THE FRENCH LABORERS AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Each of the many French revolutions was occasioned by destitution almost
amounting to famine among the laboring classes. Each was the
insurrection of labor against capital. But until the revolution of 1848,
the revolutionists were unconscious alike of their motives and their
objects. They believed, till then, that political changes would remedy
the evils which oppressed them. After the revolution of 1830,
philosophers and statesmen, seeing the inadequacy of change of dynasty
or of political policy, to alleviate the distresses of the great working
classes, began to search deeper for the causes of social embarrassment.
Suddenly the discovery was made, not only in France, but throughout
Western Europe, that the disease was social, not political. That it was
owing to the too unequal distribution of capital, and to its
exploitation of labor. The ablest minds saw, as well in England as in
France, that in transferring the reins of government from the hands of
hereditary royalty and nobility, to those of the capitalist class, that
the people had exchanged a few masters for thousands of extortioners.
Never did so vast a moral, intellectual and social movement arise so
suddenly, and spread so rapidly. The thing became the rage and fashion.
Even in America, our Northern folks affected a disease, which they did
not feel, just as Alexander's courtiers aped his wry neck; and
anti-rentism and land monopoly became the constant theme of
conversation, lectures, speeches, books and essays. In France and in
England, prior to 1830, there had been a few Socialists, such as Fourier
and St. Simon, Owen and Fanny Wright--but they were little heeded, and
generally considered about half crazy. Immediately thereafter, by far
the greater portion of the literary mind of Europe imbibed, in whole or
in part, the doctrines of these early Socialists. The infection soon
reached the lower classes, and occasioned revolution, intended to be
social as well as political, throughout Western Europe. The Provisional
Government in France, which immediately succeeded to the expulsion of
Louis Philippe, was composed entirely of Socialists, and its programme
and attempted measures were thoroughly socialistic.
The subject of the condition of the laboring classes in Europe, and
especially in France, was handled with an accuracy of detail and a
breadth of scientific expression in a review of our own work in the
Literary Messenger of March, 1855, of which we are incapable. The
author, Professor H. of Virginia, is our corresponding acquaintance
only. Informed by letter that he would review us, and that he concurred
in the general truth of our theory, we suggested to him in reply, that
he should, from his vast stores of learning, strengthen our main
positions. He thought the suggestion a good one, and fulfilled our
request, with an ability and learning, that no other man, on so short a
notice, could have done. As we have prompted, if not caused his toil, we
make no apology for appropriating so much of his review as seems to be a
reply to our suggestion:
From the principles as laid down in theory and exemplified in
practice, we proceed to the effects. That religion has been
undermined, morals contaminated, crime increased, misery extended,
deepened and multiplied, want and starvation augmented, society
agitated, and orderly government endangered by the progress of the
so-called prosperity of the free labor system, is evident, without
further proof, to any one who reads contemporary literature, who
pays attention to the statements of newspapers, and of Poor Law
Reports, who notes the cases brought before the police or criminal
courts, or is cognizant from any source of information, of the
actual condition of the multitude and of the poor in England,
Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, Prussia, and parts of
Switzerland, and in New England and the Northern States. The
connection of the results with the causes, is ably traced by Mr.
