justice, of truth, of a manly character developing itself in a manly
life. Wealth is often made the end to live for; not the means to live
by, and attain a manly character. The young man of good abilities does
not commonly propose it to himself to be a noble man, equipped with all
the intellectual and moral qualities which belong to that, and capable
of the duties which come thereof. He is satisfied if he can become a
rich man. It is the highest ambition of many a youth in this town to
become one of the rich men of Boston; to have the social position which
wealth always gives, and nothing else in this country can commonly
bestow. Accordingly, our young men that are now poor, will sacrifice
every thing to this one object; will make wealth the end, and will
become rich without becoming noble. But wealth without nobleness of
character is always vulgar. I have seen a clown staring at himself in
the gorgeous mirror of a French palace, and thought him no bad emblem of
many an ignoble man at home, surrounded by material riches which only
reflected back the vulgarity of their owner.
Other young men inherit wealth, but seldom regard it as a means of power
for high and noble ends, only as the means of selfish indulgence;
unneeded means to elevate yet more their self-esteem. Now and then you
find a man who values wealth only as an instrument to serve mankind
withal. I know some such men; their money is a blessing akin to genius,
a blessing to mankind, a means of philanthropic power. But such men are
rare in all countries, perhaps a little less so in Boston than in most
other large trading towns; still, exceeding rare. They are sure to meet
with neglect, abuse, and perhaps with scorn; if they are men of eminent
ability, superior culture, and most elevated moral aims, set off, too,
with a noble and heroic life, they are sure of meeting with eminent
hatred. I fear the man most hated in this town would be found to be some
one who had only sought to do mankind some great good, and stepped
before his age too far for its sympathy. Truth, Justice, Humanity, are
not thought in Boston to have come of good family; their followers are
not respectable. I am not speaking to blame men, only to show the fact;
we may meddle with things too high for us, but not understand nor
appreciate.
Now this disproportionate love of money appears in various ways. You see
it in the advantage that is taken of the feeblest, the most ignorant,
and the most exposed classes in the community. It is notorious that they
pay the highest prices, the dearest rents, and are imposed upon in their
dealings oftener than any other class of men; so the raven and the
hooded crow, it is said, seek out the sickliest sheep to pounce upon.
The fact that a man is ignorant, poor, and desperate, furnishes to many
men an argument for defrauding the man. It is bad enough to injure any
man; but to wrong an ignorant man, a poor and friendless man; to take
advantage of his poverty or his ignorance, and to get his services or
his money for less than a fair return--that is petty baseness under
aggravated circumstances, and as cowardly as it is mean. You are now and
then shocked at rich men telling of the arts by which they got their
gold--sometimes of their fraud at home, sometimes abroad, and a good man
almost thinks there must be a curse on money meanly got at first, though
it falls to him by honest inheritance.
This same disproportionate love of money appears in the fact that men,
not driven by necessity, engage in the manufacture, the importation, and
the sale of an article which corrupts and ruins men by hundreds; which
has done more to increase poverty, misery, and crime than any other one
cause whatever; and, as some think, more than all other causes whatever.
I am not speaking of men who aid in any just and proper use of that
article, but in its ruinous use. Yet such men, by such a traffic, never
lose their standing in society, their reputation in trade, their
character in the church. A good many men will think worse of you for
being an Abolitionist; men have lost their place in society by that
name; even Dr. Channing "hurt his usefulness" and "injured his
reputation" by daring to speak against that sin of the nation; but no
man loses caste in Boston by making, importing, and selling the cause
of ruin to hundreds of families--though he does it with his eyes open,
knowing that he ministers to crime and to ruin! I am told that large
quantities of New England rum have already been sent from this city to
California; it is notorious that much of it is sent to the nations of
Africa--if not from Boston, at least from New England--as an auxiliary
in the slave-trade. You know with what feelings of grief and indignation
a clergyman of this city saw that characteristic manufacture of his town
on the wharves of a Mahometan city. I suppose there are not ten
ministers in Boston who would not "get into trouble," as the phrase is,
if they were to preach against intemperance, and the causes that produce
intemperance, with half so much zeal as they innocently preach
"regeneration" and a "form of piety" which will never touch a single
corner of the earth. As the minister came down, the Spirit of Trade
would meet him on the pulpit stairs to warn him: "Business is business;
religion is religion; business is ours, religion yours; but if you make
or even allow religion to interfere with our business, then it will be
the worse for you--that is all!" You know it is not a great while since
we drove out of Boston the one Unitarian minister who was a fearless
apostle of temperance.[36] His presence here was a grief to that "form
of piety;" a disturbance to trade. Since then the peace of the churches
has not been much disturbed by the preaching of temperance. The effect
has been salutary; no Unitarian minister has risen up to fill that
place!
