+-------------------------------------------------+
|Transcriber’s note: |
| |
|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. |
| |
+-------------------------------------------------+
[Illustration: Decoration]
[Illustration: J Bronterre]
A man who lived for truth, and truth alone--
Brave as the bravest--generous as brave;
A man whose heart was rent by every moan
That burst from every trodden, tortured slave;
A man prepared to fight, prepared to die,
To lighten, banish, human misery.
The mighty scorned him, vilified, oppressed;
The bitter cup of poverty and pain
Forced him to drink. He was misfortune’s guest
Through weary, weary years; his anguish’d brain
Shed tears of pity--wrath--for Mankind’s woe;
For his own sorrows tears could never flow.
He loved the people with a brother’s love;
He hated tyrants with a tyrant’s hate.
He turned from kings below, to God above--
The King of kings, who smites the wicked great.
The shame, the scourge, the terror of their race,
Those demons in earth’s holy dwelling-place.
Thou noble soul!--around thee gathered those
Who, poor and trampled patriots, were like thee.
Thou art not dead!--thy martyred spirit glows
In us, a band devoted of the free;
We best can celebrate thy natal day,
By virtues, valours, such as marked thy way.
WILLIAM MACCALL.
THE
RISE, PROGRESS, AND PHASES
OF
HUMAN SLAVERY:
HOW IT CAME INTO THE WORLD,
AND HOW IT SHALL BE MADE TO GO OUT.
BY
JAMES BRONTERRE O’BRIEN.
[Illustration: Decoration]
LONDON:
WILLIAM REEVES, 185, FLEET STREET, E.C.
G. STANDRING, 8 AND 9, FINSBURY STREET;
MARTIN BOON, 170, FARRINGDON ROAD, W.C.
SOUTH AFRICA: HAY BROS., WHOLESALE AGENTS, KING WILLIAM’S TOWN.
1885
TO THE PEOPLE!
This little Work, by an eloquent denunciator of the manifold evils of
Profitmongering and Landlordism, whose entire life was devoted to the
advocacy of Social Rights, as distinguished from Socialistic theories,
is now given to the world for the first time in a complete form.
The Author, in his lifetime, was frustrated in his design of finishing
his History through the ceaseless machinations of working-class
exploiters and landlords. This has been at length achieved by the aid
of his various writings preserved in print. The object steadily kept in
view has been to give the _ipsissima verba_ of the Author, so that no
foreign pen may garble or mislead.
In order to provide room for so much additional matter as was essential
to the elucidation of the great reforms needed in the subjects of Land
Nationalisation, Credit, Currency, and Exchange, it has been found
expedient to omit from this edition some disquisitions on subjects of
ephemeral and passing interest, not closely connected with the scope of
the Work. Ample compensation, however, has been given in the additions
which have been made for the elucidation and enforcement of the saving
truths herein contained.
“SPARTACUS.”
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PROLETARIANISM SPRUNG FROM CHATTEL SLAVERY.
Importance of Social Reform--Universality of covert or open
Slavery--Partial Prevalence of Working Class--Origin in
Proletarianism--Advent of Christianity--its Effects on Slavery--Middle
and Working Classes the product of Emancipations--Classification of the
_Proletariat_ 1
CHAPTER II.
ORIGIN OF SLAVERY IN PATERNAL AUTHORITY.
Antiquity of Slavery--anterior to Legal Institution--Examples cited
from Ancient History--Arose from Patriarchal Government--despotic
Power of Head of Family--Marriage Custom of Purchase--Aristocratic
Governments favourable to Development--Decadence under Republics 8
CHAPTER III.
CAUSES OF PARENTAL DESPOTISM.
Evidences from Egypt and Persia--Supreme Authority of Family
Head--First Legal Limitation under Roman Empire--Necessity for gradual
Growth of Slavery--Source of Paternal Riches--Importance of Chief of
Family 13
CHAPTER IV.
