a full development 
 his class are significantly advertised for as Hands wanted 
 not men. But to the true and whole man each successive 
 duty is the proper relief from the preceding, and in the regu 
 lar alternation of labors now those which tax mainly the 
 Intellect, next those which appeal mainly to the Sinews is 
 the needed relaxation best attained. Thus only shall Life be 
 rendered consistent and harmonious thus shall each hour 
 be dignified and rendered heroic. The division of the Race 
 into two unequal, contrasted classes the few Thinkers, the 
 many Workers has been and is the source of many and 
 sore evils, including the loss of the fitting and manly inde 
 pendence of each. It is the source of infinite servility, false 
 hood and mean compliance. Not till we shall have emanci 
 pated the Many from the subjection of taking their thoughts 
 at second-hand from the Few, may we hope to accomplish 
 much for the upraising of the long trampled masses. Not till 
 we have emancipated the Few from the equally degrading 
 necessity of subsisting on the fruits of the physical toil of the 
 Many, can we secure to the more cultivated and intellectual 
 their proper and healthful ascendency over the less affluent in 
 mental wealth. The plowman recognizes and appreciates 
 Genuis, Talent, Learning; but he finds that these are too 
 often directed to the acquisition of wealth and luxury by 
 means which add little to the aggregate of human comforts, 
 and rather subtract from his own especial share of them. The 
 reprobate dreads the rebuke of the anointed reprover of sin ; 
 but says, He will hardly venture to arraign pointedly the 
 transgressions of one who contributes liberally to the salary 
 
THE RELATIONS OF LEARNING TO LABOR. 121 
 
 which barely supports his expensive family. Thus the divorce 
 of Learning from Manual Labor the absolute dependence of 
 the Educated on the Uneducated class for the means of sup 
 plying its physical wants becomes the source of endless and 
 fatal compromises of Principle and perversions of Intellectual 
 power. 
 
 It avails nothing to point me to the failure, if it shall be so 
 termed, of past attempts to reunite Study with Physical exer 
 tion the affluent mind with the ready and skillful hand. 
 These failures only prove the inadequacy of the effort, not 
 that the object is unworthy, nor even unattainable. They 
 have been impelled too often by low ideas of their own scope 
 and purpose by a consideration of the necessity to the stu 
 dent not so much of Labor as of Bread. Commenced in this 
 spirit, the number of workers will inevitably dwindle till only 
 those labor who must subsist on the fruits of that labor ; soon 
 the class distinction of Gentlemen and Peasants reappears ; 
 invidious comparisons, sneers and sarcasms beget hatreds and 
 collisions; and one class or the other probably both 
 make their exit ; the institution explodes ; and the superficial 
 multitude unhesitatingly pronounce the idea of uniting Labor 
 with Study proved impracticable and absurd ! 
 
 The fatal error here was obviously that of putting the new 
 wine into old bottles. The impulse to the enterprise was not 
 a conviction of the necessity, healthfullness and dignity of La 
 bor not even the idea of Duty as commanding a participa 
 tion in the toil needful to the sustenance and comfort of Man 
 but at bottom the pauper s necessity, the slave s dread of 
 the lash. This may facilitate and insure the production of 
 corn never of true men. Not until Labor shall be joyfully 
 and proudly accepted as a genial and beneficent destiny 
 us the needful exercise and complement of our else unde 
 veloped or perverted faculties may we rationally hope for 
 any permanently satisfactory result. 
 
 And here you will permit me to. hazard a criticism on so 
 
122 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 much of our educational processes no great portion of 
 any college course, I will hope as are undertaken for the 
 sake, it is said, of disciplining the mind. I ask a student- 
 friend why he, who is aspiring to the Christian Ministry, 
 should devote so much time to a science so little pertinent 
 to his future calling as Mathematics, and he answers that the 
 study of Mathematics is an admirable discipline for the 
 mind ! Need I say to you that I neither appreciate the 
 force of the reason nor discern the benefits of the discipline ? 
 I do not say that this or any other science may not be emi 
 nently calculated to subserve the purpose contemplated I 
 simply demur to the necessity or fitness of pursuing mental 
 discipline apart from healthful mental activity in the sphere 
 of practical life. Does the youth contemplate the pursuit 
 of Astronomy, Engineering, or any sphere of usefulness 
 requiring the aid of the exact sciences then let him devote 
 his student years in part to Mathematics, and master them 
 thoroughly. But if he contemplate pursuing either of the 
 three leading professions, Theology, Law or Physic I dis 
 trust the wisdom of such a devotion of his time. This life 
 is too short to justify the acquisition of abstruse sciences on 
 such grounds. The mind is best disciplined when it finds 
 its pleasures in its duties when all its laborious acquisi 
 tions are turned to direct and palpable account when its 
 every impulse is toward utility and beneficence. We give 
 the child playthings because we know not or have not what 
 we should give him did we know all things, command all 
 things, we should improve his every desire to subserve 
 directly some useful end. His toys would be tools, or at 
 least demonstrations of some truth adapted to his opening 
 mind. He should be wiser for every walk more skillful 
 for each hour s diversion!, In our ignorance or fond thought 
 lessness, we waste half the golden opportunities of the most 
 impressible period of life, and misimprove a portion of the 
 remainder. It were well to remember that a benign Creator 
 
THE RELATIONS OF LEARNING TO LABOR. 123 
 
 has enfolded the mental casket we contemplate, and that it 
 needs not to be pressed and fashioned, but simply developed. 
 The discipline it requires, if unstifled, unperverted, is induc 
 tion into whatever is peculiar to that sphere of laudable 
 endeavor to which it is specially devoted. 
 
 And here let me state fairly the objection of the Utilitarian 
 school to the acquisition of the Dead Languages, which I 
 find often commented on and controverted without being at 
 all apprehended. We do not, we never did, deny the utility 
 of these Languages to many it would ill become us to do 
 so ill become any rational beings. We admit nay, in 
 sist, that there are large classes to which a thorough know 
 ledge of one or more of the Languages in which the noblest, 
 most inspiring ideas of Antiquity lie inurned, is indispen 
 sable. The Christian theologian needs a mastery of Greek 
 and Hebrew ; the Physician, the Botanist, the thorough 
 Lawyer, of Latin. But, beyond and above these, the world 
 needs and is deeply indebted to the illustrious body of Schol 
 ars, Learned Men, who as Professors, (() most desecrated 
 term !) Historians, Philosophers, Poets, Critics, are constantly 
 irradiating and instructing the Present by the light of the 
 Past. Noblest, least obtrusive of our teachers, we could not 
 dispense with these we are in no danger of honoring them 
 too highly. But it is not given to every man it is permit 
 ted to few to be of these, and it is preposterous to subject 
 the multitude of comparatively educated persons to their 
 ordeal in the idle hope of producing any such result. You 
 can not make Scholars of these you have enough to do 
 to render them passable attorneys and doctors, in the com 
 mon way. And, if they are to be such and nothing more, 
 you must allow me to believe that their College years might 
 be better devoted than to the acquisition of Greek and 
 Latin oftener practically forgotten in two years than really 
 learned in three. The simple and notorious fact that they 
 usually arc so forgotten that they are to most educated 
 
124 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 men (so called) in the busy walks of life but a foggy remin 
 iscence of dull days wasted and dry tasks slighted, is their 
 sufficient condemnation. 
 
 The truth is that the fatal evil of pecuniary dependence is 
 not always unfelt even by those who hold the responsible 
 position of directors of the highest education of our youth. 
 A President or Professor who should frankly tell the parents 
 of a proffered student that their son might make an excellent 
 blacksmith or carpenter, but would be neither eminent nor 
 happy at the bar nor in the pulpit, would probably incur 
 resentment and a withdrawal of patronage and yet how 
 often ought such truth to be frankly, kindly told ! It would 
 frequently save much waste of energies and means, much 
 weariness and heart-ache. The true though rugged man 
 who has nobly gathered a competence by following the plow, 
 would feel offended if assured that his son was so fit for no 
 other avocation as that of a farmer though that were a 
 genuine tribute of respect to the dignity of the vocation and 
 the honest worth of the youth. 
 
 We are here confronted by the low idea \vhich every 
 where prevails of the true rank of useful manual toil by 
 none so cherished, as by those who themselves toil, except 
 by the empty demagogue who windily babbles in bar-rooms 
 of the rights and dignity of Labor, hoping to compass there 
 by the means of avoiding Labor. The farmer will not feel 
 gratified, though he should, if assured that he can give his 
 son no fitter, no better calling than his own ; the hope of the 
 family must be trained to the chicanery of Law or the futil 
 ity of Medicine in order that he may duly honor his kin 
 dred, though he may be reluctant to enter, or at best have 
 manifested no genius or taste for the calling thus thrust upon 
 him. This is in the true spirit of the illiterate farmer who 
 insisted on having a sermon in Greek, on the ground that 
 he paid the clergyman for the best, and would have it. 
 Thus our higher Education becomes a bed of Procrustes 
 
THE RELATIONS OF LEARNING TO LABOR. 125 
 
 excellent for the few whom Nature has just adapted to it 
 but a very different affair for all beside. We shall learn yet 
 to study the unfolding genius of the youth to be guided 
 by this rather than attempt to overrule it and to leave to 
 the directors of Education a larger discretion in the premi 
 ses than they have usually hitherto enjoyed. 
 
 In the lamentable divorce of Learning from Labor of 
 the highest Intellectual culture from the greatest Industrial 
 capacity and efficiency do I detect the origin of that de 
 plorable discord which prevails between the teachings of our 
 Schoolmen and th? edicts of Legislators, between the les 
 sons of our Literature and the spirit of Communities and 
 States, with regard to Political Economy. Vainly do our 
 Colleges, the wide world over, indoctrinate nearly all the 
 leading minds of the age with the distinctive principles of 
 Adam Smith and his followers their labor may be lighter 
 than that of Sysiphus, but their fortune is inevitably like his. 
 On a few minds, remarkable rather for speculative than for 
 practical ability, they make a durable impression ; but with 
 the majority their plausible inculcations are overborne by the 
 observation and experience of a few succeeding years. 
 Those originally most captivated by the theory of Laisscz 
 faire, soon discover, on passing out into the actual world, 
 that all Life is, all Legislation must be, in contradiction to 
 its spirit. A man who should be left to grow up on this 
 fundamental principle of the Free Trade philosophy, would, 
 if by some miraculous chance he survived to maturity at all, 
 be a most unmitigated savage, and a bad specimen even of 
 that forlorn condition. A young Nation which should really 
 and fully adopt the corresponding theory of National Econ 
 omy, and, by dispensing with all Industrial and Commer 
 cial Legislation of its own, leave its Labor and Trade 
 wholly at the mercy of Foreign regulation, would soon have 
 little left wherewith to tempt the cupidity of Foreign policy. 
 There never yet was, there never can be, a Government of 
 11* 
 
126 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 a civilized, accessible, enlightened, wealthy Nation which 
 acted consistently and thoroughly on the principle of Free 
 Trade for a single generation no, not for ten years. Su 
 perficial men may dilate on the unsafeness of following The 
 ory, the discrepancies between Theory and Practice, and the 
 like fig-leaves of seeming Wisdom wherewith Folly is wont to 
 enrobe herself but there is in truth no such discrepancy. 
 A sound theory is always a safe one it may fearlessly be re 
 duced to practice and followed to the end. When a States 
 man rises in your halls of Legislation and tells you that a cer 
 tain theory is indeed sound and worthy of general acceptance, 
 but it must be postponed in this particular instance, because 
 of the depression of Trade, the distresses of the Laboring 
 Class, or on any such ground, be sure that either he or his 
 theory is hollow and untrustworthy. More probably, both of 
 them are so. For, were the theory sound, the earliest moment 
 would be the best moment to reduce it to practice, and what 
 ever the embarrassments existing, they but furnish additional 
 arguments for its instant adoption. Their existence argues 
 a wrong somewhere, and demands that every known wrong 
 be instantly redressed. To say that a theory is sound, and 
 yet act in contradiction thereto, is to dethrone eternal Right 
 and exalt a fleeting, unstable, unrighteous Expediency in its 
 stead. Whatever is true in theory is desirable in practice, 
 and desirable to-day. 
 
 But the elemental Free Trade assumption is not true. 
 The best government is not that which governs least, or 
 no government at all were clearly better still. Trade will 
 not regulate itself so as to secure even the greatest good 
 of the greatest number, though I insist that it is not the good 
 of the greatest number but of the whole number which com 
 munities and governments are bound unceasingly to seek and 
 to secure. It is not true that the largest possible average or 
 general reward of Industry is that which it would secure in 
 the total absence of Governmental regulation. The grain- 
 
THE RELATIONS OF LEARNING TO LABOR. 127 
 
 grower of the valley of the Wabash or Illinois, for example, 
 can never receive the fullest reward of his toil, the largest 
 return for his bounteous harvests, while the producer of his 
 cloths, his wares, his glass, his cutlery, &c. remains on the 
 other side of the Atlantic. The fact that they do remain 
 there compels a larger export thither of his bulky Agricultural 
 staples, at an enormous cost for transportation, and inevita 
 bly involves a corresponding and permanent depression of the 
 prices of those staples. If England may obtain Wheat from 
 the Black Sea. and the Baltic at an average cost of one dollar 
 a bushel, (as she con, very nearly,) then his must be largely 
 sold in England at that price, though the cost of transporting 
 it thither amounts to three-fourths of that sum. The residue, 
 small as it is, must be the standard price of his wheat at the 
 point of production. But change your policy so as to bring 
 the producers of most of the fabrics which minister to his 
 convenience and comfort from Sheffield and Birmingham to 
 the banks of his own gentle rivtn-s, or of their more impetu 
 ous tributaries, or divert a portion of the grain-grow T ers already 
 there into the various pursuits of Manufacture, and now you 
 have insured a higher price for Grain and a larger reward to 
 the industry of its producer. He will not merely receive 
 more money for his yearly product than he could have done 
 for a long, indefinite period if Manufactures had been left to 
 grow up around him, by the slow, capricious efforts of 
 unaided individual enterprise, exposed to the relentless hos 
 tility of their alarmed and skillful, wealthy and powerful For 
 eign rivals, but he will receive afar greater aggregrate of the 
 various articles he desires in exchange for his own surplus 
 productions. The reason why this is inevitable is that the 
 number of actual producers, the amount of aggregate product, 
 is immensely greater than formerly. Of a thousand workers 
 there were originally three hundred in Illinois producing 
 Grain, tw r o hundred in Europe fabricating various products to 
 be exchanged for the Grain, and the remaining five hundred 
 
128 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 employed as wagoners, boatmen, sailors, forwarders, mer 
 chants, etc., in interchanging the Provisions and the Manu 
 factures between their respective producers, and living (as 
 they must) out of the aggregate product. Now, with the 
 workshops attracted to the westward of the Alleghenies, there 
 are but one hundred required to effect those exchanges, 
 releasing four hundred from various non-productive functions, 
 and reinforcing by so many the body of actual producers of 
 wealth. The consequence, most manifestly, is an increased 
 production and accumulation of wealth, to be evinced not in 
 store-houses filled to bursting with unneeded food and cloth 
 ing, but in the improvement of wild or waste lands, the erec 
 tion of buildings, and the multiplication of books, schools, 
 implements, and everything which conduces to human com 
 fort and well-being. There is no mystery, no magic, no 
 juggle in the increase of National Wealth by an enlightened 
 and judicious Protection of Home Industry an increase 
 of the wealth not of one nation merely, but of the People of 
 all Nations. It operates by giving Idleness employment, and 
 rendering Labor more effective. There is nothing narrow, 
 partial, envious, exclusive, in the policy of Protection, rightly 
 understood and rightly pursued. That we should systemati 
 cally produce for ourselves and not purchase from other coun 
 tries whatever articles may with substantially as little labor be 
 produced here as elsewhere, is the dictate not only of a wise 
 Patriotism but of a generous Philanthropy. It is the perma 
 nent, universal interest of the Toiling Millions of all climes 
 that the exchanges of their productions be rendered as direct, 
 simple, uriexpensive, as possible ; but a bloated and super- 
 flous Commerce, regarding simply its own profits and not the 
 general good, may, in the absence of Protective Legislation, 
 defeat this consummation, or at least postpone it for years. 
 We may clearly be able we are able with our Home 
 Market secured to us by such legislation, after vanquishing 
 the difficulties presented by utter inexperience, to fabricate 
 
THE RELATIONS OF LEARNING TO LABOR. 129 
 
 our own Hardware and Glass, our Pins and Penknives, much 
 cheaper than we could purchase them from England no 
 matter though they were made somewhat lower there and 
 yet we should not be able in fifty years to naturalize and estab 
 lish, under the batteries of destructive Foreign rivalry, so as 
 to be beyond the reach of its capricious competition, the 
 various arts and processes required for their production. A 
 hundred farmers of Illinois, combining or resolving singly to 
 purchase only Home Manufactures, might not raise the market 
 price of their Agricultural staples one per cent, though the 
 agreement of the Community, expressed through a Protective 
 Tariff, to consume only or mainly Domestic fabrics, securing 
 the Home Production of those fabrics and the consequent 
 Home Consumption of the Agricultural staples, would inevita 
 bly raise the price of the latter by fifty to a hundred per cent. 
 To repeat, then, the parrot phrase that Trade will regulate 
 itself, meaning that individual avarice and anarchical competi 
 tion will work out the most beneficent general results, is a 
 futility unworthy of this enlightened age. As well leave a 
 necessary canal to dig itself, or be scraped out from time to 
 time by the voluntary efforts of those who chance to live on 
 its borders. The seeming personal interest of many of them 
 will often be directly adverse to its construction at all, im 
 pelling them to impede rather than advance it. General 
 good is only to be attained through general effort sys 
 tematic, harmonious and far-sighted. Left to the mercy of 
 individual selfishness and caprice, it will rarely be com 
 passed at all. 
 
 But I do not merely challenge the Economical soundness 
 of the Free Trade system my objection is deeper, broader, 
 and more vital. I object that it fails to recognize and respect 
 the more important use and purpose of Industrial effort. I 
 object that it regards Labor only as a necessary means of 
 supplying Man s sensual wants, and not at all as Divinely 
 appointed for the discipline and development of our Race. 
 
130 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 It regards the Corn and the Cloth as the only results of 
 Industry ; and takes no account of that nobler product, 
 the Man. 
 
 It everywhere assumes as unquestionable that if our Peo 
 ple, or those of any section, as a mass, a community, can 
 realize a greater aggregate of wealth by devoting their ener 
 gies wholly to some single function or department of Industry 
 
 the growing of Cotton, for example then it would be 
 clearly their interest and duty to do nothing but grow Cotton, 
 and with this purchase everything else they need or desire, 
 made ready for use abroad. But this I most strenuously 
 deny. We might so have more goods for a season, but less 
 good more sensual gratification, but less intellectual expan 
 sion and force. A new art, a new calling, introduced among 
 a people, is a new seminary for that people. It awakens 
 inquiry, elicits ideas, suggests improvements even in old pro 
 cesses and inveterate habits. It has a decided value, though 
 not precisely calculable in dollars and cents. The boorish- 
 ness of manners, the vacuity or stupor of mind, of a youth 
 trained in the dull routine of a single pursuit and ignorant of 
 the processes of all others, contrasts strikingly with the rapid 
 ity of thought, freedom of manner, and fertility of resource, 
 of his fellow who has been reared in observing contact with 
 the multiform processes of a hundred surrounding avocations. 
 It is thus that the city lad usually appears to advantage 
 beside the rustic who has grown up in some secluded valley, 
 even when the latter is the more favored by nature and more 
 informed by the study of the schools. The vast domain of 
 Industry is and must be the University of the great majority 
 
 it is of the highest public importance that none shall be 
 restricted therein to a single acquirement, but that the educa 
 tion it affords shall be diversified and thorough. 
 
 But it is not merely true that the ultimate uses and full 
 beneficence of the Divine appointment of Labor as the proper 
 condition and essential element of human development and 
 
THE RELATIONS OF LEARNING TO LABOR. 131 
 
 well-being can only be realized where that Labor is diversified 
 and elevated, not monotonous and degraded it is also true 
 that, though the majority might possibly find a pecuniary and 
 sensible advantage in a National Industry restricted to one or 
 two pursuits, there would be numerous classes condemned to 
 helplessness and dependence thereby. Let a whole commu 
 nity be purely Agriculturists, purely Iron-workers, or entirely 
 devoted to any branch of Industry, and there must be a large 
 proportion of its members who, from inadequacy of strength 
 or of skill, from considerations of age or of sex, will be un- 
 suited for efficien-y in that especial field of effort conse 
 quently, for the most part idle or but partially employed and 
 rneagerly rewarded. There will be seasons when, owing to 
 unfavorable markets, the icliolc Industry of such a community 
 will be suspended or unrecompensed, as well as classes which 
 habitually earn little or nothing. Under such circumstances, 
 the laborer becomes the thrall of the capitalist, just as the 
 Egyptians did of Pharaoh during the seven years of famine; 
 while those whose capacities are not suited to the demands of 
 the branches of industry there mainly pursued, are habitually, 
 inevitably dependent on others for the means of subsistence. 
 A new branch of Industry naturalized in any country is a vir 
 tual Declaration of Independence for a portion of its before 
 subject people. There can be no emancipation of the Labor 
 ing Mass from a virtual bondage without a liberal and thor 
 ough diversification of Industrial pursuits ; and, though this 
 is profitable in every way, it is too vastly important to be 
 deferred to any mere pecuniary consideration. If it were 
 true that it must cost us more, according to the narrowest 
 dollar-and-cent reckoning, to manufacture for ourselves 
 than to buy of others the products of manufacture, the 
 interests of Labor and of Man would still imperatively 
 require us to secure the supplying of our own wants, so far 
 as Nature interposed no obstacle, by the skill and effort of 
 our own People. Not individual Man only, but the Nation 
 
132 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 as an aggregate, demands that symmetric and thorough 
 Development which is to be attained only through a many- 
 sided Industry. 
 
 You will bear with one more illustration of the blindness 
 which has befallen Learning through its divorce from Labor. 
 I allude now to the discussions which have arisen in our day 
 respecting the organic Reform of Society. We of the Move 
 ment are not surprised to hear from the lips of Ignorance and 
 a purblind Selfishness the cavils which befit and bespeak their 
 sources. We are not surprised nor vexed to hear from such 
 that Industrial Association is but another device to get the 
 goods of the thrifty and prudent within the grasp of the 
 knavish and prodigal that no house was ever large enough 
 for two families that no man will work unless impelled to 
 it by appetite or avarice or any of the sage and well-con 
 sidered objections which we are required to meet as profound 
 novelties or novel profundities, day after day. From the 
 class wherein such objections properly originate, we receive 
 and answer them with indomitable patience. Neither are we 
 surprised that a well-meaning man, with a brain by nature and 
 habit nicely adjusted to the reception and retention of one 
 idea at a time, is afraid that if he accepts the thought of a 
 Social condition based on brotherhood and love, he must 
 eject his Religion, or his Family ties, or some other cherished 
 possession, to make room for it. We see that the man wants 
 expansion he must have more room before he can render 
 more hospitality and we are but moved to more energetic 
 and untiring effort in the great work of whose necessity he 
 is so striking an evidence. But when the objections of the 
 ostler and the nurse confront us from the rostrum and the 
 pulpit when they overwhelm us in the magisterial dictum 
 of the Professor when the annihilation that we can not 
 realize in the Judge s argument overtakes us in the Judge s 
 frown what shall we think or say? The narrowness and 
 obliquity of the depressed and benighted was saddening ; 
 
THE RELATIONS OF LEARNING TO LABOR. 133 
 
 but when that which should be light but deepens darkness, 
 whither shall we turn for a ray ? Whither but to the great 
 central truth of which we are the imperfect advocates ? 
 
 We of the Movement maintain a position which need not 
 be deemed ambiguous and ought not to be regarded with 
 distrust or aversion by any generous, lofty mind by any 
 hopeful, loving heart. We maintain that Industry, now too 
 often degraded and repugnant, may be everywhere elevated 
 and rendered attractive, so that not the result only but the 
 process shall be a source of daily joy. We contend that 
 the anarchy between Labor and Capital which now glaringly 
 prevails all around us may be replaced by a better system, 
 wherein a just and settled proportion of product shall be 
 accorded to each, and the present alienating, disorganizing, 
 depraving, universal struggle to secure more wages for less 
 work or more work for less wages, shall be banished forever, 
 taking unfaithfulness on the one side and extortion on the 
 other along with it. We maintain that, in this bounteous 
 creation of our God, a man standing idle for want of em 
 ployment, or even of suitable employment, when there is 
 scarcely a square mile of the earth s surface which would 
 not reward ten times the labor ever yet bestowed on it, is a 
 grievous wrong and a bitter reproach to our whole Social 
 Economy, wherein the cunning and the strong secure a cer 
 tain portion of comfort and luxury to themselves by means 
 which leave the simple and the feeble to famish. We con 
 tend that the Rights of Property in the earth, so wisely and 
 necessarily guarantied to the fortunate possessors, were 
 granted not that the many might be excluded from the com 
 mon source of sustenance, but that they might be enabled 
 more securely, peacefully, advantageously to derive their 
 subsistence therefrom, and that the Right to Labor, and to 
 receive the rewards of Labor, pertains to every individual 
 where the right to the Soil, originally free and common to 
 all, has been granted away to a part. We maintain that, as 
 12 
 
134 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 no man. clearly, would have a moral right to acquire the 
 ownership of all the earth and, forbidding any to cultivate or 
 dwell on it, starve the Race to death, so no one can have the 
 moral right to do this in part, by monopolizing the land and 
 keeping it unproductive for the gratification of his pomp and 
 avarice, while hundreds around him are suffering for the want 
 of it. In fine, we hold that all individual rights are held sub 
 ordinate to the demands of Universal Beneficence, and though 
 Human Law may not prescribe the limits of such rights and 
 provide against any overstepping them, yet the Divine Law 
 condemns every act which finds its end in self-gratification by 
 means which trench on the well-being of others. We main 
 tain that the isolated family is not the most perfect form of 
 the household that immense economies, in both production 
 and consumption, are attainable by Combined Effort, directed 
 by combined experience and wisdom that a true and full 
 Education, such as is not possible under the isolated system, 
 will be all but inevitable in the Combined Order, with its 
 schools beneath the common roof for every department of 
 Knowledge and Art, presided over by instructors chosen from 
 the whole body because of their observed and tested capacity 
 to teach, and not of their indisposition to work but, above 
 all, its extensive, infinitely diversified, carefully perfected pro 
 cesses of Industry in action all around the young learner. 
 We maintain that only in such a relation, based on a pro 
 found sentiment of Human Brotherhood, can be wrought out 
 the emancipation of the Laboring Class from practical servi 
 tude and the haunting dread of destitution from Ignorance, 
 Degradation and the apathy of departed Hope. We main 
 tain that for Woman, from infancy a toy or a slave, so often 
 condemned to mercenary and loathed marriages, or a useless 
 and joyless loneliness, by an education and by Social usages 
 which deny her the means of essential independence, there is 
 no hope but in a true Social condition, and enlarged oppor 
 tunities for Knowledge, liberal Culture and Industrial useful- 
 
THE RELATIONS OF LEARNING TO LABOR. 135 
 
 ness which the Phalanx alone can afford to all. We maintain 
 that only in a Society which puts an end to the interminable 
 vagrancy of Labor anxiously seeking employment, and often 
 seeking long and hungrily in vain which banishes Commerce 
 and Wages, with their incessant temptations to selfishness, 
 avarice and dishonesty which secures Development and 
 Opportunity to all, with Plenty and Comfort to every one who 
 will use the means he possesses of acquiring them wherein 
 Love to God and Man will constitute the moral atmosphere, 
 and Progress in all good the universal aspiration can the 
 benign purposes of Heaven be fulfilled and the Destiny of 
 Man on earth accomplished. 
 
 If there be any who object that the Social Movement of our 
 time is defective in method or in purpose, we simply invite 
 them to embrace and pursue it by that better method, with 
 that better purpose, which their criticism implies. If there 
 be any who object that only publicans and sinners are en 
 gaged in it, we ask them to dignify it with their weight of 
 character and hallow it with their sanctity. If they deem its 
 advocates heretical in faith or deficient in piety, how much 
 larger and more inviting is the field wherein they are called 
 to exemplify the influences of a true faith and of a saintly 
 life ! Assuredly, there is no necessary heresy nor impiety in 
 effort to supplant Divergence by Convergence of Interests 
 to replace envious Competition by generous Cooperation 
 to banish Strife and Want, and establish instead Concord and 
 Plenty ; and if any has been engrafted thereon by injudi 
 cious or inconsiderate partisans, it will be easy to demonstrate 
 the fact by an effort based on better principles, and made in 
 a more catholic spirit. We may be sure that every sincere, 
 unselfish effort to do good is based on a Religion which can 
 not be false, and a Faith which takes hold on Heaven. 
 
 Now it weighs little with us that those who never thought 
 seriously, candidly, of this subject for two hours, perceive 
 obstacles in our path which to them seem insurmountable 
 
136 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 for we have traversed the quagmires in which they now 
 flounder and know that they are not impassable. It is no 
 tidings to us that time, and effort, and sacrifice, will be re 
 quisite to secure what we contemplate, and that the grave will 
 probably close over the present generation before half that we 
 foresee and struggle for can be attained. Neither can failure 
 in practical trials discourage us, for we anticipate successive 
 and often mortifying failures. The inadequacy of means, the 
 absence of that every-day wisdom learned only in the school 
 of experience, the imperfection of men, all unite to assure us 
 on this point. But we are sustained by an undoubting faith 
 that whatever of possible good has been revealed to the un 
 derstandings of men may be rendered practical by devoted 
 and patient exertion. Through sacrifices, discouragements, 
 reverses, and failures, the great work steadily advances step 
 by step to its ultimate triumph. A hundred failures will not 
 suffice to arrest it ; a thousand lives are already pledged to its 
 steadfast prosecution ; and many thousands will be ready ere 
 these are wholly spent. This wounded, bleeding body of 
 Humanity shall yet be raised up and healed the benefi 
 cence of God has decreed it ; the silent transformations of the 
 ages have prepared the way for it. For a time may the 
 Priest and the Levite distrustfully pass by on the other side ; 
 but they shall yet recognize in this the work which they were 
 appointed to aid and to compass, and shall exultingly share 
 in the glory and the joy of its consummation ! 
 
 I have thus far invited your attention to some of the de 
 fects, as they strike me, of our Educational methods and aims, 
 as exemplified in the practical errors and deficiencies in which 
 they result. I need not, surely, now reverse the picture and 
 exhibit at length the amendments I would with diffidence 
 suggest. That Education should be based on Labor and 
 directed thoroughly, discriminately, to practical ends this 
 is the immovable and universal foundation. If a youth is 
 
THE RELATIONS OF LEARNING TO LABOR. 137 
 
 destined to be a Professor, a Physician, a Lawyer, a Poet, a 
 Clergyman, let his higher education at every step contemplate 
 that fact ; but let all his education, from infancy to maturity, 
 regard the development and perfection of the Man. And, 
 as one battle contributes more than ten reviews or sham 
 engagements to form the soldier, so one acquirement which 
 commends itself to the student s regard by a direct and pal 
 pable utility shall prove of more worth to him than a dozen 
 which he is constrained to labor at as part of a prescribed 
 routine, and (as he is told) to discipline his mind. It is 
 in life only that we learn how to live. The great ends of all 
 study, of all acquirement, are ability and disposition to dis 
 charge more effectually our duties as men and as citizens. 
 The benefits of a true education commence with the indi 
 vidual, but pass directly and inevitably to the community. 
 He who is not a better brother, neighbor, friend, and citizen, 
 because of his superior knowledge, may very well doubt 
 whether his knowledge is really superior to the ignorance of 
 the unlettered many around him. He whose education has 
 not taught him to shun Vice and loathe Hypocrisy has not 
 taught him to prize lightly the pleasures of Sense, the pos 
 session of boundless Wealth, and the pomp of Public Station, 
 has been taught to little purpose, and should be sent back to 
 his hornbook. 
 
 Far be it from me to decry Ambition. There is a generous 
 and lofty aspiration for the blessing of the present and the 
 admiring regard of future generations, which has doubtless 
 been the main-spring of many a self-denying act of devotion 
 to human welfare of many an illustrious and eminently 
 useful career. Let this be held in due honor, that those who 
 do not find in the consecration of their every faculty, every 
 hour, to the good of their Race, the proper and ample reward 
 of such consecration, may unite in the good work, though 
 from a motive less exalted. 1 can comprehend an ardent 
 desire for Public Station and even for Riches, springing from 
 12* 
 
138 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 a consciousness of capacity to wield the power thence accru 
 ing to the signal benefit of mankind. It is this which excuses 
 the thirst for office we often detect in men who by nature are 
 clearly above receiving either consideration or renown from 
 any post whatever. Yet I trust this will not much longer 
 continue that the increase and diffusion of Knowledge, 
 insuring a more just and general discrimination of the real 
 from the factitious, will gradually work a separation of real 
 power, as well as of popular homage, from Station undignified 
 by the Virtue and Ability which should be essential to its 
 attainment. Our Country has enjoyed shall I say, has 
 enjoyed ? a remarkable example of the impotency of mere 
 station, however lofty, to confer respect or substantial power 
 may we not hope that the salutary lesson will be widely 
 and lastingly heeded ? 
 
 Yet I confess that I find or fancy a perverted and groveling 
 Ambition alarmingly prevalent among our Educated Young 
 Men, and that the hope of awaking in some minds a nobler 
 and loftier impulse has been instrumental in bringing me be 
 fore you. It seems to me that, while our higher Culture is 
 far more vague and indiscriminate than I could wish it, the 
 purposes and aims of those who acquire that Culture are too 
 generally special and personal to an extent equally faulty and 
 even more pernicious. Nine-tenths of our Educated Youth 
 pass through College to fit themselves for this or that profess 
 ion very rarely that they may be simply better men. If 
 they intently explore and unseal the fountains of Knowledge, 
 it is not that they, and all men and the parched earth, may 
 be freely refreshed by the bubbling element, but that they 
 may sell it by the penny s worth to the thirsty wayfarer. I 
 am not satisfied with the aspect here presented. I do not 
 object to the adequate reinforcement of the Professions from 
 the ranks of the Educated ; but I demur to the devotion of 
 the Educated Class, of the entire facilities and means of a 
 liberal Culture, to the filling of the Professions. It seems to 
 
THE RELATIONS OF LEARNING TO LABOR. 131) 
 
 me, if not a profanation, at least an impotent conclusion, 
 when a young man who has spent some years in intimate and 
 delighted communion with the Philosophers, Poets and Sages 
 of all times, subsides into a mere dispenser of medicines or 
 drawer of declarations. I would not undervalue the Pro 
 fessions as spheres of usefulness, though I am in small danger 
 indeed of overvaluing them ; but I insist that the Man and 
 the Scholar shall not be swallowed up in the Lawyer or the 
 Doctor. I insist that he shall not consider the Profession the 
 object and end of his Education, but shall still employ the 
 latter to qualify him for higher and more varied usefulness 
 through all the scenes of life. What he has learned from 
 Plato and from Newton, from the master-minds of our Race, 
 let him, as opportunity shall offer, dispense freely and gladly 
 to his less favored neighbors, till they too shall recognize 
 and bless profound Learning as the guidance and the solace 
 of mankind. 
 
 I have come naturally to the consideration of the position 
 of the Educated Class in our existing Society, and the influ 
 ence they therein exert. Will any contend that this is what 
 it should and must be ? Is our public opinion usually shaped 
 and directed by that of the more elaborately Educated ( I 
 think no one will pretend it. There are points wherein, no 
 settled or strenuous opposition being offered, the sentiment of 
 the College-bred class is accordant with that of the uneduca 
 ted ; but let a vital question arise, on which the oracles of the 
 grog-shops shall generally take ground against the oracles of 
 the schools, and can we hesitate as to which will triumph ? 
 Were our Educated Class really the leaders of Opinion in this 
 Country, could such atrocities as Lynch-Law and Repudi 
 ation ever be countenanced ? There is manifestly unsound- 
 ness here evil which needs to be probed and cured. The 
 Educated Class is far less potential than it should be ; the 
 mischief may be the Country s, but the fault is primarily its 
 own. Its sources I have throughout been endeavoring to 
 
140 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 detect and expose to your apprehension. It has been said 
 by one of the most eminent scholars* of our time and country, 
 " It is difficult for cultivated Pride to put its ear to the 
 ground and listen to the teachings of a lowly Humanity." I 
 see how this may be difficult for Pride of any sort, but I 
 deny that the voice of Humanity, however lowly, ought to be 
 less welcome or less intelligible to the truly cultivated than 
 to the uncultivated ear far otherwise. But there is a half- 
 truth at the bottom of this sentiment, and it bears to us an 
 admonition. There is too little cordial sympathy too little 
 familiar and friendly interchange of thought between the 
 better educated and the imperfectly instructed. There are 
 too many barriers of form and usage between them. Each 
 might learn much from the other profit much by a nearer 
 relation. Each may find admonition in the experiences of 
 the other, if freely imparted. In the great convulsions now 
 dimly apprehended but certainly at hand, the well-meaning 
 and right-thinking of each class will find a union essential to 
 both. That enlightened Conservatism, which asks what it is 
 that we should conserve, and what there is of abuse or in 
 justice that should be cut away in order that what is valuable 
 and precious may be conserved that genial Reform which 
 recognizes Harmony and Love as the elements of all true 
 Progress, and shrinks from any changes impelled by Hatred 
 and compassed through Disorder are learning to know each 
 other as brethren and natural allies. On the altar of a 
 common danger, a common interest, may their union be in- 
 dissolubly consummated ! 
 
 I have said that the practical and treasured acquirement of 
 the Educated Class seems to me too special and individual, 
 while their culture appears indiscriminate and general. Here 
 in one of our rural townships is a limited number of persons 
 perhaps ten or twenty who have enjoyed the benefits of 
 a College education. Their literary acquirement of course 
 
 * Hon. Geo. Bancroft Address of Massachusetts Democratic Convention. 
 
THE RELATIONS OF LEARNING TO LABOR. 141 
 
 far surpasses that of the great mass around them. But how 
 are their neighbors and townsmen permitted to realize this ? 
 Is it not quite common that their only experience of it is 
 based on the hard words in an attorney s prolix folios or an 
 apothecary s account words subsidiary to a still harder 
 charge at the bottom of it ? May we not hope that this shall 
 be amended "? that the Educated Class shall yet be related 
 to the less instructed many in a manner very different from 
 this ? Why should not this class create an atmosphere, not 
 merely of exemplary morals and refined manners, but of 
 palpable utility and blessing ? Why should not the Clergy 
 man, the Doctor, the Lawyer, of a country town be not 
 merely the patrons and commenders of every generous idea, 
 the teachers and dispensers of all that is novel in Science or 
 noble in Philosophy exemplars of Integrity, of Amenity, 
 and of an all-pervading Humanity to those around them 
 but even in a more material sphere regarded and blessed as 
 universal benefactors V Why should they not be universally 
 as I rejoice to say that some of them are models of wisdom 
 and thrift in Agriculture their farms and gardens silent but 
 most effective preachers of the benefits of forecast, calculation, 
 thorough knowledge and faithful application ? Nay, more : 
 Why should not the Educated Class be everywhere teachers, 
 through lectures, essays, conversations, as well as practically, 
 of those great and important truths of Nature, which Chem 
 istry and other sciences are just revealing to bless the Indus 
 trial world ? Why should they not unobtrusively and freely 
 teach the Farmer, the Mechanic, the Worker in any capacity, 
 how best to summon the blind forces of the elements to his 
 aid and how most effectually to render them subservient to 
 his needs? All this is clearly within the power of the Edu 
 cated Class, if truly educated ; all this is clearly within the 
 sphere of duty appointed them by Providence. Let them 
 but do it, and they will stand, where they ought to stand, 
 at the head of the community, the directors of Public 
 
142 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 Opinion and the universally recognized benefactors of the 
 Race. 
 
 I stand before an audience in good part of Educated men, 
 and I plead for the essential independence of their class 
 not for their sakes only or mainly, but for the sake of Man 
 kind. I see clearly, or I am strangely bewildered, a deep- 
 rooted and wide-spreading evil which is palsying the influence 
 and paralyzing the exertions of Intellectual and even Moral 
 superiority all over our Country. The lawyer, so far at least 
 as his livelihood is concerned, is too generally but a lawyer ; 
 he must live by law or he has no means of living at all. So 
 with the Doctor ; so alas ! with the Pastor. He, too, often 
 finds himself surrounded by a large, expensive family, few or 
 none of whom have been systematically trained to earn their 
 bread in the sweat of their brows, and who, even if approach 
 ing maturity in life, lean on him for a subsistence. This son 
 must be sent to the academy, and that one to College ; this 
 daughter to an expensive boarding-school, and that must have 
 a piano and all to be defrayed from his salary, which, how 
 ever liberal, is scarcely or barely adequate to meet the de 
 mands upon it. How shall this man for man, after all, he 
 is with expenses, and cares, and debts pressing upon him 
 hope to be at all times faithful to the responsibilities of his 
 high calling ! He may speak ever so fluently and feelingly 
 against sin in the abstract, for that can not give offence to the 
 most fastidiously sensitive incumbent of the richly furnished 
 hundred-dollar pews. But will he dare to rebuke openly, 
 fearlessly, specially, the darling and decorous vices of his most 
 opulent and liberal parishioners to say to the honored dis 
 penser of liquid poison, " Your trade is murder, and your 
 wealth the price of perdition!" To him who amasses 
 wealth by stinting honest Labor of its reward and grinding 
 the faces of the Poor, "Do not mock God by putting your 
 reluctant dollar into the Missionary box there is no such 
 heathen in New Zealand as yourself!" and so to every 
 
THE RELATIONS OF LEARNING TO LABOR. 143 
 
 .specious hypocrite around him, who patronizes the church to 
 keep to windward of his conscience and freshen the varnish 
 on his character, Thou art the man ! I tell you, friends ! 
 he will not, for he can not afford to, be thoroughly faithful ! 
 One in a thousand may be, and hardly more. We do not 
 half comprehend the profound significance of that statute of 
 the old Church which inflexibly enjoins celibacy on her 
 Clergy. The very existence of the Church, as a steadfast 
 power above the multitude, giving law to the People and not 
 receiving its law day by day from them, depends on its main 
 tenance. And if we are ever to enjoy a Christian Ministry 
 which shall systematically, promptly, fearlessly war upon 
 every shape and disguise of evil which shall fearlessly 
 grapple with War and Slavery, and every loathsome device 
 by which man seeks to glut his appetites at the expense of his 
 brother s well-being, it will be secured to us through the in 
 strumentality of the very Reform I advocate a Reform 
 which shall render the clergyman independent of his parish 
 ioners, and enable him to say manfully to all, " You may 
 cease to pay, but I shall not cease to preach, so long as you 
 have sins to reprove, and I have strength to reprove them ! 
 I live in good part by the labor of my hands, and can do so 
 wholly whenever that shall become necessary to the fearless 
 discharge of my duty." 
 
 A single illustration more, and I draw this long disserta 
 tion to a close. I shall speak now more directly to facts 
 within my own knowledge, and which have made on me a 
 deep and mournful impression. I speak to your experience, 
 too, friends of the Phenix and Union Societies to your 
 future if not to your past experience and I entreat you to 
 heed me ! Every year sends forth from our Colleges an 
 army of brave youth, who have nearly or quite exhausted 
 their little means in procuring what is termed an education, 
 and must now find some remunerating employment to sus 
 tain them while they are more specially fitting themselves 
 
144 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 for and inducting themselves into a Profession. Some of 
 them find and are perforce contented with some meager 
 clerkship ; but the great body of them turn their attention 
 at once to Literature to the instruction of their juniors in 
 some school or family, or to the instruction of the world 
 through the Press. Hundreds of them hurry at once to the 
 cities and the journals, seeking employment as essayists or 
 collectors of intelligence bright visions of Fame in the 
 foreground, and the gaunt wolf Famine hard at their heels. 
 Alas for them ! they do not see that the very circumstances 
 under which they seek admission to the calling they have 
 chosen almost forbid the idea of their succeeding in it. 
 
 o 
 
 They do not approach the public with thoughts struggling 
 for utterance, but with stomachs craving bread. They seek 
 the Press, not that they may proclaim through it what it would 
 cost their lives to repress, but that they may preserve their 
 souls to their bodies, at some rate. Do you not see under 
 what immense disadvantages one of this band enters upon 
 his selected vocation, if he has the rare fortune to find or 
 make a place in it? He is surrounded, elbowed on every 
 side by anxious hundreds, eager to obtain employment on 
 any terms ; he must write not what he feels, but what another 
 needs ; must regret or rejoice to order, working for the 
 day, and not venturing to utter a thought which the day 
 does not readily approve. And can you fancy that is the 
 foundation o^ which to build a lofty and durable renown 
 a brave and laudable success of any kind? I tell you, no, 
 young friends! the farthest from it possible. There is 
 scarcely any position more perilous to generous impulses 
 and lofty aims scarcely any which more imminently threat 
 ens to sink the Man in the mere schemer and striver for 
 subsistence and selfish gratification. I say, then, in deep 
 earnestness, to every youth who hopes or desires to become 
 useful to his Race or in any degree eminent through Litera 
 ture, Seek first of all things a position of pecuniary inde- 
 
THE RELATIONS OF LEARNING TO LABOR. 115 
 
 pendence ; learn to live by the labor of your hands, the 
 sweat of your face, as a necessary step toward the career 
 you contemplate. If you can earn but three shillings a day 
 by rugged yet moderate toil, learn to live contentedly on 
 two shillings, and so preserve your mental faculties fresh and 
 unworn to read, to observe, to think, thus preparing your 
 self for the ultimate path you have chosen. At length, 
 when a mind crowded with discovered or elaborated truths 
 will have utterance, begin to write sparingly and tersely for 
 the nearest suitable periodical no matter how humble and 
 obscure if the thought is in you, it will find its way to 
 those who need it. Seek not compensation for this utter 
 ance until compensation shall seek you ; then accept it if an 
 object, and not involving too great sacrifices of independence 
 and disregard of more immediate duties. In this way alone 
 can something like the proper dignity of the Literary Char 
 acter be restored and maintained. But while every man 
 who either is or believes himself capable of enlightening 
 others, appears only anxious to sell his faculty at the earliest 
 moment and for the largest price, I can not hope that the 
 Public will be induced to regard very profoundly either the 
 lesson or the teacher. 
 
 Graduates, Students of Hamilton College ! a parting word 
 with you ! Some of you have completed your studies and 
 are now passing out into the actual world, to be followed in 
 successive years by your brethren whom you now leave be 
 hind you. I w r ill not doubt that you bid adieu to these 
 scenes with lofty purposes of usefulness with a proper 
 appreciation of the advantages over the great mass of your 
 countrymen which have been here afforded you, and of tlio 
 obligations which these advantages draw after them. 1 am 
 not so far removed from youth as to have forgotten all its san 
 guine visions and generous aspirations. I bid you cherish 
 them each and all, for they are wiser than the cold les- 
 son which disappointment and experienced treachery may 
 13 
 
116 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 afterward teach you. O be assured, above all things, that no 
 generous and self-forgetting aspiration can ever be unwise 
 or mistaken while the Universe obeys a scepter and Earth 
 revolves beneath the eye of a benignant Father! I know 
 not whether I may hope in this hurried communion to have 
 implanted in one breast a clearer or nobler idea of the true 
 purposes and aims of Life I may not confidently trust 
 that I have imparted to one mind a deeper disdain of those 
 bubbles surnamed Luxury, Ease, Wealth, Power, Popu 
 larity, Honors, by which many an ardent and capacious soul 
 has been deluded to its ruin. But you are by position 
 Scholars, and by virtue of that position you musl realize 
 at least, in your calmer and better moments, when that which 
 is immortal is not stifled within you that a true Life is the 
 one thing desirable to Man on earth, for and in itself that 
 Virtue, being truly such, transcends all idea of reward, and 
 becomes to the spiritual what gravitation is to the material 
 world a law which will not be evaded. He who truly, 
 fully apprehends the one fact that GOD REIGNS, knows all 
 that can be of morality knows that no conceivable diver 
 gence from the line of strictest rectitude, of loftiest endeavor, 
 can possibly be otherwise than calamitous in and of itself, 
 wholly apart from all extraneous conditions and conse 
 quences. I shall not, then, exhort you to follow Purity and 
 Righteousness, since the admonition would imply a possible 
 ignorance on .your part of the existence of the All- Wise 
 of the laws of your own being. But I may warn you, 
 friends ! of the mistake so commonly made by our educated 
 youth of lingering long by the wayside of active life, under 
 the pretence very often alleged in good faith of a want 
 of opportunity. O, deceive not yourselves thus, young 
 men ! To the rightly constituted mind, to the truly devel 
 oped Man, there always is, there always must be opportu 
 nity opportunity to be and to learn, nobly to do and to 
 endure and what matter whether with pomp, and eclat, 
 
THE RELATIONS OF LEARNING TO LABOR. 147 
 
 with sound of trumpets and shout of applauding thousands, 
 or in silence and seclusion, beneath the calm, discerning 
 gaze of Heaven ? O realize that no station can be humble 
 on which that gaze is approvingly bent 
 
 be. ignoble which is performed uprightly and not impelled 
 by sordid aaid selfish aims. It is a vital defect of our Society 
 and our Culture, which you are bound to wrestle against 
 and to overcome, that while an immensity of effort is ever 
 needed, of true work remains undone, we are too generally 
 dissatisfied with that which lies broad and plain before us, 
 and waste our hours in seeking long and far for something 
 loftier and nobler. We wander to the Poles and the An 
 tipodes, vainly seeking for that which to the man at peace 
 with himself is everywhere, to the unquiet nowhere. Vainly 
 sighing for the opportunity of some other, which his genius 
 and ready acceptance have made the basis of an illustrious 
 and dazzling career, we neglect and sacrifice our own. We 
 speak regretfully of the age of Chivalry, the age of Hero 
 ism or of perilous and doubtful struggle for Freedom, as if 
 we did not recognize that Man s struggle with darkness and 
 evil is ever in progress, and that to render any age one of 
 heroism nothing is wanting but heroic souls. Waiting for 
 the dead Past to be acted over again for our selfish gratifi 
 cation and aggrandizement, we suffer the precious and living 
 Present to glide away from us undervalued and unimproved. 
 Says a deep, fearless thinker* of our time, " To-Day is a 
 king in disguise. To-Day always looks common and trivial, 
 in the face of a uniform experience that all great and happy 
 actions have been made up of these same blank To-Days. 
 Let us unmask the king as he passes." Yes, my young 
 friends, here is our high privilege and our imperative du 
 ty to discern arid honor the disguised angels whom God 
 is ever sending to illumine and bless his earth. Not from 
 
 * Ralph Waldo Emerson Lecture on the Times. 
 
148 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 among the children of monarchs, ushered into being with 
 boom of cannon and shouts of reveling millions, but from 
 amid the sons of obscurity and toil, cradled in peril and 
 ignominy from the bulrushes and the manger come forth 
 the benefactors and saviors of Mankind. So when all the 
 babble and glare of our age shall have passed into a fitting 
 oblivion when those who have enjoyed rare opportuni 
 ties and swayed vast empires, and been borne through life 
 on the shoulders of shouting multitudes, shall have been laid 
 at last to rest in golden coffins, to molder forgotten, the 
 stately marble their only monuments, it will be found that 
 some humble youth, who neither inherited nor found but 
 hewed out his opportunities, has uttered the thought which 
 shall render the age memorable by extending the means of 
 enlightenment and blessing to our Race. The great strug 
 gle for Human Progress and Elevation proceeds noiselessly, 
 often unnoted, often checked and apparently baffled, amid 
 the clamorous and debasing strifes impelled by greedy self 
 ishness and low ambition. In that struggle, maintained by 
 the wise and good of all parties, all creeds, all climes, I call 
 you to bear the part of men. Heed the lofty summons, not 
 the feeble messenger, and, with souls serene and constant, 
 prepare to tread boldly in the path of highest duty. So 
 shall Life be to you truly exalted and heroic ; so shall Death 
 be a transition neither sought nor dreaded ; so shall your 
 memory, though cherished at first but by a few humble, lov 
 ing hearts, linger long and gratefully in human remembrance, 
 a watchword to the truthful and an incitement to generous 
 endeavor, freshened by the proud tears of admiring affec 
 tion, and fragrant with the odors of Heaven ! 
 
HUMAN LIFE, 119 
 
 V. 
 
 HUMAN LIFE: 
 
 A LECTURE. 
 
 To the piercing gaze of an unfettered spirit, unmindful 
 of space, which should scan it from the central orb of our 
 system, this fair globe must afford a spectacle of strange 
 magnificence and beauty. Rolling on, ever on, in her ap 
 pointed round, the earth must present new scenes of interest 
 and grandeur with every hour of her revolving progress : 
 now the swarming vales of China and Japan, the sultry 
 plains of India, with its tiger-haunted jungles, relieved by 
 the gaunt, bleak piles of the Himmalehs, piercing the very 
 skies with their pinnacles of eternal rock and ice ; then ap 
 pear the more alluring and variegated glades of Southern 
 and Middle Europe, and with them the scorched and glow 
 ing deserts of Africa, shining in silvery worthlessness and 
 arid desolation. The broad green belt of the billowy Atlan 
 tic now unfolds itself, and then appears the deeper green of 
 this immense, luxuriant forest, America, witli the achieve 
 ments of three centuries of advancing, struggling civilization, 
 barely sufficing to dot irregularly its eastern border, and 
 hardly equaling in extent those prairie openings in its center 
 which Nature, or rather the Red Man s annual conflagration, 
 lias sufficed through many ages to hollow out by impercep 
 tible gradations. From amid the all-embracing foliage, shine 
 forth with steady radiance, with ^ieep serenity, the mirror- 
 13* 
 
150 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 like surfaces of the Great Lakes the last surpassing in 
 size, profundity, and beauty the slender threads of the Fa 
 ther of Waters and his far-stretching tributaries are seen 
 disparting vales whose exuberant fertility has known no 
 parallel since Eden ; while farther on, the tremendous chains 
 of the Andes, the Rocky Mountains, heave up their scathed 
 and rugged sides through the surrounding seas of verdure, 
 as if in grim and haughty defiance to the utmost fury of the 
 lightning and the hurricane, or in scornful exultation over 
 the crouching world at their feet. Soon the broad, placid 
 surface of the vast, unvexed Pacific presents itself, sprinkled 
 with isles of deepest emerald where flowers perennial bloom. 
 And still the earth rolls on, and every hour shall bring to 
 view fresh marvels to awaken the soul to a consciousness of 
 the Infinite, to deepen the fervor of piety, and exalt the glory 
 of the Great Supreme. 
 
 Yet, beyond doubt, the central figure of this vast wonder 
 work of creation, around which all other entities and seem- 
 ings cluster and revolve, is MAN. He is the presiding genius 
 the lord of the heritage. It is his presence which gives 
 significance and interest to the landscape, which elevates 
 fertility and beauty above barrenness and decay. Not in 
 laughing meads nor rippling streamlets, not in broad blue 
 lakes nor foaming cataracts not even in these vast, eternal 
 forests, with their cavernous depths, their waving, swelling 
 expanse of surface, their changing garniture, so green, and 
 now so golden not in these in any or all of them does 
 the soul of Nature find utterance. On no wild mountain-crag 
 or lone savannah would the spirit-gaze dwell with clinging 
 earnestness. But on the scenes of Man s earliest, sternest, 
 most momentous conflicts with nature, with destiny, or with 
 his own blinding, blasting evil passions on the narrow de 
 file where the Spartan handfull withstood the gathered might 
 of a continent the battle-field where a world was lost and 
 won on the widowed solitude wherein Rome broods discon- 
 
HUMAN LIFE 151 
 
 solate over the fading wreck of her grandeur and her power, 
 or the wintry desolation wherein gray-haired Jerusalem 
 crouches amid the ruins of her once impregnable towers and 
 peerless temples the ashes of her self-abasement trampled 
 into her furrowed brow by the iron heel of sixty generations 
 of tyrants. Through all circumstances, all events, this truth 
 presents itself, that Man s being is the essential fact, his spirit 
 the imparted vitality of the world. 
 
 Human Life ! how inspiring, how boundless the theme ! 
 Sadly, wildly has the Poet sung of it calmly, lucidly has 
 the Historian traced its meandering* earnestly, gravely 
 have the Priest and the Sage" exposed and reproved its 
 errors from the birth of the Race. The Nurse s story de 
 picts it the Scholar s research illustrates the Statesman s 
 harangue illumines and exalts. From the cradle over which 
 the young mother bends with a novel sensation of wondering 
 delight, to the bier around which all are melted in tho 
 brotherhood of a common sorrow, this life of ours is a marvel 
 and a poem. 
 
 Are we dwellers in the country ? From that low-roofed 
 cottage a youth is going forth, with lofty heart, to do and 
 dare on the great battle-field of manly adventure. He has 
 given ear to a father s counsel, he has knelt to receive a 
 mother s blessing ; he has smiled at the fears and regrets 
 expressed by younger or tenderer hearts around him : for a 
 sanguine spirit urges him on, and he sees already fortune 
 and honors awaiting him in the distant city to which his 
 eager footsteps tend. Not till the hour of parting has come 
 and passed does he feel how heavy the chain he drags who 
 goes forth for years from all he loves on earth not till the 
 stately, branching elms which overhang the dear spot have 
 waved their last mute adieu to his backward glances not 
 till the stream which was the companion of his boyish pas 
 times has bent away from his rigid course and buried itself 
 among the wooded hills, does he feel that he has shaken off 
 
152 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 the companionships and supports of his youth, and is utterly 
 alone. Now nerve your quivering heart, young adventurer ! 
 Summon every thought of hope, and pride, and shame, and 
 press sternly onward ; for a feather s weight might almost 
 suffice to dash all your high resolutions to chase away the 
 dreams of hope and ambition, and send you back, an early 
 penitent, to that lowly home which never seemed half so dear 
 before. 
 
 Are we dwellers by the sea-side? Here the sailor is 
 bending the white canvas for a voyage it may be around 
 the world. Before he shall again drop anchor in the haven 
 he deems his home, he may from his vessel s deck gaze on 
 the peaks of the Andes, the sulphurous flames of Kirauea, 
 or may thread with his bark the perilous windings of the 
 forest-mantled Oregon may survey the porcelain towers of 
 Canton, or the naked site of Troy, whose very ruins have 
 vanished, leaving no monument of their existence save in 
 Homer s undying song. 
 
 Here, too, the emigrant is bidding adieu to the ungenial 
 land of his birth and his love, and, with his household gods 
 around him, is seeking on a distant shore a soil on which his 
 hopes may expand and flourish. There is sadness, there is 
 anguish in the parting hour : the tree most carefully trans 
 planted must leave too many fibres in its native soil : and 
 the life-long dweller in some secluded valley, who first finds 
 himself confronted with a thousand leagues of raging brine, 
 across which lies the way to his unknown future home, may 
 well recoil and shudder at the prospect. But the hoarse 
 order to embark is given and obeyed : the last adieux are 
 looked from streaming eyes ; the vessel swings slowly from 
 her moorings ; the young look out in wonder on the bleak 
 waste of stormy waters, and turn inquiringly to those who 
 are perchance as young in this hour s sensations as they. 
 And so wears on the passage; and at length, amid new 
 scenes, new toils, anxieties and troubles, the pilgrim finds 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 153 
 
 that Care rests its eternal burden on Man wherever he is 
 found that Earth has no more an Eden. What recks it? 
 The same blue heaven bends lovingly over all the children 
 of men. New scenes, new hopes, new* prospects, speedily 
 dim the memory of keenest disappointments, of deepest 
 regrets ; and the heart, transplanted, sends out its tendrils 
 in every direction, and learns to blossom and grow again. 
 And thus do all of us, each in his appointed sphere and sou- 
 son, open new chapters in the great volume of Human Life. 
 But let us not contemplate only individual aspects. This 
 Life of ours has grander proportions if we can but widen the 
 sweep of our vision so as to reach its far horizon. Those daily 
 acts, those common impulses, which, viewed individually, and 
 with microscopic or with soulless gaze, seem insignificant or 
 trifling, take on a different aspect if regarded in a more 
 catholic spirit. Those myriad hammers which, impelled by 
 brawny arms, are ringing out their rude melody day by 
 day, and contributing to the comfort and sustenance of Man 
 those fleets of hardy fishers, now chasing the whale on the 
 other side of the globe to give light to the city mansion and 
 celerity to the wheels of the village factory those armies of 
 trappers, scattered through the glens of the Rocky Moun 
 tains, each in stealthy solitude pursuing his deadly trade, 
 whence dames of London and belles of Pekin alike shall 
 borrow warmth and comeliness let us contemplate these in 
 their several classes, unmindful of the leagues of wood, or 
 plain, or water which chance to divide them. Readily 
 enough do we perceive and acknowledge the grandeur of the 
 great army which some chief or despot assembles and draws 
 out to feed his vanity by display or his ambition by carnage ; 
 but the larger and nobler armies whose weapons are the 
 mattock and spade, who overspread the hills and line the 
 valleys, until beneath their rugged skill and persevering 
 effort a highway of Commerce is opened where late the pan 
 ther leaped, the deer disported is not theirs the nobler 
 
154 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 spectacle more worthy of the orator s apostrophe, the 
 poet s song ? Let us look boldly, broadly out on Nature s 
 wide domain. Let us note the irregular yet persistent ad 
 vance of the pioneers of civilization the forest conquerors, 
 before whose lusty strokes and sharp blades the century- 
 crowned wood-monarchs, rank after rank, come crashing to 
 the earth. From age to age have they kept apart the soil 
 and sunshine, as they shall do no longer. Onward, still 
 onward, pours the army of axe-men, and still before them 
 bow their stubborn foes. But yesterday their advance was 
 checked by the Ohio ; to-day it has crossed the Missouri, 
 the Kansas, and is fast on the heels of the flying buffalo. 
 In the eye of a true discernment, what host of Xerxes or 
 Caesar, of Frederick or Napoleon, ever equaled this in ma 
 jesty, in greatness of conquest, or in true glory? 
 
