Volume I Part 10 (2/2)

Allegiance to the sovereign is the same thing on both sides of the water, whether the sovereign be an eagle or a guinea. Some American, it is said, wrote the Lord's Prayer on one side of a dime, and the Ten Commandments on the other. The Const.i.tution and a considerable commentary might perhaps be written on the two sides of a dollar!

This cla.s.s controls the Churches, as the State. Let me show the effect of that control. I am not to try men in a narrow way, by my own theological standard, but by the standard of manliness and Christianity.

As a general rule, the clergy are on the side of power. All history proves this, our own most abundantly. The clergy also are unconsciously bought up, their speech paid for, or their silence. As a cla.s.s, did they ever denounce a public sin? a popular sin? Perhaps they have. Do they do it now and here? Take Boston for the last ten years, and I think there has been more clerical preaching against the abolitionists than against slavery; perhaps more preaching against the temperance movement than in its favor. With the exception of disbelieving the popular theology, your evangelical alliance knows no sin but ”original sin,” unless indeed it be ”organic sins,” which no one is to blame for; no sinner but Adam and the devil; no saving righteousness but the ”imputed.” I know there are exceptions, and I would go far to do them honor, pious men who lift up a warning, yes, bear Christian testimony against public sins. I am speaking of the ma.s.s of the clergy. Christ said the priests of his time had made a den of thieves out of G.o.d's house of prayer. Now they conform to the public sins and apologize for popular crime. It is a good thing to forgive an offence: who does not need that favor and often? But to forgive the theory of crime, to have a theory which does that, is quite another thing. Large cities are alike the court and camp of the mercantile cla.s.s, and what I have just said is more eminently true of the clergy in such towns. Let me give an example. Not long ago the Unitarian clergy published a protest against American slavery. It was moderate, but firm, and manly. Almost all the clergy in the country signed it. In the large towns few: they mainly young men and in the least considerable churches. The young men seemed not to understand their contract, for the essential part of an ecclesiastical contract is sometimes written between the lines and in sympathetic ink. Is a steamboat burned or lost on the waters, how many preach on that affliction! Yet how few preached against the war? A preacher may say he hates it as a man, no words could describe his loathing at it, but as a minister of Christ, he dares not say a word! What clergymen tell of the sins of Boston,--of intemperance, licentiousness; who of the ignorance of the people; who of them lays bare our public sin as Christ of old; who tells the causes of poverty, and thousand-handed crime; who aims to apply Christianity to business, to legislation, politics, to all the nation's life? Once the church was the bride of Christ, living by his creative, animating love; her children were apostles, prophets, men by the same spirit, variously inspired with power to heal, to help, to guide mankind. Now she seems the widow of Christ, poorly living on the dower of other times. Nay, the Christ is not dead, and 'tis her alimony, not her dower. Her children--no such heroic sons gather about her table as before. In her dotage she blindly shoves them off, not counting men as sons of Christ. Is her day gone by? The clergy answer the end they were bred for, paid for. Will they say, ”We should lose our influence were we to tell of this and do these things?”[29] It is not true. Their ancient influence is already gone! Who asks, ”What do the clergy think of the tariff, or free trade, of annexation, or the war, of slavery, or the education movement?” Why no man. It is sad to say these things.

Would G.o.d they were not true. Look round you, and if you can, come tell me they are false.

We are not singular in this. In all lands the clergy favors the controlling cla.s.s. Bossuet would make the monarchy swallow up all other inst.i.tutions, as in history he sacrificed all nations to the Jews. In England the established clergy favors the n.o.bility, the crown, not the people; opposes all freedom of trade, all freedom in religion, all generous education of the people: its gospel is the gospel for a cla.s.s, not Christ's gospel for mankind. Here also the sovereign is the head of the church, it favors the prevailing power, represents the morality, the piety which chances to be popular, nor less nor more; the Christianity of the street, not of Christ.

Here trade takes the place of the army, navy, and court in other lands.

