in what he once deemed a menial occupation; society deplores his sad lot, and reads edifying homilies upon the vanity of wealth,-forgotten the moment after in the unrelaxed pursuit of the vanity. In this development of social equality, as expressed in the relation of labor and wages, the first answer is found to the inquiry, "Why have I none?" Wages are undoubtedly a step in advance of the condition of enforced unpaid labor; but only an advance-not an end. They imply substantially, only a little more decisively than servitude, a denial of manhood and its rights. They attach to the laborer, in the sentiment of society, reflected and responded to in his own heart, the same idea as servitude of inferiority and social degradation. If they were to be the ultimate condition of the laborer, it might well be inquired whether he had made a fortunate escape from serfdom, and might not find repose, and a serener lot, even in slavery.

Another consideration must not be omitted. Wages are the laborer's only resource for subsistence. His right to labor cannot be denied without abridging his right of life. Yet society gives no guaranty of this. The right to labor depends upon the will of others. The opportunity of earning wages is uncertain and contingent, depending upon the uncertainties and contingencies of trade, the state of the markets, the prosperity or failure of speculation;and worse, upon the arbitrary and tyrannical caprice of those who hold in their hands the laborer's bread of life, who have the power to punish the utterance of a free opinion, an honest assertion of manhood, by withholding, or taking away from him occupation, his only resource for existence.

Such is society's protection to property. A great part of its legislation, and even the "perfection of reason,' ," its common law, is founded on, and aims at the security of these falsehoods. As the system originated in force and fraud, in the power of the strong and the subtleties of the cunning, so it can be maintained only by force, and by deceiving the masses as to the nature and extent of their rights. Hence, all our statute books bristle with laws recognizing property as of more worth than man; making the want of it more or less a civil disqualification, and the possession of it a condition of political rights; creating wealth by special favor

for a few, by modes which it is made a crime for others to pursue; giving to corporations and money-making associations unusual facilities for accumulating and concentrating wealth; and in various other modes, making labor more and more dependent on capital. The circle of injustice to man, the laborer, is completed by making property, thus acquired, hereditary, placing it at the absolute disposal of its possessor after his bones have mouldered in the grave, and securing it to his heirs, if he should chance to die and make no sign.

A society thus organized is, of necessity, a state of selfish competition for material interests, with little thought of generous and enlarged co-operation in the pursuit even of these. Man is not looked upon as a brother and a helper, but as a rival and an enemy in interests. Occupations and employments are hostile, circumventive, watchful for private advantage, forgetful of the great law of justice and love, seeking to profit by the ignorance and inexperience of others. The law of war, "all stratagems are just," is the rule of business; the legal maxim, caveat emptor, is the authentic scripture of trade. The acquisition of wealth is the chief good, and avarice the predominating passion of society. The great strife is Capital against Labor, in which the latter is, for the most part, passive, and the necessities and imperative wants and holiest affections of man are the fund upon which cupidity and cunning speculate. A show of political unity and equality may be maintained, but social unity and equality are impossible. Society is a system of cliques, parties, professions, trades, with different and rival interests in most respects, and none united by any common bond of private interest. Industry is solitary, selfish, antagonistic. Man is placed in the isolation, without the freedom and independence, of the savage.

Poverty is a necessary incident of such a social organization,-not as the result of casualty or crime, but directly and inevitably of the institutions of society. Poverty is the inevitable lot of multitudes,--of multitudes, which the clearly induced necessity of things and constant experience testify, must be enlarging in every generation,-of multitudes, who, for no fault of their own or their fathers in the third or fourth generation, have no inheritance but poverty and toil, and before whose carliest path

day leave him at night weary and exhausted, incapable of anything but sleep-sleep "that is broken by no dream.' None but a heroic soul could grow but feeble, stinted, dwarfish; nay, though the oaks bore books instead of acorns, and there were literally sermons in stones. Even the flowers in his path utter no prophecy in his ears, and he cannot hear the eternal song of the

stars.

Resulting from the necessity of unnatural, excessive labor, and the intellectual obstructions it occasions, is the prevailing sentiment that labor in itself is disgraceful, and a curse. That sentiment is seldom expressed in words, and is avoided with very special care by popular orators, when they appeal, on the eve of an election, to the "intelligence of the hard-handed, huge-pawed yeomanry." It is, nevertheless, the concealed spring of much of the life and activity of society. What has produced here, in the free States, where the laborer is acknowledged to be a man, and the equal of all other men, the deathlike apathy concerning the existence of that institution of slavery which crushes the body and soul of the laborer under an iron yoke, but the secret thought of the leaders of opinion, that labor is the natural badge of slavery, that slavery and wages are but different modifications of the same natural and essential condition? The sentiment is uttered, though unspoken, by the eager crowds everywhere found, who seek to escape from the manual occupations into the more respectable headcrafts; in all the distinctions which are made in legislation, custom, or social opinion, between the handicraftsman and others; in the rules of wages in all their details; in every condition, other than that of being a man, annexed to the possession of political rights or social communion; in the deference paid to mere wealth, to the ability to live without occupation, which is, in other words, to live without having fulfilled the first condition of life; in the idea that any honest labor can be menial in itself, or one kind of labor more honorable than another, if it is labor according to the worker's gifts, and well and honorably done. If I accept a service from another, which I would not render him, my action affirms that I consider his office menial and disgraceful. If James gives John a sixpence for a coat of Day & Martin

VOL XVI.-NO. LXXIX.