INCREASE AND CONSOLIDATION OF SLAVERY.
Sanction given by Law and Public Opinion--Various Causes of
Enslavement--Practices of Ancient Germans--Analogy in Modern Commercial
and Funding Systems and Expatriation of Irish Peasantry--Slavery among
the Jews 19
CHAPTER V.
OPINION OF THE ANCIENT WORLD ON SLAVERY.
Permanence of Slavery under all Revolutions--Ignorance of principle of
Human Equality--Theory and Personal Experience of Plato--Contentment
of Slaves with their Condition--Occasional Comfort and Happiness of
Slaves--Absence of Revolts against Slavery--Social and Political Rights
ignored by Greeks and Romans 26
CHAPTER VI.
UNIVERSALITY OF PUBLIC OPINION AS TO MASTER AND SLAVES.
System acquiesced in by Slave-Class--Insurrections and Rebellions from
other causes than Hatred of Slavery--Rising under Spartacus--conditions
wanting for Success--Contrast of Modern Aspirations after
Freedom--Example from enslaved Roman Citizens--Preference of Slaves for
their Condition 33
CHAPTER VII.
COMPARISON OF ANCIENT AND MODERN SLAVERY.
Forces which overthrew Chattel Slavery--Advantages of Chattel Slaves
over Freedmen and Wages-slaves--Natural Fecundity esteemed a Blessing,
not a Curse--Condition of American Slaves under Slavery 40
CHAPTER VIII.
EXPLOITATION-VALUE OF SLAVE AND FREE LABOUR.
Contrast of Plantation-Servants with British Workpeople--Affluence of
former American Slaves--Misery of Free Labourers and Artisans--Value of
Irish Peasants and English Workers--Free and Slave Children
in America 47
CHAPTER IX.
HISTORY OF EARLY SOCIAL REFORMERS.
Intention of foregoing Contrast--Difficulties of Christian
Revolution, and comparative Facility of coming Ones--Essenes as Early
Reformers--Difficulties in the way of Christian innovations on Pagan
Slavery 54
CHAPTER X.
PROGRESS OF EARLY CHRISTIAN PROPAGANDA.
Opposition from corrupt Slave-Caste--Detestation of Christian
Doctrines by Slave-owners--Incomprehensibility of the new Doctrine
of Equality--Absence of a destitute Free People a Drawback on
Reform--Spread of the New Teachings--Alarm, and Persecution of the New
Faith 61
CHAPTER XI.
THE FOUR GREAT PERSECUTIONS.
Obscurity and Insignificance of Early Reformers their best
Protection--Christians the great Levellers--Nero’s Persecution--The
Blood of the Martyrs the Seed of the Church--Persecution of
Domitian--Martyrdoms under Trajan--Tortures under Antonius 68
CHAPTER XII.
PROGRESS OF PROPAGANDA TO THE TENTH PERSECUTION.
Seven Years’ Persecution of Equalitarian Innovators--Seventh
Great Persecution--Christians charged with Sorcery in Eighth
Persecution--Tortures of Ninth and Tenth Persecutions--Pretended
Conversion of Constantine--Lives of Early Christian exemplars to the
Pagan World 75
CHAPTER XIII.
DEBASEMENT OF THE NEW POWER WHEN SEIZED BY RULERS.
Cost of making the New Ideas triumphant--Change in Character in the
hands of Kings, Courtiers, and Profitmongers--Emancipations become a
matter of Policy and Profit--Repudiation of principles of Fraternity
and Equality--Horrors of introduction of Proletarianism 82
CHAPTER XIV.
SERVICE OF CHRISTIANITY IN BREAKING CASTE-BONDS.
Division of Emancipated Slaves into two Classes of
Proletarians--Equality and Fraternity gave the desire for
Liberty--Inveteracy of Caste-prejudice--Perversion of Christianity
under Constantine--Antagonism of Wages-Slavery and Christianity 89
CHAPTER XV.