This same disproportionate love of money appears in the fact, that the
merchants of Boston still allow colored seamen to be taken from their
ships and shut up in the jails of another State. If they cared as much
for the rights of man as for money, as much for the men who sail the
ship as for the cargo it carries, I cannot think there would be brass
enough in South Carolina, or all the South, to hold another freeman of
Massachusetts in bondage, merely for the color of his skin. No doubt, a
merchant would lose his reputation in this city by engaging directly in
the slave-trade, for it is made piracy by the law of the land.[37] But
did any one ever lose his reputation by taking a mortgage on slaves as
security for a debt; by becoming, in that way or by inheritance, the
owner of slaves, and still keeping them in bondage?
You shall take the whole trading community of Boston, rich and poor,
good and bad, study the phenomena of trade as astronomers the phenomena
of the heavens, and from the observed facts, by the inductive method of
philosophy, construct the ethics of trade, and you will find one great
maxim to underlie the whole: Money must be made. Money-making is to the
ethics of trade what attraction is to the material world; what truth is
to the intellect, and justice in morals. Other things must yield to
that; that to nothing. In the effort to comply with this universal law
of trade, many a character gives way; many a virtue gets pushed aside;
the higher, nobler qualities of a man are held in small esteem.
This characteristic of the trading class appears in the thought of the
people as well as their actions. You see it in the secular literature of
our times; in the laws, even in the sermons; nobler things give way to
love of gold. So in an ill-tended garden, in some bed where violets
sought to open their fragrant bosoms to the sun, have I seen a cabbage
come up and grow apace, with thick and vulgar stalk, with coarse and
vulgar leaves, with rank unsavory look; it thrust aside the little
violet, which, underneath that impenetrable leaf, lacking the morning
sunshine and the dew of night, faded and gave up its tender life; but
above the grave of the violet there stood the cabbage, green,
expanding, triumphant, and all fearless of the frost. Yet the cabbage
also had its value and its use.
There are men in Boston, some rich, some poor, old and young, who are
free from this reproach; men that have a well-proportioned love of
money, and make the pursuit thereof an effort for all the noble
qualities of a man. I know some such men, not very numerous anywhere,
men who show that the common business of life is the place to mature
great virtues in; that the pursuit of wealth, successful or not, need
hinder the growth of no excellence, but may promote all manly life. Such
men stand here as violets among the cabbages, making a fragrance and a
loveliness all their own; attractive anywhere, but marvellous in such a
neighborhood as that.
* * * * *
Look next on the morals of Boston, as indicated by the Newspapers, the
daily and the weekly press. Take the whole newspaper literature of
Boston, cheap and costly, good and bad, study it all as a whole, and by
the inductive method construct the ethics of the press, and here you
find no signs of a higher morality in general than you found in trade.
It is the same centre about which all things gravitate here as there.
But in the newspapers the want of great principles is more obvious, and
more severely felt than in trade--the want of justice, of truth, of
humanity, of sympathy with man. In trade you meet with signs of great
power; the highway of commerce bears marks of giant feet. Our newspapers
seem chiefly in the hands of little men, whose cunning is in a large
ratio to their wisdom or their justice. You find here little ability,
little sound learning, little wise political economy; of lofty morals
almost nothing at all. Here, also, the dollar is both Pope and King;
right and truth are vassals, not much esteemed, nor over-often called to
pay service to their Lord, who has other soldiers with more pliant neck
and knee.
