Page images
PDF
EPUB

its basis in their alleged right and duty to coerce and suppress the individual conscience of man and to compel him to look towards divinity through their glasses. Of this duty they were convinced, and it was based upon absolute distrust in humanity at large, and the consequent necessity of resorting to an intermediary in having recourse to the Great Supreme, and under such arbitrary conditions individual liberty necessarily was crushed.

Against this fundamental error the principles of British and American liberty stand opposed, and they contain the vindication of the dignity of man's personality in his relations to the Supreme Being, and this has been the source of the entire advance of civilization.

Long ago it was said that the end of the constitution, statutes, laws and customs of this realm was to bring twelve honest men together into a box, which is but a terse mode of saying that every form and principle of law is intended to secure personal freedom.

Therefore do I earnestly invoke opposition to State Socialism in all its forms, and sound a note of warning against the many propositions of political interference and State management under the garb of philanthropic aid or paternalism, for they are fraught with danger to the principle of individual freedom.

It is impossible for me to comprehend how it can be considered practicable or right and just to limit and fix, by a general public law, rigorously and indiscriminately, the same measure of time during which a man shall be allowed to work, for all descriptions of labor, regardless of the special incidents of the different occupations, and to compress all contracts for labor into such a uniform cast-iron arrangement.

The degree of attention, of the application of sight, hearing, dexterity, or strength, are scarcely ever the same; some processes of production are rapid and continuous, others slow and intermittent; some controlled by temperature and climate, but each having its own distinct conditions, and no two alike. Equally unreasonable and impracticable would it be that the amount and quality of labor to be performed within the prescribed number of hours should be also regulated, and with equal

[ocr errors]

logic establish the amount of wages to be paid for the labor so performed for all three features are requisite to effect the purpose intended, which is to substitute State control for the right of individual contract.

This is not personal freedom-it is State servitude; and the institution of property would inevitably perish under its grinding

power.

Labor is the universal creator of property, and if a man cannot be secure, as in his own right, to use and control his own labor, he can no longer be called a free man - he will be controlled by a merciless despotism, in which his idiosyncrasies are ignored, his tastes and faculties disregarded, and he is deprived of his most essential right; for to use the words of Adam Smith: The property which every man has in his labor, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolate."

"The patrimony of the poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands, and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity, in what manner he thinks proper, without injury to his neighbor, is a plain violation of the most sacred rights of property."

The great Irish philosopher and statesman, Edmund Burke, bore like testimony. "Men have a right to the fruits of their industry and the means of making their industry fruitful. Whatever each man can do without trespassing upon others he has a right to do for himself, and he has a right to a fair proportion of all which society, with its combination and skill and force, can do in his favor."

For the superfluities of the rich there would appear less urgency for safe-guarding than for the necessities of the poor, and the more exigent the need, the more imperative the remedy, and whether the subject of the demand is for labor performed or property in some other form, there can be no difference in principle, for the same law is essential to all; for the humblest individual or to the organized association, all the rights of private property must be equally sustained, and no organization, however powerful, whether of numbers, or property, should be suffered to override them, and cannot be permitted to do so ex

1

cept at the cost of that individual liberty which is the essential basis of free government.

Justice enthroned on law is the only protection of the humble and defenseless. How shall justice be enthroned but by a united public opinion demanding it? and the demand must originate in the articulate individual conscience, which must be listened to and respected, or we shall be ground down by the despotism of numbers, or military autocracy, or aggregated wealth, enacting and compelling obedience to laws, not to establish justice and insure domestic tranquility, but to secure unjust privileges and unequal advantage.

In my own country I have witnessed the insatiable growth of that form of State Socialism styled "Protection," which I believe has done more to foster class legislation and create inequality of fortune, to corrupt public life, to banish men of independent mind and character from the public councils, to lower the tone of national representation, blunt public conscience, create false standards in the popular mind, to familiarize it with reliance upon State aid and guardianship in private affairs, divorce ethics from politics, and place politics upon the low level of a mercenary scramble, than any other single cause.