Fitzhugh, but not with sufficient care, minuteness and precision;
and the actual character and enormity of the results is exhibited
by him, and by an indefinite array of the most various and
unexceptionable testimony. The History of the Working Classes, by
Robert du Var, which we have joined with the Sociology for the
South, as the text for the present observations, is full of
evidence to this effect with regard to France; and for the other
countries specified, ample testimony may be easily obtained. The
Boston papers will suffice to illustrate the wretchedness of the
laboring classes in New England: the New York Herald and Tribune,
the works of Stephen Pearl Andrews, and of Greeley himself, will
render the same service for the other Northern States: Alton
Locke, Mary Barton, Mayhew's London Labor and the London Poor, the
debates in Parliament, the Reports of the Poor Law Commissioners,
and the English Reviews, will amply illustrate the condition of
Great Britain and Ireland; and for Germany, reference may be made
to Hacklander's Europarsches Sclavenleben, a work which has
followed the example of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and portrayed the
condition of the inferior classes in Europe, as a much more
legitimate object of European sympathy and consideration than
American Slavery. Where the evidence is so abundant and
voluminous, selection would be as unnecessary as it would be
tedious. It is within the reach of every one who desires to
consult it; and we need not load our pages with extracts to prove
what has been frequently and sufficiently proved before, and what
is so notoriously true as to be undeniable. A few quotations to
illustrate the condition of free labor societies we may indeed
quote at a later period, in connection with a different division
of the argument; but they are wholly unnecessary to confirm the
allegation of the wretchedness and depravity which are consuming
the vitals of the principal free societies of the Nineteenth
Century. They are rendered still more unnecessary by the fact that
the acceptability of Socialism in all of those communities,
betrays the extent of both the misery and the social disease to be
cured; and the confession of the multitude of recent writers on
social topics, admits not merely the evils which we have
specified, and their dependence on the theory and practice of free
societies, but acknowledges also the truth of the general
conclusion, that the free societies enumerated have unquestionably
failed, they have not produced the permanent or general blessings
anticipated from them, they have produced overwhelming social
disaster, multiplied indefinitely the woes and the vices of the
poor, threatened all society and government and national existence
in those communities, and announced a future so dark that little
more than its gloom and spectral shapes can be distinctly
recognized.
We regard Mr. Fitzhugh's employment of these admissions by
European writers and Northern reformers, as constituting the most
important position of his argument, and the most characteristic
novelty in his defence of the South. The testimonies which he
adduces are very strong and pointed, but they may be easily
multiplied, and will gain an accession of strength from such
multiplications. For years we have carefully collected similar
acknowledgments from foreign writers, and cheerfully contribute
them to the cause of the South, and the fortification of Mr.
Fitzhugh's position. And let it be remembered, that neither in the
Sociology for the South, nor in the quotations which will be
shortly introduced here, is the sole or principal obligation due
to Chartists, Socialists, Communists, or Agrarians of any sort.
From such authors some admissions have been received, but the
chief contributions are derived from those who have been the most
strenuous supporters of past social arrangements, and who,
notwithstanding a great diversity of views, abilities, studies,
and opportunities of knowledge, still represent the sober
conservative sense of their respective communities. We regret that
Mr. Fitzhugh should have extended so much countenance to the
Socialists, and should have partially identified Socialism and
Slavery, but the strongest part of his testimonies to the failure
of free societies, is derived from other declarations than theirs,
and we shall imitate his example.
We begin, however, with a Socialist, but almost the only one whom
we shall summon to the stand:
"The French Revolution was an abortion. The trading classes (_la
bourgeoisie_) organized themselves in the name of capital, and,
instead of becoming a man, the serf became a proletaire. What then
was his situation? The most painful of all, the most intolerable
which can be conceived. Like all the proletaires, the trading
classes had shouted: 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.' The result
has been that every thing which was proletaire--that is to say,
all those who have no capital, groan under the most cruel usage
(_exploitation_.) They cannot be freemen, nor brothers, nor
equals. Not free, because their daily bread depends on a thousand
accidents produced and engendered by the competition of
capitalists among themselves; not brothers, because, with hearts
crushed and lacerated by the evils which overwhelm them, they
cannot love those whose creed is so fatal to them; not equals,
because capital being the supreme law, it is only through it that
any participation or concurrence in social power is possible."[9]
An apology is due for not attempting to translate the term
proletaires in the above passage, but every one familiar with the
condition of modern free societies, is aware that it is absolutely
untranslateable. It is an indispensable word in modern times, and
the impossibility of avoiding its use is a stronger proof of the
failure of free societies, than the invention of the phrase
Sociology, which Mr. Fitzhugh regards in this light. It ought to
be unhesitatingly introduced into the English language; it can
boast of a very respectable Latin descent; it occurs in the XII
Tables, and originally signified a person of the lowest class, too
poor to pay taxes, and unable to serve the State otherwise than by
raising children and thus increasing the population[10]--a very
doubtful service in modern Europe.
