Cannibals all! Part 10

We cannot venture to extend our extracts, though we have the materials before us to increase them ten--nay, twenty-fold. We contribute these merely as a confirmation of Mr. Fitzhugh's position, that, really and confessedly, Free Society has proved a calamitous and irremediable failure in the princ.i.p.al communities of Christendom.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE REFORMATION--THE RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT.

The Reformation, like the American Revolution, was originated and conducted to successful issue by wise, good and practical men, whose intuitive judgments and sagacious instincts enabled them to feel their way through the difficulties that environed them. Wise men know that there is too much of complexity in the tangled web of human affairs, to justify the attempt at once to practice and philosophise, to act and to reason. Fools and philosophers too often mar the good works of such men, by pretending to see clearly, and to define accurately, the principles of action which have led to those works. A Was.h.i.+ngton, a Peel, or a Wellington, never "writes himself down an a.s.s" by appealing to abstract principles to justify measures which are rendered necessary by a thousand minute and peculiar circ.u.mstances of the hour, which common sense and experience instinctively appreciate, but which philosophy in vain attempts to detect or to generalize. Common sense never attempts "to expel nature," but suggests and carries through a thousand useful reforms by recurrence to and comparison with the past, and by cautious experimentation.

Common sense sometimes errs by excess of conservation; but it is better to err with Pope, who thought "Whatever is, is right," than with Jefferson, whose every act and word proves that he held that "Whatever is, is _wrong_.

The Reformation was not the thought and the act of Luther, Calvin, Cranmer and Erasmus; but the thought and the act of society--the vox Populi, vox Dei. Popes and cardinals are not infallible, but society is.

Its harmony is its health; and to differ with it is heresy or treason, because social discord inflicts individual misery; and what disturbs and disarranges society, impairs the happiness and well-being of its members.

This doctrine of the infallibility of society, is suggested, though not expressed, in the maxim--Salus populi, est suprema lex. The Puritans, in the early days of New England, acted it out; and if they hung a few troublesome old women, the good that they achieved was more than compensated for by any errors they may have committed. Liberty of the press, liberty of speech, freedom of religion, or rather freedom from religion, and the unlimited right of private judgment, have borne no good fruits, and many bad ones. Infidels, Skeptics, Millerites, Mormons, Agrarians, Spiritual Rappers, Wakemanites, Free Negroes and Bloomers, disturb the peace of society, threaten the security of property, offend the public sense of decency, a.s.sail religion, and invoke anarchy.

Society has the right, and is in duty bound, to take care of itself; and when public opinion becomes powerless, law should intervene, and punish all acts, words, or opinions, which have become criminal by becoming dangerous or injurious.

We would rejoice to see intolerance of error revived in New England.

Laxity of rule and laxity of public opinion is sin of itself, and leads to thousands of sins. New England is culpable for permitting Parker and Beecher to stir up civil discord and domestic broils from the pulpit.

These men deserve punishment, for they have instigated and occasioned a thousand murders in Kansas; yet they did nothing more than carry into practice the right of private judgment, liberty of speech, freedom of the press and of religion. These boasted privileges have become far more dangerous to the lives, the property and the peace of the people of this Union, than all the robbers and murderers and malefactors put together.

The Reformation was but an effort of Nature--the vis medicatrix naturae--throwing off what was false, vicious, or superfluous, and retaining what was good.

The great men of the day but show larger portions of the common thought. Men, and all other social and gregarious animals, have a community of thought, of motions, instincts and intuitions. The social body is of itself a thinking, acting, sentient being. This is eminently observable with the lower animals. Bees and herds perform their evolutions with too much rapidity and precision, to leave any doubt but that one mind and one feeling, either from within or without, directs their movements. The great error of modern philosophy is the ignorance or forgetfulness of this fact. The first departure from it was not the Reformation--for that was preeminently a social idea and a social movement;--but the doctrine of the right of private judgment, which speculative philosophers and vain schismatics attempted to engraft upon it, or deduce from it. Human equality, the social contract, the let-alone and selfish doctrines of political economy, universal liberty, freedom of speech, of the press, and of religion, spring directly from this doctrine, or are only new modes of expressing it. Agrarianism, Free Love, and No Government, are its logical sequences: for the right to judge for ourself implies the right to act upon our judgments, and that can never be done in a world where the private appropriation of all capital, and the interference of government, restricts our free agency, and paralyzes our action on all sides.

