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Title: Freedom! Equality!! Justice!!!
       A Speech on the Impending Revolution, Delivered in Music Hall,
       Boston, Thursday, Feb, 1, 1872, and the Academy of Music, New York,
       Feb. 20, 1872

Author: Victoria C. Woodhull

Release Date: May 31, 2021 [eBook #65477]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

Produced by: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
             at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
             generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FREEDOM! EQUALITY!! JUSTICE!!! ***

                     Freedom! Equality!! Justice!!!
           These three; but the greatest of these is Justice.




                                A SPEECH
                                 ON THE
                         Impending Revolution,
                              DELIVERED IN
              Music Hall, Boston, Thursday, Feb, 1, 1872,
                                AND THE
               Academy of Music, New York, Feb. 20, 1872,


                                   BY

                         VICTORIA C. WOODHULL.

[Illustration]

                               NEW YORK:
                  WOODHULL, CLAFLIN & CO., PUBLISHERS,
                          No. 44 Broad Street.

                                 1872.




                                  THE
                         IMPENDING REVOLUTION.


Standing upon the apex of the nineteenth century, we look backward
through the historic era, and in the distant, dim past catch sight of
the feeble outreachings of the roots of humanity, which during thousands
of years have evolved into the magnificent civilization by which we are
surrounded. Mighty nations have risen and fallen; empires have gathered
and wasted; races and peoples have evolved and decayed; but the mystic
ebb and flow of the Gigantic Spirit concealed within the universe has
continued upon its course, ever increasing in strength and in variety of
sequence.

It is true that the results which have flown from this progressive
course have very materially changed. Early in its history every
achievement was considered great or small, as its conquests by military
prowess were great or small. But who in this era would think of placing
a Sesostris, or a Semiramis, or even an Alexander, or Cæsar, in
comparison as conquerors, with the steamship, the locomotive engine, the
electric telegraph, and last and greatest, collecting the efforts of all
men, and spreading them world-wide—the printing-press. Where kings and
emperors once used the sword to hew their way into the centers of
barbarism, the people now make use of their subtle powers of intellect
to pierce the heart of ignorance. The conquerors of the present, armed
with these keen weapons, are so intertwining the material interests of
humanity that, where exclusion was once the rule among nations,
intercommunication has made it the exception. Every year some new tie
has been added to those which already bound the nations together, until
even the continents clasp hands across the oceans, and salute each other
in fraternal unity, and the islands stand anxiously waiting for their
deliverance.

The grand results of all these magnificent changes have accrued to the
benefit of nations as such. All the revolutions of the past have
resulted in the building of empires and the dethroning of kings. The
grandeur of the Roman Empire consisted in its power, centered in and
expressed by its rulers. The glory of France under the great Napoleon
was the result of his capacity to use the people. We have no histories
making nations famous by the greatness of their peoples. Centralization
of power at the head of the government has been the source of all
national honor. Under this system grades and castes of people have built
themselves, the stronger upon the weaker, and the people as individuals
have never appeared upon the surface.

Government has gone through various and important evolutions and
changes. First we learn of it as residing in the head of the family,
there being no other organization. Next, families aggregated into
tribes, with an acknowledged head. Again, tribes united into nations,
occupying specified limits, and having an absolute ruler. Then began a
double process, which is even now unfinished—the consolidation of
nations into races, and the redistribution of power to the people. That
which was once absolute in the head of the family, the tribe and the
nation, is now shared by the head with the most powerful among the
people. These two processes will continue until both are complete—until
all nations are merged into races, and all races into one government;
and until the power is completely and equally returned to all the
people, who will no longer be denominated as belonging to this or that
country or government, but as citizens of the world—as members of a
common humanity.

“God loves from whole to parts: but human soul Must rise from individual
to the whole.”

It is at once one of the most interesting as well as instructive of
studies, to trace the march which civilization has described. Beginning
in Asia, it traversed westward by and through the rise and decay of the
Assyrian, Egyptian, Persian, Grecian and Roman Empires, each one of
which built successively upon the ruins of the preceding, and all
culminating in the downfall of the last, whose civilization was
disseminated to impregnate that portion of the world then unknown.
Modern Europe rose, and when at its height of power, civilization still
undeviatingly marching westward, crossed the stormy Atlantic, and
implanted itself in the virgin soil of America.

Here, however, an entirely new process was begun. Representatives from
all nations, races and tongues here do congregate. Not only do the
nations of Europe and Africa pour their restless sons and daughters
westward, but the nations of Asia, setting at defiance the previous law
of empire, send their children against its tide to meet it and to
coalesce. To those who can view humanity as one, this is a fact of great
significance, since it proves America to be the center to which the
nations naturally tend. But this is only a part of its significance. The
more prophetic portion is, that here a new race is being developed, into
which will be gathered all the distinctive characteristics of all the
various races. Each race is the distinct representative of some special
and predominant characteristic, being weak in all others. The new race
will combine all these different qualities in one grand character, and
shall ultimately gather in all people of all races. Observe the merging
of the black and white races. The white does not descend to the black,
but the black gradually approaches the white. And this is the prophecy
of what shall be:

 “For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along,
 Round the earth’s electric circle, the swift flash of right and wrong;
 Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity’s vast frame,
 Through its ocean-sundered fibres, feels the gush of joy or shame:
 In the gain or loss of one race, all the rest have equal claim.”

As in this country the future race of the world is being developed, so
also will the foundation of the future government be developed, which
shall become universal. It was no mere child’s play or idle fancy of the
old prophets, whose prophecies of a Christ who should rule the world,
come trooping down the corridors of time, and from all eras converge
upon this. Neither were the Jews entirely at fault when they looked for
a Messiah who should reign over the world in temporal as well as in
spiritual things, since it is beginning to be comprehended that a reign
of justice in temporal things can only follow from the baptism of them
by spirituality. And it is the approach of these heretofore
widely-separated principles which is to produce the impending
revolution. And that revolution will be the final and the ultimate
contest between justice and authority, in which the latter will be
crushed, never again to raise its despotic head among and to divide the
members of a common humanity.

St. Paul said: “Faith, Hope and Charity. These three, but the greatest
of these is charity.” Beautiful as this triplet may appear to be to the
casualist, it cannot bear the test of analysis. It will be replaced in
the vocabulary of the future by the more perfect one—Knowledge, Wisdom
and Justice. These three, but the greatest of these is Justice. Charity,
with its long cloak of justice escaped, has long enough covered a
multitude of sins. Justice will in the future demand perfect
compensation in all things, whether material, mental or spiritual.

Heretofore justice has only been considered as having relation to
matters covered by enacted law, and its demands have been considered as
satisfied when the law has had its full course. With Freedom and
Equality it has been a mere abstract term with but little significance.
There has never been such a thing as freedom for the people. It has
always been concession by the government. There has never been an
equality for the people. It has always been the stronger, in some sense,
preying upon the weaker; and the people have never had justice. When
there is authority, whether it be of law, of custom, or of individuals,
neither of these can exist except in name. Neither do these principles
apply to the people in their collective capacity, but when the people’s
time shall come they will belong to every individual separately.
Equality will exist in freedom and be regulated by justice.

But what does freedom mean? “As free as the winds” is a common
expression. But if we stop to inquire what that freedom is, we find that
air in motion is under the most complete subjection to different
temperatures in different localities, and that these differences arise
from conditions entirely independent of the air simply as such. That is
to say, the air of itself never changes its temperature. Therefore the
freedom of the wind is the freedom to obey commands imposed by
conditions to which it is by nature related. So also is water always
free to seek its own level. But neither the air or the water of one
locality obeys the commands which come from the conditions surrounding
another locality. That is to say, that while air and water as a whole
are subject to general laws, when individualized, each separate body
must be subject to its peculiar relations, and to the law of its
conditions. Water in one locality may be pure—hydrogen, nitrogen and
oxygen; while in others it may contain various additional elements, as
sodium, calcium or ammonium, and yet each is free. Air in one locality
may be twenty degrees above, and in another twenty degrees below, zero;
and yet each is free in its own sphere.