 The mastery of Man over Nature this is an inspiring 
 truth which we must not suffer from its familiarity to lose its 
 force. By the might of his intellect, Man has not merely 
 made the Elephant his drudge, the Lion his diversion, the 
 Whale his magazine, but even the subtlest and most terrible 
 of the elements is the submissive instrument of his will. He 
 turns aside or garners up the lightning ; the rivers toil in his 
 workshop ; the tides of ocean bear his burdens ; the hurri 
 cane rages for his use and profit. Fire and water struggle 
 for mastery that he may be whisked over hill and valley 
 with the celerity of the sunbeam. The stillness of the forest 
 midnight is broken by the snort of the Iron Horse, as he 
 drags the long train from Lakes to Ocean with a slave s 
 docility, a giant s strength. Up the long hill he labors, 
 over the deep glen he skims, the tops of the tall trees sway 
 ing around and below his narrow path. His sharp, quick 
 breathings bespeak his impetuous progress ; a stream of fire 
 reflects its course. On dashes the resistless, tireless steed, 
 and the morrow s sun shall find him at rest in some far 
 mart of Commerce, and the partakers of his wizzard journey 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 155 
 
 scattered to their vocations of trade or pleasure, unthinking 
 of their night s adventure. What has old Romance where 
 with to match the every-day realities of the Nineteenth 
 Century ? 
 
 We are in no danger of estimating too highly the extra 
 ordinary character of the age in which our lot has been cast, 
 and of the influences by which we are surrounded. Tim 
 Present is the proper theme of Poetry, the fitting scene of 
 Romance. Whoever shall even faintly realize the mighty 
 events, the stirring impulses, the lofty character of our time, 
 is in no danger of passing through life groveling and unob 
 servant as the dull beast that crops the thistles by the way 
 side. The Past has its lessons, doubtless, and well is it for 
 those who master and heed them ; but, were it otherwise, the 
 Present has themes enough of ennobling interest to employ 
 all our faculties to engross all our thoughts, save as they 
 should contemplate the still grander, vaster Hereafter. Do 
 they talk to us of Grecian or Roman heroism ? They say 
 well ; but Genius died not with Greece ; and Heroism has 
 scarcely a recorded achievement which our own age could 
 not parallel. What momentary deed of reckless valor can 
 compare with the life-long self-devotion of the Missionary in 
 some far cluster of Indian lodges, of Tartar huts, cut off from 
 society, from sympathy, and from earthly hope ? How easy, 
 how common, to dare death with Alexander ! how rare to live 
 nobly as Washington, and feel no ambition but that of doing 
 good ! Take the efforts for the elevation of the African race 
 in our day ill-directed as some of them appear and yet 
 Antiquity might well be challenged to produce anything out 
 of the sphere of Sacred History half so heroic and divine. 
 Let us, then, waste little time in looking back to earlier ages 
 for high examples and deeds that stir the blood. Let us not 
 idly imagine that the Old World embosoms scenes and me 
 morials dearer to the lover of Truth, of Freedom, and of 
 ATn.n, tijn.n those of our own clime. Let us repel aHke the 
 
156 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 braggart s vain-glory and the self-disparagement of degene 
 racy, yet cherish the faith that nowhere are there purer 
 skies, more inspiring recollections, or more magnificent 
 landscapes than those in which our own green land rejoices. 
 Where shall the patriot pulse beat high if not on Bunker 
 Hill or Saratoga? Where has Nature displayed her gran 
 deur if not in the great Valley of the Father of Waters ? Are 
 not the scenes of Man s noblest efforts, of God s rarest 
 earthly handiwork, all around and among us ? Have not I 
 listened to the roar of Niagara and stood by the grave of 
 Mount Vernon ! 
 
 Let me not be accused of dwelling too long on the visible 
 and the palpable on external Nature when my theme re 
 gards internal Man. No reflecting mind can hesitate to 
 admit that to a great extent the circumstances shape the 
 man. None of us would have difficulty in pointing out 
 among his circle one at least who would have been a Catholic 
 at Rome, a Turk (if born such) at Constantinople, an idolater 
 at Pekin would it be as easy to instance one who would 
 not be thus molded ? As with the highest of all human 
 affirmations Faith in God so with our lower deeds and 
 developments. All know that the mountaineer is more hardy 
 than the dweller in the vales beneath the native of a rugged 
 climate than he who is ripened beneath an equatorial sun. 
 Have not the raw breezes from snow-clad hights been ever 
 held an inspiration to the soul of Liberty ? Is not the sailor 
 oftenest born beside the heaving expanse which he chooses 
 for his home ? I would not explain all differences of charac 
 ter or capacity by the action of extraneous influences on the 
 immortal spirit the organs of the Phrenologist, the decree 
 of the fatalist, the circumstances of the Owenite and yet I 
 shrink from the temerity of setting bounds to their sway. 
 Though we speak of the inscrutable ways of the Deity, we 
 accuse only our own imperfectness of vision. The eye of 
 Faith, and not less that of Reason, recognize in all His 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 157 
 
 ways regular successions of effect to cause, from the warm 
 ing into life of an insect to the creation of a world. If, then, 
 we read that the son and heir of a wise and good ruler proved 
 a weak yet bloody tyrant, let us not rashly infer the proces 
 sion of Evil from Good. We have yet to be assured that the 
 good king was an equally good father that pressing cares 
 of state, or possibly some defect of character, did not incline 
 him to neglect the great duty of training up his son, and im 
 buing him with the seeds of all moral good. So with the 
 reprobate and outcast scion of an exemplary house we say, 
 indeed, that his opportunities of good were equal to those of 
 his brethren, and his temptations to wrong no greater than 
 theirs ; but how do we know ? It were well for the safety 
 of our ready and confident assertion if we had first assured 
 ourselves that no inherent vice of physical organization no 
 bodily defect preceding the susceptibility to a moral impres 
 sion no silent, unnoted, but yet potent agency, has pro 
 duced the disparity we observe and lament, before we had 
 so positively concluded that men may gather grapes of 
 thorns, or figs of thistles. 
 
 Yet let us not hotly and heedlessly pursue this truth till 
 we lose ourselves and it in the mazes of error, the opposite 
 of that we would dissipate. There is very much of human 
 attainment dependent on circumstances ; let us not forget 
 how much also I will not say how vastly more depends 
 on essential Man. There is a deplorably immense multitude 
 who live but to eat bounteously and daintily with whom the 
 sum of life is practically to compass the largest amount of 
 rich viands and gaudy trappings with the smallest outlay of 
 effort or perseverance to procure them this mass will be at 
 Rome Romans, at Moscow Russians, and nothing more. 
 There will he some small varieties or shadings of individual 
 character, calculated to gratify by their study the minute 
 curiosity of an entomologist, and interesting to him only. 
 But let one of these human ephemera be awakened, however 
 14 
 
153 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 casually or blindly, to the higher impulses, the nobler ends 
 of our being, and he is instantly transferred to a different 
 world or rather, the world which surrounds him takes on a 
 different aspect, and what before was bleak waste or dull 
 expanse of wooded hight and low herbage, assumes a deep 
 spiritual significance. To his unfolding, wondering soul, 
 Nature is no more a Poet s rhapsody, a Chemist s generali 
 zation, but a living presence, a solemn yet cheering com 
 panionship. No matter whether he be, in social position, a 
 peer or peasant, by birth Danish or Egyptian, one glance at 
 the world within has placed him with those whose coun 
 trymen and brethren are all Mankind. He has no need now 
 to change his daily pursuit or outward condition, for he 
 has risen by inevitable force to an atmosphere of serenity, 
 above the influence of merely external influences and petty 
 limitations. He has not toilsomely but naturally attained a 
 condition in which the soul no longer blindly pants for emi 
 nence or homage, but realizes intensely that nobly to Do for 
 the sake of nobly Doing and its intrinsic results rightly to 
 Be for the sake of rightly Being discarding the lust to 
 shine or rule, is the true end of life. 
 
 And here let me hazard the remark that our unquietness, 
 our ant-hill bustle, is the severest criticism on our present 
 intellectual condition and efforts. True greatness may be 
 said to resemble the water in some perennial fountain, 
 which rises ever and spontaneously, because in communi 
 cation with some exhaustless reservoir more capacious and 
 higher than itself; while the effort to be great is like the 
 stream forced up by some engine or hydrant, which tow 
 ers a moment unsteadily and then falls to water but the 
 weeds by the way-side. And thus our young men of prom 
 ise, who would seem to be touched by a live coal from off 
 the altar of Genius whom we are led fondly to regard as 
 the light and the hope of our age the heralds and the 
 hasteners of that fairer future our hearts so throbbingly 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 159 
 
 anticipate seem for the most part to lack that element of nat 
 ural quietude, of unconscious strength, which we are rightly 
 accustomed to consider a prediction and an accompaniment 
 of the highest Manhood. Here in some rude hamlet in 
 some boorish neighborhood there starts into view a rare 
 youth, whom the Divine spark w r ould seem to have quick 
 ened who bids fair to freshen by at least a chaplet the 
 dusty pathway of human endeavor. But forthwith the ge 
 nius must be bandaged into rigidity some education son 
 ciety, or kindred contrivance for the promotion of dullness 
 and mediocrity, must take hold of him and place him in its 
 go-cart there must be tomes of word-knowledge and the 
 petrifactions of by-gone wisdom hurled through his cra 
 nium he must be led away from all useful labor of the 
 hands, and his already precocious intellect subjected to the 
 hot-house culture of some seminary, no matter how un- 
 suited to his mental or social condition ; thus losing his 
 independence, essential and pecuniary, and putting his 
 whole life upon a single throw of the dice, and they so 
 loaded that the chances are heavily against him. And this 
 is called developing the man, and making the most of his 
 natural gifts, though it would seem quite as likely to blast 
 them altogether. With new scenes and an utter transfor 
 mation of attitude and aims, come strange and dizzying 
 
 J o 
 
 excitement, extravagant hopes, inordinate ambition, along 
 with novel temptings to dissipation on the one hand, as well 
 as to excessive study on the other. I will not say that the 
 result of this course may not in most instances be satis 
 factory ; I only urge that you put at hazard the youth whom 
 Nature has marked for noble ends, trusting to make of him 
 the man of profound acquirement, who after all may be 
 worth less than the material out of which he was con 
 structed. May we not rather trust something to Nature ? 
 Would we willingly exchange to-day the ROBERT BURNS 
 she gave us for his counterpart educated in a University? 
 
160 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 would we not prefer that the poor, rudely taught Ayrshire 
 plowman had never seen Edinburgh and its cultivated 
 circles at all ? 
 
 And yet I have only taken hold of one corner of the 
 forcing system. Its widest if not its worst evils are felt by 
 those our impromptu collegian leaves behind him in the 
 conviction impressed upon the youth left in the hamlet that 
 they can never be anything but ox-drivers, because they can 
 not enjoy the advantages of what is termed a Classical Edu 
 cation. Hence the poison of disquiet and discontent the 
 irresolution to act worthily under a mistaken impression that 
 adverse circumstances have forbidden that anything shall 
 worthily be done. I confess I look with anxiety on what 
 seems to me the perverted aspiration so universal among us. 
 There is an incessant straining for outward and visible ad 
 vantages to be Legislators, Governors, Professional men, 
 Teachers there is too little appreciation of that greatness 
 which is intrinsic and above the reach of accident. I am 
 not insensible to the advantages of a systematic induction 
 into all the arcana of Science of a knowledge of Lan 
 guages and a mastery of their vast treasures the possession 
 even of power and its honors. All these are well in their 
 way, but they are not properly within the legitimate reach 
 of all who feel that they have souls. 
 
 More intently than even these I would have our young 
 men contemplate and be moulded upon such characters 
 and lives as those of our FRANKLIN, the penniless, active 
 Apprentice, the thriving, contented Mechanic, the peerless 
 Philosopher, the idolized yet not flattered ambassador ; our 
 WASHINGTON, carrying the surveyor s chain through swamp 
 and briar, forming with his own hatchet a rude raft for 
 crossing the deep-shaded, savage-haunted Ohio ; long and 
 ably defending his country at the head of her armies ; at 
 length laying aside the care of a Nation s destinies, resist 
 ing the affectionate entreaties of millions that he would con- 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 161 
 
 tinue to bear sway over half a continent, in order that he 
 may enjoy, for the brief remainder of an active, glorious 
 life, the blessings of the domestic fireside, the untroubled 
 sleep which comes only to the couch of private life. There 
 is here a sw r eet unconsciousness of greatness that we realize 
 and cling to at a glance. We recognise under every change 
 of circumstance the strong and true Man, superior to any 
 freak of Fortune. No culture could have made these men 
 more or less than they appear alike to us and to all ob-% 
 servers. Is not the lesson they teach us at once distinct 
 and invigorating? 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood. I value and prize Learn 
 ing, Knowledge, Culture, while esteeming Self-Culture and 
 Self-Development the sum of them all. I would have no 
 youth reject facilities for acquiring them which may fairly 
 and justly present themselves, so that he may embrace them 
 without sacrifice of his proper independence or neglect of 
 his proper duties and responsibilities as a son, a brother, a 
 citizen. What I object to is the too common notion that the 
 higher Education of the Schools is essential to his develop 
 ment and his usefulness in life, thus making the Circum 
 stances everything, the Man nothing. If I have not incor 
 rectly observed, the effect of this prevalent impression is 
 often to pervert and misplace the individual whom it spe 
 cially contemplates, while it is morally certain to work 
 injury to the great mass of his brethren by original condition. 
 A youth in humble life evinces talent, genius, or the love 
 of knowledge and facility of acquiring it, which are quite 
 commonly confounded with either or both. Forthwith he 
 must be taken hold of, and transplanted, and stimulated to 
 acquirement, in an atmosphere and under influences wholly 
 different from those which have thus far nourished and 
 quickened him. Now I do not say that this novel, stimu 
 lating process will necessarily mildew or distort him I do 
 not say that he is inevitably thrust by it into a strange orbit 
 14* 
 
162 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 for which he is unbalanced and unfitted I do not say that 
 he will be educated into flightiness or dunce-hood, though 
 such cases may be have been. What I would most earn 
 estly insist on is this, that the continual repetition of this 
 process confirms our aspiring youth in the mistaken impres 
 sion that they can be nothing without a collegiate education 
 and a profession, while it depresses and stunts the undistin 
 guished many by a still keener humiliation. They had not 
 hoped nor aspired to give light toothers they had pre 
 sumed only to sun themselves in the rays of intellect which 
 had burst on their own unnoted sphere. In the young aspi 
 rant to whom their village, their class, had given birth, they 
 recognized with gladness and pride an evidence of the 
 essential brotherhood of Man a link between the low 
 liest and the most exalted. He has shed a redeeming halo 
 of glory and beauty, of hope and joy, over the triteness and 
 drudgery of their daily paths. But, in the first moment 
 of their fond exultation, the unfolding genius expands its 
 new-found wings and soars beyond their sphere, leaving 
 them to gaze with sinking heart on its ascending, receding 
 flight, troubled and depressed where they should have been 
 assured and strengthened. As a farmer, an artisan in their 
 midst, he would have been their glory and blessing their 
 guide, philosopher and friend for there is nothing in 
 the contact of true genius which discourages nor discon 
 certs ; but he hies away to some distant city or seminary ; 
 and now he is no longer of them, but has visibly enrolled 
 himself in a different class, whose members they may ad 
 mire, look up to, and even reverence, but can not clasp in 
 the bands of a true and genial sympathy. There are too 
 many folds of papyrus between his heart and theirs. What 
 I would urge, then, is this, that the deep want of our time is 
 not a greater number of scholars, professional men, pastors, 
 educators, (though possibly there may be some improvement 
 here in the quality ;) the need of new, strong, penetrating 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 163 
 
 and healthy men is felt rather in the less noticeable walks 
 of life. We need to bring the sunlight of Genius to bear 
 on the common walks to dignify the sphere as well as 
 facilitate the operations of the Useful Arts ; to hallow and 
 exalt the pathway of honest, unpretending Industry. It is 
 here that the next decided movement is needed and will be 
 made in the way of Human Progress not a pushing for 
 ward of the vanguard, but a bringing up of the main body. 
 The deep want of the time is that the vast resources and 
 capacities of Mind, the far-stretching powers of Genius and 
 of Science, be brought to bear practically and intimately on 
 Agriculture, the Mechanic Arts, and all the now rude and 
 simple processes of Day-Labor, and not merely that these 
 processes may be perfected and accelerated, but that the 
 benefits of the improvement may accrue in at least equal 
 measure to those whose accustomed means of livelihood 
 scanty at best are interfered with and overturned by the 
 change. Not merely that these be measurably enriched, but 
 that they be informed and elevated by the vast industrial 
 transformations now in progress or in embryo, is the obvious 
 requirement. Here opens a field for truly heroic exertion 
 and achievement, far wider and nobler than that of any 
 Political heroism of ancient or modern time, because its 
 results must be deeper, more pervading, more enduring. 
 I would insist, then, that our youth of promise shall not be 
 divorced from the physical toil, the material interests of our 
 and their natal condition, while qualifying themselves for 
 the highest spheres of usefulness and endeavor. I would 
 not have them, like Geography in our atlases, contemplate 
 that hemisphere in which the greatest advances have already 
 been effected, to the exclusion of that wherein the greatest 
 triumphs yet remain to be achieved. I would not have 
 them bedeck themselves in the spoils of by-gone* victories, 
 and forget that the adversaries, Ignorance and Obstacle, 
 yet remain formidable and imminent. 
 
164 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 But, above all, I would have no youth feel that he is de 
 barred the opportunities of a useful and honorable, if he 
 please, a lofty and heroic career, because the means of ob 
 taining a Classical Education are denied him. I will not 
 point him to the many who have inscribed their names high 
 on the rolls of enviable fame without such Education, for the 
 logic therein implied might as well be used to reconcile him 
 to the loss of an eye or an arm. I will not argue to him that 
 circumstances are indifferent or unimportant ; I have freely 
 admitted the contrary. But I would urge to such a one that 
 the essential circumstance is the awakening of the soul to a 
 consciousness of its own powers and responsibilities, and that 
 this is determined in the very fact of his seeking, with eye 
 single and heart pure, a larger development, a more 
 thorough culture. This point attained, let him doubt 
 nothing, fear nothing, save his own steadiness of purpose and 
 loftiness of aim. Be not discouraged, then, awakened youth 
 in some lowly cottage, some boorish valley, by the magnitude 
 of others attainments, the richness of others facilities for 
 acquiring and investigating, as contrasted with the seeming 
 poverty of your own ; but remember and be reverently thank 
 ful that the same high stars which, shining so brightly upon 
 the palace, the university, the senate-house, have kindled the 
 souls of philosophers, sages, statesmen in times past, now 
 look down as kindly, inspiringly on you ; and in the fact 
 that they have touched an answering chord within you is an 
 earnest that their companionship shall nevermore be sullen 
 nor fruitless. From this hour shall all Nature be your 
 teacher, your ministrant ; her infinite grandeur no longer a 
 barren pageant ; her weird and solemn voices no more un 
 meaning sounds. Though they should come to you no more 
 at second-hand from the lips of her Pindar, her Shakspere, 
 they can *never more be hushed nor unheeded ; they have 
 passed from the realm of darkness, of doubt, of speculation, 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 165 
 
 and become to you the deepest and grandest realities of 
 Human Life ! 
 
 But Life is not all aspiration. Clouds and shadows over 
 spread even its morning promise ; they oftener settle densely 
 and darkly down upon its evening horizon. Let us briefly 
 regard them. 
 
 We must begin with that vast, deplorable fact of Sin, which 
 early intrudes itself upon us in any attempt to measure the 
 extent of external influences on the human character : How 
 shall we regard it / It stands before us in all its towering 
 altitude, throwing its gloomy shadows across the whole land 
 scape of Human Life. We must look it fairly in the face, 
 for no survey of our subject can be even superficially correct 
 that affects to disregard it. Sin, without which this world 
 would even now be an Eden, with which it is so nearly a 
 Pandemonium the haggard wrecks of its ravage are all 
 around and among us : they stare upon us from the drunk 
 ard s hovel, the felon s dreary cell ; they creak in the mid 
 night wind from the murderer s gibbet; they meet us in the 
 most extraordinary events ; they hover and flit along our 
 daily paths. The child opens its eyes on a world made foul 
 and wretched by Sin alone, looks but fitfully around on the 
 general desolation, and hastens to plunge in the polluted 
 and polluting current, and dash its waves still higher up the 
 banks which it threatens to overwhelm. Is there a stern 
 fatality in this V Does Innate Depravity, taken in its most 
 positive, emphatic acceptation, sufficiently account for it? 
 I do not perceive that it does. Man s depravity never induces 
 him in material concerns to act so blindly to give much for 
 nothing to journey days through mire and thorn for that 
 which is found abundantly at home, and can not be found by 
 thus pursuing it. How shall we account, then, for this uni 
 versal madness this horrible infatuation ? In pursuing this 
 inquiry, I shall endeavor to state philosophic truth only, and 
 to pursue it by philosophic methods. The essential depravity 
 
166 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 which leads man to trample wilfully on the laws of his 
 Creator to pursue his own ends indifferently through good 
 and evil, uncaring who suffers so that his gratification is se 
 cured I leave to be exposed and reproved by the Sacred 
 Teacher, while I endeavor in all humility to consider trans 
 gression simply as error, and to trace out the nature and 
 source of the immense mistake so generally fallen into by the 
 hapless children of Adam. 
 
 The individual Man awakes on earth to moral conscious 
 ness, surrounded by warring influences nay, endued, in 
 formed, possessed, by warring impulses. On the one side 
 are arrayed his Passions, such as we now find them, demand 
 ing gratification at all cost Luxury, Power, Ease, and all 
 sensual delights. On the other side, stern as in the primal 
 garden, gleams the Law, saying plainly to all, " Refrain ! 
 Obey !" Perhaps it does not become Omnipotence to reason 
 with His creatures minutely and continually on the justice 
 and propriety of His requirements it is enough that those 
 requirements are distinctly made known. Adam is not told 
 that the interdicted fruit is unpalatable or intrinsically poi 
 sonous ; it should be enough for him to know that it is forbid 
 den. But here, where Divine Law stops, Human Education 
 should begin. What is our knowledge but the collected ex 
 perience of the Race ? and what truth in this so important, 
 so prominent, as that everywhere, in all cases, without the 
 possibility of exception, Virtue secures Happiness and Vice 
 produces Misery ? 
 
 I insist that this be made the subject of scientific and 
 palpable demonstration. I insist that this is the scope and 
 the fullness of all true teaching, without which all beside is 
 a hollow mockery of knowledge. I insist that the Education 
 which excludes Moral and even Religious culture using the 
 term Religious in its legitimate relation to the sentiment of 
 devotion, and with no regard to creeds or formulas is at best 
 superficial and defective it maybe, pernicious and destruc- 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 167 
 
 live. I will not now say how much or how little of Education 
 should be left to the school and its ministrations ; but I do 
 say, that to talk of a man being educated when he has not 
 yet learned profoundly that any wrong action, however out 
 wardly successful or unrebuked, is a deplorable mistake on 
 the part of the wilful doer a ruinous subtraction from the 
 sum of his own happiness, considered simply in itself and its 
 irresistible consequences is to use words in utter contempt 
 of their true meaning. Nay, more : our Education should not 
 merely imprint on the mind the general truth already stated, 
 but the full and particular reasons for it in all cases should 
 show why and how the miser, the swindler, the drunkard, 
 the hypocrite, the libertine, all stand in their own light all 
 make war upon themselves, while they imagine they are 
 draining others measure of enjoyment to fill to overflowing 
 their own. This truth thoroughly mastered, the road to all 
 desirable knowledge, to all true happiness, lies open and easy 
 before the learner. Shall it not be the triumph of our age 
 to unfold and apply a truth so simple yet so mighty ? The 
 child but once suffers by clutching the glowing fire-brand ; 
 it knows thenceforth that the warmth so genial in its ap 
 pointed sphere becomes anguish and destruction if grasped 
 thus recklessly. Is it not time that civilized, cultivated Man 
 were at least as truly wise as the infant ? 
 
 Let none imagine that I am proposing to cure a cancer of 
 the heart by some external ablution : I have not affirmed that 
 the most lucid teaching, the most careful moral culture, will 
 imbue man necessarily with a right spirit. But I do con 
 tend that, if all the natural and unavoidable consequences of 
 Crime and Wrong-doing were clearly and fully set before 
 our Youth from infancy, and the events transpiring, the in 
 fluences surrounding them, were made to illustrate and en 
 force the lessons so imparted, there would be impediments 
 to actual transgression which it would be outright madness 
 to overleap. What thief would steal if he saw the officers 
 
168 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 of justice ready to seize him in the act, with the door of the 
 State s Prison just opening to receive him ? Though fallen 
 as Lucifer, he plainly could not do it. What we need, then, 
 in our Practical Education, is to bring home the conse 
 quences of transgression as clearly and directly to every 
 man s understanding as in this instance ; to show our youth 
 that they can not possibly step aside from the path of duty 
 without bringing upon themselves suffering and degradation. 
 I would have them taught beyond cavil that any attempt to 
 clutch enjoyment by Sin is as insane as undertaking to warm 
 the hands by grasping a red-hot bar of iron. This teaching 
 does not take the place of truly Religious discipline and 
 culture it is not intended to do so. A man may be too 
 wise to do wrong, and yet be at heart far from right. I urge 
 only that the community should secure itself by teaching the 
 benighted the suicidal mischiefs of wrong-doing, even though 
 the lesson be given without benevolence and received with 
 out essential amendment. 
 
 Alas for us ! we are a dwarfed, distorted Race ! We are 
 but the fragments and pigmies of what we might and should 
 be ! Here and there we see a Judge, a General, a Ruler 
 perchan* a Poet, an Orator, a Pastor how seldom a whole 
 and complete Man ! Our excellence, what there is of it* 
 runs in veins, in seams, in zig-zags seldom is it found dif 
 fused and equable. Could a mental daguerreotype be held 
 up before us one on which the fullnesses and deficiencies 
 of the character should vividly appear what deformities and 
 defects should we not be surprised to discern ! far beyond 
 any ability of paint and patches, of whalebone and padding, 
 to disguise or conceal. What indiscreet Philanthropists ! 
 what godless Patriots ! what uncharitable Devotees ! Must 
 we abandon in despair the hope of a truer Manhood ? Must 
 Human Virtue be ever a tiny rivulet meandering through a 
 boundless bog of prejudice, selfishness, and passion ? Let 
 us hope otherwise. 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 169 
 
 And yet I derive less encouragement than many are en 
 abled to do from that brilliant aurora in their eyes in mine 
 it has some suspicious likeness to a meteor, a will-o -wisp 
 which they grandly propound as the " Progress of the Hu 
 man Race." High-sounding words these, and most flatter 
 ing is their sonorous iteration to our insatiable vanity and 
 conceit. If they were intended only to assert that Human 
 Nature has a capacity for vast improvement that it ought 
 to be wiser and better with each successive generation or 
 even that the small portion of our race which has enjoyed 
 the greatest advantages of position, climate, traditional 
 wisdom, and of Divine enlightenment, have improved, are 
 improving I accept it most heartily. But this is by no 
 means all that the flowery orators of our time, the Philoso 
 phers of the latest French School and their admiring followers 
 among us, assert and dilate on. They affirm (if I do not 
 greatly misapprehend them) the existence of a principle of 
 Progress in Man a constant improvement founded in the 
 very laws of his being, and one of their latest essays 
 declares that in those eras when the Race has appeared 
 visibly, palpably to recede into deeper darkness as in the 
 centuries which witnessed the decline and subversion of the 
 Roman power that even then the light was not diminished, 
 but obscured, as when a new load of fuel is thrown upon the 
 roaring fire, diminishing for a season the brightness of the 
 blaze, but increasing the intensity of the heat within. Not 
 so have / learned history not so regarded the monuments 
 or the story of Human Advancement. Whether early 
 Egyptian civilization and culture were in any sense the 
 fruit of growth and progression, and not rather the result 
 of some carefully treasured and guarded traditions of the 
 primal state of Man, may I think be well doubted I think 
 has been successfully disputed by philosophic and critical 
 observers. The means of positive solution to that deep 
 enigma are doubtless buried for ever with the Priesthood of 
 15 
 
170 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 that mysterious realm. Greek elevation and refinement 
 sprang so directly from a few mighty master-spirits say 
 Homer, Pythagoras, Plato that, even under the inspiring 
 influences of clime and scenery, of sea and skies, which will 
 ever make the dwellers by the ^Egean and the Adriatic a 
 people eminent for genius and daring, without these we can 
 scarcely imagine the Greece of Miltiades and Leonidas, of 
 Epaminondas and Pericles, to have had an existence. From 
 the humble cot of the peaceful and unregarded student of 
 Nature and votary of Truth, from the tremulous and famine- 
 enfeebled chant of the blind old beggar of Scio, went forth 
 the power which hurled back into the Hellespont the legions 
 of Xerxes and changed the destiny of a world. Roman 
 culture, what there was of it worth recalling and commend 
 ing, was so directly an imitation of the Greek, that it de 
 serves no special consideration. And so far is continued 
 Progress, higher and higher Attainment, from being, in my 
 view, a law of Human Nature, that I believe the Civilization 
 of Antiquity had attained and passed its zenith before the 
 influence of Christianity began to be intensely felt ; and 
 that, but for that influence, so high a point of culture would 
 never, within the range of natural causes, have been reached 
 again. Only through some new infusion of the Divine, 
 could the smouldering embers of Manhood have been kin 
 dled to a more genial warmth, a brighter radiance, than had 
 already been manifested. 
 
 No ! vain is the conceit, mischievous the illusion, that the 
 Human Race progresses by some law of its being, and that 
 the far Future, merely because it is future, shall be better 
 and loftier than the Past. Let the dreamer of this filtering 
 vision survey the vain-gloriously styled Celestial Empire, 
 trace back its mouldy chronicles through thirty centuries of 
 utter stagnation stand upon the ruins (if he can find them) 
 of mighty Babylon, above the fallen and imbedded pillars 
 of her temples, theaters, and palaces, which no longer afford 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 171 
 
 a shelter even for the wolf and hyena, and look abroad on 
 the scattered hordes of miserable and famished robbers of 
 the desert who roam here unconscious that a great city ever 
 existed explore, if you would rather, the crumbling monu 
 ments, the still towering pyramids and delicate sculptures 
 of Palenque and Uxmal, inquire their origin and history of 
 the degraded savages who dwell around them after three 
 centuries of Christian teaching, and then judge of the fallacy 
 which affirms Progress to be a law of our Nature, and its un- 
 ebbing tides the land-marks of Time. No ! friends of Man ! 
 only through ardent and patient effort, by heroic endurance 
 and high-souled endeavor, aided, impelled by the good Prov 
 idence of God, and led by those whom it leads and vouch 
 safes us, does the capacity of our Race for improvement 
 and elevation evolve itself. Imperative is the obligation 
 which rests upon us to stand not idly by, expecting the 
 foaming current of human ignorance, error and wrong to 
 exhaust itself, but to embark earnestly in the great work of 
 resisting and overcoming it, assured that only through sys 
 tematic exertion will it ever be diminished in volume or in 
 force. 
 
 But Life has not rugged and repulsive aspects only 
 even perverted and degraded as it is, it smiles upon us 
 through kindly and sympathizing eyes. Viewed in a genial 
 spirit, it presents themes of elevating, chastening contempla 
 tion. Not in the rough and stormy collisions of the market 
 place, the forum, the senate, the battle-field, are its true 
 nobility, its essential beauty manifested ; but in the uncalcu- 
 lating hospitality of some rude squatter on a Texan prairie 
 in the heart-gushing charity of some Arab or African 
 woman, who in the desert eagerly proffers the scanty morsel 
 of food which stands between her and famine, to nourish the 
 drooping stranger of whose nation she never heard till yester 
 day in the clustering around some lowly New-England fire 
 side of the long scattered members of a family which passed 
 
172 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 its childhood thereby, freely disbursing the hoarded coin 
 they ill can spare, that they may gather from distant Ohio, 
 Iowa, and Mississippi, once more beneath the dear old raft 
 ers, so blackened with smoke and age, to receive for the last 
 time the tottering father s grave, affectionate counsel, the 
 pious mother s fervent, tearful blessing. And still the great 
 world rolls on, with empty noise and frivolous iterations, and 
 the impatient soul exclaims, "How fruitless, how tiresome are 
 these succeeding To-Days ! what use to bear with them 
 longer, expecting the good which never comes ?" Be not so 
 hasty, choleric friends ! Perchance at this very moment, in 
 the brain of some nameless, noteless dreamer, some awkward, 
 bashful boy, whom the world would not condescend even to 
 laugh at, the Idea is silently maturing which shall transform 
 and vivify the whole career of man. Whether it shall as 
 sume a Physical or Moral bearing shall teach us to ride 
 the thunderbolt or revel in the outermost ether shall bridge 
 the Atlantic, or only bridle its fiercest waves, and cause 
 them to impel the calm, majestic vessel directly athwart 
 their raving breakers shall detect the hidden metals in the 
 beds a hundred feet below the surface, where they have lain 
 unimagined since creation, or draw from the unfathomed 
 deep the treasures it has amassed through forty centuries, 
 who may tell? Better, doubtless, than any, than all of 
 these, could it secure to every child the blessings of Intel 
 lectual and Moral Culture to every man and woman the 
 means and opportunity of employing the faculties God has 
 given in such manner as best to promote the welfare of all 
 His creatures, while securing beyond contingency a compe 
 tent support to each. 
 
 Of all Reforms not strictly spiritual, that which shall yet 
 secure opportunity and a just and fair reward to every one 
 who is willing to contribute his best exertions in any sphere 
 of industry and usefulness to the aggregate of human efforts 
 for the satisfaction of human wants which shall secure to 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 173 
 
 every man and woman the Right to Labor, and to enjoy rea 
 sonably the fruits of such Labor appears to me the great 
 est, the most essential, and one which no generous and en 
 lightened mind can afford to despair of attaining. 
 
 The vital principle which must be the basis of a true life 
 is forgetfulness of self in aspiration for general good. The 
 act, of which selfish gratification or advantage is the impulse, 
 can not be holy nor heroic it can scarcely be other than 
 ignoble and wrong. A life of selfish aims and exertions ! 
 how sordid and despicable ! how groveling its morality 
 how lean its virtue ! how icy and stolid its innocence ! 
 And yet this is the acme of much of the teaching and more 
 of the example of the world. That evil inevitably leads to 
 degradation and misery, this is a truth which should receive 
 every practicable demonstration which should be early and 
 deeply imprinted on every heart. But the avoidance of evil 
 is a lesson for infancy in moral culture goodness for the 
 sake of goodness, for the love of goodness, that is the highest 
 inculcation. Not to do right for the sake of happiness, in 
 the usuat low sense of the term, but for the sake of Right, 
 is the true precept. The whole life, even of the humblest, 
 should be a spontaneous aspiration. Then Goodness is no 
 more a holiday cloak, a Sunday feat, but a breath, an at 
 mosphere. No longer is the week divided into six days for 
 overreaching our neighbor and one for expiating it to God ; 
 but the life becomes integral and consistent, and the daily 
 toil an unmeditated psalm. 
 
 The bane of guiltless life among us is excessive, perpetual 
 Care. The eagerness to acquire, the dread to lose the 
 apprehension of loss of caste, poverty, want, famine these 
 furrow our brows prematurely with their scathing plowshares. 
 The evils that we really endure are less formidable in amount, 
 perhaps in intensity, than those we suffer from fear alone. 
 Not merely is it too true, that 
 
 Getting and spending we lay waste our years ; 
 
 15* 
 
174 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 but the depressing dread that we shall be cut off from any 
 opportunity to acquire and possess this wears upon and 
 crushes us. There is more bitterness than levity in the jest 
 that " We have no National amusements but Banking and 
 the Credit system." How many a child is early set to hoard 
 ing pence in a box which takes readily but returns none ; 
 while its simple, narrow-minded parents imagine that they 
 have given it a noble start on the journey of life ! To win 
 money and keep it this is the great achievement constantly 
 held up before the eyes of our infant Alexanders and Caesars. 
 1 Whittington and his Cat are more the objects of Child 
 hood s admiring contemplation than an army of saints and 
 martyrs. How shall such children afterward be taught to 
 believe and realize that Life has higher aims than those of 
 the counter and the market ? that a competence is to be 
 valued as enabling to live truly and nobly, and as affording 
 the means of diffusing benefits and blessings, while Self- 
 Culture, the training, development and elevation of the 
 Man, are the true ends of life ! It is idle to expect, save 
 rarely, a result contradictory to early and deep impres 
 sions. Nay, it is idle to expect that the child which grows 
 up surrounded and impressed by many and painful evidences 
 of the privations and degradations, mental as well as physi 
 cal, to which the pecuniarily destitute are everywhere sub 
 jected, will not learn to prize and struggle for Wealth as a 
 chief good. It stands before him the practical barrier be 
 tween Liberty and Slavery, Power and Insignificance, self- 
 respect and abjectness. It is not merely a means of enjoying 
 and dispensing physical comforts it is the key to the 
 treasuries of Thought and Knowledge it is the power of 
 retirement and self-communion. We may teach Man to limit 
 his desires to the last degree, yet the question recurs to 
 him "Without Property, how shall I have means of satis 
 fying the lowest necessities of physical existence ? I may 
 learn to live long on a dollar ; but I can not learn to com- 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 175 
 
 that dollar, unless some one will employ me, and how 
 shall I be sure of that ? If I could live on grass and water, 
 there are those depending on me who can not ; what will 
 secure comfort to them ?" Alas, for this necessity of con 
 stant, anxious, earth-embracing care for the supply of tem 
 poral wants ! Shall we never be able to obey the Divine 
 injunction to take no thought for the morrow ? 
 
 And here is the root of that demand for a Social Reform 
 which, springing up simultaneously in so many earnest hearts, 
 is beginning at length to make itself heard and felt. The 
 thoughtless Million may scoff, as their prototypes in all ages 
 have scoffed, at ideas which look beyond the sensual wants 
 of the individual and the hour ; but the observing understand 
 that these do not even comprehend the evil which is resisted 
 the change which is desired. It is not merely that the 
 widow and the orphan lack food under our present Social 
 Order it is not merely the contemplation of the yawn 
 ing abysses of degradation, misery and crime, into which 
 millions after millions are constantly driven by our Society s 
 harsh denial to them of any honest means of earning their 
 needful bread though this and its train of consequences 
 are enough to drown a nation in tears of blood but the cry 
 for a truer Social basis has yet a deeper source than this. 
 It is the Soul s indignant protest against its own perpetual 
 involvement in a system of heartlessness and war of chaf 
 fering and struggling for daily bread, when its healthful 
 existence demands an atmosphere of serenity and love. It 
 willingly proffers physical powers to obtain physical ends 
 the hands to plant and to build, to fashion and produce ; but 
 the surrender of itself to a perpetual round of ignoble 
 anxieties and petty yet exacting collisions, is felt to be too 
 much. The desolate and crushed heart that lives but on one 
 cherished though saddening memory, is willing, nay, eager, 
 to give faithful daily labor for the plainest daily bread ; it is 
 the constant, haunting dread that even that hard exchange 
 
176 HINTS TOWARD REFORM. 
 
 will not long be attainable the exposure to rude rebuffs and 
 wounding suspicions in obeying the frequently recurring 
 necessity to seek anew the privilege of giving much toil for 
 little recompense it is this which gnaws and kills. It is 
 the conviction that Society that of Christendom at least 
 ought to be a condition not of war but of peace not of 
 jarring rivalry but of generous emulation in good deeds 
 not calculated to develop and aggravate, but to chasten and 
 correct whatever in man is selfish and unsympathizing it is 
 this which underlies and impels the great Social movement, 
 not now prominent to the careless eye, but which is destined 
 to render our age memorable in the history of Man. Let 
 those who think slightingly of this idea of a pervading Re 
 form a Reform which shall embosom almost every other 
 ponder the following words of a great man lately departed 
 the philanthropic yet cautious, high-souled and far-seeing 
 Channing : 
 
 ** Our present civilization is characterised and tainted by a devouring 
 greediness of wealth. The passion for gain is everywhere sapping 
 pure, generous feeling, and raising up bitter foes against any reform 
 which may threaten to turn aside the stream of wealth. I sometimes 
 feel as if a great reform were necessary to break up our present mer 
 cenary civilization, in order that Christianity, now repelled by the uni 
 versal worldliness, may come into nearer contact with the soul, and re 
 construct Society after its own pure and disinterested principles." 
 
 Such thoughts as these are already familiar to many gen 
 erous hearts, and the number is daily increasing. Let us 
 not fear that they will long remain unacted. 
 
 Let none accuse me of the enthusiast s common error 
 the presumption that the world is to be transformed in a day. 
 I know well how great the interval which ever divides the 
 perception of a noble idea by a few earnest minds from 
 its hearty acceptance, its practical realization, by the great 
 mass of mankind. I know how any such idea must ever 
 suffer from the errors or imperfections of its apostles, from 
 the faithlessness of the selfish and undiscerning, from its 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 177 
 
 perversion and corruption by many on whom it makes an im 
 pression. But, on the other hand, I will not close my eyes 
 to the decided progress which Society has made during the 
 last two centuries, nor to the direction of that progress. 
 When I perceive that UNITY OF EFFORT, resting on com 
 munity of interest, has checkered Christendom with roads, 
 bridges, canals, railroads, and before unimagined facilities 
 for the interchange of products and of thought ; when I see 
 Universal Education, so recently regarded as a benevolent 
 chimera, now admitted in theory to be essential and attain 
 able, though but distantly approached in practice ; when I 
 find the right of the destitute to a support at the public expense 
 admitted and acted upon blindly, imperfectly, if you please, 
 but still at so serious a cost and with such a uniformity both 
 in time and space as to forbid the idea that it rests on any 
 other foundation than that of acknowledged and imperative 
 duty ; when I consider that so few generations have passed 
 since the ignorant and the destitute were left to live in dark 
 ness and die by unheeded famine, no man questioning its 
 rightfulness, and the learned, the affluent, the noble blas 
 phemously pronouncing all this the order of Providence ! I 
 will not doubt that all these meliorations of the hard lot of 
 the unfortunate are but slight precursors of the vast Reform 
 which is yet to embosom all other reforms which is to se 
 cure Education and Bread even to the deepest poverty and 
 darkest misfortune, by simply making the sinews, the exer 
 tions, of any intelligent child of Adam worth the cost of his 
 instruction and subsistence which shall replace all our mis 
 erable and too often pernicious public and private alms to 
 the vigorous, by a system of undegrading and self-sustaining 
 General Industry, in which a place shall be open to every 
 one who needs or asks it. 
 
 Happy he who shall be enabled to show forth in his own 
 what human life should be, unpolluted by evil passions, un- 
 corroded by sordid cares, unchafed by the disappointment of 
 
178 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 selfish aspirations, ever shielded from the access of tempta 
 tion and error by finding delight in duty, and a tranquil joy 
 in the widest diffusion of blessings. Happy beyond the 
 power of evil destiny shall he be whose life flows on in one 
 calm, full current of active goodness of unceasing benevo 
 lence to Man, of unbounded reliance on God. Looking back 
 in the evening of his days through the dissolving mists of 
 the past, he shall discern in every trial, Discipline ; in every 
 sorrow, the salutary chastening of a Divine beneficence. 
 And when the bowed fra me and feeble limbs shall admonish 
 him of failing power to execute the dictates of a still loving 
 heart, he shall need no farther witness of the benignity of 
 that dispensation which Sin recoils from as Death, but, pil 
 lowed on that blessed Book, whose promises have lighted 
 the dim pathway to millions, shall sleep to be awakened in 
 Heaven. 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR. 179 
 
 VI. 
 THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR : 
 
 A LECTURE.* 
 
 WE are in the depth of Winter. Around us lie strewed 
 the lifeless, decaying wrecks of a world of verdure, growth, 
 and beauty, which has perished forever. Before us stretches 
 a bleak, rugged prospect of ice and snow, of keen north 
 western blasts and raw north-eastern storms, rattling the bare 
 boughs of a hemisphere of orchard, grove, and forest. All 
 seems stern, joyless, transfixed, congealed as by the frost of 
 Death. 
 
 Not so, however. The searching eye, impelled by the 
 loving, trusting heart, discerns on these naked boughs the 
 modest shrinking buds which bespeak the corning Spring 
 and the precursors of the abundant foliage and gladness of 
 the approaching Summer. The pall of the Present shields 
 while it shrouds the roses of the Future. Nature, so torpid, 
 and dead to the dull, material eye, is even now in her pro 
 found laboratories preparing for her coming season of visible, 
 palpable glory. Her night of wintry darkness heralds a rosy, 
 genial dawn. 
 
 Thus also in the Moral and in the Social world. 
 
 For generations the old Social Machinery has been wear 
 ing out giving way breaking down. The original 
 division of our Race into a Free class of Warriors and 
 
 * In part. The concluding pages as here published are quite different from the 
 Lecture as read, under another title. 
 
186 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 Rulers and a Slave caste of Laborers and Cultivators is with 
 difficulty and but partially maintained. With the change of 
 circumstances and of aspirations, the trade of War has fallen 
 into comparative disuse and disrepute, and the governing 
 class seek distinction and advantage on other fields than those 
 of battle. The chiefs advance to the conflict in mail and 
 hemlet as of old, while the undistinguished multitude still 
 fight and fall in relative nakedness ; but the armor of the 
 Nineteenth Century is a plethoric pocket-book ; its strong 
 fortress is a fire-proof vault, well filled with notes, mortgages, 
 and title-deeds. Ancient Chivalry wasted ten years, with 
 countless lives and treasure, in burning one Troy ; its 
 modern counterpart builds half a dozen Lowells and Man- 
 chesters in a like period, and at a cost and risk immeasurably 
 less. The king of men of to-day, to whom honors and 
 public trusts are tendered as of right, after whom new cities 
 are named, is a Factory Agent and Railroad Director ; a 
 Cotton-spinner overturns the long-cherished policy of Great 
 Britain ; a cotton-spinner s son is the most eminent civilian 
 of that mighty realm. Not to ravage and trample down but 
 to cherish, upbuild and direct is the wiser impulse of the 
 powerful of our day with respect to the operations and the 
 results of Productive Industry. Very naturally, the progress 
 and the efficiency of Useful Labor shame all recorded 
 precedent. 
 
 But here, on the threshold of our survey, a painful fact 
 confronts and startles us. Human Labor is efficient beyojid 
 example, but the Labori?ig Class is hardly benefited thereby. 
 Houses multiply with extreme rapidity, but the number of 
 the houseless is not diminished. The prolific Earth yields 
 larger and larger harvests as wilds are reclaimed and Science 
 is applied to Agriculture, but millions pine and thousands 
 starve for lack of food. Our roads and means of transit are 
 visibly improved from season to season ; but our road- 
 makers are no better circumstanced than their grandfathers 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR. 181 
 
 were. Each year sees the number and value of arable 
 acres increase, while the proportion of those who possess 
 any land in their own right steadily diminishes. Each year 
 produces more and more fuel and cloth, yet witnesses 
 more and more shivering and nakedness. While new 
 inventions and processes are daily rendering material life 
 more smooth and comfortable to the affluent, the number of 
 the destitute, squalid and miserable is steadily on the in 
 crease. With an immensely extended and widening de 
 mand on every side for Labor, to clear lands, blast rocks, 
 construct houses, factories, dams, and Railroads, to dig 
 Canals, drains, &c., &c., there is a large and increasing host 
 of unemployed laborers, standing idle and gaunt in the 
 market-place, anxious to work that their little ones may 
 not famish, and in danger of sinking into dissipation and 
 crime through despair. Men and brethren, what shall 
 we do T 
 
 That wealth and penury advance hand in hand, that the 
 stately, sumptuous mansion implies the lowly, desolate hovel, 
 was long ago noted. The mansion may rise in London or 
 Paris, while the hovel covers in Irish Skibbereen or the 
 Scotch Highlands : the distance of location does not break 
 and should not conceal the chain of cause and effect by 
 which the palace and the hovel are united. We may re 
 hearse the babble of the accredited Political Economists till 
 our own brains are addled and our eyes benighted, and still 
 the fact remains that so long as one man shall be authorized 
 to draw an income of, say $100,000 per annum, from the 
 cultivators of a township or County for the use of the naked 
 earth they stand on, to be increased as Power shall dictate 
 and Need perforce assent, so long must the reward of the 
 Labor expended thereon be meager and its subsistence 
 scanty and precarious ; and so long as the maxim is accred 
 ited and acted on that the powerful and the shrewd have a 
 clear moral right to use their natural advantages with a single 
 16 
 
182 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 view to their own gratification and aggrandizement, so long 
 must the weak and lowly be crushed and trampled on. 
 
 Of the tendencies and goal of the existing Social system, 
 with its legalization of Land Monopoly and cardinal maxim 
 of Every man for himself, Ireland affords at this day the 
 most eminent and striking example. There the soil is by 
 law the property of the few, while the population is dense and 
 relies mainly on Agriculture for subsistence. Vast estates 
 and petty holdings are its main characteristics estates 
 whose incomes are squandered in luxurious dissipation from 
 Dublin to Venice holdings which it would seem scarcely 
 possible to draw a family s subsistence from if the landlord s 
 tax on God s naked bounty were a thing unknown. Yet 
 from these mere patches of soil, varying from a rood to an 
 acre in area, rents of five and twenty dollars per acre are 
 extorted. And still men wonder that Ireland is so scourged 
 and famine-stricken ! wonder that her common people are 
 so ignorant and wretched ! Is it not the real marvel that 
 they have so long endured and survived their wrongs and 
 oppressions ? 
 
 Nor ought we to regret that the evil, so long brooding, 
 has reached its crisis before our eyes that the clouds so 
 long gathering, lowering, muttering, have been rent by the ar 
 tillery of Heaven and are discharging their furies. Whoever 
 has thoughtfully studied our prevailing maxims of Social 
 Polity, and clearly apprehends their radical vices, must real 
 ize that the visitations of Famine in our day are no less 
 obviously judgments than mercies. For, as says the keen- 
 sighted though erratic Carlyle : 
 
 " Great is Bankruptcy : the bottomless gulf into which all False 
 hoods, public and private, do sink, disappearing ; whither, from the 
 first origin of them, they were all doomed. For nature is true, and 
 not a lie. No lie you can speak or act, but it will come, after longer 
 or shorte r circulation, like a Bill, drawn on Nature s reality, and be 
 presented there for payment with the answer, No Effects. Pity 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR. 183 
 
 only that it often had so long a circulation : that the original forger 
 were so seldom he who bore the final smart of it ! Lies, and the bur 
 den of evil they bring, are passed on ; shifted from back to back, and 
 from rank to rank ; and so land ultimately on the dumb lowest rank, 
 who, with spade and mattock, with sore heart and empty wallet, daily 
 come in contact with reality, and can pass the cheat no farther. * * * 
 "With a Fortunatus Purse in its pocket, through what length of 
 time might not almost any Falsehood last ! Your Society, your 
 Household, practical or spiritual Arrangement, is untrue, unjust, 
 offensive to the eye of God and man. Nevertheless, its hearth is 
 warm, its larder well replenished ; the innumerable Swiss of Heav 
 en, with a kind of natural loyalty, gather round it; will prove, 
 by pamphleteering, musketeering, that it is a Truth ; or, if not an un 
 mixed (unearthly, impossible) Truth then better; a wholesomely 
 attempered one (as the wind is to the shorn lamb,) and works well. 
 Changed outlook, however, when purse and larder grow empty ! 
 Was your arrangement so true, so accordant to Nature s ways, then 
 how, in the name of wonder, has Nature, with her infinite bounty, 
 come to leave it famishing there ? To all men, to all women and 
 children, it is now indubitable that your Arrangement was false. 
 Honor to Bankruptcy ! Under all Falsehoods it works, unweariedly 
 mining. No Falsehood, did it rise Heaven high and cover the world, 
 but Bankruptcy, one day, will sweep it down, and make us free 
 of it/ 
 
 Ah! we know! says the thoughtless conservative, 
 that there is a bad state of things in Ireland ; but w r hat has 
 that to do with us ? You don t mean to say that we are in 
 any such condition ? 
 
 Why, sir, do you realize that the anti-reformer in Ireland 
 is just as oblivious to the existence or the curability of evils 
 there as you are as to those which cluster or lower here ? 
 Of course, he does not wish to deny that evils exist ; he 
 readily admits that, and contends it is divinely ordained that 
 so it should be. He seeks not to deny that whole neighbor 
 hoods are famishing ; but what of it? Did not CHRIST 
 say, The poor ye have always with you ? And who 
 should seek to falsify the Savior s prediction ? Starvation 
 and wretchedness are by Heavenly appointment sent to 
 
184 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 discipline portly, well-to-do Christians in the exercise of 
 Charity. Thus the Poor famish, but that only proves the 
 extent of Human perversity, the desperate viciousness and 
 depravity of the lower class, or the fierceness of the Divine 
 wrath against Sin ; and Society stands acquitted of injustice 
 or even improvidence. When some poor peasant, living 
 with his pigs and children in a mud-hovel unfit for the 
 habitation of brutes, driven to despair by the impossibility of 
 subsisting his family, and paying some dollars rent for a 
 scanty half acre of soil, falls into habits of intemperance, and 
 is ejected for non-payment of rent, his fault is exaggerated 
 and his calamity deemed a righteous retribution ; while his 
 landlord, who idly enjoys and uselessly expends an income 
 of $50,000 or more, racked from just such half-acres and 
 hovels, walks the earth an honored, smiling, self-satisfied, 
 Christian gentleman, the pride of the County and the idol 
 of those he honors with his intimacy ; and when at a ripe 
 age he is gathered to his fathers, florid sermons are preached 
 in commendation of his exemplary life and in glorification 
 of the munificent charity with which he gave back to plun 
 dered Poverty a hundredth part of what he took from it. So 
 wags, not Ireland merely, but the world. 
 
 Yes, my Conservative friend ! not in Ireland only, nor in 
 Europe, nor in the Old World, are there grievous Social 
 wrongs to redress, but here and everywhere. Man deals 
 hardly with his brother the rich with the poor, the strong 
 with the weak, the landed with the landless. The base of 
 our Social Edifice is not Justice, but Power the right of 
 the strongest to use his strength, not to upraise but to depress 
 his brother, if he can seemingly profit thereby. Let a con 
 flagration or an earthquake add some thousands to the num 
 ber of those who must hire houses, and what Christian land 
 lord hesitates to increase his rents ? although he well knows 
 that neither his outlay nor the ability of the tenants is 
 increased an atom. Let bread become scarce, and what 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR. 185 
 
 Christian merchant, what affluent farmer, hesitates to ad 
 vance the price of Grain, though the wail of the famished 
 is ringing in his ears ? Do we not know that the morality, 
 and even the humanity, of so doing has, after a fashion, 
 been demonstrated, and forms one of the corner-stones of 
 the temple of modern Political Economy ? And, the premises 
 being granted, the conclusion is irresistible. The objection 
 applies not to the stone but to the temple. Grant that the 
 earth has been wisely and justly allotted to, or permitted to 
 become, the property of the few to the exclusion of the 
 many, and that every person has a right to use his strength, 
 his skill, or his wit, expressly and primarily for individual 
 gain or advantage, all we see and feel follows of course. The 
 wrong lies at the very foundation of our Social Order, or 
 there is no wrong at all. 
 
 But I have premised generally that our Society is unjust : 
 let me briefly indicate in what respects and particular. 
 
 When a young man, having devoted the better portion of 
 his minority to the acquirement of some useful trade or 
 handicraft, finds himself of age and an adept in his vocation, 
 yet unable to obtain employment in his calling and unfitted 
 to earn a livelihood out of it denied even an acre of bare 
 earth on which to earn it there is an instance of Social 
 defect or injustice. 
 
 When a poor laborer, delving in weariness from day to 
 day, finds a promising family growing up around him whom 
 he can not lodge decently, clothe comfortably nor educate 
 thoroughly, but is compelled to dismiss his sons to the 
 temptations and corruptions of the street, while he is off 
 through the day earning their scanty subsistence there is 
 another whom Society treats unjustly. 
 
 When a poor youth, who has devoted every hour of his 
 
 time, every farthing of his means, to the acquirement of 
 
 what is called a Liberal Education, finds himself afloat on 
 
 the great sea without a haven before him no call for him 
 
 16* 
 
186 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 in any professional capacity, no influential friends to make 
 a position no fitness, but rather decided unfitness, for use 
 fulness in any mechanical vocation and has the simple 
 choice afforded him, to beg, starve, or turn his acquirements 
 to some gainful but infamous use there is another victim 
 of Social injustice. 
 
 When a poor man, after drudging steadily at day-labor 
 through the warmer season, finds himself at winter thrown 
 out of employment, with a family that must be fed, a rent 
 that must be paid, and yet no means afforded him of doing 
 either no reliable barrier against starvation but the Poor- 
 House there is another whom Society is wronging and 
 tempting to wrong. 
 
 Still more, when a poor widow, her earthly reliance and 
 solace lately snatched away by death, finds herself driven by ne 
 cessity into some miserable garret, there to keep the breath of 
 life in her shivering children from the earnings of her needle 
 at best hardly twenty-five cents a day, however long that 
 day may be made from which the food, clothing, rent and 
 fuel of that desolate family are somehow to be extracted 
 there is not merely grievous suffering but flagrant wrong, 
 at which angels might weep tears of indignant commiseration. 
 
 Worse still is the case of the young maiden doomed to 
 poverty and deficient training in one of our great cities, 
 thrown early on her own guidance and exertions, impelled 
 to earn a livelihood by sewing, bookfolding, or any of the 
 principal avocations of women which at best affords a bare 
 subsistence cursed with the fatal gift of Beauty, and with 
 the necessity of constantly exposing herself, in the pursuit 
 of her humble calling, to contact with all that is corrupt and 
 licentious, and at length thrown out of employment by the 
 paralyzing touch of Winter, with black Necessity drifting 
 her to swift Despair, while Infamy eagerly proffers a life of 
 dazzling Luxury and Ease in exchange for, at best, one of 
 Poverty and Toil. That the exchange is oftener spurned 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR. 187 
 
 with horror than accepted is honorable to Human Nature ; 
 but it is not always spurned, as the streets and alleys of our 
 great cities mournfully attest. Accursed be the necessity 
 which thus tramples down Virtue ! detested be the Social 
 Injustice in which originated the necessity ! 
 
 And yet I have heard of such a mockery of Heaven as a 
 clergymen rising before a wealthy and fashionable congrega 
 tion on a Thanksgiving-Day to express gratitude that, in 
 this favored land, every one who chooses may earn a comfort- 
 able subsistence ! What could the man have meant ? Where 
 were his eyes ? He might as well have given thanks that 
 no person ever dies here except by his own hand. I can 
 testify from personal experience that there is not always work 
 even for the skilful who diligently seek it ; much less is 
 there for the unskilled and the simple. That Industry, 
 Energy, Skill and Probity will eventually lead to Compe 
 tence and Respect, may be affirmed without dispute, but to 
 what purpose ? The vital question remains : How shall the 
 landless and virtually homeless evince these valuable capaci 
 ties and thereby secure immediate Employment and ultimate 
 Competence ? How shall they live while they are waiting 
 the moving of the waters ? It is the first step that costs ! 
 It is OPPORTUNITY to exhibit the desirable qualities and 
 command a just recompense that I plead for as the natural 
 right of all men ; and that this is not now secured is the 
 condemnation of our existing Social Order. 
 
 We, then, who st$nd for a comprehensive and all-pervading 
 Reform in the Social relations of mankind, impeach the 
 present Order as defective and radically vicious in the fol 
 lowing important particulars : 
 
 1. It does not provide for the Physical, Moral and Intel 
 lectual training of the Young, but leaves all to the accident 
 of parental ability and wisdom to nurture and instruct. But 
 in most instances the father, and in many the mother also, 
 is forced by the stern necessity of laboring for bread where 
 
188 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 Labor can be obtained, to leave the children to the training 
 of the street that is, to the training of the most corrupt and 
 worthless portion of the community. The little ones can 
 not be tolerated in the factory, the foundry, nor even the 
 grain-field, until they are fitted for useful toil therein ; and 
 the inevitable consequence, as to the most destitute and en 
 dangered, is the formation of habits of idleness, profanity 
 and vice, and the utter waste of some of the most precious 
 years of life. 
 
 2. It does not secure Opportunity to Labor, nor to acquire 
 Industrial skill and efficiency, to those who most need both. 
 It is a clear general truth that, in the world as we find it, 
 the man who has the means of living for a time without labor 
 need never stand idle ; nor need he whose Industrial ac 
 quirements enable him to earn in one month the recompense 
 of several months merely physical toil. But he who is to 
 day without property and employment has but his chance 
 among many others of finding something to do ; and if he is 
 at the same time unskilled for any but the rudest labor, his 
 chance is by far the slenderer. Let him be infirm, or crip 
 pled, or by any means reduced below the medium standard 
 of Industrial capacity, and his chance of finding employment 
 is still more meager and doubtful. Thus Society, in strict 
 obedience to its fundamental law, Look out for No. 1, has 
 established a sliding scale of opportunity, whereby every 
 one s chance of finding work is in inverse ratio to the neces 
 sity of his obtaining it ; and he who co^uld hardly earn a 
 poor subsistence if constantly employed and fairly remu 
 nerated, is morally certain to be more frequently idle and 
 more scantily paid than anybody else. 
 
 3. We impeach our existing Society that it dooms the 
 most indigent class to pay for whatever of comforts and 
 necessaries they may enjoy Food, Fuel, Shelter, &c. 
 at a higher rate comparatively than is exacted of the more 
 affluent classes. The man who must buy as he needs, both 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR. 189 
 
 in time and quantity, always pays more than he who buys as 
 he chooses. On this point no argument is necessary; but I 
 apprehend that the extent of the injustice thus inflicted is 
 very rarely considered and appreciated. 
 