We sometimes think the burning of the Alexandrian Library was a providential purification, just as the fict.i.tious burning, by Cervantes, of Don Quixote's library ridded the world of the useless rubbish of the Middle Ages, by the ridicule so successfully attached to it. Sure we are, that a fire that would consume all the theological and other philosophical speculations of the last two centuries, would be a happy G.o.d-send.

Our Revolution, so wise in its conception and so glorious in its execution, was the mere a.s.sertion by adults of the rights of adults, and had nothing more to do with philosophy than the weaning of a calf. It was the act of a people seeking national independence, not the Utopian scheme of speculative philosophers, seeking to establish human equality and social perfection.

But the philosophers seized upon it, as they had upon the Reformation, and made it the unwilling and unnatural parent of the largest and most hideous brood of ills that had ever appeared at one birth, since the opening of the box of Pandora. Bills of Rights, Acts of Religious Freedom and Const.i.tutions, besprinkled with doctrines directly at war with all stable government, seem to be the basis on which our inst.i.tutions rest. But only seem to be; for, in truth, our laws and government are either old Anglo-Saxon prescriptive arrangements, or else the gradual accretions of time, circ.u.mstance and necessity. Throw our paper platforms, preambles and resolutions, guaranties and const.i.tutions, into the fire, and we should be none the worse off, provided we retained our inst.i.tutions--and the necessities that begat, and have, so far, continued them.

All government proceeds ab extra. Neither individuals nor societies can govern themselves, any more than the mouse can live in the exhausted receiver, or the clown lift himself by the lappel of his pantaloons. The South is governed by the necessity of keeping its negroes in order, which preserves a healthy conservative public opinion. Had the negroes votes, the necessity would be removed, because the interest of the governing cla.s.s would cease to be conservative. The necessity, the governing power ab extra, would be removed. The little republics of ancient Greece were able to preserve the most artificial social arrangements, under the necessities which slavery and foreign hostile pressure from without begat. They were afraid of change, because insurrection was dangerous.

If government on paper were really useless and harmless, we should say nothing about it. But it is fraught with danger, first because we are apt to rely on it for safety and security of rights, and secondly because it rarely suits the occasion. Men and societies are endowed by Providence generally with sufficient knowledge and judgment to act correctly or prudently under circ.u.mstances as they arise; but they cannot foresee or provide for the future, nor lay down rules for other people's conduct. All platforms, resolutions, bills of rights and const.i.tutions, are true in the particular, false in the general. Hence all legislation should be repealable, and those instruments are but laws. Fundamental principles, or the higher law, are secrets of nature which G.o.d keeps to himself. The vain attempt of "frequent recurrence to them," is but the act of the child who builds card houses, for the pleasure of knocking them down. Recurrence to fundamental principles and appeals to the higher law, are but the tocsin of revolution that may upset everything, but which will establish nothing, because no two men are agreed as to what the higher law, alias "fundamental principles,"

is.

Moses, and Lycurgus, and Solon, and Numa, built their inst.i.tutions to last, enjoined it on the people never to change them, and threw around them the sanct.i.ty of religion, to ward off the sacrilegious hand of future innovation. "A frequent recurrence to fundamental principles,"

and the kicking down of card houses, was not part of their science of government. We have often thought, that of all the lost arts, the art of government was the only one whose loss we would deplore, or whose recovery is worth the pains of study and research.

To us it seems that "first causes," "fundamental principles," and the "higher law," mean one and the same thing: An "ignis fatuus," that it is dangerous to pursue, and hopeless to overtake.

We may be doing Mr. Jefferson injustice, in a.s.suming that his "fundamental principles" and Mr. Seward's "higher law," mean the same thing; but the injustice can be very little, as they both mean just nothing at all, unless it be a determination to inaugurate anarchy, and to do all sorts of mischief. We refer the reader to the chapter on the "Declaration of Independence," &c., in our Sociology, for a further dissertation on the fundamental powder-cask abstractions, on which our glorious inst.i.tutions _affect_ to repose. We say _affect_, because we are sure neither their repose nor their permanence would be disturbed by the removal of the counterfeit foundation.