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applied to his boots, and will not polish John's boots, and pocket John's sixpence, when the fit occasion offers, James considers John's office servile. If John, knowing that to be James's opinion, brushes his boots, and takes his sixpence, and hesitates to require the same service for the same compensation, because James thinks it servile, John admits that James's opinion is right; John's office is servile, and John, as a man, is degraded. Or, if John, possessing equal skill in his business with James in his, receives a sixpence for a certain amount of timeexcluding the cost of materials-occupied in James's service, and both parties are satisfied that the service is well remunerated, and James refuses to receive a sixpence as an equivalent for the same amount of time bestowed in John's service, he looks upon that employment as dishonorable, and John, by giving more as James's right, acknowledges that it is so. The relation might be placed in various other lights.

Now, essentially, no labor is menial, or dishonorable, which contributes to the rational enjoyment of man. In itself, the employment of James is no worthier than that of John, if John's also contributes to the comfort and improvement of social existence. It is not the work a man does, but only the spirit in which he works, that makes it honorable or mean. Those reckoned the lowest offices of society, are readily performed for the relief of suffering, or at the demand of friendship, even by those who scorn them most as occupations. Love ennobles the deed, and makes it heroic. In this view, John the boot-black, or the poorest tinker, with his rude kit and coarse manipulations, may be greater in his work, if we consider the reality and endurance of things, than he whose voice chains senates in attention, or hushes tumultuous crowds in reverent stillness. This man's work may perish with the dispersion of the crowd, while his is done for the eternal years, whose splendors illuminate and hallow it. In the present arrangement of the social state, scarcely a chance for this heroic work is permitted to the laborer. The dignity and respectability of the laborer are measured, almost exclusively, by the ability to pay, and the necessity of getting, the sixpence. Those employments are reckoned the most worthy of the

aspirations of young ambition, which offer it the best prospect of being able to be the giver of the coin. James is a gentleman, and John is a menial, because the one has a sixpence, by which he can save himself from the dishonor of brushing his own boots, and the other has a stomach whose ever recurring hunger he can appease only by getting the sixpence into his hands on the required terms. Neither of them stands upon the ground of his manhood. The clear relation of brotherhood and equality is forgotten on both sides. The intrinsic dignity of labor is implicitly denied ; a dishonorable service has been demanded and rendered; and they stand in an acknowledged relation of preeminence and inferiority.

The worst effect of all this is the impairing of the sentiment of manhood in those thus condemned to hopeless toil, and regarded as degraded by their social position; and of the self-respect and reliance which are both the manifestation and security of that sentiment. The feeling of manhood, in its essence and highest development, approaches, if it be not identical with, religious reverence. Its perfect utterance is, "Know ye, that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwells in you?" It is the foundation of personal virtue, the only efficient restraint upon the lower appetites. So far as it is weakened or impaired, man's higher nature loses the dominion over him, and the animal rules. Man is no longer a man, living in free obedience to his divine intuitions; but an animal, subject to the sway of his animal propensities. Whose fault is it, then, that men, thus fettered and borne down by unnatural limitations and denials, are ignorant, vicious, degraded, brutalized, slaves of sense and passion, and possessed in the depths of their souls by an indignant feeling of injustice, issuing in hatred and defiance of society? Smothered, but unextinguished, manhood thus unconsciously avenges itself upon the power that has crushed it; and the evil seeds, which its unnatural institutions have sown in man's heart, are returned to society in poisonous harvests. In vain does it build its penitentiaries and scaffolds. These are the crown and consummation of all other injustice, and only aggravate the evils they profess to remedy. Society has no right to punish, but what is de

rived from the equity and justice of its organization,--the paternal character of its administration. Its jurisdiction is unjust and tyrannical, when not grounded on the truth of the relations it maintains with man.