 4. For the Physical evils it inflicts and renders inevitable, 
 Society has barely two palliatives Private Alms-giving and 
 the Poor-House. But neither of these is curative in its na 
 ture ; indeed, each is plainly calculated to render the evils 
 its combats chronic and enduring. No man, I apprehend, 
 was ever cured of Pauperism by the Aims-House ; on the 
 contrary, few have submitted to its conscious degradation 
 and retained the moral power to struggle for and regain their 
 independence. Over the entrance to this Hospital of Civil- 
 zation might fitly be inscribed the warning which Dante 
 places over the gate of the Infernal Regions : 
 
 All hope abandon, ye who enter here: 
 
 For the man who enters the Aims-House as a pauper con 
 fesses that he has been utterly defeated in the grand battle of 
 life and has surrendered at discretion ; and he will hardly 
 have the spirit, with his sanguine expectations disappointed, 
 his hopes blasted, his means dissipated and his energies 
 broken, to rally and renew determinedly the combat. To 
 all practical intents, he is henceforth merely a clog and a 
 burden. It is a little better, and but a little, with him who 
 is reduced to receive assistance from friends or others with 
 out expecting ever to repay it. He may struggle on, in a 
 dying way, for years ; but each recurrence of the necessity 
 and the bounty debases his spirit, relaxes his energies, and 
 floats him nearer and nearer the abyss of utter abasement 
 and listless despair. 
 
 Now what is proposed by Social Reformers, regarded 
 merely in its Physical and Economical aspects, is the cor 
 rection of these mistakes and the removal of their evil con 
 sequences. We contend that in a civilized, Christian land, 
 
190 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 where the great Law of Love is professedly regarded as 
 paramount, there is flagrant inconsistency, palpable injus 
 tice and prodigal waste, in allowing a family to grow up in 
 ignorance or pine in want merely because no individual 
 chooses or has occasion to employ the head of that family. 
 We believe that the education and comfort of that family, 
 the steady employment of its able and willing members, are 
 matters not merely of individual but of general concern, and 
 that the Community, which is under obligation to maintain 
 its bankrupt members, not only ought but ultimately must, 
 in the exercise of a reasonable forecast, to say nothing of 
 humanity, take as much care and incur as much expense to 
 save its feebler members from becoming paupers as it now 
 does to support them in a state of pauperism. We believe 
 that every human being, except the infantile, superannuated, 
 brainless and crippled, is clearly worth at least the cost of 
 his decent maintenance, and that, whenever Society shall be 
 thoroughly just, it will have far less occasion to be charitable. 
 We believe that with more wise Prevention there may be 
 less severe Punishment, with better Schooling there need 
 be less Hanging and that one-half the money now expend 
 ed on Aims-Houses, Prisons, Criminal Processes and Pen 
 alties, would, under wise direction, do away the necessity 
 for nine-tenths of the burdens which Crime and Pauperism 
 now impose on the community. Such is our faith : years 
 must elapse before its soundness can be thoroughly tested, 
 but we are not the less resolved to struggle for it patiently to 
 the end. 
 
 Enough of the evil for the present occasion ; let us next 
 briefly consider what hints are afforded us, by Nature, by 
 Reason, by History, and the aspects of the Times, as to 
 the appropriate remedy. 
 
 The inflexible condition if not the impelling cause of 
 material life is ORGANIZATION. Around the minutest semi- 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR. 191 
 
 nal principle or germ of vitality matter collects, disposes 
 itself, attracts, organizes, until the rude and insignificant 
 acorn has become the shapely and towering oak, a thing of 
 infinite uses and of stern endurance. The principle of 
 Organization, of assimilation, once lost, this storm-defying 
 monarch of the hills is helpless, doomed, perishing. A 
 summer breeze prostrates its unwieldy carcass, which has 
 become the unresisting prey of all the elements of insects 
 the most weak and contemptible. Shall we not profit, mor 
 ally as well as physically, by his origin and growth, his 
 decline and fall? 
 
 Man has organized despotism, carnage, desolation, all 
 with the most palpable and stupendous results. A drilled 
 and well-appointed regiment of one thousand is a full match 
 for an ordinary rabble of ten times the number. Why may 
 not Production be likewise organized ? Even in the midst 
 of profound peace, he who would find work as a stabber 
 and fusileer need never look long for an employer at any 
 season, while his more peaceful brother, who revolts at the 
 trade of death, and would gladly be hired to subdue and 
 beautify rather than ravage and desolate the earth, may 
 vainly seek opportunity from door to door, from city to city, 
 and from week to week. Can it be impossible to render 
 work at all times accessible to him also ? 
 
 Stand by one of our crowded wharves as a steamboat from 
 some other city approaches, and you see before you a very 
 fair daguerreotype of Industry in Civilization. Here are two 
 hundred passengers seeking their various destinations, one- 
 half of whom will probably incur the expense of a ride ; here 
 are carriages enough for five hundred eagerly awaiting them ; 
 of which, after infinite crowding, jostling, cheating, lying, 
 swearing, four-fifths must go away empty from their thriftless 
 quest ; while the residue, after half an hour s service, must 
 each on the average spend three or four hours in anxious 
 pursuit of another customer. Of course, those who are 
 
192 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 served must pay thrice the worth of the service, while those 
 who wait to serve are in general meagerly rewarded. The 
 chaotic, anarchical condition of the pursuit compels an 
 abstraction of four times the needful amount of labor and 
 capital from the general aggregate for the performance of this 
 function, which, after all, is far less effectively, accommo 
 datingly performed than it might be by one-fourth as many 
 coaches, horses, and coachmen, under a carefully organized 
 system. 
 
 Hawthorne, in his delightful Mosses from an Old Manse, 
 gives a vision of a Universal Intelligence Office, whereto all 
 manner of people throng from every quarter, each inquiring 
 for * his place in the general distribution of duties and 
 functions, and insisting that that place be pointed out and 
 assigned to him. A reasonable request, methinks, and one 
 which Society should long since have recognized and com 
 plied with. As the world goes, many doubtless make it in 
 envy, pride, petulance, or spleen ; they would not now be 
 satisfied with such a place as they are entitled to and fitted 
 for if it were allotted them. They have hardly been educated 
 into fitness for any position of essential freedom and useful 
 ness ; they need fitting as well as placing, and before placing. 
 But visit the National Metropolis when a new Congress is 
 about to be organized, or any State Capital on like occasion, 
 and note the swarms of place-hunters whom such an occasion 
 draws together ; they, too, shall teach us. Many of them are- 
 doubtless seekers for lucrative idleness or undue recompense, 
 some for the imaginary consequence of official station, how 
 ever menial, and of contact with the eminent and powerful. 
 Yet I think the eagerness wherewith every place, even to the 
 most laborious and least profitable, is sought and struggled 
 for proves a very general desire to be employed and useful 
 if each could but find his place and be reasonably sure of 
 preserving and profiting by it. If steady employment with 
 just recompense, where Labor was neither unwholesome, 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR. 193 
 
 uncomfortable, nor morally degrading, were this day prof 
 fered for half a million persons, of various ages and capacities, 
 the whole number would gladly step forward and the 
 requisition be promptly filled up, with no material and per 
 manent abstraction from the ranks of existing employments. 
 And what immense additions might the labor of this Half 
 Million make tor the aggregate of human comforts and en 
 joyments, even w ithin the short space of ten years ! 
 
 Labor must be organized. Apart from all theories 
 and projects, this is inevitable. Our gigantic and ever- 
 increasing Aims-Houses, our cots and hovels filled with 
 shivering, famishing inmates, who suffer because they can 
 not find work ; our immense stretches of unbroken forest and 
 uncultivated soil ; our millions of children and youth, 
 growing up in ignorance and idleness to lives of vice, 
 misery, and crime, all demand an Organization of Labor 
 which shall secure a place for every man, a man for every 
 place. The aggregate waste of labor and faculty for want 
 of such organization in any year excels the cost of any war 
 for five years ruinous and detestable as all War is. It is 
 palpable fatuity, a criminal waste of the Divine bounty, to 
 let this go on interminably. 
 
 But, assuming that Labor is to be, must be so organized, 
 as a matter of pure Yankee calculation on the part of the 
 landholding, capitalist class, who will not insist on maintain 
 ing a large and steadily increasing proportion of the com 
 munity in pauperized idleness when they might clearly be 
 enabled and stimulated to support themselves by useful in 
 dustry, it still remains to be shown that a more intimate Social 
 relationship is to accompany or result from this Industrial 
 Reform. Dives might perhaps give Lazarus a steady job 
 of oakum-picking, or even gardening, in order to keep the 
 crumbs about his table for his dogs exclusively, without at 
 all recognizing the essential brotherhood between them or 
 doing anything to vindicate it. Beside, it is said thai Human 
 17 
 
194 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 Nature stands opposed to any such social aggregation as 
 these * Fourierites dream of. Let us consider this : 
 
 The lowest Savage state is that of the most complete 
 isolation of Family efforts and interests. The savage makes 
 or mends a road or bridge if he wants one, but troubles no 
 other savage concerning it ; instructs his children after his 
 fashion or neglects it, but never concerns himself with the in 
 struction of his neighbors ; grinds his own grain as best he 
 can, but never thinks of uniting with his tribe to construct or 
 sustain a grist-mill ; sends or carries his message through 
 hundreds of miles of trackless wilderness, but has no idea of 
 a public mail. As Civilization advances, all this is changed ; 
 public schools, mills, and mails are but a part of the vital 
 machinery whereby Society progresses from Barbarism to 
 Refinement, from poverty and misery to wealth and comfort. 
 Even this is by no means the limit already attained. A bare 
 century ago, it would have seemed quite incredible that the 
 Patroon of Rensselaerwyck and the Governor of New-York 
 should travel through the State in the same car with their 
 barber, oyster-dealer, and shoemaker ; yet they do it now 
 without imagining there is anything remarkable in the cir 
 cumstance. So the same carriage whirls through Broadway 
 the dandy, the banker, the brick-layer, the fine lady, the 
 washerwoman, and the milliner : and no one is discommoded 
 nor offended ; for it is the omnibus, and everybody rides 
 with everybody in that, without regarding differences of caste 
 or culture. The Omnibus and the Railroad car are among 
 our latest adoptions ; but who insists that we must stop here ? 
 These, we have found, do not contravene Human Nature : 
 can we be sure that the Unitary Household must do so ? 
 Let us at least understand what it is before any settle ob 
 stinately into any such position. 
 
 We have seen that all the selfishness and depravity inhe 
 rent in Human Nature has not prevented the gradual substi 
 tution of carriage-roads, turnpikes, canals, steamboats and 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR. 195 
 
 railroads for the footpaths and canoes of the savage, nor the 
 substitution of grist-mills for family mortars, common schools 
 and seminaries for private tutors and family instructors, the 
 steamboat and the rail-car for the scow and the palanquin ; 
 the spacious and luxurious hotel for the wanderer s tent and 
 the oriental serai. This great change does not necessarily 
 involve a moral regeneration, but simply a more enlightened 
 appreciation by each of his own interest as a seeker of hap 
 piness. Human depravity is undoubtedly a formidable 
 impediment to the perfect realization of the advantages of 
 Association in efforts, interests and enjoyments ; but we see 
 that it has not prevented progress up to this point, and may 
 justly conclude that it can not absolutely arrest and fix us at 
 the spot we this moment occupy. 
 
 Indeed, we Jcnoiu it can not, from the testimony of all 
 things around us. On every side we are confronted by evi 
 dences of movement, progress, advance, and all in the Asso 
 ciative direction. Trades Unions, Protective Unions, Sons 
 of Temperance, Odd-Fellowship, Mutual Insurance, Life 
 Insurance, Building and Mutual Benefit Societies of all 
 shapes and sizes, attest the existence of a principle, an 
 instinct, a perception, which is everywhere impelling the 
 members of civilized communities to form closer and more 
 intimate relationships and alliances for mutual assistance and 
 protection. Many of these may seem narrow, partial, one 
 sided ; still more may disclaim affinity with that universal 
 reform for which they are all such palpable preparations and 
 beginnings : we must have patience with all this, not exact 
 ing of the man who sees one truth an immediate and 
 necessary recognition of all truth thence logically flowing. 
 Enough that we can see plainly in these movements, how 
 ever limited in their several aims, the workings of a great 
 principle which is destined in time to overshadow and ab 
 sorb them all the principle of Social Unity, to be actual 
 ized in Industrial Association. 
 
196 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 The first if not most important movement to be made in 
 advance of our present Social position is the ORGANIZATION 
 OF LABOR. This is to be effected by degrees, by steps, by 
 instalments. I propose here, in place of setting forth any 
 formal theory or system of Labor Reform, simply to narrate 
 what I saw and heard of the history and state of an experi 
 ment now in progress near Cincinnati, and which differs in 
 no material respect from some dozen or score of others 
 already commenced in various parts of the United States, 
 not to speak of twenty times as many established by the 
 Working Men of Paris and other portions of France. 
 
 The business of IRON-MOLDING, Casting, or whatever it 
 may be called, is one of the most extensive and thrifty of 
 the Manufactures of Cincinnati, and I believe the labor em 
 ployed therein is quite as well rewarded as Labor generally. 
 It is entirely paid by the piece, according to an established 
 scale of prices, so that each workman, in whatever depart 
 ment of the business, is paid according to his individual 
 skill and industry, not a rough average of what is supposed 
 to be earned by himself and others, as is the case where 
 work is paid for at so much per day, week or month. I 
 know no reason why the Iron-Molders of Cincinnati should 
 not have been as well satisfied with the old ways as anybody 
 else. 
 
 Yet the system did not work well, even for them. Be 
 yond the general unsteadiness of demand for Labor and the 
 ever-increasing pressure of competition, there was a pretty 
 steadily recurring dull season, commencing about the 1st 
 of January, when the Winter s call for stoves, &c., had been 
 supplied, and holding on for two or three months, or until 
 the Spring business opened. In this hiatus, the prior savings 
 of the Molder were generally consumed sometimes less, 
 but perhaps oftener more so that, taking one with another, 
 they did not lay up ten dollars per annum. By-and-by 
 came a collision respecting wages and a strike, wherein 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR. 197 
 
 the Journeymen tried the experiment of running their heads 
 against a stone wall for months. How they came out of it, 
 no matter whether victors or vanquished, the intelligent 
 reader will readily guess. I never heard of any evils so 
 serious and complicated as those which eat out the heart 
 of Labor heing cured by doing nothing. 
 
 At length but I believe after the strike had somehow 
 terminated some of the Journeymen Molders said to each 
 other : Standing idle is not the true cure for our grievances : 
 why not employ ourselves They finally concluded to try 
 it, and, in the dead of the Winter of .1847-8, when a great 
 many of their trade were out of employment, the business 
 being unusually depressed, they formed an association under 
 the General Manufacturing Law of Ohio (which is very 
 similar to that of New York) and undertook to establish the 
 JOURNEYMEN MOLDERS UNION FOUNDRY. There were 
 about twenty of them who put their hands to the work, and 
 the whole amount of capital they could scrape together was 
 two thousand one hundred dollars, held in shares of twenty- 
 five dollars each. With this they purchased an eligible 
 piece of ground, directly on the bank of the Ohio, eight 
 miles below Cincinnati, with which the Whitewater Canal 
 also affords the means of ready and cheap communication. 
 With their capital, they bought some patterns, flasks, an 
 engine and tools, paid for their ground and five hundred 
 dollars on their first building, which was erected for them 
 partly on long credit by a firm in Cincinnati, who knew that 
 the property was a perfect security for so much of its cost, 
 and decline taking credit for any benevolence in the matter. 
 Their Iron, Coal, &c w to commence upon were entirely and 
 necessarily bought on credit. 
 
 Having elected Directors, a Foreman and a Business 
 Agent (the last to open a store in Cincinnati, buy stock, sell 
 wares, &c.) the Journeymen s Union set to work, in August, 
 18* 
 
198 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 1848. Its accommodations were then meager ; they have 
 since been gradually enlarged by additions, until their 
 Foundry is now the most commodious on the River. Their 
 stock of Patterns, Flasks, &c., has grown to be one of the 
 best ; while their arrangements for unloading coal and iron, 
 sending off stoves, coking coal, &c. &c. are almost perfect. 
 They commenced with ten associates actually at work ; the 
 number has gradually grown to forty ; and there is not a bet 
 ter set of workmen in any foundry in America. I profess 
 to know a little as to the quality of castings, and there are 
 no better than may be seen in the Foundry of * Industry 
 and its store at Cincinnati. And there is obvious reason for 
 this in the fact that every workman is a proprietor in the 
 concern, and it is his interest to turn out not only his own 
 work in the best order, but to take care that all the rest is of 
 like quality. All is carefully examined before it is sent 
 away, and any found imperfect is condemned, the loss fall 
 ing on the causer of it. But there is seldom any deserving 
 condemnation. 
 
 A strict account is kept with every member, who is cred 
 ited for all he does according to the Cincinnati Scale of 
 Prices, paid so much as he needs of his earnings in money, 
 the balance being devoted to the extension of the concern 
 and the payment of its debts, and new stock issued to him 
 therefor. Whenever the debts shall have been paid off, and 
 an adequate supply of implements, teams, stock, &c. bought 
 or provided for, they expect to pay every man his earnings 
 weekly in cash, as of course they may. I hope, however, 
 they will prefer to buy more land, erect thereon a most sub 
 stantial and commodious dwelling, surqpund it with a garden, 
 shade-trees, &c. and resolve to live as well as work like 
 brethren. There are few uses to which a member can 
 put a hundred dollars which might not as well be subserved 
 by seventy-five if the money of the whole were invested 
 together. 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR. 199 
 
 The members were earning when I visited them an 
 average of fifteen dollars per week and meant to keep doing 
 so. Of course they work hard. Many of them live inside 
 of four dollars per week, none go beyond eight. Their 
 Business Agent is one of themselves, who worked with them 
 in the Foundry for some months after it was started. He 
 has often been obliged to report, I can pay you no money 
 this week, and never heard a murmur in reply. On one 
 occasion he went down to say, There are my books ; you 
 see what I have received and where most of it has gone ; 
 here is one hundred dollars, which is all there is left. The 
 members consulted, calculated, and made answer ; We can 
 pay our board so as to get through another week with fifty 
 dollars, and you had better take back the other fifty, for the 
 business may need it before the week is through. When I 
 was there, there had been an Iron note to pay, ditto a Coal, 
 and a boat-load of Coal to lay in for the Winter, sweeping 
 ofTall the money, so that for more than three weeks no man 
 had had a dollar. Yet no one had thought of complaining, 
 for all knew that the delay was dictated, not by another s 
 interest, but their own. They knew, too, that the assurance 
 of their payment did not depend on the frugality or ex 
 travagance of some employer, who might swamp the pro 
 ceeds of his business and their labor in an unlucky spec 
 ulation, or a sumptuous dwelling, leaving them to whistle for 
 their money. There were their year s earnings visibly around 
 them in Stoves and Hollow Ware, for which they had 
 abundant and eager demand in Cincinnati, but which a break 
 in the canal had temporarily kept back ; in iron and coal 
 for the Winter s work ; in the building over their heads and 
 the implements in their hands. And while other Holders 
 have had work off and on, according to the state of the 
 business, no member of the Journeymen s Union has stood 
 idle a day for want of work since their Foundry was first 
 starter].. Of course, as their capital increases, the danger of 
 
200 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 being compelled to suspend work at any future day grows 
 less and less continually. 
 
 The ultimate capital of the Journeymen s Union Foundry 
 (on the presumption that the Foundry is to stand by itself, 
 leaving every member to provide his own home, &c.) is to 
 be eighteen thousand dollars, of which seven thousand dol 
 lars has already been paid in, most of it in labor. The re 
 mainder is all subscribed by the several associates and is to be 
 paid in labor as fast as possible. That done, every man may 
 be paid in cash weekly for his work, and a dividend on 
 his stock at the close of each business year. The workers 
 have saved and invested from three hundred dollars to six 
 hundred dollars each since their commencement in August 
 of last year, though those who have joined since the start 
 have of course earned less. Few or none had laid by so 
 much in five to ten years working for others as they have in 
 one year working for themselves. The total value of their 
 products up to the time of my visit is thirty thousand dollars, 
 and they were then making at the rate of five thousand dol 
 lars worth per month, which they do not mean to diminish. 
 All the profits of the business, above the cost of doing the 
 work at journeymen s wages, will be distributed among 
 the stockholders in dividends. The officers of the Union are 
 a Managing Agent, Foreman of the Foundry, and five 
 Directors, chosen annually, but who can be changed mean 
 time in case of necessity. A Reading Room and Library 
 were to be started directly ; a spacious Boarding House 
 (though probably not owned by the Union) will go up this 
 season. No liquor is sold within a long distance of the 
 Union, and there is little or no demand for any. Those 
 original members of the Union who were least favorable to 
 Temperance have seen fit to sell out and go away. 
 
 Now is it reasonable that the million or so of hireling 
 laborers throughout our country who have work when it 
 suits others convenience to employ them, and must stand 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR. 201 
 
 idle perforce when it does not, can read the above simple 
 narration which I have tried to render as lucid as possible 
 - and not be moved to action thereby? Suppose they 
 receive all they earn when employed which of course they 
 generally do not, or how could employers grow rich by 
 merely buying their labor and selling it again ? should not 
 the simple fact that these Associated Workers never lack 
 employment when they desire it, and never ask any master s 
 leave to refrain from working when they see fit, arrest public 
 attention ? Who it such a slave in soul that he would not 
 rather be an equal member of a commonwealth than the 
 subject of a despotism ? Who would not like to taste the 
 sweets of Liberty on work-days as well as holidays ? Is 
 there a creature so abject that he considers all this mere 
 poetry and moonshine, which a little hard experience will 
 dissipate ? Suppose the Cincinnati Iron-Molders Association 
 should break down, either through some defect in its organ 
 ization or some dishonesty or other misconduct on the part 
 of one or more of its members what would that prove ? 
 Would it any more prove the impracticability of Industrial 
 Associations than the shipwreck and death of Columbus, 
 had such a disaster occurred on his second or third voyage 
 to America, would have disproved the existence of the New 
 World ? 
 
 Can it be that I have not yet succeeded in making clear 
 the feasibility as well as the importance of the Reform here 
 indicated? Is there anything occult, or dubious, or mys 
 terious in the process? Doubtless, the application of the 
 principle to other handicrafts would require modifications in 
 the details, which experience and practical knowledge will 
 suggest ; but what of that ? What is there to hinder the im 
 mediate organization on this basis of such callings as do not 
 involve complicated processes and the aggregation of large 
 capitals for their economical and effective prosecution? 
 Why should Tailors, Shoemakers, Hatters, Cabinet-Makers, 
 
OQ2 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 &c. &c., continue to work for masters instead of combining to 
 work for customers ? To illustrate still farther the facility 
 and the advantage -of the change proposed, I will take the case 
 of the Boot and Shoemakers. 
 
 There are probably Ten Thousand Men and at least Five 
 Thousand Women engaged in the manufacture of Boots and 
 Shoes within half a day s ride of our City Hall possibly 
 twice that number. A few of them receive quite fair wages, 
 but the great majority are working for very poor pay, and 
 even at that can get nothing to do for some weeks if not 
 months in every year. Nearly all are obliged every few 
 weeks to troop from shoe-store to shoe-store, begging for 
 work, and ready to accept it on any terms which will enable 
 them to keep what little soul men so circumstanced can 
 afford to have in their bent and crouching bodies. 
 
 On one of our street-corners is the store of a shoe-dealing 
 firm we will call it Stirrup & Co. which has sold One 
 Million Dollars worth of shoes during the past year, and net 
 ted a clear profit of One Hundred Thousand Dollars fifty 
 thousand to each partner. I do not believe all the actual 
 makers of Shoes and Boots between Philadelphia, Pough- 
 keepsie, New-Haven and Sandy Hook were together 
 enabled to lay up One Hundred Thousand Dollars in 1849. 
 Now don t fancy that I am about to preach a Jacobinic 
 crusade against Stirrup & Co. They made their money 
 fairly, as the world goes, and nobody has any right to re 
 proach them. If Labor had seen fit to do without their ser 
 vices, it was at perfect liberty to do so ; but it did n t. The 
 fact that the Shoe business saw fit to find a channel through 
 such stores as theirs proves that no better was in existence. 
 But there should be better, and the Shoemakers have no 
 body but themselves to blame that there is not. They might 
 have steady instead of unsteady work, and full pay instead of 
 part pay, if they only would. Let me endeavor in a rough 
 way to show how : 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR. 203 
 
 Suppose One Thousand Workers on Boots and Shoes, 
 old and young, male and female, good and indifferent, some 
 living in our City and some around in its vicinity, were to 
 meet here on some appointed day, and resolved to become 
 their own employers. To this end they agree to pay in 
 twenty-five dollars each to form a common fund, making in 
 all twenty-five thousand dollars. The sole condition of their 
 union is that each one shall have constant employment and 
 full pay for his work that is, in the first place, the regular 
 journeymen s wages. 
 
 They proceed at once to elect a first-rate cutter or foreman 
 and overseer of work, and the very best business man they 
 can get, no matter though they have to pay him two thousand 
 dollars a year. This agent must be a man of known integ 
 rity as well as capacity, able to give ample bonds for the 
 safety of the funds. This agent and foreman proceed to 
 take the right sort of a store or stand for business, and adver 
 tise the public that the Journeymen Shoemakers Union is 
 prepared to supply the public with Boots and Shoes of all 
 kinds at the shortest notice and at fair prices. They buy 
 stock with cash at wholesale prices, distribute it to the mem 
 bers with directions to make up such work as they are sev 
 erally best qualified for, and as shall seem to be required to 
 perfect an assortment for the demands of the trade. On the 
 Saturday following, let the store be opened for customers, 
 and the public called to enter and buy for cash at cash 
 prices. 
 
 Each workman should be paid once a week, if he chooses 
 to send in his work so often, as those living out of the city 
 probably would not. Friday should be the general day for 
 receiving work from associates and paying them off, all the 
 work being passed upon as received, and paid exactly accord 
 ing to its value, leaving each worker the option of making 
 poor or good work fine boots, coarse shoes, ladies gaiters, 
 or whatever he should prefer ; though of course a demand 
 
204 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 for any kind of work would be intimated by the foreman to 
 the workers and some of them induced to supply it. 
 Customers would be measured here as elsewhere, and 
 promptly supplied with the best or poorer articles, as they 
 might prefer. Each worker might stamp his own work with 
 his name or mark, and any one choosing to order his work 
 done by a particular maker would be obeyed. To the best 
 workmen would naturally be assigned the best and most 
 profitable work. But every person belonging to the Union 
 should be furnished with stock on demand at all times, and 
 credited with his products, when sent in, according to their 
 value. 
 
 Twenty-five dollars per man would be a short capital 
 fifty would be better, but not so easily raised. With twenty- 
 five, a good agent would be able to keep the wheels moving. 
 If temporarily short of money, he would always have stock 
 or shoes to pledge for it, and could borrow on security till 
 money came in from customers. Such a concern, well 
 managed, might sell ten thousand dollars worth of Boots 
 and Shoes per week at retail, at a profit of ten per cent, 
 on the cost of stock and journeymen s wages for working 
 it up. 
 
 At the end of each year there should be a settlement, and 
 all clear profits carried to the credit of the shareholders. 
 The first twenty-five thousand dollars should be divided to 
 them in stock, increasing the cash capital to fifty thousand 
 dollars, which would be sufficient for an inflexibly cash 
 business. But the balance should not be divided and frit 
 tered away. It ought to be expended in buying for all the 
 associates, first, an eligible and desirable plat of cheap land 
 say two miles square on the Erie, Long-Island or some 
 other Railroad ; next in laying it out to the best advantage 
 into streets and small allotments, and then setting to each 
 one his separate acre. The balance might then be sold 
 (after making suitable reservations for churches, school- 
 
THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR. 205 
 
 houses, groves, squares, &c.) to grocers, artisans, c., for 
 more than the whole need cost, so soon as it should be de 
 cided that the Shoemakers were to occupy their allotments, 
 thus making a village of a waste. Perhaps they would now 
 see fit to put up a grand Shoe-shop, calculated to accommo 
 date them all and perhaps they would not stop at this 
 but let us not ask them to go too far. Suffice it that they 
 might at all times divide the profits of their business and 
 spend them if they thought proper. 
 
 Such is a hasty outline of a plan for the Emancipation 
 of the Shoemakers of New- York and vicinity from depend 
 ence on any employer but the shoe-wearing public generally. 
 It is doubtless imperfect, and susceptible of many improve 
 ments. Well, make them, then, and let the enterprise be got 
 under headway at once. The Shoemakers have been rather 
 low down among Mechanics for some years. Why should 
 they not go up to the head in the great work of making 
 Labor its own master? They can if they will, and much 
 easier than almost any other trade. Let us hope that, before 
 this year expires, they WILL. 
 18 
 
206 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 VII. 
 
 TEACHERS AND TEACHING: 
 
 A LECTURE. 
 
 To DO good is the proper business of life to qualify for 
 earnestness and efficiency in doing good, is the true end of 
 Education. The sum of all true knowledge in the child is 
 a consciousness that he lives not for himself, but for his 
 Creator and his Race. Let him but comprehend and accept 
 this destiny, and all formal lessons of morality, all deca 
 logues and criminal codes, become to him matters of small 
 account. He needs no admonition not to steal, to lie, to 
 covet, nor to slay; no doctor of divinity nor professor of 
 ethics to decide whether slave-holding and war be right or 
 wrong ; if he has but received into his inmost heart the pri 
 mal, central truth, that the human family live for and through 
 each other, and that, in the abasement or exaltation of any, 
 each is abased or exalted. " All the law and the prophets" 
 may still be useful as counsel, as wisdom, as guidance ; but 
 no longer as conducing to whatever is intrinsic and essen 
 tial. The one commandment, welcomed and obeyed in the 
 sunlight of its manifest reasonableness and necessity as an 
 elemental law of the universe, supplants or dwarfs all others. 
 Know but that this is no barren abstraction, no oriental 
 exaggeration, but the simplest dictate of heaven and nature, 
 beaming alike from the loftiest star and from the humblest 
 blossom, and all beside that philosophic lore, and pious 
 
TEACHERS AND TEACHING. 207 
 
 exhortation, or even sacred writ, can convey to you, is sub 
 sidiary and incidental. Love God with all thy heart and 
 thy neighbor as thyself, is the sun of the moral universe, in 
 whose presence the brightest stars become dim and invisible. 
 
 Well were it if the education of the heart could precede 
 and prepare for the education of the mind and the body, but 
 this may not be. With the earliest development of sensa 
 tion and of muscular energy, while the child is still appa 
 rently unsusceptible of any thorough and enduring moral 
 culture, come swarming shoals of perverted and misleading 
 passions untamed appetite, imperious temper, ungovernable 
 will. The consciousness of self, of individual wants, suf 
 ferings, enjoyments, is felt with the first dawn of intellect ; 
 the knowledge of our relations and duties to others is the 
 slow acquirement of maturer years. And, as distortion or 
 misdevelopment in one sphere very surely induces defects 
 and perversions in others, it is hardly possible to overstate 
 the disturbing, deranging, blighting influence which moral 
 obliquity exerts upon the education of the physical and in 
 tellectual being. From a chaos of moral infirmities, intellec 
 tual deficiencies and physical perversions in the child, is 
 to be deduced the thoroughly informed, enlightened, wise, 
 energetic, sternly upright, self-denying, all-loving, effective, 
 healthy man. 
 
 Into the midst of this chaos, the true teacher fearlessly 
 casts himself, the Van Amburgh of every-day life. It is his 
 mission to grapple with all the elements of moral and mental 
 disorder, and bid them stand ruled. As out of the net 
 tle Danger we pluck the flower Safety, his task is to pluck 
 from the unweeded garden of wayward childhood the rich 
 fruit of a true and genial manhood. The marvels of chemi 
 cal transmutation are tame compared with those he is required 
 and expected to perform. To render the froward gentle, 
 the reckless considerate, to dignify the degraded and spiritu 
 alize the clod, such are among the arduous requirements of 
 
208 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 his sphere and calling. That he should often fail is inevi 
 table ; the wonder is that he should ever succeed. 
 
 No engineer, no mathematician, is required to make allow 
 ance for so many disturbing and conflicting forces as he, the 
 moral Leverrier, who is required not merely to discover but 
 seemingly to create the Franklins and Washingtons of the 
 time. His theories, be they what they may, must often give 
 way to unwelcome but stubborn facts. He may, for instance, 
 have adopted the principle that human beings are not to be 
 constrained to do right by violence, but won to the love and 
 practice of all virtue by attraction, by instruction, by admo 
 nition, by gentleness, by fervent love. That this is the true 
 theory, I trust few at this day will dispute. But the public 
 teacher often finds himself confronted with apparently insu 
 perable difficulties in attempting to conform to this theory 
 implicitly. For his instructions, his discipline, form at best 
 but a small portion of the motley superstructure which com 
 poses the child s education ; the lessons of the fireside and 
 the wayside have been potential before his ; are more nume 
 rous and pervading now than his ; will be vivid and power 
 ful after he and his are forgotten. He tries the virtue of 
 moral suasion upon one who from the cradle has known no 
 other power than physical force ; no other dread but that of 
 bodily pain ; no influence but that of the appetite or the rod. 
 To a mind so trained, all appeals to the heart or the con 
 science are flummery; the disuse of the rod can only seem 
 the dictate of weakness or cowardice ; and where penalty 
 stops anarchy begins. How can any general rule be arbi 
 trarily laid down to cover such cases as this ? Invest the 
 teacher with the authority and the intimacy of a parent ; let 
 the child be constantly under his supervision and care, and 
 he may hope by patient endurance to translate and commend 
 the principles by which he is guided to the apprehension of 
 the most hardened and^stolid. But while his lessons of six 
 hours per day are contradicted by those of the other eighteen, 
 
TEACHERS AND TEACHING. o g 
 
 especially with the immense advantage of several years start 
 to the latter, what shall the teacher do ? How adapt the 
 new wine to the old bottle ? and to the bottle-imp confined 
 therein ? The system of discipline which eschews the in 
 fliction of physical pain as the penalty of moral aberration 
 is undoubtedly the true one wherever its subject can be 
 steadily exposed to its undisturbed influences ; but where 
 violence rules the hours out of school, as it has ruled the 
 years before school, what is the teacher to do ? What can 
 we say more than that he must do the best he can ? 
 
 The great work incumbent on him in this connection, 
 however, is that of dispelling from the pupil s mind a false 
 notion of the nature of Law, and of implanting a true one 
 in its stead. Law, to the apprehension of the ignorant and 
 the vicious, is but. the exhibition of a Will as capricious 
 and as selfish as their own, differing thence only in that it is 
 stronger and more imperious. To the confutation of this 
 error the teacher should sedulously devote himself. He 
 should have as few prohibitions as possible ; far better let 
 two real offences pass unreproved, unnoticed, than to punish 
 one act which involves no real culpability. He should de 
 vote all the time necessary no matter how much to de 
 monstrating, even to the humblest capacity, the most perverse 
 nature, the reasonableness of, the necessity for, every re 
 quirement and prohibition. As the exponent and minister 
 of Law, it is his first duty to cause every subject to realize 
 that Law is no arbitrary despot, no blind, remorseless Fate, 
 but the loving, genial friend and guardian of all, himself in 
 cluded, and that it smites but to heal. Next to, and conse 
 quent upon the love of God and man, the love of Law, as 
 a divinely-appointed guide, monitor, and beacon-light, is to 
 be inculcated and implanted with the most devoted assiduity. 
 
 But this can never be consummated if the pupil finds him 
 self hedged about with innumerable arbitrary and unreason- 
 18* 
 
210 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 able commands and injunctions : if a look aside from the 
 lesson, a smile at some passing drollery or incongruity, a 
 movement of the weary muscles, is to be watched for and 
 reprehended as a crime. To render authority respected, 
 and obedience general, it is essential that Law should con 
 front Inclination on the fewest points possible. We may not, 
 indeed, be able to render the reasonableness and necessity 
 of every separate command perfectly obvious to the infantile 
 apprehension, but we can do this by adequate effort and 
 earnest assiduity with the great majority of our inhibitions, 
 and so create and justify a strong presumption that those 
 whereof the reason is not so fully understood are equally 
 well grounded in a regard for the subject s enduring wel 
 fare. When a child has once realized profoundly that 
 the laws he is required to obey are founded in a thorough 
 knowledge of his own nature and its requirements, and are 
 calculated to increase the sum of his personal good, and not 
 rather to subtract from the measure of his enjoyments in or 
 der to expand or secure those of others, his future govern 
 ment will be a work of guidance merely, and can cost but 
 very little trouble. 
 
 As with Government or discipline, so with the more im 
 mediate business of Education itself. The teacher s first 
 point is to impress thoroughly on the pupil s mind the truth 
 that whatever of irksomeness or weariness of the flesh may 
 be experienced by either in the process of instruction is en 
 countered primarily and mainly for the learner s own sake, 
 and not for that of his relatives or his monitors. He must 
 feel that he is not fulfilling a useless task but securing an in 
 dispensable treasure. To grudge the youthful hours ab 
 stracted from the acquirement of useful knowledge as the 
 spilling of some priceless fluid on the thirsty and remorse 
 less sands of Sahara, is the feeling with which every pupil 
 should be sedulously imbued and animated. 
 
 Of course, no one fit to be a teacher is likely to fall into 
 
TEACHERS AND TEACHING. 211 
 
 the error of deeming the rudimental culture of certain well- 
 nigh mechanical functions of the intellect Education, al 
 though the poverty of language and a colloquial convenience 
 may tempt to such an accommodated use of the term. In 
 the larger, truer sense, Education implies the development, 
 drawing out, of the whole nature, moral, physical, intellect 
 ual, social. The acquisition of the mechanical facility of 
 reading, writing, computing, &c., the sharpening of the 
 youthful intellect on the rough grindstone of Letters, is no 
 more Education than is learning to mow or to swim. The 
 direct inculcations of the class can but supply the pupil 
 with a few rude implements of Education the ax where 
 with he may clear and the plow wherewith to break up 
 the rugged patrimony which has fallen to him in its state of 
 primal wilderness. These are most valuable nay indis 
 pensable but they must be taken for what they are, and 
 for nothing more. The youth who fancies himself educated 
 because he has fully mastered ever so many branches of 
 mere school-learning, is laboring under a deplorable and 
 perilous delusion. He may have learned all that the schools, 
 the seminaries, and even our miscalled universities, neces 
 sarily teach, and still be a pitiably ignorant man, unable to 
 earn a week s subsistence, to resist the promptings of a per 
 verted appetite, or to shield himself from such common re 
 sults of physical depravity as Dyspepsia, Hypochondria, 
 and Nervous derangement. A master of Greek and He 
 brew who knows not how to grow Potatoes, and can be 
 tempted to drown his reason in the intoxicating bowl, is far 
 more imperfectly educated than many an unlettered back 
 woodsman. The public teacher is indeed virtually limited 
 in his stated inculcations to a narrow circle of Arts and Sci 
 ences, so called, but he should nevertheless endeavor so to 
 teach as to secure in the end a thoroughly symmetrical cul 
 ture. The education of the prince will differ somewhat 
 from that of the plow-jogger, but either should be consistent 
 
212 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 with itself and thoroughly adapted to the nature of both as 
 well as to the circumstances of each. 
 
 Nor is this all. Each should be so educated that if For 
 tune should call him to fill the place of the other he would 
 do so naturally, heartily, effectively. Being educated .as a 
 Man, he should be able promptly to qualify himself for and 
 adapt himself to whatever a man may properly be required 
 to do. Herein is laid the only solid foundation for a life of 
 manly independence, and a readiness to brave all the pos 
 sible consequences of a frank truthfulness, and a generous, 
 fearless devotion to the highest and enduring good. 
 
 Herein, too, is the condemnation of our ordinary training. 
 It is too special, narrow, one-sided. The merchant, we will 
 say, educates his son for a merchant, and tolerably well with 
 a view to that particular calling. But we live in a world and 
 an age of mutation. The ground perpetually rocks and 
 heaves beneath our feet, throwing up new eminences and 
 opening chasms where bights have lately been. The young 
 man who enters on the stage of action at twenty a trader, 
 banker, doctor, will very likely be found pursuing a very 
 different vocation at forty, or at least unable to follow advan 
 tageously that in which he began life. Joe Dobbs, the 
 Yankee stable-boy of 1830, becomes the Western horse- 
 dealer of 36, and very likely the South American Cavalry 
 Colonel of 1840, thence branching off into running steam 
 boats on the Paraguay, or working gold mines in the Cordil 
 leras, unless he happen to have a taste for Politics, and so 
 undertake a job of Constitution-making or accept the post of 
 Foreign Secretary of State. On the other hand, a Nabob s 
 son who does not quite graduate at Yale, owing to some 
 trifling irregularities, is perfectly successful in doing so at 
 wine-parties, gaming-saloons, and ultimately at Sing-Sing. 
 No man s destiny, hardly his vocation, can be predicted with 
 anything like certainty ; and the only safe plan of Education 
 
TEACHERS AND TEACHING. 213 
 
 is that which shall prepare him for usefulness and indepen 
 dence in every imaginable contingency. 
 
 Now, while the teacher can not be allowed to forget that it 
 is his primary duty, so far as purely intellectual culture is con 
 cerned, to supply his pupils with the mere implements of 
 Education with the ax, the saw, the plane, wherewith they 
 are to work out an Education each for himself he must 
 never fall mentally into the error of confounding these with 
 the essential thing itself. It is not enough jhat the child be 
 taught to realize that he is to master the arbitrary and ca 
 pricious spelling of a page of crooked words, not as an in 
 genious puzzle, a mental exercise, nor even for any intrinsic 
 worth thereof as a mental acquisition, but simply because of 
 the practical uses of that acquisition, and the indispensable- 
 ness of this knowledge to a clear and accurate understanding 
 of the meaning of written language. The farther use of a 
 correct Orthography in fixing and throwing light upon the 
 meaning of words and sentences is of course to be explained 
 to and impressed upon the learner s mind. Yet after all, 
 the central truth that all instruction in letters is but means to 
 an end an end immensely transcending in importance 
 all scholastic eminence in itself considered can not be too 
 profoundly realized by the teacher nor too sedulously im 
 pressed on the learner. He whose admiring contemplation 
 rests on the prizes of successful scholarship who thinks 
 more of the honors awarded to the most proficient in any 
 branch of study than of the remoter uses of his proficiency 
 is readily perceived to be laboring under a baneful de 
 lusion ; but not less so is he who prizes Intellectual Culture 
 unless accompanied by Moral, and except as conducive 
 to ends of practical utility. That teaching has been most 
 effective, however simple in manner or deficient in quantity, 
 which has qualified, enabled the pupil to find a salutary les 
 son in every passing event, a healthful companionship in his 
 own thoughts, a meaning and a wondrous beauty in every 
 
214 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 changing phase of Nature. He who knows how to do, when 
 to do, and stands ready with a hearty will to do, whatever it 
 is or fairly may be incumbent on him to do, perilous though 
 it be, and apart from the sense of duty repulsive, is truly 
 educated, though he knows nothing of logarithms or Latin ; 
 while the graduate with highest honors at Oxford or Gottingen 
 may be as essentially ignorant as many a Typee or Hottentot. 
 Fitness and utility are the only tests of the value of an 
 acquirement. w 
 
 I have reminded you, but am not satisfied with the mere 
 suggestion, that Education is essentially Development. The 
 teacher must never forget that he has much to learn of his 
 pupil before he can safely assume to instruct him. Few of 
 us will not readily recall instances within his own experience 
 where a youth, wearied and sorely perplexed with some 
 puzzling problem in his Arithmetic, has been caught by his 
 instructer flagrante delieto, having been tempted by his 
 aching brain into the astounding depravity of sketching a 
 house, a ship, a tree, or a face, on his slate. Black grew 
 the brow of the master at the sight of this enormity, and his 
 virtuous indignation was only assuaged by the infliction on 
 the shrinking body of the conscience-smitten culprit of sundry 
 thumps and bruises, whereby Justice was satiated and 
 the evil example carefully guarded against. But at length 
 it has crawled through the hair of Pedagoguism that this 
 propensity for sketching need not absolutely be treated as 
 one of the seven deadly sins that it may even be tolerated, 
 patronized, licked into shape, so as to take rank in the end as 
 a decent, well-favored pedagogical acquirement. How many 
 millions of palms have been blistered by the ferule, how 
 many backs have been warmed by the rod, to beat this 
 tendency to linear drawing out of the minds of pupils before 
 the first attempt was made to beat it {, it would be idle to 
 guess at. The practical use of the notorious facts in this 
 instance is to suggest farther inquiries in the same broad 
 
TEACHERS AND TEACHING. 215 
 
 field, that we may see whether there are not other tendencies 
 of the youthful nature which we rush eagerly to punish and 
 repress when, were we wiser, we should rather guide, 
 encourage, and rightly develop them. I can not doubt that 
 many millions of lithe, graceful rods have been rudely torn 
 from their parent trees and worse than wasted on juvenile 
 backs in vain attempts to repress the superabounding mus 
 cular energies of boyhood, where wiser teachers would have 
 said to the several offenders, " If you feel too restless to sit 
 still and study, be good enough not to disturb others by 
 whispering, or tickling, or other mischief, but step out, take 
 a brisk run of half a mile or so, climb a smooth tree, or hurl 
 heavy stones until you shall feel like coming in and study 
 ing quietly." That such liberty would sometimes be 
 abused, is a matter of course ; but that very abuse would 
 tend promptly to correct the original fault and ultimately the 
 superimposed truancy also. The mysterious luxury of break 
 ing laws will lose its zest when the lawgiver evinces his read 
 iness to obviate any needless severity involved therein, and to 
 accommodate or even relax them in the subject s favor so 
 far as is compatible with that subject s ultimate well-being. 
 To defer our own to others good is the perfection of moral 
 culture, and can not be expected to precede the long course 
 of wise and careful training which is required to produce it. 
 Meantime, while keeping it ever in view, it is just and neces 
 sary to secure obedience and growth by means of laws of inferior 
 scope and more personal bearing. To do right because it is 
 right, without asking what will be the effect of so doing on 
 our individual well-being, is the consummation, not the begin 
 ning of moral culture. Pending that consummation, attained 
 as yet by so few, even of the ripe in years and in experience, 
 we must guide and profit by such springs of action as we find 
 already implanted in the youthful breast. 
 
 But let the great fundamental truth that No man (right 
 fully) liveth to himself, be ever the pole-star of all moral 
 
216 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 inculcation. The child taught to practise virtue mainly that 
 he may reap the rewards of virtue and to shun transgression 
 because of the perils and penalties of transgression, is 
 viciously taught, and will hardly fail to exhibit the fruits of 
 vicious training in his subsequent career. Such good 
 savors too much of enlightened, wary and cunning evil. 
 The taint of utter selfishness poisons all it touches. What 
 merit can there be in serving God for the best of wages 
 when we know that the devil pays only in counterfeit coin ? 
 The truly virtuous do good from an inherent love of good, 
 because it is the spontaneous dictate of their moral nature, 
 and because it is calculated to increase and diffuse happiness. 
 If it were possible to blot the Creator from his Universe, the 
 good man would be no more deflected from his unvarying 
 moral course than by the death of an earthly father. 
 Against the temptations and trials of frail mortality there can 
 be no absolute safeguard, but if there be any all-pervading, 
 all-enduring security for rectitude, it is found in the convic 
 tion that Virtue is intrinsically more desirable than Honors, 
 Rewards or personal Happiness. The mists of overmaster 
 ing temptation may obscure every orb in the moral firmament, 
 but this is the sun which shines longest and brightest of all. 
 That a pure Heart is of vastly greater moment than a 
 sharpened Understanding, is a truth too palpable to be dwelt 
 on here, and that it is the business of the teacher, however 
 limited his sphere or imperfect his opportunities, to develop 
 rightly the moral affections no less than the intellectual facul 
 ties of his pupils, I presume no one has ever questioned. 
 Yet I apprehend that the truth is but half understood by or 
 half impressed upon the minds of a majority of teachers. I 
 fear that too many fail to appreciate the evil consequences up 
 on some scores of ingenuous, receptive minds, of any casual 
 exhibition of meanness, or falsehood, or unworthy passion, 
 on the part of him who is their common exemplar and ruler. 
 How dare a man do a base act, or harbor a base thought, 
 
TEACHERS AND TEACHING. 217 
 
 when acting under such a tremendous responsibility ? Yet 
 I have known instructors, directly under the piercing 
 eyes of their charges, evince an unworthy and partial def 
 erence for the children of their more wealthy and honored 
 patrons, or a mean conformity to fashion or popular preju 
 dice, which could not fail to exert the most pernicious in 
 fluence upon every immature observer. It is idle to expect 
 that Ids influence will do anything toward inculcating the 
 love or practice of virtue who himself evinces that he regards 
 wealthy or powerful mediocrity above poor and humble ex 
 cellence. Of all the lessons the teacher gives, that of his 
 daily walk and conversation is the most potent and en 
 during. 
 
 I apprehend that there is a radical defect in our popular 
 inculcations with regard to Manners, Breeding, Courtesy, 
 though I do not know that I shall succeed in making it 
 manifest. That we owe a certain deference to our fellow- 
 beings generally, and should ever stand ready to serve ^hem, 
 is of course understood. That a manifestation of respect is 
 likewise due to rank, station, authority, social eminence, is 
 also obvious. But when the teacher requires his pupils to 
 render certain outward symbols of deference to every one 
 they may meet ; above all, when he teaches them to observe 
 a prescribed formula in entering or leaving the presence of 
 others, is there not a peril that conformity will degenerate 
 into rank hypocrisy or sheer grimace ? Is there not a clear 
 demand for a spontaneity and hearty directness in all our in 
 tercourse with others ? Do the prescribed courtesies mean and 
 are they intended to be understood only as Sir, (or Madam,) 
 I proffer you that deference which I owe and am ready to 
 pay to all my brethren of the Human Family V If they mean 
 this, and be tendered in sincerity, very well. But I appre 
 hend that they are often intended to express more than this 
 to indicate a peculiar consideration or regard, which is 
 not and can not be so widely cherished. If this be so, it be- 
 19 
 
218 HINTS TOWARD REFORM. 
 
 comes the teacher to warn against it as a virtual falsehood, 
 and directly leading to the meanest of vices. He who does 
 not shrink from acting a lie will not hesitate, when strongly 
 tempted, to utter one ; and the teacher who begins by exact 
 ing for himself or requiring toward others any farther indi 
 cations of deference than are prompted by the inmost heart 
 has launched his pupils blindly on an inlet of shams and 
 seemings, whence the tide sets strongly out to the broad 
 ocean of insincerity, hypocrisy, and all dishonesty. 
 
 I return to consider more fully the great end of all true 
 Education that of qualifying and inspiring to do good. He 
 whose life is consecrated to the enhancement of general well- 
 being, the diminution of wrong and wretchedness, is well 
 educated, or needs farther instruction only to increase his 
 efficiency in well-doing, or to teach him how he may surely 
 discriminate between the truly good and the speciously, 
 seeming good. Paul s education was perfected, not at the feet 
 of Gamaliel, but on his journey to Damascus. We have 
 only to consider how many, or rather, how few have dedi 
 cated their lives to the widest diffusion of good, and we shall 
 realize how low is the state and standard of Education among 
 us, and throughout the world. We shall find on one hand an 
 institute for instruction in the art of throat-cutting and joint- 
 fracturing, and on the other a college for the education of 
 surgeons to heal the mangled bodies ; and a little farther oh 
 a seminary which turns out divines for the cure of gangrened 
 souls. So far, Education would seem to be balancing its 
 results, and likely to leave the world nearly as well as it found 
 it, if we could forget that one battery will in an hour cut 
 out work enough to last many surgeons for weeks, and that 
 the saving of perverted souls is hardly less difficult than the 
 healing of maimed bodies. That the world should realize 
 as the fruit of such training many Murats or Neys to one 
 Howard is inevitable. Yet I can not suppress the convic 
 tion that all our instruction looking to special ends to 
 
TEACHERS AND TEACHING. 219 
 
 make of the student a lawyer, doctor, engineer, merchant, or 
 some such is so shaped and managed as often to narrow 
 and dwarf the intellect it is intended to sharpen. Each of us 
 is trained for and started upon some special path, and incited 
 to pursue it with primary reference not to general good but 
 to his own. Not many of the children, even of Piety or 
 Philanthropy, are urged to inquire out and select that 
 sphere wherein they may contribute most directly and essen 
 tially to the general weal, while thousands on thousands are 
 practically taught to consider only what career will probably 
 secure them the most abundant supply of goods and chattels. 
 From this pervading taint of selfishness, not even the incul 
 cations of the pulpit are absolutely exempt. Men are ex 
 horted to become religious, not so much because they ought 
 as because they must, if they would avoid the most fearful 
 penalties and w r oes. Hence many a man is impelled to strain 
 every nerve to secure the saving of his soul, leaving out of 
 view entirely the preliminary matter of having any soul to 
 save. Whenever the time shall come that all men really 
 have souls, their salvation will not be so arduous a work and 
 need not absorb so much effort and attention. 
 
 I would not if I could conceal from you my conviction 
 that, before Education can become what it should and must 
 be, we must reform the Social Life whence it proceeds, 
 whitherto it tends. To the child daily sent out from some 
 rickety hovel or miserable garret to wrestle with Poverty and 
 Misery for such knowledge as the teacher can impart, what 
 true idea or purpose of Education is possible ? How can he 
 be made to realize that his daily tasks concern the Soul, the 
 World, and Immortality? He may have drilled into his 
 ears day after day the great truth that the life is more than 
 meat and the body more than raiment, but so long as his 
 own food and raiment are scanty and precarious, his mind 
 will be engrossed by a round of petty and sordid cares. 
 (I speak here of the general fact ; there will be striking in- 
 
220 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 stances of the contrary brilliant exceptions which do not 
 disprove but establish the rule I have indicated.) But the 
 child whose little all hitherto of life has been passed in penury 
 and consequent suffering who lives in the constant presence, 
 on the very brink, of Want how can he have a higher 
 idea of Life than that it is a struggle for bread, or of Edu 
 cation than that it is a contrivance for getting bread more 
 easily or more abundantly, or else a useless addition to his 
 toils and cares? He whose energies have been, must be, 
 taxed to keep starvation at bay, can hardly realize that 
 Life has truer ends than the avoidance of pain and the 
 satisfaction of hunger. The narrow, dingy, squalid tene 
 ment, calculated to repel any visiter but the cold and 
 the rain, is hardly fitted to foster lofty ideas of Life, its 
 Duties and its Aims. He who is constrained to ask each 
 morning, i Where shall I find food for the day? is at best 
 unlikely often to ask, By what good deed shall the day be 
 signalized ? Well did the Divine Teacher enjoin His fol 
 lowers to take no thought for the morrow, and difficult 
 will be the work of imbuing the general mind with any lofty 
 ideal of Life and its ends until this commandment can be 
 obeyed in verity, and until such obedience can be made to 
 comport with the dictates of a reasonable forecast and with 
 that care for his own household, lacking which the be 
 liever is * worse than an infidel. 
 
 And herein is the true foundation for that protest against 
 the divorce of Learning from Labor which the world has 
 not yet begun to comprehend, or at least to treat with decent 
 consideration. The advocates of Manual Labor as an es 
 sential ingredient of a true Education cherish no fanatical 
 regard for Physical Toil as alone deserving the name and 
 rewards of Labor. They quite well understand and freely 
 concede that much true Work has been done, elsewhere 
 than in the fields and the factories ; they know and cheer 
 fully admit that the sage in his closet, the astronomer 
 
TEACHERS AND TEACHING. 221 
 
 in his observatory, the legislator in the capitol, may be 
 among the noblest and most deserving of toilers for uni 
 versal good. But it is not given to all men, nor to most, to 
 advance the general well-being from such exalted positions. 
 The ship Common Weal can not be navigated from the 
 quarter-deck alone; she needs men at the ropes as well as 
 the speaking-trumpet, the wheel and the lead. It being 
 thus certain that the many must live by hard labor, only the 
 few by mental exertion solely, it does seem the most obvious 
 dictate of prudence and wisdom that all should be qualified 
 for efficiency in that sphere which may become the lot of 
 any, and in which energy and skill will at all events insure 
 a subsistence, independent of the opinion of others. Here, 
 for illustration, is a youth just qualifying himself to enter 
 upon the stage of active life, who desires and expects to be 
 a clergyman, a physician, or a lawyer, and must at all events 
 earn his bread in some sphere of manly exertion. He can 
 not glide from one profession to another like a harlequin on 
 the stage ; he must choose one and abide his fortune therein. 
 But suppose he should find, after exhausting all his means in 
 fitting himself for his chosen career, that he can not succeed 
 therein without a compromise of principle, a base deference 
 to prejudice or falsehood suppose, if a clergyman, he can 
 not preach all the truth that is made plain to his mind 
 without incurring ecclesiastical censure and ignominy 
 or as a physician, he stumbles upon some discovery in ad 
 vance of his age, which raises the hiss of scorn from his 
 brethren, as did Jenner s discovery of the great antidote for 
 Small Pox or Harvey s theory of the Circulation of the 
 Blood or suppose that, as a I^awyer, he find or fancy such 
 an oppugnancy between the maxims and usages of the craft 
 and the dictates of a stern integrity that he can only succeed 
 in the practice by kicking Conscience overboard and giving 
 the command to circumspect, respectable Knavery what 
 alternative has the man educated to live only by his profes- 
 19* 
 
222 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 sion but to take the broad road and keep it, at whatever 
 internal sacrifice ? A Prime Minister once, to the courtier 
 who said to him I must live, you know, replied, Pardon 
 me, Sir, I do not perceive the necessity, but rarely has any 
 one so decided in his own case. Even if living be to him 
 personally a matter of indifference, there are those dependent 
 on his exertions whom he can not so stoically resign to the 
 buffetings of adverse fortune. Hence a life of mean com 
 pliances and self-condemned hypocrisies becomes a sort 
 of necessity to thousands nay, often, the seeming dictate 
 of paternal or conjugal duty. Thus the landmarks which 
 should separate Vice from Virtue are broken down, defaced, 
 obliterated, and the ends of life are lost sight of in g. des 
 perate, degrading struggle for the means of living. 
 
 The most effectual remedy for this which is attainable 
 under our present Social Order is the blending of Manual 
 Labor with Education, so that they should be inseparable by 
 the wealth or personal distinction of the learner. Let it be 
 settled, as a fundamental base of our higher Popular Educa 
 tion, that a stated portion of each day shall be devoted to the 
 acquisition of skill in some department of Industry to Man 
 ual Labor for the sake of the strength it imparts, the disor 
 ders it baffles, the comforts it creates, the independence it 
 secures, and the professional man may then stand up before 
 his flock, his patients, his clients, in an attitude of conscious 
 self-reliance, and say to them, " Employ and requite me if 
 you choose : the earth and the kindly elements will reward 
 my efforts if you do not want them ; and, so long as vegeta 
 tion proceeds and sunshine follows the shower, I can exist 
 as well without you as you can without me. I have learned to 
 labor efficiently with my hands ; and I am neither afraid nor 
 ashamed to do so, and whenever I have no other employ 
 ment I shall joyfully earn my bread thus." Surely, the 
 opinions and inculcations of the professional man in this at 
 titude would deserve and command a degree of respect 
 
TEACHERS AND TEACHING. 223 
 
 which is not now accorded to them. He could never more 
 be rendered the slave of others vices or prejudices ; he 
 would be master of his own aims if not of his destiny. 
 The humiliating, fettering consciousness that any reckless 
 following of Conscience out of ihe track of Prescription or 
 Tradition would almost entirely deprive him of bread, 
 would vanish for ever. In its stead would come self-respect 
 and serenity ; and not self-respect only, but the respect of 
 those made to realize that his livelihood did not depend on 
 his conformity to the standard of their opinions or desires. 
 My profound conviction that the independence, adequate in 
 fluence and proper dignity of the better Educated or Pro 
 fessional Class imperatively demands a reform in our systems 
 of instruction which shall render the educated man skillful 
 as well as knowing, handy as well as long-headed, will not 
 allow me to neglect any fair opportunity of proclaiming and 
 insisting on the requisition of Manual Labor as an integral 
 part of our better Education. Not for their own sakes merely, 
 though greatly for those, do I insist that the Thinking Class 
 shall become a Working Class in the rude, palpable sense. 
 I demand a more brotherly relation between the man who 
 lives by turning clods and him who strives to turn hearts. 
 That spectacle of the Emperor of China standing forth un 
 der the vernal sun a guider of the plow, can you think that 
 it has no worth, no meaning, but as a state ceremonial a 
 relic of bygone ages? I tell you Nay! it is to-day, and 
 will be while time and it endures, a most inspiring, benefi 
 cent Reality and no sham. That single act shall lighten the 
 heavy burthen on millions of aching shoulders shall make 
 the poorest and most heart-weary delver in all China 
 more hopeful and joyous, at all events less miserable, than 
 he else would be. Who shall deem himself degraded 
 or dishonored by a calling which the Sovereign Majesty 
 takes pleasure and pride in following, if not constantly 
 yet statedly, as if to say that he would cleave to it daily 
 
224 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 did not imperious duties and the welfare of Three Hun 
 dred Millions sternly forbid ? Rely on it, there is no 
 other day in all the year when the Brother of the Sun and 
 Moon does half so much toward the right governing of those 
 Millions as on that day when he turns the sward beneath the 
 gaze of exulting thousands. Herein does he prove himself 
 truly a Ruler, and more a Teacher, by indisputable ex 
 ample of truths which, if once universally accepted and 
 lived, would make Governing easy and outward, forcible 
 Government a quite subordinate matter. For let men but 
 profoundly realize the dignity and true meaning of Labor 
 
 let them feel that not the fruits of it alone are, but the work 
 itself is desirable, essential to the well-being of every son 
 and daughter of Adam, and it is not possible that standing 
 Armies and Armories, Forts and Magazines, multitudinous 
 Police and Tipstaves, would be requisite to keep men from 
 plundering and throttling each other, mainly for sordid pelf. 
 It is the divorce of Work from the visible reward and out 
 come of Work of laudable exertion from the palpable 
 need of exertion which fills the world with knaves and 
 dastards, almost beyond the power of Authority to repress. 
 