A newspaper is an instrument of great importance; all men read it; many
read nothing else; some it serves as reason and conscience too: in lack
of better, why not? It speaks to thousands every day on matters of great
moment--on matters of morals, of politics, of finance. It relates daily
the occurrences of our land, and of all the world. All men are affected
by it; hindered or helped. To many a man his morning paper represents
more reality than his morning prayer. There are many in a community like
this who do not know what to say--I do not mean what to think,
thoughtful men know what to think--about any thing till somebody tells
them; yet they must talk, for "the mouth goes always." To such a man a
newspaper is invaluable; as the idolater in the Judges had "a Levite to
his priest," so he has a newspaper to his reason or his conscience, and
can talk to the day's end. An able and humane newspaper would get this
class of persons into good habits of speech, and do them a service,
inasmuch as good habits of speech are better than bad.
One portion of this literature is degrading; it seems purposely so, as
if written by base men, for base readers, to serve base ends. I know not
which is most depraved thereby, the taste or the conscience. Obscene
advertisements are there, meant for the licentious eye; there are
loathsome details of vice, of crime, of depravity, related with the
design to attract, yet so disgusting that any but a corrupt man must
revolt from them; there are accounts of the appearance of culprits in
the lower courts, of their crime, of their punishment; these are related
with an impudent flippancy, and a desire to make sport of human
wretchedness and perhaps depravity, which amaze a man of only the
average humanity. We read of Judge Jeffreys and the bloody assizes in
England, one hundred and sixty years ago, but never think there are in
the midst of us men who, like that monster, can make sport of human
misery; but for a cent you can find proof that the race of such is not
extinct. If a penny-a-liner were to go into a military hospital, and
make merry at the sights he saw there, at the groans he heard, and the
keen smart his eye witnessed, could he publish his fiendish joy at that
spectacle--you would not say he was a man. If one mock at the crimes of
men, perhaps at their sins, at the infamous punishments they
suffer--what can you say of him?
It is a significant fact that the commercial newspapers, which of course
in such a town are the controlling newspapers, in reporting the European
news, relate first the state of the markets abroad, the price of cotton,
of consols, and of corn; then the health of the English queen, and the
movements of the nations. This is loyal and consistent; at Rome, the
journal used to announce first some tidings of the Pope, then of the
lesser dignitaries of the church, then of the discovery of new antiques,
and other matters of great pith and moment; at St. Petersburg, it was
first of the Emperor that the journal spoke; at Boston, it is legitimate
that the health of the dollar should be reported first of all.
The political newspapers are a melancholy proof of the low morality of
this town. You know what they will say of any party movement; that
measures and men are judged on purely party grounds. The country is
commonly put before mankind, and the party before the country. Which of
them in political matters pursues a course that is fair and just; how
many of them have ever advanced a great idea, or been constantly true to
a great principle of natural justice; how many resolutely oppose a great
wrong; how many can be trusted to expose the most notorious blunders of
their party; how many of them aim to promote the higher interests of
mankind? What servility is there in some of these journals, a cringing
to the public opinion of the party; a desire that "our efforts may be
appreciated!" In our politics every thing which relates to money is
pretty carefully looked after, though not always well looked after; but
what relates to the moral part of politics is commonly passed over with
much less heed. Men would compliment a senator who understood finance in
all its mysteries, and sneer at one who had studied as faithfully the
mysteries of war, or of slavery. The Mexican War tested the morality of
Boston, as it appears both in the newspapers and in trade, and showed
its true value.
There are some few exceptions to this statement; here and there is a
journal which does set forth the great ideas of this age, and is
animated by the spirit of humanity. But such exceptions only remind one
of the general rule.
In the sectarian journals the same general morality appears, but in a
worse form. What would have been political hatred in the secular prints,
becomes theological odium in the sectarian journals; not a mere hatred
in the name of party, but hatred in the name of God and Christ. Here is
less fairness, less openness, and less ability than there, but more
malice; the form, too, is less manly. What is there a strut or a
swagger, is here only a snivel. They are the last places in which you
need look for the spirit of true morality. Which of the sectarian
journals of Boston advocates any of the great reforms of the day? nay,
which is not an obstacle in the path of all manly reform? But let us not
dwell upon this, only look and pass by.