That is well, but it takes also the place in great measure of science, art and literature. So we become vulgar, and have little but trade to show. The rich man's son seldom devotes himself to literature, science, or art; only to getting more money, or to living in idleness on what he has inherited. When money is the end, what need to look for any thing more? He degenerates into the cla.s.s of consumers, and thinks it an honor. He is ashamed of his father's blood, proud of his gold. A good deal of scientific labor meets with no reward, but itself. In our country this falls almost wholly upon poor men. Literature, science and art are mainly in their hands, yet are controlled by the prevalent spirit of the nation. Here and there an exceptional man differs from that, but the ma.s.s of writers conform. In England, the national literature favors the church, the crown, the n.o.bility, the prevailing cla.s.s. Another literature is rising, but is not yet national, still less canonized. We have no American literature which is permanent. Our scholarly books are only an imitation of a foreign type; they do not reflect our morals, manners, politics, or religion, not even our rivers, mountains, sky. They have not the smell of our ground in their breath.

The real American literature is found only in newspapers and speeches, perhaps in some novel, hot, pa.s.sionate, but poor, and extemporaneous.

That is our national literature. Does that favor man--represent man?

Certainly not. All is the reflection of this most powerful cla.s.s. The truths that are told are for them, and the lies. Therein the prevailing sentiment is getting into the form of thought. Politics represent the morals of the controlling cla.s.s, the morals and manners of rich Peter and David on a large scale. Look at that index, you would sometimes think you were not in the Senate of a great nation, but in a board of brokers, angry and higgling about stocks. Once in the nation's loftiest hour, she rose inspired and said: ”All men are born equal, each with unalienable rights; that is self-evident.” Now she repents her of the vision and the saying. It does not appear in her literature, nor church, nor state. Instead of that, through this controlling cla.s.s, the nation says: ”All dollars are equal, however got; each has unalienable rights.

Let no man question that!” This appears in literature and legislation, church and state. The morals of a nation, of its controlling cla.s.s, always get summed up in its political action. That is the barometer of the moral weather. The voters are always fairly represented.

The wicked baron, bad of heart, and b.l.o.o.d.y of hand, has pa.s.sed off with the ages which gave birth to such a brood, but the bad merchant still lives. He cheats in his trade; sometimes against the law, commonly with it. His truth is never wholly true, nor his lie wholly false. He overreaches the ignorant; makes hard bargains with men in their trouble, for he knows that a falling man will catch at red-hot iron. He takes the pound of flesh, though that bring away all the life-blood with it. He loves private contracts, digging through walls in secret. No interest is illegal if he can get it. He cheats the nation with false invoices, and swears lies at the custom-house; will not pay his taxes, but moves out of town on the last of April.[30] He oppresses the men who sail his s.h.i.+ps, forcing them to be temperate, only that he may consume the value of their drink. He provides for them unsuitable bread and meat. He would not engage in the African slave-trade, for he might lose his s.h.i.+ps and perhaps more; but he is always ready to engage in the American slave-trade, and calls you a ”fanatic” if you tell him it is the worse of the two. He cares not whether he sells cotton or the man who wears it, if he only gets the money; cotton or negro, it is the same to him.

He would not keep a drink-hole in Ann Street, only own and rent it. He will bring or make whole cargoes of the poison that deals ”d.a.m.nation round the land.” He thinks it vulgar to carry rum about in a jug, respectable in a s.h.i.+p. He makes paupers, and leaves others to support them. Tell not him of the misery of the poor, he knows better; nor of our paltry way of dealing with public crime, he wants more jails and a speedier gallows. You see his character in letting his houses, his houses for the poor. He is a stone in the lame man's shoe. He is the poor man's devil. The Hebrew devil that so worried Job is gone; so is the brutal devil that awed our fathers. n.o.body fears them; they vanish before c.o.c.k-crowing. But this devil of the nineteenth century is still extant. He has gone into trade, and advertises in the papers; his name is ”good” in the street. He ”makes money;” the world is poorer by his wealth. He spends it as he made it, like a devil, on himself, his family alone, or worse yet, for show. He can build a church out of his gains, to have his morality, his Christianity preached in it, and call that the gospel, as Aaron called a calf--G.o.d. He sends rum and missionaries to the same barbarians, the one to d.a.m.n, the other to ”save,” both for his own advantage, for his patron saint is Judas, the first saint who made money out of Christ. Ask not him to do a good deed in private, ”men would not know it,” and ”the example would be lost;” so he never lets a dollar slip out between his thumb and finger without leaving his mark on both sides of it. He is not forecasting to discern effects in causes, nor skilful to create new wealth, only spry in the scramble for what others have made. It is easy to make a bargain with him, hard to settle.