 When that day shall have come which must come, which 
 sees the truth that lurks in our aphorisms transferred to our 
 popular convictions when men shall find the highest re 
 ward of doing good in being good when the heir of Wealth 
 shall rejoice in his good fortune, in being able, not to fare 
 more daintily and live more uselessly than his poorer neigh 
 bors, but to relieve more distress and diffuse more blessing 
 
 when the public opinion, not of the poor only but of the 
 rich, shall hold the consumer in idle and selfish luxury of a 
 bounteous income a craven-hearted object of pity rather than 
 of scorn when he who in cheerful poverty and serene hu 
 mility most worthily hews out from stubborn wood or more 
 obstructive stone the sustenance of a numerous family, shall, 
 unseeking, be sought out for public trusts and honors 
 
TEACHERS AND TEACHING. 225 
 
 when, in short, honest Industry and modest Worth shall be 
 sure of respect and competence, while scheming Knavery 
 and bloated Pretence shall be equally sure of detection and 
 defeat the work of the true teacher will be easy, the prog 
 ress of the pupil rapid, compared with what we now witness. 
 The perpetual and gigantic obstacle which confronts the in 
 structor now is the opposition of the incessant teachings of 
 the street, the gathering, and alas! the family fireside, to 
 his own. Does he speak reverently of Virtue and its su 
 periority to Rank, Wealth, Power, or any outward success 
 he finds his pupils puzzled if not perverted by the palpable, 
 notorious truth that, tested by superficial and vulgar stan 
 dards, Virtue is not popularly esteemed and rewarded. The 
 coterie or the club-room rings with the general laugh at 
 any supposition that a man has done a heroic act has sac 
 rificed popularity or property from any other than a sordid 
 impulse, and the child is taught, if not expressly yet vir 
 tually, by the very mother that bore him, to ingratiate him 
 self with school-mates excelling him in station, affluence, 
 talents, expectations anything, in short, but essential good 
 ness. To combat and overbear these insidious influences, 
 to make the pupil see through the misleading mists of Opin 
 ion and test every appearance and event by eternal instead 
 of transitory consequences, is the high duty of the true 
 monitor and guide of the feeble, faltering steps of Youth. 
 At the basis of all Morality, all true Knowledge, all lofty 
 Endeavor, lies the truth that GOD REIGXS. I doubt not that 
 there have been many worthy and useful men whose con 
 sciousness of this truth was obscured whose minds the 
 subtle mazes of metaphysical disputation had clouded or the 
 pride of scientific attainment had made giddy, so that, be 
 wildered in the very vastness and magnificence of the Uni 
 verse, they had lost sight of its Creator. I disclaim all im 
 peachment of the morals or characters of unbelievers when 
 I say that I find it utterly impossible to demonstrate the cer- 
 
226 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 tain and unvarying superiority of Virtue to Vice, of Right 
 to Wrong, if there be no Discerner and Ruler of all things. 
 I know and have said that the truly good man will do right 
 though the Heavens were all swept from his vision, and this 
 earth alone were left, whirling aimless and unguided through 
 the depths of infinite space. But the question is, How shall 
 we first convince the young mind that Virtue is more de 
 sirable, more precious than Pleasure ? How shall we de 
 monstrate to the passion-fired, hot-blooded youth, that the 
 act which would yield him present ecstacy and yet may be 
 shielded by secrecy from infamy or penalty is to be shunned 
 and avoided at all hazards because it is in its tendencies ad 
 verse to general purity and well-being. Such unvarying 
 resistance to temptation is plainly beyond the power of skep 
 tical morality. Not vainly is Joseph solicited if Atheism 
 possess his understanding never fruitlessly does Satan 
 proffer all the kingdoms of this world to one who has no 
 belief in any other. Archimedes must have a place whereon 
 to stand or he can not move the world ; and I see not how 
 Virtue can be implanted in the human soul so firmly as to 
 defy the blandishments of seduction, the tempest-gusts of 
 Passion, the dazzling lures of Ambition, if it be not rooted 
 and grounded in that faith which entereth within the veil 
 and undoubtingly realizes that every action is noted by Om 
 niscience and rewarded by Omnipotent Justice. 
 
 Mere recognition of God as an Architect is not sufficient: 
 still less is belief in Him as a blind Power like the Des 
 tiny of the Greek Drama or the Fatalism which challenges 
 the Turk s submission. Worse still is the vulgar idea of 
 him as an African Mumbo-Jumbo, to be placated by flat 
 tery or won over by servile compliances in place of practical 
 and hearty obedience. Whoever truly knows Him as He 
 is, knows that no act nor thought, whether good or evil, can 
 possibly fail of its due recompense, and that all attempts to 
 evade this by finesse or formula are at once preposterous and 
 
TEACHERS AND TEACHING. 227 
 
 audacious. That His mercy to the erring and the penitent 
 never faileth, is a glorious, cheering truth ; but vainly shall 
 any hope for Vice, penitent on its death-bed, the rewards of 
 enduring Virtue. Were He but known as He is, we should 
 have more lives of active beneficence and fewer death-beds 
 of abject repentance when too late to be of any earthly use. 
 No Louis XV. worn out with fifty years of debauchery and 
 tyranny, would think of making the amende honorable to 
 God by mumbling a wafer and a prayer in his death-throes, 
 but all would realize that Whatsoever a man soweth that 
 shall he also reap, and that the Virtue which holds its even 
 way through life, realizing that God governs and judges here 
 as well as elsewhere, is alone deserving of his favor or calcu 
 lated to secure it, and that hardly to Heaven itself is it pos 
 sible to efface utterly from the soul the stains of a career 
 of guilt and shame, save through the purifying fires of a 
 righteous and fearful retribution. 
 
 I draw to the close of my hour ; yet how shall I close 
 without attempting to impress on your minds the great truth 
 that JtZducation can never be what it ought until a vast and 
 pervading improvement has been wrought in the Social and 
 Physical Condition of the destitute Millions of mankind . In 
 vain shall we provide capable teachers and comfortable school 
 rooms, and the most admirable school-books, apparatus, libra 
 ries, &c., for those children who come shivering and skulking 
 in rags who sit distorted by the gnawings of hunger or suf 
 fering from the effects of innutritions or unwholesome food 
 who must sleep huddled in cellars or garrets unfit even for 
 dog-kennels, hard Necessity overruling all distinctions of age 
 or sex and crowding Modesty through the unglazed window 
 to keep company with exiled Decency outside. You may 
 fill the hovels of the famishing with Bibles and Tracts, suf 
 ficient to replace the chairs and tables which famine and the 
 landlord have sent to the pawnbroker, yet you can not ren 
 der those who grow up under such influences religious nor 
 
228 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 moral ; you may cram them with Popularized Science and 
 convert them into infant prodigies of intellect and culture, 
 and they will yet be deplorably uneducated, untrained, un 
 developed. No stimulation of one or two faculties ever yet 
 produced a true or useful human character, nor ever will. 
 The education which does not begin worthily in the cradle 
 can rarely result in eminent worth or honor. Idly shall you 
 labor to teach the child whose earliest recollections are of 
 torturing hunger or of cloying surfeit that Food is not an 
 end of life but a means of sustaining it vainly shall you 
 moralize to him whose youth was rendered bitter and abject 
 by Want that Wealth is but an added responsibility and not 
 necessarily a sovereign good. The actualization of grosser 
 vice may be shunned from instinct, or fear, or habit ; but the 
 soul s native purity and delicacy can not be preserved where 
 a single garret is made to afford the sleeping accommoda 
 tions of a numerous family, nor can monitorial precepts 
 restore it while the influences which wrought its destruction 
 are still present and potent. It will be idle to expect true, 
 beneficent attainment in school from those who have not the 
 means of decent and comfortable existence at home. You 
 may sharpen their wits ; you may awaken in them a dread 
 of shame or pain and a resolution to avoid them. But to 
 impress the solemn injunctions, * Thou shalt not steal, 
 Thou shalt not covet, on him who daily casts famine- 
 sunken eyes on the fruit ripening and rotting in the rich 
 man s orchards, and who feels that the fuel which would 
 warm his benumbed limbs is moldering to dust in the ad 
 jacent wood, unused and unwanted, this is the impossible 
 task ; yet who shall be deemed educated whose heart 
 festers with rebellion against these essential command 
 ments ? 
 
 Not until we shall have achieved the emancipation of the 
 Poor from the slavery of physical and absolute destitution 
 not till we shall have rendered possible to all obedience to 
 
TEACHERS AND TEACHING. 229 
 
 the Divine precept, * Take no thought for the morrow, 
 not till we shall have relieved all who will work from the 
 terror of constrained idleness and consequent starvation, can 
 I feel that a secure basis has been laid for Universal Educa 
 tion. There will still remain obstacles in abundance 
 obstacles originating in perverted appetites, impetuous pas 
 sions, narrow-minded parentage, false pride, mental inca 
 pacity, and the like ; but before all these I place the impedi 
 ments arising from extreme indigence and the degradations 
 and dangers which have thence their origin. Let this be 
 removed, and we shall have better opportunity to appreciate 
 and encounter the residue. 
 
 Universal Education ! grand inspiring idea ! And shall 
 there come a time when the delver in the mine and the rice- 
 swamp, the orphans of the prodigal and the felon, and even 
 the very offspring of shame, shall be truly, systematically 
 educated ? Glorious consummation ! morning twilight of 
 the Millennium ! Who will not joyfully labor and court sacri 
 fices, and suffer reproach, if he may hasten, by even so much 
 as a day, its blessed coming ? Who will not take courage 
 from a contemplation of what the last century has seen 
 accomplished, if not in absolute results, yet in preparing the 
 approaches, in removing impediments, in correcting and ex 
 panding the popular comprehension of the work to be done 
 and the feasibility of doing it? Whatever of evil and of 
 suffering the Future may have in store for us though the 
 earth be destined yet to be plowed by the sword and fer 
 tilized by human gore until rank growths of the deadliest 
 weeds shall overshadow it, stifling into premature decay 
 every plant most conducive to health or fragrance the time 
 shall surely come when universal and true Education shall 
 dispel the dense night of ignorance and perverseness that now 
 enshrouds the vast majority of the Human Race shall 
 banish evil and wretchedness almost wholly from earth 
 20 
 
230 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 by removing or unmasking the multiform temptations to 
 wrong-doing shall put an end to Robbery, Hatred, Oppres 
 sion, and War, by diffusing widely and thoroughly a living; 
 consciousness of the Brotherhood of Mankind, and the sure 
 blessedness as well as righteousness of doing ever as we 
 would have others do to us. Train up a child in the way 
 he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it, 
 such is the promise which enables us to see to the end of the 
 dizzy whirl of wrong and misery in which our Race has so 
 long sinned and suffered. On wise and systematic training, 
 based on the widest knowledge, the truest morality, and tend 
 ing ever to universal good as the only assurance of special 
 or personal well-being, rests the great hope of the terrestrial 
 renovation and elevation of man. 
 
 Not the warrior then, nor the statesman, nor yet the 
 master-worker, as such, but the teacher, in our day leads the 
 vanguard of Humanity. Whether in the seminary or by the 
 wayside, by uttered word or printed page, our true king is 
 not he who best directs the siege or sets his squadrons in the 
 field, or heads the charge, but he who can and will instruct 
 and enlighten his fellows, so that at least some few of the 
 generation of whom he is shall be wiser, purer, nobler for his 
 living among them, and prepared to carry forward the work 
 of which he was a humble instrument to its far grander and 
 loftier consummation. O far above the conqueror of king 
 doms, the destroyer of hosts by the sword and the bayonet, is he 
 whose tearless victories redden no river and whiten no plain, 
 but who leads the understanding a willing captive and builds 
 his empire not of the wretched and bleeding fragments of 
 subjugated nations, but on the realms of intellect which he 
 has discovered and planted and peopled with beneficent 
 activity and enduring joy ! The mathematician who in his 
 humble study, undisturbed as yet by the footsteps of mon- 
 archs and their ministers, demonstrates the existence of a 
 planet before unsuspected by astronomy, unobserved by the 
 
TEACHERS AN1) TEACHING. 231 
 
 telescope ; the author who from his dim garret sends forth the 
 scroll which shall constrain thousands on thousands to laugh 
 or weep at his will who topples down a venerahle fraud 
 by an allegory, or crushes a dynasty by an epigram he 
 shall live and reign over a still expanding dominion when 
 the paste-board kings whose steps are counted in court cir 
 culars and timed by stupid huzzas shall have long since 
 moldered and been forgotten. To build out into chaos and 
 drear vacuity to render some corner of the primal darkness 
 radiant with the presence of an Idea to supplant ignorance 
 by knowledge and sin by virtue such is the mission of our 
 age, worthy to enkindle the ambition of the loftiest, yet 
 proffering opportunity and reward to the most lowly. To 
 the work of universal enlightenment be our lives henceforth 
 consecrated, until the black clouds of impending evil are 
 irradiated and dispersed by the full effulgence of the divinely 
 predicted day, when All shall know the LORD from the 
 least unto the greatest, and when wrong and woe shall 
 vanish for ever from the presence of universal knowledge, 
 purity, and bliss ! 
 
232 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 LABOR S POLITICAL ECONOMY: 
 
 AN ESSAY.* 
 
 THE Political Economy of Trade is very simple and easy. 
 4 Buy where you can cheapest and sell where you can 
 dearest, is its fundamental maxim ; the whole system radiates 
 from this. l Take care of yourself and let others do as 
 they can, is its natural and necessary counterpart. Nay, 
 this Economy insists that the best you can do for your 
 neighbor and for mankind is to do whatever your individ 
 ual interest shall prompt. That I do not misunderstand and 
 may not be plausibly accused of misstating the scope of the 
 Free Trade doctrine, so far as it applies to the action of 
 states and communities, I will show by the following extract 
 from M Culloch s Principles of Political Economy: 
 
 "Admitting, however, that the total abolition of the prohibitive 
 system might force a few thousand workmen to abandon their present 
 occupations, it is material to observe that equivalent new ones would, 
 in consequence, be open to receive them ; and that the total aggre 
 gate demand for their services would not be in any degree diminished. 
 Suppose that, under a system of free trade, we imported a part of the 
 silks and linens we now manufacture at home ; it is quite clear, inas 
 much as neither the French nor Germans would send us their com 
 modities gratis, that we should have to give them an equal amount of 
 British commodities in exchange ; so that such of our artificers as had 
 been engaged in the silk and linen manufactures, and were thrown out 
 
 * Mainly embodied in an American Introduction to Atkinson s Political Econ 
 omy. 
 
LABOR S POLITICAL ECONOMY. 233 
 
 of them, would, in future, obtain employment in the production of the 
 articles that must be exported as equivalents to the foreigner. We 
 may, by giving additional freedom to commerce, change the species of 
 labor in demand, but we can not lessen its quantity" 
 
 Here, in the essay of one of the ablest and most admired 
 doctors of the Free Trade school, you see the ground fairly 
 marked out, and the consequences of depressing and de 
 stroying a particular branch of Home Industry enunciated. 
 True, says the doctor, you throw many out of employ 
 ment in that particular branch, but you thereby inevitably 
 create a corresponding demand for their labor in some other 
 capacity. The cotton-spinner, the wool-carder, the carpet- 
 weaver, may no longer have work in the vocations to which 
 they were bred and in which they are skilled, but then there 
 will be so much the more work in growing wheat, picking 
 cotton or salting pork. I do not see the advantage of the 
 change, to Labor even, affirmed in this statement, though it 
 is not difficult to imagine that Trade may experience a falla 
 cious and transitory improvement. But, while the merchant 
 may just as easily ship or sell one article as another, the 
 laborer can not with like facility change from casting iron to 
 growing corn, from weaving broadcloth to chopping timber, 
 and so on. To compel him to give up his accustomed em 
 ployment and seek some other is generally to doom him to 
 months of unwilling idleness followed by years of relatively 
 ineffective toil. The overthrow of an important branch of 
 National Industry is therefore a serious calamity to a great 
 portion of the Laboring Class a blow which will be felt for 
 years. 
 
 But, thus far, I have conceded the main point assumed 
 by M Culloch and his school that the destruction of a branch 
 of Home Industry by the influx of rival Foreign fabrics is 
 necessarily followed by a corresponding extension of some 
 other branch or branches, giving employment to an equal 
 amount of labor, and rendering the depression of Industry 
 20* 
 
234 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 only temporary. That this is a mistake, a few moments 
 reflection will establish. It assumes that the consumption 
 of a given article is not diminished by the transfer of its pro 
 duction from the consumers neighborhood to a distant 
 shore, and that wherever a community receives its supply of 
 cloths or wares from abroad, it necessarily follows that some 
 staple or staples of equal value will be taken of it by the 
 supplying nation in return. To prove that the fact is not so, 
 I cite the memorable instance of the Dacca weavers of India, 
 as stated in Parliament by the distinguished Free Trader, 
 Dr. Bowring : 
 
 " I hold, Sir, in my hand, the correspondence which has taken place 
 between the Governor-General of India and the East India Company, 
 on the subject of the Dacca hand-loom weavers. It is a melancholy 
 story of misery so far as they are concerned, and as striking an evidence 
 of the wonderful progress of manufacturing industry in this country. 
 Some years ago the East India Company annually received of the prod - 
 uce of the looms of India to the amount of from six to eight millions of 
 pieces of cotton goods. The demand gradually fell to somewhat more 
 than one million, and has now nearly ceased altogether. In 1800, the 
 United States took from India nearly eight hundred thousand pieces 
 of cottons; in 1830 not four thousand. In 1800, one million of pieces 
 were shipped to Portugal ; in 1830, only twenty thousand. Terrible 
 are the accounts of the wretchedness of the poor India weavers, re 
 duced to absolute starvation. And what was the sole cause ? The 
 presence of the cheaper English manufacture the production by the 
 power-loom of the article which these unhappy Hindoos had been used 
 for ages to make by their unimproved and hand-directed shuttles. 
 Sir, it was impossible that they could go on weaving what no one 
 would wear or buy. Numbers of them died of hunger : the remainder 
 were, for the most part, transferred to other occupations, principally 
 agricultural. Not to have changed their trade was inevitable starva 
 tion. And at this moment, Sir, that Dacca district is supplied with 
 yarn and cotton cloth from the power-looms of England. The language 
 of the Governor-General is : 
 
 " European skill and machinery have superseded the produce 
 of India. The court declare, that they are at last obliged to aban 
 don the only remaining portion of the trade in cotton manufactures, 
 in both Bengal and Madras, because, through the intervention of 
 
LABOR S POLITICAL ECONOMY. 235 
 
 power-looms, the British goods have a decided advantage in quality 
 and price. Cotton piece-goods, for so many ages the staple manufac 
 ture of India, seems thus forever lost. The Dacca muslins, celebrated 
 over the whole world for their beauty and fineness, are also annihilated, 
 from the same cause. And the present suffering, to numerous classes 
 in India, is scarcely to be paralleled in the history of commerce." 
 
 Here you see are Mr. M Culloch s conditions made ready 
 to his hand. 1. The people of India were formerly supplied 
 with cotton fabrics from the hand-looms of their own 
 Dacca weavers. 2. They are now supplied with such 
 fabrics much cheaper (that is, at lower money prices) from 
 the power-looms of England. 3. India being a dependency 
 of Great Britain, the goods of the latter enter the former sub 
 stantially free of duty, and have completely supplanted and 
 ruined the native manufacture. 4. But, though this has now- 
 existed some thirty years or more, the supplanted Hindoo 
 spinners and weavers do not (at least, they certainly did not, 
 and their case is not yet materially improved) find employ 
 ment in new branches of industry created or expanded to 
 provide the means of payment for the British fabrics imported 
 in lieu of their own. 5. That in consequence, " Terrible 
 are the accounts of the wretchedness of the poor Indian 
 weavers, reduced to the verge of starvation." [Yes, and 
 many of them beyond it.] And 6. That the evil was by no 
 means confined to the weavers, but that the present suffering 
 of " numerous classes," (those whom Free Traders say 
 Protection would tax for the benefit of the weaver) " is 
 scarcely to be paralleled in the history of Commerce." 
 
 Here is the Free Traders theory confronted by a Free 
 Trader s notorious and undeniable facts. Can anything 
 farther be needed to demonstrate the fallacy of the former, 
 so far as it assumes unrestricted competition to be favorable 
 to the interest of Labor? 
 
 Political Economy is among the latest born of the Sci 
 ences. Mainly intent on the horrid game of War, with its 
 
236 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 various reverses and only less ruinous successes, it is but 
 yesterday that the rulers of the world discovered that they 
 had any duty to perform toward Industry, other than to in 
 terrupt its processes by their insane contentions, to devastate 
 its fields, and ultimately to consume its fruits. And, when 
 the truth did penetrate their scarcely pervious skulls, it came 
 distorted and perverted by the resistance it had met, by 
 selfish and sinister influences, so that it had parted with all 
 its vitality, and was blended with and hardly distinguishable 
 from error. When it began to be dimly discerned that Gov 
 ernment had a legitimate duty to perform toward Industry 
 that the latter might be cherished, improved, extended by 
 the action of the former legislators at once jumped to the 
 conclusion that all possible legislation upon and interference 
 with Industry must be beneficial. A Frederick the Great 
 finds by experience that the introduction of new arts and 
 industrial processes into his dominions increases the activity, 
 thrift and prosperity of his People ; forthwith he rushes (as 
 Macaulay and the Free Trade economists represent him) 
 into the prohibition of everything but coin from abroad, and 
 the production of everything at home, without considering 
 the diversities of soil and climate, or the practicability of 
 here prosecuting to advantage the business so summarily 
 established. The consequence is of course a mischievous 
 diversion of Labor from useful and productive to profitless 
 and unfruitful avocations. But this is not the worst. Some 
 monarch finds himself unable to minister adequately to the 
 extravagance of some new favorite or mistress ; so he creates 
 in her favor a Monopoly of the supply and sale of Salt, 
 Coffee, or whatever else is not already monopolized, and 
 styles it a " regulation of trade," to prevent ruinous fluctu 
 ations, competitions, and excesses ! Thus private ends are 
 subserved under the pretence of public good, and the com 
 forts of the people abridged or withheld to pander to the 
 
LABOR S POLITICAL ECONOMY. L 37 
 
 vices and sustain the lavish prodigality of princes and 
 paramours. 
 
 From a contemplation of these abuses, pierced and 
 uncovered by the expanding intelligence of the Eighteenth 
 Century, the Political Economy of the Schools was evolved. 
 In its origin a protest against existing abuses, it shared the 
 common lot of all reactions, in passing impetuously to an ex 
 treme the opposite of the error it went forth to combat. 
 From a scrutiny and criticism of the gross abuses of the 
 power of Government over Industry, it was impelled to the 
 conclusion that no such power properly existed or could be 
 beneficially exercised. Thus the Science became, in the 
 hands of the latest professors of the enlightened school, a 
 simple and sweeping negation a demand for incessant and 
 universal abolishing a suicidal science, demonstrating that 
 to do nothing is the acme of governmental wisdom, and 
 King Log die profoundest and greatest of monarchs. 
 
 These conclusions would have staggered the founders of 
 the school, and yet it is difficult to resist the evidence 
 offered to show that they are legitimately deduced by their 
 disciples from the premises those founders themselves have 
 laid down. 
 
 There are reasons for hoping that the raiiction against a 
 sinister and false regulation of Industry has spent its force, 
 and that the error which denies that any regulation can be 
 beneficent equally with the fraud which has cloaked schemes 
 of personal aggrandisement under the pretence of guiding 
 Industry aright, will alike cease to exert a controlling influ 
 ence over the affairs of Nations. Experience, the great cor 
 rector of delusive theories, has long since settled this point, 
 that any attempt to grow Coffee in Greenland, or dig Coal 
 from the White Mountains, must prove abortive ; that same 
 Experience, it seems most obvious, has by this time 
 established that it is wise, it is well, for each nation to draw 
 from its own soil every desirable and necessary product 
 
238 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 which that soil is as well calculated to produce as any other, 
 and to fabricate within itself all articles of utility or comfort 
 which it may ultimately produce as advantageously that is, 
 with as little labor as they can be steadily produced else 
 where. To do this may require fostering legislation at first 
 to shield the infant branches of Industry against the formi 
 dable competition of their adult and muscular rivals, which 
 would otherwise strangle them in the cradle ; it may require 
 efficient and steady Protection in after years, to counteract the 
 effects of differing standards of money values, and different 
 rates of wages for Labor nay, of the disturbing rivalries and 
 ruinous excesses of mere foreign competition, which often leads 
 to underselling at the door of a rival, (especially if that rival 
 be shut out from retaliation by duties on the other side) when 
 living prices are maintained at home. A protected branch 
 of Industry cloth-making, for instance might thus over 
 throw an unprotected rival interest in another nation without 
 selling its products at an average price lower than that of the 
 latter. Having its own Home Market secured to it, and un 
 limited power given it to disturb and derange the markets 
 necessarily relied on by its rival, it would inevitably cripple 
 and destroy that rival, as the mailed and practiced swordsman 
 cuts down in the field of combat the unarmed and defense 
 less adversary whom fate or fatuity has thrown within his 
 reach. 
 
 Those who profess an inability to see how Protection can 
 benefit the producer if it does not raise the average price of 
 his product contradict not merely the dictates of a uniform 
 experience but the clearest deductions of reason. The 
 artisan who makes pianofortes, say at three hundred dollars 
 each, having a capricious demand for some twenty or thirty 
 per year, and liable at any time to be thrown out of business 
 by the importation of a cargo of pianofortes will he pro 
 duce them cheaper or dearer, think you, if the foreign 
 rivalry is cut off, and he is thence enabled to find a steady 
 
LABOR S POLITICAL ECONOMY. 239 
 
 market for some twelve instruments per month ? Admit that 
 his natural tendency will be to cling to the old price, and 
 thereby secure larger profits this will be speedily corrected 
 by a Home Competition, which will increase until the profits 
 are reduced to the average profits of business. It will not be 
 in the power of the Home as it is of the Foreign rival inter 
 ests to depress his usual prices without depressing their own 
 to destroy his market yet preserve and even extend 
 theirs to crush him by means of cheaper labor than he 
 can obtain. If vanquished now, it will be because his 
 rapacity is unequal to that of his rivals not that circum 
 stances inevitably predict and prepare his overthrow. No 
 intelligent man can doubt that Newspapers, for example, are 
 cheaper in this country than they would be if Foreign jour 
 nals could rival and supplant them here as Foreign cloths 
 may rival and supplant in our markets the corresponding 
 products of our own Country. The rule will very generally 
 hold good, that those articles of Home Production which can 
 not be rivaled by Importation are and will be relatively 
 cheaper than those of a different character. 
 
 And here it maybe well to speak more directly of the dis 
 crepancy between Theory and Practice which is so often 
 affirmed in connection w r ith our general subject. There are 
 many who think the theory of Free Trade the correct, or at 
 any rate the more plausible one, but who yet maintain, 
 because they know by experience, that it fails practically of 
 securing the good it promises. Hence they rush to the con 
 clusion that a policy may be faultless in theory yet pernicious 
 in practice, than which no idea can be more erroneous and 
 pernicious. A good theory never yet failed to vindicate 
 itself in practical operation never can fail to do so. A 
 theory can only fail because it is defective, unsound lacks 
 some of the elements which should have entered into its 
 composition. In other words, the practical working is bad 
 only because the theory is no better. 
 
240 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 Let us consider, for illustration, the fundamental maxim 
 of Free Trade, Buy where you can buy cheapest. This 
 sounds well and looks plausible. But let us hold it up to 
 the light : What is cheapest ? Is it the smallest sum in 
 coin ? No very far from it ; and here is where the theory 
 gives way. We do not, as a nation, produce coin do not 
 practically pay in coin. We pay for products in products, 
 and the real question first to be resolved is, Whence can we 
 obtain the desired fabrics for the smaller aggregate of our 
 products from the Foreign or the Home manufacturer? 
 Take Woolen Cloths, for instance : We require of them, say 
 One Hundred Millions worth per annum. Now the point 
 to be considered is not where we could buy most cloths for 
 One Hundred Millions in money, for that we have not to 
 pay ; but where our surplus product of Pork, Lumber, Dairy 
 Produce, Sheep, Wool, &c. &c. will buy the required Cloth 
 most advantageously. The nominal or Money price paid 
 for it may be Eighty Millions or One Hundred and Twenty 
 Millions, and yet the larger sum be easier paid than the 
 smaller that is, with a smaller amount of our Produce. 
 The relative Money prices do not determine the real ques 
 tion of cheapness at all they may serve, if implicitly relied 
 on, to blind us to the merits of that question. In the absence 
 of all regulation, the relative Money price will of course de 
 termine whether the cloths shall be imported or produced at 
 home, but not whether they should be. 
 
 But this is not all. We may obtain a desired product 
 to-day and fitfully cheaper abroad, and yet pay more for it 
 in the average than if we produced it steadily at home. The 
 question of cheapness is not determined by a single transac 
 tion but by many.* 
 
 And again : We can not buy to advantage abroad that 
 which, being bought abroad, leaves whole classes of our 
 people to famish at home. For instance ; Suppose one 
 
 * Madison s Messages, 1811-15-16. 
 
LABOR S POLITICAL ECONOMY. 241 
 
 hundred millions of garments are made by the women of 
 this country yearly at an average price of twenty-five cents 
 each, and these could be bought abroad for two-thirds of 
 that sum : Would it be wise so to buy them ? Free Trade 
 asserts that it would that all the labor so thrown out of 
 employment would be promptly absorbed in other and more 
 productive occupations. But sad experience, common 
 sense, humanity, say Not so. The truth is very different 
 from this. The industry thus thrown out of its time-worn 
 channels would find or wear others slowly and with great 
 difficulty ; meantime the hapless makers, no longer enabled 
 to support themselves by labor, must be supported in idle 
 ness. By indirect if not by public charity they must some 
 how be subsisted; and our citizens will have bought their 
 garments some twenty per cent, lower from abroad, but will 
 be compelled to pay another price for them in charities and 
 poor-rates. Such is the effect of Buying where we can buy 
 cheapest in a low, short-sighted, miserly, Free-Trade view 
 of cheapness. 
 
 But why, it is asked, should not a Nation purchase of 
 others as freely as individuals of the same nation are permit 
 ted to trade with each other ? Fairly as this question would 
 seem to be put, there is a fatal fallacy lurking beneath its 
 use of the term nation. A nation should always buy 
 where it can (in the long run) buy cheapest, or most ad 
 vantageously ; where that may be is a question for the 
 nation, through its legal organism, to decide. The query 
 mistakenly assumes that the immediate, apparent interest of 
 each individual purchaser is always identical with the inter 
 est of the community, which common sense as well as ex 
 perience refutes. The lawyer or clergyman in Illinois may 
 obtain his coat of the desired quality cheaper (for less money) 
 from Paris than it can be fabricated in Illinois, yet it by no 
 means follows that it is the interest of Illinois to purchase 
 her coats or cloths from Europe quite the contrary is the 
 21 
 
242 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 fact. Nay, it would be easy to show that the real, permanent 
 interest of the lawyer or clergyman himself certainly of his 
 class is subserved by legislation which encourages and 
 protects the home producer of those articles, not only because 
 they improve in quality and are reduced in price under such 
 a policy, but because the sources of his own prosperity and 
 income are expanded or dried up as the Industry of his own 
 region is employed, its capacities developed, and its sphere 
 of production enlarged and diversified. Let us illustrate this 
 truth more fully : 
 
 The state of Illinois, for example, is primarily grain- 
 growing, producing a surplus of five millions of bushels of 
 Wheat and Indian Corn annually, worth in New-York four 
 millions of dollars, and requiring in return ten millions of 
 yards of Cloths of various kinds and qualities, costing in 
 New- York a like sum. In the absence of all legislation, she 
 purchases and consumes mainly English cloths, which can 
 be transmitted from Leeds to Chicago in a month, at a cost, 
 including insurance and interest, of not more than five per 
 cent, and there undersell any Illinois fabricator of cloths 
 equal in quality and finish. Is it the real, permanent in 
 terest of Illinois (disregarding the apparent momentary interest 
 of this or that class of persons in Illinois) to persist in Free 
 Trade ? or, on the other hand, to concur in such legislation 
 as will insure the production of her cloths mainly at home ? 
 Here is opened the whole question between Free Trade and 
 Protection. 
 
 The advocate of Free Trade insists that the solution of 
 the problem lies plain on the surface. The British broad 
 cloth is offered in abundance for three dollars per yard ; the 
 American is charged twenty per cent, higher, and can not 
 be afforded for three dollars. The true course is obvious 
 Buy where you can buy cheapest. But the advocate 
 of Protection answers that the real, intrinsic cheapness 
 is not determined by the market price of the rival fabrics 
 
LABOR S POLITICAL ECONOMY. 213 
 
 in coin specie not being the chief staple of Illinois, nor 
 produced there at all but where may the required Cloth be 
 bought with the smallest amount of her Grain ? Is not this 
 true ? What avails it to Illinois that she may have Cloth 
 from England twenty per cent, cheaper if she is, by purchas 
 ing her supply there r constrained to sell her Grain at half 
 price or less ? Let us see, then, what is the inevitable fact : 
 
 That we can not buy, perpetually, without paying that 
 in paying for a single article, we must regard, not how much 
 the payment is called, but how much it is, (that is, the 
 amount of Products absorbed in paying for, or of the Labor 
 expended in producing it) we assume to be obvious 
 or sufficiently demonstrated. Let us now consider what 
 will be the inevitable cost to Illinois the real cost of one 
 million yards of broadcloth obtained from England as com 
 pared with the same cloth produced at home. 
 
 The average value of Wheat throughout the world is not 
 far from one dollar per bushel, varying largely, of course, 
 in different localities ; in the heart of a grain-growing region, 
 away from manufactures or navigation, it must fall greatly 
 below that standard ; in other districts, where consumption 
 considerably exceeds production, rendering a resort to im 
 portation necessary, the price rises above the average stand 
 ard. The price at a given point is determined by its prox 
 imity to a market for its surplus or a surplus for its market. 
 Great Britain does not produce as much as will feed her 
 own population ; hence her average price must be governed 
 by the rate at which she can supply her deficiency from 
 abroad ; Illinois produces in excess, and the price there 
 must be governed by the rate at which she can dispose of 
 her surplus, including the cost of its transportation to an ade 
 quate market. In other words, (all regulation being thrown 
 aside) the price which England must pay must be the price 
 at the most convenient foreign marts of adequate supply, 
 adding the cost of transportation ; while the grain of Illinois 
 
244 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 will be worth to her its price in the ultimate market of its 
 surplus, less the cost of sending it there. 
 
 Now the great grain-growing plains of Poland and South 
 ern Russia, with capacities of production never yet half 
 explored, even with Labor cheaper than it ever can or 
 should be in this country are producing Wheat in the inte 
 rior at fifty cents a bushel or lower, so that it is ordinarily 
 obtained at Dantzic on the Baltic for ninety cents per 
 bushel and at Odessa on the Black Sea for eighty, very 
 nearly. With a Free Trade in grain, Britain can be abun 
 dantly supplied from Europe alone at a cost not exceeding 
 one dollar and ten cents per bushel ; with a competition from 
 America, the average price in her ports would more prob 
 ably range from one dollar to one dollar and six cents. What, 
 then, is the prospect for Illinois, buying her Cloths from 
 Great Britain, and compelled to sell somewhere her Grain to 
 pay for them ? 
 
 That she could not sell elsewhere her surplus to such ex 
 tent as would be necessary, is obvious. The ability of the 
 Eastern States to purchase the produce of her fertile prairies 
 depends on the activity and stability of their Manufactures 
 depends, in short, on the market for their manufactures in 
 the Great West. The markets to which we can resort, in 
 the absence of the English, are limited indeed. In point of 
 fact, the rule will hold substantially good, though trivial ex 
 ceptions are presented, that, IN ORDER TO PURCHASE AND 
 PAY FOR THE MANUFACTURES OF GREAT BRITAIN, ILLINOIS 
 MUST SELL TO THAT COUNTRY THE GREAT BULK OF HER 
 SURPLUS OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIONS. 
 
 The rates at which she must sett this surplus, we have 
 already seen ; the cost of transporting it is easily computed. 
 Seventy-five cents per bushel is considerably below the 
 average cost of transporting Wheat from the prairies of Illi 
 nois to England, but that may be assumed as a fair average 
 for the next ten years, in view of the improvements being 
 
LABOR S POLITICAL ECONOMY. 245 
 
 made in the means of transportation. There is then left to 
 the Illinois farmer to Illinois thirty cents per bushel as 
 the net proceeds of her surplus of Wheat or one million five 
 hundred thousand dollars for the five millions of bushels 
 purchasing, at three dollars per yard, five hundred thousand 
 yards of broadcloth. This would be the net product under 
 Free Trade. 
 
 Now the same inevitable law which depresses the price of 
 Wheat in Illinois so far below that prevailing in England, so 
 long as the one is wholly Agricultural, the other predomi 
 nantly Manufacturing, will as surely raise the price in Illinois 
 
 SO SOOX AXD SO FAST AS A SUFFICIENT MARKET FOR HER 
 SURPLUS IS BROUGHT XEARER TO HER DOORS. Let that Slir- 
 
 plus be arrested by an adequate market in New-England, and 
 its price will rise to fifty cents a bushel ; let the supply of 
 her Manufactured products be drawn by Illinois from points 
 West of the Alleghenies, and it will rise to seventy-five 
 cents ; and, whenever they are mainly produced on her own 
 territory, the price will have advanced to one dollar per 
 bushel. In other words, the net produce of her grain to 
 Illinois will be the average price throughout the world, less 
 the cost of transporting it to the point at which an adequate 
 market for her surplus is attained. There may be casuaJ 
 and special exceptions, but this is the fundamental law. 
 
 Now it is evident that, though Illinois may buy he* 
 cloths for fewer dollars from England, she can buy them 
 with fewer bushels of Grain from our own manufactories, 
 and fewer still when the progress of improvement, unde* 
 a steady and careful Protection to our Industry, shall havf* 
 established most branches of Manufacture on her own soiL 
 She may pay twenty-five per cent, higher nominal price* 
 for her fabrics, and yet obtain them at one-half the actua* 
 cost at which she formerly obtained them from abroad- 
 In other words, by bringing the producers of Cloth from 
 21* 
 
246 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 England to America, and placing them side by side with 
 the producers of Grain, she has effected an enormous 
 SAVING OF LABOR of that Labor, namely, which was 
 before employed in trasporting Grain and Cloth from con 
 tinent to continent. One hundred thousand grain-growers 
 and cloth-makers produce just as much now as they did 
 with four thousand miles of land and water between them, 
 while they no longer require the services of another hundred 
 thousand persons as boatmen, sailors, shippers, forwarders, 
 &c., to interchange their respective products. These now 
 become producers themselves. By thus diminishing vastly 
 the number of non-producers and adding to that of pro 
 ducers, the aggregate of production is immensely increased, 
 increasing in like measure the dividends of Capital and f he 
 rewards of Labor. 
 
 Such is the process by which wise Protection increases 
 the prosperity of a country, quite apart from its effect in 
 discouraging ruinous fluctuations and competition, whereby 
 thousands of producers are frequently thrown out of em 
 ployment and thence out of bread. It is this multiplying 
 and diversifying of the departments of Home Industry, 
 bringing the farmer, the artisan, the manufacturer into im 
 mediate contact with each other, and enabling them to inter 
 change their products without the intervention of several 
 non-producers, which is justly regarded as the great end of 
 an enlightened and paternal policy. To guard against the 
 changes, fluctuations, depressions, which an unbounded com 
 petition and rivalry are sure to induce, is also well worthy 
 of effort ; but the primary aim of Protection is to secure a 
 real cheapness of production and supply, instead of the 
 nominal, indefinite, deceptive cheapness which Free Trade 
 obtains by looking to the money price only of the staples 
 purchased. 
 
 But why, it is asked, have we need of any legislation 
 on the subject, if the Home Trade and Home Production 
 
LABOR S POLITICAL ECONOMY. 247 
 
 be so much more beneficial than Foreign ? The answer to 
 this question is made obvious by the foregoing illustrations. 
 The individual farmer, lawyer, teacher, of Illinois might with 
 Free Trade obtain the Foreign fabrics cheaper than the 
 Domestic, escaping, or seeming to escape, the consequent 
 reduction in the price of Domestic staples which we have 
 seen to be the result of a resort to distant countries for the 
 great bulk of desirable fabrics; but the community could not 
 escape it. On the other hand, the individual might perceive 
 clearly the true policy to be pursued by all ; but how could 
 he effect its adoption except through the action of the Gov 
 ernment? The Farmer, producing a thousand bushels of 
 Grain, might see clearly that the general encouragement of 
 Home Manufactures would build up a Home Market for 
 Grain at a more adequate price ; but his buying Domestic 
 fabrics instead of Foreign, while importation remained unre 
 stricted, and the majority purchased abroad, would answer 
 no purpose whatever. It would only condemn him to sell 
 his products for a still smaller return than the meager one 
 which Free Trade vouchsafed him. 
 
 On this point it seems obvious that the inculcations of our 
 leading Political Economists must be revised the sole 
 cisms which they imbody have grown too glaring and vital 
 to be longer endured. The distinction between real and 
 merely nominal or money cheapness in marts of supply must 
 be acknowledged and respected, or the flagrant contrarieties 
 of Fact and Theory will impel the practical world to distrust 
 and ultimately to discard the theory and its authors. 
 
 But not less mistaken and short-sighted than the First 
 Commandment of the Free Trade Decalogue Buy where 
 you can cheapest is the kindred precept, Laissez faired 
 Let us alone. That those who are profiting, amassing 
 wealth and rolling in luxury, from the proceeds of some craft 
 or vocation gainful to them but perilous and fraught with 
 evil to the common weal, should strive to lift this maxim 
 
248 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 from the mire of selfishness and heartless indifference to 
 others woes to the dignity of Statesmanship, is not remark 
 able ; but that any one seriously claiming to think and labor 
 for National or Social well-being should propound and de 
 fend it, this is as amazing as lamentable. Regarded in the 
 light of Morality, it can not stand a moment : it is identical 
 in spirit with the sullen insolence of Cain * Am I my 
 brother s keeper? If it be, indeed, a sound maxim, and the 
 self-interest of each individual himself being the judge 
 be necessarily identical with the common interest, then it is 
 difficult to determine why Governments should exist at all 
 why constraint should in any case be put on the action of 
 any rational being. But it needs not that this doctrine of 
 Laissez faire should be traced to its ultimate results, to 
 show that it is inconsistent with any true idea of the interests 
 of Society or the duties of Government. The Genius of 
 the Nineteenth Century the expanding Benevolence and 
 all-embracing Sympathy of our age emphatically repudiate 
 and condemn it. Everywhere is Man awaking to a truer 
 and deeper regard for the welfare and worth of his brother. 
 Everywhere is it beginning to be felt that a bare opportunity 
 to live unmolested if he can find and appropriate the means 
 of subsistence as some savages are reported to cast their 
 new-born children into the water, that they may save alive 
 the sturdy who can swim, and leave the weak to perish is 
 not all that the community owes to its feebler and less fortu 
 nate members. It can not have needed the horrible deduc 
 tions of Malthus, who, admiringly following out the doctrine 
 of Laissez faire to its natural result, declares that the 
 earth can not afford an adequate subsistence to all her human 
 offspring, and that those who can not find food without the 
 aid of the community should be left to starve! to con 
 vince this generation of the radical unsoundness of the 
 premises from which such revolting conclusions can be 
 drawn. Our standard Political Economists mav theorize in 
 
LABOR S POLITICAL ECONOMY. 249 
 
 this direction as dogmatically as they will, modestly pro 
 nouncing their own views liberal and enlightened, and all 
 others narrow and absurd ; but though they appear to win 
 the suffrage of the subtle Intellect, the great Heart of Hu 
 manity refuses to be thus guided nay, insists on impelling 
 the entire social machinery in an exactly opposite direction. 
 The wide and wider diffusion of a public provision for 
 General Education and for the support of the destitute 
 Poor inefficient as each may thus far have been; is of 
 itself a striking instance of the triumph of a more benignant 
 principle over that of Laisscz faired The inquiries, so 
 vigorously and beneficently prosecuted in our day, into the 
 Moral and Physical, Intellectual and Social condition of the 
 depressed Laboring Classes, of Great Britain especially 
 of her Factory Operatives, Colliers, Miners, Silk-Weavers, 
 &c. &c., and the beneficent results which have followed 
 them, abundantly prove that, for Governments no less than 
 Communities, any consistent following of the Let us alone 
 principle, is not merely a criminal dereliction from duty 
 it is henceforth utterly impossible. Governments must be 
 impelled by a profound and wakeful regard for the common 
 interests of the People over whom they exercise authority, 
 or they will not be tolerated. It is not enough that they 
 repress violence and outrage as speedily as they can ; this 
 affords no real security, even to those exposed to wrong 
 doing : they must search out the causes of evil, the influ 
 ences which impel to its perpetration, and labor zealously to 
 effect their removal, They might reenact the bloody code 
 of Draco, and cover the whole land with fruitful gibbets, 
 yet, with a People destitute of Morality and Bread nay, 
 destitute of the former alone they could not prevent the 
 iteration of every crime which a depraved imagination might 
 suggest. That theory of Government which affirms the 
 power to punish, yet in effect denies the right to prevent 
 evil, will be found as defective in its Economical inculca- 
 
250 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 tions as in its relations to the Moral and Intellectual wants 
 of Mankind. 
 
 The great principle that the Laborer has a Right of Prop 
 erty in that which constitutes his only means of subsistence, 
 is one which can not be too broadly affirmed nor too earnestly 
 insisted on. A man s trade is his estate ; and with what 
 justice shall one-fourth of the community be deprived of 
 their means of subsistence in order that the larger number 
 may fare a little more sumptuously or obtain what they buy 
 a little more advantageously? The cavil at the abuse of 
 this principle to obstruct the adoption of all labor-saving 
 machinery, etc., does not touch the vitality of the principle 
 itself. All Property, in a justly constituted state, is held 
 subject to the right of Eminent Domain residing in the 
 State itself; when the public good requires that it should 
 be taken for public uses, the individual right must give way. 
 But suppose it were practicable to introduce to-morrow the 
 products of foreign needle-work, for instance, at such prices 
 as to supplant utterly garments made by our own country 
 women, and thereby deprive them entirely of this resource 
 for a livelihood would it be morally right to do this? 
 Admit that the direct cost of the fabrics required would be 
 considerably less, should we be justified in reducing a nu 
 merous and worthy class, already so meagerly rewarded, to 
 absolute wretchedness and pauperism ? It does not seem 
 that an affirmative answer can deliberately proceed from any 
 generous heart. 
 
 I am not forgetting that Free Trade asserts that the 
 necessary consequence of such rejection of the Domestic in 
 favor of a cheaper Foreign production would be to benefit 
 our whole People, the displaced work-women included ! 
 that these would, by inevitable consequence, be absorbed 
 in other and more productive employments. I am only 
 remembering that facts, bold as the Andes and numerous as 
 forest-leaves, confront and refute this assumption. To say 
 
LABOR S POLITICAL ECONOMY. 251 
 
 nothing of the many instances in our own country s expe 
 rience, where the throwing out of employment of a whole 
 class of our citizens, owing to the overwhelming influx of 
 Foreign fabrics rivaling theirs, has been followed, not by 
 an increased but a diminished demand and reward for labor 
 in other avocations, I need but refer to the notorious in 
 stance already cited that of the destruction of the Hand- 
 Loom Manufactures of India through the introduction of 
 the cheaper product of the English power-looms. Not only 
 were the Hand-Loom Weavers themselves reduced to beg 
 gary and starvation by the change no demand whatever 
 for their labor arising to take the place of that which had 
 been destroyed but other classes were inevitably involved 
 in their calamity, while none in India realized any percep 
 tible benefit unless it were a very few merchant princes, 
 who fed and fattened on the misery and starvation of mil 
 lions of their doomed countrymen. 
 
 And here, as everywhere, it is observable that no indi 
 vidual action could have arrested the mighty evil. If every 
 person intelligent enough to perceive the consequences of 
 encouraging the Foreign instead of the Domestic fabric had 
 early and resolutely resolved never to use any but the latter, 
 and had scrupulously persevered in the course so resolved 
 on, what would it have effected ? Nothing. It w r ould have 
 been but a drop in the bucket. But an independent Gov 
 ernment of India, with intelligence to understand and virtue 
 to discharge its duties to the People under its protecting 
 care, would have promptly met the Foreign fabric with an 
 import duty sufficient to prevent its general introduction, at 
 the same time prompting, if needful, and lending every aid to 
 the exertions of its own manufacturers to imitate the labor- 
 saving machinery and processes by which the foreigner was 
 enabled to undersell the home-producer of cotton fabrics on 
 the very soil to which the cotton-plant was indigenous, and 
 from which the fibre was gathered for the English market. 
 
252 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 Such a Government would have perceived that, in the ver$ 
 nature of things, it could not be permanently advantageous 
 to the great working mass of either People that the Cotton 
 should be collected and transported from the plains of India 
 about twice the diameter of the globe to England, there fab 
 ricated into cloths, and thence, at some two years end, be 
 found diffused again over those very plains of India, to clothe 
 its original producers. Obviously, here is an enormous 
 waste of time and labor to no end of general beneficence 
 a waste which would be avoided by planting and fostering 
 to perfection the manufacture of the Cotton on the soil where 
 it grew and among the People who produced and must con 
 sume it. This policy would be prosecuted in no spirit of 
 envy or hostility to the English manufacture very far from 
 it but in perfect conformity to the dictates of universal as 
 well as national well-being. The cost of these two im 
 mense voyages, and the commercial complications which 
 they involve, though falling unequally on the Agricultural 
 and the Manufacturing community respectively, yet fall in 
 some measure on the latter as well as the former ; they inevi 
 tably diminish the intrinsic reward of Labor on either side 
 and increase the mischances which affect the steadiness of 
 demand for that Labor and intercept that reward. Protec 
 tion, as we have seen in considering the argument of cheap 
 ness, must increase the actual reward of both classes of pro 
 ducers, by diminishing the number of non-producers and 
 the amount of their subtraction, as such, from the aggregate 
 produced. Yet this is the policy stigmatized by the self- 
 styled liberal and enlightened Political Economists as nar 
 row and partial! as looking only to local and regardless 
 of general good ! 
 
 The Moral effects of Protection, as resulting in a more 
 intimate relation and a more symmetrical proportion between 
 the various departments of Industry, can not be too strongly 
 insisted on. Capital, under the present system of Society, 
 
LABOR S POLITICAL ECONONV. 253 
 
 has a natural tendency to centralization ; and the manufac 
 ture of all light and costly fabrics, especially if their cheap 
 fabrication involves the employment of considerable capital, 
 is subject to a similar law. With universal Free Trade, 
 those countries which are now foremost in Manufactures, 
 especially if they at the same time possess (as is the case) 
 a preponderance in Capital also, \vill retain and extend that 
 ascendancy for an indefinite period. They will seem to 
 afford the finer fabrics cheaper than they can be elsewhere 
 produced ; they will at any rate crush with ease all daring 
 attempts to rival them in the production. That this seem 
 ing cheapness will be wholly deceptive we have already 
 seen, but that is not to our present purpose. The tendency 
 of Free Trade is to confine Agriculture and Manufactures 
 to different spheres ; to make of one country or section a 
 Cotton plantation ; of another a Wheat field ; of a third a 
 vast Sugar estate ; of a fourth an immense Manufactory, &c. 
 &c. One inevitable effect of this is to render the Laborer 
 moie dependent on the Capitalist or Employer than he other 
 wise would be ; to make the subsistence of whole classes 
 depend on the caprices of Trade the endurance of For 
 eign prosperity and the steadiness of Foreign tastes. The 
 number of hirelings must be vastly greater under this policy 
 than that which brings the Farmer, the Manufacturer, the 
 Artisan, into immediate vicinage and daily contact with each 
 other, and enables them to interchange their products in 
 good part without invoking the agency of any third party, 
 and generally without being taxed on whatever they con 
 sume to defray the expense of vast transportation and of the 
 infinite complications of Trade. A Country or extensive 
 District whose product is mainly exported can rarely or 
 never boast a substantial, intelligent and virtuous Yeomanry : 
 the condition of the Laborer is too precarious and depend 
 ent his average reward too meager. It may have wealthy 
 Capitalists and Merchants, but never a numerous Middle 
 
 99 
 
254 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 Class, nor a flourishing, increasing proportion of small but 
 independent proprietors. The fluctuations of supply and 
 demand soon reduce all but the few to the dead level of in 
 digence and a precarious dependence on wages for a sub 
 sistence, unless prevented by absolute and undisguised 
 Slavery. 
 
 But not alone in its influences on the pecuniary condition 
 and physical comforts of the mass is the state of things pro 
 duced by Free Trade conducive to their Social degradation. 
 The external influences by which they are visibly surrounded 
 are likewise adverse to their Intellectual development and 
 Moral culture. The Industry of a People is, to a far 
 greater extent than has been imagined, an integral and im 
 portant part of its Education. The child whose infancy is 
 passed amidst the activity of a diversified Industry who 
 sees the various processes of Agriculture, Manufactures, 
 Art, in progress all around him, will be drawn out to a clearer 
 and larger maturity of intellect a greater fullness of be 
 ing will be more certain to discover and adopt his own 
 proper function in life his sphere of highest possible use 
 fulness than one whose early years are passed in famili 
 arity with the narrower range of exertion which any one 
 branch of industry can afford. Foreign as this considera 
 tion may be to the usual range of Economic Science, it is 
 too vitally important to be disregarded. 
 
 I can not assent to the vital proposition so generally as 
 sumed as self-evident by the Free-Trade Economists that 
 the ability to give employment to Labor is always in pro 
 portion to the amount of Capital, and that the increase of 
 Capital as compared with Population necessarily leads to an 
 increase of Wages. I will not deny that such ought to le 
 the result in a perfect state of Society ; that it is the result is 
 plainly contradicted by glaring facts. The French Revolu 
 tion diminished greatly the aggregate of Property in France 
 as compared with its Population, yet the average rewards of 
 
LABOR S POLITICAL ECONOMY. 255 
 
 Labor were enhanced thereby. The amount of Capital as 
 compared to Population is less in America than in England, 
 yet the rewards of Labor are here higher. On the contrary, 
 there are many instances where the Wealth of a People has 
 increased, yet the condition and rewards of its Laborers, 
 with the demand for Labor, have receded. Political Econ 
 omy has yet to take to itself a broader field than that of 
 discovering the means whereby the aggregate Wealth of a na 
 tion may be increased ; it must consider also how its Labor 
 may be most fully and equally rewarded, and by what means 
 the largest proportion of the aggregate increase of wealth 
 and comforts may be secured to those who have produced 
 them. 
 
 I am not unaware that at present the current of opinion on 
 this subject sets, or seems to set, against me that the dead 
 fish all float that way. I realize that the great majority of 
 Authors and Professors who treat of Political Economy are 
 Free Traders that their writings are admired and com 
 mended as liberal, beneficent and of immutable soundness, 
 while ours of the contrary part are derided as narrow, partial, 
 and impelled by a transient or selfish expediency. I perceive 
 that the paramount tendency of our time is toward Adven 
 ture and Speculation that the great mass of the educated 
 and intellectual are making haste to be rich, and generally by 
 buying and selling other men s labor or its fruits rather than 
 by laboring assiduously themselves. Commerce and Im 
 portation amass fortunes, and enrich the great journals 
 with lucrative advertising, and found professorships, and 
 fashion the public sentiment of the comfortable class with 
 regard to Labor, its position, and requirements. I see that 
 the very progress hitherto made in the Useful Arts under the 
 shelter of Protective Duties, the progress still making by 
 virtue of the impulse thus given, may render the existence 
 of decided and stringent Protection less vitally, obviously 
 necessary than it was in the infancy of our Country and her 
 
256 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 Industry. Yet I see, too, that we who stand for Protection 
 read, study, and endeavor to understand both sides of the 
 question are familiar with our adversaries arguments, have 
 considered them, and think we see why and wherein they 
 are mistaken and inconclusive, while they habitually treat our 
 arguments with studied contempt or with a radical miscon 
 ception which argues gross ignorance or inattention. I can 
 not doubt that this country is now losing many millions per 
 annum for want of a more efficient and systematic Pro 
 tection of its Industry, though some articles are really, others 
 partially protected by it, and that our Labor is receiving in 
 the average at least one-eighth less than it would be under 
 a thoroughly Protective Tariff, while hundreds of thousands 
 stand idle and earn nothing whom that Tariff would amply 
 employ and adequately reward. So believing, I can not but 
 hope that time, and discussion, and contemplation, and the 
 cooling down of party asperities, and the progress of events, 
 will work a silent but thorough revolution in our National 
 
 O 
 
 Councils and that the adequate and comprehensive Pro 
 tection of Industry will again be regarded by legislators and 
 people as among the most urgent, essential, and beneficent 
 duties of the Federal Government. 
 
ALCOHOL AND ITS EFFECTS. 257 
 
 IX. 
 
 ALCOHOLIC LIQUORS: 
 
 THEIR ESSENTIAL NATURE AND NECESSARY EFFECTS ON 
 THE HUMAN CONSTITUTION.* 
 
 ALCOHOL is a peculiar combination of Hydrogen, Oxygen 
 and Carbon. It is a compound unknown to Nature, but 
 evolved by art from certain vegetable substances in a pecu 
 liar stage of dissolution. The first step toward producing 
 Alcohol is the death of the Grain or Fruit destined to yield 
 it. When the life of any organic substance is destroyed, 
 that substance tends by a law of the universe to decay and 
 dissolution. More accurately, with the cessation of organic 
 life the laws of vitality, by which the peculiar assimilation 
 of elements forming the Grape, the Apple, the berry of 
 Wheat or Rye, was created and sustained, now lose their 
 power over this matter, and the opposite laws of chemical 
 affinity take effect upon it, causing its several constituents to 
 enter into new combinations with each other and with other 
 substances wherewith they are brought in contact by the ac 
 tion of air, water, and otherwise. Thus the Sugar, which, 
 in the form of Starch or Gluten, forms one of the bases of 
 certain Grains and Fruits, is dissolved in an early stage of 
 the process of decay, and, combining with other substances, 
 ferments, or effervesces, and enters upon the stage known as 
 
 * Prepared by request of the NATIONAL DIVISION OF THE SONS OF TEMPE 
 RANCE, and published under the direction of a Committee appointed at the Session 
 of May, 1849. 
 
 99* 
 
258 HINTS TOWARD REFORM. 
 
 that of Vinous Fermentation. In this stage Alcohol is pro 
 duced, a fiery, volatile, nearly transparent liquid, which, 
 imbibed by itself, is a most undoubted and deadly poison to 
 mankind, as well as to nearly or quite every animal consti 
 tution. Had Alcohol been originally and uniformly pro 
 duced and imbibed independently of other fluids, there can 
 be no question that it would have been recognized and 
 shunned as a bane deadly as any other vegetable poison. 
 
 But Alcohol does not naturally manifest itself indepen 
 dently of other substances. The water which forms so large a 
 proportion of the Grape, the Apple, the Peach, the Potato, 
 and which must be commingled with the Grains in order to 
 produce the Vinous Fermentation, remains combined with 
 the Alcohol after the fermentation has produced it. Some 
 small portion also of the other constituents of the original 
 organic substance are held in solution or chemical combina 
 tion by their affinities with the Water or Alcohol, or both uni 
 ted. Indeed, it was not till the ninth century that Alcohol was 
 separated and recognized as a distinct substance by an Ara 
 bian chemist. Fermentation has been very generally practised, 
 more or less rudely, from a very early age, and Alcoholic 
 beverages of course produced ; and Intoxication just as nat 
 urally followed ; how or why seems to have been scarcely 
 considered. But the Arabian s discovery induced or blended 
 with the art of Distillation. Thenceforward, Alcoholic Spir 
 its, more or less pure, began to find a place in the bottles 
 of the apothecary, and, in minute quantities, among the 
 physician s prescriptions. It was not till the sixteenth cen 
 tury, however, that Distilled Liquors began to be commonly 
 used as a beverage or stimulant by persons in health. 
 
 Distillation is a more potent process, superinduced on 
 Fermentation, rendering its liquid product more fiery, acrid 
 and stimulating. In other words, it is the art of reducing 
 the proportion of Water, &c. and increasing that of Alcohol 
 in a given quantity of the stimulating fluid. Of the earlier 
 
ALCOHOL AND ITS EFFECTS. 259 
 
 stimulants, Ale and Porter contain but one-twenty-fifth of 
 Alcohol, and Palm Wine one-twentieth ; Cider, Perry, El 
 der and some of the milder Grape Wines about one-tenth. 
 [It can hardly be necessary here to remark that none of 
 these contain Alcohol nor any principle of Intoxication until 
 they have fermented or worked, as the cider-makers say, 
 and that many if not most of the ancient Wines were drank 
 unfermented. That these were known to the Hebrews by a 
 different word from that used to designate Alcoholic or fer 
 mented Wines has been fully shown by recent critical inves 
 tigations, and the seeming contradiction between those pas 
 sages of Scripture which mention approvingly and those 
 which severely condemn Wine, is thus shown to be no con 
 tradiction at all. In the one case, a mild, harmless, palatable 
 beverage, which cheereth god and man ; in the other a 
 raging mocker, a heating, corrupting, infuriating poison, 
 was indicated. Those who have any doubt on this subject 
 may dissipate it by consulting Bacchus, Anti-Bacchus, 
 E. C. Delavan s essays, and other elaborate treatises in ex 
 position and defense of Total Abstinence.] 
 