Now, individual freedom in its true sense means just the same thing for
the people that freedom for the air and water means to them. It means
freedom to obey the natural condition of the individual, modified only
by the various external forces which are brought to bear upon, and which
induce action in, the individual. What that action will be, must be
determined solely by the individual and the operating causes, and in no
two cases can they be precisely alike; since no two human beings are
precisely alike. Now, is it not plain that freedom means that
individuals having the right to it, are subject only to the laws of
their own being, and to the relations they sustain to the laws of other
things by which they are surrounded?

If, then, freedom mean anything, it means that no individual is subject
to any rule or law to be arbitrarily imposed by other individuals. But
several individuals may agree among themselves to be governed by certain
rules, since that is their freedom to do so. And here is the primal
foundation and the only authoritative source of government. No
individual can be said to be free and be held accountable to a law to
which he or she did not consent.

In the light of that analysis, have the people of this country got
freedom? But should it be objected that such freedom would be liable to
abuse, we reply that that is impossible. Since the moment one individual
abuses his or her freedom, that moment he or she is encroaching upon the
freedom of some one else who is equally entitled to the same right. And
the law of the association must protect against such encroachment. And,
so far as restraint is concerned, this is the province—the sole
province—of law, to protect the rights of individual freedom.

But what is equality, which must be maintained in freedom? A good
illustration of what equality among the people means, may be drawn from
the equality among the children of a family in the case of an equal
division of the property of the deceased father. If the property is
divided among them according to their respective merits, that would not
be equality.

Now, equality for the people means the equality of the family, extended
to all families. It means that no personal merit or demerit can
interfere between individuals, so that one may, by arbitration or laws,
be placed unequally with another. It means that every individual is
entitled to all the natural wealth that he or she requires to minister
to the various wants of the body, and to an equal share of all
accumulated, artificial wealth—which will appear self-evident when we
shall have analyzed wealth. It also means that every person is entitled
to equal opportunity for intellectual acquirements, recreation and rest,
since the first is necessary to make the performance of the individual’s
share of duty possible; while the second and third are the natural
requirements of the body, independent of the individuality of the
person, and which was not self-created but inherited.

Under this analysis have we any such thing as equality in this country?
And yet it should be the duty of government, since it is a fundamental
portion of its theory, to maintain equality among the people; otherwise
the word is but a mere catch, without the slightest signification in
fact.

What, then, should be the sphere of justice in maintaining equality in
freedom? Clearly to maintain equal conditions among free individuals.
But this will appear the more evident as we proceed. The impending
revolution, then, will be the strife for the mastery between the
authority, despotism, inequalities and injustices of the present, and
freedom, equality and justice in their broad and perfect sense, based on
the proposition that humanity is one, having a common origin, common
interests and purposes, and inheriting a common destiny, which is the
complete statement of the religion of Jesus Christ, unadulterated by his
professed followers.

But does the impending revolution imply a peaceful change or a bloody
struggle?

No person who will take the trouble to carefully observe the conditions
of the various departments of society can fail to discern the terrible
earthquakes just ready to burst out upon every side, and which are only
now restrained by the thick incrustations with which customs, prejudices
and authorities have incased humanity. Indeed, the whole surface of
humanity is surging like the billows of the stormy ocean, and it only
escapes general and destructive rupture because its composition, like
the consciences of its constituent members, is so elastic. But, anon,
the restrained furies will overcome the temper of their fastenings, and,
rending them asunder, will sweep over the people, submerging them or
cleansing them of their gathered debris, as they shall have located
themselves, with regard to its coming.

All the struggles of humanity in the centuries which have come and gone
have been for freedom—for freedom to think and for freedom to act, as
against authority and despotic law, without regard to what should come
of that thought and action. But we are now entering upon a struggle for
something quite different from this. Having obtained freedom from the
despotism of rulers and governments, the rule and despotism of
individuals began to usurp the places made vacant by them. Where once
the king or the emperor reigned, capital, reinforced by the power of
public opinion and religious authorities, now sits and forges chains
with which to fetter and bind the people. Where, by divine right, men
once demanded the results of the labors of their people, the privileged
few, by the means of an ingenious system, facetiously called popular
laws, now make the same demand, and with equally decisive results. The
demand is answered by the return of the entire proceeds of each year’s
surplus productions into their coffers. And this is no more true of the
pauper laborers of Europe and the slave laborers of Asia than it is of
the free labor of America. Six hundred millions people constantly toil
all their lives long, while about ten millions sit quietly by gathering
and luxuriating in their results.

Simple freedom, then, is not enough. It has not accomplished the
redemption of the people. It has only relieved them from one form of
slavery to leave them at the mercy of another still more insidious in
its character, because more plausible; since, if penury and want exist,
accompanied by suffering and privation, under the rule of a monarch, he
may justly be held responsible. But when it exists under the reign of
freedom, there is no responsibility anywhere, unless it may be said to
be in the people themselves, which is equivalent to saying
responsibility without application.

To illustrate this distinction without a difference, take the island of
Cuba, with its half million inhabitants, and suppose it to be ruled by
an absolute monarch, who administers his commands through the usual
attachés of the court and the noblemen of the island. Virtually owning
the people, he commands them to labor, taking from them all their
products, and merely feeding, clothing and sheltering them. In this case
it would be the non-laborers who, without any circumlocution, directly
obtain all the produced wealth, they simply expending their time and
talent in its securing, while the lives of the people who produce it
would be simply maintained.

Now advance one step toward popular government—to a constitutional
monarchy. In this the same results to the producing people will be
maintained, while the noblemen will share the wealth among themselves,
allotting a certain share to the monarch.

Coming down to a representative government, of which personal liberty is
the basis, the despotism of laws enacted in the interest of privileged
classes are substituted for the personal despotism of monarchs and
nobles. What the absolute monarch possesses himself of by the right of
might, the privileged class in the popular government possess themselves
of by the right of law, everything legal being held to be just.

Now is not that precisely the case in this country? Do not all the
results of labor accrue to the privileged few? and are not the producing
classes just as much enslaved to them as the subjects of an absolute
monarch are to him?

With this mortification, however. In the last instance, they suffer from
conditions over which they have no control; whilst in the former case
the conditions by which they are enslaved are of their own formation.
And I say, I would rather be the unwilling subject of an absolute
monarch than the willing slave of my own ignorance, of which advantage
is taken by those who spend their time in endeavoring to prove to me
that I am free and in singing the glories of my condition, to hoodwink
my reason and to blind my perception.

And I further say, that that system of government by which it is
possible for a class of people to practice upon my credulity, and, under
false pretenses, first entice me to acquiesce in laws by which immense
corporations and monopolies are established, and then to induce me to
submit to their extortions because they exist according to law, pursuing
none but lawful means, is an infernal despotism, compared to which the
Russian Czar is a thousand times to be preferred.

This may at first seem a sweeping indictment of our form of government,
but I say it is just. Suppose we take our railroad system, now amounting
to fifty-five thousand miles. At an average cost of eighty thousand
dollars per mile for construction and equipment, its total cost would be
four billions four hundred millions dollars. To pay the shareholders an
eight per cent. dividend for doing nothing, the industries of the
country would have to be taxed three hundred and fifty millions dollars
over and above the cost of maintenance and operation. Did this enormous
drain from the products of the people stop here, the fertility of the
country, made use of by the ingenuity of the people, might possibly keep
pace with the demand. But it does not stop there. The net earning of the
railroads enables their directors to make larger dividends than eight
per cent. Do their managers relinquish this increase in favor of the
people? Never a bit of it. But they increase their stock either by
selling new shares, or by making stock or scrip dividends, and to
neither process has there been found any legal bar or cure.

Now, what may the result of such a system be? Why, this. If the stock of
all these railroads be increased in the same proportion that some of
them have already been increased, it may be raised to a thousand
billions of dollars, and the people, instead of being compelled to pay
three hundred and fifty millions dollars to provide an eight per cent.
dividend on their cost, will have to submit to the extortion of eight
hundred million dollars annually to satisfy the demands of these legal
despots for an eight per cent. dividend upon stock, a large part of
which represent absolutely nothing but the people’s stolen money.