FORM OF SLAVERY UNDER MODERN CIVILIZATION.
Persistence of Chattel-Slavery in Eastern Countries--Assumption of form
of Wages-Slavery under Modern Civilization--Creation of Millionaire
Capitalists by present System--Result in Ruin and Starvation of the
Labouring Class--Necessity of repressive Armies and Police--Measures
necessary to secure Social Reform 96
CHAPTER XVI.
REFORMS AS MUCH NEEDED IN AMERICA AND IN COLONIES AS IN EUROPE.
Answer to question, “How is Human Slavery to go out?”--Insufficiency of
mere Political Freedom--Accessibility of Public Lands in new Countries
their chief Advantage--Inadequacy of Universal Suffrage without a
Knowledge of Social Rights--America falling into
same Abyss as Europe 104
CHAPTER XVII.
RELIEF TO UNEMPLOYED OR DESTITUTE A RIGHT--NOT A CHARITY.
Inability of a People ignorant of Social Rights to choose
Representatives--Duties of a wise Democracy--Omnipotency of a Knowledge
of Social Rights--Facility of Application of Social Reforms--Exposition
of the three Provisional Measures necessary 109
CHAPTER XVIII.
GRADUAL RESUMPTION OF PUBLIC LANDS BY THE STATE.
Necessity of Agrarian Reform--Crown Lands, Church Lands, and Corporation
Lands to be immediately resumed, and their Rent applied to the relief of
Taxation--The Rich have no right to meddle with them--Needed by the
exploited Millions, as a Fulcrum to raise them from the Earth 115
CHAPTER XIX.
NATIONAL DEBT A MORTGAGE ON REALISED PROPERTY.
Necessity for Adjustment of Public and Private Debts--Their
overwhelming Burden must result in Civil War--Third Resolution the
only Remedy--Opinion of Cobbett--Enormous Increase of Debt through
Improvements in Manufactures--Only just Claims of Public and Private
Creditors 120
CHAPTER XX.
NATIONAL LANDS AND CREDIT FOR THE USE OF THE PEOPLE.
Unjust Laws to enable the Few to deprive the Working Class of their
Earnings--Private Property in Land the Basis of Wages-Slavery--Raw
Materials of Wealth belong to all--Land and Money Lords govern the
World--Right of Working Class to the Use of Credit--Surplus of Earnings
of Working Class beyond Consumption the Source of all Capital 126
CHAPTER XXI.
NATIONAL SYSTEM OF CURRENCY AND EXCHANGE REQUIRED.
Inadequacy and Absurdity of present Medium of Exchange--Necessity of
new National Currency for the Home Trade--Example from Iron Currency of
Sparta--Labour Notes of Guernsey--Gold and Silver mere Commodities--All
four Reforms must be combined 134
CHAPTER XXII.
EVIL OF MONOPOLIES AND EXPLOITATION OF INDUSTRIES.
False principle of Law-made Property--Absurdity of Funding System
and Borrowing from Investors--Evil of Public Works in hands of
Profitmongers and Speculators--Rapacity of Predatory Classes--Efforts
of Robespierre to abolish their nefarious System--his legal
Assassination in consequence--All the evils of Society the work of
Landlords and Profitmongers 143
THE
RISE, PROGRESS, AND PHASES
OF
HUMAN SLAVERY.
CHAPTER I.
PROLETARIANISM SPRUNG FROM CHATTEL SLAVERY.
Importance of Social Reform--Universality of Covert or
Open Slavery--Partial Prevalence of Working Class--Origin
in Proletarianism--Advent of Christianity--Its Effects
on Slavery--Middle and Working Classes the Produce of
Emancipations--Classification of the _Proletariat_.