 The difference between Fermented and Distilled Liquors 
 is one purely of degree. Alcohol, the intoxicating and poi 
 sonous quality, is precisely the same in the two, but there is 
 more of it in an equal quantity of the Distilled spirit. While 
 the different kinds of Beer contain from one-twenty-fifth up 
 to one-fourteenth of Alcohol, and the Fermented Grape 
 Wines from one-tenth to one-fourth, the Distilled Liquors 
 known as Brandy, Rum, Gin, &c. are generally a little more 
 than half Alcohol. Sometimes they are reduced far below 
 this standard by the introduction of Water to increase the 
 seller s profits ; but this is very unlikely to diminish their 
 poisonous properties, because the diminution of strength, 
 improperly so called, must be disguised by the infusion of 
 drugs, often as poisonous as Alcohol and sometimes more 
 concentrated. Whisky, for example, generally commands 
 
260 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 from twenty to twenty-five cents per gallon at wholesale in 
 this City, yet it is known that what passes for Whisky (and 
 often for Gin, Brandy and Rum as well,) in the lowest 
 haunts of dissipation among us, is so concocted and doc 
 tored as to cost its manufacturers but fourteen cents per 
 gallon. The vile and baleful ingredients employed to con 
 ceal the infusion of so much water as will reduce the cost 
 per gallon to this standard are such as, if fully exposed, 
 would utterly shock credibility. 
 
 They greatly mistake who in this country hope to live 
 longer by drinking Wines or Malt Liquors than they would 
 expect to if addicted instead to Distilled Spirits. True, 
 there is less Alcohol in the same quantity of the Fermented 
 beverages, but the same quantity will not content them. De 
 ceive themselves as they may, it is the Alcoholic stimulus 
 that their depraved appetites exact, aud, if indulged at all, 
 they will be indulged to the constantly receding point of sat 
 isfaction. The single glass of Wine or Beer per day which 
 sufficed at the beginning, will soon be enlarged or repeated. 
 It was enough to start the blood into a gallop yesterday, but 
 falls short to-day, and will not begin to do to-morrow. And, 
 even were the fact otherwise, the Wines and Malt Liquors 
 drank in this country are nearly all so adulterated that drink 
 ing them would be foolhardy even if those liquids, when 
 pure, were naturally wholesome instead of being the poisons 
 they are known to be. White Lead, Red Lead, (Litharge,) 
 Copperas, Sugar of Lead, Rhatany, Logwood, Alum, Elder- 
 Berries, Opium, Henbane, Quassia, Aloes, Tobacco, Nux 
 Vomica, Oil of Vitriol, Coculus Indicus, Grains of Paradise, 
 and even Arsenic, beside many comparatively harmless in 
 gredients, are all in current use among the preparers of 
 Wines, Malt and Distilled Liquors for consumption. Few 
 of the Wines drank out of the wine-producing districts are 
 even comparatively pure, while nine-tenths of the liquids im 
 bibed by the drinkers of this country never smelt of a grape. 
 
ALCOHOL AND ITS EFFECTS. 261 
 
 Even in the Wine-producing districts of France and Ger 
 many, there have been formidable and fatal epidemics, ra 
 ging through a lifetime, caused solely by the adulteration of 
 wines with lead. So with Cider in England and Rum in 
 Jamaica, in the very regions where these beverages were 
 respectively produced. Lead Colic is a well known dis 
 ease, whereof drinking drugged liquors is the source. The 
 facts here stated do not rest upon anti-Alcoholic authority. 
 In the standard Vintners Guides, Brewers Manuals, &c. 
 you will find directions for correcting acidity, producing 
 paleness, clearness, briskness, body, color, bead, &c. by 
 the use of the notoriously poisonous substances above 
 enumerated. Sometimes the reader is warned against 
 liquors so drugged, or the practice of using such deadly 
 poisons is condemned and less objectionable substitutes are 
 suggested ; but the manufacturers take the hint. British 
 Custom-house returns show indisputably that the use of Nux 
 Vomica, Coculus Indicus, &c. has rapidly increased of late 
 in England, as it doubtless has also in this and other civil 
 ized countries. Nine-tenths of these poisons are consumed 
 in the form of drugged liquors, and that alone. The British 
 Channel Islands are not subject to the British Tariff of 
 Duties, and are consequently places of deposit for wines des 
 tined for British consumption, which the dealers choose to 
 have within easy reach, while they defer the payment of 
 duties as long as practicable. The official returns show that 
 for every pipe of wine imported into those islands some ten 
 or twelve pipes are in due season exported thence to London. 
 It is the same the world over, save that the farther the 
 liquors are transported the greater is their probable adulter 
 ation. In Southern Europe, half the wines consumed may 
 contain no other poison than the Alcohol ; but in more 
 Northern countries, it is not probable that one-fourth are 
 thus uncorrupted ; while in America not one bottle in ten is 
 free from gross adulteration. Our home-made Whisky, 
 
262 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 New Rum, &c. is a little better ; our Porter, Ale and other 
 Malt Liquors generally worse. Adulteration with regard to 
 these is the law ; purity the exception. Of Liquors osten 
 sibly imported, observing, experienced drinkers habitually 
 observe that they grow worse as you recede from the sea 
 board, so that the pretended French Brandy, Holland Gin or 
 Jamaica Rum which is a tolerable imitation of the genuine in 
 New- York or Boston, becomes one-fourth Whisky and drug at 
 Albany to Syracuse, half ditto thence to Buffalo, three-fourths 
 ditto to Chicago and Milwaukee, beyond which points it is 
 difficult to detect the flavor of the genuine article at all. Now, 
 while this fact does not necessarily imply the pernicious 
 character of Alcohol, it does show that the use of Alcoholic 
 Liquors is pernicious and perilous. If we waive altogether 
 the proof that Alcohol is essentially a poison, the fact that it 
 is habitually mingled in beverages, with ingredients whose 
 poisonous qualities no man ever disputed, should induce us 
 to let it carefully alone. Partridges are naturally wholesome 
 and savory ; but they sometimes eat obnoxious berries which 
 render their flesh a poison. When it is known that some 
 of them have done so in any locality, the eating of partridges 
 in that locality is at once desisted from by all but the grossly 
 ignorant or stupid ; and if it shall ever become a habit with 
 these birds to eat the poisonous berries freely and generally, 
 so that their bodies shall be usually poisonous, who can 
 doubt that their flesh will be generally rejected and uneaten? 
 In nothing else do sensible, moral, intelligent men act so 
 irrationally as when they persist in the habitual use of Alco 
 holic Liquors. 
 
 The first production of Alcoholic Liquids was doubtless 
 accidental caused by the spontaneous fermentation of 
 Grape-juice, Milk, or Grain, under peculiar circumstances, 
 finally evolving a fiery, transparent fluid. (When we term 
 Alcohol an unnatural product, we simply place it in the same 
 category with carrion, malformations, idiots, &c. which are 
 
ALCOHOL AND ITS EFFECTS. 263 
 
 not produced in the regular and healthy course of Nature, 
 but evidence her defeat and disappointment.) Ten thousand 
 times this phenomenon may have occurred unnoted, before 
 some stern necessity of thirst, faintness, and destitution in 
 duced some one to imbibe cautiously of the product, in spite 
 of the reluctance aod revolt of the senses. The effect was 
 immediate and palpable elasticity, energy, courage, in- 
 vigoration, the first pair and the apple over again. The 
 depression, prostration, and pain came afterward, and could 
 be forgotten or referred to some other cause. If the first bold 
 experimenter in Alcohol did not choose to repeat the dose, 
 the second, the fifth, or the tenth was doubtless less wise. 
 It crept gradually into use first, as a medicine or wonder 
 ful elixir, capable of curing almost any disease ; and very 
 soon repaid the confidence reposed in it by creating many 
 new disorders and aggravating those previously known. 
 While it may have been medically employed in some cases 
 with effect, it has unquestionably created a thousand pains 
 where it ever removed one, and caused more deaths than all 
 the medicines on earth have postponed or prevented. 
 
 Throw a fierce bloodhound into the cage of a young 
 leopard or tiger, and, although neither ever before saw an 
 animal of the other s species, each instantly, instinctively 
 recognizes the presence of a deadly foe. Each summons 
 every energy for the imminent and deadly encounter, places 
 himself in his best attitude, rallies all his strength, quickens 
 his circulation bristles up, as we say. He is more 
 strongly nerved, resolute, formidable now than he was a 
 minute since, precisely because he feels himself confronted 
 by an implacable enemy, before whom to quail is immediate 
 death. 
 
 So with the use of Alcohol. A man swallows a glass of 
 Alcoholic Spirits his first. At once his whole vital economy 
 recognizes the presence of an unnatural intruder a deadly 
 enemy. The stomach, disturbed in all its functions, savs, 
 
264 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 You must not stop here I can not digest you and 
 throws it off upon the liver, which repels it as peremptorily, 
 and thrusts it toward the heart, which with like emphasis 
 repels it. It is thus hurried from one to another of the vital 
 organs, and repulsed by them all ; but the necessity for 
 disposing of it is pressingly imperative, a,nd it is expelled in 
 one way or another partly through the kidneys, partly 
 through the lungs, and partly through the pores of the skin. 
 Unless the outrage be repeated, a short time sees the enemy 
 banished, but only through an extraordinary exertion, an un 
 natural activity of all the vital forces. The pulse bounds, 
 the blood gallops, the heart quickens its movements, and 
 even the endangered brain is goaded to unwonted exertion. 
 Of all these exhausting efforts, the mind perceives only the 
 impulse, the exhilaration. The happy neophyte almost walks 
 on air he feels richer, more generous, and of more conse 
 quence than hitherto he has a great mind to give somebody 
 a fortune. (The illusive exhalation produced by opium and 
 some other poisons is known to be even more intellectual 
 and ethereal than that produced by Alcoholic Liquors.) But 
 all this elevation of spirits is not really created by the stim 
 ulus it is simply so much vivacity and elation of spirits 
 borrowed at ruinous usury, and of which payment is sure to 
 be demanded to-morrow. To-morrow comes, and the 
 demand with it ; but the debauched consciousness fails to 
 attribute the intolerable exhaustion and depression to its real 
 cause. When the liquor was present, and potent, it per 
 versely reasons, all was better than usual ; but, now that it 
 is gone, I feel horribly. Take more, chimes in the de 
 praved appetite, and the counsel is deferred to. More is 
 taken, and momentary relief thereby secured, by means 
 which shall necessitate a still more abject prostration on the 
 morrow, which will require a still stronger potion to over 
 come it. And thus the blind victim goes on, cherishing the 
 adder which daily stings him, and fancying he is revived and 
 
ALCOHOL AND ITS EFFECTS. 265 
 
 upheld by that which is constantly depressing and destroy 
 ing him. 
 
 But it is said that very many drink moderately and 
 guardedly through a long course of years, preserving to old 
 age a sound constitution and vigorous intellect, which could 
 not be the case if the natural effects of Alcoholic Drinks 
 were such as has been depicted. 
 
 Now that some men live long in spite of moderate drinking 
 no more proves that practice safe and healthful than the fact 
 that some soldiers who fought through all Napoleon s wars 
 are still alive proves fighting a vocation conducive to 
 longevity. That some persist in drinking without drinking 
 immoderately is true ; but the natural tendency of drinking 
 at all is nevertheless from less to more, and from more to in 
 disputable excess. There are many vices of which the 
 natural, obvious penalty is not inflicted on every one who 
 commits them, yet no man doubts the connection between the 
 sin and the punishment. Some men steal so moderately 
 and slily that they are never detected by man ; yet no one 
 doubts that stealing is a crime, and that every crime meets 
 its proper punishment. That some men drink liquors yet do 
 not die drunkards is true, as it also is that some habitual 
 drunkards live to old age ; and yet it is none the less true 
 that drinking leads to drunkenness, and drunkenness shortens 
 life. The laws of the universe are vindicated alike by their 
 usual consequences and the apparent exceptions. There 
 may be men who began to drink one glass of liquor per day 
 forty years ago, and whom one glass per day still suffices ; 
 but if so they are exceptions to a law almost universally 
 vindicated ; and it is safe to assume of them that a less 
 amount of self-denial than was requisite to keep their allow 
 ance down to one glass per day would have preserved them 
 from drinking at all. And if any moderate drinker of forty 
 years standing will recall to mind the subsequent career of 
 the fifteen or twenty associates in whose company he began 
 23 
 
266 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 to drink, he will, if well informed and candid, admit that 
 seven-eighths of them are now dead, and that full three- 
 fourths, whether now living or dead, have been seriously 
 injured by drinking. 
 
 If what has been said of the nature and essential properties 
 of Alcoholic Liquors be correct, there can be no such thing 
 as a temperate or moderate use of them as beverages. No 
 man in the enjoyment of health and vigor can need such 
 beverages nor innocently imbibe them, whether in large or 
 small quantities. The whole controversy properly hinges 
 on this question < Is Alcohol naturally a poison to the 
 human constitution ? If the proper answer be Yes, then it 
 can never be innocently and safely imbibed, except where it 
 is medically prescribed as an antidote to some still more 
 dangerous and deadly evil which it is calculated to dislodge. 
 If Alcohol be naturally a poison to man, then there can be no 
 more temperate and innocent use of it as a beverage than 
 temperate forgery, adultery, or murder. Is Alcohol, then, 
 essentially a poison ? I have already expressed my own 
 conviction, which is that of the advocates of Total Absti 
 nence generally. I will proceed to quote a very few Medi 
 cal authorities in support of that conviction. I can not quote 
 one in a hundred, but I affirm that no candid, intelligent 
 adversary will deny that the great mass of the scientific and 
 able writers who have investigated and treated of the subject 
 concur substantially in the views here presented. 
 
 Sir Astley Cooper who has no superior as a British 
 Medical authority, observes : 
 
 " I never suffer Ardent Spirits in my house, thinking them evil spir 
 its ; and if the poor could witness the white livers, the dropsies, the 
 shattered nervous systems which I have seen, as the consequences of 
 drinking, they would be aware that spirits and poisons are synonymous 
 terms." 
 
 Dr. Wm. Beaumont, Surgeon in the U. S. Army, was 
 stationed at Mackinac, Lake Huron, in 1822, when Alexis 
 
ALCOHOL AND ITS EFFECTS. 057 
 
 St. Martin, a robust French Canadian eighteen years of age, 
 was severely wounded in his side by the accidental discharge 
 of a musket within a yard of him, whereby part of a rib and 
 a large portion of his side were blown off, lacerating one of 
 his lungs and perforating his stomach. His life was never 
 theless saved, and the wound was healed but not closed ; the 
 stomach finally forming a sort of fold or overlap, which pre 
 vented any exudation of its contents through that orifice, but 
 did not, forbid the introduction nor withdrawal of nutritive 
 substances by way of it ; nor did such operation occasion 
 any pain. The whole process of digestion was thence ob 
 served and experimented upon by Dr. Beaumont, just as 
 plainly as you may observe the working of bees in a glass 
 hive. The time required for the digestion of any substance 
 eaten by St. Martin ; the effects of various combinations of 
 food or of different liquids with any one or more of them ; the 
 diseases of the stomach and their causes all were watched 
 and the results noted through a series of years. Dr. Beau 
 mont s book is purely scientific ; it has no theory to estab 
 lish, no party nor school to subserve ; it simply details his 
 experiments and observations and draws the obvious de 
 ductions therefrom. St. Martin frequently drank Alcoholic 
 Liquors, though not what is called intemperately, and this is 
 Dr. Beaumont s statement of the consequences of such drink 
 ing observed by him : 
 
 " The mucous membrane of the stomach was covered with inflam 
 matory and ulcerous patches ; the secretions were vitiated, and the 
 gastric juice diminished in quantity, and of an unnatural viscidity ; yet 
 he described himself as perfectly well and complained of nothing. Two 
 days subsequent to this, the inner membrane of the stomach was 
 unusually morbid, the inflammatory appearance more extensive, the 
 spots more livid than usual ; from the surface some of them exuded 
 small drops of grumous blood ; the ulcerous patches were larger and 
 more numerous ; the mucous covering thicker than usual, and the 
 gastric secretions much more vitiated. The gastric fluids extracted 
 were mixed with a large proportion of thick, ropy mucus, and a con- 
 
268 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 siderable rauco-purulent discharge, slightly tinged with blood, resem 
 bling discharges from the bowels in some cases of dysentery. Yet, 
 notwithstanding this diseased appearance of the stomach, no very essen 
 tial aberration of its functions was manifested. St. Martin complained 
 of no symptoms indicating any general derangement of the system, 
 except an uneasy sensation and tenderness at the pit of the stomach, 
 and some vertigo, with dimness and yellowness of vision, on stooping 
 down and rising up again." 
 
 Dr. Beaumont farther remarks that 
 
 " The free use of Ardent Spirits, Wine, Beer, or any other in 
 toxicating liquor, when continued for some days, has invariably pro 
 duced these changes The use of Ardent Spirits always produces 
 
 disease of the stomach if persevered in," &c. &c. 
 
 Is there on the face of the earth any tangible evidence in 
 conflict with this testimony ? I know of none. 
 
 Dr. Muzzy, an eminent American physiologist, says : 
 
 " That Alcohol is a poison to our organization is evident from 
 
 observation "What is poison? It is that substance, in whatever 
 
 form it may be, which, when applied to a living surface, disconcerts 
 life s healthy movements. * * * * Such a poison is Alcohol ; such in 
 all its forms, mix it as you may. It is never digested and converted 
 into nourishment. 
 
 Dr. Dods, an eminent English physician, being called 
 before a Committee of the House of Commons, testified 
 as follows : 
 
 * Writers on Medical Jurisprudence rank Alcohol among narcotic- 
 acrid poisons," of which " small quantities, if repeated, always prove 
 more or less injurious," and that " the morbid appearances seen after 
 death occasioned by Ardent Spirits exactly agree with those which re 
 sult from poisoning caused by any other substance of the same class." 
 
 Dr. Dods, in the course of his testimony, farther says : 
 
 " The effects of Alcohol on the blood-vessels seems to be two-fold 
 increased excitement and contraction in the diameter of the vessels ; 
 this tends to produce enlargement in some parts of the blood-vessels, 
 or effusion, should their coats give way at any part of their course 
 
ALCOHOL AND ITS EFFECTS. 269 
 
 Diseased deposits are frequently formed where a branch is given off, 
 or in some wider portion of the blood-vessels, which give rise to the 
 most painful symptoms, such as are common in gout or rheumatism." 
 
 It would be as easy to multiply quotations of similar pur 
 port far easier than to refrain. But to keep within the 
 necessary limit of a tract I am compelled to stop here. Let 
 the candid and reasonable drinker say whether he can safely 
 and innocently imbibe Alcholic beverages in any quantity. 
 
 How is it, asks a doubter, * if Alcohol be so poisonous, 
 that the best doctors often use it in their medical pre 
 scriptions ? The question implies ignorance in the querist 
 that other poisons, and indeed most poisons, are likewise 
 used as medicines, including the most deadly. Mercury, 
 Opium, Nightshade, Hemlock, Arsenic, and even Prussic 
 Acid, are in daily use by the ablest physicians for the cure 
 of human maladies, and, though often abused and misapplied, 
 there can be no doubt that each and all of them may be and 
 are prescribed by the experienced and skillful to remove 
 pain and preserve life. But who thence argues that these 
 articles may be harmlessly and beneficially swallowed by 
 men in health as their own fancy or depraved appetite may 
 prompt ? The laws of Health and those of Disease are so 
 different that the fact of a particular substance being useful 
 in certain stages or forms of disease, would rather argue its 
 unfitness to be profusely swallowed in health merely for the 
 sake of a sensual gratification. But I do not press that 
 argument. Suffice it that the fact of Alcohol s being some 
 times useful as a medicine does not and can not prove that 
 it, is innocent as a beverage. 
 
 I have aimed to demonstrate the physical evils of Tempe 
 rate Drinking (as it is improperly called, since no drinking 
 of liquids essentially poisonous for the sake of a sensual 
 /gratification can be truly Temperate) by other considerations 
 than those connected with Drunkenness. It is very true 
 that he who drinks, however moderately, is in danger of 
 13* 
 
270 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 dying a drunkard ; but if there were no such thing as drunk 
 enness it would still be most unwise and culpable to drink. 
 Indeed, it has been forcibly argued that the physical evils of 
 drinking would be greater if Drunkenness were unknown. 
 Inebriety dethrones the reason, often making of a naturally 
 inoffensive, good-natured man, a furious, raging fiend ; but 
 it does not originate the mischief it rather serves to expel 
 and finish it. It is the demoniac spirit tearing his victim 
 because commanded to come out of him. Thousands die 
 prematurely every year in consequence of drinking who never 
 were thoroughly drunk in their lives. One man drinks three 
 glasses and loses his reason ; another drinks six, or even ten, 
 and seems wholly unaffected. Men say of the latter, He 
 has a strong head ; and cigar-puffing, wine-bibbing young 
 sters are apt to envy him ; yet he is far more likely to die in 
 consequence of drinking than his neighbor whom three 
 glasses knock over. The former retains the poison in his 
 system, and it silently preys upon him : in the latter, Nature, 
 revolting at the deadly potion, makes a convulsive effort and 
 throws it off. He is damaged by the liquor, but not by its 
 ejectment, whatever he may fancy. Intoxication is a kindly 
 though ungentle ministration whose object is relief and re 
 covery. Drinking is not evil because it produces Intoxica 
 tion, but Intoxication is ordained to limit the physical evils 
 of Drinking. Let no free drinker, therefore, glory in his 
 ability to drink much without Intoxication ; for, in the natu 
 ral course of events, he will need his coffin much sooner 
 than if liquor easily overcame him. 
 
 If the propositions affirmed in this essay be true, how can 
 any youth read them and yet become or continue a drinker 
 of Alcoholic Liquors ? Banish, if you can, all thought of 
 God and His judgments forget or deny your immortality 
 deride the idea of restricting or qualifying your own grati 
 fication for the sake of kindred, friends, country or race 
 regard yourself merely as an animal that has happened here 
 
ALCOHOL AND ITS EFFECTS. 271 
 
 io sport a brief summer, then utterly perish and still is it 
 not a palpable mistake to drink anything that intoxicates ? 
 Why should it intoxicate if it be not essentially a poison ? 
 Is there any other substance claimed to be innocent and 
 wholesome in moderate quantities which drowns the reason 
 if the amount taken be increased ? Why seek enjoyment 
 in such a perilous and dubious way a path paved with the 
 bones of millions after millions who have fallen in pursuing 
 it when innocent and healthful pleasures everywhere sur 
 round and invite you ? Lived there ever a human being 
 who regretted at death that he had through life refrained from 
 the use of stimulating drinks ? and how countless the mil 
 lions who have with reason deplored such use as the primary, 
 fatal mistake of their lives ? Surely, from the radiant heavens 
 above us, the dust once quickened beneath us, conies to the 
 attentive ear a voice which impressively admonishes, BE 
 
 WISE WHILE IT IS CALLED To-DAY. 
 
 [NOTE The writer does not pretend to know anything on the subject of Tem 
 perance which others have not known and well said before him. He acknowledges 
 his obligations for ideas herein presented to Sylvester Graham, Rev. B. Parsons, 
 and several others, beside those he has expressly quoted in the foregoing pages.] 
 
272 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS, 
 
 X. 
 THE SOCIAL ARCHITECTS FOURIER. 
 
 A LECTURE. 
 
 BY the term Society I indicate that indefinite circle of 
 relations, usages, unwritten laws, duties, obligations, whereby 
 every human being is surrounded from birth to burial, the 
 hermit who flees from the face of his fellows and dwells be 
 yond the reach of human control or influence alone excepted. 
 Wherever two or more human beings exist, recognizing 
 some relations or duties to each other, there is Society. 
 
 Yet the Social Structure has varied from age to age and 
 from country to country. Its lowest form is probably that 
 exhibited in our own day by the savages of Australia and 
 some other isles of the Southern Ocean. Looking upon 
 this from our point of view, we can readily see that it is ex 
 ceedingly imperfect, and ill suited to promote the happiness 
 of the People living under it. The wandering, foraging, 
 hunting, fighting tribe which abandons its aged and decrepit 
 members to perish by famine, frost or the wolf, doubtless 
 conforms reluctantly to the dictates of a hard necessity. It 
 commits its burdensome members to such Aims-Houses as 
 it has. Our criticisms upon its conduct, which at first blush 
 appeared so unfeeling, must, if just, go behind the simple act 
 at which our humane feelings revolt. That was unavoid 
 able, except by preceding arrangements and provisions in 
 other words, by a better Social structure. To secure this 
 
THE SOCIAL ARCHITECTS. 273 
 
 must all wise efforts for the prevention of such tragedies be 
 directed. 
 
 Four distinct orders of Society, variously modified as they 
 are unfolded, one from another, have existed and now exist 
 on the earth the Patriarchal, the Savage, the Barbarian, 
 and the Civilized. Sacred History assures us that the Patri 
 archal is the oldest, and that while population was sparse 
 and Man s desires few and simple, it assured a moderate 
 degree of happiness to those who reposed in its shade. But 
 a Patriarchal Society is not formed to resist the rude shocks 
 of War nor to repress the effervescence of vehement passions. 
 The few possess and rule ; the many labor and obey. 
 Soon, laborers are more abundant than employment ; the 
 patriarch s people are " servants born in his household" 
 in other words, Slaves ; his sway is vigorous, his dispensa 
 tions of food and raiment scanty ; the aspiring, the turbu 
 lent, the criminal become fugitives or outcasts in large num 
 bers ; he is attacked and plundered by these or by the troops 
 of some marauding conqueror, and the Patriarchal System 
 is no more. The world outgrows it, as the son his father s 
 rule not always, it must be conceded, to his own advan 
 tage. But of the various orders of Society w r hich the world 
 has yet known, I need not farther speak. War, Conquest, 
 the subjection of Race to Race, and a general aversion to 
 Industry, are the proper characteristics of the Savage and 
 Barbarian eras, but Civilization has never yet been able to 
 rise above them. The fear of starvation is an inducement to 
 labor only less degrading than the dread of the lash. 
 
 Civilization, as manifested in the most favored Christian 
 countries, is unquestionably a great advance upon, as it is a 
 wide departure from, any Social order which had preceded 
 it. The brilliant sophisms of Rousseau and his school have 
 never really convinced any considerable number that the 
 well-being of mankind is to be sought in a return to the wig 
 wam and bark canoe of the Indian. Doubtless, the city has 
 
274 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 many vices, many diseases, many forms and occasions of 
 suffering, unknown to the simpler, hardier life of the savage. 
 But it has its enjoyments also pleasures of the Intellect and 
 the Soul which those who have once tasted them can never 
 willingly relinquish. We may look back with a sigh to the 
 simple joys of Childhood, yet we are rarely in earnest when 
 we wish we were children again. If to the feeble glimmer 
 ing of the stars has succeeded the indistinctness of the morn 
 ing twilight, we must not waste time in idle lamentations, 
 but look steadfastly upward and onward to the day. 
 
 The idea of a direct and systematic effort for the better 
 ordering of the Social relations of Men, is almost as old as 
 History. The Republic of Plato is its most ancient expres 
 sion now extant. In that remarkable essay of one of the 
 profoundest minds of antiquity, the critic detects the most 
 glaring incongruities. A vigorous maintenance of rank and 
 caste on the one hand, \vith an abolition of all individual 
 property and even of the ties of family on the other here 
 are conditions which could not possibly coexist for any con 
 siderable time. But the Republic, regarded in its proper 
 light as a protest against existing evils and the suggestion of 
 a comprehensive plan for Political and Social improvement, 
 has great worth. It was the remonstrance of a great and 
 pure soul against the usages founded in selfishness, injustice 
 and perverseness, by which the lives of a great majority of 
 the human family were made bitter. That it was not in all 
 respects worthy of acceptance is the fault not of the author 
 but of the age an additional evidence of the existence and 
 universality of the evils it exposes and combats. If each 
 succeeding philosopher whom the world has reverenced as a 
 teacher and a guide, had done but half so much as Plato to 
 promote it, a great Social revolution would ere this have 
 been accomplished. 
 
 But the world has been rarely blessed with a Plato. 
 Inquirers have found suggestions of a Social reconstruction, 
 
THE SOCIAL ARCHITECTS. 275 
 
 more or less earnest and thorough, in the writings of St. 
 Pierre, of Campanella, of Morelly, ofFenelon, of Rabelais, 
 of De Foe ; and manyothers might doubtless be added to 
 the list. 
 
 The Utopia 1 of Sir Thomas More deserves a separate 
 notice. As the production of an eminent as well as wise 
 and good man, a Lord Chancellor of England two centuries, 
 ago, and one who has made his mark legibly and brightly 
 on the Jurisprudence, as well as the literature of his eventful 
 age, * Utopia demands our earnest regard. Its simplicity 
 and beauty of style, its manliness of thought and benevolence 
 of spirit, have won it many admirers among those who 
 would have been most shocked at the idea of any practical 
 realization of its pictures of a better social system. 
 
 Utopia is depicted as a Republic, in which every exertion, 
 every impulse tends to and promotes the public good. All 
 Property is common, but every one labors a certain portion 
 of each day for the general weal, the hours of toil being 
 agreeably relieved by music and recreations. Innocent 
 pleasure is the general aspiration, and to secure the widest 
 possible enjoyment the object of the Political and Social 
 Institutions. The laws are few and simple, and the penal 
 ties of offences are mild, that of death being never inflicted. 
 The author says, what would hardly be expected from a 
 judge, save one in whom manhood was too strong to be 
 overpowered by any circumstance of position or official duty, 
 that as crimes spring oftener from the injustice and wrong 
 of Society than from the inherent depravity of the indi- 
 vidual, it is clearly our duty and our true policy to prevent 
 offences and reform offenders rather than hope to deter by 
 the severity of punishments. It is remarkable and would 
 seem not a little inconsistent that the author, while he 
 eschews individual property, yet tolerates Personal Slavery. 
 
 The last writer who need be noticed^in this class of 
 theoretical reconstructors of Society is Harrington, author 
 
276 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 of Oceana, who lived in the time of Cromwell. He, too, 
 depicts to us an imaginary Commonwealth, in which he 
 recasts Society for the sake of constituting a perfect Govern 
 ment. Power, he assumes, always follows the Land, and 
 so, in order to a proper distribution of power he ordains 
 an equal distribution of Property, though recognizing the 
 distinction of castes or orders in Society. 
 
 I may not linger over details. Let me remark, however, 
 that these speculators on the reconstruction of Society, from 
 Plato to Harrington, were not weak men ; they were not 
 fanatics ; they were not outlaws. They were among the 
 wisest and best men whose names have come down to us. 
 They were generally men held in high honor and entrusted 
 with power ; who, according to the vulgar estimate, had 
 everything to lose and nothing to gain by such changes as 
 they proposed. No conceivable motive for their inculcations 
 can be adduced, if we reject the hypothesis of a profound 
 conviction that the welfare of mankind imperatively demanded 
 some radical change. 
 
 I can not at all concur with those who in our day have 
 professed to find in these productions of lofty and generous 
 minds only the sportive sallies of lively and ardent imagin 
 ations mere castles in the air, intended but to amuse a 
 passing hour. Their authors I speak of those upon 
 whose works I have mainly dwelt were not novelists. 
 They were not writers for bread nor for popular applause. 
 They were grave statesmen, eminent sages, profound philos 
 ophers. Silence would to any one of them have been more 
 grateful, more joyous, more fruitful, than inditing romances 
 to dazzle coteries and win admiration from the empty and the 
 idle. I conclude, therefore, that each of them had a meaning 
 and a purpose, and that this purpose is clearly indicated 
 by the works themselves. Doubtless, the exposure and 
 demolition of some immediate practical errors of policy or 
 of habit some deforming accretion which long years of 
 
THE SOCIAL ARCHITECTS. 277 
 
 ignorance or vicious passion, of state-craft or priestcraft, had 
 built up, drop by drop, on the face of Society was aimed at, 
 as in the wilder fancies of the satirists and fabulists of their 
 times. Doubtless, if any one of them had been called upon 
 to establish at once, with such men and means as he saw 
 around him, such a Social condition as he had portrayed, he 
 would have wisely shrunk from the task. But I can not 
 doubt that each of these radiant minds was penetrated by the 
 conviction that the Social structure wherein they and all men 
 lived and struggled, and sinned and suffered, was in itself 
 radically vicious and wrong that it inevitably tended to 
 create the evils which all good men deplored and resisted, 
 and that a Social Order was possible in which these evils, if 
 not utterly abolished, should be greatly modified and 
 restrained, while happiness and purity should be immensely 
 increased and far more impartially distributed. To incite 
 men to seek for and obtain that better condition was the 
 motive by which they were impelled and directed. 
 
 The practical attempts to realize a better Social structure 
 are almost as old as the theoretical inculcations of its possibil 
 ity perhaps older. To speak of no other the Essenes of 
 the time of our Savior afford a well-known example. They 
 were a community of mild and simple ascetics, holding all 
 properly in common, discarding Marriage and living in pure 
 celibacy, refraining from War, and Oaths, and Slavery, and 
 bloodshedding on whatever pretense. They were in short 
 very much like the Shakers, so called, of our day, with 
 fewer prejudices and a deeper intellectual life. Their exist 
 ence was terminated by the stupendous calamities which 
 overwhelmed the Jewish People and scattered their remnant 
 over the face of the earth. 
 
 Perhaps the most satisfactory experiment of the power of 
 a true and heartfelt Religion to render practicable and en 
 during a more genial and trustful Society is that of the 
 Hernhutters or Moravians of Germany. Their example has 
 24 
 
278 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 fully demonstrated the feasibility of combining that univer 
 sal Philanthropy which spurns the thought of individual and 
 exclusive possessions with the natural sentiment of peculiar 
 love for family and kindred, so as to preserve and cherish 
 both. They, not rejecting but exalting the basis of the 
 family union, have demonstrated that true Marriage is loftier 
 and purer than Celibacy, and that to live truly and wholly 
 to God it needs not that we contravene or contemn any part 
 of the nature wherewith He has endowed. us. 
 
 I am not personally acquainted with the Moravians, and 
 know not w r hat changes may have been wrought in their 
 relations to each other by time, and personal ambition, and 
 the contagion of evil example. It may be that an intimate 
 knowledge of them might somewhat modify the admiration 
 which a general acquaintance with their history and their 
 character is calculated to excite. But, after making every 
 allowance, it seems to me that the Moravians are to Christen 
 dom a rebuke and an example, an incitement and a con 
 demnation. If men may live, have lived, a life of perfect 
 equality and brotherhood, why should any man be content 
 to live otherwise ? 
 
 With the Shakers, so nick-named, I have some personal 
 acquaintance, and I am not ashamed to own that I have been 
 instructed and cheered by them. They have never been 
 fairly appreciated by the world. Their utter condemnation 
 of Marriage and of Individual Property, their grotesque 
 ceremonials of Divine worship, and their incessant declama 
 tion against all departures from celibacy as impure and sin 
 ful, have repelled and disgusted nearly all who are not of 
 their own body. But might not a more expansive philoso 
 phy, a more liberal culture, discover in these very excesses 
 a moral worthy of the gravest attention ? Are our relations 
 as men and women so universally pure and exalted that we 
 may rightly despise those who, unable to separate the pal 
 pable evil from the latent good, reject both together ? Is 
 
THE SOCIAL ARCHITECTS. 279 
 
 exclusive property so beneficent a feature of our Social 
 Order, as practically exemplified around us, that we may 
 fairly stigmatize those who, not needing its incitements to 
 thrift or industry, see fit to decline them ? The peculiari 
 ties of Shaker worship I readily abandon to the ridicule of 
 the cavil er, only wishing that theirs w T ere the only absurdi 
 ties committed in attempting to honor our Father in Heaven, 
 and that no Religious errors more popular and more en 
 during than theirs were worse than simply ridiculous. 
 
 When all that may be said against these simple-minded 
 ascetics has been freely admitted, there is yet left enough in 
 their character and history to challenge our admiration. 
 They present the sublime and hope-inspiring spectacle of a 
 Community founded and built up on the conquest of the 
 most inexorable appetites. Lust, Avarice, Ambition, Re 
 venge these are not merely discountenanced by the Social 
 economy of the Shakers, but this economy is based on their 
 entiro crucifixion. Nor can I see how any man can ration 
 ally conclude, as some have nevertheless asserted, that all 
 this show of subduing the appetites is a hypocrisy and a 
 delusion. I can conceive no earthly motive for practicing 
 so much outward self-denial, at so great inconvenience, and 
 with no hope of honor, or popularity, but a certainty of the 
 reverse, if not based on obedience to an inward conviction. 
 The uncharitable theory supposes a refinement of absurdity 
 and self-annoyance which never yet possessed for any period 
 the brain of any one sane man, much less of a whole com 
 munity for ages. Let us, then, profit by the lessons which 
 these enthusiasts read us, while discarding their pardonable 
 errors. Let us remember that they have solved for us the 
 problem of the possibility, the practicability, of a Social con 
 dition from which the twin curses, Pauperism and Servitude, 
 shall be utterly banished. They have shown how pleasant 
 may be the labors, how abundant the comforts, of a commu 
 nity wherein no man aspires to be lord over his brethren, no 
 
280 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 man grasps for himself, but each is animated by a spirit of 
 devotion to the common good. When I have stood among 
 the quiet homes of this unaspiring, unpoetical people, and 
 marked how they have steadily, surely advanced from abject 
 poverty to amplest competence when I have observed how 
 their patient but never excessive toil has transformed rugged 
 barrenness into smiling fertility and beauty, how could I 
 refrain from thinking lightly of that blind dogmatism which 
 asserts the impossibility of inducing men to labor except 
 for their own selfish gratification, and affirms the necessity 
 of the stimulus of personal acquisition to save mankind from 
 sinking back into the darkness and the destitution of bar 
 barism ? 
 
 I have not time to speak fully of the first of the Social 
 Architects of our own day who attracted the attention of 
 the learned world of Claude Henri, Count St. Simon, a 
 descendant of Charlemagne in youth a soldier of our own 
 Revolution, in later years an impassioned seeker of all 
 knowledge possible to man, and an ardent explorer of every 
 field of human experience ; falling at length into extreme 
 poverty, and dying substantially of want; .yet insisting, 
 through all, not merely on the practicability but the cer 
 tainty and imminence of a great Social renovation, to be 
 wrought out through the operation of Christian Love. This 
 man, without securing our entire respect, challenges our 
 admiration. Impulsive and sanguine in temperament, he 
 was calculated rather to inspire others than to direct wisely 
 the movement which he originated. Blindly confident that 
 Love would solve all difficulties, redress all inequalities, 
 reform all abuses in the condition of mankind, he does not 
 seem to have considered means at all requisite, but trusted 
 to the simple enunciation of the sentiment. Adversity, des 
 titution, misery, could not shake the convictions of a better 
 day past in better days to come ; and the last words he ut 
 tered to the few friends who stood around his desolate 
 
THE SOCIAL ARCHITECTS. 281 
 
 death-bed of famine joyously proclaimed THE FUTURE is 
 OURS ! 
 
 His few surviving disciples, catching new inspiration from 
 a faith so quenchless and sublime, eagerly rushed to the 
 work of propagation, and soon a large number of the best 
 spirits of Europe did reverence to the genius and devotion 
 of St. Simon. But the fatal defect of a want of system, of 
 definite plan, of seeking to base Society on a sentiment 
 merely, was soon evident. The little band who gathered to 
 form the first community or family of St. Simonians soon 
 found their ardor cooled and their sentiment of brotherhood 
 abated. Differences arose which they had no appointed 
 means of adjusting or preventing ; many were repelled, while 
 the few who remained are reported to have fallen at length 
 into gross sensuality. Their dissolution was inevitable, and, 
 if I mistake not, was hastened by the Government, which, 
 regarding St. Simonism as a new and specious form of Jaco 
 binic attack on all Public Order, broke up their establish 
 ment on a charge of immorality. 
 
 The counterpart of St. Simon s is exhibited in the system 
 of Robert Owen, a man in whom it is hard to say whether 
 personal virtues or speculative errors have predominance. 
 Mr. Owen relies as blindly on Reason as did St. Simon 
 on Love. We do not need Law ; we need no Religion ; 
 we need no hope of personal advantage, to induce us to 
 do whatever is just and beneficent, says Mr. Owen in sub 
 stance, as I understand him ; all that is required is that we 
 shall conduct ourselves rationally. All, indeed ; but this is 
 very much. If men were but truly reasonable, they would 
 not butcher each other, whether for the honor which neither 
 party possesses, nor the territory which neither needs ; they 
 would not grasp, nor covet, nor degrade themselves by all 
 manner of unseemly vices. But how comes it that so few 
 are rational? that so few have been so in the course of a 
 hundred generations ? 
 24* 
 
282 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 To say that the fault is in Society scarcely helps the mat 
 ter toward a solution : for this Society is made up of these 
 very men and women whose irrationality is our puzzle, and is 
 such as they have chosen to make it. The problem is how 
 Society and its members have gone so far wrong altogether. 
 Its solution Mr. Owen finds in the existence of formal Reli 
 gion, Priests and priestcraft, superstition and blind obedience 
 to the irrational behests of an unknown superior being 
 these, according to Mr. O. are the causes of the vice and 
 misery wherewith the world abounds. These convictions, 
 no doubt earnestly entertained, have cut him off from the 
 sympathies of the believing, and greatly impaired if not 
 destroyed his efficiency as an apostle of Social Reform. 
 His followers are now mainly confined to the anti-Christian, 
 and the general scope of his exertions is now directed quite 
 as much against Religion as against Social Evils. I regret 
 this, not only because it tends to prejudice, and has already 
 prejudiced, thousands against all plans for Social meliora 
 tion, but because Mr. Owen s earlier efforts at practical 
 reform, which resulted in the substitution of Temperance, 
 Cleanliness, Thrift, Comfort, Intelligence, for the Drunken 
 ness, Filth, Idleness, Misery and Ignorance which had pre 
 viously prevailed in the manufacturing district of New 
 Lanark, where his attention w r as first drawn to the subject, 
 proves that much good might have been anticipated from his 
 undivided attention to the wants and woes of his fellow-men 
 and the best means of removing them.* 
 
 The last of the Social Architects to whom I shall invite 
 your attention is CHARLES FOURIER; and if I ask more of your 
 time for a development of the nature and details of his sys 
 tem, it is because I consider his plans far less imperfect in 
 themselves than any other, and more likely to lead to benefi 
 cent results. 
 
 * For many of the foregoing facts I am indebted to the writings of PARKE GODWIN. 
 
FOURIER AND HIS IDEAS. 283 
 
 Fourier, bom at Besangon, in France, in 1772, was 
 trained to Commercial pursuits in the shop of his father, a 
 woolen draper, where at five years of age he was punished 
 for telling the truth to a customer, whereby a purchase was 
 prevented. From this time his infantine mind pondered 
 anxiously on the means of obviating frauds in Commercial 
 dealings, and of establishing uniform Truth and Justice in 
 the business relations of mankind. At twenty-one years of 
 age he engaged in Commerce for himself on a capital of 
 $16,000, his portion of the family property, which was 
 swept away before the close of that year in the siege and 
 capture of Lyons during the convulsions which attended the 
 French Revolution. His life was barely saved by escape 
 and flight, but he was again arrested at Besancon, and, to 
 avoid execution, compelled to enter the army, whence, after 
 two years service, he was discharged on account of ill 
 health. He afterward engaged as a clerk in Marseilles, 
 where he was employed to throw into the river an immense 
 quantity of rice, which had been monopolized in a season of 
 public scarcity in the hope of realizing an enormous profit, 
 but which, having been held too high and kept too long, be 
 came worthless and unsalable. Other incidents conspired 
 to stimulate his early resolution to discover the means of 
 preventing the calamities resulting to mankind from the 
 frauds, extortions, falsehoods and adulterations of Com 
 merce. Pursuing this inquiry, he saw the field widen before 
 him, disclosing and embracing the broad domain of Industry 
 and the whole Social condition of our race. He became 
 convinced that nothing short of a Universal Science could 
 solve the difficulties and obscurities in which this vast sub 
 ject was involved. This Science, of which the outline was, 
 as he believed, discovered by him in 1799, was first set 
 before the public in 1808, in his earliest work, the Theory 
 of the Four Movements, or of Universal Attraction and Re 
 pulsion. (This was four years previous to the appearance 
 
284 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 of Owen s New Views of Society. ) The volume which wa& 
 published was but one of eight of which the whole work was 
 to have consisted, and was rather a prospectus of what was 
 to follow, than a complete work. Those who know any 
 thing of the common or probable fate of such works will not 
 need to be told that the other seven were never published 
 at least not in their author s lifetime. I have heard that a 
 copy of the published volume was submitted to Napoleon, 
 then in the zenith of his power and glory. The relentless 
 warrior, then involved in his Spanish War and about to 
 plunge into another desperate struggle with Austria, bestowed 
 but little thought upon it. The earth must first be plowed 
 by the sword, said he, before it will be fitted to produce 
 such harvests as this man thinks of. It ivas plowed with 
 the sword how thoroughly, let Wagram, and Borodino, 
 and Leipsic, and Waterloo, bear witness. In the event, 
 Napoleon was hurled to his island rock, having found no 
 time to look farther into the undistinguished citizen s far- 
 reaching speculations on Divine Benignity and Human Des 
 tiny. 
 
 \ The name of Fourier s first work will have indicated that, 
 though he may be condemned as visionary, he can not 
 rationally be considered narrow or superficial. Though his 
 primary object was the prevention of Fraud and whatever 
 induces men to act in opposition to the general or highest 
 good, his researches took the widest scope, and he undoubt- 
 ingly believed that their result was the discovery of the laws 
 of Universal Unity or those Divinely ordained Harmonies 
 by a knowledge and observance of which all discord, all evil, 
 shall ultimately be banished from the earth. Attraction and 
 Repulsion being the laws by which the planets are held in 
 their orbits, oceans in their beds, and the multiform races 
 of animals nurtured in infancy and impelled to do whatever 
 is proper and needful to them, Fourier held that these same 
 laws, rightly understood and duly applied to the Organiza- 
 
FOURIER AND HIS IDEAS. 035 
 
 lion and mechanism of Society, will there produce equally 
 benign results. Some of the more important of Fourier s 
 deductions from a profound and critical investigation of Na 
 ture I have very freely rendered as follows : 
 
 1. The Attractions of all beings are proportioned to their 
 Destinies. Thus every animal is fitted by nature and in 
 clination for the element he is to inhabit and the life he is 
 destined to lead. So man is precisely fitted for that Social 
 Harmony for which he was created, but which he has not 
 hitherto discovered and realized. 
 
 2. The Harmonics of the Universe are distributed in 
 Series, stretching from the highest to the lowest order of 
 beings. Whatever law exists for one exists for every other, 
 though necessarily modified in its applications. To under 
 stand thoroughly the laws which govern one is to understand 
 the laws which govern all. 
 
 3. The Human Race exists not as many but as one. The 
 ignorance, vice, misery, which seem to afflict but a part, do 
 truly mar the happiness of all. Hence no reform can be 
 perfect which is not universal, and no happiness unalloyed 
 until all evil is vanquished. The good should labor and 
 strive for nothing less than the emancipation and elevation of 
 the Race. 
 
 4. All needful Labor may be rendered Attractive. By 
 this he means not merely that all Labor may, by proper in 
 ducements, be procured without constraint or degrading 
 servitude, but that, under proper arrangements, men will love 
 Labor for itself, will prize it as an intrinsic good, and as con 
 tributing to health, vigor, enjoyment, and true dignity. To 
 this law Fourier admits in practice some exceptions, con 
 sisting of labors now requisite which are intrinsically re 
 pulsive and disgusting, for which he prescribes increased re 
 wards and the highest Social honors. All other Labor, he 
 insists, may and will be performed as freely and willingly a? 
 
286 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 hunting, fishing, and other sportive functions are in our ex 
 isting Society. 
 
 5. The Right to Labor, and to the fair reward of Labor, 
 inheres in all men-, and can not be withheld from any without 
 grievous wrong and injury. The man who has no resource 
 but in the strength of his sinews, the skill of his fingers, has 
 a positive claim on the possessors of Land and of Property 
 for opportunity to earn and receive a subsistence. 
 
 On these principles, here most imperfectly stated, is based 
 Fourier s system of Society. 
 
 Let me endeavor to set before you some rude idea of a 
 community constituted according to his suggestions. But, 
 in order that you may understand the change he proposes, 
 let us first briefly consider the society he would supersede. 
 
 A New-England rural township (answering to the French 
 commune, and, in some respects, to the English parish) is, 
 we will say, a tract some six miles square, inhabited, in the 
 average, by about two thousand persons, divided into four 
 hundred families. Of these families one-half obtain their 
 subsistence by farming, a fourth by the various mechanical 
 or manufacturing arts, half a dozen by merchandise, three or 
 four by religious teaching, two or three by law, as many by 
 physic ; a few are so wealthy as to be above the necessity of 
 labor ; some are paupers, supported by the town ; while per 
 haps a dozen live as they may by hiring out to labor when 
 they must, and picking up whatever they can, at all times. 
 Such are the avocations by which the township is subsisted. 
 It would be a liberal estimate to say that three hundred good 
 days work are performed daily on the average in all 
 branches of productive labor among these two thousand 
 people, while perhaps as much more labor is performed by 
 women, children, and servants in the less profitable but still 
 essential duties of the household. Out of the products of 
 this labor, often rudely applied and unskillfully directed, the 
 whole community must obtain such a livelihood as it has. 
 
FOURIER AND HIS IDEAS. 237 
 
 Fourier s system would make of these four hundred 
 families one community or association, inhabiting one vast, 
 capacious edifice, (instead of four hundred scattered dwell 
 ings of all grades from comfortable to miserable,) with half a 
 dozen spaciously and perfectly constructed granaries, instead 
 of three hundred Hi-adapted, leaky barns, the safe harbors 
 of countless destructive vermin. These buildings he would 
 locate conveniently to the choicest lands of the Association, 
 and near its water-power, if such were among its possessions. 
 Instead of some twenty thousand acres of land, (the area of 
 the township,) the Association would require less than half 
 so much, but of this the arable portion would be brought to 
 and kept in the highest state of fertility and cultivation. The 
 property would be represented by stock, as in a railroad or 
 bank ; each member, whether resident or not, holding shares 
 and receiving dividends according to the amount of his in 
 vestment. The whole of the produce is to be sold or valued 
 annually, a proportionate dividend paid to the capital, and 
 the residue apportioned to all the members, according to the 
 amount and efficiency of the labor and skill of each. Mean 
 time, education is zealously prosecuted in the Association, 
 the fittest persons being chosen for teachers in the various 
 departments, who are to initiate all the children, not merely 
 into the rudiments of learning, as now taught in schools, but 
 into the principles of Mechanics, the knowledge of Chemistry, 
 Geology, Botany, but, above all, into the love and practice 
 of Industry. From earliest infancy they are to be familiar 
 ized with the various processes of Agriculture, Manufactures, 
 and the Arts ; they are to see Labor, however rude or repul 
 sive, the main source of honor and distinction, as well as 
 wealth ; and they are to be thus taught to seek the know 
 ledge and skill which shall fit them for eminence in the 
 domain of Industry, and to arrest the earliest opportunity of 
 winning her cherished rewards. Such is a very meager out 
 line of the means by which Labor is to be rendered attractive. 
 
238 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 Among the material advantages reckoned by Fourier, as 
 inevitably resulting from Association, as contrasted with the 
 present modes of life and industry, are these : 
 
 1. A saving of at least nine-tenths of the fuel now required, 
 of the land set apart to produce, and the labor needed to 
 prepare it. 
 
 2. A saving of nineteen-twentieths of the fences now re 
 quired, covering and defacing the land, and requiring end 
 less repairs, materials, and attention. 
 
 3. A saving of the time now consumed in the endless ex 
 changes of products between the various classes of pro 
 ducers, and in petty trade. 
 
 4. A saving of the labor now misapplied and wasted, by 
 reason of the want of skill or science in the workman, or 
 rendered relatively inefficient by the want of the best labor- 
 saving machinery. The small farmer can not afford to pur 
 chase, for his few acres, all the costly implements of the 
 most skillful modern husbandry. 
 
 5. A saving of three-fourths of the labor now required for 
 the preparation of food, and in the various departments of 
 the household. It is evident that these would require far 
 less labor in one house than in five hundred, and that the 
 food of two thousand persons may be prepared in three or 
 four spacious apartments, amply supplied with every conve 
 nience, with infinitely less labor than in four hundred petty 
 kitchens with scarcely any conveniences at all. Whether the 
 members shall partake of their food at common tables, in 
 small groups, or in families, is to depend on the free choice 
 of each, the actual cost being ascertained and charged to 
 each in every case. 
 
 6. A saving of the entire services of those now employed 
 in the unproductive functions of retail trade, and of most of 
 those now living by Law, Physic, &c., &c. One good 
 Physician would be enough, one Lawyer, it is hoped, too 
 much, for an Association, while fewer but better teachers 
 
FOURIER AND HIS IDEAS. o 6j 
 
 tiian are now required, would impart a far wider range of 
 instruction to the young. 
 
 These are but a part of the economies insisted on by 
 Fourier, who is sanguine in the faith that the annual product 
 of the community would be four-fold what it now is, while 
 an immense saving, on the other hand, of property now de 
 stroyed by waste, and ignorance, and subdivision, and want 
 of skill, is also predicted. 
 
 The general results which he affirms are these : 
 
 1. All needful labor skilfully and cheerfully performed. 
 In so large a community there would be found capacity for 
 every duty and a duty for every capacity, so that each indi 
 vidual would find that employment best suited to his abilities, 
 and which, by a general though not inflexible rule, would 
 be to him most attractive. In the exceptional instances of 
 duties to be performed which no one would undertake of 
 choice, their recompense is to be raised until some one is 
 induced to undertake them. 
 
 2. Every individual, infants, idiots and disabled persons 
 exccptcd, will be secured the means of earning an ample sub 
 sistence and of acquiring property ahead. The vast econ 
 omies and vastly increased production of the community 
 are to redound to the benefit, not mainly of capital, but of 
 labor. Each man, woman, and child is guarantied the 
 fullest opportunity to labor and earn, in the vocation of his 
 or her choice, as nearly as may be, and with assurance of the 
 just and fair reward of his or her exertions. To women and 
 children, gardening, horticulture, the care of fruits, and the 
 prosecution of a great variety of manufactures, in addition 
 to the cares of the household, proffer industrial careers as 
 ample, varied and independent as those of men. With 
 each individual an account is kept, in which he is charged 
 the fair cost of his subsistence, the rent of his apartments, 
 and whatever he draws from the common stores, while he is 
 
 25 
 
290 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 credited for his labor or the fruits of that labor, whether used 
 by the Association or sold, at its fair market price. 
 
 3. The most thorough Education is guarantied to every 
 individual. The schools, though ample, well-taught, and 
 never intermitted, are not, according to Fourier, the main 
 sources of Knowledge to the child ; but the fields, the edi 
 fices, work-shops, manufactories, and all industrial processes 
 are to be rendered his books and his monitors. From ear 
 liest infancy, a thirst for information is to be studiously 
 excited. The child is to be trained to seek honor in useful 
 ness, pleasure in duty, and to plead for instruction in letters 
 and in arts, as the means of enjoyment, of efficiency and of 
 personal distinction. To become familiar with some new 
 truth, some new process, some application of science to the 
 promotion of human well-being, is his daily step-stone on 
 the path to manhood and its honors. The Library of the 
 Association, open to all, will afford the amplest stores of 
 knowledge to old and young, while stated meetings of those 
 engaged in each branch of industry will be held to receive 
 and to impart the results of experience, of observation, and 
 of study, until the knowledge and skill of each shall be 
 combined in the understanding and practice of all. 
 
 Such are some rude, imperfect outlines of Fourier s sys 
 tem. Of the means by which he proposes to secure to each 
 his just dividend of the aggregate product to each family 
 the domestic privacy and sanctity of its own apartments 
 to each individual or family the freedom of living more or 
 less sumptuously according to ability or inclination, I have 
 not room to speak in this lecture. Unlike every other nota 
 ble Social architect, from Plato to Owen, Fourier is wholly 
 averse to communism or the denial of individual property as 
 utterly subversive of justice, not merely, but of individual 
 freedom. Basing his system on a rigorous analysis of the 
 Divine economy as evinced in Nature, he holds that diver 
 sity, not uniformity, is the fundamental law to which all hu- 
 
FOURIER AND HIS IDEAS. 291 
 
 man regulation must conform. Many are indifferent to 
 present gratification but eager for permanent acquisition ; 
 others are careless of the future, so that the present be but 
 joyous. Some choose to devote a large proportion of their 
 income to dress ; others to food ; others delight in spacious 
 and richly furnished apartments. Some grudge every mo 
 ment abstracted from their work ; others regret rather those 
 hours wherein they mmt work. Fourier, insisting that work 
 may be rendered as attractive as play now is, leaves to each 
 individual the perfect control of his hours and their uses, the 
 Association taking care only that his earnings shall equal 
 the cost of his subsistence in default of \vhich, if not caused 
 by sickness or other calamity, his stock is sold to make up 
 the deficiency, until it has entirely disappeared, when his 
 rights of residence and membership are at an end. 
 
 In short, while St. Simon bases his Social fabric on uni 
 versal Love, and Owen on calm, enlightened Reason, Fou 
 rier builds on absolute and carefully administered Justice 
 a justice which secures to each his own, whether of Develop 
 ment, of Opportunity, or of Recompense. Give every one 
 the work for which he is best fitted, give him knowledge 
 and skill, and guaranty him the full reward of his exertions ; 
 but disturb not the foundations of Property, nor transfer to 
 any one, save in charity, the earnings of another. This 
 keen sense of justice is the basis of his hostility to Com 
 merce, other than the wholesale interchange of the products 
 of different climes and communities. Traders, as such, 
 have no place in his Social economy. The extent and 
 minuteness of his arrangements to obviate the possibility of 
 injustice, and to reconcile perfect order and harmony with 
 ihe largest individual freedom, can only be apprehended by 
 those who are familiar with his works. 
 
 Yet I could not, with any confidence of a favorable result, 
 invite the mass of readers to study Fourier s system in 
 his own writings. Replete as they are" with profound ob- 
 
292 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 servation and the most searching analytical criticism, they 
 will not impress happily the casual or careless student. The 
 author is too positive in his self-assurance too dogmatic 
 too contemptuous in his regard for whatever opposes his 
 views. He has no adequate patience with our difficulty in 
 seeing through his spectacles on the first trial. A lonely, 
 obscure, thoughtful, studious man, treated with obloquy, or 
 more commonly a disdainful silence, by the world s flattered 
 teachers and arbiters, as though he were an idiot or a mad 
 man, we may not wonder but must regret that he returned 
 scorn for scorn, and that many of his later works are marred 
 by fierce denunciations of the duplicity, barrenness, and 
 sophistry of the leaders of public opinion. 
 
 The world without and that within such a man must pre 
 sent a strange and striking contrast. Around him poverty, 
 neglect, derision a settled hostility or a more humiliating 
 indifference ; within, the consciousness of mighty discov 
 eries of truths competent now and certain ultimately to 
 transform and electrify mankind. Around him obstruction 
 and want perhaps hunger and cold; within, the deep con 
 viction that he had discovered the means ordained of God 
 for banishing want from the earth, by quadrupling produc 
 tion, diminishing wasteful consumption, renovating and beau 
 tifying the earth, until at last even the Polar Ices should be 
 dissolved, and a joyous, exhilarating spring-time envelop 
 our planet. The reclamation of deserts, of pestilential 
 marshes, of wildernesses and snow-capped mountains, until 
 all earth shall praise Heaven by comforting and blessing 
 mankind all these, and many more dizzying, are among 
 the ultimate consequences of Social Reorganization antici 
 pated by Fourier. 
 
 This sanguine spirit waited eight years after his first work 
 appeared for a disciple perhaps for his first attentive 
 reader. Six years later, he published his second work, 
 which was met, like the former, by absolute silence and in- 
 
FOURIER AND HIS IDEAS. 293 
 
 difference on the part of the press, and so remained unknown 
 to the public. It was not till ten years afterward, on the 
 dispersion of the St. Simonian fraternity in 1832, that he 
 obtained any general hearing. Then a considerable number 
 were attracted by his theory, a journal was started, and, in 
 spite of his earnest remonstrances, an estate was purchased 
 near Paris, and an attempt made at practical Association. 
 It failed at the outset for want of means ; though if this had 
 been surmounted, the want of Knowledge and of fit men 
 would doubtless have been found as serious an obstacle to 
 success. The unthinking many were repelled by the failure, 
 of which they neither knew nor cared to know the reasons ; the 
 judicious few stood unmoved. Their journal was kept up 
 and its circulation extended ; and, abandoning the idea of 
 practical experiment until knowledge shall have been 
 adequately diffused and the confidence of men of wealth and 
 influence obtained, they are still laboring in the cause 
 with spirit and success. In France, they number thousands, 
 including many eminent in station, in intellect, and in worth; 
 in England, they have made some progress ; in Germany 
 more, though there are they checked by the prevalence of 
 Communism ; in this country, the doctrines of Fourier have 
 gained adherents in every State, and in some sections in 
 almost every neighborhood, and are still making steady prog 
 ress. Meantime, Fourier himself has gone down to the 
 grave in obscurity, but in undoubting conviction of having 
 pointed the way to a loftier and happier career for Humanity 
 on Earth. He died in 1837. 
 
 I have thus hurriedly traced the outlines of Fourier s life 
 and Social System the Industrial and Economical rather 
 than the Intellectual and Spiritual features of the latter. I 
 doubt not that I have exposed him to objections which a 
 better knowledge of his works would remove ; but, on the 
 other hand, I have passed over many of his speculations on 
 subjects having no necessary connection with Social Reform 
 25* 
 
294 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 that would be likely to provoke opposition. He was a bold 
 adventurer in unknown seas, and whether he brought back 
 more pearls or bubbles I need not here discuss. I stop not 
 for criticism nor panegyric even on his Social theory, though 
 it seems to me to invite the one and deserve the other. 
 What time I may trespass farther on your attention shall 
 rather be devoted to the Living and the Practical to a con 
 sideration of our own duties, our hopes, and our respon 
 sibilities in connection with Social Reform. 
 