A person who would double the size of another’s note simply because the
profits of his business would permit the payment of twelve per cent.
interest, so that instead of paying twelve per cent. upon one hundred
dollars, which would be an illegal charge, it would be six per cent.
upon two hundred dollars, would be deemed and adjudged guilty of
forgery. But these railroad magnates sit in their palatial offices and
raise their notes at pleasure, and they are considered public
benefactors. It is a crime for a single person to steal a dollar, but a
corporation may steal a million dollars, and be canonized as saints.

Oh, the stupid blindness of this people! Swindled every day before their
very eyes, and yet they don’t seem to know that there is anything wrong,
simply because no _law_ has been violated. In their eyes everything that
is lawful is right, and this has become the curse of the nation. But the
opposite—that everything which is right is lawful—don’t follow as a part
of their philosophy.

No matter what a person does if it is not actionable under the law; he
is an honest man and a good church member. But Heaven defend us from
being truthful, natural beings, unless the law says we may—since that is
to be an infamous scoundrel.

A Vanderbilt may sit in his office and manipulate stocks, or make
dividends, by which, in a few years, he amasses fifty millions dollars
from the industries of the country, and he is one of the remarkable men
of the age. But if a poor, half-starved child were to take a loaf of
bread from his cupboard, to prevent starvation, she would be sent first
to the Tombs, and thence to Blackwell’s Island.

An Astor may sit in his sumptuous apartments, and watch the property
bequeathed him by his father, rise in value from one to fifty millions,
and everybody bows before his immense power, and worships his business
capacity. But if a tenant of his, whose employer had discharged him
because he did not vote the Republican ticket, and thereby fails to pay
his month’s rent to Mr. Astor, the law sets him and his family into the
street in midwinter; and, whether he dies of cold or starvation, neither
Mr. Astor or anybody else stops to ask, since that is nobody’s business
but the man’s. This is a free country, you know, and why should I
trouble myself about that person, because he happens to be so
unfortunate as not to be able to pay Mr. Astor his rent?

Mr. Stewart, by business tact, and the various practices known to trade,
succeeds, in twenty years, in obtaining from customers whom he has
entrapped into purchasing from him fifty millions dollars, and with his
gains he builds costly public beneficiaries, and straightway the world
makes him a philanthropist. But a poor devil who should come along with
a bolt of cloth, which he had succeeded in smuggling into the country,
and which, consequently, he could sell at a lower price than Mr.
Stewart, who paid the tariff, and is thereby authorized by law to add
that sum to the piece, would be cast into prison.

Now these individuals represent three of the principal methods that the
privileged classes have invented by which to monopolize the accumulated
wealth of the country. But let us analyze the processes, and see if it
is wholly by their personal efforts that they gain this end.

Nobody pretends that Mr. Stewart ever produced a single dollar of his
vast fortune. He accumulated it by dealing in the productions of others,
which he first obtained at low rates, and then sold at a sufficient
advance over the cost of handling to make in the aggregate a sum
amounting to millions.

Now, I want to ask if all this is not arriving at the same result, by
another method, at which the slaveholders of the South arrived, by
owning negroes? In the case of the latter, the slaveholder reaped all
the benefits of the labors of the negroes. In the former case the
merchant princes, together with the various other privileged classes,
reap the benefit of the labors of all the working-classes of the
country. Every year the excess of the produced wealth of the country
finds final lodgment in the pockets of these classes, and they grow
richer at each succeeding harvest, while the laborers toil their lives
away; and when all their strength and vigor have been transformed into
wealth, which has been legally transferred to the capitalists, they are
heavy with age, and as destitute as when they began their life of
servitude. Did ever Southern slave have meaner end than this?

In all seriousness, is there any common justice in such a state of
things? Is it right that the millions should toil all their lives long,
scarcely having comfortable food and clothes, while the few manage to
control all the benefits? People may pretend that it is justice, and
good Christians may excuse it upon that ground, but Christ would never
have called it by that name. He would even give him that labored but an
hour as much as he that had labored all the day, but to him who labored
not at all he would take away even that which he hath. And yet we hear
loud professions of Christianity ascending from the pulpit throughout
the length and breadth of the land. And when I listen, I cannot help
exclaiming, “O, ye hypocrites, how can ye hope to escape the damnation
of hell?”

Am I asked, How are these things to be amended? I will tell you in the
first place, that they must be remedied; and this particular case of
dealing in the labor of the people is to be remedied by abolishing
huckstering, or the system of middle-men, and substituting therefor a
general system of public markets, conducted by the people through their
paid agents, as all other public business is performed. In these markets
the products of the country should be received, in first hands, direct
from the producers, who should realize their entire proceeds. In this
manner the immense fortunes realized by middle-men, and the profits made
by the half-dozen different hands through which merchandise travels on
its way to consumers, would be saved to the producer. A bushel of
apples, purchased in the orchard at twenty-five cents, is finally sold
to the consumer at a dollar. Now, either the consumer has paid at least
a half dollar too much, or the producer has received a half dollar too
little, for the apples; since, under a perfect system, the apples would
go direct from the orchard to the market, and thence direct to the
consumer.

We are forever talking of political economy, but it appears to me that
the most vital points—one of which is our system of huckstery—is
entirely overlooked.

Suppose Mr. Stewart, instead of having labored all these years for his
own selfish interests, had labored in the interests of the people? Is it
not clear that the half-a-hundred million dollars he has accumulated
would have remained with the people who have consumed his goods? Place
all other kinds of traffic upon the same proposed basis, and do you not
see that the system which makes merchant-princes would be abolished?
Neither would it require one-half the people to conduct a general system
of markets who are now employed speculating in the results of labor.

In short, every person should either be a producer or a paid agent or
officer of consumers and producers, and our entire system of shopkeeping
reduced to a magnificent system of immense public markets. In this way
there could also be a perfect control exercised over the quality of
perishable goods, the want of which is now felt so severely in summer in
all large cities, and a thousand unthought of remedies would necessarily
suggest themselves as the system should develop.

But let us pass to one of the other branches of this same system. We
have in our midst thousands of people of immense wealth who have never
even done so much to justify its possession as the merchant-princes have
done to justify themselves. I refer to our land monopolists, and to Mr.
Astor as their representative. Mr. Astor inherited a large landed
estate, which has risen in value to be worth millions of dollars, to
which advance Mr. Astor never contributed even a day’s labor. He has
done nothing except to watch the rise and gather in the rents, while the
whole laboring country has been constantly engaged in promoting that
advance. What would Mr. Astor have been without the City of New York?
And what would the City of New York have been without the United States?
You see, my friends, it will not do to view this matter superficially.
We live in too analytic an age to permit these things to go on in the
way they have been going. There is too much poverty, too much suffering,
too much hard work, too many hours of labor for individuals, too many
sleepless nights, too many starving poor, too many hungry children, too
many in helpless old age, to permit these villanous abuses to continue
sheltered under the name of respectability and public order.

But again, and upon a still worse swindle of the people. A person having
money goes out into the public domain and acquires an immense tract of
land. Shortly a railroad is projected and built, which runs through that
tract. It offers a fine location for a station. A city springs up, and
that which cost in some instances as little as a shilling per acre, is
divided into town lots, and these are reluctantly parted with at five
hundred dollars each.

Again, I wish to inquire, in the name of Justice, to whom does that
advance belong? To the person who nominally holds the land? What has he
done to entitle him to receive dollars for what he only paid cents? Is
there any equality—is there any justice—in such a condition? He profits
by the action of others; in fact at the public expense, since in its
last analysis it is the common public who are the basis of all advance
in the value of property.

Now, I say, that that common public is entitled to all the benefits
accruing from common efforts; and it is an infamous wrong that makes it
accrue to the benefit of a special few. And a system of society which
permits such arbitrary distributions of wealth is a disgrace to
Christian civilization, whose Author and his Disciples had all things in
common. Let professing Christians who, for a pretense, make long
prayers, think of that, and then denounce Communism, if they can; and
denounce me as a Revolutionist for advocating it, if they dare.