I am not about to censure the conductors of these journals, commercial,
political, or theological. I am no judge of any man's conscience. No
doubt they write as they can or must. This literature is as honest and
as able as "the circumstances will admit of." I look on it as an index
of our moral condition, for a newspaper literature always represents the
general morals of its readers. Grocers and butchers purchase only such
articles as their customers will buy; the editors of newspapers reveal
the moral character of their subscribers as well as their
correspondents. The transient literature of any age is always a good
index of the moral taste of the age. These two witnesses attest the
moral condition of the better part of the city; but there are men a good
deal lower than the general morals of trade and the press. Other
witnesses testify to their moral character.
* * * * *
Let me now speak of your moral condition as indicated by the Poverty in
this city. I have so recently spoken on the subject of poverty in
Boston, and printed the sermon, that I will not now mention the misery
it brings. I will only speak of the moral condition which it indicates,
and the moral effect it has upon us.
In this age, poverty tends to barbarize men; it shuts them out from the
educational influences of our times. The sons of the miserable class
cannot obtain the intellectual, moral, and religious education which is
the birthright of the comfortable and the rich. There is a great gulf
between them and the culture of our times. How hard it must be to climb
up from a cellar in Cove Place to wisdom, to honesty, to piety. I know
how comfortable pharisaic self-righteousness can say, "I thank thee I am
not wicked like one of these," and God knows which is the best before
His eyes, the scorner, or the man he loathes and leaves to dirt and
destruction. I know this poverty belongs to the state of transition we
are now in, and can only be ended by our passing through this into a
better. I see the medicinal effect of poverty, that with cantharidian
sting it drives some men to work, to frugality and thrift; that the
Irish has driven the American beggar out of the streets, and will shame
him out of the almshouse ere long. But there are men who have not force
enough to obey this stimulus; they only cringe and smart under its
sting. Such men are made barbarians by poverty, barbarians in body, in
mind and conscience, in heart and soul. There is a great amount of this
barbarism in Boston; it lowers the moral character of the place, as
icebergs in your harbor next June would chill the air all day.
The fact that such poverty is here, that so little is done by public
authority, or by the ablest men in the land, to remove the evil tree and
dig up its evil root; that amid all the wealth of Boston and all its
charity, there are not even comfortable tenements for the poor to be had
at any but a ruinous rent--that is a sad fact, and bears a sad testimony
to our moral state! Sometimes the spectacle of misery does good,
quickening the moral sense and touching the electric tie which binds all
human hearts into one great family; but when it does not lead to this
result, then it debases the looker-on. To know of want, of misery, of
all the complicated and far-extended ill they bring; to hear of this,
and to see it in the streets; to have the money to alleviate, and yet
not to alleviate; the wisdom to devise a cure therefor, and yet make no
effort towards it--that is to be yourself debased and barbarized. I have
often thought, in seeing the poverty of London, that the daily spectacle
of such misery did more in a year to debauch the British heart than all
the slaughter at Waterloo. I know that misery has called out heroic
virtue in some men and women, and made philanthropists of such as
otherwise had been only getters and keepers of gain. We have noble
examples of that in the midst of us; but how many men has poverty trod
down into the mire; how many has this sight of misery hardened into cold
worldliness, the man frozen into mere respectability, its thin smile on
his lips, its ungodly contempt in his heart!
* * * * *
Out of this barbarism of poverty there come three other forms of evil
which indicate the moral condition of Boston; of that portion named just
now as below the morals of trade and the press. These also I will call
up to testify.