The evil influences of this unnatural state of things, are not confined to those who outwardly seem to suffer most. The worst effects are not physical, but moral. The other extreme has its peculiar forms of evil. The standard of virtue is not the standard of manhood. Good and evil are not reckoned from the absolute, but from the expedient. Decorums, proprieties, factitious fitnesses of position, rank, office, income, take the place of the universal law of the good and true. Man is here no more a man than in the other extreme; but in his most favorable aspect, a wealthy man, a man of birth, an educated, official, or some other accidental man. Here, as there, hedged in and controlled by his circumstances, he is little more than a bundle of accidents,

superior advantages regarded not as conferring the means of greater benefit to the race, or the society, but as personal distinctions, conferring a real superiority, and just claims for larger demands of reverence and service from mankind. Contempt for the supposed inferior is a characteristic of such a society; and in a truthful view of things, the want of reverence for humanity in any of its manifestations, is not a more venial crime, nor a less prolific seed of evil, than the loss of the sentiment of manhood itself. "Whosoever shall say to his brother, thou fool,' shall be in danger of hell-fire." Even the refinements and elegances which indicate the distinction of the favored classes, are a snare and a curse. Luxuries are not in themselves an evil; they are good and desirable. The palace is a fitter residence for man, than the hovel. Within it he may have freer opportunities for large development. Surrounded by the elegances of architecture and household embellishments, he is in a situation much more favorable for self-culture, than if his senses are conversant only with uncouth and ungraceful forms. In a natural state of society, the burnished mirror of the present day would be intrinsically a better and fitter appendage of the female toilet, than the nicely scoured pewter platter, before which

the beauties of past generations adjusted their "amber-twisted ringlets." A loftier communion than with mere dumb matter is awakened by the beautiful proportions of the Grecian Temple, or amid the solemn majesty of the Gothic Minster. These things are fitted to nourish the sentiment and the love of Beauty, one of the deepest instincts of man, in its true and natural unfolding, leading the soul to the love and worship of the true and good. But their true use is perverted by their becoming appropriated and exclusive possessions, sought for and valued chiefly as tokens of the more fortunate social conditions. They are made things of ostentation and idle vanity, pampering luxurious pride, and starving the nobler sentiments they are fitted to nourish. Their true significance is lost, and they remain only as evidences of the sad and terrible contrasts of the human lot. The evils which afflict the favored classes, may be less gross in their outward exhibition; but perhaps even more dangerous and debasing, more hopeless of reform, and make more utter wreck of manhood, for the very reason that the veil of decency and external decorum covers their grossness even from the eyes of their victims. In this exhibition of social injustice, and the oppressions of labor, it is not intended to impute any particular degree of blame to any individual, or class or party. The differences of social condition are the results of maxims and laws which have been transmitted from all the past centuries, are consecrated by tradition and authority, interwoven with some of the most intimate convictions of opinion, and pleaded for, perhaps, even by the self-love of some who suffer from their operation, who endure with slight reluctance for the present, in the hope that their, or their children's, turn may come to profit by them. They may be defended by so many plausibilities of feeling and argument, that men are slow to perceive their radical injustice. The fact of their constant existence in all ages, stands for an ultimate reason, the voice of Providence, that original inequalities of condition are not only inevitable, but essential to the harmony of the world. While these things are so, few will be found who will hesitate to seize the opportunities, which the times afford, to mount above their fellows. Therefore,

in laboring to reform social abuses, no hostility is felt towards individuals or classes, but only against the false institutions, which create classes, and make poverty an inevitable lot,-which load this one with favors more than he can employ, and deprive that other of his birthright of an equal share of his Father's bountiful and plenteous earth, and of the means of training himself for the holy and lofty services to which that Father has appointed him. No war is waged against the capitalist in behalf of the laborer, for the mere purpose, as a final end, of reversing their positions. If poverty is an inevitable condition of human affairs,-poverty not produced by misconduct,--it is of little consequence who are the individuals that suffer, or that enjoy; especially since among us these distinctions are not likely to be hereditary through many generations. Social evils are not to be remedied by putting down those who thrive by abuses,and putting those who suffer, in their places.

The evil," says La Mennais," is in the injustice, and not that it is this one, rather than that, who profits by the injustice. Whoever is uppermost, man will still continue in a state of equal suffering, and the world remain unchanged. Good and evil will subsist in the same proportions; they will only be differently arranged in respect to persons. One will mount, and another will descend, and that is all." Nothing, therefore, will be gained by substituting one domination for another. The end to be aimed at, is to subvert all domination, to abolish the social institutions which give rise to separate classes and exclusive privilege, and thus prevent any pre-eminence of one man over an other, but what is derived from superior wisdom, or higher virtue. The object of the reformer should be so to re-organ-ize society, as to make it the nurse of manhood, by removing the limitations of man's freedom, and placing him in the most direct relations with the law of his nature, giving him full scope for the free unfolding of himself, and the clear exercise of his activity in that sphere to which his individual gifts direct him. The end is, in other words, so to arrange the conditions of society as to make it a true school for the education of man.

Society is now, and will be under any condition of human affairs, the school of He was man's practical education. placed in it for that end, and in it only can.