But, is it asked, how is this to be remedied? I answer, very easily!
Since those who possess the accumulated wealth of the country have
filched it by legal means from those to whom it justly belongs—the
people—it must be returned to them, by legal means if possible, but it
must be returned to them in any event. When a person worth millions,
dies, instead of leaving it to his children, who have no more title to
it than anybody else’s children have, it must revert to the people, who
really produced it. Do you say that is injustice to the children? I say,
No! And if you ask me how the rich man’s children are going to live
after his death, I answer, by the same means as the poor man’s children
live. Let it be remembered that we have had simple freedom quite long
enough. By setting all our hopes on freedom we have been robbed of our
rights. What we want now is more than freedom—we want equality! And by
the Heaven above us, earth’s growing children are going to have it! What
right have the children of the rich to be born to luxurious idleness,
while the children of the poor are born to, all their lives long,
further contribute to their ease? Do they not in common belong to God’s
human family? If I mistake not, Christ told us so. You will not dispute
his authority, I am sure. If, instead of preaching Christ and him
crucified quite so much, we should practice his teaching a little more,
my word for it, we should all be better Christians.

And when by this process all the land shall have been returned to the
people, there will be just as much of it, and it will be equally as
productive, and just as much room on it as there is now. But instead of
a few people owning the whole of it, and farming it out to all the rest
at the best possible prices, the people will possess it themselves in
their own right, through just laws, paying for its possession to the
government such moderate rates of taxes as shall be necessary to
maintain the government.

But I may as well conclude what I have to say regarding railroads, which
must also revert back to the people, and be conducted by them for the
public benefit, as our common highways are now conducted. Vanderbilt,
Scott & Co. are demonstrating it better and better every day that all
the railroads of the country can be much more economically and
advantageously conducted under one management than under a thousand
different managements. They imagine that very soon they will have
accomplished a complete consolidation of the entire system, and that by
the power of that consolidation they will be able to control the
government of this country.

But they will not be the first people who have made slight
miscalculations as to ultimate results. Thomas Scott might make a
splendid Secretary of the Department of Internal Improvements, for which
the new Constitution, which this country is going to adopt, makes
provision; but he will never realize his ambition to preside over the
railroad system of the country in any other manner.

And I will tell you another benefit that will follow the nationalization
of our railroads. You have all heard of the dealing in stocks, of the
“bulls” and the “bears,” and the “longs” and the “shorts,” and the “lame
ducks” of Wall street. Well, they will all be abolished. There will be
no stocks in which to deal. That sort of speculation, by which gigantic
swindlers corner a stock and take it in at their own figures, will, to
use a vulgar phrase, be “played out.” And if you were to see their
customers, as I have seen them, rushing about Broad street to catch
sight of the last per cent. of their margins as they disappear in the
hungry maw of the complacent brokers, you would agree with me that it
ought to be “played out.”

Under the system which I propose, not only will stock gambling be
abolished, but also all other gambling, and the hundreds of thousands of
able-bodied people who are now engaged in it, living from the products
of others, will be compelled to go to producing themselves.

But, says the objector, take riches away from people and there will be
no incentive to accumulate. But, my dear sir, we don’t propose to do
anything of the kind, nor to destroy any wealth. There will never be any
less wealth than now, but a constant increase upon it. We only propose
that the people shall hold it in their own right, instead of its being
held in trust for them by a self-appointed few. Instead of having a few
millionaires, and millions on the verge of starvation, we propose that
all shall possess a comfortable competence—that is, shall possess the
results of their own labors.

I can’t see where there is a chance for a lack of motive to come in. It
seems to me that everybody will have a better and a more certain chance,
as well as a better incentive to accumulate. Will the certainty of
accumulation destroy the desire to accumulate? Nobody but the most
stupid would attempt to maintain that. It is not great wealth in a few
individuals that proves a country prosperous, but great general wealth
evenly distributed among the people. That country must be the most
prosperous and happy where the people are most generally comfortably and
happily circumstanced. And in this country, instead of a hundredth part
of the people living in palaces and riding in coaches, while the balance
live in huts and travel on foot, every person may live in a palace and
ride in a coach. I leave it to you to decide which is the preferable
condition and which the more Christian.

And why should the rich object to this? If everybody has enough and to
spare, should that be a subject of complaint? What more do people want,
except it be for the purpose of tyrannizing over others dependent upon
them? But no objections that may be raised will be potent enough to
crush out the demand for equality now rising from an oppressed people.
This demand the possessors of wealth cannot afford to ignore. It comes
from a patiently-enduring people, who have waited already too long for
the realization of the beautiful pictures of freedom which have been
painted for them to admire; for the realization of the songs which poets
have sung to its praise. Let me warn, nay, let me implore them not to be
deaf to this demand, since they do not know so well as I know what
temper there is behind it. I have tested it, and I know it is one that
will not much longer brook the denial of justice.

But there is another monopoly of which I must speak—I mean the monopoly
of money itself. We have seen how great a tyranny that is which arises
from monopolizing the land. But that occurring from the monopoly of
money, is a still more insidious and dangerous form of despotism, since
its ramifications are more extensive and minute. It may be exercised by
the person possessing a hundred, or by the person possessing a million
dollars. But what is the process? A person inherits a half million
dollars for which he never expended a single day’s labor. He sits in his
office loaning that sum of money say, in sums of one thousand dollars to
one thousand different persons, each of whom conducts a little business
which yields just enough to support a family and to pay the interest.
These people live for forty years in this manner, and die no better off
than when they began life. But during that time they have paid all their
extra production to the amount of four thousand dollars, each, to the
capitalist; and, finally, the business itself is sold out to pay the
principal. And thus it turns out that the capitalist obtains everything
those thousand persons earned during their whole lives, they leaving
nothing to their families. Now, what better is that result than it would
have been had these people been slaves? Could their owners have obtained
any more from them? I say they would have obtained less; since, had they
been slaves in name, as in fact they were, there would have been times
during the forty years that they would not have earned interest over
cost of their support. Now, look at the capitalist. For one million
dollars, and without the straining of a muscle, he receives five million
dollars direct, which, reinvested from time to time as it increases,
amounts at the end of the forty years to not less than fifteen millions
dollars.

But try another example of a somewhat different kind. A person having
four grown children, whom he has reared in luxury, and given all the
facilities of education, dies, leaving each of them a farm worth
twenty-five thousand dollars. These children having never learned the
art of farming are incapable of conducting these farms; but they lease
them to four different people for a thousand dollars a year each, and
live at ease all their lives, therefrom, never so much as lifting their
hands to do an hour’s labor. Now, who is it that supports those four
people? Is it not clear that it is the people who work the farms? And
how did it happen that they had the farms to lease? Simply by an
incident for which there was no legitimate general cause, else why do
not all children have farms and live without work?

Nor can you, my friends, discover anything approaching equality, or
aught that looks like justice in that operation. I tell you nay! It is
the most insidious despotism, with a single exception, that is possible
among a people. It is a despotism which was condemned in all former
times, even by barbarians, and which the Jews were only permitted to
enforce upon people of other nations. It is the hideous vampire fastened
upon the vitals of our people, sucking—sucking—sucking their very life’s
blood, leaving just enough to keep up their vitality, that they may
manufacture more. It is the heartless monster that will have the exact
pound of flesh, even if there be loss of blood to obtain it, and there
is no just judge near to prevent the taking, or to hold him to account
if he take it. It paralyzes our industries; shuts the gates in the way
that leads to our inexhaustible treasures within the bosom of mother
earth; strips the stars and stripes from the masts of merchantmen;
compels our immense cotton lands to luxuriate in weeds; robs our
spindles of the power to turn them; and lays an embargo upon every
productive enterprise. Whoever makes a movement to compel the earth to
yield her wealth, or to transform that wealth into useful form, must
first obtain the consent of this despot, and pay his demands for a
license.

Thirteen millions of laborers in this country produce annually four
thousand millions dollars of wealth, every dollar of which over and
above the cost of living is paid over to appease the demands of this
insatiate monster—this horrid demon, whose name is Interest.

We are told that we cannot manufacture railroad iron in this country as
cheap as it can be manufactured in England. Yes! And why? Is it because
we have no ore or no coal; or that, which is not as good as England has?
No! We have on the surface what in England is hundreds of feet in the
bowels of the earth, and coal the same; and both of better quality. But
money can be put at interest in this country so as to double itself
every four years, and be amply secured. What reason have capitalists to
construct iron works, or to have their care, when twenty-five per cent.
per year is returned them, without care or risk? And what is true of
iron is also true of every other natural production. Is it any wonder
that our manufacturers are obliged to demand that the people pay an
additional per cent. upon everything they eat, drink or wear, that they
may be protected in their various productive enterprises, when such
exactions are laid upon them by this more than absolute monarch? No! It
would indeed be a wonder if it were not so.