We return to Mr. Robert du Var:
"It must be remarked, that what is called pauperism, this sore,
this ulcer, which infests, and more and more consumes the body
social, could not exist in the same degree amongst the nations of
antiquity. It is a phenomenon which could only arise as the
consequence of the transformation of slavery into serfdom, and of
serfdom into free labor (_proletariat_.) * * * In antiquity, every
one, whether free or not, citizen or slave, was always connected
with some centre which ensured at least his material support."[11]
"As a result of the individual liberty, independent of any central
power, proclaimed by Christianity, favored and developed by the
instincts of the Northern barbarians, legitimated and transformed
into a social doctrine by the institution of Communes, was formed
and agglomerated throughout Europe an innumerable population,
having no material connection with the regular society, and having
for itself nothing but the most naked liberty, that is to say,
misery, poverty, isolation. Thence issued the poor, the beggars,
the thieves--in one word, parias of every description, with whom
society was compelled to compound, willingly or reluctantly, by
the foundation of establishments intended to palliate the bleeding
wound of the pauperism which had been engendered by liberty."[12]
"From whatever point the modern system is regarded, it seems
impossible not to recognize that the Politico-economical rule of
free competition is the negation, as its name indicates, of all
ties and communion of interests between the members of society.
Free competition is a free field open to every individual,
provided or not with the elements necessary and indispensable to
its manifestations; free competition, in a word, is liberty, but
liberty without other rule than the material and moral force, of
which each one may be able to dispose in the presence of the
thousand causes which produce a difference in the position of
individuals."[13]
"But, we say that a system which thus arms, morally, the poor
against each other, is a barbarous system, and contrary to
civilization: it is barbarous, inasmuch as it developes all the
bad tendencies of the human heart: it is contrary to civilization,
because, instead of facilitating harmonious relations among men,
it inclines them to mutual repulsion and hostility."[14]
This is a sufficient sample of M. Robert du Var's testimony. The
greater part of his work is to the same effect: and there is a
singular accordance between his censures of Political Economy,[15]
and those uttered by Mr. Fitzhugh. They merit especial attention.
We will cite another Socialist, M. Vidal:
"The ox, the horse, the hog eat according to their hunger: their
desires are even anticipated: they have their subsistence assured.
It is the same thing in the case of the slave. For the ox, the
horse, the hog, the slave, belong to a master, and their loss is
the loss of the owner: _res perit domino_, says the Digest. But
with the hired laborer it is different! He belongs to himself.
His death is the loss of his family whom he maintained, and who
will no longer find the means of living. What matter to an
employer is the death of a hired laborer? Are there not every
where millions of arms always ready to offer themselves at reduced
wages?"[16]
Let us turn to evidence of a different character. Here is Sir
Robert Peel's testimony to the condition of Ireland before 1844,
previous to the potato-rot and the famine:
"It may be assured that the fourth class of houses, (according to
the census,) are generally unfit for human habitation; and yet it
would appear that in the best circumstanced county, in this
respect, the county of Down, 24.7 per cent., or one-fourth of the
population, live in houses of this class: while in Kerry, the
population is 66.7 per cent., or about two-thirds of the whole;
and, taking the average of the whole population of Ireland, as
given by the census commissioner, we find that in the rural
districts about 43 per cent. of the families, and in the civic
districts, about 36 per cent. inhabit houses of the fourth
class. * * *
"The lowest, or fourth class, remember, comprises all mud cabins,
having but one room."[17]
Mr. Kay, from whom the foregoing remarks of Sir Robert Peel are
quoted, thus comments upon a murder committed in open day in
Ireland. The two murderers had escaped:
"Why," he asks, "were not these men apprehended? Because of the
rottenness that there is in the state of society in these
districts; because of the sympathy which there is on the part of
the great bulk of the population with those who, by these dreadful
acts of vengeance, are supposed to be the conservators of the
rights of the tenant, and supposed to give him that protection
which imperial legislation has denied. The first thing that ever
called my attention to the condition of Ireland, was the reading
an account of one of these outrages. I thought of it for a moment,
but the truth struck me at once: and all I have seen since
confirms it. When law refuses its duty--when government denies the
right of a people--when competition is so fierce for the little
land, which the monopolists grant to cultivation in Ireland--when,
in fact, for a bare potato, millions are scrambling, these people
are driven back from law and from the usages of civilization to
that which is termed the law of nature, and, if not of the
strongest, the law of the vindictive; and in this case the people
of Ireland believe, to my certain knowledge, that it is only by
these acts of vengeance, periodically committed, that they can
hold in suspense the arm of the proprietor and the agent, who, in
too many cases, if he dared, would exterminate them."[18]
A pretty result, this, for free labor and free competition, and
abolitionism, to have arrived at. But Ireland was always esteemed
_un mauvais sujet_. Let us cross St. George's Channel:
"The English peasant is thus deprived of almost every motive to
practice economy, and self-denial, beyond what suffices to provide
his family with food and clothing. Once a peasant in England, and
a man cannot hope that he himself, or his children, will ever be
anything better, than a mere laborer for weekly hire.