In politics he wants a Government that will insure his dividends; so asks what is good for him, but ill for the rest. He knows no right, only power; no man but self; no G.o.d but his calf of gold.

What effect has he on young men? They had better touch poison. If he takes you to his heart, he takes you in. What influence on society? To taint and corrupt it all round. He contaminates trade; corrupts politics, making abusive laws, not asking for justice but only dividends. To the church he is the Anti-Christ. Yes, the very Devil, and frightens the poor minister into shameful silence, or, more shameless yet, into an apology for crime; makes him pardon the theory of crime! Let us look on that monster--look and pa.s.s by, not without prayer.

The good merchant tells the truth and thrives by that; is upright and downright; his word good as his Bible-oath. He pays for all he takes; though never so rich he owns no wicked dollar; all is openly, honestly, manfully earned, and a full equivalent paid for it. He owns money and is worth a man. He is just in business with the strong; charitable in dealing with the weak. His counting-room or his shop is the sanctuary of fairness, justice, a school of uprightness as well as thrift. Industry and honor go hand in hand with him. He gets rich by industry and forecast, not by slight of hand and shuffling his cards to another's loss. No men become the poorer because he is rich. He would sooner hurt himself than wrong another, for he is a man, not a fox. He entraps no man with lies, active or pa.s.sive. His honesty is better capital than a sharper's cunning. Yet he makes no more talk about justice and honesty than the sun talks of light and heat; they do their own talking. His profession of religion is all practice. He knows that a good man is just as near heaven in his shop as in his church, at work as at prayer; so he makes all work sacramental; he communes with G.o.d and man in buying and selling--communion in both kinds. He consecrates his week-day and his work. Christianity appears more divine in this man's deeds than in the holiest words of apostle or saint. He treats every man as he wishes all to treat him, and thinks no more of that than of carrying one for every ten. It is the rule of his arithmetic. You know this man is a saint, not by his creed, but by the letting of his houses, his treatment of all that depend on him. He is a father to defend the weak, not a pirate to rob them. He looks out for the welfare of all that he employs; if they are his help he is theirs, and as he is the strongest so the greater help. His private prayer appears in his public work, for in his devotion he does not apologize for his sin, but asking to outgrow that, challenges himself to new wors.h.i.+p and more piety. He sets on foot new enterprises which develop the nation's wealth and help others while they help him. He wants laws that take care of man's rights, knowing that then he can take care of himself and of his own, but hurt no man by so doing. He asks laws for the weak, not against them. He would not take vengeance on the wicked, but correct them. His justice tastes of charity. He tries to remove the causes of poverty, licentiousness, of all crime, and thinks that is alike the duty of Church and State. Ask not him to make a statesman a party-man, or the churches an apology for his lowness. He knows better; he calls that infidelity. He helps the weak help themselves. He is a moral educator, a church of Christ gone into business, a saint in trade. The Catholic saint who stood on a pillar's top, or shut himself into a den and fed on gra.s.s, is gone to his place--that Christian Nebuchadnezzar. He got fame in his day. No man honors him now; n.o.body even imitates him. But the saint of the nineteenth century is the good merchant; he is wisdom for the foolish, strength for the weak, warning to the wicked, and a blessing to all.

Build him a shrine in bank and church, in the market and the exchange, or build it not, no saint stands higher than this saint of trade. There are such men, rich and poor, young and old; such men in Boston. I have known more than one such, and far greater and better than I have told of, for I purposely under-color this poor sketch. They need no word of mine for encouragement or sympathy. Have they not Christ and G.o.d to aid and bless them? Would that some word of mine might stir the heart of others to be such; your hearts, young men. They rise there clean amid the dust of commerce and the mechanic's busy life, and stand there like great square pyramids in the desert amongst the Arabians' s.h.i.+fting tents. Look at them, ye young men, and be healed of your folly. It is not the calling which corrupts the man, but the men the calling. The most experienced will tell you so. I know it demands manliness to make a man, but G.o.d sent you here to do that work.