At this critical period of the world’s history, when either the whole
of society must undergo a peaceful Social Reformation that shall
strike at the root of abuses, or else be incessantly menaced with
revolutionary violence and anarchy, it becomes a subject of grave
interest to ascertain how Human Slavery came into the world; how it
has been propagated; wherefore it has been endured so long; the varied
phases it has assumed in modern times; and, finally, how it may be
successfully grappled with and extinguished, so that henceforth it may
exist only in the history of the past.
Glancing over the world’s map, we find nearly all the inhabited
parts parcelled out into various nations and races--some called
civilized, some savage, and the rest, forming the greater part, in some
intermediate state of semi-barbarism. One sad feature, however, is
found, with hardly an exception, to belong to all. It is Slavery, in
one form or another;--it is the subjection of man to his fellow-man by
force or fraud. Yes, disguise it as we may, human slavery is everywhere
to be found--as rife in countries called Christian and civilized as
in those called barbarous and pagan--as rife in the western as in the
eastern hemisphere--as rife in the middle of the nineteenth century
as in the pagan days of the Ptolemies and the Pharaohs. The only
difference is, it is in the one case slavery direct and avowed; in the
other, slavery hypocritically masked under legal forms. The latter is
the phase slavery has assumed in countries calling themselves Christian
and civilized; but it is a slavery not the less galling and unbearable
because it is indirect and disguised.
What are called the “Working Classes” are the slave populations of
civilized countries. These classes constitute the basis of European
society in particular and of all civilized societies in general. We
make this restriction, because there are societies in which there is
found nothing to correspond with what in England and France are called
the working classes. For example, they are unknown in Arabia, amongst
the Nomad tribes of Africa, the Red-Indians of America, and the hunter
tribes of Tartary; and, although in process of development, they are
comparatively “few and far between” in Russia, Turkey, Greece and,
indeed, throughout the nations of the East in general.
Amongst those who write books and deliver speeches about the working
classes, few concern themselves to note this peculiarity in their
history, namely, the fact that they exist in some countries and not in
others; and the no less startling fact, that it is only at particular
epochs of history, and only under certain peculiar circumstances of
society, that they have been known to spring into social existence as
a distinctive class. Books, journals, pamphlets, essays, speeches,
sermons, Acts of Parliament, all are alike silent upon this notable
fact. Nobody dreams of inquiring whether the working classes do, or do
not, constitute a separate and distinct race in the countries they are
found in; or of asking themselves what cause or causes produced them
at particular epochs and in certain climes, while they continue to be
unknown at other epochs and in other climes; and why we find them, as
it were, sown broadcast in one country, while they appear but emerging
into doubtful existence in other countries. In truth, the history of
the middle and working classes has still to be written; and though it
is far from our present purpose to undertake any such task, we shall,
nevertheless, of necessity have to draw largely upon history for the
elucidation of the facts and arguments by which we shall support our
views upon the subject of slavery.
Not to encumber the question with details which, however interesting
to antiquarians and scholars, would be out of place here, let us
briefly observe at once, that the working classes, however general
and extensive an element they constitute in modern society, are,
nevertheless, but an emanation from another element, much more
extensive and general, bequeathed to us by the ancient world under the
name of Proletarians. By the term Proletarians is to be understood,
not merely that class of citizens to which the electoral census of the
Romans gave the name, but every description of persons of both sexes
who, having no masters to own them as slaves, and consequently to be
chargeable with their maintenance, and who, being without fortune
or friends, were obliged to procure their subsistence as they best
could--by labour, by mendicity, by theft, or by prostitution. The
Romans used the term to denote the lowest, or lowest but one, class of
voters--those who, being without property, had only their offspring
(_proles_) to offer as hostages to the State for their good behavior,
or rather as guarantees for not abusing their rights of citizenship. We
use the term in the more enlarged sense of its modern acceptation, to
denote every description of persons who are dependent upon others for
the means of earning their daily bread, without being actual slaves.