"This unhappy feature of an English peasant's life was most
powerfully, and only too justly depicted in those articles of 'The
Times,' to which I have referred above. It was there shown that
during the last half century, every thing has been done to deprive
the peasant of any interest in the preservation of public order;
of any wish to maintain the existing constitution of society; of
all hope of raising himself in the world, or of improving his
condition of life; of all attachment to his country; of all
feelings of there really existing any community of interest
between himself and the higher ranks of society; and of all
consciousness that he has anything to lose by political changes;
and that every thing has been done to render him dissatisfied with
his condition, envious of the richer classes, and discontented
with the existing order of things."[19]
This, too, is a pretty picture, which is not relieved by the
further information that,
"In the year 1770, there were, it is said, in England alone,
250,000 freehold estates in the hands of 250,000 different
families. In the year 1815, at the close of the revolutionary war,
the whole of the lands of England were concentrated in the hands
of only 32,000 proprietors."[20]
"What is the result? The labor market in the manufacturing towns
is constantly overstocked; the laborers and shopkeepers find new
and eager competitors constantly added to the list; competition in
the towns is rendered unnaturally intense; profits and wages are
both unnaturally reduced; the town work-houses and the town gaols
are crowded with inmates; the inhabitants are overburthened with
rates; and the towns swarm with paupers and misery.
"I know not what others may think, but to me it is a sad and
grievous spectacle, to see the enormous amount of vice and
degraded misery which our towns exhibit, and then to think, that
we are doing all we can to foster and stimulate the growth and
extension of this state of things, by that system of laws, which
drives so many of the peasants of both England and Ireland to the
towns, and increases the already vast mass of misery by so doing.
"I speak with deliberation, when I say, that I know of no
spectacle so degraded, and if I may be allowed to use a strong
word, so horrible, as the back streets and suburbs of English and
Irish towns, with their filthy inhabitants; with their crowds of
half-clad, filthy, and degraded children, playing in the dirty
kennels; with their numerous gin-palaces, filled with people,
whose hands and faces show how their flesh is, so to speak,
impregnated with spirituous liquors--the only solaces, poor
creatures, that they have!--and with poor young girls, whom a want
of religious training in their infancy, and misery, has driven to
the most degraded and pitiful of all pursuits."[21]
"Of 1600, [pauper children in London,] who were examined, 162
confessed that they had been in prison, not merely once, nor even
twice, but some of them several times; 116 had run away from their
homes; 170 slept in the "lodging-houses;" 253 had lived altogether
by beggary; 216 had neither shoes nor stockings; 280 had no hat or
cap, or covering for the head; 101 had no linen; 349 had never
slept in a bed; many had no recollection of ever having been in a
bed; 68 were the children of convicts."[22]
"The further we examine, the more painful, disgusting and
incredible does the tale become.