Now, do you suppose our markets would be flooded with British goods if
our producing and manufacturing interests had all the money they require
without interest? If there are any borrowers at ten per cent. who hear
my voice, let them answer. No; it is the tribute that industry is
compelled to pay to capital that forces our government to exact ten,
twenty, fifty, aye, even a hundred per cent. for the privilege of
bringing merchandise into this country.

But they tell us if we go to free trade that our country would be
flooded with foreign products, so there would be absolutely no
production of manufactured goods in the country. Now that would be true,
if we should attempt free trade and leave the monster Interest with his
grip upon our vitals. And here is the short-sightedness of Free-Traders.
If we want free trade, we must, in the first place, attack, throttle and
kill this demon, after which we may manufacture at prices that will not
only absolutely forbid the importation of almost everything that is now
imported, but which will also enable us to play the same game with
Europe that Europe has played so long upon us. Free money in this
country would abolish every European throne within ten years. And yet
people cannot be made to see that this country is their support. With
free money what need would we have for a protective tariff? Can any
Protectionist answer that?

You see, my friends, that it is the people who catch sight of an idea
and pursue it to the death, regardless of relative ideas, who make
reform so ridiculous. One reform cannot advance alone. All kinds of
reform must go on together. Interest and free trade must go hand in
hand; interest, if either, a little ahead.

And in this regard I am free to confess that the National Labor Union’s
demand for a decrease of interest is the most reasonable single reform
now being advocated. We want free trade; but we want free money first,
so that not a spindle or forge in this country shall stop at the command
of those across the ocean.

But how are we going to get free money? Why, in the very easiest way
possible. It is the simplest problem of them all. I am not going into
this discussion to prove to you that gold is not money, since everybody
ought to know that it has no more the properties of money than cotton,
corn and pork have the properties of money. Now, money is that thing
which, if every dollar in circulation should be destroyed, there would
be no loss of wealth. Gold, cotton, corn and wheat are wealth. Destroy
these and there is a loss. But when money is destroyed, there is no more
loss than when a promissory note is destroyed. A note is an evidence of
debt. It is not wealth, but its representative. So also is money not
wealth, but its representative. And if we had a thousand million dollars
in circulation to-day, there would be no more wealth in the country than
there now is, and we would have quite as much wealth if there were two
thousand millions dollars, since money and wealth are two entirely
distinct things.

But they tell us that unless money is made redeemable in gold, it is not
of any account, and that, too, in the face of our miserable greenback
system, which was so much better even than gold that it saved the nation
when, had we stuck to gold, we should have been destroyed. Oh, but it
was a depreciated currency, says some one. Yes, it was a depreciated
currency, and we should have ample reason to be thankful if when we come
to pay our bonds, we have a depreciated currency with which to liquidate
them, instead of being obliged, as we shall, to pay a thousand dollars
in cotton for what we realized less than five hundred in gold.

It is not the gold only of a country that constitutes its wealth. What
should we care if we had not a single ounce of gold, if we had a
thousand million bales of cotton, ten thousand millions bushels of corn
and wheat, and a billion dollars’ worth of manufactured goods to send to
other countries? So you see it is not the gold after all that makes a
circulation good, but the sum total of all kinds of wealth. Now, that is
what we propose to substitute for gold as the basis for a money issue.
And instead of permitting corporations to issue it and remain at liberty
to dispose of their property and let the people who hold their
circulation whistle for its redemption, we propose that government,
which can neither sell our property nor abscond with it, shall issue it
for the people and lend it to them at cost; or if you will insist on
paying interest for money, why, then, pay it to the government and
lessen your taxes that much, instead of paying interest to bankers and
supporting government besides.

Now, don’t you think that would be rather a good sort of a money system?
I know that every manufacturer in the country would like it. But I can
tell you who will not like it; and whom we may be compelled to fight
before they will permit us to have it; and these are the money-lenders
and money-changers, such as it is related the Head of the Christian
Church—one Jesus Christ, of whom we hear a great deal said, but whose
teachings and doctrines are wofully perverted—scourged out of the Temple
at a place known as Jerusalem.

I have not been guilty of frequenting the temples of the country much of
late, but if I am not misinformed upon the subject, and unless they have
changed since I did frequent them, if Christ should pass through this
land of a Sunday, scourge in hand, he would find plenty of work to do in
the same line in which he labored so faithfully among the Jews.

But the National Labor Union say they won’t be so hard upon these
money-lenders as we would be. They are willing that they shall be eased
down from the vast height to which they have attained. They say they
shall have three per cent. interest instead of six, seven, eight and
ten, or as much more as they can steal out of the necessities of the
case, by the circumstances and discounts. But they shall be limited to
three per cent., and in a way that they cannot evade, as they now evade,
lawful interest. It is proposed that government shall issue this money,
but that it shall be convertible into a three per cent. interest-bearing
bond; so that when money shall be so plenty that it will be worth less
than three per cent. in business, it can be invested in bonds drawing
three per cent.; and the bonds to also be reconvertible into money, so
that the moment business shall demand more money than there should be in
circulation—which would increase the value of money to more than three
per cent.—the bonds would be converted into money again; and when there
should be no more bonds to convert, and money still worth more than
three per cent., then the Government shall issue more money to restore
the equilibrium. In this way money would always be worth just three per
cent. No more nor less, and there would always be just enough; or, in
other words, money would be measured, as it never has been, and which
has been the cause of all our financial troubles. What would you say to
a person who should talk to you about measuring your corn in a bushel
that had itself never been measured? But you complacently talk of money
being a measure of values, and money has never had a measure regulating
its own value.

But this consideration is only a stepping-stone to what shall be. Money
must be made free from interest. In fact, I do not know but people who
have money should pay something to have it securely loaned, the same as
you must pay your Safe Deposit Companies for safely keeping bonds,
jewels and other valuables. I think people ought to be made to pay for
the safe keeping of money upon the same principle. Money under our
present system is the only thing which we possess that does not
depreciate in value by use. The more money is used, the more it
increases; a proof complete of the fallacy and its despotism.

The Government now pay the banks thirty millions dollars per year for
the privilege of loaning them about three hundred millions national
currency, which the banks reloan to the people at an average of ten per
cent. It seems to me that is almost too good a thing to last long. If
the Government can afford to do this thing, why can’t they better afford
to loan directly to the people for nothing, and save thirty millions
dollars annually? Do you think the people would object? Oh, no; but the
bankers would. But for all that the cry of “Down with the tyrant” is
raised, and it will never cease until interest shall be among the things
that were.

I also desire to call attention to the reduction of the Public Debt, and
to the means by which this reduction has been accomplished. The
Administration hangs almost all of its hopes upon this fact, while if it
were thoroughly understood it would prove its condemnation. It has paid
three hundred millions of the debt, they say. Who has paid it? we
inquire. It fails to answer. We say that that entire payment has been
made by the producing classes of the country, while the capitalists have
not reduced their cash balances in the least. In other words, the
producers have got no more money now than they had before the debt was
paid, while the capitalists have had their bonds changed into money.
Now, who have paid that three hundred millions dollars? I repeat the
laboring people have done it, just as they pay all public debts and all
public expenses, besides constantly adding to the wealth of the
capitalists themselves. Can such a state of things continue? Again I
tell you nay.

This wrong must be remedied by a system of progressive taxation. If
persons having a hundred thousand dollars pay one-half per cent. tax,
let those having a million pay ten per cent., or two millions
twenty-five per cent. Let there be a penalty placed upon monopolizing
the common property, and it will soon cease and equality come in its
place. Now, the poorest woman who buys the cheapest calico pays a tax to
the Government, while the rich appropriate her labor to pay their dues.
Truly said Jesus, “The poor ye have with you always.”