In the early periods of history, and, indeed, until some time after
the introduction of Christianity, the Proletarians constituted a very
small fraction of society. The reason is obvious. Actual slaves and
their owners formed the bulk of every community. The few Proletarians
of the old Pagan world were either decayed families who had lost the
patrimonies of their fathers, or else the descendants of manumitted
slaves, who, in succeeding to the condition of freemen (acquired for
them by their enfranchised forefathers), succeeded also to their
poverty and precarious tenure of life, by inheriting the disadvantage
of having no patrons bound to protect them, no masters answerable for
their maintenance, no market for their labour. But as such manumissions
were, before the establishment of Christianity, comparatively of rare
occurrence, and as the offspring of them were as likely to be absorbed
in time by the slave-owning class as to sink into and swell the
Proletarian, the result was, that until the times of Augustus Cæsar,
and indeed for a considerable period after, the Proletarians were by
no means a numerous class. In other words, there were comparatively
few upon whom the necessity was imposed of obtaining a precarious
subsistence by hired labour, mendicity, theft, or prostitution. Almost
all kinds of labour, agricultural and mechanical, were performed
by slaves; masters had, therefore, little or no occasion to hire
“free labourers.” Prostitution was followed as a profession only by
courtesans who were freed-women or the offspring of freed-women. The
slave class who were devoted to that degradation were either the
property of masters (of whose households they formed part) or else of
mangones, or slave-merchants, who openly sold them or let them out on
hire for that purpose. Of beggars and thieves there could have been
comparatively few, for the same reasons the conditions of society, as
then constituted, did not make place for them. As already observed,
almost every one was either an actual slave or an owner of slaves.
If a slave-owner, he lived upon the revenues of his estates--upon
his possessions, of which his slaves constituted a part, often the
greater part. If a slave, his wants were supplied, and his necessities
provided for, by those to whom he belonged. If a predial slave, he was
kept out of the produce of his master’s farms, just as the herds and
flocks were kept, both being regarded alike in the light of chattel
property. If a domestic slave, his keep was a necessary part of his
master’s household expenses. If let out for hire (an ordinary condition
of ancient slavery), a portion of his gains was of necessity applied
to his own maintenance. In any case--in all cases--he was exempt from
want, and from the fear of want, as well as from all care and anxiety
about providing for his subsistence. He could not, it is true, earn
wages or acquire property for himself without his master’s leave; but
neither, on the other hand, was he liable to starvation or privation
because there might happen to be no work for him to do. Work or no
work, he was always sure to be well fed, well housed, well clothed,
and well cared for, as long as his master had enough and was satisfied
with him. If he was incapable of acquiring property, so was he also
exempt from its cares, and sure to participate in the use of his
master’s, at least to the extent requisite for keeping him in bodily
health and in good condition. Nor were slaves always debarred from the
acquisition of property. There are instances recorded of slaves having
been permitted to amass considerable fortunes, though this was rarely
the case till after their masters manumitted them. Some also became
celebrated as grammarians, poets, and teachers of _belles lettres_ and
philosophy. Indeed, when they happened to have good, kind masters their
lot was by no means a hard one;--it was an enviable one in comparison
with that of a modern “free-born Briton,” rejoicing in the status
of an “independent labourer.” Of this we shall adduce proofs enough
by-and-by. Suffice it, for the present, to observe, that so well must
slaves have been used to fare under the old pagan system, that terms
corresponding with our “wanton,” “saucy,” “pampered,” are of frequent
occurrence in the old Greek and Roman classics as applied to slaves,
particularly domestic or menial. At all events, destitution, in the
modern sense, was unknown to them; and, with it, were also unknown
its inevitable consequences--mendicity, robbery, theft, prostitution,
and crime--_as characteristic of a class or of a system_. Individual
or isolated cases there might be, and these chiefly amongst the
manumitted; but there was no large class of persons subsisting by such
means--no outlawed class compelled, as it were, by the very first law
of nature--self-preservation--to erect such means into a system in
order to preserve life.