 The famous pamphlet of the Abbe Sieyes on the Third 
 Estate or Commons of France, which gave so powerful an 
 initial impulse to the Great Revolution, assumed to propose 
 and answer three questions What is the Third Estate? 
 Nothing. What might it be ? Everything. What should 
 it be ? Something? In a kindred spirit I am accustomed 
 to regard the various efforts in our day for effecting a radical 
 Social Reform. * * * * 
 
 What, then, may we reasonably hope from these efforts ? 
 
 If this question contemplate only immediate results, I shall 
 be constrained to answer, Very little. True, I know many 
 noble men and women engaged in these enterprises, and 
 who bring to the work a spirit worthy of our reverent admi 
 ration. These can not fail, though the enterprises with 
 which they are connected may. If all of this stamp were 
 united in one undertaking, with means at all adequate to 
 its prosecution, I should indulge ardent hopes. But I can 
 not put aside the impress which sixty centuries of grasping 
 and suffering, of avarice and want, have made on the Human 
 Character. I can not forget that these who are now embark 
 ing it would seem so bravely, so heroically, in the various 
 efforts to realize a higher and less sordid Social condition, 
 have lived from infancy amid scenes and under influences 
 whereof Self was the master-spirit, and the ever-cherished 
 even if unuttered maxim, Look out for Number One. 
 Some have doubtless risen, above these influences ; others 
 
FOURIER AND HIS IDEAS. 295 
 
 mistakenly think they have. But the great majority, even 
 of those who are ready to embark in undertakings to reform 
 Society, have not yet reformed themselves. The motive which 
 impels them, even in this, is at bottom selfish the hope of 
 ease, of abundance, of consequence, or of fame. As this sel 
 fish expectation is disappointed, and disappointed it must be, 
 since no great and true Reform was ever effected except 
 through privations and sacrifices their zeal will grow cold, 
 their enthusiasm vanish, their faith die out. Their underta 
 kings will fail, and they abandon the cause in the full con 
 viction that the idea is chimerical and can never be realized. 
 
 And, besides, we must consider that the individuals 
 easiest induced to embark in any novel enterprise like this, 
 are usually those who have not been strikingly successful in 
 their undertakings hitherto, and who may fairly be presumed 
 less fitted than many others to deserve and command suc 
 cess generally. The fortunate, the skilful, the thrifty, are 
 usually content to remain as they are. They/eeZ no neces 
 sity, and are slow to perceive any, for a radical change in 
 Society. These are seldom tempted to embark in novel 
 enterprises, while the luckless, the portionless, the unskilled 
 in the crafts of trade and the ways of getting on, are sure 
 to be well represented. I do not notethis distinction to cast 
 reproach on any. Every observer is aware that the faculty 
 of making headway in the world is something quite distinct 
 from moral qualities, good or bad. But it is fair, it is 
 essential, that this distinction should be borne in mind. 
 
 I am not surprised, therefore, to hear of the failure of 
 most of the rash, ill-considered, ill-provided attempts in our 
 day to furnish practical models of a better Social condition. 
 I should have been greatly disapppointed if they had all 
 succeeded. Of those which remain to buffet the gales of 
 adverse or sport in the breezes of prosperous fortune, a 
 part will doubtless share the fate of those already broken up ; 
 whi ie some. I think, are destined to survive and ultimately 
 
296 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 flourish. But this is conjecture only ; while the fact that 
 men have lived, do live, in a more intimate and trustful So 
 ciety than the mass of us believe possible, is abundantly es 
 tablished. Apart from the familiar examples of the Mora 
 vians, the Shakers, there are in this country communities 
 which have existed twenty, thirty, and forty years, holding 
 all things in common, and finding thrift, economy, abun 
 dance, happiness, freedom, in their chosen condition. Of 
 these are the settlement known as Rapp s or Economy, in 
 Beaver Co., Pennsylvania, that at Zoar, Ohio, and one or 
 two others. They do not appear to have been held together 
 by any special sympathy or fervor of Religious feeling, nor 
 by any disposition to act as models for the guidance and 
 imitation of mankind. They have no theory to commend, 
 no anxiety to make proselytes. In each case, the Social 
 appears to have been preferred to the Individual economy 
 from a mixture of choice and necessity, and in each it has 
 fully answered the expectations of its choosers. Abundance 
 and thrift have amply rewarded the moderate labor of the 
 associates, and no reason has been given us to doubt their 
 entire satisfaction. 
 
 I think, then, we may consider this fact already establish 
 ed, that a more intimate and trustful Social relation is prac 
 ticable than that which prevails among the mass of mankind 
 that men may labor and possess in common without 
 jealousy, envy or strife at any rate, without an increase 
 thereby of these cankers of existence. The vulgar cavil 
 that no house is large enough for two families, is as thor 
 oughly refuted by one demonstration as it would be by a 
 million repetitions of it. Association in life and industry is 
 not a chimera it is not a bubble it is not a mere possi 
 bility, but palpably and certainly practicable. 
 
 But what then ? Are we to abandon our old-fashioned 
 and not altogether comfortless dwellings, our settled ways 
 and maxims, because a different Social economy has been 
 
FOURIER AND HIS IDEAS. 297 
 
 found practicable ? Certainly not. There are many thou 
 sands of us whose condition could hardly be improved by 
 such a change, and whose sense of security and comfort 
 would surely not be. There is many a humble home of 
 which the happiness of the inmates would not be enhanced 
 by a transfer to the stateliest palace, even though a few 
 crowns and scepters were to be thrown in to sweeten the 
 bargain. We need not disparage the old in order to com 
 mend the new. There is no probability that the mass of the 
 well-placed and comfort-girded thousands will desert their 
 happy homes to accept any which Association may proffer 
 them, nor that they would be gainers by it if they did. 
 Let all who are satisfied and useful where they are remain 
 so ; they are very unlikely to receive benefit or do good by 
 rushing into untried and to them most unnatural relations. 
 Unspeakable is the worth of Habit of the fact that matters 
 have been so ordered, or have so ordered themselves, for a 
 time whereof the memory of Man runneth not to the con 
 trary. Custom not only serves to reconcile us to privations 
 and sufferings, but it has even impelled mean men to do 
 heroic deeds, hardly conscious that such was their nature. 
 For the great mass of human beings, it ig eminently desi 
 rable that they should jog on as nearly as possible in the 
 paths worn smooth and plain by their ancestors footsteps, 
 profiting much by the secondary instinct which the usage of 
 successive generations has called into being, until something 
 better shall be plainly demonstrated. Well is it for them 
 and for their race if the wisdom of our ancestors be not 
 invoked by this immense class to support and justify their 
 adherence to the folly which has encrusted and obscured that 
 wisdom, so that they may be found admiring less the block 
 of amber than the fly therein imbedded. 
 
 But on the other hand there is a small number very 
 small, it may be, but I think it increases to whom the old 
 ways, the old purposes of life, have become impossible of 
 
298 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 pursuit who must breathe more freely or be stifled who 
 can not live longer to merely personal ends who will 
 readily dig ditches, if that be the most useful employment 
 which solicits them, but who must do even this heroically, 
 not sordidly, or not at all. They are ready to welcome 
 drudgery, privation, obscurity, but not willing that the cov 
 ering and cherishing of their own bodies shall be the pur 
 pose of their life-long struggle. To this small class the idea 
 of a Social Reform commends itself with irresistible force ; 
 they can not banish it from their minds ; they can not even 
 affect indifference to it. Need I urge that these should be 
 aided from the abundant wealth of the contented class to 
 give their several plans a fair trial ? There is no possible 
 shape of evil, no suggestion of depravity, which has not 
 been bodied forth in acts ; why should sanguine hopes of 
 universal good alone be coldly set aside as fantastic and 
 chimerical ? 
 
 And then, again, that immense multitude whose lives are 
 but a weary round of incessant and meagerly requited 
 drudgery who herd in hovels, exposed to the visitation of 
 every annoyance and discomfort with whom the contem 
 plation of the miseries incident to their filthy, noisome, un- 
 ventilated workshops .is forbidden by the overmastering 
 horror of the apprehended time when even this employment 
 shall vanish, taking their subsistence along with it shall 
 not the thought of their world-wide sufferings impel us to 
 do something? The universal spectacle of Wealth and 
 Poverty increasing side by side of side-boards of glitter 
 ing plate accumulating here, while the thin diet there grows 
 more meager and scanty all this is calculated to compel 
 reflection, at least. The labor of this generation produces 
 nearly twice as much as did a like amount a century ago ; 
 yet that immense proportion of the laborers who must sub 
 sist on the Wages of rude manual toil live no better as a 
 class in the average even worse, than of old. In the 
 
FOURIER AND HIS IDEAS. 299 
 
 great City of my residence, a metropolis of wealth, of com 
 merce, civilization, art and enterprise, not less than forty 
 thousand human beings at this moment vainly seek employ 
 ment have sought it for days and weeks without success, 
 and at length almost without hope. Shall this be accepted 
 as the final, God-ordained condition of Humanity on earth ? 
 I can not, will not believe it. No : through effort and vicis 
 situde, through aspiration and stern resolve, through the 
 flashes of electric Genius and the slow approaches of pro 
 saic Calculation, if need be, through reproach and oblo 
 quy the humane and the Christian must patiently toil on, 
 until at length, with bent frames and beaded brows, they 
 shall have attained the summit of the Mount of Vision, and 
 may thence perceive with exulting gladness the glories of 
 the second Eden. 
 
IN MEMORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 MARTYRS TO HUMAN LIBERTY, 
 
 WHO FELL 
 
 DURING THE SIEGE, MAY AND JUNE, 1849. 
 
 AS 
 
 DEFENDERS OF ROME, 
 
 AGAINST 
 THE MACHINATIONS OF DESPOTISM, THE WILES OF AMBITIOUS HYPOCRISY, 
 
 *" AND 
 
 THE INFERNAL PERFIDY OF MONARCHICAL VILLAINS WHO HAVE STOLEN 
 POWER IN FRANCE, 
 
 BY MEANS OF 
 
 HOLLOW PROFESSIONS OF THAT REPUBLICANISM THEY MORTALLY HATE, 
 
 AND SWEARING FIDELITY TO THAT CONSTITUTION WHICH 
 
 THEY HASTENED MOST GLARINGLY TO VIOLATE ; 
 
 Thus Richly deserving", 
 
 The loathing detestation of the honest and just. 
 
 NOT SO THEY f 
 
 WHO FELL ON THE RAMPARTS OF ROME, 
 
 sternly Struggling 
 
 AGAINST OVERWHELMING NUMBERS, AGAINST AMPLE MUNITIONS, AGAINST FATE : 
 
 THEIR HIGHEST HOPE THAT IN THEM, LIVING OR DEAD, THE 
 
 SACRED CAUSE SHOULD NOT BE DISHONORED. 
 
 Their proudest wish 
 
 THAT FREEDOM S CHAMPIONS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD MIGHT 
 RECOGNIZE THEM AS BRETHREN, 
 
 Nobly Dying 
 THAT SURVIVING MILLIONS MAY DULY ABHOR TYRANNY AND LOVE LIBERTY : 
 
 Closing their eyes serenely, 
 
 IN THE GENEROUS FAITH THAT RIGHTS FOR ALL, DOMINION FOR NONE. 
 WILL SOON REVIVIFY THE EARTH BAPTIZED IN THEIR BLOOD. 
 
 Stay, heedless Wanderer! 
 DEFILE NOT WITH LISTLESS STEP THE ASHES OF HEROES ! 
 
 BUT 
 
 OUT THE RELICS OF THESE MARTYRS SWEAR A DEEPER AND STERNER 
 HATE TO EVERY FORM OF OPPRESSION. 
 
 Here learn to Feel 
 A DEARER LOVE FOR ALL WHO STRIVE FOR LIBERTY. 
 
 Here breathe a Prayer 
 
 FOR THE SPEEDY TRIUMPH OF RIGHT OVER MIGHT, 
 LIGHT OVER NIGHT; 
 
 AND FOR ROME S FALLEN DEFENDERS, 
 
 THAT THE GOD OF THE OPPRESSED AND AFFLICTED MAY HAVE THEM 
 IN HIS HOLY KEEPING. 
 
 "They never fail who die 
 
 In a great caue; the block may soak their gore; 
 Their heads may sodden in the sun ; their limbs 
 Be strung to city gates and castle walls 
 But still their spirit walks abroad." 
 
 BTBOK Marino Falitro, Act II., Scene 2. 
 
DEATH BY HUMAN LAW. 301 
 
 XI. 
 
 BRIEF REFORM ESSAYS. 
 
 DEATH BY HUMAN LAW. 
 
 DEATH is the universal doom. The time, the mode of 
 
 individual decease are to human vision inscrutable ; the event 
 
 is inevitable. We do not know whether it is better for us 
 
 to die early or later by sudden violence or slow decay. 
 
 Many who die at twenty are doubtless more fortunate in life 
 
 and death than others who lived to eighty. Many who 
 
 perished by flood or fire, by famine or frost, by rack or 
 
 poison, by ax or halter, are more to be envied than the mass 
 
 of those who lounged through a long life of pomp and ease, 
 
 and breathed their last on beds of down amid the tears of 
 
 idolizing thousands. Who can say that a man should be 
 
 pitied or congratulated that he is doomed to die to-morrowj? 
 
 Society must live though individuals should die. All 
 
 speculation on the right of the community to take human 
 
 life is preposterous. Self-preservation is the primal law ; 
 
 and if the death of any individual is necessary to the safety 
 
 of the commonwealth, he must die. * I doubt whether there 
 
 is one theoretical denier of the right of society to take life 
 
 who if he saw a man forcing his way into the window of 
 
 his family s sleeping apartment, and knew that the ruffian 
 
 would, in order to rob securely, murder the mother and 
 
 babes there lying in unconscious slumber would hesitate 
 
 26 
 
302 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 to catch up a rifle and shoot the burglar dead on the spot. 
 This would imply no malice toward the victim of his own 
 evil designs no desire to harm him no wrath, even 
 but a simple choice that of two evils the greater should be 
 averted by interposing the lesser. 
 
 Thus we hear that in the California of 1849 men were 
 frequently hung by a summary process for simple theft 
 I do not say wantonly, nor cruelly* There were no courts, 
 no sheriffs, no prosecutors, grand juries, police, nor prisons. 
 The legal forms of indictment, arraignment, trial, sentence, 
 and punishment, were clearly unattainable. Yet theft must 
 somehow be repressed, though at the cost of guilty or even 
 innocent lives. To allow it impunity and triumph would be 
 to arrest the arm of Labor, palsy Production, Trans 
 portation, Commerce, and doom the entire community to 
 ruin and starvation. Yes, though it were certain that a 
 dozen innocent men would be put to death under the Lynch- 
 law which precedes and partially subserves the end of the 
 regular Administration of Justice, we must still say, 
 Welcome this dire alternative welcome anything rather than 
 Anarchy, chaos, and the unchecked domination of devils ! 
 
 In such a state of things, it is idle to talk of the duty of 
 Society toward its erring, sinful members for Society s 
 first duty is to exist. That it can not do if the lazy villain 
 may break at pleasure into the frail shanty of the delving 
 miner and carry off the fruits of his patient, exhausting 
 toil. The moment it is established that this is a safe 
 operation, the vicious and unprincipled will hasten to ravage 
 and rob, while the honest and industrious must inevitably 
 cease to dig. They will hasten to collect their valuables in 
 some strong position, to strengthen it with fortifications and 
 defend it by arms. They can do nothing as yet with the 
 rascal but to make him keep his distance, or, if he will per 
 sist in robbing, to deprive him of the ability in the only way 
 yet practicable, by depriving him of life. 
 
DEATH B HUMAN LAW. 303 
 
 The condition of the Children of Israel at the time the 
 Law was given through Moses was not unlike that of 
 California in 1849. Fugitives and wanderers in a rugged 
 wilderness, surrounded by hostile tribes, and soon to engage 
 in a protracted, exterminating warfare for the land destined 
 to be their home for many centuries a land certain to be 
 frequently overrun by invading hosts and to be harassed by 
 robber hordes from the adjacent desert it would have been 
 idle for a pople so situated to talk of perpetual imprison 
 ment or anything of the kind. They could treat offenders 
 no otherwise than with severity. Punishment must be 
 prompt or it could not be inflicted, for no prisons existed, 
 nor could any be constructed which could be reasonably 
 expected to hold prisoners through a lifetime. A wise Law 
 giver could not overlook these facts. He could give no 
 other laws than such as his people s condition and circum 
 stances required, leaving to later times and a Diviner guide 
 the announcement of the Law of the Universe of Eternity. 
 t The infliction of Death on flagrant offenders is not, under 
 such circumstances, necessarily nor naturally an act of 
 vengeance any more than the farmer s destruction of the 
 weeds, briars, and thistles which infest his fields and meadows 
 is. Man must live Society must exist the Right must 
 maintain its ascendency Cultivation and Food-producing 
 must have scope, though robbers should die, the wrong 
 should suffer, and weeds be exterminated in consequence. 
 Whatever degree of severity and amount of destruction may 
 at any time be necessary to maintain this rightful supremacy 
 of good over evil stands justified by the constitution of the 
 universe. It is not cruel but merciful ; not wrathful and 
 vindictive but benignant and humane. 
 
 The moral guilt or innocence of the causer of evil is not 
 material to the issue. Suppose an insane man were now 
 wandering and skulking among the mountains and ravines 
 of interior California, so possessed by the spirit of destruc- 
 
304 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 tion, of slaughter, that he missed no opportunity to kill a 
 human being whom he could surprise when defenseless and 
 alone. He could not be taken, and, if taken, could not be 
 kept secure. He has killed several already, and every week 
 adds to the number of his victims. Now the miners would 
 say, True, we know this man is insane and morally irre- 
 4 sponsible that there is no essential guilt in his homicidal 
 frenzy ; but we know also that many of us must die by 
 
 * his hands if he does not by ours. We know that life is 
 unsafe and rendered hideous by terror, so long as we re- 
 
 * main exposed to his destroying fury. Therefore, the first 
 man among us who gets within rifle-range of him will 
 1 shoot him down as if he were a wolf which he would do, 
 and be perfectly justified in doing not in revenge for past 
 but in deprecation of future killing. 
 
 So with regard to War. If a farmer were to shoot a boy 
 whom he caught robbing his orchard or fleeing from such 
 robbery, the whole country would cry Shame, and the law 
 would not hold the slayer guiltless. But if that youth were 
 an avowed burglar, robbing the farmer s dwelling at mid 
 night and threatening death to all who resisted, shooting him 
 would be deemed justified, not by the robber s guilt but the 
 farmer s peril. The principle is the same with regard to 
 nations as individuals. A nation which should declare war 
 and proceed to invade another s territory, burn its towns 
 and slaughter its resisting people, because of past depre 
 dations on the property or outrages on the persons of some 
 of the citizens of the former within the territory of the latter, 
 would surely be guilty of a wanton and inexcusable resort to 
 bloodshed. True, if these depredations and outrages were 
 defiantly proclaimed and gloried in by the offending nation, 
 they might afford some pretext for hostilities or rather, the 
 spirit evinced in their perpetration might be esteemed 
 dangerous to the National and individual security, and so 
 demanding resistance with a view to repression. To embark 
 
DEATH BY HUMAN LAW. 305 
 
 in wholesale slaughter simply because those outrages had 
 been committed would be wanton and inexcusable crime. 
 
 But a nation is invaded and its very existence threatened 
 by some powerful neighbor as that of Greece was by Xerxes, 
 that of France by the Saracens, that of Russia by Napoleon. 
 It is the plain duty of its people to resist with all their might, 
 and roll back the tide of invasion across their frontiers. It 
 is better for Humanity that thousands should die than that 
 millions should be made slaves, and their children after 
 them. But there is necessarily and properly no vengeful 
 feeling on their part no wish to harm an individual of the 
 invading host nothing but submission to the stern, sad 
 necessity of sacrificing the invaders or themselves to the 
 preservation of the most sacred Rights of Man. Since the 
 path to security and perpetuated Freedom lies through the 
 center of that invading, advancing host, the patriot pursues 
 and clears that path, though in so doing he should cleave 
 an invader s heart on the point of his bayonet. Yet he may 
 very probably regard the individuals composing the invading 
 army with pity rather than wrath may consider that they 
 are, nevertheless, men and brethren, whom deceit and con 
 straint and a perverted love of country have thus armed 
 and impelled on their errand of devastation and enslave 
 ment. He must resist and even slay them so long as no 
 other way lies open to him of defeating the baleful purpose 
 whereof they are instruments ; but, the moment that peril 
 is averted, by their capture or discomfiture, that moment his 
 acquiescence in this sad necessity of doing them physical 
 harm is at end. To kill one of them now would be a crime 
 a wanton and guilty effusion of human blood. He is 
 henceforth their friend, their host, their good Samaritan, and 
 in due time dismisses them on their homeward road, heartily 
 wishing them a pleasant journey thither and a long and 
 happy sojourn in the land of their fathers. 
 26* 
 
306 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 And now to killing malefactors by sentence of law. Is 
 it ever justifiable ? I answer Yes, provided Society can in^ 
 no other way be secured against a repetition of the culprit s 
 offence. In committing a murder, for instance, he has 
 proved himself capable of committing more murders 
 perhaps many. The possibility of a thousand murders is 
 developed in his one act of felonious homicide. Call his 
 moral state depravity, insanity, or whatever you please, he 
 is manifestly a ferocious, dangerous animal, who can not 
 safely be permitted to go at large. Society must be secured 
 against the reasonable probability of his killing others, and, 
 where that can only be effected by taking his life, his life 
 must be taken. 
 
 But suppose him to be in New-England, New- York or_ 
 Pennsylvania arrested, secured and convicted Society s 
 rebel, outcast and prisoner of war taken with arms in his 
 hands. Here are prison-cells wherefrom escape is impos 
 sible ; and if there be any fear of his assaulting his keeper 
 or others, that may be most effectively prevented. Is it ex 
 pedient or salutary to crush the life out of this helpless, ab 
 ject, pitiable wretch? 
 
 I for one think it decidedly is not that it is a sorrowful 
 mistake and barbarity to do any such thing. In saying this, 
 I do not assume to decide whether Hanging or Imprisonment 
 for Life is the severer penalty. I should wish to understand 
 clearly the moral state of the prisoner before I attempted to 
 guess; and, even then, I know too little of the scenes of 
 untried being which lie next beyond the confines of this mor 
 tal existence to say whether it were better for any peni 
 tent or hardened culprit to be hung next month or left 
 in prison to die a natural death. What is best for that 
 culprit I leave to God, who knows when is the fit time for 
 him to die. My concern is with Society the moral jt 
 teaches, the conduct it tacitly enjoins. And I feel that the 
 
DEATH BY HUMAN LAW. 307 
 
 choking to death of this culprit works harm, in these respects, 
 namely : 
 
 1. It teaches and sanctions Revenge. There is a natural 
 inclination in man to return injury for injury, evil for evil. 
 It is the exciting cause of many murders as well as less 
 flagrant crimes. It stands in no need of stimulation its 
 prompt repression at all times is one of the chief trials even 
 of good men. But A. B. has committed a murder, is con 
 victed of and finally hung for it. Bill, Dick and Jim, three 
 apprentices of ordinary understanding and attainments, beg 
 away or run away to witness the hanging. Ask either of 
 them, What is this man hung for ? and the prompt, cor 
 rect answer will be, * Because he killed C. D. not To 
 prevent his killing others, nor yet To prevent others from 
 killing. Well : the three enjoy the spectacle and turn 
 away satisfied. On their way home, a scuffle is commenced 
 in fun, but gradually changes to a fight, wherein one finds 
 himself down with two holding and beating him. Though 
 sorely exasperated and severely suffering, he can not throw 
 them off, but he can reach with one hand the knife in his 
 vest pocket. Do you fancy he will be more or less likely 
 to use it because of that moral spectacle which Society has 
 just proffered for his delectation and improvement ? You 
 may say Less, if you can, but I say More ! many times 
 more ! You may preach to him that Revenge is right for 
 Society but wrong for him till your head is gray, and he 
 perhaps may listen to you but not till after he has opened 
 his knife and made a lunge with it. 
 
 2. It tends to weaken and destroy the natural horror of 
 bloodshed. Man has a natural horror of taking the life of 
 his fellow man. His instincts revolt at it his conscience 
 condemns it his frame shudders at the thought of it. But 
 let him see first one and then another strung up between 
 heaven and earth and choked to death, with due formalities 
 of Law and solemnities of Religion the slayer not ac- 
 
308 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 counted an evil-doer but an executor of the State s just 
 decree, a pillar of the Social edifice and his horror of 
 bloodshed per se sensibly and rapidly oozes away, and he 
 comes to look at killing men as quite the thing provided 
 there be adequate reason for it. But what reason? and 
 whose ? The law slays the slayer ; but in his sight the 
 corrupter or calumniator of his wife or sister, the traducer 
 of his character, the fraudulent bankrupt who has involved 
 and ruined his friend, is every whit as great a villain as the 
 man-slayer, and deserving of as severe a punishment. Yet 
 the Law makes no provision for such punishment hardly 
 for any punishment at all and what shall he do? He 
 can not consent that the guilty go unwhipt of justice, so he 
 takes his rifle and deals out full measure of it. He is but 
 doing as Society has taught him by example. War, duel-, 
 ing, bloody affrays, &c., find their nourishment and support 
 in the Gallows. 
 
 3. It facilitates and often insures the escape of the guilty 
 from any punishment by human law. Jurors (whether for 
 or against Capital Punishment) dread to convict where the 
 crime is Death. Human judgment is fallible ; human testi 
 mony may mislead. Witnesses often lie sometimes con 
 spire to lie plausibly and effectively. Circumstances often 
 strongly point to a conclusion which is after all a false one. 
 The real murderers sometimes conspire to fasten suspicion 
 on some innocent person, and so arrange the circumstances 
 that he can hardly escape their toils. Sometimes they ap 
 pear in court as witnesses against him, and swear the crime 
 directly upon him. A single legal work contains a list of 
 one hundred cases in which men were hung for crimes which 
 they were afterward proved entirely innocent of. And for 
 every such case there have doubtless been many wherein 
 juries, unwilling to take life where there was a possibility of 
 innocence, have given the prisoner the benefit of a very 
 faint doubt and acquitted him. Had the penalty been Im- 
 
DEATH BY HUMAN LAW. 309 
 
 prisonment, they would have convicted, notwithstanding the 
 bare possibility of his innocence, since any future devel 
 opments in his favor, through the retraction of witnesses, 
 the clearing up of circumstances, or the confession of the 
 actual culprit, would at once lead to his liberation and to an 
 earnest effort by the community to repay him for his un 
 merited ignominy and suffering. But choke the prisoner 
 to death, and any development in his favor is thenceforth 
 too late. Next year may prove him innocent beyond cavil 
 or doubt ; but of what avail is that to the victim over whose 
 grave the young grass is growing ? And thus, through the 
 inexorable character of the Death-Penalty, hundreds of the 
 innocent suffer an undeserved and ignominious death, while 
 tens of thousands of the guilty escape any punishment by 
 human law. 
 
 4. It excites a pernicious sympathy for the convict. We 
 ought ever to be merciful toward the sinful and guilty, 
 remembering our own misdeeds and imperfections. We 
 ought to regard with a benignant compassion those whom 
 Crime has doomed to suffer. But the criminal is not a 
 hero, nor a martyr, and should not be made to resemble one. 
 A crowd of ten to fifty thousand persons, witnessing the 
 infliction of the law s just penalty on an offender, and half 
 of them sobbing and crying from sympathy for his fate, is 
 not a wholesome spectacle far otherwise. The impression 
 it makes is not that of the majesty and Divine benignity of 
 Law the sovereignty and beneficence of Justice. Thou 
 sands are hoping, praying, entreating that a pardon may yet 
 come some will accuse the Executive of cruelty and hard 
 ness of heart in withholding it. While this furnace of sighs 
 is at red heat, this tempest of sobs in full career, the cul 
 prit is swung off a few faint; many shudder ; more feel 
 an acute shock of pain ; while the great mass adjourn to 
 take a general drink, some of them swearing that this hang 
 ing was a great shame that the man did not really deserve 
 
310 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 it. Do you fancy the greater number have imbibed and will 
 profit by the intended lesson ? 
 
 But I do not care to pile argument on argument, con 
 sideration on consideration, in opposition to the expediency, 
 in this day and section, of putting men to death in cold 
 blood by human law. It seems to me a most pernicious 
 and brutalizing practice. Indeed, the recent enactments of 
 our own, with most if not all of the Free States, whereby 
 Executions are henceforth to take place in private, or in 
 the presence of a few select witnesses only, seem clearly to 
 admit the fact. They certainly imply that Executions are 
 of no use as examples that they rather tend to make 
 criminals than to reform those already depraved. When I 
 see any business or vocation sneaking and skulking in dark 
 lanes and little by-streets which elude observation, I conclude 
 that those who follow such business feel at least doubtful of 
 its utility and beneficence. They may argue that it is a 
 necessary evil, but they can hardly put faith in their own 
 logic. When I see the bright array of many-colored liquor- 
 bottles, which formerly filled flauntingly the post of honor 
 in every tip-top hotel, now hustled away into some side- 
 room, and finally down into a dark basement, out of the 
 sight and knowledge of all but those who especially seek 
 them, I say exultingly, Good for so much ! one more 
 hoist, and they will be where they should be ^ out of sight 
 4 and reach altogether : so, when I see the Gallows, once 
 the denizen of some swelling eminence, the cynosure of ten 
 thousand eyes, the observed of all observers, skulking and 
 hiding itself from public view in jail-yards, shutting itself up 
 in prisons, I say, You have taken the right road ! Go 
 1 ahead ! One more drive, and your detested, rickety frame 
 is out of the sight of civilized man for ever ! 
 
LAND REFORM. 311 
 
 LAND REFORM. 
 
 The Rights of Man his natural, unchanging, inalienable 
 Rights as Man have fitly become, in our day, the theme 
 of general and earnest discussion. We find little of this in 
 the world s early ages and their enduring monuments in 
 Homer, or Plato, or Cicero in Magna Charta, or the Con 
 stitutions, so called, of ancient Republics, or more modern 
 Limited Monarchies. Only since Paine met The Crisis of 
 our Revolutionary struggle with those brief, terse, vigorous 
 essays wnich brought the whole philosophy of Government 
 into the strong, clear sunlight of Common Sense only 
 since Jefferson condensed the truths so enunciated into the 
 Declaration of our Independence have the Rights of Man 
 been prominently considered and discussed. And, w r hen 
 Jefferson and the Continental Congress proclaimed, in tones 
 to which the world, however unwilling, has been compelled 
 to listen, that all men are created equal, and that among 
 the inalienable rights with which their Creator has en 
 dowed them are those of * Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of 
 Happiness, they uttered truths of whose fullest import even 
 they were not clearly conscious, and whose ultimate influ 
 ences on Human well-being and destiny no man can even 
 yet conceive. 
 
 Let us consider their bearings on the newly agitated Land 
 Question on the Right of Man to the Soil. The Earth s 
 surface undoubtedly contains good arable land enough to 
 give to every family in existence a farm of ample dimensions, 
 even though all the unhealthful or inhospitable portions of 
 the globe were left utterly uninhabited. But of the One 
 Thousand Millions of human beings w r ho are supposed to 
 be in existence, what proportion practically enjoy the Right 
 
312 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 to any Soil except that with which their lifeless bodies are 
 finally covered? What proportion are at liberty to obey 
 God s command, Six days shalt thou labor, save in the 
 contingency that some one else knows that he can buy that 
 labor and sell its product on such terms that he may realize 
 a pecuniary profit on the speculation ? 
 
 Now these deductions can hardly seem far-fetched : Man, 
 having a conceded right to live, has a necessary right also to 
 a reasonable share of those means of subsistence which God 
 has provided for and made virtually necessary to the whole 
 human family : Having a right to Liberty, he must have 
 consequently the right to go somewhere on earth and do what 
 is essential to his continued existence, not by the purchased 
 permission of some other man, but by virtue of his manhood : 
 Having the right to pursue his own happiness by any means 
 not inconsistent with the welfare and happiness of others, he 
 has the right to do so somewhere, and to be protected and 
 justified in so doing. In short, the terrestrial Man, pos 
 sessing the well-known properties of matter as well as of 
 spirit, can only in truth enjoy the rights of Life, Liberty, 
 and the pursuit of Happiness, by being guarantied some 
 place in which to enjoy them. He who has no clear, inhe 
 rent right to live somewhere, has no right to live at all. 
 
 But look at the question from the side of Labor : God 
 expressly commands men to labor six days of every seven, 
 and has made obedience to this command a vital condition 
 of healthful and comfortable existence. (Alas that one man 
 should obey and another enjoy the reward of his obedience !) 
 Here, in a State or County, are fifty thousand persons able 
 and willing to labor, with an abundance of arable land to 
 employ them all constantly and reward them generously : 
 But the land mainly belongs to a few dozens or hundreds 
 of this population, (or, still worse, of absentees,) who vir 
 tually say to the twenty or thirty thousand would-be laborers 
 who own no land, You can only be allowed to work here 
 
LAND REFORM. 313 
 
 s on condition that you will allow us [in the shape of rents, 
 price of land, or depressed wages] one-half to three-fourths 
 * of the entire product of your toil. Is not here a heavy 
 tax levied by man upon obedience to the laws of Nature and 
 of God ? Who does not see that Labor is discouraged and 
 Idleness immensely increased by this exaction, and the 
 power vested in the few to impose it? 
 
 i r et the most appalling feature of our present system of 
 Landholding is the manifest tendency of its evils to become 
 more and more aggravated and intolerable nay, the inevi 
 table necessity that they should become so, if the system 
 itself be endured. If the population of the British Isles 
 were this day no more dense than that of Indiana or Russia, 
 the average recompense of its labor would doubtless be in 
 creased, the condition of its laboring people greatly improved. 
 The gradual increase of population therein from three or four 
 millions to thirty or forty, has, in connection with the mo 
 nopoly of the Soil by a class who are not its cultivators, 
 gradually carried up the market value and the yearly rental 
 of arable land to prices which enable the land-owning few 
 to riot in unparalleled luxury, and doom the landless many 
 to toil evermore for the barest necessaries of life, while hun 
 dreds of thousands vainly beg from door to door an oppor 
 tunity to earn the blackest bread by the most repulsive and 
 meagerly recompensed drudgery. Like causes will produce 
 like effects here and elsewhere. It is not the fact that the 
 landlords are few that is so baneful ; if they were ten times 
 as many, the evil would hardly be mitigated. So long as 
 the millions, whom God has doomed in the sweat of their 
 faces to eat bread, shall be constrained to solicit of others 
 the privilege of so doing, and to propitiate the land-owning 
 class by such a share of their products as Cupidity may 
 exact and Necessity must concede, the increase of popula 
 tion will be paralleled by the depression of labor and the 
 laborer. Other influence. mnv come in to modify or roun- 
 27 
 
314 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 teract this new inventions which vastly increase the effi 
 ciency of labor ; improved processes, more scientific culture, 
 &c., may do something to mitigate the ills of poverty; but 
 the master evil, a monopoly of land by those who do not use 
 it, tends ever to sink the landless multitude into a state of 
 more abject dependence, while it restricts the demand for 
 and the price of their sole commodity and resource. 
 
 Suppose the usage and the law were so changed that no 
 man were permitted, in this boasted land of equal rights, to 
 hold as his own more than half a square mile of arable soil 
 (which is enough for fifty men to cultivate) so long as a 
 single person needing land in the community should remain 
 destitute of any, what a mighty and beneficent transformation 
 would be effected in the reward of labor and the condition 
 of the laboring class ! Then, instead of a constant increase 
 in the proportion of landless seekers for something to do, 
 resulting in a constant jostling and underbidding among 
 laborers wanting employment, we should see a continual 
 division and subdivision of large estates, with a steady in 
 crease in the number and proportion of small proprietors, 
 each his own employer and his own laborer, whereby the 
 mass of landless seekers for work as hirelings or tenants 
 would be rapidly diminished. It is not proposed to disturb 
 any individual in the full enjoyment of his possessions, but 
 to make the operation of the proposed reform wholly pros 
 pective, so that, while each proprietor or landlord, at the 
 enactment of the Limitation, should retain his estates until 
 death, all future aggregation shall be sternly forbidden, 
 and the principle applied to each existing estate on the de 
 cease of its present owner. Even the right to transmit prop 
 erty to heirs or devisees would not be interfered with, except 
 so far as to say, Man of Millions ! bequeath your wealth as 
 you choose ; but that part of it which consists of the Soil 
 
 * can only be inherited and held by any one to the extent o f 
 
 * the limit prescribed by law. If you see fit to devise more 
 
LAND REFORM. 315 
 
 4 than this to any one person, he may select from your be- 
 * quest, and any he may previously own, so much as the law 
 allows him to retain, and sell the rest : or, if he does not do 
 1 this within a year, the State will do it for him, holding the 
 1 proceeds of the portion sold subject to his order. 
 
 That this will seem arbitrary and impracticable to many 
 is a matter of course, and the hardship of not allowing a man 
 to do as he likes with his own will doubtless be dilated on in 
 tones of moving eloquence. But the principle here involved 
 has already been asserted in our Usury Laws and many 
 others which tend to fetter or check the spirit of personal 
 acquisition when it is found encroaching upon the domain of 
 public good. A man may not do as he likes with his own 
 money, nor even with his own house he is forbidden to 
 burn the latter, though built with his own hands, and en 
 tirely unconnected with any other. Many if not most States 
 already limit the area of land which may be acquired and 
 held by a Bank or Moneyed Corporation ; probably none 
 allow Aliens freely to acquire and enjoy it. Coeval with 
 the great Hebrew Lawgiver and very thoroughly enforced 
 by him, reappearing in the noblest periods of Roman repub 
 licanism, but gradually sapped and overthrown by an ever- 
 grasping Aristocracy, the principle of Land Limitation has 
 received the approval of some of the most gifted and philan 
 thropic of ancient or modern times. Its triumphant estab 
 lishment, wherever Popular Education and Universal Suf 
 frage shall have preceded it, is well nigh inevitable. 
 
 A ready objection of those who have scarcely thought on 
 the subject imports that any attempt to remedy by law the 
 inequalities of fortune in the matter of Land involves the 
 principle of an arbitrary distribution of Property equally to 
 everybody. But this is an egregious error. What Nature 
 indicates and Justice requires is Equal Opportunities to all. 
 To maintain that he who has idly frolicked through the sum 
 mer has an equal right to food and clothing in the winter with 
 
316 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 his frugal neighbor, who by patient toil has produced five 
 hundred bushels of grain and some hundreds of pounds of 
 flax and wool, is to contravene the Apostle s precept, He 
 that will not work shall not eat. But Land Limitation con 
 templates a gentle and gradual restoration of that equal right 
 to the Soil which was ordained by the Creator in the consti 
 tution of the globe. Instead of giving to the idle the products 
 of other men s labor, it is intended to countervail that dis 
 pensation of human policy whereby millions labor ceaselessly 
 for scanty and bitter bread while thousands revel sump 
 tuously on the lion s share of the products of the toil so 
 meagerly recompensed. Not to transfer the toiler s earnings 
 to the idler, but to prevent such transfer, is the object of 
 Land Reform. 
 
 But if it be possible to resist the force of the considera 
 tions which dictate the enactment of laws looking to a more 
 equal apportionment of the Soil now private property, how 
 can it be to oppose with even plausibility the application of 
 the Land Reform principles to our vast and bounteous Na 
 tional Domain? Here we have a public patrimony equal to 
 the habitable portion of Europe, and calculated to support 
 in generous abundance a population of Two Hundred Mil 
 lions of People. Under our present system, (the best the 
 world has known since the overthrow of the Hebrew Com 
 monwealth,) this Domain is becoming private property at the 
 rate of some Three to Five Millions of Acres per annum. 
 Making a reasonable allowance for the steadily increasing 
 demand, arising from the enlargement of our population 
 and the swelling tide of immigration, we may safely calcu 
 late that in fifty years our Public Lands will have been 
 diminished by^t least Three Hundred Millions of their very 
 choicest portion, namely, that bordering or approaching the 
 navigable waters of the Mississippi, the Columbia, and their 
 tributaries. The remainder must be far inferior in soil and 
 natural advantages generally. What then will be the con- 
 
LAND REFORM. 317 
 
 dition and prospects of the landless millions among our peo 
 ple, pressed upon by European competition and European 
 immigration on the one side, and deprived in great measure 
 of the present safety-valve of Western migration on the 
 other ? But look forward another half-century, and judi;o 
 what will then be the state of * the disinherited classes, 
 should no change be made meantime in our land-laws. 
 Look to Saxony, to Belgium, to Ireland, for a parallel. 
 
 National Reform is the broad and sure basis whereon all 
 other Reforms may be safely erected. A single law of Con 
 gress, proffering to each landless citizen a patch of the Pub 
 lic Domain small but sufficient, when faithfully cultivated, 
 for the sustenance of his family, and forbidding farther sales 
 of the Public Lands except in limited quantities to actual 
 settlers, with a suitable proviso against future aggregation, 
 would promote immensely the independence, enlightenment, 
 morality, industry, and comfort of our entire laboring popula 
 tion evermore. It would improve the condition of the labor 
 ing class in our cities, not by drawing away all to the new 
 lands of the West, but by so enlarging the stream of emigra 
 tion thither as to diminish the pressure of competition in the 
 Labor market throughout the country, and enable the hire 
 ling to make terms with his employer as to the duration of 
 his daily toil and the amount of his recompense. It would 
 render settlements more compact and continuous, insuring 
 a more rapid establishment of Roads, of Schools, of Divine 
 worship, &c. It would enlarge immensely the demand for 
 the products of our manufactories and workshops, and thus 
 aid the laborers remaining in the Old States by increasing 
 the demand for their labor as well as diminishing the com 
 petition to supply it. It would hardly be possible to exag 
 gerate the ultimate benefits of the proposed Reform, and 
 the day of its triumph should be hailed by the poor and 
 lowly as the birthday of their independence, as the Fourth 
 of July is celebrated as that of the Nation. 
 
 97* 
 
318 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 THE RIGHT TO LABOR.* 
 
 " IN the beginning GOD created the heaven and the 
 earth." 
 
 The earth, the air, the waters, the sunshine, with their 
 natural products, were divinely intended and appointed for 
 the use and sustenance of Man (Gen. i. 26, 28J[ not for a 
 part only, but for the whole Human Family. 
 
 Civilized Society, as it exists in our day, has divested the 
 larger portion of mankind of the unimpeded, unpurchased 
 enjoyment of their natural rights. That larger portion may 
 be perishing with cold, yet have no legally recognized right 
 to a stick of decaying fuel in the most unfrequented morass, 
 or maybe famishing, yet have no legal right to pluck and eat 
 the bitterest acorn in the depths of the remotest wilderness. 
 The defeasance or confiscation of Man s natural right to use_ 
 any portion of the Earth s surface not actually in use by 
 another, is an important fact, to be kept in view in every 
 consideration of the duty of the affluent and comfortable to 
 the poor and unfortunate. 
 
 It is not essential in this place to determine that the 
 divestment of the larger number of any recognized right to 
 the Soil and its Products, save by the purchased permission 
 of others, was or was not politic and necessary. All who 
 reflect must certainly admit that many of the grants of land 
 by hundreds of square miles to this or that favorite of the 
 power which assumed to make them were made thoughtlessly 
 or recklessly, and would not have been so large or so un 
 accompanied with stipulations in behalf of the future occu 
 pants and cultivators, if a reasonable foresight and a decent 
 regard for the general good had been cherished and evinced 
 
 * From a discussion on Socialism, with H. J. Raymond. 
 
THE RIGHT TO LABOR. 319 
 
 by the granting power. Suffice it here, however, that the 
 granting of the Soil of the State of New York, for example 
 by the supreme authority representing the whole to a minor 
 portion of the whole is a " fixed fact." By a Law of Nature, 
 every person horn in the State of New York had (unless for 
 feited by crime) a perfect right to be here, and to his equal 
 share of the Soil, the woods, the waters, and all the natural 
 products thereof. By the law of Society, all but the posses 
 sors of title-deeds exist here only by the purchased permission 
 of the land-owning class, and were intruders and trespassers 
 on the soil of their nativity without that permission. By law, 
 the landless have no inherent right to stand on a single square 
 foot of the State of New-York except in the highways. 
 
 The only solid ground on which this surrender of the 
 original property of the whole to a minor portion can be 
 justified is that of PUBLIC GOOD the good, not of a part, 
 bu f of the whole. The people of a past generation, through 
 their rulers, claimed and exercised the right of divesting, not 
 themselves merely, but the majority of all future generations, 
 of their original and inherent right to possess and cultivate 
 any unimproved portion of the soil of our State for their own 
 sustenance and benefit. To render this assumption of power 
 valid to the fearful extent to which it was exercised, it is 
 essential that it be demonstrated that the good of the whole 
 w r as promoted by such exercise. 
 
 Is this rationally demonstrable now ? Can the widow, 
 whose children pine and shiver in some bleak, miserable 
 garret, on the fifteen or twenty cents, which is all she can 
 earn by unremitted toil, be made to realize that she and her 
 babes are benefited by or in consequence of the granting to 
 a part an exclusive right to use the earth and enjoy its fruits ? 
 Can the poor man who day after day paces the streets of a 
 city in search of any employment at any price, (as thousands 
 are now doing here,) be made to realize it on his part ? _Are 
 there not thousands on thousands natives of our State who 
 
320 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 never wilfully violated her laws who are to-day far worse 
 off than they would have been if Nature s rule of allowing 
 no man to appropriate to himself any more of the earth than 
 he can cultivate and improve had been recognized and 
 respected by Society ? These questions admit of but one 
 answer. And one inevitable consequence of the prevailing 
 system is that, as Population increases and Arts are per 
 fected, the income of the wealthy owner of land increases 
 while the recompense of the hired or leasehold cultivator is 
 steadily diminishing. The labor of Great Britain is twice as 
 effective now as it was a century ago, but the laborer is 
 worse paid, fed, and lodged than he then was, while the 
 incomes of the landlord class have been enormously in 
 creased. The same fundamental causes exist here, and tend 
 to the same results. They have been modified, thus far, by 
 the existence, within or near our State, of large tracts of un 
 improved land, which the owners were anxious to improve 
 or dispose of on almost any terms. These are growing 
 scarcer and more remote ; they form no part of the system 
 we are considering, but something which exists in opposition 
 to it, which modifies it, but is absolutely sure to be ultimately 
 absorbed and conquered by it. The notorious fact that they 
 do serve to mitigate the exactions to which the landless 
 mass, even in our long and densely settled towns and cities, 
 are subject, serves to show that the condition of the great 
 mass must inevitably be far worse than at present when the 
 natural consummation of land- selling is reached, and all the 
 soil of the Union has become the property of a minor part 
 of the People of the Union. 
 
 The past can not be recalled. What has been rightfully 
 (however mistakenly) done by the authorized agents of the 
 State or Nation, can only be retracted upon urgent public 
 necessity, and upon due satisfaction to all whose private 
 rights are thereby invaded. But those who have been 
 divested of an important, a vital natural right, are also 
 
THE RIGHT TO LABOR. 321 
 
 entitled to compensation. THE RIGHT TO LABOR, secured 
 to them in the creation of the earth, taken away in the_ 
 granting of the Soil to a minor portion of them, must be re 
 stored. Labor, essential to all, is the inexorable condition 
 of the honest, independent subsistence of the Poor. It must 
 be fully guarantied to all, so that each may know that he 
 can never starve nor be forced to beg while able and willing 
 to work. Our public provision for Pauperism is but a 
 halting and wretched substitute for this. Society exercises 
 no paternal guardianship over the poor man until he has sur 
 rendered to despair. He may spend a whole year and his 
 little all in vainly seeking employment, and all this time 
 Society does nothing, cares nothing for him ; but when his 
 last dollar is exhausted, and his capacities very probably 
 prostrated by the intoxicating draughts to which he is driven 
 to escape the horrors of reflection, then he becomes a subject 
 of public charity, and is often maintained in idleness for the 
 rest of his days at a cost of thousands, when a few dollars 
 worth of foresight and timely aid might have preserved him 
 from this fate, and in a position of independent usefulness for 
 his whole after-life. 
 
 But the Right to Labor that is, to constant Employ 
 ment with a just and full Recompense can not be guaran 
 tied to all without a radical change in our Social Economy. 
 I, for one, am very willing, nay, most anxious, to do my full 
 share toward securing to every man, woman, and child, full 
 employment and a just recompense for all time to come. I 
 feel sure this can be accomplished. But I can not, as the 
 world goes, give employment at any time to all who ask it 
 of me, nor the hundredth part of them. "Work, work! 
 give us something to do ! anything that will secure us 
 honest bread," is .at this moment the prayer of not less than 
 Thirty Thousand human beings within sound of our City- 
 hall bell. They would gladly be producers of wealth, yet 
 remain from week to week mere consumers of bread which 
 
322 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 somebody has to earn. Here is an enormous waste and loss. 
 We must devise a remedy. It is the duty, and not less the 
 palpable interest, of the wealthy, the thrifty, the tax-paying, 
 to do so. The ultimate and thorough remedy, I believe is 
 found in ASSOCIATION. 
 
 HOMESTEAD EXEMPTION. 
 
 THE general policy of exempting certain necessaries of 
 life from seizure and confiscation for debt no longer stands 
 in need of vindication. The Roman barbarism of selling the 
 debtor to satisfy the demand of his creditor and the more 
 absurd and recent enormity of shutting him up in jail, to 
 be an expense to the creditor and no benefit to himself nor 
 anybody else, are now generally exploded. Instead of de 
 priving the debtor of all chance to earn a livelihood, or to 
 support his family, it is the wiser effort of our time to en 
 courage him to work and earn by reserving of his property 
 certain household articles of prime necessity and his imple 
 ments of labor from the clutch of the sheriff. And I feel 
 very sure that these exemptions, though sometimes abused, 
 have in the main operated justly and beneficently. A man 
 hitherto in easy circumstances is often rendered bankrup* 
 by misplaced confidence, by endorsing for friends, by a 
 commercial revulsion, or by a mistaken estimate of his own 
 resources, by a fire, a flood, or some other calamity. Of 
 course, as soon as it is known that he is unable to pay, 
 everybody insists on being paid, and his remaining property 
 is sacrificed for less than half its worth, just when he most 
 needs that it should command its full value. The law, as it 
 has been, steps in not to protect and comfort but to harass 
 and skin him, until he finds himself not merely destitute of 
 property, but of the ability to earn any. His implements of 
 Jabpr, the shelter of his family, their bedding, clothes and 
 
HOMESTEAD EXEMPTION. 303 
 
 cooking-ware, are dragged away and sold for a song ; and 
 he has the pleasant prospect before him of seeing anything 
 that he may henceforth be able to earn carried off and sacri 
 ficed in like manner, without paying his debts or contributing 
 sensibly toward that consummation. Law costs eat up 
 pretty much all that such small matters will fetch, and he is, if 
 left out of prison, hardly better off than if in it. Discouraged, 
 despairing, avoided by his sunshine friends, he is, in the ex 
 pressive language of the street, ruined. He sinks in stupid 
 lethargy under the crushing load weighing upon him, and 
 becomes feeble, heartless, inefficient very often a depen 
 dent on the grudged charity of kindred, an idler, a pauper, 
 a drunkard. 
 
 Public sentiment, enlightened by observation and reflec 
 tion, has outgrown this policy and subjected it to many im 
 portant modifications. Imprisonment for debt is nearly ex 
 tinct ; liberal exemptions of implements of labor and house 
 hold furniture have been enacted in most States ; and now 
 the question is fairly presented Shall a shelter for wife 
 and children, a piece of ground wherefrom to grow their 
 food, be added to the present list of exempted articles ? 
 To this question I most emphatically answer, Yes ! Let the 
 4 bankrupt s wife and children have a shelter in spite of his 
 misfortunes. Let him still have an assured opportunity to 
 labor on and produce from the soil now that his other 
 resources are cut off. In our diseased and unstable social 
 * condition, the banker of to-day may be the bankrupt of to- 
 k morrow. Let us all in prosperity remember the teachings 
 of adversity and be merciful. 
 
 NOW T I know all that may be said, and have said a part 
 of it against the selfishness, the dishonesty, the gross culpa 
 bility, of a large proportion of the debtor class. I know that 
 no man has a moral right to give entertainments, to buy fine 
 clothes and jewelry, to inhabit a costly house and live sump 
 tuously, while he is or pretends to be unable to pay his 
 
324 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 honest debts. Such a man is a swindler, no matter though 
 * Hon. is prefixed to his name or D. D. appended to it. 
 I will go as heartily and as far as any man for punishing him 
 as a swindler, but not for turning his family into the street on 
 a simple allegation of debt. Indeed, it is one of my reasons 
 for urging the further prosecution of the Exemption policy 
 that I wish to see loose, idle livers deprived of the facilities 
 they now enjoy for running into debt. Credit, credit every 
 where credit to men of doubtful character or principles 
 credit for articles that never should be bought except by 
 those who have the money to pay for them and more behind 
 it credit absorbing half the movable capital of the country 
 in channels where it is least useful such credit is among 
 the sorest evils of our time. Credit should be given to the 
 upright, the frugal and the industrious only to farmers for 
 farms, implements or stock ; to mechanics or artisans for 
 machinery or material ; to forwarders and exchangers to 
 enable them to purchase produce with cash and market it 
 advantageously for all parties. But credit for silks, pianos 
 and Brussels carpets for wines, liquors and perfumes 
 this is about as common and as extensive as the right sort, 
 and it is bad policy to encourage such by legislation. I did 
 hope that a mortal blow had been struck at such credit by 
 the National Bankrupt Law ; but faction and folly destroyed 
 that law just when its evils had been all encountered and its 
 blessings were about to be experienced. I shall rejoice if the 
 same end is reached, to a more limited extent, by Homestead 
 Exemption. 
 
 The soundness of the principle of Homestead Exemption 
 is not generally questioned by the adversaries of the policy. 
 They have a safer mode of warfare than that. No bill can 
 be drawn so as to hit their several tastes if the amount 
 exempted is high enough for one it is too high for another ; 
 and if you reduce it to the pattern of the latter, the former will 
 vote against it as a mockery and worse than nothing. If a 
 
HOMESTEAD EXEMPTION. 325 
 
 House passes a bill notwithstanding, the Senate will amend, 
 or postpone, or fail to act upon it, and the measure fails. 
 Yet already Wisconsin, Georgia, Texas, New-York, and I 
 believe some other States, have Homestead Exemption laws, 
 and nobody even suggests their repeal. Those States would 
 as soon think of going back to the cast-off atrocity of strip 
 ping a man of al 1 he has and shutting him up in jail without 
 trial on a mere allegation or suspicion of debt. A secure 
 though humble home to every family is one of the generous 
 aspirations of our age, and it will yet be established as one 
 of the cardinal principles of a Republican polity. It will 
 prove a potent element of a true and genial Conservatism. 
 The timorous people who used to declaim against the un- 
 safety of a Government swayed by all manner of vagrants 
 and loafers were not so very wrong as to the evil, though 
 grievously mistaken as to the remedy, which is to be found in 
 supplying these vagrants with Homes and not in depriving 
 them of Votes. A Republic in which every man shall feel 
 that he has interests to protect, rights to defend, must be the 
 strongest government on earth, and such will ours be when 
 every inhabitant shall have his own secure Home. Now 
 Homestead Exemption will not directly provide any one with 
 a freehold who is without it, but it will secure one to each man 
 or woman who has it, and thus strongly impel every man to 
 acquire one. The young man will naturally say, If I work 
 for and pay the price of a dwelling and piece of land while 
 I am single and can save, I may be very sure that no mis- 
 * fortune in after-life can deprive me of a home so long as I 
 1 choose to retain it. That the end of this will be frugality 
 in youth and independence in after-life to thousands, who 
 otherwise would stumble on to maturity heedless and im 
 provident, I can not doubt. And, in spite of distrust, 
 timidity, indolence and avarice, the good work will go on, 
 until the enjoyment of Inviolable Homes shall be commen 
 surate with the existence of Republican Freedom. 
 28 
 
HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 LIVING AND MEANS. 
 
 ONE of the most mischievous phrases in which a rotten 
 Morality, a radically false and vicious Public Sentiment dis 
 guise themselves, is that which characterizes certain individ 
 uals as destitute of financial capacity. A l kind, amiable, 
 generous, good sort of man, (so runs the varnish,) * but 
 utterly unqualified for the management of his own finances 
 a mere child in everything relating to money, &c. &c. 
 meaning that with an income of five hundred dollars a year 
 he persisted in spending one thousand ; or with an income 
 of two to three thousand dollars, he regularly spent five to 
 eight thousand, according to his ability to run in debt or the 
 credulity of others in trusting him. 
 
 The victims of this immorality debtor as well as cred 
 itor are entitled to more faithful dealing at the hands of 
 those not directly affected by the misdemeanors of the 
 former. It is the duty of the community to rebuke and re 
 press these pernicious glosses, making the truth heard and 
 felt that inordinate expenditure is knavery and crime. No 
 man has a moral right thus to lavish on his own appetites 
 money which he has not earned and does not really need. 
 If Public Opinion were sound on this subject if a man 
 living beyond his means when his means were commensurate 
 with his real needs, were subjected to the reprehension he 
 deserves the evil would be instantly checked and ulti 
 mately eradicated. 
 
 The world is full of people who can t imagine why they 
 don t prosper like their neighbors, when the real obstacle is 
 not in banks nor tariffs, in bad public policy nor hard times, 
 but in their own extravagance and heedless ostentation. The 
 young mechanic or clerk marries and takes a house, which 
 
LIVING AND MEANS. 327 
 
 he proceeds to furnish twice as expensively as he can afford, 
 and then his wife, instead of taking hold to help him earn a 
 livelihood by doing her own work, must have a hired servant 
 to help her spend his limited earnings. Ten years afterward 
 you will find him struggling on under a double load of debts 
 and children, wondering why the luck was always against 
 him, while his friends regret his unhappy destitution of finan 
 cial ability. Had they from the first been frank and honest, 
 he need not have been so unlucky. 
 
 Through every grade of society this vice of inordinate ex 
 penditure insinuates itself. The single man hired out in 
 the country at ten to fifteen dollars per month, who contrives 
 to dissolve his year s earnings in frolics and fine clothes ; 
 the clerk who has three to five hundred dollars a year and 
 melts down twenty to fifty of it into liquor and cigars, are 
 paralleled by the young merchant who fills a spacious house 
 with costly furniture, gives dinners and drives a fast horse 
 on the strength of the profits he expects to realize when his 
 goods are all sold and his notes all paid. Let a man have a 
 genius for spending, and whether his income be a dollar a 
 day or a dollar a minute it is equally certain to prove inade 
 quate. If dining, wining and party-giving won t help him 
 through with it, building, gaming and speculating will be 
 sure to. The bottomless pocket will never fill, no matter 
 how bounteous the stream pouring into it. The man who 
 (being single) does not save money on six dollars per week 
 will not be apt to on sixty ; and he who does not lay up 
 something in his first year of independent exertion will be 
 pretty likely to wear a poor man s hair into his grave. 
 
 No man who has the natural use of his faculties and his 
 muscles has any right to tax others with the cost of his sup 
 port, as this class of non-financial gentlemen habitually do. 
 It is their common mistake to fancy that if a debt is only 
 paid at last the obligations of the debtor is fulfilled, but the 
 fact is not so. A man who sells his property for another s 
 
328 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 promise to pay next week, or next month, and is compelled 
 to wear out a pair of boots in running after his due, which 
 he finally gets after a year or two, is never really paid. Very 
 often, he has lost half the face of his demand by not having 
 the money when he needed it, beside the cost and vexation 
 of running after it. There is just one way to pay an obli 
 gation in full, and that is to pay it when due. He who keeps 
 up a running fight with bills and loans through life is con 
 tinually living on other men s means, is a serious burden and 
 a detriment to those who deal with him, although his estate 
 should finally pay every dollar of his legal obligations. 
 
 Inordinate expenditure is the cause of a great share of the 
 crime and consequent misery which devastate the world. 
 The clerk who spends more than he earns is fast qualifying 
 himself for a gambler and a thief; the trader or mechanic 
 who overruns his income is very certain to become in time 
 a trickster and a cheat. Wherever you see a man spending 
 faster than he earns, there look out for villainy to be devel 
 oped, though it be the farthest thing possible from his present 
 thought. 
 
 When the world shall have become wiser and its stand 
 ard of morality more lofty, it will perceive and affirm that 
 profuse expenditure, even by one who can pecuniarily afford 
 it, is pernicious and unjustifiable that a man, however 
 wealthy, has no right to lavish on his own appetites, his 
 tastes or his ostentation, that which might have raised hun 
 dreds from destitution and despair to comfort and usefulness. 
 But that is an improvement in public sentiment which must 
 be waited for, while the other is more ready and obvious. 
 
 The meanness, the dishonesty, the iniquity, of squander 
 ing thousands unearned, and keeping others out of money 
 that is justly theirs, have rarely been urged and enforced as 
 they should be. They need but to be considered and un 
 derstood to be universally loathed and detested. 
 
PITY HIS FAMILY. 329 
 
 * PITY HIS FAMILY/ 
 
 A MAN falls into embarrassments, which ultimately over 
 whelm him in bankruptcy or drive him into roguery and crime. 
 He was yesterday respected, influential and supposed to be 
 affluent, and his family were treated and treated themselves 
 accordingly ; but to-day he is disgraced and steered clear 
 of without resources or prospects very likely in prison 
 and exposed to ignominious punishment. Vile wretch ! 
 say the million ; it is good enough for him, but we must 
 pity his poor family. 
 
 Certainly, we must pity them pity all who suffer 
 still more all who sin and suffer. They need pity, and 
 there is no danger that we shall pity them too much. But 
 the impression conveyed of the innocence of the fallen man s 
 family and their unmerited exposure to want and ignominy, 
 is often very far from the truth. 
 