Another mode of remedying the existing ills in industry and the
distribution of wealth, must be in giving employees an actual interest
in the products of their labors, so that ultimately co-operation will be
the source of all production, its results being justly distributed among
all those who assist in the production. First, pay the employer the same
rate of interest for his capital that Government shall charge for loans
made to the people; next, the general expenses, including salaries to
himself and all employees, the remainder to be equitably divided among
all who have an interest in it. Do you not see what a revolution in
industrial production such a constitutional provision would effect? And
do you not suppose if the workingmen and women of this country
understood the justice of it, that they would have it? I intend that
they shall have the required information. Already there have been half a
million tracts upon these subjects sent broadcast over this land, and
the present year shall see double as many more, until every laborer,
male and female, shall hold in his or her own hands the method of
deliverance from this great oppression.

But there is another consideration, which, more forcibly than any other,
shows the suicidal policy which we pursue. If the present rates of
interest are continued to be paid upon only the present banking capital
and bonds of the country, for twenty-five years to come, the interest,
with the principal added, will have absorbed the total present wealth,
as well as its perspective increase. And such a consummation as this are
the European capitalists now preparing for this country. Europe holds
not less than three thousand millions of bonded indebtedness of this
country, which is being augmented every month by additional railroad
bonds, or some syndicate operation. So do you not see that European
capital is gradually, but nevertheless inevitably, absorbing not only
all of our annually produced wealth, but also acquiring an increased
mortgage every year upon our accumulated wealth? There is no escaping
these facts. Figures don’t lie. Mathematics is an absolute science from
whose edicts there is no escape. And mathematics inform us that we are
year by year mortgaging ourselves to European capitalists, who will
ultimately step in and foreclose their mortgages, and possess themselves
of our all, just as we foreclose our smaller mortgages, when there is no
hope of a further increase from interest.

Besides the monopoly of land, money and public conveniences, there is
another kind of monopoly still, which may appear rather strange and new
to be thus classed, but it is nevertheless a terrible tyrant. I refer to
the monopoly of education. I hold that a just government is in duty
bound to see to it that all its children of both sexes have the same and
equal opportunities for acquiring education, and that every person of
adult age shall have graduated in the highest departments of learning,
as well as in the arts, sciences and practical mechanics. Every person
should be compelled to acquire a practical knowledge of some productive
branch of labor, because the time will come when all people will be
obliged to produce at least as much as they consume, or earn what they
consume, as the paid agents of producers. What a revolution would that
accomplish? If every person in the world was to work at production two
hours a day there would be a larger aggregate produced than there is
now. Therefore every person must learn the art of production, and thus
be equal in resources to any other person, and Government must undertake
the compulsory industrial education of all its children.

Thus I could continue analysis upon analysis, until not a stone in the
foundations of our social structure would be left unturned, and all
would be found unworthy of our civilization—our boasted Christian
civilization. I think Christianity has been preached at, long enough. I
go for making a practical application of it at the very foundations of
society. I believe in recognizing the broad principle of all
religion—that we are all children of one great common parent, God,
which, since it disproves the propositions of the Church, that at least
a large portion of us are the children of the devil, and renders the
services of the clergy to save us from that inheritance unnecessary,
will abolish our present system of a licensed and paid ministry.
Thirty-five thousand ministers are paid twenty-five millions dollars
annually for preaching the gospel in cathedrals costing two hundred and
fifty millions dollars; and how many of them ever teach any fact other
than that Jesus was crucified, just as though that would save us from
the sloughs of ignorance in which we are sunk? Which one of them dare
tell his congregation the truth, as he, if he be not a blockhead, knows
it? I here and now impeach the clergy of the United States as dishonest
and hypocritical, since the best of them acknowledge that they do not
dare to preach the whole truth, for, if they should, they would have to
preach to empty seats—an admission sufficiently damnable to consign them
to the contempt of the world and to the hell of which they prate so
knowingly, but whose location they have not been able to determine, and
to light the torch which shall fire the last one of these palatial
mockeries of true religion.

Why, should Christ appear among these godly Christians as he did among
the Jews, he would be arrested as a vagrant, or sent to jail for
stealing corn; and in Connecticut, perhaps, for Sabbath-breaking, or for
telling the maid at the well “_all she had ever done_,” which is now
called fortune-telling, or for healing the sick by laying on of hands,
which they denominate charlatanry. Christ and his Disciples and the
multitude which he gathered together had all things in common. But every
pulpit and every paper in this Christian country launch the thunders of
their denunciations when that damnable doctrine is now advanced. Now,
Christ was a Communist of the strictest sort, and so am I, and of the
most extreme kind. I believe that God is the Father of all humanity and
that we are brothers and sisters; and that it is not merely a
theoretical or hypothetical nothing but a stern reality, to be reduced
to a practical recognition. And they who cannot accept and practice this
doctrine of Christ, and who still profess to be his followers, are
simply stealing the livery of Christ in which to serve the devil in
their own souls.

I do not care to what length Christians may stretch their faces of a
Sunday, nor how much they pay to support their ministers; nor do I care
how long prayers they may make, nor what sermons preach, when they
denounce the fundamental principles of the teachings of Christ, I will
turn upon and, in his language, utter their own condemnation: “Inasmuch
as ye have not done it unto the least of these, ye have not done it
unto” Christ. And they may make all the fuss, call me all the hard
names, they please; but they can’t escape the judgment. And I don’t
intend they shall have a chance to escape it. I am going to strip the
masks of hypocrisy from their faces, and let the world see them as they
are. They have had preaching without practice long enough. The people
want practice now, and when they get it, they can even afford to do
without the preaching.

These privileged classes of the people have an enduring hatred for me,
and I am glad they have. I am the friend not only of freedom in all
things, and in every form, but also for equality and justice as well.
These cannot be inaugurated except through revolution. I am denounced as
desiring to precipitate revolution. I acknowledge it. I am for
revolution, if to get equality and justice it is required. I only want
the people to have what it is their right to have—what the religion of
humanity, what Christ, were he the arbiter, would give them. If, in
getting that, the people find bayonets opposing them, it will not be
their fault if they make their way through them by the aid of bayonets.
And these persons who possess the monopolies and who guard them by
bayonets, need not comfort themselves with the idea that the people
won’t fight for their rights. Did they not spring to arms from every
quarter to fight for the negro? And will you say they will not do the
same against this other slavery, compared to which the former is as a
gentle shower to a raging tempest?

Don’t flatter yourselves, gentlemen despots, that you are going to
escape under that assumption. You will have to yield, and it will be
best for you to do it gracefully. You are but as one to seven against
them. Numbers will win. It will be your own obduracy if they are goaded
on to madness. Do not rely upon their ignorance of the true condition.
Upon that you have anchored your hopes as long as it is safe. There are
too many reform newspapers in circulation. And though the columns of all
our great dailies are shut to their truths, still there are channels
through which they flow to the people—aye, even to those who delve in
the coal mines of Pennsylvania, seldom seeing the joyous sunshine. And
this education shall continue until every person who contributes to the
maintenance of another in luxurious idleness shall know how such a
result is rendered possible.

Hence, I say, it lies in the hands of those who have maintained this
despotism over the common people to yield it up to them and recognize
their just relations.

And remember what I say to you to-night: If this that is claimed is not
granted—if, beside freedom, equality is not made possible by your giving
up this power, by which the laborer is robbed of the results of his
labor, before our next centennial birthday, July 4th, 1876, you will
have precipitated the most terrible war that the earth has yet known.

For three years before the breaking out of the slavery rebellion I saw
and heard with my spiritual senses the marching of armies, the rattle of
musketry, and the roar of cannon; and I already hear and see the
approach of this more terrible contest. I know it is coming. There is
but one way in which it can be averted. There was one way by which the
slave war could have been avoided—the abolition of slavery. But the
slave oligarchy would not listen to our Garrisons, Sumners, Tiltons and
Douglases. They tried the arbitration of war, but they lost their slaves
at last. Now, will not these later oligarchies—the land, the railroad,
the money aristocracies—learn a lesson from their terrible fate? Will
they not listen to the abolitionists—to the Garrisons, the Sumners, the
Tiltons and the Douglases—of to-day? Will they try the arbitration of
war, which will result as did the last, in the loss of that for which
they fight? I would that they should learn wisdom by experience. The
slaveholders could have obtained compensation for their negroes. They
refused it and lost all. Ponder that lesson well, and do not neglect to
give it its true application. You can compromise now, and the same
general end be arrived at without the baptism of blood. It shall not be
my fault if that baptism comes. Nevertheless, equality and justice are
on the march, and they cannot be hindered. They must and will attain
their journey’s end. The people shall be delivered.