* * * * *
One is Intemperance. This is a crime against the body; it is felony
against your own frame. It makes a schism amongst your own members. The
amount of it is fearfully great in this town. Some of our most wealthy
citizens, who rent their buildings for the unlawful sale of rum to be
applied to an intemperate abuse, are directly concerned in promoting
this intemperance; others, rich but less wealthy, have sucked their
abundance out of the bones of the poor, and are actual manufacturers of
the drunkard and the criminal. Here are numerous distilleries owned, and
some of them conducted, I am told, by men of wealth. The fire thereof is
not quenched at all by day, and there is no night there; the worm dieth
not. There out of the sweetest plant which God has made to grow under a
tropic sun, men distil a poison the most baneful to mankind which the
world has ever known. The poison of the Borgias was celebrated once;
cold-hearted courtiers shivered at its name. It never killed many; those
with merciful swiftness. The poison of rum is yet worse; it yearly
murders thousands; kills them by inches, body and soul. Here are
respectable and wealthy men, men who this day sit down in a Christian
church and thank God for his goodness, with contrite hearts praise him
for that Son of Man who gave his life for mankind, and would gladly give
it to mankind; yet these men have ships on the sea to bring the poor
man's poison here, or bear it hence to other men as poor; have
distilleries on the land to make still yet more for the ruin of their
fellow Christians; have warehouses full of this plague, which "outvenoms
all the worms of Nile;" have shops which they rent for the illegal and
murderous sale of this terrible scourge. Do they not know the ruin which
they work; are they the only men in the land who have not heard of the
effects of intemperance? I judge them not, great God! I only judge
myself. I wish I could say, "They know not what they do;" but at this
day who does not know the effect of intemperance in Boston?
I speak not of the sale of ardent spirits to be used in the arts, to be
used for medicine, but of the needless use thereof; of their use to
damage the body and injure the soul of man. The chief of your police
informs me there are twelve hundred places in Boston, where this article
is sold to be drunk on the spot; illegally sold. The Charitable
Association of Mechanics, in this city, have taken the accumulated
savings of more than fifty years, and therewith built a costly
establishment, where intoxicating drink is needlessly but abundantly
sold! Low as the moral standard of Boston is, low as are the morals of
the press and trade, I had hoped better things of these men, who live in
the midst of hard-working laborers, and see the miseries of intemperance
all about them. But the dollar was too powerful for their temperance.
Here are splendid houses, where the rich man or the thrifty needlessly
drinks. Let me leave them; the evil Demon of Intemperance appears not
there; he is there, but under well-made garments, amongst educated men,
who are respected and still respect themselves. Amid merriment and song
the Demon appears not. He is there, gaunt, bony, and destructive, but so
elegantly clad, with manners so unoffending, you do not mark his face,
nor fear his steps. But go down to that miserable lane, where men
mothered by Misery and sired by Crime, where the sons of Poverty and the
daughters of Wretchedness, are huddled thick together, and you see this
Demon of Intemperance in all his ugliness. Let me speak soberly:
exaggeration is a figure of speech I would always banish from my
rhetoric, here, above all, where the fact is more appalling than any
fiction I could devise. In the low parts of Boston, where want abounds,
where misery abounds, intemperance abounds yet more, to multiply want,
to aggravate misery, to make savage what poverty has only made
barbarian; to stimulate passion into crime. Here it is not music and the
song which crown the bowl; it is crowned by obscenity, by oaths, by
curses, by violence, sometimes by murder. These twine the ivy round the
poor man's bowl; no, it is the Upas that they twine. Think of the
sufferings of the drunkard himself, of his poverty, his hunger and his
nakedness, his cold; think of his battered body; of his mind and
conscience, how they are gone. But is that all? Far from it. These
curses shall become blows upon his wife; that savage violence shall be
expended on his child. In his senses this man was a barbarian; there are
centuries of civilization betwixt him and cultivated men. But the man of
wealth, adorned with respectability and armed with science, harbors a
Demon in the street, a profitable Demon to the rich man who rents his
houses for such a use. The Demon enters our barbarian, who straightway
becomes a savage. In his fury he tears his wife and child. The law,
heedless of the greater culprits, the Demon, and the demon-breeder,
seizes our savage man and shuts him in the jail. Now he is out of the
tempter's reach; let us leave him; let us go to his home. His wife and
children still are there, freed from their old tormentor. Enter: look
upon the squalor, the filth, the want, the misery still left behind.
Respectability halts at the door with folded arms, and can no further
go. But charity, the love of man which never fails, enters even there;
enters to lift up the fallen, to cheer the despairing, to comfort and to
bless. Let us leave her there, loving the unlovely, and turn to other
sights.