The true greatness of Mr. Jefferson was his fitness for revolution. He was the genius of innovation, the architect of ruin, the inaugurator of anarchy. His mission was to pull down, not to build up. He thought everything false as well in the physical, as in the moral world. He fed his horses on potatoes, and defended harbors with gun-boats, because it was contrary to human experience and human opinion. He proposed to govern boys without the authority of masters or the control of religion, supplying their places with Laissez-faire philosophy, and morality from the pages of Lawrence Sterne. His character, like his philosophy, is exceptional--invaluable in urging on revolution, but useless, if not dangerous, in quiet times.

We would not restrict, control, or take away a single human right or liberty, which experience showed was already sufficiently governed and restricted by public opinion. But we do believe that the slaveholding South is the only country on the globe, that can safely tolerate the rights and liberties which we have discussed.

The annals of revolutionary Virginia were ill.u.s.trated by three great and useful men. The mighty mind of Jefferson, fitted to pull down; the plastic hand of Madison to build up, and the powerful arm of Was.h.i.+ngton to defend, sustain and conserve.

We are the friend of popular government, but only so long as conservatism is the interest of the governing cla.s.s. At the South, the interests and feelings of many non-property holders, are identified with those of a comparatively few property holders. It is not necessary to the security of property, that a majority of votes should own property; but where the pauper majority becomes so large as to disconnect the ma.s.s of them in feeling and interest from the property holding cla.s.s, revolution and agrarianism are inevitable. We will not undertake to say that events are tending this way at the North. The absence of laws of entail and primogeniture may prevent it; yet we fear the worst; for, despite the laws of equal inheritance and distribution, wealth is acc.u.mulating in few hands, and pauperism is increasing. We shall attempt hereafter to show that a system of very small entails might correct this tendency.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE NOMADIC BEGGARS AND PAUPER BANDITTI OF ENGLAND.

Under various names, such as Proletariat in France, Lazzaroni in Italy, Leperos in Mexico, and Gypsies throughout all Europe, free society is disturbed and rendered insecure, by the cla.s.s, a description of which we shall draw from the British writers. We do not hesitate to a.s.sign to the Gypsies the same origin with the rest. They are all the outgrowth of runaway and emanc.i.p.ated serfs. The time of the appearance of the Gypsies is coeval with the universal liberation and escape of the villeins.

If this _diluvies_ of society is by nature vicious, nomadic and incapable of any self-control, it is obvious they should be enslaved. If emanc.i.p.ation of their ancestors and the throwing them upon the world without property or other means of support, made them and their posterity, from necessity, beggars, Pariahs and Ishmaelites, they should be restored to slavery, unless some better disposition of them can be discovered.

North British Review, "Literature and Labor Question," February No.

1851. The pa.s.sage we quote is from a work of Mr. Mayhew:

"That we, like the Hottentots, Kaffirs, and Fins, are surrounded by wandering hordes, the 'sonquas' and 'fingons' of this country, paupers, beggars and outcasts, possessing nothing but what they acquire by depredation from the industrious, provident and civilized portion of the community; that the heads of these nomads are remarkable for a greater development of the jaws and cheek bones, than of the skull, and that they have a secret language of their own--an English 'cuzecat,' or 'slang,' as it is called, for the concealment of their designs; these are points of coincidence so striking, that, when placed before the mind, they make us marvel why the a.n.a.logy has been so long un.o.bserved. The resemblance once discovered, however, becomes of great service in enabling us to use the moral characteristics of the nomadic races of other countries, as a means of comprehending more readily those of the vagabonds and outcasts of our own. * * * The nomad there is distinguished from the civilized man by his repugnance to regular and continuous labor--by his want of providence in laying up a store for the future; by his inability to perceive consequences ever so slightly removed from immediate apprehension; by his pa.s.sion for stultifying herbs and roots, and when possible, for intoxicating fermented liquors; for his extraordinary powers of enduring privation; by his comparative insensibility to pain; by an immoderate love of gaming; frequently risking his own personal liberty on a single cast; by his love of libidinous dances; by the pleasure which he experiences in witnessing the sufferings of sentient creatures; by his delight in warfare and all perilous sports; by his desire for vengeance; by the looseness of his notions as to property; by the absence of chast.i.ty among his women, and his disregard of female honor; and lastly by his vague sense of religion, his rude idea of a Creator, and utter absence of all appreciation of the mercy of the Divine Spirit.