Social evils there were--frightful evils--under the old pagan system.
Slavery itself was an evil--an appalling evil--under even its most
favourable conditions. But fearful as those evils were--hateful as
direct slavery must ever be while man is man--the ancient pagan
world has exhibited nothing so revolting and truly abominable as the
development and progress of Proletarianism, which was consequent upon
the breaking up of the old system of slavery, and which has ever since
gained more and more strength in every age, till, in our times, it has
made Proletarians of three-fourths of the people of every civilized
country, and threatens society itself with actual dissolution.
Strange that what God designed to be man’s greatest blessing should
be made man’s greatest curse by man’s own perversity! Yet so it is
with almost every good thing designed or invented to perfect man in
wisdom and civilization. It is so with science and machinery, it is
so with money; it is so with public credit; it is so with mercantile
enterprise; it is so with the institution of private property; and so,
also, it has hitherto been with the divine institution of Christianity
itself.
Christianity was introduced into the world at a period when the cup of
human wickedness was full to overflowing. The inequalities of human
condition were then greater than at any antecedent epoch. Wars the most
bloody and brutal, and on the most extensive scale, had just ravaged
the whole civilized world, ending with the destruction of the Roman
Republic and with the erection of a military empire which threatened
all nations and all future generations with irredeemable bondage. The
long internecine struggles of Marius and Sylla, of Julius Cæsar and
Pompey, and afterwards of Anthony and Augustus, had crimsoned three
parts of the globe with human blood, and let loose such a universal
torrent of rapine, lust, proscriptions, conspiracy, and crime of every
sort throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa, that hardly any nation or
people escaped the general demoralization. Direct human slavery--the
personal subjection of man to man as property--was at its height as a
social institution. Thousands and hundreds of thousands who had been
free citizens were taken prisoners and sold as slaves during those
horrid wars. To escape similar disasters, whole nations and races
without number placed themselves under the protectorate of Rome,
paid tribute to the imperial exchequer, and basely bartered their
independence and the rights and liberties of their subjects to win the
smiles or to court the pleasure of Augustus and his successors. Rome
herself was a mass of incarnadined corruption. To reconcile the Romans
to their newly forged fetters it became the policy of their government
to brutalize their minds with gladiatorial shows, or with the familiar
sight of human beings torn to pieces by wild beasts, or by shedding
each other’s blood with a ferocity unknown to wild beasts, and to
corrupt their hearts and manners with importations of all that was most
debasing in the systematized lewdness and debaucheries of the Grecian
stage.
It was at this peculiar crisis of human affairs that Christianity
made its appearance in the world. Need we say the divine mission of
its Author was to rescue humanity from the scourges we have been
describing, to bind up its bleeding wounds, and to infuse into it
a spirit the opposite of what had produced the appalling vices and
evils so rife at the time of His advent? Need we expatiate upon the
marvellous successes which attended the labours of Himself and his
apostles in the early propagation of the Gospel, or upon the amazing
revolution which His followers wrought in the minds of men during the
three first centuries? It is quite unnecessary to do so: history has
made the world familiar with the prodigies of those days. Suffice it to
say that anything like so extraordinary and so universal a revolution
in the opinions and manners of men had never before been conceived,
much less operated. Upon this point, at least, all historians of credit
and all true philosophers are agreed.
Amongst the greatest of these marvels was the gradual but rapid
extinction of direct human slavery, which took place throughout
the greater part of the Roman empire during the three first ages.