"We see on every hand stately palaces, to which no country in the
world offers any parallel. The houses of our rich are more
gorgeous and more luxurious than those of any other land. Every
clime is ransacked to adorn or furnish them. The soft carpets, the
heavy rich curtains, the luxuriously easy couches, the beds of
down, the services of plate, the numerous servants, the splendid
equipages, and all the expensive objects of literature, science,
and the arts, which crowd the palaces of England, form but items
in an _ensemble_ of refinement and
magnificence, which was never imagined or approached, in all the
splendor of the ancient empires.
"But look beneath all this display and luxury, and what do we see
there? A pauperized and suffering people.
"To maintain a show, we have degraded the masses, until we have
created an evil so vast, that we now despair of ever finding a
remedy."[23]
We may now dismiss Mr. Kay--this testimony is sufficiently direct
and sufficiently ample: and yet it would have been easy to have
introduced many more and stronger statements made by him, which
have been omitted because they were loo long to be quoted. Mr. Kay
is neither Chartist nor Socialist. He is a graduate of Trinity
College, Cambridge, a Barrister-at-law, and has traveled over
Europe for eight years, under an appointment from the Senate of
the University of Cambridge, as Traveling Bachelor of the
University, commissioned "to travel through Western Europe in
order to examine the social condition of the poorer classes of the
different countries."[24] The evidence of such a man should be
authoritative, but we will continue our quotations:
"It is undeniable that morality has declined in our days with the
progress of knowledge."[25]
"One word more, and we have done. On many questions of practical
duty, men are now affecting to be wiser
and better than the Bible. Plans of social progress and
improvement are rife, that have an air of transcendental
refinement about them, unknown to the homely morality of the Word
of God. We are becoming too sentimental to endure that even the
murderer shall be put to death. And now we are for bettering God's
ordinance of marriage itself; and we see a fine, romantic, tender
charm in an alliance of brothers and sisters, on which God has
stamped his curse. What may such things betoken? Are they ominous
of such unbridled lawlessness and lust as marked the days before
the Flood? Are they signs of the days not unlike these that are to
precede the coming of the Son of Man?"[26]
"The task of restoring health and soundness to a society so
fearfully diseased as ours unquestionably is, is on all hands
acknowledged to be at once the noblest and the most imperative to
which citizens or statesmen can now direct their energies."[27]
"Society, such as it now is in England, will not continue to
endure, &c."[28]
"The last battle of civilization is the severest: the last problem
the knottiest to solve. Out of all the multitudinous ingredients
and influences of the past; out of the conquest of nature, and the
victory of freedom; out of the blending and intermixture of all
previous forms
of polity and modifications of humanity, has arisen a complex
order of society, of which the disorders and anomalies are as
complex as its own structure. We are now summoned to the combat,
not with material difficulties, nor yet with oppressors nor with
priests, but with an imperfect and diseased condition of that
social world of which we form a part; with pains and evils
appalling in their magnitude, baffling in their subtlety,
perplexing in their complication, and demanding far more clear
insight and unerring judgment, than even purity of purpose, or
commanding energy of will. This conflict may be said to date from
the first French Revolution; and it has been increasing in
intensity ever since, till it has reached to a vividness and
solemnity of interest, which surpasses and overshadows the
attractions of all other topics, &c. &c."[29]
"England's rapidly accelerating decline is a very remarkable and
mournful phenomenon; it is a mortal sickness for which there is no
remedy. I liken the English of the present day to the Romans of
the third century after Christ."[30]
The analogy might be extended to nearly all of modern
civilization.
"Tremendous catastrophes have come to pass, and there is no
resistance; not a semblance of great men, no joy or enthusiasm, no
hopes for the future, except that the time will one day come, when
by means of mutual instruction every peasant boy shall be able to
read. The
truth of the thing is the unveiled destitution of the populace,
who are resolved to bear it no longer, and this again paves the
way for a revision of property; which is not, indeed, something
new under the sun, but has been unheard of for centuries past, and
even now seems quite inconceivable to our politicians, who have
set property, in the place of God, in the Holiest of Holies, &c,
&c."[31]
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 principal communities
of Christendom.