"The nomadic races of England are of many distinct kinds--from the habitual vagrant, half beggar, half thief, sleeping in barns, tents, and casual wards, to the mechanic on the tramp, obtaining his bed and supper from the trade societies in the different towns on his way to seek work. Between these two extremes, there are several mediate varieties, consisting of pedlars, show-men, harvest men, and all that large cla.s.s who live by either selling, showing, or doing something through the country. There are, so to speak, the rural nomads--not confining their wanderings to any one particular locality, but ranging often from one end of the land to the other. Besides these, there are urban and suburban travellers, or those who follow some itinerant occupation in and about the large towns. Such are in the metropolis, more particularly the pickpockets, the beggars, the prost.i.tutes, the street sellers, the street performers, the cab-men, the coachmen, the watermen, the sailors, and such like. In each of these cla.s.ses, according as they partake more or less of the family vagabond, doing nothing whatever for their living, but moving from place to place, preying upon the earnings of the more industrious part of the community--so will the attributes of the nomad tribe be found to be more or less marked."

To the same effect, read the following from July No. 1852, of Edinburgh Review, in article on "Mendicity; its causes and statistics:"

There live, then, in the midst and about all the English population, a distinct population, fearful in numbers, constantly and rapidly increasing, having a language, manners, and customs of its own--living, in nine cases out of ten, in a course of life the most immoral and profligate; and yet so living, and so increasing, in spite of the laws, in spite of the munic.i.p.al arrangements of the last few years, so favorable to their detection and punishment; in spite of the new poor-law arrangements; and in spite of the general feeling that the poor-rates and the union ought to provide for all real cases of dest.i.tution and misery. This population has its signs, free-masonry, its terms of art, its correspondence, its halting-houses, its barns still kept open, and even well-strawed by farmers and country gentlemen; its public-houses, its well-known and even recognized lodging houses; and its manifold plans to extract or extort, to win or to scold, out of its reluctant but deceived victims, sums amounting, we are inclined to believe, to not less than 1,375,000; being one-third of the total amount of poor-rates! This sum may at first appear utterly extravagant; but it will not be found to be so when it is remembered, that on an average each begging family extorts 55 per annum from the public. The annual poor law expenditure for the year ending in March, 1840, in England, was, in round numbers, 4,300,000. In England, including the three ridings of Yorks.h.i.+re, there are forty-two counties. The population of those counties is nearly fifteen millions. If we take at this moment a rough and general, though a tolerably correct estimate of that population, with its dense misery in towns and cities, and its diffused but not less individually intense misery in the agricultural districts, we may fairly calculate that one out of every one hundred is a beggar or lives in a state of practical vagrancy--looking in one form or other, to alms for support. The one-hundredth part of the population is 150,000; and if each begging family, raising 55 per annum from the public by alms, be estimated as consisting of six, we shall have 25,000 English begging families, raising 55 per annum each, or the total sum of 1,375,000. But we believe that we have underrated, instead of overstated the facts of the case in these calculations. In London alone and its vicinity, in spite of all the efforts of the police, a very large part of that sum is extorted; and we have not taken into consideration the wholesale mendicity which is now deplorably manifest in the larger English manufacturing towns. We have also omitted all Irish mendicants; and yet they are nearly in the proportion of one to three in the English agricultural districts. Naturally anxious as we are to avoid even the appearance of exaggeration, we are still bound to state, that the estimate we have made is greatly deficient, and that we have understated the real statistics.

The begging population of England, existing and increasing in spite of munic.i.p.al police, and notwithstanding the penalties of the vagrant act, is divided into several cla.s.ses; and we now propose to draw upon a little pamphlet, mentioned at the head of this article, which has been recently published at Birmingham, and which contains very accurate details of the mendicant population--written by one who long frequented the haunts of the vagrant community. The portion of the community to which his details extend, belong princ.i.p.ally to the hereditary and professional cla.s.s of beggars.

