Until within a few years past, this dogma was stereotyped in all the
text-books of the country--from the horn-book to the most eminent
treatise on Moral Science for colleges and universities. From the days
of Jefferson until now, it has been the text for the noisy twaddle of
the “stump-politician,” and the profound discussions of the grave
senator in the Congress of the United States. If this dogma, as it
generally exists in thought, be true, it will follow, that any and
every abridgment of liberty is a violation of original and natural
right--that is, inalienable right. Hence every system of slavery must
be based upon a false principle. The popular sense in which this
language is generally understood, from father to son, is evidently the
literal sense. But taken in this sense, the doctrine is utterly false.
For men are born in a state of infancy, and grow up to the state of
manhood; and infants are entirely incapable of freedom, and do not
enjoy a particle of it. They _are_ not, therefore, born equally free,
but in a state of entire subjection. They grow up, it is true--if
they be not imbeciles--to a degree of mental liberty, that is, the
liberty of arbitrary volition in the plain matters of _right_ and
_wrong_, and hence are accountable; but the degree of this liberty, or
how far they are thus mentally free, depends upon the accident of
birth, education, and numerous coincident circumstances, which
destroys all equality of mental freedom; and as to _equality_ in other
respects, it is scarcely a decent regard to the feelings of mankind to
affirm their equality. They are not _physically_ equal. No two men
will compare exactly in this respect. They are not _politically_
equal. The history of all human governments, throughout all time,
shows this. To be “hewers of wood and drawers of water,” in unequal
and subordinate positions, _to the few_, has been the lot of the great
mass of mankind from the days of Adam. But, says the “socialist,” (to
whom the doctrine is far more creditable,) “this latter is precisely
the state of things we deprecate, and affirm that such was never the
intention of Deity, but that it is his will that there should be no
such inequality among men; that his will is in itself _the right_; and
what it is his will we should be, it is _right_ for us to be, and it
is our right _to be_; and that system which makes our condition other
than this, deprives us of our rights.” This is the philosophy of
socialism.
Now it is true that much of the inequality of condition among men is
owing to an abuse of the superior power which intelligence confers
upon the few; but this admission does not advance the cause of
socialism. For if it were allowed that the will of God is the only
rule of right--that is, in itself _the right_, instead of this, that
that which in itself is _the right_ is the will of God--it will not
help the argument. For, on this hypothesis, the will of God is the
only rule of right, as on the other it conforms to the only rule of
right; so that on either, the will of God may be taken as a certain
rule of right. What then does he will? In regard to the present
subject of inquiry, we can only judge what he wills from that which he
has done. Now we have seen that he has not endowed the souls of men
with equal capacity, nor has he even placed them in circumstances of
providential equality, favorable to an equal development of the
unequal capacities he has given them. Superior intelligence is the
condition of inequality. Where this exists, there is essential
inequality, and practical inequality cannot usually be avoided. Hence
_superior_ and _inferior_, and cognate terms, are found in all
languages, and the conditions they represent are found amongst all
people. Hence inequality among men is the will of God; and if his will
is the rule of _our rights_, we have no abstract right to equality.
It is rather our duty to submit to that inequality of condition which
results from the superior intelligence or moral power of others.
Superior physical power may, for a time, give us the ascendency; but
things will find their level. Superior intelligence will ultimately
bear its possessor to his destined eminence. A state of oppression is
not one of _inequality_ merely. It is one in which superior
intelligence has degraded and afflicted those who rank below it, in an
inferior condition; or it is an instance in which, by the aid of brute
force, those of inferior condition have, for a time, risen at the
expense of those of superior intelligence. If we are oppressed, in
either of these ways, we have a right to complain, because our
oppressors violate the will of God concerning us--violate our rights;
but we have no right to complain of _inequality_ merely. Inequality is
the law of Heaven. He who complains of this is not less _unwise_ than
the prisoner who frets at his condition, and chafes himself against
the bars and bolts of the prison which securely confines him!
But if the dogma in question cannot be made to serve the cause of
truth, it has often been made to serve the cause of policy. Many there
are who have not scrupled to use it as a tocsin to call together a
clan, not their inferiors merely, but so degraded in their
inferiority, that, for the price of being honored with the
distinction of “_free and equal fellow-citizens_,” they have been
ready as menials to bow their necks to their masters, debase
themselves, dishonor the state, and insult Jehovah!