THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ISMS--SHEWING WHY THEY ABOUND AT THE NORTH, AND
ARE UNKNOWN AT THE SOUTH.
The exploitation, or unjust exactions of skill and capital in free
society, excite the learned and philanthropic to devise schemes of
escape, and impel the laborers to adopt those schemes, however
chimerical, because they feel that their situation cannot be worsted.
They are already slaves without masters, and that is the bathos of human
misery. Besides, universal liberty has disintegrated and dissolved
society, and placed men in isolated, selfish, and antagonistic
positions--in which each man is compelled to wrong others, in order to
be just to himself. But man's nature is social, not selfish, and he
longs and yearns to return to parental, fraternal and associative
relations. All the isms concur in promising closer and more associative
relations, in establishing at least a qualified community of property,
and in insuring the weak and unfortunate the necessaries and comforts of
life. Indeed, they all promise to establish slavery--minus, the master
and the overseer. As the evils which we have described are little felt
at the South, men here would as soon think of entering the lion's cage,
as going into one of their incestuous establishments. Mormonism is only
a monster development of the isms. They are all essentially alike, and
that the most successful, because, so far, it has been socialism--plus
the overseer. The mantle of Joe Smith descended on Brigham Young, and if
he transmit to a true prophet, there is no telling how long the thing
may work. Mormonism had its birth in Western New York, that land fertile
of isms--where also arose Spiritual Rappings and Oneida
Perfectionism--where Shakers, and Millenarians, and Millerites abound,
and all heresies do most flourish. Mormonism now is daily gathering
thousands of recruits from free society in Europe, Asia, Africa, and our
North, and not one from the South. It has no religion, but in place of
it, a sensual moral code, that shocks the common sense of propriety. But
it holds property somewhat in common, draws men together in closer and
more fraternal relations, and promises (probably falsely) a safe retreat
and refuge from the isolated and inimical relations, the killing
competition and exploitation, of free society. All the other isms do the
same--but mal-administration, or the want of a master, soon explodes
them. We saw last year an advertisement, under the hammer, of the last
of fourteen phalansteries, established at the North on the
Greely-Fourierite plan. The Shakers do better; but Mr. S. P. Andrews,
who is an expert, informs us that they, like the Mormons, have a
despotic head. Socialism, with such despotic head, approaches very near
to Southern slavery, and gets along very well so long as the despot
lives. Mr. S. P. Andrews should enlighten the public as to the progress
of the Free Love villages of Trialville, in Ohio, Modern Zion, on Long
Island, &c. "Self-elected despotism" is his theory of the perfection of
society. Has any Cromwell, or Napoleon, or Joe Smith, seized the sceptre
in those delightful villages, which we hope will soon inspire the pen of
some Northern Bocaccio. Human opinion advances in concentric circles.
Abolition swallows up the little isms, and Socialism swallows up
Abolition. Socialism long since attained the point of the circle most
distant from slavery, and is now rapidly coming round to the point
whence it started--that is, to slavery. Mr. Andrews, who is no humbug,
(except in so far as any philosopher is a humbug,) Mr. Andrews, who is
probably the foremost thinker in America, could, if he would, prove to
the Abolitionists and Socialists, that after a furious day's drive, like
that of Toby Lumpkin and his mother, they are just about to haul up at
the horse pond, in a few yards of the place where they started in the
morning. The Socialists, Louis Napoleon included, are trying to
establish slavery, whilst abusing the word.