I have several times referred to the methods by which these things may
be accomplished. They are impossible under our present Constitution. It
is too restricted, too narrow, to admit even an idea of a common
humanity. True, its text is complete, but its framework does not carry
out the original design. Even George Washington, himself, was accused of
treachery for countenancing so great a departure as was made; and the
late war justified the grounds upon which that accusation was founded.
The text of the Constitution held these truths to be self-evident, “That
all men (and women) are born equal and entitled to certain inalienable
rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
The Constitution should have been erected in harmony with those
declarations. It was not. There is no such thing as equality provided
for. Life and liberty have not been held inalienable under it; the
pursuit of happiness has been outrageously interfered with, and the
government has been made to exist without the consent of the governed;
and exists to-day against the protests of a large number of its
subjects.

Is it to be expected that anything so false as that is to its basic
propositions can be made enduring? It is against the constitution of
nature itself that it should be so. Nature is always true to itself, and
will always vindicate itself. If hedged in and obstructed, it will burst
through or find its way around. The needle is not truer to the pole than
is Nature to the truth. And Nature is always just. Those propositions
were deduced from human rights, regardless of any authority or
despotism. Had they been elucidated—had their principles guided the
construction of the Constitution itself, all would have been well. What
our fathers failed to do is left for this generation to perform; and it
must not shirk the duty. It must look the condition squarely in the
face, and meet the issue as squarely.

What issues must be met and provided for in order that human rights may
be respected and protected? I have already referred to the monopolies
that must be abolished. But there are also many other things. I will
call attention first to minority representation, which lies at the base
of a representative government. The State of Massachusetts has eleven
representatives in Congress, and they are all Republicans. Justice would
infer that there are no Democrats in the State. But such is not the
fact. There are a large body of Democrats. They are not represented.
That is the fault of the system of arriving at representation. While it
is true that majorities must rule, that is not equal to saying that
minorities shall have no voice. But the practice in Massachusetts does
say just that. I suspect if it were possible for all the real
differences, politically, to be represented, that the Congressmen would
stand something as follows: The Democrats would have, say, four out of
the eleven, the Republicans, say, three, while the remainder would be
divided between the Labor and Temperance Reformers and Woman
Suffragists. Indeed, I am not certain if the door were to be opened that
there would be any straight Republicans left, since all reformers are,
under the present system, compelled to congregate together in this
party, so as not to entirely throw away their votes. The Democrats are
always Democrats. Like the hard-shell Baptists, you always know where to
find them.

They are always on hand to vote early, and often also, if opportunity
permit. Admit minority representation, and the Republican party in
Massachusetts would be abolished, except that part who carry the loaves
and eat the fishes. They are as certain to be found “right there” as the
Democrats are. I think the Woman Suffragists cover about one-half the
Republican party. But a large body of them are Spiritualists and
Temperance men, while as many more are Labor Reformers. But those who
are more Labor Reformers than anything else, are perhaps two-sevenths;
who are more Woman Suffragists than anything else, are perhaps
two-sevenths; who are more Spiritualists than anything else, perhaps
two-sevenths; and who are more Temperance men than anything else,
one-seventh; therefore, if the delegation were elected by the
representation of minorities, it would stand four Democrats, two
Spiritualists, two Labor Reformers, two Woman Suffragists, and one
Temperance man. But all of these, however, would be again swallowed up
whenever a Human Rights party should be evolved, and that will be the
party of the near future, in whose all embracing arms the people, long
suffering and long waiting, will at last find repose, while the Goddess
of Liberty, with her scales of equality, shall find no more of her
subjects to whom justice is not measured out. Then will partisan
politics have received its death warrant; then will the people become
one in heart, one in soul and one in common purpose—the general good of
the general whole. The “greatest good of the greatest number” will be
supplanted by: “the general welfare, is best maintained when individual
interests are best protected.” The new government, then, must be the
result of minority representation, and all legislative bodies, and,
where possible, all executive officers, be so elected, while the people
shall retain the appointing as well as the veto power. Our lawmakers
must be made law proposers, who shall construct law to be submitted to
the people for their approval, in the same manner as our public
conventions appoint committees to draft resolutions, which are afterward
adopted or rejected by the convention itself. This will make every
person a legislator, having a direct interest in every law. The people
will then no longer elect representatives to make laws by which they
must be bound whether they approve or disapprove. The referendum is the
desired end. The referendum is what the people require, and it is what
the new Constitution must provide. So that in all future time the people
themselves will be their own lawmakers—will be the government.

The people must appoint all their officers, heads of departments and
bureaus at regular intervals, and all under assistants, during faithful
performance of duty. We want no Civil Service Commissions. Every person
who shall be eligible to office under the new government will be
competent; and when once familiar with the duties, will not be removed
to give room for the friend of some politician belonging to the party in
power, since it would be the people in power at all times.

Another matter which must have attention is the sweeping away of that
_jeu d’esprit_, our courts of justice, by making all kinds of contracts
stand upon the honor and capacity of the contracting parties. All
individual matters must be settled by the individuals themselves without
appeal to the public. Our present system of enforced collection of debts
costs every year more than is realized, and besides maintains a vast
army of lawyers, constables and court officers in unproductive employ.
All this is wrong, entailing almost untold exactions upon the producing
community, who in the end are made to pay all these things.

Further, our system of oaths and bonds must be abolished. This swearing
people to tell the truth, and binding them to perform their duty,
presupposes that they will lie and neglect their duty. People are always
placed upon the side of force and compulsion—never upon that of personal
rectitude and honor. The results are what might be expected. It plunges
us into the very things we would avoid. There is a philosophy, too, in
all these things; since in freedom only can purity exist. Anything that
is not free is not pure. Anything that is accompanied by compulsion is
no proof of individual honesty.

The new government must also take immediate steps for the abolition of
pauperism and beggary. It is an infamous reproach upon this country that
there are hundreds of thousands of people who subsist themselves upon
individual charity. I do not care whether this is from choice or
necessity. I say it is a burning shame, requiring immediate curative
steps. The indigent and helpless classes are just as much a part of our
social body as the protected and the rich are, and they are entitled to
its recognition. Society must no longer punish and compel suffering and
death for its own wrongs. It must evolve such a social system as shall
leave no single member of the common body to suffer. When one member of
the body suffers, the whole body sympathizes. So, also, when a member of
the social body suffers, does the whole body suffer. And yet we have
pretended philanthropists and Christians who have never grasped that
truth.

Our civilization and our Christianity have been made too much a matter
of faith in, and devotion to, the unknowable, divorced from all human
relations. We must first recognize and practice the brotherhood of man
before we can be made to realize the Paternity of God, since “if we love
not our brothers whom we have seen, how can we love God whom we have not
seen?” Our religious teaching has been too much of punishment, and too
little of love; too much of faith, too little of works; too much of
sectarianism, too little of humanitarianism; too much of hell-fire
arbitration, too little of inevitable law; and too much of
self-righteousness, and too little of innate goodness.

And here I cannot forbear to depart from the strict line of my subject
to say a word regarding a doctrine, from the effects of which even this
country is but slowly recovering—that of eternal damnation! I say, that
a people who really believe in a God who could burn his own children in
a lake of literal fire and brimstone, “where the worm dieth not and the
fire is not quenched,” and from which there is no present escape nor
future hope, for a single unrepented misdeed, and still profess to
honor, love and worship a fiend so infernal as that would make Him,
cannot be honest and conscientious, since they must mistake fear for
love, and confound sycophancy with worship. It was such a belief that
kindled the fires by which the early martyrs perished, by which the
Quakers of Massachusetts were burned and the witches hanged, and which
invented the terrible Inquisition, with its horrid racks and tortures.
These are the legitimate results of such a belief; and if the people of
to-day really believed what they profess in their creeds, they would do
precisely the same things. And they would be justified, since it would
be merciful in them to subject a person to a few moments’ torture, to
induce him or her to escape the eternal tortures of Hell, the horrors of
which all the ingenuity men can command could not invent a torture
one-hundredth part as inhuman; and yet they say our Heavenly Father has
prepared this for nineteen-twentieths of humanity.