Step by step, and largely owing to the confusion of civil strife, it has succeeded in obtaining control of the sovereign power of taxation, never hesitating at any alliance, or the resort to any combination that promised to assist its purpose of perverting public taxation from its only true justification and function, of creating revenue for the support of the government of the whole people, into an engine for the selfish and private profit of allied beneficiaries and combinations, called "Trusts." Under its dictation individual enterprise and independence have been oppressed, and the energy of discovery and invention debilitated and discouraged.

It has unhesitatingly allied itself with every policy which tends to commercial isolation, dangerously depletes the treasury, and saps the popular conscience by schemes of corrupting favor and largesse to special classes whose support is thereby attracted.

Thus it has done so much to throw legislation into the political

market, where jobbers and chafferers take the place of statesThe words of Lowell's warning well apply:

men.

"Rough are the steps, slow-hewn in flintiest rock,
States climb to power by; slippery those with gold
Down which they stumble to eternal mock:

No chafferer's hand shall long the scepter hold,
Who, given a Fate to shape, would sell the block."

Gradually the commercial marine of the United States has disappeared from the high seas, with the loss of the carrying trade, and the dispersion of the class of trained seamen and skilled navigators; the exceptions, that only prove the rule, are the few vessels lately built, and only by making a breach by special contract in the general tariff and navigation laws, a reluctant confession of the impolicy and unwisdom of both, but an object lesson from which valuable instruction may be drawn.

More than seventy years ago, when this practice of the substitution of State interference for free individual enterprise and energy was first mooted, and before the destructive policy of protection had struck its roots in American legislation, my great countryman, Daniel Webster, had said: "How, sir, do shipowners and navigators accomplish this? How is it they are able to meet and in some measure to overcome universal competition? Not, sir, by protection and bounties, but by unwearied exertion, by extreme economy, by unshaken perseverance, by that manly and resolute spirit which relies on itself to protect itself.

"I need not say the navigation of the country is essential to its honor and its defense."

And at a National Congress of Farmers, just held at Atlanta, I find full confirmation of all that I have said in the address of a former Commission of Navigation:

“To think awhile of the ocean and its navigation, of the ships and seamen carrying on the commerce of the world, should bring delight and stir our pride; for many builders of reputation, many famous shipmasters and some of the most successful merchants began careers of honor as farmer boys. Once our laws encouraged enterprise on land and sea, and our people succeeded. The four pillars of our prosperity were agriculture and manufactures, commerce and navigation. American ships and American trade

went everywhere; and the American flag at sea had the respect of the world. So it was, but is no more. No call to the sea sounds now for Young America, it has been swept by rivals so cleanly from the sea that the proportion of American carriage, in what is called American commerce, is now but half as large as in 1789.

"When we had shipping of our own, and merchants of our own people to carry on our trade, we had no fears of adverse balances and the export of gold. There was then no nation, rival or enemy, that could strip us of our wealth. Now there is, and the world knows that a foreign marine is a stripping machine. A famous Englishman laid down this maxim for his country's guidance: Whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world and, consequently, the world itself."

[ocr errors]

It is incorrect to speak of "Protection" as a national policy, for that it can never be, because it can never be other than the fostering of special interests at the expense of the rest; and this overthrows the great principle of equality before the law, and that resultant sense of justice and equity in the administration of sovereign powers which is the true cause of domestic tranquility and human contentment. The value of "protective "taxation to its beneficiaries consists in its inequality, for without discrimination in favor of some one there is no advantage to any one, and if the tax is equally laid on all, all will be kept upon the relative level from which they started; and this simply means a high scale of living to all, high cost of production of everything, and consequent inability to compete anywhere outside the orbit of such restrictive laws.

But the enfeeblement of individual energies and the impairment of manly self-reliance are necessarily involved, and the belief in mysterious powers of the State and a reliance upon them to take the place of individual exertion fosters the growth of State Socialism, and personal liberty ceases to be the great end of Government.

How can we fail to perceive that it is fatal to hopes of advancement or even of retention of what has been gained by civilization when individual freedom and idiosyncrasies of

« PreviousContinue »