 In fact, half the men who are loathed as dragging down 
 their families to shame and destitution are really themselves 
 dragged down by those families driven to bankruptcy, 
 shame and crime by the thoughtless and basely selfish 
 extravagance of wife and children. Let a man be in the 
 way of receiving considerable money, and having property 
 in his hands, and his family can rarely be made to compre 
 hend and realize that there is any limit to his ability to 
 give and spend. Fine dresses and ornaments for wife and 
 daughters ; spending money and broadcloth for hopeful 
 sons costly parties every now and then, and richer furni 
 ture and more of it at all times these are a few of the 
 blind drains on the governor s means which are perpetu 
 ally in action. O, what s a hundred dollars to a man doing 
 such a business? is the indignant question in case of any 
 
330 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 demur or remonstrance on his part. Not one of them could 
 bear to disgrace him by earning a dollar; they couldn t go 
 out shabbily dressed, for fear his credit would suffer. They 
 F can t see how a man who can get discounts in Bank need 
 ever be short of money or stingy in using it. All his talk 
 of difficulties or hard times they regard as customary fables, 
 intended to scrimp their drafts on his purse or enhance their 
 sense of his generosity. When it is so easy to fill up a 
 check, why will he be hoggish ? Let him give fifty dollars 
 to any philanthropic object, or invest five hundred, however 
 safely, in any attempt to meliorate the sufferings of the Poor, 
 and they now see clearly that he has hoards of gold, and 
 can just as well give them all dresses and jewels as not. 
 Thus the man of means or of business is too often regarded 
 by his family as a sponge to be squeezed, a goose to be 
 plucked, an orange to be sucked, a spring to be drank from 
 when thirsty without at all diminishing its flow. The stuff is 
 there in profusion the only trouble is to make him give it up. 
 In vain he remonstrates implores puts down his foot. 
 He can not be eternally contending with those he loves 
 best he wants quiet at home in order to mature his plans 
 and perfect his operations. If he resists importunity, the 
 pumps are set going, and what man can stand the April show 
 ers of feminine sorrow ? He gives way at last and throws 
 down the money demanded, hoping that some great news by 
 the next steamship, some turn of luck in his business, will 
 make it up to him. Perhaps it does, and he floats on ; per 
 haps it don t, and this last feather has broken the elephant s 
 back. The end, however near or distant, is morally certain. 
 Treated always as a mine to be opened at will, he finally 
 grows desperate and rushes into reckless speculation or 
 blasting crime, and is overwhelmed with ruin. Selfish 
 villain ! say the ignorant crowd ; how could he run such 
 a career? How we pity his family! No doubt of it! 
 But if you knew more, perhaps you would pity him. 
 
FLOGGING IN THE NAVY. 331 
 
 FLOGGING IN THE NAVY. 
 
 THE primary division of the human species on shore re 
 solves the individuals into Men and Women ; on shipboard 
 into Officers and Men, though the latter term very unfitly 
 expresses the light in which Seamen are regarded by Offi 
 cers. The crew are practically Hands ; sometimes Legs 
 also ; at others Backs ; but as to any clear conception that 
 they are truly Men, it is neither expressed nor implied in 
 our theory or practice of Naval discipline. In the contem 
 plation of that discipline, the crew are beasts, dogs, devils 
 anything but men. 
 
 A seaman enlists into the Navy, allured by the notion of 
 serving his country and helping to maintain and extend the 
 glory of the Stars and Stripes. He has the faults of his class 
 and condition is reckless, headstrong, easily provoked to 
 quarrel, and has an appetite for grog and other sensual de 
 pravities. Yet he means to behave himself and to do his 
 duty, and for a time no complaint is made. But, as a part 
 of his rations, an allowance of Alcoholic Liquor is daily dealt 
 out to him not enough to make him drunk, but quite 
 enough to maintain and increase the appetite for Alcohol if 
 he has already acquired it, and to create it if he has hitherto 
 escaped or overcome it. Not to drink it would be to subject 
 himself to ridicule and dislike among his messmates, so he 
 takes it down. By-and-by the ship reaches port, and he with 
 others has a few hours liberty to go on shore. With appetites 
 for liquor thus formed or increased on shipboard, the jolly 
 mess betake themselves in hot haste to the grog-shop first, and 
 then to other dens of debauchery, and when their leave has 
 expired, some are too confused and brutified clearly to know 
 or seriously to care where they are or what they are doing. 
 
332 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 If all hurry on board at the last moment, some of them are 
 pretty certain to be grossly intoxicated, which is of course 
 a punishable offence. These are to be hauled up as soon 
 as the ship s convenience will permit, their backs stripped 
 and lashed with a heavy, cutting, torturing whip known as 
 the cat-o -nine-tails, plied with all the strength of an athletic 
 sub-officer. One dozen lashes is the usual allowance for 
 such an offence as drunkenness ; and each lash makes at 
 least a black-and-blue stripe across the offender s back of the 
 width of your finger often takes off the skin and causes 
 the blood to fly freely, leaving the back as raw as a beef 
 steak. More serious offences are punished with more 
 lashes striking an Officer with death. But lashing, 
 threshing, gashing, is the great reliance for discipline on 
 board our Republican Navy, and many officers resort to it 
 on the most trifling pretexts. * Looking insolently at an 
 officer, is one of the more serious offences, while there are 
 cases officially reported by the commanders themselves 
 where men have been thus gashed for not cooking an officer s 
 dinner to his liking, for spilling water on the deck, not 
 stowing a hammock away neatly, &c. &c. Six thousand 
 lashes, such as I have described, have been dealt out during 
 one cruise to the crew of a single vessel that is, so many 
 were reported to the Navy Department by the commander, 
 while it is notorious that nothing like all are reported, and 
 officers have boasted that they never would report all, nor 
 any more than they chose. That men have been flogged 
 by the dozen for no better reason than such as the drunken 
 ness of their superior supplied, is notorious. The appetite 
 for cruel spectacles grows by what it feeds on, and an officer 
 accustomed to order and oversee the flogging of half a dozen 
 men just before morning prayers might as well be expected 
 to do without his bitters as without the added stimulus of 
 writhing flesh and spirting blood. If there are no real of 
 fences, his gloomy fancy, his flagging spirits, will invent or 
 
FLOGGING IN THE NAVY. 333 
 
 imagine some, for the sake of the fillip they crave so insa 
 tiably. 
 
 What must be the effect of this on the seamen, whether 
 personally flogged or spared ? 
 
 They have no hope of promotion no chance of ever 
 rising to the quarter-deck no prospect of an honorable 
 niche in history nor of laying their bones beneath a marble 
 monument. If they are lucky enough to spend their last days 
 in a hospital and be buried at all, they do well. Every year 
 sees a new squad of greenhorns, mere boys, and not 
 favorable specimens at that sent aboard the ship, not to 
 learn and serve, but to govern and direct. These sons and 
 nephews of Congressmen or local dignitaries of some sort 
 are often provided with commissions in the Navy because 
 their past careers of idleness and dissipation have unfitted 
 them for usefulness on shore, and rendered them a burden 
 if not a terror to their respective families. (Of course, there 
 are many of a different order, but there are many of this 
 stamp as well.) They step on shipboard immature except 
 in depravity, knowing not even the alphabet of their novel 
 profession, but thoroughly comprehending that they are offi 
 cers and thus gentlemen, while sailors are the dust beneath 
 their feet. Let an old salt who fought with Bainbridge, 
 Porter or Perry, venture to look queer at one of the new 
 rnid s hourly exhibitions of ignorance in nautical matters, 
 and wo to that unlucky soul ! The scars won in capturing 
 the Guerrierc or Macedonian shall be as feathers in the way 
 of that dignitary s vengeance. And thus the brutalizing of 
 men and officers by lash and gash goes on from day to day. 
 The officers have been educated to deem it necessary ; it 
 magnifies their importance and draws the line .sharply and 
 broadly between the flogged and the flogging classes. The 
 seamen are dumb nobody hears nor heeds them. The 
 People are ignorant and indifferent ; Congress is preoccupied 
 and hosiilfj. The Navy, in its contemplation, means tin 1 
 
334 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 officers, and possibly the vessels ; the men are of no ac 
 count there. Commodores, Captains, Lieutenants and Mid 
 shipmen have fathers, brothers and cousins in either House ; 
 Jack has none. So Reform is shirked or scouted, and Lash 
 and Gash go on. There is no hope of a change but through 
 enlightening and arousing the mass of the People. 
 
 What is essentially needed may be summed up in a very 
 short sentence Make the Navy Republican. Open a gang 
 way from the forecastle to the quarter-deck. At the end of 
 every year make it the sworn duty of the commanders and 
 lieutenants to report to the Navy Department the names of 
 the ablest and best seamen in the ship for promotion, and if 
 the crew consist of more than a hundred men, let one such 
 be reported for every hundred or major fraction of a hun 
 dred. Let the crew in like manner assemble by themselves, 
 and each giving his word of honor to render a true judgment, 
 let each man cast a ballot for the seaman who in his opinion 
 has best served and displayed most nautical ability during 
 the past year. Let these votes be duly authenticated and 
 transmitted unopened to the Department, and if the judg 
 ment of the officers and men be found to accord in any case, 
 let a commission issue forthwith. If not, let future commis 
 sions be given in equal numbers to those recommended 
 by the officers and seamen respectively, the Department 
 exercising a discretion as to which among the recommen 
 dations from the various vessels seem most emphatic and 
 reliable. But make the rule absolute and inflexible that 
 no one shall henceforth receive a commission in the Navy un 
 til he shall have earned it by manifest ability and faithful 
 service as a sailor therein. 
 
 Let this system have two years fair trial, and it would 
 matter little, except for the principle of the thing, whether 
 Congress directed the Abolition of Flogging or not. It 
 would be dead, beyond the power of resurrection. Officers 
 promoted from the forecastle would have a tenderness for 
 
FLOGGING IN THE NAVY". 335 
 
 Jack s infirmities, which those manufactured as at present 
 can never feel. Seamen, with the eyes of both officers and 
 messmates steadily watching to see w r ho ought to be reported 
 for commissions, would have a very different and far more 
 effectual stimulus to well-doing than Lash and Gash can 
 ever afford. And the Navy, thus proffering an honorable 
 career with ultimate distinction and a liberal support through 
 life to every well-behaving seaman, would be crowded with 
 the noblest spirits that sail the ocean, instead of being left 
 to those who have banished the hope of rising in the world 
 and to whom the scourge is no longer a conscious degrada 
 tion. Make the Navy Republican, and the spirit will be 
 aroused which carried the arms of Revolutionary France in 
 triumph to Rome, Cairo, Vienna, Berlin and Moscow by 
 simply opening the road of promotion to good conduct, 
 without regard to birth or breeding. Make the Navy Re 
 publican, and it will be the most efficient and formidable of 
 its size that the world has ever seen. In thus doing justice 
 to the fundamental principles of our Political Fabric, we 
 shall palpably hasten the advent of universal freedom and 
 happiness, wherein Lash and Gash shall be banished for ever 
 from the world. 
 
 THE UNION OF WORKERS.* 
 
 THE ancient Egyptians had a custom of seating at their 
 feasts the robed skeleton of some departed friend, whose 
 stern silence contrasted strikingly with the mirth and hilarity 
 of his living companions. I believe scholars are not agreed 
 as to the purpose and meaning of this strange custom 
 whether the rigid, silent guests were intended to say to the 
 festal throng "Enjoy and revel while you may, for Time 
 
 " An Address to the Printers of New York, delivered before the N. Y. Typo 
 graphical Society, at their Celebration of Franklin s Birth-Day, Jan. 17th, 1850. 
 
330 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 * flies, Man perishes ; in a few years all is dust, is nothing 
 1 therefore, make haste to quaff the wine while it sparkles, to 
 4 seize pleasure while the capacity of enjoyment remains to 
 you" or rather to impress the opposite sentiment " Life 
 
 * is short ; Life is earnest ; stupendous consequences hang 
 suspended on your use or abuse of the speck of time allot- 
 
 * ted you ; therefore, be temperate in your indulgence, mode- 
 rate in your festive mirth, and, seeing in what I am what 
 
 * you soon must be, consider and beware !" I shall not of 
 course pretend to decide this grave question, though I shall 
 assume for the occasion that the latter is the true rendering ; 
 and, in accordance with the elemental idea, I venture to 
 assume among you to-night the functions of the Egyptians 
 silent monitor, and while others stir you with lofty eloquence 
 or charm you with dulcet flatteries with pictures of the 
 grand achievements of our Art in the past and its brilliant 
 prospects for the future, I shall speak to you frankly of our 
 deficiencies, our failings, and the urgent demands upon us 
 for new and more arduous exertions in yet unrecognized 
 fields of duty. 
 
 It is now some four centuries since the discovery or in 
 vention of our Art, fully three sinc^ our continent began 
 to be the home of civilized men, and more than two since 
 the Pilgrim fugitives first landed on Plymouth Rock. Since 
 that landing, and even within the last century, what amazing 
 strides have been made in the diffusion of Knowledge and 
 the perfection of the implements and processes of Indus 
 try in the efficiency of Human Labor and the facilitation 
 of intercourse between country and country, clime and 
 clime ! The steam-engine, the spinning-jenny, the power- 
 loom ; the canal, steam-ship, power-press, railroad and light 
 ning telegraph these, in their present perfection and 
 efficiency, are a few of the trophies of human genius and 
 Inbor within even the last century. 
 
 P>ut while Labor has thur. doubled and quadrupled its own 
 
THE UNION OF WORKERS. 337 
 
 efficacy in the production of whatever is needful to the 
 physical sustenance, intellectual improvement and social en 
 joyment of Man, I do not find that there has been a cor 
 responding melioration in the condition of the Laborer. 
 That there has been some improvement I do not deny ; but 
 has it been at all commensurate with the general progress of 
 our race in whatever pertains to physical convenience or 
 comfort ? I think not ; and I could not help pondering this 
 matter even while our orator s silvery tones were delighting 
 our ears with poetical descriptions of the wonders which 
 Science and Invention have achieved and are achieving. I 
 could not help considering that, while Labor builds far more 
 sumptuous mansions in our day than of old, furnishing them 
 far more gorgeously and luxuriously, the laborer who builds 
 those mansions lives oftenest in a squalid lodging, than 
 which the builders of palaces in the fifteenth century can 
 hardly have dwelt in more wretched ; and that while the 
 demands for labor, the uses of labor, the efficiency of labor, 
 are multiplied and extended on every side by the rush of 
 invention and the growth of luxury around us, yet in this 
 middle of the Nineteenth Century (call it the last year of the 
 first half or the first year of the last half as you please) La 
 bor is a drug in the market that the temperate, efficient, 
 upright Worker often finds the comfortable maintenance and 
 proper education of his children beyond his ability and 
 that, in this thriving Commercial Emporium of the New 
 World, this trophy and pride of Christian Civilization 
 there are at this day not less than Forty Thousand human 
 beings anxious to earn the bread of honest industry but 
 vainly seeking, and painfully, despairingly awaiting oppor 
 tunity for so doing. This last is the feature of our condi 
 tion which seems to me most important and commanding, 
 and it is to this, on occasions like the present, and in listen 
 ing to such orations as that which has just delighted us, that 
 my thoughts are irresistibly turned. 
 29 
 
338 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 What can be the reason of this ? Why is it that these 
 Forty Thousand strong-handed, willing Workers stand here 
 thus fixed, enchained, in loathed, despairing idleness ? Why 
 are they compelled to wear out our pavements in hurrying 
 hither and thither in anxious, heart-sick quest of something 
 to do? with downcast looks and trembling voice beseech 
 ing some fellow man to give them leave to labor for their 
 bread ? I trust no one here gives any heed to the mumbling 
 of self-styled Political Economists about Over-Production 
 and the kindred phrases with which counsel is darkened. 
 Over-Production of what ? Where ? Can there be over 
 production of Food, when so many, even in our midst, 
 are suffering the pangs of famine ? * Over-Production of 
 Clothing and Fabrics, while our streets swarm with men, 
 women and children who are not half-clad, and who shiver 
 through the night beneath the clothing they have worn by 
 day ? Over-Production of Dwellings, when not half the 
 families of our city have adequate and comfortable habita 
 tions, not to speak of that large class whose lodgings are 
 utterly incompatible with decency and morality? No, 
 friends ! there is no l Over-Production, save of articles per 
 nicious and poisonous, like Alcoholic Liquors, Lewd Books, 
 implements of Gaming, &c. Of whatever conduces to hu 
 man sustenance, comfort or true education, there is not and 
 never has been too much produced, although, owing to im 
 perfect and vicious arrangements for Distribution, there may 
 often be a glut in the warehouses of Trade, while thousands 
 greatly need and would gladly purchase if they could. 
 What the world eminently requires is some wise adjustment, 
 some remodeling of the Social machinery, diminishing its 
 friction, whereby every person willing to work shall assu 
 redly have work to do, and the just reward of that work in 
 the articles most essential to his sustenance and comfort. It 
 may be that there is indeed a surplus of that particular 
 product which some man s labor could most skillfully or 
 
THE UNION OF WORKERS. 339 
 
 rapidly produce, Pianos, Watches, or Gauzes, for exam 
 ple and therefore it maybe advisable to intermit for a 
 season the production of these yet the skill, the faculty, 
 the muscular energy not required in that particular department 
 of production might nevertheless be made available, even 
 though in a subordinate degree, in the fabrication of some 
 kindred product for which there is a demand among the 
 general mass of consumers. I maintain, then, that in our 
 day no man should be compelled to stand idle or wander 
 vainly in search of employment, even though that particular 
 calling for which he is best fitted has now no place for him, 
 but that the palpable self-interest of the community should 
 prescribe the creation of some Social Providence expressly 
 to take care that no man, woman or child shall ever stand 
 uselessly idle when willing and anxious to work. Even the 
 most injudicious application of the labor now wasted through 
 lack of opportunity could not fail to increase the National 
 Wealth to the extent of millions on millions per annum, 
 while its effect on the condition of the Laboring Class, in 
 preserving them from temptation, dissipation and crime, 
 would be incalculably beneficent. 
 
 Now what I stand here to complain of is the indiffer 
 ence and inattention of the Laboring Mass, and especially 
 of those entitled to a leading position in it, like the Printers, 
 to the discussion of a truth so grand and so fruitful as the 
 Right to Labor. It is more discussed, more pondered, to 
 day, by Merchants, Capitalists, Scholars, and men who are 
 called Aristocrats, than by the mass of those who earn their 
 living by the sweat of the face. It is now eighteen years 
 since I came to this city a journeyman printer, during which 
 years I have been intimately connected with our craft in one 
 capacity or another, and yet I have never heard of a meeting 
 of Printers to consider and discuss the Rights generally of 
 Labor, the causes of its depression, the means of its ad 
 vancement. During these eighteen years there have been 
 
340 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 hard times and good times, so called ; seasons of activity 
 and seasons of depression in the course of which the 
 country has been saved, I forget how often our city has 
 doubled in population and more than doubled in wealth 
 and yet the Laboring Class as a Class is just where it was 
 when I came here, or, if anything, in a worse condition, as 
 the increased valuation of Property has caused advance in 
 Rents and in some other necessaries of life. Individuals 
 have risen out of the Laboring Class, becoming buyers of 
 Labor and sellers of its Products, and grown rich thereby ; 
 but the condition of the Laboring Class, as such, has not 
 improved, and I think is less favorable than it was twenty 
 years ago. Why should it not investigate, determine and 
 develop the causes of this ? Why not consider the practi 
 cability of securing Work and Homes to all willing to work 
 for them ? Can we imagine that improvement is to come 
 without effort or even inquiry ? Is it the order of Nature or 
 of Providence that it should ? Do blessings come to other 
 classes without foresight or calculation? I have heard 
 complaints that Machinery and Invention do not work for 
 the Laboring Class, but rather against them. Concede the 
 assumption, and is not the inquiry a fair one, What has the 
 Laboring Class ever done to make Machinery work in its 
 favor? When has it planned, or sought, or calculated, to 
 render Machinery its ally and aid rather than its enemy and 
 oppressor ? 
 
 I am here to-night to tell you that you, and our Trade, 
 and the Laboring Class of our City have been glaringly, un 
 faithful in this respect to yourselves, your posterity, and your 
 Race, and that the Workers of Paris, for example, are in 
 advance of their brethren here in knowledge of and devotion 
 to the interests and rights of Labor. And I am here not to 
 find fault merely, but to exhort you to awake from your 
 apathy and heed the summons. of Duty. 
 
 I stand here, friends, to urge that a new leaf be now 
 
THE UNION OF WORKERS. 341 
 
 turned over that the Laboring Class, instead of idly and 
 blindly waiting for better circumstances and better times, 
 shall begin at once to consider and discuss the means of 
 controlling circumstances and commanding times, by study, 
 calculation, foresight, union. We have heard to-night of a 
 Union of Printers and a Printers Library, for which latter 
 one generous donation has been proffered. I have little faith 
 in giving as a remedy for the woes of mankind, and not 
 much in any effort for the elevation or improvement of any 
 one section of Producers of Wealth in our City. What I 
 would suggest would be the Union and Organization of all 
 Workers for their mutual improvement and benefit, leading 
 to the erection of a spacious edifice at some central point in 
 our City to form a LABORERS EXCHANGE, just as Commerce 
 now has its Exchange, very properly. Let the new 
 Exchange be erected and owned as a joint-stock property, 
 paying a fair dividend to those whose money erected it ; let 
 it contain the best spacious Hall for General Meetings to be 
 found in our City, with smaller Lecture-Rooms for the 
 meetings of particular sections or callings all to be leased 
 or rented at fair prices to all who may choose to hire them, 
 when not needed for the primary purpose of discussing and 
 advancing the interests of Labor. Let us have here books 
 opened, wherein any one wanting work may inscribe his 
 name, residence, capacities, and terms, while any one wishing 
 to hire may do likewise, as well as meet personally those 
 seeking employment. These are but hints toward a few of 
 the uses which such a Labor Exchange might subserve, 
 while its Reading-Room and Library, easily formed and re 
 plenished, should be open freely and gladly to all. Such an 
 edifice, rightly planned and constructed, might become, and 
 I confidently hope would become, a most important instru 
 mentality in the great work of advancing the Laboring Class in 
 comfort, intelligence, and independence. I trust we need not 
 long await its erection. 
 29* 
 
342 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 THE TRADE REFORM. 
 
 ALL great changes proceed slowly, and if any seem to be 
 sudden, it is because the real change had long been going 
 on unnoticed, and that which is mistaken for it is only the 
 disclosure or discovery. You will only hear from the vulgar 
 and shallow that repeated attempts at renovation have failed 
 or broken down, until at last the ignorant and credulous are 
 astounded by the admission that what they have so often been 
 told had exploded has actually triumphed ! Even now they 
 will not comprehend that what they have been taught to 
 consider failures was but the necessary foundation of what 
 they must now admit is success that the latter is but the 
 complement and fruition of the former. They admit the 
 particular fact, but shut their eyes to the general principle, 
 and the very next reform that is commenced finds them as 
 blind and shallow as ever. 
 
 There is to be, there must be, a great reform in the mode 
 and means of effecting exchanges of products between pro 
 ducers and consumers generally. The average cost of such 
 exchanges is absurdly higher than it need be and will be. 
 There are certain marked exceptions to this general state 
 ment one of them in the case of cotton. The manufac 
 turer, whether in Old or New England, in France or Pitts- 
 burg, regularly buys his stock of cotton for seldom more and 
 often less than the grower s price with the usual charges for 
 brokerage and transportation. The same is the case with a 
 few other great staples which are mainly bought and sold in 
 large quantities, and which suffer little injury from time or 
 change of climate. But with regard to the great majority 
 of vendibles the fact is gloomily otherwise. There are very 
 many articles which cost large classes of consumers three to 
 
THE TRADE REFORM. 343 
 
 six times what the producers receive for them ; while on 
 more than half the goods sold in the world there is an ad 
 vance of twenty-five to fifty per cent, above what they need 
 cost the consumer. This advance is a tax on productive 
 labor which can not long abide the neighborhood of common 
 schools, cheap newspapers, and electric telegraphs. It must 
 come down. 
 
 Do you ask why the rate of mercantile profit is too high ? 
 Count the number of stores in any county, and you have a 
 ready answer. There are five to ten times as many persons 
 employed in and subsisting by trade as there need or should 
 be. As the taxes of a nation must be in proportion to the 
 number and salaries of those quartered on its treasury, so the 
 profits of trade must be graduated by the number they are 
 required to support. If twenty mercantile establishments 
 are kept up where three would be abundant, the average ad 
 vance on the cost of the goods must be three or four times 
 what it should be. Of course, we do not forget the use of 
 competition in counteracting selfish rapacity, but there are 
 ways of attaining the good here contemplated far more 
 cheaply than by employing twenty men to do the work which 
 three could do better. 
 
 We shall have an end of this. The diversification of in 
 dustrial pursuits will do much to promote it. As a general 
 rule, the profit charged on any article to the consumer is 
 proportioned to the distance from the point of production. 
 A fabric which the manufacturer will gladly sell to the peo 
 ple of his own county for five per cent, on its cost, and 
 think he is doing well, will sell a thousand miles away at 
 twenty per cent., and across a continent at fifty or even a 
 hundred. When the nations of the earth shall have become 
 wise enough to purchase freely of each other such raw ma 
 terials as the nature of their soil or climate forbids them re 
 spectively to produce, each fabricating and commingling for 
 
344 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 itself, the aggregate tax levied on labor by traffic will be im 
 mensely diminished. But that is a work of time. 
 
 The more immediate instrumentalities through which a 
 reduction of this tax is to be effected are, as briefly as may 
 be stated, the substitution of Cash payment for Credit as the 
 common law of mercantile transactions, and an immense and 
 systematic extension of Advertising. And though on these 
 heads I have little to offer that is novel, I would earnestly 
 commend them to public attention. 
 
 Credit, I need hardly affirm, is an excellent, an indis 
 pensable thing, but grossly abused, as excellent things are 
 apt to be. It ought to be based on substantial security. 
 We give credit to a bank-note which we know to be based 
 upon and secured by a deposit of state stocks in the public 
 coffers of our state ; we give credit to the man who proffers 
 a pledge of undoubted property for the punctual payment 
 of his debt ; we give credit to the man we thoroughly know 
 as a man of integrity and pecuniary ability. So far all is 
 legitimate, though it should still appear that the person giv 
 ing credit is thoroughly able so to do. Credit should be 
 given because the creditor is able and willing to intrust some 
 share of his means to the less fortunate debtor, and not 
 merely because the former is a seller and the latter a buyer. 
 Selling and giving credit are two entirely distinct operations, 
 and one should never suppose nor involve the other. 
 
 But the existing system of mercantile credit is as loose 
 and vicious as it could be and not lead directly to general 
 ruin. Our importers buy in Europe on credit ; our manu 
 facturers are too often constrained to sell through commis 
 sion-houses on credit not because they desire or are really 
 able to give it, but because such is the course of trade, and 
 they must conform to it or not sell at all, except at a ruinous 
 sacrifice. The jobber, of course, jobs on credit, and when 
 his payments crowd him he is forced to credit not less, but 
 more ; for his stock in store will not pay his notes, but when 
 
THE TRADE REFORM. 345 
 
 turned into retailers paper, though not absolutely known to 
 be good, it can, well indorsed, be ground into cash. It is 
 no mystery, therefore, that a failing house has lots of bad 
 paper among its assets ; it is as natural as life. It has been 
 making sales to keep the mill going, and could not stop to 
 be nice. Thus green country youth, not worth a thousand 
 dollars in the world, but backed up by such letters as most 
 people will write or sign without much consideration or con 
 science, can come here and get in debt for five thousand 
 dollars worth of goods, when they have no legitimate claim 
 to credit for one-fourth the amount. These they go back to 
 retail, nine-tenths on credit, to Tom, Dick, and Harry, at 
 glorious prices, but with dubious prospects of payment. 
 The notes fall due all around ; payment is demanded ; a 
 part of the retailer s customers have paid in work on his 
 new store, or in provisions, furniture, or fuel, for his family ; 
 a few pay punctually, their goods costing them twenty to 
 forty per cent, more than they need if there were no such 
 thing as mercantile credit ; others pay at the end of an exe 
 cution, and of course pay nearer a hundred per cent, more 
 than the cash value; many have started for "the west," or 
 have no tangible property, and never pay. Finally, but not 
 when due, the retailer pays twenty to fifty per cent, of his 
 debt, compromises with his creditors, and is ready to begin 
 again. The jobber pays the importer and the commission- 
 house if he can. The upshot is, that the goods are not half 
 paid for but those who paid at all have paid far too much. 
 The whole transaction has been an encouragement to knave 
 ry, improvidence, and over-trading ; for, if there were no 
 system of mercantile credit, not half those now engaged in 
 trade could pretend to be in it at all. They could not buy 
 a decent stock of goods if obliged to pay for them ; and a 
 system of cash sales would speedily reduce profits so that a 
 petty business would not be worth doing. The mere sim 
 plification of business consequent on the disuse of credit in 
 
346 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 trade, would save half the time and talent now absorbed in 
 mercantile pursuits. The selling of one hundred thousand 
 dollars worth of goods in a county, by two or three es 
 tablishments, entirely for ready pay, need not engross the 
 time of ten persons in all ; while selling the same goods 
 through ten or fifteen concerns, with the usual paraphernalia 
 of daybook, ledger, note-book, &c., winding up with the in 
 terposition of lawyers, sheriff, county court, &c., will keep 
 at least fifty employed the year round. 
 
 I have remarked that extensive advertising is one of 
 the means by which the reform in trade is to be accom 
 plished. The two classes, buyers and sellers, have a com 
 mon interest in finding each other : that is to say, it is the 
 interest of him who can supply a certain want cheapest, to 
 have every buyer aware of the fact ; and it is the interest of 
 the buyers no less. An expenditure of fifty dollars may be 
 too much, one of five thousand may be too little, for that 
 purpose. If, for example, somebody has discovered as 
 I see stated in a southern paper a substance, or chemical 
 compound, which will dispense with the labor now required 
 in washing clothes, or the half of it, at a very small cost, the 
 owners of his patent may spend fifty thousand dollars a-year 
 in advertising it, and then not spend enough. There are 
 inventions within my knowledge worth hundreds of thou 
 sands, if the patentees knew how, and had the enterprise, to 
 bring them home to the knowledge of all interested ; these 
 failing, they will never realize twenty thousand. Whoever 
 can supply this city cheapest with almost any article in gen 
 eral use, or can cheaply furnish an article which will meet a 
 general want hitherto more expensively met, can not adver 
 tise too much if he knows how to advertise at all. And yet 
 many a dealer in our city pays a thousand dollars more for 
 an eligibly located store than he need pay in a less frequented 
 street, and does not pay a hundred dollars a-year for adver 
 tising ! He willingly pays a thousand dollars merely to let 
 
THE REFORM IN TRADE. 347 
 
 some ten thousand people know that he has certain articles 
 to sell, but grudges five hundred dollars as the cost of ex 
 tending the same knowledge to millions ! 
 
 This can not, in the nature of things, long endure. It is 
 simply a blind following of old rules and habits, after they have 
 become utterly inapplicable. The time was when the circu 
 lation of the most popular journal was counted by hundreds, 
 and an advertisement in its columns was about equivalent in 
 publicity to a handbill on a blacksmith s shop. It is different 
 now, and there are men in trade who understand the differ 
 ence and profit by it. Many pay thousands a-year for ad 
 vertising, and the number is yearly increasing. There will 
 be hundreds where there are now tens within five years. 
 
 Fools can be fools in this as in anything else. He who 
 keeps a corner grocery, and does not look for customers be 
 yond the four blocks around him, need not advertise it 
 would only be throwing away his money. So of many 
 others. But he who has a cargo of fresh tropical fruits to 
 day, which he must speedily sell or see spoil on his hands, 
 can not too quickly make known the fact to every purchaser 
 within five hundred miles : so of many others. Whenever 
 the difference in cost or quality is worth looking after, then 
 it is an immense economy of cost and labor to let the fact be 
 known at once and as widely as possible. Extensive adver 
 tising of itself is morally certain to work a revolution in 
 trade, by driving thousands of the easy-going out of it, and 
 concentrating business in the hands of the few who know 
 how to obtain and keep it. Unite with this the substitution 
 of cash for credit, and one-fifth of those now engaged in 
 trade will amply suffice to do the whole and will soon 
 have it to do. The revolution is already begun. 
 
348 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 WHAT FREE TRADE IS DOING. 
 
 " You ought to go to England," said a mercantile friend 
 lately from Europe the other day, " to see how triumphant 
 is the success of the Free Trade Policy there." 
 
 1 Indeed ! is it? I had not heard that the British Poor- 
 Rates had fallen off materially. Is the Labor of England 
 better paid and subsisted than it was ten years ago ? If it 
 is, the fact is new to me. 
 
 My friend could not say that Labor was higher or Paupers 
 fewer in Great Britain under what is called Free Trade 
 than they had been previously. Indeed, the condition of 
 Labor and the extension or diminution of Pauperism did not 
 seem to have specially engaged his attention abroad. But 
 he had seen Commerce active, Business prosperous, Lon 
 don swelling on every side, Liverpool extending its borders, 
 Manchester and Leeds increasing their looms and mills, and 
 capitalists plethoric and satisfied. They told him that Eng 
 land was flourishing under her present policy, and he joy 
 fully believed it. Had he gone into the workshops and 
 dwellings of the Laboring Poor of the spinners, weavers, 
 tailors, shoemakers, hatters, stevedores, &c. and inquired as 
 to the condition and wages of the millions who just manage 
 to exist there, he would have learned that those millions 
 were never more scantily paid, more meagerly fed, nor 
 more utterly wretched and hopeless than they are in this 
 year of grace 1850. If the blessings of Free Trade have 
 been realized around the London Docks and the Welsh 
 iron-mines, in the mills of the Cobdens and the banks of the 
 Barings, they have never yet traveled down to the shops of 
 the toiling and the cottages of the humble. 
 
WHAT FREE TRADE IS DOING. 349 
 
 But this is not the whole truth that demands consider 
 ation. 
 
 I bear no ill will to England. She is in part the land of 
 my ancestry. She has produced many great and noble 
 men, to whom the world is deeply indebted. Among the 
 predominant characteristics of her People are many which 
 challenge admiration patient courage, fortitude under ad 
 versity, laborious energy, and love of home and kindred. I 
 as warmly desire the well-being of her people as of any other 
 except our own, and yet say rather, because of this I 
 desire and hope for the downfall of that Commercial and 
 Manufacturing supremacy which she now enjoys. I believe 
 such an ascendency by any one nation over others, is based 
 on and compels the depression of Labor and the degradation 
 of Man. So long as the whole world shall be laid under 
 contribution to gild the palaces and expand the cities of 
 Great Britain so long as the Cotton, Wheat, Wool, Meat, 
 and other staples of all nations are collected in the London 
 and Liverpool docks to be fabricated and consumed by 
 British skill and industry, and their product re-distributed 
 over the whole face of the earth, just so long must Labor 
 everywhere be depressed and plundered. The wrong is in 
 the system, and can not be averted by any modification of it. 
 The British manufacturer may well say to his workers. I 
 * must have your services for a shilling or so per day ; for 
 1 how else can I pay the cost of bringing hither the Cotton 
 of Alabama, the Pork of Ohio and the Wheat of Illinois, 
 4 and make my fabrics so cheap that they may undersell 
 and drive out the rival American fabrics from the market 
 of their own country V Then the American manufacturer 
 turns round upon his workers, and says, " I can t sell my 
 goods except at a loss, for the British fabrics are cheaper ; 
 I must have labor cheaper or shut up my works : say 
 which it shall be?" and they, clinging to their homes 
 and an assured though meager subsistence, say, " Cut us 
 30 
 
350 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 c down ten per cent if you must ; we will try to live under 
 the reduction." So down go the wages, and Yankee cloth 
 is cheapened ; but British capital gives the screw another 
 wrench, and gets its labor still cheaper and consequently its 
 cloth also ; and there is a chance for our operatives to try 
 another stage on the road to famine, and so on. The na 
 tural, inevitable tendency of this struggle of British Manu 
 facturers to permeate and monopolize the markets of the 
 world is to aggrandize Speculation and useless Traffic with 
 the sweat and blood of helpless, undefended Toil. Labor 
 is everywhere driven by it to bid against itself is driven 
 to engage in a cannibal warfare whereof the only issue is 
 ruin. If there be for it a season of seeming prosperity here 
 or there, the reaction is certain and terrible. Half the 
 recompense which Labor fairly earns is swallowed up in the 
 cost of taking its product from one country to undersell and 
 ruin on their own soil the workers of another. And, bad 
 as the job is, it is never thoroughly done. The moment the 
 labor of one country or class has been thus undermined and 
 crushed, it becomes a potent instrument for undermining 
 and crushing the labor of others perhaps of those who 
 wrought its overthrow. The lower the Capital and Com 
 merce of any country can depress its Labor, the greater is 
 their chance of securing bountiful gains the more thorough 
 is their command of the markets of the world. They can 
 hold up when a business do n t pay, or seek out some other 
 investment ; but Labor must delve on, even at ruinous 
 rates ; with it to stand idle is to famish. And even its vic 
 tories are defeats ; for, as the Spitalfields silk-weaver told 
 Mr. Mayhew, "We ve driven the French out of the market 
 in umbrellas and parasols ; but the people are starving while 
 they re driving of em out. ^ 
 
 Earnestly believing, therefore, that the gigantic fabric of 
 modern Commercial and Industrial Feudalism whereof Great 
 Britain is the center and soul is at deadly war with the vital 
 
WHAT FREE TRADE IS DOING. 351 
 
 interests of mankind, I do not rejoice in what men of 
 business call the prosperity of England, for I believe it is 
 based on the robbery of Labor at home and results in its 
 depression and derangement abroad. I do not rejoice that 
 Manchester builds new factories and London excavates new 
 docks, for I see in these new instruments for the colonial 
 subjugation and industrial depression of the rest of the 
 world. Profoundly convinced that it is best for the Toiling 
 Millions of all nations, Great Britain included, that each 
 country should learn to spin and weave, to roll and hammer 
 for itself, I regret any evidence afforded us that the retrograde 
 policy anywhere gains ground. I would not regret that British 
 Manufactures are expanding, British Commerce flourishing, 
 British Revenue redundant, did I not feel that these are but 
 links in the chain which holds Portugal in virtual vassalage, 
 renders Brazil in effect a British colony, and leaves our own 
 vast, fertile and energetic country in her blindness to grind corn 
 like Samson in the house of the Philistines. She ought to 
 be out of debt, independent in her circumstances, with her 
 labor fully employed and justly rewarded ; yet tens of thou 
 sands of her people to-day vainly beg employment in her 
 streets and villages, while, in the midst of peace and boun 
 teous harvests, she is silently incurring a Foreign Debt of 
 many millions per annum in the shape of Government and 
 State Stocks, Railroad Bonds (for Iron that our workers 
 would gladly make, and suffer for want of opportunity to 
 make,) and other Stocks, Bonds and Commercial balances 
 generally. Why should we run in debt for the fruits of other 
 nations labor, while a superabundance of our own labor is 
 left unemployed and famishing? No, I do not rejoice in 
 what is regarded as British prosperity ; for I believe it is the 
 upholding and apparent triumph of a system whose downfall 
 is necessary to the emancipation and elevation of Labor 
 throughout the world. 
 
352 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 SLAVERY AT HOME : 
 
 ANSWER TO AN INVITATION TO ATTEND AN ANTI-SLAVERY MEETING. 
 
 NEW- YORK, June 3, 1845. 
 
 Dear Sir: I received, weeks since, your letter inviting 
 me to be present at a general convention of opponents of 
 Human Slavery, irrespective of past differences and party 
 organizations. I have delayed to the last moment my 
 answer, hoping I might this season indulge a long-cherished 
 desire and purpose by visiting your section and city, in 
 which case I should certainly have attended your Convention. 
 Being now reluctantly compelled to forego or indefinitely 
 postpone that visit, I have no recourse but to acknowledge 
 your courtesy in a letter. 
 
 In saying that I should have attended your Convention 
 had I been able to visit Cincinnati this month, I would by 
 no means be understood as implying that I should have 
 chosen to share in its deliberations ; still less that I should 
 have been likely to unite in the course of action to which 
 those deliberations will probably tend. Whether there can 
 true reconcilement grow between those opponents of Slavery 
 whom the late Presidential Election arrayed against each 
 other in desperate conflict, I do not venture to predict. Most 
 surely, that large portion of them with whom / acted and 
 still act, have been confirmed in our previous convictions of 
 duty by the result of that election, and by the momentous con 
 sequences which it has drawn after it, not merely with regard 
 to this question of Slavery, but to all questions, I have by 
 that result been warned against pledging myself to any 
 special and isolated Reform in such manner as to interfere 
 with and fetter my freedom and ability to act decisively 
 and effectively upon more general and immediately practical 
 
SLAVERY AT HOME. 353 
 
 considerations of National interest and of Human well- 
 being. You and yours, I understand, have been confirmed 
 in an opposite conviction. Time must decide on which side 
 is the right. 
 
 But, while I can not hope that I should have been able to 
 unite with you upon any definitive course of action to be 
 henceforth pursued by all opponents of Slavery, irrespective 
 of past or present differences, I should have gladly met you, 
 conferred with you, compared opinions, and agreed to act 
 together so far as joint action is not forbidden by conflicting 
 opinions. Animated by this spirit, I shall venture to set 
 before you, and ask the Convention to consider, some views 
 which I deem essential as bearing on the present con 
 dition and ultimate success of the Anti-Slavery movement. 
 
 What is Slavery ? You will probably answer, " The 
 1 legal subjection of one human being to the will and power 
 * of another." But this definition appears to me inaccurate on 
 both sides too broad, and at the same time too narrow. 
 It is too broad, in that it includes the subjection founded 
 in other necessities not less stringent than those imposed by 
 statute. We must seek some truer definition. 
 
 I understand by Slavery, that condition in which one 
 human being exists mainly as a convenience for other human 
 beings "in which the time, the exertions, the faculties of a 
 part of the Human Family are made to subserve, not their 
 own development, physical, intellectual, and moral, but the 
 comfort, advantage, or caprices of others. In short, wher 
 ever service is rendered from one human being to another, 
 on a footing of one-sided and not of mutual obligation 
 where the relation between the servant and the served is one 
 not of affection and reciprocal good offices, but of authority, 
 social ascendency and power over subsistence on the one 
 hand, and of necessity, servility, and degradation on the 
 other there, in my view, is Slavery. 
 
 You will readily understand, therefore, that, if I regard 
 30* 
 
354 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 your enterprise with less absorbing interest than you do, it is 
 not that I deem Slavery a less but a greater evil. If I am 
 less troubled concerning the Slavery prevalent in Charleston 
 or New-Orleans, it is because I see so much Slavery in 
 New- York, which appears to claim my first efforts. I rejoice 
 in believing that there is less of it in your several com 
 munities and neighborhoods ; but that it does exist there I 
 am compelled to believe. In esteeming it my duty to preach 
 Reform first to my own neighbors and kindred, I would by 
 no means attempt to censure those whose consciences pre 
 scribe a different course. Still less would I undertake to say 
 that the Slavery of the South is not more hideous in kind 
 and degree than that which prevails at the North. The fact 
 that it is more flagrant and palpable renders opposition to it 
 comparatively easy and its speedy downfall certain. But 
 how can I devote myself to a crusade against distant servi 
 tude, when I discern its essence pervading my immediate 
 community and neighborhood? nay, when I have not yet 
 succeeded in banishing it even from my own humble house 
 hold ? Wherever may lie the sphere of duty of others, is 
 not mine obviously here ? 
 
 Let me state what I conceive to be the essential character 
 istics of Human Slavery : 
 
 1. Wherever certain human beings devote their time and 
 thoughts mainly to obeying and serving other human beings, 
 and this not because they choose to do so but because they 
 must, there (I think) is Slavery. 
 
 2. Wherever human beings exist in such relations that a 
 part, because of the position they occupy and the functions 
 they perform, are generally considered an inferior class to 
 those who perform other functions, or none, there (I think) 
 is Slavery. 
 
 3. Wherever the ownership of the Soil is so ^grossed by 
 a small part of the community that the far larger number are 
 compelled to pay whatever the few may see fit to exact for 
 
SLAVERY AT HOME. 355 
 
 the privilege of occupying and cultivating the earth, there is 
 something very like Slavery. 
 
 4. Wherever Opportunity to Labor is obtained with diffi 
 culty, and is so deficient that the Employing class may vir 
 tually prescribe their own terms and pay the Laborer only 
 such share as they choose of the product, there is a very 
 strong tendency to Slavery. 
 
 5. Wherever it is deemed more reputable to live without 
 Labor than by Labor, so that a gentleman would be rather 
 ashamed of his descent from a blacksmith than from an idler 
 or mere pleasure-seeker, there is a community not very far 
 from Slavery. And, 
 
 6. Wherever one human being deems it honorable and 
 right to have other human beings mainly devoted to his or 
 her convenience or comfort, and thus to live, diverting the 
 labor of these persons from all productive or general useful 
 ness to his or her own special uses, while he or she is ren 
 dering or has rendered no corresponding service to the 
 cause of human well-being, there exists the spirit which 
 originated and still sustains Human Slavery. 
 
 I might multiply these illustrations indefinitely, but I 
 dare not so trespass on your patience. Rather allow me to 
 apply the principles here evolved in illustration of what I 
 deem the duties and policy of Abolitionists in reference to 
 their cause. And here I would advise : 
 
 1. Oppose Slavery in ALL its forms. Be at least as care 
 ful not to lie a slaveholder as not to vote for one. Be as 
 tenacious that your own wives, children, hired men and 
 women, tenants, &c., enjoy the blessings of rational Liberty, 
 as that the slaves of South Carolina do. 
 
 2. Be at least as ardent in opposing the NEAR as the 
 DISTANT forms of Oppression. It was by beginning at 
 home that Chanty was enabled to perform such long jour 
 neys, even before the construction of railroads. And it does 
 seem clear to my mind that if the advocates of Emancipa- 
 
356 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 tion would unite in well-directed, persistent efforts to im 
 prove the condition of the Colored Race in their own States 
 and neighborhoods respectively, they could hardly fail to ad 
 vance their cause more rapidly and surely than by any other 
 course. Suppose, for example, they were to resolve in 
 each State to devote their political energies in the first place 
 to a removal of the shameful, atrocious civil disabilities and 
 degradations under which the African Race now generally 
 labor, and to this end were to vote systematically for such 
 candidates, whom their votes could probably elect, (if such 
 there were,) as were known to favor the removal of those 
 disabilities : Would not their success be sure and speedy ? 
 But, 
 
 3. Look well to the Moral and Social condition of the 
 Blacks in the Free, States. Here is the refuge of the con 
 scientious slaveholder. He declines emancipating, because 
 he can not perceive that emancipation has thus far conduced 
 to the benefit of the liberated. If the mass of the Blacks 
 are to remain ignorant, destitute, unprincipled, degraded (as 
 he is told the Free Blacks are) he thinks it better that his 
 should remain Slaves. 
 
 I know that the degradation of the Blacks is exaggerated. 
 I know that so much of it as exists is mainly owing to their 
 past and present wrongs. But I feel also that the process 
 of overcoming this debasement must be slow and dubious, 
 while its causes continue to exist. I entreat, therefore, that 
 those who have the ear of these children of Africa and of 
 their philanthropic friends, shall consider the propriety of 
 providing for them cities of refuge, townships communi 
 ties, I would say wherein they may dwell apart from the 
 mass of our people, in a social atmosphere of their own, not 
 poisoned by the universal conviction of their inferiority, at 
 least until they shall have had a chance to show whether they 
 are or are not necessarily idle, thriftless, vicious and content 
 with degradation. I most earnestly believe the popular as- 
 
TOBACCO. 357 
 
 sumptions on these points erroneous ; I ask that the Blacks 
 have a fair chance to prove them so. A single township in 
 each Free State mainly peopled by them, with churches, 
 schools, seminaries for scientific and classical education, and 
 all Social influences untainted by the sense of African hu 
 miliation, would do more (if successful, as I doubt not it 
 would be) to pa/e the way for Universal Freedom, than 
 reams of angry vituperation against slaveholders. These 
 are in good part men of integrity and conscience ; they see 
 the wrong almost as clearly as you do ; it is the right which 
 they should see and can not ; will you enable them to see it ? 
 Yours respectfully, HORACE GREELEY. 
 
 TOBACCO. 
 
 LETTER TO MESSRS. O. S. & L. N. FOWLER. 
 
 Gentlemen : You ask me for a statement of what I know 
 and think respecting tobacco. I have had a good deal of 
 experience on this subject ; in fact, I once smoked nearly an 
 inch of cigar myself. It served me right, and I have never 
 since had an inclination to outrage human nature and insult 
 
 O 
 
 decency in any such way. I was then some six years old, 
 and naturally aspiring to the accomplishments of manhood 
 and gentility ; but the lesson I then received will suffice for 
 my whole life, though it should be spun out to the length of 
 Methuselah s. I have since endured my share of the fumi 
 gations and kindred abominations of tobacco, but I have 
 inflicted none. 
 
 I wish some budding Elia, not a slave to narcotic sensual 
 ism, would favor us with an essay on " The Natural Affini 
 ties of Tobacco with Blackguardism." The materials for it 
 are abundant, and you have but to open your eyes (or nos 
 trils) in any city promenade, (glorious Boston excepted,) in 
 
358 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 any village bar-room, to find yourself confronted by them. 
 Is Broadway sunny yet airy, with the atmosphere genial and 
 inviting, so that fair maidens (and eke observing bachelors) 
 throng the two-shilling sidewalk, glad to enjoy and not un 
 willing to be admired ? Hither (as Satan into Paradise, but 
 not half so gentlemanly) hie the host of tobacco-smoking 
 loafers, to puff their detested fumes into the faces and eyes 
 of abhorring purity and loveliness, to spatter the walk, and 
 often soil the costly and delicate dresses of the promenaders 
 with their vile expectorations. And, even should the smo 
 kers forbear to besmear the outraged but patiently-enduring 
 flag-stones with their foul saliva, the chewers will not be far 
 behind (as the Revelator saw Death on the pale horse, and 
 Hell following after, ) industriously polluting the fair face of 
 earth, as their precursors have poisoned the sweet breath of 
 heaven. How long, oh ! how long, must all this be suffered ? 
 I have intimated that the tobacco-consumer is not in 
 deed necessarily and inevitably, but naturally and usually 
 a blackguard ; that chewing or smoking obviously tends to 
 blackguardism. Can any man doubt it? Let him ride 
 with uncorrupted senses in the stage or omnibus, which the 
 chewer insists on defiling with the liquid product of his in 
 cessant labors, seeming unconscious of its utter offensive- 
 ness ; and which even the smoker, especially if partly or 
 wholly drunk, will also insist on transforming into a minia 
 ture Tophet by his exhalations, defying alike the express 
 rule of the coach and the sufferer s urgent remonstrances, if 
 he can only say, "Why, there s no lady here." pNo ladies* 
 is his expression, but the plea is execrable enough, though 
 expressed grammatically.] Go into a public gathering, 
 where a speaker of delicate lungs, and an invincible repul 
 sion to tobacco, is trying to discuss some important topic so 
 that a thousand men can hear and understand him, yet 
 whereinto ten or twenty smokers have introduced themselves, 
 a long-nine projecting horizontally from beneath the nose of 
 
COMING TO THE CITY. 35D 
 
 each, a fire at one end and a fool at the other, and mark how 
 the puff, puffing gradually transforms the atmosphere (none 
 too pure at best) into that of some foul and pestilential cav 
 ern, choking the utterance of the speaker, and distracting (by 
 annoyance) the attention of the hearers, until the argument 
 is arrested or its effect utterly destroyed. If he who will 
 selfishly, recklessly, impudently, inflict so much discomfort 
 and annoyance on many, in order that he may enjoy in a 
 particular place an indulgence which could as well be en 
 joyed where no one else would be affected by it, be not a 
 blackguard, who can be ? What could indicate bad breed 
 ing and a bad heart, if such conduct does not? "Breth 
 ren !" said Parson Strong, of Hartford, preaching a Con 
 necticut election sermon, in high party times, some fifty 
 years ago, "it has been charged that I have said every 
 Democrat is a horse-thief: I never did. What I did say 
 was only that every horse-thief is a Democrat, and that I 
 can prove." So I do not say that every smoker or chewer 
 is necessarily a blackguard, however steep the proclivity 
 that way; but show me a genuine blackguard one of the 
 b hoys, and no mistake who is not a lover of tobacco in 
 some shape, and I will agree to find you two white black- 
 , birds. HORACE GREELEY. 
 
 COMING TO THE CITY. 
 
 CITIES are the result of certain social necessities of civil 
 ized or semi-civilized Man, necessities of Trade, of Manu 
 facture, Interchange of Ideas, and of Government : they 
 rest upon and are supported by the Country. Their sup 
 port is of course mainly voluntary ; its amount is controlled 
 by the ability and desires of the rural population. Thus, 
 while almost any farming County might give employment 
 and ample subsistence to five or even ten times its present 
 
360 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 population, there is scarcely a city in the world whose popu 
 lation is not already quite as large as it has business to 
 employ and income to sustain, while the greater number are 
 constantly crowded with surplus laborers, vainly seeking 
 employment and underbidding each other in the eager strife 
 for it, until thousands can hardly sustain life on the scanty 
 reward of their exertions, and other thousands are forced to 
 live on public or private charity. Many perish every year, 
 not perhaps of absolute starvation, but of diseases induced 
 by hunger, want and exposure, while a larger number are 
 driven by destitution into evil courses, and close their brief 
 careers of guilty mockery of enjoyment by deaths of shame 
 and horror. Such are some of the dire consequences of the 
 continual over-population of our cities, caused by the insane 
 desire very generally felt to escape the ruder toils and tamer 
 routine of country life. Until some marked change shall 
 have been wrought in the general condition of our rural In 
 dustry, so as to render it less repulsive than it now is, our 
 cities must continue over-crowded and full of misery. The 
 naked truth that, as a general rule, no one lives by bonafide 
 physical labor who can obtain a living without, and very 
 few live by farming or the like who can live by what are 
 esteemed the lighter and more genteel avocations mainly 
 pursued in cities and villages, explains much of the misery 
 so prevalent all around us. Doubtless, the Monopoly of 
 Land is one of the ultimate causes of this deplorable state 
 of things ; thousands annually quitting the country for cities 
 who would cling to the homes of their infancy if they were 
 not the property of others, and would cultivate soil like their 
 fathers if they had any soil to cultivate. Having none, they 
 are tempted to seek in some city the employment and inde 
 pendence which seem denied them where they were born. 
 
 This choice is almost always an unwise one. In the 
 Country, the young man heartily willing to do anything hon 
 est and useful for a livelihood, need seldom wait long for 
 
COMING TO THE CITY. 361 
 
 employment that will at least insure him a subsistence. In 
 the Cities, the case is sadly different. A capable, willing, 
 trustworthy man may earnestly seek employment here for 
 months without finding any. And the reason is very clear : 
 There are more seeking work in the cities than work can be 
 found for ; and, though the business of most cities annually 
 increases, through the growth of the Country trading with 
 them, yet the pressure for employment in cities constantly 
 outruns the demand for labor, and if New- York were to 
 increase its trade and consequently its population by ten or 
 twenty per cent, a year for the next century, there would at 
 all times be thousands waiting here for chances to do some 
 thing, and many starved out or impelled to evil courses for 
 want of honest business. The gigantic sea of Foreign 
 Immigration incessantly rolling in upon us, bringing thou 
 sands each month to our City (some of them most ingenious, 
 expert and capable) who must have work promptly or go to 
 the Poor-House, and who are inured to lower wages and 
 poorer living than Americans will submit to, will keep the 
 general Labor market glutted and the average recompense 
 of hired labor low for a term of which I can not foresee the 
 end. 
 
 But do you contend that no American youth should 
 ever migrate from the country to one of our Cities ? No, 
 Sir, I do not. What I do maintain is this Whoever leaves 
 the country to come hither should feel sure that he has facul 
 ties, capacities, powers, for which the Country affords him no 
 scope, and that the City is his proper sphere of usefulness. 
 He should next be sure that he has ability to procure a live 
 lihood while he shall be laboring to attain that sphere which 
 he regards as his ultimate destination. No youth should 
 migrate to a City without a thorough mastery of some good 
 mechanical trade or handicraft such as is prosecuted in 
 cities, although he may not intend to follow it except in case 
 of dire necessity. Teaching. Clerking Law, &c. are so 
 31 
 
362 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 very precarious, except to men of established reputation and 
 business, that it is next to madness for a youth to come here 
 relying upon them. With a good trade, a hearty willingness 
 to work, strict temperance and habits of economy, it will be 
 hard to starve out a man who has once found employment ; 
 not so with one who is trained only for a Teacher or Clerk, 
 or who is willing to do anything which means that he 
 knows how to do nothing. With these, our City always has 
 been, always will be crowded it pays for burying the 
 greater part of them. 
 
 The young man fit to come to a City does not begin by 
 importuning some relative or friend to find or make a place 
 for him. Having first qualified himself, so far as he may, for 
 usefulness here, he comes understanding that he must begin 
 at the foot of the class and work his way up. Having found 
 a place to stop, he makes himself acquainted with those 
 places where work in his line may be found, sees the adver 
 tisements of * Wants in the leading journals at an early hour 
 each morning, notes those which hold out some prospect for 
 him, and accepts the first place offered him which he can 
 take honorably and fill acceptably. He who commences in 
 this way is quite likely to get on. 
 
 But for him whose chief object is to live comfortably, or 
 even to acquire wealth by honest industry, the City is not 
 the place. The mass of men and women work far steadier 
 and harder here for a bare subsistence than they do away 
 from the Cities. To say nothing of the ruder manual toil by 
 which no man can support a family in comfort, the average 
 earnings of good mechanics here will not exceed eight dol 
 lars per week the year round, or four hundred dollars per 
 annum. This will seem considerable to mechanics who can 
 hire a good house and garden for thirty to sixty dollars, with 
 often a strip of pasture or meadow attached ; but let such 
 consider that here almost any kind of a house costs from 
 three to five hundred dollars per annum, and the meanest 
 
COMING TO THE CITY. 363 
 
 dog-hole into which a family can be crowded perhaps up 
 two flights of stairs will cost one hundred dollars, with like 
 charges for Fuel, Milk, Vegetables, &c. and they will under 
 stand the whole subject much better. A good mechanic can 
 support his family better by five days labor per week in the 
 country than by six in this or almost any great city. 
 
 * But men do get rich in the city, Yes, they do. One 
 in a thousand of those who come here in quest of fortune 
 achieve it, and they are generally men who would do the 
 same anywhere. Scrutinize closely the lives of those who 
 have made fortunes in cities, and you will find that they were 
 early risers, hard workers, sharp dealers, and close calcu 
 lators a sort very difficult to starve. Having thus obtained 
 a good start early in life, the rest was easy ; for he must be 
 a natural-born fool or worse who can not with money and 
 credit accumulate property anywhere. The problem we are 
 considering is, How men are to do who have not money, or 
 at best have very little. 
 
 I am not forgetting that there are some rare but showy 
 instances of men who have made fortunes by some dashing 
 speculation or run of luck in trade but these are too few 
 to disturb the general calculation. Whoever wishes to try his 
 luck at gambling is not obliged to come to the City for that 
 purpose, or at least need not remove hither. Three days will 
 usually suffice for his purpose. And, for every large fortune 
 rapidly acquired in Trade or Stocks, fully forty small for 
 tunes (and some large ones) have been lost in the same way. 
 The mushroom millionaire dazzles all eyes by his horses 
 and equipage, his palace, and his plate he is thought of, 
 talked of while those who have lost everything by the same 
 turn of the wheel crawl away to die in some out-of-the-way 
 corner, silent and forgotten. 
 
 A single class remains to be spoken of that of men 
 past their youth, who, often with families dependent on them, 
 seek employment in cities because they have not been sue- 
 
364 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 cessful elsewhere, and, without any special faculty, plunge 
 into some emporium of Commerce to earn in some novel 
 vocation the livelihood among strangers which they can not 
 amid their friends at the pursuits to which they are ac 
 customed. Such men are downright suicides if they have 
 families, they are worse than that ; and whoever aids them 
 in their mad folly is an accessory to their crime. No man 
 should ever change his vocation after thirty unless he has 
 hitherto been a pirate, gambler, pickpocket, or something of 
 the sort, and even then he has but a sorry prospect before 
 him ; but for a poor unlucky man to bring a family of chil 
 dren to a City and hope there to support them in some novel 
 pursuit, is the wildest, most desperate infatuation. There is 
 no chance of success no rational hope that he can struggle 
 on except in the most abject dependence and beggary. 
 
 Such are some of the reasons which impel me uniformly 
 to reply unfavorably or not at all to those seeking encourage 
 ment in their plans of removing to the City. To bring 
 more here is to increase the prevalence of want and misery 
 among our present redundant population. I might say 
 much more on this theme, but can it be needed ? 
 
 STRIKES AND THEIR REMEDY. 
 
 THE recent Strikes for Wages in different parts of the 
 country, but especially those of the Iron-Puddlers of Pitts 
 burgh, suggest grave and yet hopeful thoughts. In reading 
 the proceedings of the Strikers, an observer s attention will be 
 arrested by their emphatic though unconscious condemnation 
 of our entire Social framework as defective and unjust. 
 Probably half of these men never harbored the idea of a 
 Social reconstruction never even heard of it. Ask them 
 one by one if such an idea could be made to work, and they 
 would shake their heads and say, * It is all well in theory, 
 
STRIKES AND THEIR REMEDY. 365 
 
 but it will never do in practice. But when they come to 
 differ with their employers, they at once assume the defect- 
 iveness of our present Social polity, and argue from it as a 
 point by nobody disputed : " We ought to be paid so much, 
 [thus runs their logic] because we need and they can afford 
 it." Ought, 1 do you say, friends? Don t you realize that 
 the whole world around is based upon must instead of ought? 
 Which one of you, though earning fifteen dollars per week, 
 ever paid five cents more than the market price for a bushel 
 of potatoes, or a basket of eggs, or a quarter of mutton, be 
 cause the seller ought to be fairly paid for his labor, and 
 couldn t really afford to sell at the market rate? Nay, 
 which of you well-paid puddlers ever gave a poor widow 
 a dollar a piece for making your shirts when you could get 
 them made as well for half a dollar, even though at the dol 
 lar you would be getting three days work for one ? Step 
 forward from the ranks, you gentlemen that have conducted 
 your own buying and hiring through life on the principle of 
 * ought, 1 and let me make my obeisance to each of you ! I 
 shall do it right heartily, and with no fear of being rendered 
 neck-weary by the operation. 
 