Thank Heaven, however, the day has come when such libels upon the name
of God are rapidly merging into the gray twilight, to soon sink in
blank, unfathomable oblivion. Thank Heaven, for its own approach
earthward, to strike off the chains of superstition from humanity, and
for the first faint glimmering of light shed upon us by its angels’
faces, proving to us that humanity, whether of earth or heaven, is:

            “One life for those who live and those who die—
            For those whom sight knows and whom memory.”

The Jews would not accept Christ since he came not with temporal power.
But Christ will come in the power of the spirit, and shall baptise all
humanity. Already His messengers begin to herald the “glad tidings of
great joy which shall be unto all people.” Already the music of the
approaching harmonies are heard from the hill-tops of spirituality
singing the approaching millennium. Already its divine notes have
pierced some of the dark places of earth, making glad the hearts of
their oppressed children, shedding light and truth and joy into their
souls. The prophecies of all ages converge upon this, and for their
fulfillment, Christ, with all his holy angels, will come to judge the
world, and to erect upon it that government already inaugurated in
Heaven and long promised Earth, for

           “Decrees are sealed in Heaven’s own chancery,
           Proclaiming universal liberty.
           Rulers and kings who will not hear the call,
           In one dread hour shall thunder-stricken fall.

           “So moves the growing world with march sublime,
           Setting new music to the beats of time.
           Old things decay, and new things ceaseless spring,
           And God’s own face is seen in everything.”

Therefore it is that there shall soon come a time in which the people
will ask for universal liberty, universal equality, and universal
justice. Heretofore all branches of reform have been separated each from
the other—have been diffusive, working in single and straight lines from
a principle outward, utterly regardless of all other movements. Reform
has never yet been constructive, but destructive to existing things.
Nevertheless, all reform originates primarily from a common cause—the
effort of humanity to attain to the full exercise of human right, only
attainable through the possession of freedom, equality and justice. Any
reform which does not embrace these three principles must necessarily be
diffusive, instructive or educational. Each different branch is the
squaring of a separate stone, all of which must be brought together and
adjusted before even the corner-stone of the perfect and permanent
structure can be laid. Republicanism even was not integral in its
propositions. It looked simply to personal freedom. Neither equality in
its high, or justice in its broad, sense was a portion of its creed.
Hence republicanism as represented by the party in power has done its
work, and those who prefer to stick to it rather than to come out and
rally around a platform perfect in humanitarian principles, will thus
show themselves to be more republican than humanitarian.

As a nation we are nearing our first centennial birthday. A hundred
years have come and gone since political freedom was evolved from the
womb of civilization. Great as its mission was, great as its results
have been, shall the car of progress stop there? Is there nothing more
for humanity to accomplish? I tell you there are still mightier and more
glorious things to come than human tongue hath spoken or heart
conceived. Little did our noble sires imagine what a century would do
with what they set in motion. From three to forty millions is a grand, I
may almost say a terrible, stride. But with this step we cannot stop. We
must open new channels for the expansion of the human soul.

Up to this time we have expanded almost wholly in a material and
intellectual sense. There is a grander expansion than either of these.
Wealth and knowledge have brought us power, but we lack wisdom. To
material prosperity and intellectual acquirements there must be added
moral purity, and then we shall get wisdom. Everybody appears to live as
though this life were all there is of life, and that to get from it the
most physical enjoyment were the grand thing to be attained. Wealth has
been made almost the sole aim of living, whereas it should only be
regarded as the means to a better end; as the means by which to
accumulate an immense capital with which to begin life in the next and
higher stage of existence; and he or she lives best on earth who does
the most for humanity.

In this view, what are professing Christians—the churches—doing for the
general good to-day? What good can come from preaching without practice,
since, though people may be able to say, “All of these have I kept from
my youth up,” Christ, when he shall come, will reply to them: “Go sell
all thou hath and give to the poor, and come and follow me.” What
clergyman in this city dare stand in his pulpit Sunday after Sunday and
insist upon such practice? or what one dare to insist that his church
should have all things in common? or what one dare to eat with publicans
and sinners, or say to the woman, “Neither do I condemn thee.” Or which
one of the people dare go to her poor, enslaved and suffering sisters
and take them to her heart and home? or be the good Samaritan? I tell
you, my friends, beware lest those whom you scorn to know be before you
with Christ, who knows the heart. It is not what you pretend that shall
make you Christian, but what you do, and if you do right, though the
world curse you, yet shall you lay up treasures in Heaven thereby.
Therefore, I say that the Christianity of to-day is a failure. It is not
the following of Christ, nor the practice of his precepts. True religion
will not shut itself up in any church away from humanity; it will not
stand idly by and see the people suffer from any misery whatever. It is
its sphere to cure all ills, whether moral, social or political. There
are no distinctions in humanity. Everything to be truly good and grand,
whether it be in politics, society or religion, must be truly moral, and
to be truly moral is to live the Golden Rule.

Therefore, it is foolish for the Christian to say, “I have nothing to do
with politics, as a Christian.” It is the bounden duty of every
Christian to support that political party which bases itself upon Human
Rights; and if there is no such party existing, then to go about to
construct one. It is too late in the century for a Justice of the
Supreme Court of the United States to be a political thief and trickster
as a politician, while he issues a call asking that the people inject
God into the Constitution. Such consummate hypocrisy is an outrage upon
the intelligence of the nineteenth century; and it will meet its just
reward.

If they would take the precepts of Christ and build a new Constitution
upon them, nobody would object; but to be asked to recognize a God whom
these people have themselves fashioned and set up, who hath not even
human sense of justice, is quite a different thing, and one to which
this people will not submit. I could point out to you why this attempt
is made just at this time, but I rather prefer to point out how this and
all other attempts to put fetters upon the people must be avoided, and
how to break the fetters by which they are already galled.

Permit me to ask what practical good arises from the people’s coming
together and merely passing a set of resolutions. You may pass
resolutions with whereases and therefores a mile long, and what will be
the result unless they are made practical use of. What would you say to
a person who should come before you with a resolution setting forth that
whereas, thus and thus, are so and so, therefore some new invention
ought to be made to meet the conditions. Why you would at once say to
him, “Give us the invention; then we shall be able to judge whether your
therefore bears any relation to your whereas.” Now precisely in that way
should you judge of resolutions for political reform. We have had
resolutions long enough. We now need a working model which will secure
freedom, equality and justice to the smallest of our brothers and
sisters. Anything less than this is no longer worthy to be considered
political reform; and that is not only political reform, but it is also
the best application possible of the precepts of Jesus Christ, and
therefore the best Christianity, the best religion, since to its creed
every human being who is not supremely selfish can subscribe.

In conclusion, therefore, let me urge every soul who desires to be truly
Christian to no longer separate Christianity from politics, but to make
it the base upon which to build the future political structure. Instead
of an amendment to the Constitution, which these hypocrites desire,
recognizing a God who is simply the Father of themselves, and a Christ
of whom they are the self-appointed representatives, give us a new
Constitution, recognizing the human rights of the people to govern
themselves, of which they cannot be robbed under any pretext whatever,
and my word for it, humanity will not be slow to render due homage to
their God. Let that Constitution give a place to every branch of reform,
while it shall not so much as militate against the rights of a single
individual in the whole world—and we are large enough to begin to say
the whole world—and to think of and prepare the way for the time when
all nations, kindred and tongues shall be united in a universal
government, and the Constitution of the United States of the World be
the


                              SUPREME LAW.

Around this as a New Departure let all reformers rally, and, with a
grand impulse and a generous enthusiasm, join in a common effort for the
great political revolution, after the accomplishment of which the
nations shall have cause to learn war no more.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


 1. P. 4, corrected “God loves from whole to part. But human soul must
      from individual to the whole.” to “God loves from whole to parts:
      but human soul Must rise from individual to the whole.” This is to
      match the original quote by Alexander Pope.
 2. P. 20, changed “ought that looks like justice” to “aught that looks
      like justice”.
 3. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
 4. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
 5. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FREEDOM! EQUALITY!! JUSTICE!!! ***

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