The writer of this family thus proceeds with his descriptive details:

'In order fully to explain each individual character, I shall begin with those vagrants who generally obtain the most, and are considered of the _first cla.s.s_, and are by some termed 'Silver Beggars,' but by travelers LURKERS.

'LURKERS are persons who go about with briefs, containing false statements of losses by fire, s.h.i.+pwrecks, accidents, &c. The seals and signatures of two or more magistrates are affixed to those briefs, and they are so well written, that thousands of persons are daily imposed upon by them. As there are so many different ways used by these persons, it will be necessary to explain each of them separately.'

The writer then enters into details as to '_the Fire-Lurkers_,' or those, 'who go about begging for loss by fire.' They have false briefs, pretended to be signed by two magistrates and the clergyman of the place where the fire is alleged to have taken place. The doc.u.ments are accompanied by a sham subscription-book, and the brief is called, in the mendicant's parlance, 'a sham,' whilst the subscription-book they name 'a delicate.' With this 'sham and delicate' the 'lurkers,' or beggars, proceed all over the country; and the author states that one man, with whom he was acquainted, 'had been a fire-lurker for fourteen years, and had travelled through every county in England, and the greater part of Wales.'

Then there is,

'_The s.h.i.+pwrecked Sailor's Lurk._--Persons who go on this lurk, generally represent themselves as captains or masters of merchant s.h.i.+ps, which have been wrecked, and they have, of course, lost all their property; and their pretended loss always amounts to many hundred pounds, sometimes even to thousands. This cla.s.s of impostors are very respectably dressed, having moustaches, gold chains, &c.; they have either a well-written brief, or one partly printed and filled up with writing and the seals and signatures of two or three magistrates are placed at the bottom. I have seen briefs of this description from almost every part of the kingdom.'

He goes on to say, that one named Captain Johnstone had 'followed the lurk of a s.h.i.+pwrecked captain for many years, had been over every county in England and Wales many times, and obtained not only hundreds, but thousands of pounds.' He relates various anecdotes of the most successful 'Lurkers' in this department.

'_The Foreigner's Lurk._--Considerable numbers proceed on this lurk, representing themselves as foreigners in distress.... Of late years, by far the greatest number have represented themselves as _Polish_ n.o.blemen or gentlemen, who had been driven by the tyranny of Russia from their native country to seek a refuge....

Their briefs have the names and seals of two magistrates attached, and are always well written. Whenever they present their briefs, they affect not to be able to speak a word of English, and the few words they utter are spoken in broken accent.... One of these lurkers, known among mendicants by the nickname of 'Lord Dundas,'

had often got several pounds in a day.... There are also many females who go on the foreigner's lurk.... I knew a female who went on the foreigner's lurk, who dressed very well; she had a boy with her, and often succeeded in getting two or three pounds in a day. When she called on any one, she _pattered_ (spoke) in French, and affected not to be able to converse in the English language.'

4. '_The Accident Lurk._--Lurkers of this description have a sham and delicate, (brief and book,) and the sham states, that by some dreadful accident the bearer has lost all, or at least the greater part of his property, sometimes by storm, and at other times by a flood, or in some other way: but, in whatever way the accident has happened, the bearer has always suffered a very considerable loss, and is deprived of the means of supporting himself and family. The sums raised vary from five s.h.i.+llings to a pound per day.'

5. '_The Sick Lurk._--This is worked in so many different ways, that it will be necessary to say a little on each. It would seem, 1st, That a common method of imposing upon the public is, by applying blistering ointment to the arms, causing them to have the appearance of having been badly scalded. 2d, That others go about with hands and arms tied up, said to be injured by lightning, or by some other deplorable accident. 3d, Others affect fits. 4th, Others affect pregnancy and dest.i.tution. 5th, Others obtain alms by the husband remaining at home and affecting indisposition, in case any one should visit his lodgings to examine into the merits of the case, whilst the wife goes out begging for wine, rags, clothes, &c., for the sham invalid. 6th, Others pretend to have bad wounds, and beg for linen rags and small bottles to contain medicine necessary for their cure. I saw a man who got, in one day, by this means, thirteen pounds' weight of white rags, and more than five dozen of phial bottles. Rags and bottles sell well.