Antecedently to the preaching of the Gospel, the emancipation of slaves
was but of rare and casual occurrence: it happened only on those
unusual occasions when a slave could purchase his freedom, or get
somebody to purchase it for him; or when a benevolent owner conferred
it upon him as the reward of long and faithful services; or when he
broke loose from his owner, to become a pirate or bandit; or when
some ambitious chieftain or conspirator conferred it illegally, by
draughting him into his insurgent battalions. But how few the aggregate
of these emancipations were, even in the early days of the empire, we
may infer from a passage in Seneca, where he tells us that, upon the
occasion of a discussion in the senate upon sumptuary laws, a certain
senator, having proposed that all slaves should be forced to wear a
certain uniform, was immediately reminded of the danger there would be
in furnishing the slaves with so ready a means of contrasting their own
numbers with the paucity of their masters. Indeed, Tacitus also informs
us, that when the quæstor, Curtius Lupus, was dispersing a revolt of
slaves which took place in Italy about the twenty-fourth year of the
vulgar era, “Rome trembled at the frightful number of the slaves,”
as compared with the small number of free citizens--a number which,
Tacitus further states, was diminishing every day. It would be easy to
multiply proofs of this kind, but it is unnecessary, seeing that all
historians admit that no emancipation of slaves upon a large scale--no
systematic emancipations upon principle--took place antecedently to
the introduction of Christianity; but that from the moment when the
Gospel began to take root in Rome and in its tributary provinces--from
that moment the manumissions of slaves began to take place frequently
and systematically, till at last, upon the complete establishment of
Christianity, direct personal slavery was entirely abolished.
Here, however, the perversity of man stepped in, to undo all that
Christianity had done. The very emancipations it operated, and which
it intended for the happiness of the emancipated, and to serve as
the foundation of a new social edifice, in which all should enjoy
equal rights and equal laws--these very emancipations were made a
curse instead of a blessing to the emancipated, and to serve for the
foundation of a worse system of slavery than any that was known under
the Cæsars or the Pharaohs, or than any that existed in the Southern
States of America or under any Oriental despotism.
Yes, the perverse ingenuity of man has turned the systematic and
benevolent emancipations operated by Christianity into an evil greater
than the evil it sought to redress--into an indirect and masked system
of slavery more hideous and unbearable than the direct and undisguised
slavery it warred against. For what did these Christian emancipations
operate; and what have been their consequences to humanity? They
turned well-fed, well-housed, comfortable slaves into ragged, starving
paupers; and their consequences have been to fill Europe with a race of
Proletarians by far more numerous and miserable than the human chattels
of the ancients, whose place they occupy in modern civilization.
Out of the systematic emancipations (the progressive and ultimately
universal manumission of slaves) operated by Christianity have sprung
what are now called the middle and working classes. The more fortunate
of the manumitted and of their posterity have become our modern
Bourgeois; the less fortunate and more numerous have become our modern
Proletarians. These latter are what the French call _le Prolétariat
de l’Europe_; and this _Prolétariat_ their Guizots and doctrinaires
now divide into the four following classes, which we pray all true
democrats to mark, learn, and inwardly digest:--1, les Ouvriers; 2,
les Mendians; 3, les Voleurs; and 4, les Filles Publiques: that is
to say, 1, Workmen; 2, Beggars; 3, Robbers; and 4, Prostitutes!--a
classification which must be highly flattering to the operative class,
and enamour them vastly of royal and doctrinaire governments.
These several divisions of the _Prolétariat_ are thus defined by the
doctrinaires:--
“A workman is a Proletarian who works for wages in order to live.
“A beggar is a Proletarian who will not or cannot work, and who
begs in order to live.
“A robber is a Proletarian who will neither work nor beg, but who
robs or steals in order to live.
“A public woman is a Proletarian who will neither work nor beg nor
steal, but who prostitutes herself in order to live.”
Such is the classification by which the vast majority of civilized
society is nowadays distinguished by writers of the first eminence!
Such is the classification they justify and would uphold! Nay, as
we shall show, they offer it to us as the legitimate development of
civilization, and as a just and righteous inheritance purchased for us
by the blood of our Redeemer, and bequeathed to us through eighteen
centuries of Gospel propagandism!!!
[Illustration: Decoration]