 Yet that ought 1 is a glorious word when applied to the 
 relations of Business arid of Labor we must not let it be 
 forgotten. There is in it the seeds of a revolution more 
 gigantic and pervasive than any Vergniaud or Kossuth ever 
 devised. Heaven speed the day when, not only in Iron but 
 in all branches of Industry, the reward of Labor shall be 
 regulated not by must, but by ought. 
 
 *######## 
 
 The most melancholy feature of these strikes is the ap 
 parent indisposition on either side to discover any law 
 whereby these collisions may be terminated for the present 
 and precluded in future. It seems so natural for the work 
 men to say, "You tell us that you can pay but three- 
 fourths of our former wages because of the low price of Iron : 
 31* 
 
366 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 now suppose we accept your terms, will you agree that our 
 wages shall advance whenever and so fast as the price of Iron 
 shall improve?" Yes, would be the natural and proper 
 answer of the masters, if you will agree that they shall be 
 reduced whenever and so fast as Iron shall decline still fur- 
 ther." 1 This being accepted, the entire relation of Capital to 
 Labor in this particular department is readjusted on the 
 basis of Proportion or Common Interest instead of that of 
 arbitrary Wages, evolving contrariety of interests. Now the 
 puddler gets so much, although the Iron should not sell for 
 enough to pay him, and cares very little whether the busi 
 ness is prosperous or depressed, save as its suspension may 
 turn him out of work. But with the establishment of Pro 
 portion as a law of the trade, every worker s interests would 
 be on the side of prosperity, and his wages every week de 
 pend on the price which Iron should bear at the end of it. 
 
 But from neither party to this controversy do I hear 
 one fruitful or reconciling word. From the journeymen s 
 side, we have all manner of Jacobinic clamor against the 
 oppressions of capital, wealth, monopoly, &c., but no practi 
 cal suggestion for their removal. No one says, * Let us hire 
 Iron-works [of which there are abundance shut up] and go 
 to making Iron as our own masters. Even in Wheeling, 
 where there has been a great meeting of Iron-workers to 
 sympathise with and encourage the Pittsburgh puddlers, no 
 voice uttered the creative words, Stop depending on mas 
 ters, and go to making Iron for yourselves ! How is it that 
 a course so obvious, so decisive, and now rescued from the 
 fatal taint of novelty by a signal success, should remain un 
 adopted and even unconsidered ? 
 
 NOTE. Since the above was written and published, the organization of the 
 various branches of Iron-making and manufacture on the basis of Proportion or As 
 sociation has been earnestly considered by the workers of Pittsburgh, and several 
 attempts at practical Association are now in progress or in contemplation by them. 
 
GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 367 
 
 GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 
 
 I KNOW that the speculations of those who dream of a 
 better framework of Society are distasteful to the greater 
 number of readers, but shall we, therefore, hold our peace ? 
 Shall we follow the advice of our adversaries, and choose only 
 those opportunities to speak when they who condemn un 
 heard will surely not be among the number of our auditors ? 
 Shall we politely smother the light under a bushel, lest its 
 piercing rays inflame the eyes of a long benighted and 
 wilfully slumbering world ? So policy dictates, and the 
 World imperatively commands. The dull, voluptuous 
 World ! it demands flattery for its amazing charities, not re 
 buke for its indifference to the wants and woes of the Poor ! 
 Beauty in her boudoir will be complimented on her generous 
 bestowment of pence on some famishing invalid, and not 
 confronted with the stern, reproachful ghosts of the hours 
 due to Humanity she has wasted in Sloth or Selfishness ; of 
 the coin lavished on dress or decoration, which might have 
 raised a sister from despair to love of life. Wealth rocks 
 indolently in its easy-chair, contemplating its ample hoards, 
 and broadly fertile domains, and laboriously digesting its 
 dainty viands, and petulantly asks if it is never to have a 
 moment s peace from the importunities of want, and the cant 
 of deputy beggars. And even Religion oft discards the 
 example of the Divine Teacher who hesitated not to say, 
 " How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the 
 kingdom of God !" and no longer ventures to test the sin 
 cerity of her neophytes by the sharp criterion, " Sell all thou 
 hast, and give to the poor ; then come and follow me." 
 Wisely and truly does she warn the Poor against envy, 
 
368 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 hatred, and agrarian convulsion rightly and forcibly does 
 she teach them that no change in society can be beneficent 
 unless based on Justice, Concord, and Love that from 
 strife and malevolence can come nothing but aggravated 
 squalor and misery that Content and Competence may be 
 found quite as readily, and far more effectually, by most of 
 us, by limiting and regulating our wants, than by increasing 
 our possessions that a heart at peace with the Father and 
 with its allotment is more to be prized than all the wealth of 
 Peru but does her duty stop here? How speaks she to 
 the successful devotee of gold who is constantly adding to 
 his broad domains estate after estate, as though he would 
 monopolize the Earth s wide surface and leave his brethren 
 of the Race no dry spot whereon to stand but by his gracious 
 permission? who would deem it an exorbitant exaction if 
 he were asked to contribute a tithe of his annual gains to im 
 proving the condition of his unfortunate-fellow-men ? How 
 seldom do her oblique and vague denunciations of avarice 
 and worldliness disturb the enjoyment of their well-placed, 
 richly furnished pews, though directly under the eye and 
 voice of the preacher ? 
 
 Well, thus be it, so long as it must. Let the champions 
 of Society as it is eulogize its structure and its blessings, 
 only let us few Dissenters realize and proclaim the approach 
 of a better. Ay, even on this earth, it is ordained that a 
 better condition shall be realized for Man, the toiling, 
 striving, suffering, famishing ! Not until the dark valley is 
 passed shall our Race be doomed ever to wait ere they see 
 the kingdom of God ! The radiant vision of the Prophet, 
 the living dream of the Poet, do not transcend the reality 
 which the Father has decreed for his earthly children. It 
 needs but that the principles of Divine Order shadowed forth 
 (perchance dimly to gross apprehensions) in the life and 
 words of Jesus be embodied in the daily acts and efforts of 
 His professed disciples, and Earth shall once more be 
 
GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 369 
 
 enrobed in the vesture of Eden. The old Record of the 
 proffer that even five righteous persons should suffice to save 
 a guilty and doomed city, is written for our admonition and 
 profit. It needs only that goodness be goodness, openly 
 and veritably, to commend it to all consciences and all 
 hearts. Were there but one community whereof the love 
 of God, as evinced in entire devotion to the welfare of Man 
 kind, were the ruling impulse, the whole world would 
 speedilv be illumined by its light, and transformed by its ex 
 ample. But the life, even of the noblest, is devoted to 
 partial ends ; its aims are narrow and partisan ; its efforts 
 discordant and fragmentary. The manifestations of what 
 ever Philanthropy there is in our wide world jostle each 
 other ; Religion regards with doubt, if not with aversion, the 
 efforts for Human advancement which are not made through 
 the Church, and the Church is in turn distrusted, or deemed 
 inadequate, by the philanthropist. Thus suspicion, division, 
 discord, convulse and darken the world. 
 
 Yes, Division, Alienation, Isolation, are the bane of our 
 Race. We have lost the knowledge that the blessing of 
 
 D & 
 
 each is bound up in the blessing of all. Fallen Cain blindly 
 imagines that he slays but his brother, his rival, his trium 
 phant competitor : he feels not that he is slaying himself 
 that henceforth a sky of fire shall be above him, and an earth 
 of blood beneath that all Nature s voices shall speak to 
 him the wrath of God, and that his curse shall be to live. 
 When shall the At-One-ment through Christ become a 
 living reality to the common heart, and the scales of Selfish 
 ness and Discord fall from our eyes as of old did those of 
 Prejudice and Hate from the eyes of Saul of Tarsus ? 
 
 A Social condition founded on and penetrated by the vital 
 truths of Christianity this is the Problem of our Age a 
 Society which shall be the embodiment and palpable expres 
 sion of the great Law of Love, in which servant and master 
 shall be obsolete distinctions, Labor no more a drudgery nor 
 
370 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 a degradation, and Usefulness, whether exalted or lowly, the 
 sure and only path to Honor. It shall yet be achieved, 
 through struggles, through errors, through failures, if the 
 imperfections of those who dimly and unworthily apprehend, 
 and strive to give expression to the great truth, shall render 
 these inevitable. The wintry sullenness, the frozen apathy 
 of the mass may delay the dawn, but the bright Day shall come 
 at last. Christ never intended that of His disciples a few should 
 enjoy every costly luxury which Imagination could suggest, 
 while millions famished and shivered, wanting the veriest 
 necessaries of life. How should he recognise as a follower 
 him who walls up thousands of fertile acres as a hunting- 
 ground, and leaves hungry thousands all around to pine in 
 hunger for the food which that fair domain would abundantly 
 render, and which they have now no place to produce, no 
 opportunity to procure ? To my mind, the most formal and 
 hard-natured Pharisee of olden time, the most sensual, soul- 
 denying Sadducee of our own day, would be recognised as 
 a disciple by the " good Master" far sooner than this pillar 
 of " Church and State," who complacently deems Christ 
 under obligations to him for his efforts and contributions to 
 spread what he calls the Gospel. 
 
 Man has fallen and is divided ; he must be raised and re 
 united. Darkened in understanding, and made gross by 
 sensuality, he needs to be taught his first duty to his brother. 
 " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself!" how read you 
 this, upholder of War, and Slavery, and of that Social Order 
 which leaves millions to grow up in Ignorance, Want, and 
 Temptation ; which provides prisons for the guilty, and 
 poor-houses for the helplessly starving, but makes no pro 
 vision that the still innocent and nobly striving shall have 
 Opportunity to earn needful Bread ? His children look up 
 to him with hollow, anxious eyes ; he rushes into the street, 
 determined to find employment, however repugnant, and how 
 ever meager its reward, but in vain ! He returns at night 
 
GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 371 
 
 only more weary and more wretched, to a home more deso 
 late and despairing than ever. Vain is the strength in his 
 sinews, while strength remains there ; he is one of the land 
 less millions, and has no resource but the chance that some 
 one will appreciate and require his services, and when that 
 fails what then ? The prison of the pauper may be opened 
 to his entreaties, and it may he shut sternly in his face ; the 
 fact that he has energies and health remaining is often re 
 garded as evidence, prima facie, that he needs no alms ; as 
 if muscles must command food, with or without opportunity 
 to use and profit by them. The prison of the felon is his 
 only certain resource. 
 
 Tell me not that this is Christian Society, in which the 
 widow sits toiling from dawn till midnight, consuming her 
 slender remnant of health and vision, to earn of her sister 
 in the church the smallest modicum of food and shelter with 
 which her tender babes can exist, and shivering with dread 
 that, by the delay of payment, or the failure to obtain 
 further work, food and shelter may fail to outlast the week. 
 Tell me not that these Cities, in which thousands are 
 annually driven, by keenest want, to shame and destruction, 
 do truly worship that Maker with whose costly temples they 
 are so thickly studded the benighted savages who abandon 
 the decrepit and incurable to famine and the wolf in the 
 lonely wilderness, are better Christians than these. They 
 at least have the plea of a seeming Necessity to palliate their 
 conduct ; we create the necessity we witness, by placing 
 Virtue on a rugged, flinty eminence, and presenting a 
 flowery declivity to Crime. Not till at least the Christian 
 who possesses wealth shall hold it as the trustee of the Crea 
 tor for the benefit of his children till it be recognised as a 
 practical axiom that " the Earth is the Lord s, and the full 
 ness thereof," given not to aggrandize the few, but to 
 bless and strengthen all never till it be established as a 
 maxim of Political Economy that Pauperism is, in most 
 
372 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 cases, far easier prevented than supported, and that those 
 who possess nothing have a Right to labor and to live, a 
 Right to education and healthful development, which those 
 who possess all are bound to recognise and give effect to 
 not till it is felt and admitted that Society commits a great 
 crime when one of its members is left to famish, or falls into 
 sin, through defect of education or of Social providence in 
 any way may we hope to withstand triumphantly the host 
 of moral and physical evils which now overwhelm the Race. 
 In view of these evils and their causes, how shall we x have 
 patience with the cavil that it is not reform of Social 
 Arrangements that is needed, but of the individual heart ? 
 Ay, truly does the individual need reform to induce him to 
 enter heartily and effectively upon the great work for which 
 that is a preparation. " This ought ye to have done, and 
 not have left the other undone." But when he is regenerated, 
 what then ? Shall he go on adding estate after estate to his 
 possessions ? Shall his daily life, his business, his dealings 
 with those around him, remain unaffected ? Shall servants 
 swarm around him, living for his convenience, and minister 
 ing to his luxury or his pride ? Shall the poor dread 
 ejectment from his tenements, when misfortune or mis 
 calculation shall have rendered them unable to meet his 
 legal demands ? Shall his garrets and cellars be tenanted 
 by those whose every hour must be held subordinate to his 
 wishes, and of whose education, moral culture, and happiness 
 he takes no more account than of those of the beasts in his 
 stable ? Away with this Pharisaic pretence ! Christianity 
 demands a life renewed in all its aims and relations, in which 
 there are no more servitors of pomp and sloth, to be treated 
 superciliously and paid grudgingly, but a true and essential 
 Brotherhood, linking the noblest and most fortunate with the 
 most dependent and benighted of mankind. 
 
 To constitute a Society which shall conform, in both its 
 outward structure and its inward life, to this Divine ideal, 
 
GLIMPSES OF A BETTER LIFE. 373 
 
 is the great duty of our time a duty which will yet be con 
 summated. Despite the sway of selfishness, seemingly so 
 universal, nobler and truer thoughts are everywhere breaking 
 in on the human mind. The Statesman in debate, the 
 Poet in his visions, the Novelist in his exposures of the 
 workings of guilt and the daily tragedy of life, begin to lay 
 bare the roots of Social Evil, often unwarily or with imper 
 fect apprehension, but yet so that the world begins to startle 
 in its lethargy and dream uneasily of a better day. That day 
 shall surely come nay, it is now not afar. The Chivalry 
 of Industry is already replacing that of War. It is not 
 Napoleon nor Wellington, but some Fulton or Arkwright, 
 who shall stand forth in the future as the hero of the Nine 
 teenth Century. The frightful excess of Social anarchy, 
 misery, and destitution, in the midst of the most abundant 
 wealth and prodigality the world has ever known, is driving 
 millions to inquiry and study with regard to their causes 
 and their cure. Knowledge and light with respect to 
 the whole subject are borne on the wings of the wind to 
 every nation, to every neighborhood, and even the most 
 stolid or wilfully adverse can not long refuse to listen and to 
 learn. And yet farther : Practical attempts are in progress 
 to test and exhibit the possibility, the feasibility, of a life of 
 true Brotherhood a life harmoniously adjusted to blend and 
 secure the rights and the happiness of each in those of all a 
 life devoted to noble and exalted purposes a life ultimately 
 freed from selfish anxiety, from want and from abounding 
 temptation a life of which the atmosphere shall be Inno 
 cence, and the labor Worship. Little enough of these vast 
 aims will be realized immediately they may be pursued for 
 years under adverse circumstances, discouragements and dif 
 ficulties but is it not something to have conceived and 
 adopted them? Let us not doubt that the ultimate reali 
 zation shall transcend the initial hope, and that through their 
 triumph a way shall be opened for the Social emancipation 
 of our Race. 32 
 
374 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 THE AIMS OF LIFE. 
 
 Q. What is the chief end of Man ? 
 
 A. Man s chief end is to glorify God, and enjoy him for ever. 
 
 Westminster Catechism. 
 
 IT must be deemed unfortunate that, in a summary of 
 religious doctrine from which so many human beings have 
 received their first distinct notions of God s government and 
 man s duties, the primary and most important truth should 
 have been set forth so vaguely and obscurely. How many 
 of the young learners of that catechism have any clear per 
 ception of what is meant by either question or answer ? 
 
 But dissipate all obscurity in the statement of the problem 
 and in its solution, and the matter is still seriously objection, 
 able. The existence of each individual is made to have 
 two purposes or aims first, God s glory; next, his own 
 enjoyment. He is called into being to gratify two selfish 
 ends one the Creator s, the other his own. This must be 
 wrong. God has not created us to the end that He may be 
 glorified, nor with any such purpose, but in obedience to the 
 dictates of His infinite beneficence. He has given us being 
 in order to increase the infinity of good which pervades the 
 universe. He has endowed us with reason and conscious 
 ness, not commanding us to glorify Him, not bidding us to 
 enjoy Him, but exhorting us to omit no opportunity of doing 
 good, of diffusing true Knowledge, Wisdom, Happiness, 
 Blessing. In short, God has not created us to subserve any 
 selfish end of His own, nor will He hold us guiltless if we 
 pursue only such ends of our own. 
 
 Am I wrong in assuming that our ethical and clerical 
 teachers are generally deficient in their inculcations on this 
 head? that their point of view is insufficiently elevated, and 
 
THE AIMS OF LIFE. 375 
 
 their requisitions too scanty? Is not the vulgar notion that 
 to refrain from doing ill to our neighbor is virtue, somewhat 
 countenanced by the usual tenor of moral exhortation ? 
 Does not the commandment-keeping squanderer on his own 
 luxurious appetites of the average earnings of ten human 
 beings, pass in society as an innocent and often as an exem 
 plary man ? 
 
 It seems evident that a radical reform in the popular ap 
 prehension of religious teaching, if not in the teaching itself, 
 is here needed. Since the earthly pilgrimage of the Divine 
 4 Man of Sorrows, we have had few preachers who said 
 frankly and pointedly, How hardly shall they that have 
 riches enter into the Kingdom of God ! Sell all that thou 
 hast and give to the poor ; then come and follow me, and 
 so forth. Do we realize that these were not the exaggera 
 tions of petulance or asceticism, but the simple, natural con 
 ditions of spiritual health, illumination, and progress ? What 
 He required was but the disencumbering of the soul of 
 clogs which impeded and bore it heavily earthward. What 
 Christ said of wealth, its influences and proper uses, had no 
 mere local or transitory significance. It is as true in New- 
 England as it was in Palestine, as true in 1846 as it was 
 in the year one. 
 
 In truth, wealth, employed only or mainly to subserve 
 personal ends, is in its nature incompatible with a true life, 
 or with the purpose of such a life. The man of substance, 
 who regards his riches as means of luxury, of elegance, 
 of power, (other than the power to relieve and bless,) or 
 of continuing such advantages to his descendants, is inevi 
 tably, palpably beclouded as to the very purpose for which 
 life was given him. His aims are selfish and groveling, his 
 understanding darkened, his faltering, grudging, feeble 
 efforts at goodness, are tainted by the sin of Ananias and 
 Sapphira. His fealty to Mammon will ever clash with his 
 duty to God. 
 
376 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 The true disciple of Christ regards himself but as the 
 steward of whatever worldly goods Providence has placed 
 in his hands. From these he is to satisfy the necessities of 
 those dependent upon him ; all beyond belongs to his Mas 
 ter, and is to be dispensed according to His plain directions. 
 Not that he is compelled to divest himself to-day of the 
 means of relieving wants to-morrow ; that would be acting 
 the part of a prodigal and thoughtless steward ; but he is to 
 dispense or reserve whatever has been confided to him with 
 single reference to the highest good of all. All that he has, 
 being the rightful property of his Creator, is to be dispensed 
 according to the model ever before him in the dispensation 
 of rain and sunshine. He whose sympathies or beneficent 
 efforts are circumscribed by any boundary of family, sect, 
 neighborhood, or nation, is most imperfect in his obedience 
 to the Father of lights. He who is content to enjoy the 
 fruits of others toil, rendering mankind little or no positive 
 service in return, can be but a very distant follower of the 
 Divine Redeemer. 
 
 On no point is error more common or more vital than on 
 this. A life devoted mainly to what is deemed innocent 
 though selfish enjoyment is not usually regarded as incon 
 sistent with a Christian profession. The wealthy disciple 
 may devote half his time to a round of visits, dinners, tours, 
 and entertainments, without fear of reprehension from the 
 sacred desk, and with little danger of reproach from his 
 own drugged conscience. Yet it would be difficult to say 
 wherein such a life excelled that of the less depraved hea 
 then of our own or ancient times. He that lives mainly to 
 himself and his kindred can not truly be said to live to God, 
 no matter whether he pray with his face to Jerusalem, 
 Mecca, Rome, or the sky. There is no savor of real god- 
 likeness in a life so devoted. 
 
 The assumed innocence of a life of pomp and luxury will 
 never bear a searching examination. It is not possible that 
 
THE AIMS OF LIFE. 377 
 
 such a life may be lived innocently, no matter how liberally 
 it may be garnished with tithes and prayers. The man of 
 substance who lives in luxury, can not fail to render the 
 lives of other human beings merely auxiliary to his own 
 enjoyment. Where some are only served, others must needs 
 be merely servants ; where some one is to be habitually 
 gratified, others must degenerate into the mere instruments 
 of gratification the machine whereby a certain quantum of 
 supposed enjoyment is produced. Wherever one man 
 deems the services of other human beings essential to his 
 comfortable subsistence, and repays those services otherwise 
 than by service in turn wherever a family is divided into 
 two or more classes, holding respectively superior and in 
 ferior positions, so that their reciprocal obligations differ 
 wholly in kind and degree so that one class, and but one, 
 lives in constant dread of incurring the displeasure of the 
 other, or rather, of incurring the consequences of that dis 
 pleasure there is a relation which Christ never recognized, 
 and which all His teachings tend to condemn and overthrow. 
 I do not know that I am more strongly moved by any 
 ordinary spectacle than by that of the assembling for worship 
 of a fashionable and wealthy congregation in one of our great 
 cities. As the rich and the great roll up in their carriages 
 to engross the superbly adorned pews, the poorer and hum 
 bler shuffle in on foot, and take the less desirable seats, 
 leaving the worst of all to the crushed children of Africa, 
 whose understanding, it would seem, is deemed so acute 
 that they need not hear more than half the service in order 
 to comprehend it thoroughly. The same equivocal compli 
 ment is paid to the decrepit, the deaf, the superannuated, if 
 they happen to be hopelessly poor. But the great man s 
 coachman is not even supposed to hear at all. Were he at 
 liberty, he would not venture to present himself at the door 
 of the family pew such a stretch of presumption would 
 cost him a lecture on manners to superiors, and very likely 
 32* 
 
378 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 his means of subsistence. His business in that solemn hour 
 is not to worship God, but to take care of horses. While 
 he assiduously fulfills this function in the shadow of the 
 church outside, and the gilded prayer-books are in requisition 
 within, half a dozen other human implements are busy at 
 home preparing the sumptuous meal. For these, * Sunday 
 shines no holyday ; it hardly witnesses a relaxation of their 
 labors. They may have some vague idea that the obliga 
 tions, duties, and hopes of religion are divinely intended for 
 all, but the whole atmosphere, the daily necessities of their life 
 condemn such a notion. It may be their masters duty to 
 obey God ; it is theirs to obey their masters ; and in this 
 service conscience is well nigh superfluous, and would often 
 be an embarrassment and obstruction. Thus they wear out 
 their lives in mere brutishness and serfdom, with no more 
 mental exercise nor development than the domesticated 
 animals which are their fellow servants and daily companions. 
 How many families contribute annually to send the gospel 
 to the heathen, without once reflecting that their practice 
 and example make a great many more heathen than their 
 money will ever convert ! 
 
 To insure the speedy diffusion and triumph of Christi 
 anity throughout the world, it needs but to be carried fully 
 and fairly into practice by a part of its present adherents, so 
 as to be plainly observed and understood. Were a single coun 
 ty thoroughly Christianized in all its institutions, laws, polity, 
 usages, the world could not resist its noiseless appeal for 
 universal conformity to its order, justice, harmony, and hap 
 piness. It is because Christians are content to differ so lit 
 tle from the pagan world, except perhaps in theology, that 
 gross darkness still overspreads nine-tenths of the habitable 
 globe. 
 
 The time is at hand when the significance which once 
 dwelt in the disciples washing each other s feet, (and not 
 those of each other only,) in the office of deacons, in the 
 
THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 379 
 
 Lord s Supper, and so forth, shall again be apprehended 
 and realized. Christianity has been preached, expounded, 
 and moralized upon, long enough ; it is yet (by the mass of 
 its professors) to be really lived. In the new age now 
 dawning upon humanity, the Christian slave-trader and the 
 Christian living in idleness and luxury will stand on the 
 same platform. The professor who lives sumptuously on 
 the unrequited toil of his slaves, and he who consumes 
 largely without himself laboring to add anything to the store 
 of human comforts, will be regarded as neighbors ; while he 
 who requires service but renders none, will be deemed a 
 most unfaithful subject of the great law of Love. In short, 
 living to self, or to any ends which do not embrace love to 
 God and the highest good of mankind, will be deemed the 
 one great departure from rectitude and duty, drawing after it 
 all essential corruption and actual transgressions. 
 
 THE UNFULFILLED MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY: 
 
 A LETTER TO THE READER. 
 
 WASHINGTON CITY, May 4, 1812. 
 
 * * * IT was but yesterday, that I stood in the great Com 
 mercial Emporium, and listened pensively to the rustling 
 tread of its hurrying thousands. Here passed the slave 
 of commerce, the devotee of gain, with vacant gaze and 
 introverted perception, his brow working unconsciously 
 as he plodded over the thousands he hoped to win yet 
 dreaded to lose by some casual turn of the wheel of fortune ; 
 scanning, perchance, the sky, to note what prospect of tem 
 pest or favoring gale awaited his vessel now approaching the 
 coast, hurrying to the bulletin for news, or to the price cur 
 rent to learn the chance of profit or loss on his ventures. 
 Beside him trudged unheededly the laborer, with his swart 
 
380 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 brow and stooping frame, toiling on sturdily, though wearily, 
 through the rugged day, with thoughts of the wife and little 
 ones whose narrow domicil and scanty comforts his arduous, 
 unremitted exertions barely suffice to provide, and thinking 
 sadly, shudderingly, of the period just at hand when his 
 present enployment shall cease, to be succeeded, he knows 
 not how or whence. And now, there pass me the lawyer 
 and the broker, each weaving in his brain the spider-web in 
 which some poor unfortunate shall soon be enclosed, and 
 gloating joyously over the anticipated triumph which to 
 another shall be ruin. But list ! a longer stride, a more 
 heedless air : here rushes by a reckless, half-intoxicated 
 sailor, just landed from a voyage around Cape Horn, and 
 hastening to spend, in a few days riot and debauchery, 
 the hard-won earnings of as many years, and then return to 
 his monotonous round as penniless as ever, and one degree 
 more debased and brutal than before. There prances 
 knavish Bankruptcy in its chariot, spattering the thread 
 bare garb of some ruined creditor, who goes before on foot ; 
 here trips Fashion in lace ; there hobbles Beggary in rags, as, 
 with counterfeited limp and loathsome travesty of the human 
 form, it whines out its petition for alms. * * * And now 
 tis evening, and the great avenues blaze with light, as the 
 windows of the palaces of Traffic flash with gems and are 
 radiant with the display of costly fabrics. The entrances to 
 the haunts of dissipation are luminous and inviting to their 
 victims, and, from the dark purlieus where they have shunned 
 the glare of day, the votaries of sin come forth to flaunt their 
 little season. In the narrower and less frequented paths, 
 darkness holds partial dominion, and riot, crime, dissipation, 
 and fierce contention, have recommenced their reign, des 
 tined, it may be, to outwear the night. Such is a rude and 
 hasty presentment of the moral aspects of a day in Christian 
 New-York, where thousands are assembled (very properly 
 and laudably, I doubt not) to devise the ways, and contribute 
 
THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 381 
 
 the means, to cany the GOSPEL and its attendant blessings 
 into all parts of the globe. 
 
 And now I sit in Washington, where the great and the 
 honorable of the land are assembled to shape its destinies. 
 Their voices reach me in my narrow chamber ; the rattle of 
 their wheels is borne freshly to my ear, as they roll over the 
 broad avenue. 
 
 The commanding might of Mind is here. The orator, 
 whose fervid utterance in the senate has reverberated through 
 the vast extent of our country, rocking the hearts of millions 
 from the Aroostook to the Sabine, is here. The demagogue, 
 base idol of a multitude s thoughtless hosannas, flatterer and 
 flattered, corrupter and corrupted, is here the enchant 
 ment lent by distance, dispelled by contact his essential 
 nothingness and selfish aims gleaming out abundantly through 
 the paint and patchwork of counterfeit patriotism, in which 
 he has arrayed himself. The gaudy blazonry of military 
 pomp, of naval prowess, is here. Here the sleek and satis 
 fied official jostles the shrinking and cringing office-hunter 
 from the walk. Still, as ever, amid the shows of luxury 
 and waste, stalks the gaunt form of penury and want, pining 
 for a crust, as it gazes through blazing windows upon the 
 superfluous banquet on which thousands have been squan 
 dered. Gliding through, checkering all, are the dark figures 
 of the low-browed children of Cain, bearing ever their un 
 mistakable badge of servitude and degradation. Here, the 
 gambler and the debauchee honorable and eminent, it may 
 be are preparing to waste the midnight hours in orgies 
 whereof the speedy issue is shame, debasement, and death. 
 Such is the spectacle presented by the enlightened metrop 
 olis of this Christian, land, whence missionaries are radiating 
 to every corner of the world, in this nineteenth century 
 since the advent of the Savior. In the long interval, the 
 Christian faith and worship have widely diffused themselves, 
 but where is the CHRISTIAN IDEA? Where lingers the 
 
382 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 kingdom of universal holiness and love which Jesus came to 
 establish ON EARTH ? 
 
 Where is it? I see around me the stately and costly 
 edifices in which Herod and Dives proceed weekly, with 
 scrupulous punctuality, to worship God in pomp and luxury, 
 as followers of the carpenter of Nazareth, the fishermen of 
 Galilee. Christian forms and observances are thick around 
 me : where is the Christian spirit ? I recognize it not in 
 that lordly pile ; not within the folds of that ample surplice ; 
 not within those richly-cushioned pews, which an humble, 
 threadbare stranger may not enter without encountering a 
 frown, nor an African without provoking a curse on his 
 amazing presumption. Yet, possibly, in that poor Ethiop s 
 heart the divine emotion has found unsuspected welcome ; 
 it may glow there as he shrinks tremblingly into some ob 
 scure corner of the edifice, and listens rapturously to truths 
 which not even the preacher comprehends. Perhaps, in 
 some dingy conventicle, its material utterance drowned be 
 neath discordant ejaculations of folly and frenzy, of fanaticism 
 and absurdity, the incense of a genuine devotion is ascend 
 ing, unmarked, to the throne of the everlasting Father. But 
 is this the fullness of the kingdom which Christ came to es 
 tablish ? Shall such occasional and solitary instances be 
 held to overbear and set at naught the sad reality of a world 
 lying in wickedness ? Do we not know that evil and an 
 guish, oppression and wretchedness, wrong and despair, are 
 abundant, nearly as ever, among the children of men ? And 
 is not the world yet prepared to realize that, in the fullness 
 of the Christian dispensation is contained the remedy for all 
 evil for all that is not incident to our mortality, even 
 here ? How long shall it be practically regarded as a form 
 of worship and a code of difficult observances ? Why not 
 rather accept it as a divinely appointed means of entire and 
 immediate emancipation from the ills of our earthly con- 
 
THE MISSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 383 
 
 dition ? Let not the idea be hastily condemned as extrava 
 gant ; let us soberly consider it. 
 
 When Christ directed the inquirer to sell all his goods, 
 and give the avails to the poor when He declared that the 
 rich should with extreme difficulty enter the kingdom of 
 heaven when he related the parable of the pearl of great 
 price, &c. did he merely utter extravagant hyperboles ? 
 The disciples did not so understand him, as we learn by 
 their having all things in common, even after his death. 
 Did he propound these rules in exclusive reference to some 
 imminent exigency ? So it does not appear ; nor can it, 
 unless the command to love our neighbor as ourself be un 
 derstood to have a like limited and now lifeless significance. 
 Why, then, should the Church, or assemblage of believers, 
 prefer the interpretation of Ananias and Sapphira to that of 
 Peter and Paul? Why should Christians famish nay, 
 why should men perish for lack of food, while in Christen 
 dom is abundance ? Why should believers be driven to 
 solicit and subsist on the freezing charity of our political 
 Organizations, while within the Church is ample wealth ? 
 This, surely, is directly contrary to the precept and exam 
 ple of the Apostolic age. I have not traced the history 
 minutely, yet I am confident that the first idea of a universal 
 and permanent provision for the poor and destitute origin 
 ated in that age, with Christ and His apostles ; that it con 
 tinued a work of the Church, and not at all of the State, 
 down to a comparatively recent period ; and that it lapsed 
 into the hands of the latter through the increase of temporal 
 knowledge and wisdom, and the decline of Christianity as a 
 distinct and substantive power over the hearts and actions 
 of men. If so, what is the obvious deduction ? 
 
 But a mere provision for the destitute is not all that i,- 
 contemplated by the idea of Christianity. In that idea 1 
 clearly recognize the germ of a great Social renovation, In 
 teaching mankind no longer to hate, distrust, and destroy, but 
 
384 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 to love and cherish each other as themselves, a stupendously- 
 beneficent revolution was involved. Alms-houses for the 
 destitute go but a short way toward the fulfilment of the 
 great law of love. Mot merely insurance against extremest 
 misery, but provision for positive and essentially equal hap 
 piness, is implied. And why may not this be realized? 
 Why should not the Christian dispensation become the 
 basis of -a new and benignant Social Order, from which want 
 and wo, fraud and wrong, discord and antagonism, shall be 
 banished, and the highest attainable good of each member 
 be striven for and secured? Why may not such an order 
 be formed, which shall secure to each individual not only 
 abundant food, and clothing, and shelter, but education, 
 also intellectual development, and all the means of rational 
 enjoyment requiring of him, in turn, that equal and just 
 contribution of his efforts toward the general weal, which the 
 community or church shall require, and which his own 
 capacities and preference (very rarely, if unperverted, at 
 variance) shall indicate ? And why may not our race thus 
 emancipate themselves from the bondage of constraint, and 
 privation, and suffering, in which they so long have labored 
 and groaned ; and, guided and upheld by the law of univer 
 sal love, rise speedily and surely to the primal condition, 
 while the long scourged and desolated earth shall grow ver 
 dant and beauteous again ? 
 
 This is a vast and inspiring theme. I should not venture 
 to speak so confidently on the hopeful side of it, had not 
 loftier and serener spirits sounded its depths, and vanquished 
 its difficulties. These have shown that the renovation of 
 society on the basis of the Christian idea is not visionary, 
 is not fantastic, is not impracticable. Nay, undoubted EX 
 PERIENCE, not merely in the repeated and enduring instances 
 of the Shakers and other ascetic communities, but in those 
 of many of larger faith and clearer knowledge, has demon 
 strated this cheering truth. There is no longer a necessity. 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE AGE. 385 
 
 there is hardly an excuse for social evil and degradation. 
 The means of avoiding or vanquishing them are within 
 the reach of nearly all. The system of ASSOCIATION, or 
 sharehold property, blended with Attractive Industry, pro 
 mulgated by FOURIER, does away the last objection, that 
 a Social Order adverse to the present must generate im 
 providence and idleness, and so perish through human in 
 firmity. Its vast economies will bring wealth within the 
 reach of all, while affording them the amplest means and 
 opportunities for intellectual, moral, and social elevation and 
 enjoyment. 
 
 Carlyle casually remarks, that a man, able and willing 
 to work, yet unable to find employment, and thence lacking 
 the means of subsistence, is the saddest sight under the 
 sun. What shall we say of a Christian famishing in a land 
 of Christian affluence, because the means of earning bread 
 is not afforded him in our chaotic and warring social order? 
 Surely the soul of such a one must appear as an accusing 
 angel at the bar of Eternal Justice against the community in 
 which such a tragedy was enacted. Yet such a calamity 
 has taken place, even in this country. Let us hope that the 
 time when it could be is nearly at an end, and that the 
 knowledge of its possibility will soon linger only as a fearful 
 tradition in the homes of the children of men. 
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE AGE. 
 
 I HAVE as little taste as faculty for fine writing ; as little 
 appetite as aptitude for mere sentimentality : if I were to 
 attempt even a love-story, I have no doubt it would in 
 sensibly grow into a socialist harangue or a dissertation on 
 the causes and cure of human destitution. This life on 
 which we have been lanched, seems a problem so grave 
 and earnest as to afford little time or thought for idyls or 
 33 
 
386 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 madrigals. We awake in it to find ourselves members of 
 the great body of Humanity and in what condition is that 
 body with which we are so indissolubly blended? Of the 
 one thousand millions of human beings on earth, how large 
 a proportion certainly more than half pass through life 
 sufferers from want; want of opportunity, of education, 
 of shelter, and of food ! Millions annually perish pre 
 maturely, through ignorance and the resulting evils vic 
 tims of famine, of excess, of evil habits, unfit aliment, or 
 lawless passions, from which a better training, a juster idea 
 of the laws of the universe, would have saved them. The 
 people perish for lack of vision, and so have done from the 
 first. Ignorance of the inexorable laws of cause and effect 
 which bind together virtue and happiness, vice and misery, 
 has ever been a chief source of the W 7 oes under which the 
 whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain 
 until now. 
 
 Into the midst of this lazar-house of sin and sorrow, 
 comes the angel Religion and for what ? Even granting 
 that the paramount object of the Savior s mission and the 
 Christian dispensation is salvation beyond the grave, is not 
 the parallel design to mitigate the sufferings and rectify 
 the errors of this present life still obvious, undeniable ? 
 The evils and woes over which Christ sorrowed were 
 plainly temporal the tender concern manifested by the 
 Gospel for the destitute and desolate, is not confined to the 
 future life. I have erringly read the Scriptures, if the 
 solicitude therein expressed for the well-being of our race is 
 at all confined to their condition in the world beyond the 
 grave. 
 
 Providence has cast our lot in an age of intense intel 
 lectual activity and progress. The proportion of the human 
 family who read and think has been doubled within half a 
 century, and is still rapidly increasing, And parallel, with 
 the diffusion of knowledge, speeds the consciousness of 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE AGE. 387 
 
 Brotherhood, the sentiment of love for all who breathe, of 
 sympathy for all who suffer. All over the civilized, the 
 Christian world, novel agencies and efforts of benevolence 
 attest the truth that rivers and mountains no more suffice to 
 make enemies of the nations separated by them, and that the 
 aspiration for universal beneficence is rapidly rising to its 
 proper place of guiding impulse to mankind. 
 
 And how does the Christian Church, using that term to 
 comprehend and designate the whole body of believers in 
 Christ, regard the advancing spirit? Does she joyfully 
 recognize and tenderly treat it as her own child and servitor ? 
 Does she cheerfully submit to be quickened and admonished 
 by it, in case the fire kindled at her altar burns brightly on 
 the new hearth while it has become dim on hers ? Docs 
 she evince a cordial and thankful willingness to see the good 
 for which she has not time nor means wrought out by other 
 and humbler agencies? In short, docs the Church recog 
 nize in every instrumentality of good to man a coworker 
 with herself in her glorious mission, and rejoice that its con 
 summation is thus visibly hastened ? If so, it is well with 
 her and with our kind. 
 
 But let the Church countenance the assumption that Re 
 ligion is one thing and Philanthropy quite another let her 
 insist that her concern is chiefly with the things of another 
 world, and at the same time frown upon the efforts of 
 thoughtful, loving men to meliorate the condition of the less 
 fortunate classes in this let her ministers and oracles, 
 themselves amply fed and cared for, speak slightingly of 
 efforts to secure honestly-earned bread to the needy, and 
 hold it a light thing that so many writhe in penury on this 
 dim, fleeting earth, and it will be very unfortunate for 
 Philanthropy, and not well for organized Christianity. 
 
 Ours is an age of rugged realities, yet of boundless hopes. 
 On every side men are awaking to the calls of duty and of 
 
388 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 benevolence, and asking What shall we do for our afflicted 
 or downcast brethren ? By what means may we do most, 
 1 in the little span allotted to us, to diminish the wrongs and 
 * the woes endured by so many millions of mankind ? These 
 are questions which the Christian Church should prepare 
 herself to answer conclusively. Her answer should be 
 something more than an opiate for the consciences of her 
 wealthier devotees. To say that if every one would serve 
 God and work righteousness all would be prosperous and 
 happy, is not to meet the practical case at all. We do 
 know, beyond doubt, that all will not act thus wisely and 
 holily, and the essential question will not thus be evaded. 
 It still recurs to demand of the fortunate and powerful what 
 they as Christians or as men propose to do, feel bound to 
 do, in the actual condition of things. Here are a Christian 
 wife and her young children, the victims of a reprobate, 
 drunken husband and father. Are the dictates of Christian 
 duty satisfied by the cold assertion that if he who should be 
 their protector would but refrain from being their tormentor, 
 they might enjoy comparative happiness ? What is that 
 worth to the meek, despairing sufferers ? How does it 
 excuse those who should be their neighbors ? Does not 
 the question inevitably recur in this form : What can we do 
 for them, in spite of the great misfortune which has befallen 
 them ? Admit that he who should support and cherish 
 will persist in robbing and torturing them, is there nothing 
 which can yet be done to alleviate their miseries ? Answer 
 this question in the affirmative, as you must, and the original 
 line of defense of Christian selfishness is turned completely. 
 We are brought face to face with the primary question, 
 modified (or rather, fortified) as follows : Since evil exists, 
 and will exist, what can we do to limit its blighting in 
 fluences ? Admit that the transgressor is irreclaimable, or 
 that no benevolence can render him less wretched until he 
 abandons his vicious courses, and still it may be quite 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE AGE. 389 
 
 feasible to mitigate the sufferings of those he has dragged 
 down with him to perdition. Nay, more ! We might, by 
 patient, loving inquiry into his past history and circumstances, 
 discover causes of his aberration, as yet unsuspected, which 
 would serve to soften the abhorrence with which we have 
 learned to regard him. We might bring to light facts 
 showing that his infatuation is not so wanton as we have 
 deemed it, but that influences preceding his birth, and by no 
 means confined to his own narrow family circle, have 
 powerfully aided to make him what he is. Having been 
 drawn thus far in exploring the individual case, we may see 
 before us a broad ocean of inquiry, stretching away to an 
 unexplored continent of duty. We may now be impelled to 
 consider how far the external influences which have con 
 spired to make some men drunkards or outcasts, and others 
 felons, are controllable, and whether it be not practicable to 
 place even the less fortunate in such relations, and train them 
 under such influences, as will assuredly preserve them from 
 the contaminations and perversions of which the fruits are so 
 deadly. We know that the children trained beneath the eye 
 of wise and Christian parents, amid a virtuous, intelligent 
 community, shielded alike from the temptations of affluent 
 grandeur and those of squalid misery, are morally certain to 
 be, as a class, better than those who first open their eyes in 
 castles of indolence or hovels of despair; and why shall 
 not this knowledge teach us? Why shall not the preser 
 vation of the unborn from the depressing and debasing cir 
 cumstances which have impelled and are still dooming so 
 many millions all around us to perdition, become the par 
 amount idea of the Christian, no less than of the philan 
 thropist? Do you demur that saving men s souls from cor 
 ruption in the present, or from perdition in the future life, is 
 the chief end of the Gospel ? Admit this, and still the question 
 recurs, Can you hope to save the souls immured in bodies 
 subjected to every debasing influence, without removing or 
 33* 
 
390 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 counteracting those influences ? How shall you hope to re 
 generate the denizens of the darker haunts of depravity and 
 wretchedness in all our great cities, without removing them 
 to purer homes and enabling them to eat the bread of useful 
 industry and virtuous independence ? 
 
 It is not long since the thieves of London that is, a very 
 large number of them were called together by a philan 
 thropist who had obtained a clew to their haunts and the 
 means of commanding their attention and confidence. 
 Treating them in all things as erring, misguided, unfortunate, 
 sinful brethren, he addressed them on the flagrant iniquity 
 of their lives, the more palpable ruin to which such courses 
 inevitably tended, and closed by exhorting them to instant, 
 thorough reformation. All were affected ; many melted to 
 tears. At last one found words to express the general per 
 plexity, substantially thus : * Good sir, what shall we do ? 
 As thieves, we have employment and obtain some sort of a 
 livelihood ; as thieves, we have companions, friends, homes. 
 Will you insure us these as honest men ? We ask no reward 
 for becoming honest and useful ; but we can not consent to 
 starve. Show us how to live honestly and avoid starvation, 
 and we will instantly abandon our wretched vocation. But 
 your reputable tradesmen will not hire us ; your reputable 
 workmen will not tolerate our presence in the same shop 
 with them ; the naked choice afforded us is to steal or starve. 
 And thus the conference ended, the good Samaritan baffled, 
 puzzled, discouraged. He could of himself do nothing, and 
 the Church was too busy decorating the palaces of its bishops, 
 sending dissenters to prison for non-payment of tithes, and 
 punishing its own ministers for preaching in heretical 
 chapels, to trouble itself with so vulgar a novelty as the ref 
 ormation of whole battalions of thieves, by enabling them 
 to earn honest bread. 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE AGE. 391 
 
 But what is the Church to do ? What duties are in 
 cumbent on her which for ages have lain unrecognized and 
 neglected? I answer, Many; but this first of all To 
 shield at least her own members from the temptations and 
 woes which are inseparable from unwilling idleness and con 
 sequent destitution. Every church or society of believers 
 should be, to its own members at least, as beneficent as an 
 Odd-Fellow s Lodge or Temperance League. It should, 
 at least, so remotely, faintly approximate the first church* 
 at Jerusalem as to say, So long as it shall be within our 
 ability to prevent it, no member of this body shall be idle or 
 destitute, who is willing to work cheerfully and faithfully at 
 whatever innocent employment may be offered him, and 
 which will afford him a subsistence. To this extent, at least, 
 the idea of brotherhood shall be actualized in our relation as 
 fellow Christians. This would be found in practice a pro- 
 dig ; ous step in the right path, leading on to others. Let it 
 once be established, as the common law of Christendom, that 
 no believer may stand idle and famishing amid a Christian 
 community, including many who possess, in ample measure, 
 the means of employing and rewarding the needy, and a 
 broad foundation will be laid for a gradual and enduring re 
 form in the relations of wealth to want, of capital to labor. 
 TVhat the world pressingly needs is, not mere alms-giving, 
 but less necessity therefor ; not bread in idleness, but oppor 
 tunity and just recompense for industry secured system 
 atically to all. If political economy and the advancing tide 
 of democracy can secure or promote these, so be it ; let us 
 welcome any helps or hints that the progress of knowledge 
 or invention may afford us ; but let not the Church seek to 
 excuse herself from her proper responsibility. In the spirit 
 of that divine appeal, Lead me not into temptation, she is 
 bound to take care that her members are not subjected to the 
 trial of Esau, but that each one of them is secured against 
 
 * Acts ii. 44, 45. 
 
392 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 vagrancy and famine, not in the world s cold, degrading 
 poor-house, but under the paternal guardianship of Christian 
 love. When she shall have risen to the altitude of this 
 duty, she will be fitted to contemplate, without disrelish or 
 dismay, the broader horizon of paternal obligation that 
 stretches away beyond it. Heaven grant her wisdom early 
 to apprehend and joyfully to accept her benignant destiny ! 
 
 THE IDEAL OF A TRUE LIFE. 
 
 A FRAGMENT. 
 
 THERE is, even on this side the grave, a haven where 
 the storms of life break not, or are felt but in gentle undula 
 tions of the unrippled and mirroring waters an oasis, not 
 in the desert, but beyond it a rest, profound and blissful 
 as that of the soldier returned for ever from the dangers, the 
 hardships and turmoil of War, to the bosom of that dear 
 domestic circle, whose blessings he never prized at half their 
 worth till he lost them. 
 
 This haven, this oasis, this rest, is a serene and hale Old 
 Age. The tired traveler has abandoned the dusty, crowded, 
 and jostling highway of life, for one of its shadiest and least 
 noted by-lanes. The din of traffic and of worldly strife has 
 no longer magic for his ear the myriad footfall on the 
 city s stony walks is but noise or nothing to him now. He 
 has run his race of toil, or trade, or ambition. His day s 
 work is accomplished, and he has come home to enjoy, tran 
 quil and unharassed, the splendor of the sunset, the milder 
 glories of late evening. Ask not whether he has or has not 
 been successful, according to the vulgar standard of success. 
 What matters it now whether the multitude has dragged his 
 chariot, rending the air with idolizing acclamations, or 
 howled like wolves on his track, as he fled by night from 
 
THE IDEAL OF A TRUE LIFE. 393 
 
 the fury of those he had wasted his vigor to serve ? What 
 avails it that broad lands have rewarded his toil, or that all 
 has, at the last moment, been stricken from his grasp ? Ask 
 not whether he brings into retirement the wealth of the 
 Indies or the poverty of a bankrupt whether his couch be 
 of down or of rushes his dwelling a hut or a mansion. He 
 has lived to little purpose indeed, if he has not long since 
 realized that Wealth and Renown are not the true ends of 
 exertion, nor their absence the conclusive proof of ill-fortune. 
 Whoever seeks to know if his career has been prosperous and 
 brightening from its outset to its close if the evening of his 
 days shall be genial and blissful should ask not for broad 
 acres, nor towering edifices, nor laden coffers. Perverted Old 
 Age may grasp these with the unyielding clutch of insanity ; 
 but they add to his cares and anxieties, not to his enjoy 
 ments. Ask rather Has he mastered and harmonized his 
 erring Passions ? Has he lived a True Life ? 
 
 - 
 
 A True Life ! of how many lives does each hour knell 
 the conclusion ! and how few of them are true ones ! The 
 poor child of shame, and sin, and crime, who terminates her 
 earthly being in the clouded morning of her scarce budded 
 yet blighted existence the desperate felon, whose blood is 
 shed by the community, as the dread penalty of its violated 
 law the miserable debauchee, who totters down to his 
 loathsome grave in the spring-time of his years, but the full 
 ness of his festering iniquities these, the world valiantly 
 affirms, have not lived true lives ! Fearless and righteous 
 world ! how profound, how discriminating are thy judg 
 ments ! But the base idolater of self, who devotes all his 
 moments, his energies, his thoughts, to schemes which begin 
 and end in personal advantage the grasper of gold, and 
 lands, and tenements the devotee of pleasure the man 
 of ignoble and sinister ambition the woman of frivolity, 
 extravagance and fashion the idler, the gambler, the volup- 
 
394 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 tuary on all these and their myriad compeers, while borne 
 on the crest of the advancing billow, how gentle is the re 
 proof, how charitable the judgment, of the world! Nay 
 is not even our dead Christianity, which picks its way so 
 daintily, cautiously, and inoffensively through the midst of 
 slaveholding, and drunkard-making, and National faith-break 
 ing which regards with gentle rebuke, and is regarded 
 with amiable toleration by some of the foremost vices of the 
 times is it not too often oblivious of its paramount duty to 
 teach men how to live worthily and nobly ? Are there not 
 thousands to whom its inculcations, so far as duties to Man 
 are concerned, are substantially negative in their character? 
 who are fortified, by its teachings, in the belief that to do 
 good is a casualty and not a frame of being who are 
 taught by it to feed the hungry and clothe the naked when 
 they thrust themselves upon the charity of portly affluence, 
 but as an irksome duty, for which they should be rewarded, 
 rather than a blessed privilege for which they should be 
 profoundly grateful ? Of the millions weekly listening to 
 the ministrations of the Christian pulpit, how many are 
 clearly, vividly impressed with the great truth, that each, in 
 his own sphere, should live for Mankind, as Christ did, for 
 the redemption, instruction, and exaltation of the race 
 and, that the power to do this, in his proper place, abides 
 equally with the humblest as the highest ? How many cen 
 turies more will be required to teach, even the religious 
 world, so called, the full meaning of the term CHRISTIAN ? 
 
 A true life must be simple in all its elements. Animated 
 by one grand and ennobling impulse, all lesser aspirations 
 find their proper places in harmonious subservience. Sim 
 plicity in taste, in appetite, in habits of life, with a corres 
 ponding indifference to worldly honors and aggrandizement, 
 is the natural result of the predominance of a divine and 
 unselfish idea. Under the guidance of such a sentiment. 
 
THE IDEAL OF A TRUE LIFE. 395 
 
 Virtue is not an effort, but a law of nature, like gravitation. 
 It is Vice alone that seems unaccountable monstrous 
 well nigh miraculous. Purity is felt to be as necessary to 
 the mind as health to the body, and its absence alike the in 
 evitable source of pain. 
 
 A true life must be calm. A life imperfectly directed, is 
 made wretched through distraction. We give up our youth 
 to excitement, and wonder that a decrepit old age steals upon 
 us so soon. We wear out our energies in strife for gold or 
 fame, and then wonder alike at the cost and the worthless- 
 ness of the meed. * Is not the life more than meat? Ay, 
 truly ! but how few have practically, consistently, so regarded 
 it? And little as it is regarded by the imperfectly virtuous, 
 how much less by the vicious and the worldling ! What a 
 chaos of struo^lino; emotions is exhibited by the lives of the 
 
 J 
 
 multitude ? How like to the wars of the infuriated animal 
 cule in a magnified drop of water, is the strife constantly 
 waged in each little mind ! How Sloth is jostled by Glut 
 tony, and Pride wrestled with by Avarice, and Ostentation 
 bearded by Meanness ! The soul which is not large 
 enough for the indwelling of one virtue, affords lodgment, 
 and scope, and arena for a hundred vices. But their war 
 fare can not be indulged with impunity. Agitation and 
 wretchedness are the inevitable consequences, in the midst 
 of which the flame of life burns flaringly and swiftly to its 
 close. 
 
 A true life must be genial and joyous. Tell me not, pale 
 anchorite, of your ceaseless vigils, your fastings, your 
 scourgings. These are fit offerings to Moloch, not to Our 
 Father. The man who is not happy in the path he has 
 chosen, may be very sure he has chosen amiss, or is self- 
 deceived. But not merely happier he should be kinder, 
 gentler, and more elastic in spirits, as well as firmer and 
 truer. I love God and little children, says a German 
 
396 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 poet. The good are ever attracted and made happier by the 
 presence of the innocent and lovely. And he who finds his 
 religion adverse to, or a restraint upon, the truly innocent 
 pleasures and gaieties of life, so that the latter do not inter 
 fere with and jar upon its sublimer objects may well doubt 
 whether he has indeed learned of Jesus. 
 
 HUMANITY. 
 
 THE watchword of the Nineteenth Century is BROTHER 
 HOOD. Rapid and wonderful as is the progress of Physical 
 Science valuable to Man as are the Steamboat, the Rail 
 road, the Magnetic Telegraph mighty as are the results 
 attained, mightier the hopes excited and justified, by the 
 march of discovery and invention the great discovery be 
 ing made, and to be made, by the children of men, is that 
 of their community of origin, of interests, of aspirations. 
 * God hath made of one blood all people, is its essence, pro 
 claimed many years ago ; the new truth is but the old real 
 ized and made practical. Humanity refuses longer to be 
 separated and arrayed against itself. Whoever oppresses or 
 injures any human being, however abject or culpable, wrongs 
 and tramples all men, himself included. 
 
 A grave, momentous truth let it be heard and heeded. 
 Hear it, grim and ruthless warrior ! eager to rush over 
 myriads of gashed and writhing bodies to coveted fame and 
 power ! These thou wouldst so readily trample into the 
 earth are not really enemies, not merely victims not some 
 thing which may be separated from thee and thine : they are 
 thy fellows, kinsmen, brethren with thee, members of one 
 another ! and of Humanity. The sword which hews them 
 down, maims thee : the hoof that tramples them, wounds 
 thee. No armor ever devised by cunning or selfishness can 
 
HUMANITY. 397 
 
 prevent this : no walls of stone or living men can ward off 
 the blow. As surely as the verdant tree must mark its 
 shadow in the sunshine as surely as the stone projected 
 upward will not rest in mid-air, but descend so surely 
 falls the evil on him by whom evil is done or meditated. 
 
 Miser ! heaping Mp fresh hoards of yellow dross ! thou 
 art starving, not others only, but thyself! Bread may fill 
 thy garners, and thy vaults be stored with ruddy wines ; but 
 Plenty can not come where dwells the insatiable thirst for 
 more ; and baleful are the possessions which contract the 
 brow and harden the heart ; speedy and sure is the judg 
 ment which avenges the woes of thy pale, hollow-cheeked 
 victims ! 
 
 Libertine ! believe not that the anguish thou so recklessly 
 invokest on others shall leave thee unscathed ! The con 
 trary is written in the law whose date is Eternity, whose 
 sphere the Universe. Fleeting and hollow are the guilty 
 joys thou scekest, while the crimes by which they are com 
 passed shall darken thy soul and embitter thy thoughts 
 for ever ! 
 
 And thou, humble, self-denying votary of the highest 
 good the good of thy brethren, thy fellow-beings vainly 
 shalt thou strive to sacrifice thy own happiness to brighten 
 the dark pathway of the needy, the wretched : the kindly 
 fates will not permit it ; Heaven will persist in promptly 
 repaying thee more and better than thou hast given. Give 
 all thou hast to lighten the burdens of others to-day, and the 
 bounteous reward will not wait for to-morrow s sun. It will 
 insist on making thee richer, in thy hunger and nakedness, 
 than the king amid his pomp, the banker amid his treasures. 
 Thy riches are safe from every device of villainy, from every 
 access of calamity ; they can not be separated from nor 
 made unavailable to thee. While thou art, they shall be to 
 thee a chastened gladness, a tranquil rapture for ever ! 
 ^ 
 
398 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 And thou, saintly devotee, and shrine of all virtues ! look 
 not down in loathing, but in pity, on the ruined votary of 
 vice and crime. He is here to teach thee not pride, but 
 humility. The corrupt, revolting thing he is, tells thee 
 what thou mightest easily have been, had not Divine Good 
 ness, for its own high ends, not thine, willed otherwise. 
 The drunkard s maudlin leer the lecher s marred and 
 hideous visage the thief s cat-like tread and greedy eyes 
 even the murderer s stony heart and reeking hand all 
 these, rightly viewed, are but indications of the possibilities 
 of thy own nature, commanding gratitude to God, and com 
 passion for all human errors. 
 
 Ay, * we are members together of one body of Humanity. 
 Whether blackened by the fervid sun of tropical deserts, (*r 
 bleached by the fogs of a colder clime whether worship 
 ing God or the Grand Lama, erecting Christian altars in 
 the savage wilderness or falling in frenzy beneath the wheels 
 of Juggernaut whether acting the part of a Washington or 
 a Nicholas, a Howard or a Thug the same red current 
 courses through all our veins the same essential nature 
 reveals itself through all. The slave in his coffle, the over 
 seer brandishing his whip, the abolitionist denouncing op 
 pression who shall say that any one of these might not 
 have been trained to do the deeds and think the thoughts 
 of any other ? Who shall say that the red-handed savage 
 of the wilds might not have been the meek, benign village 
 pastor, blessing and blest by all around him, if his lot had 
 been cast in Vermont instead of Oregon ? Who shall say 
 how far his crimes are treasured up against him in the great 
 account, and how far they are charged to the perverting, 
 darkening force of Christian rapacity and fraud, or esteemed 
 the result of a Christian indifference and lethargy only less 
 culpable ? 
 
 Away, then, from human sight with the hideous imple- 
 
HUMANITY. 399 
 
 merits of human butchery and destruction ! Break the 
 sword in its scabbard, bury the cannon in the earth, sink the 
 bombs in the ocean ! What business have these to disturb 
 by their hateful presence the visible harmony of God s uni 
 verse ? How dare men go out into the balmy air and 
 bright sunshine, and there, in the full view of Heaven, essay 
 to maim amd massacre each other? How would their 
 wretched babblement of National interests or National honor 
 sound, if addressed directly to the All-Ruling, as an apology 
 for wholesale slaughter? Who would dare be their mouth 
 piece in proffering an excuse so pitiful ? And do not the 
 abettors of War realize that their vile appeals to the baser 
 passions of our nature resound in the ears of the Recording 
 Angel ? 
 
 But not War alone, the grossest form of human antagonism, 
 but ev cry form, is destined to a speedy extinction. The 
 celestial voice that asked of old the terrific question, " Where 
 is thy brother Abel ?" shall yet be heard and responded to 
 by every one who would win profit or enjoyment from that 
 which oppresses or degrades a single human being. The 
 oppressor, the dram-seller, the gamester, are already begin 
 ning to listen, perforce, to its searching appeal listen, at 
 first, perhaps, with frowns, and sneers, and curses? but even 
 these are symptoms of the inward convulsion first mutter- 
 ings of the mighty earthquake at hand. 
 
 In the day of light now dawning, no relation so palpably 
 vicious as theirs can possibly abide. But theirs are the 
 rude, salient outworks, which cover, while they stand, the 
 smoother, ampler, sturdier citadel of error. That all-per 
 vading selfishness, which forgets or disregards the general 
 well-being, is yet to be tracked to its most secret recesses, 
 and extirpated. 
 
400 HINTS TOWARD REFORMS. 
 
 The avocations of Life, the usages and structure of Soci 
 ety, the relations of Power to Humility, of Wealth to Pov 
 erty, of served and servant, must all be fused in the crucible 
 of Human Brotherhood, and whatever abides not the test, 
 rejected. Vainly will any seek to avert or escape the 
 ordeal idly will any hope to preserve from it some darling 
 lust or pampered luxury or vanity. Onward, upward, irre 
 sistibly, shall move the Spirit of Reform, abasing the proud, 
 exalting the lowly, until Sloth and Selfishness, Tyranny and 
 Slavery, Waste and Want, Ignorance and Corruption, shall 
 be swept from the face of the earth, and a golden age of 
 Knowledge, of Virtue, of Plenty, and Happiness, shall dawn 
 upon our sinning and suffering Race. Heaven speed its 
 glorious coming and prepare us to welcome and enjoy it ! 
 
 THE END. 
 

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