The duty of this cla.s.s is quite plain. They control the wealth, the physical strength, the intellectual vigor of the nation. They now display an energy new and startling. No ocean is safe from their canvas; they fill the valleys; they level the hills; they chain the rivers; they urge the willing soil to double harvests. Nature opens all her stores to them; like the fabled dust of Egypt her fertile bosom teems with new wonders, new forces to toil for man. No race of men in times of peace ever displayed so manly an enterprise, an energy so vigorous as this cla.s.s here in America. Nothing seems impossible to them. The instinct of production was never so strong and creative before. They are proving that peace can stimulate more than war.

Would that my words could reach all of this cla.s.s. Think not I love to speak hard words, and so often; say not that I am setting the poor against the rich. It is no such thing. I am trying to set the strong in favor of the weak. I speak for man. Are you not all brothers, rich or poor? I am here to gratify no vulgar ambition, but in Religion's name to tell their duty to the most powerful cla.s.s in all this land. I must speak the truth I know, though I may recoil with trembling at the words I speak; yes, though their flame should scorch my own lips. Some of the evils I complain of are your misfortune, not your fault. Perhaps the best hearts in the land, no less than the ablest heads, are yours. If the evils be done unconsciously, then it will be greatness to be higher than society, and with your good overcome its evil. All men see your energy, your honor, your disciplined intellect. Let them see your goodness, justice, Christianity. The age demands of you a development of religion proportionate with the vigor of your mind and arms. Trade is silently making a wonderful revolution. We live in the midst of it, and therefore see it not. All property has become movable, and therefore power departs from the family of the first-born, and comes to the family of mankind. G.o.d only controls this revolution, but you can help it forward, or r.e.t.a.r.d it. The freedom of labor, and the freedom of trade, will work wonders little dreamed of yet; one is now uniting all men of the same nation; the other, some day, will weave all tribes together into one mighty family. Then who shall dare break its peace? I cannot now stop to tell half the proud achievements I foresee resulting from the fierce energy that animates your yet unconscious hearts. Men live faster than ever before. Life, like money, like mechanical power, is getting intensified and condensed. The application of science to the arts, the use of wind, water, steam, electricity, for human works, is a wonderful fact, far greater than the fables of old time. The modern Cadmus has yoked fire and water in an iron bond. The new Prometheus sends the fire of heaven from town to town to run his errands. We talk by lightning. Even now these new achievements have greatly multiplied the powers of men. They belong to no cla.s.s; like air and water they are the property of mankind. It is for you, who own the machinery of society, to see that no cla.s.s appropriates to itself what G.o.d meant for all. Remember it is as easy to tyrannize by machinery as by armies, and as wicked; that it is greater now to bless mankind thereby, than it was of old to conquer new realms. Let men not curse you, as the old n.o.bility, and shake you off, smeared with blood and dust. Turn your power to goodness, its natural transfiguration, and men shall bless your name, and G.o.d bless your soul. If you control the nation's politics, then it is your duty to legislate for the nation,--for man. You may develop the great national idea, the equality of all men; may frame a government which shall secure man's unalienable rights. It is for you to organize the rights of man, thus balancing into harmony the man and the many, to organize the rights of the hand, the head, and the heart. If this be not done, the fault is yours. If the nation play the tyrant over her weakest child, if she plunder and rob the feeble Indian, the feebler Mexican, the Negro, feebler yet, why the blame is yours. Remember there is a G.o.d who deals justly with strong and weak. The poor and the weak have loitered behind in the march of man; our cities yet swarm with men half-savage. It is for you, ye elder brothers, to lead forth the weak and poor! If you do the national duty that devolves on you, then are you the saviors of your country, and shall bless not that alone, but all the thousand million sons of men. Toil then for that. If the church is in your hands, then make it preach the Christian truth. Let it help the free development of religion in the self-consciousness of man, with Jesus for its pattern. It is for you to watch over this work, promote it, not r.e.t.a.r.d. Help build the American church. The Roman church has been, we know what it was, and what men it bore; the English church yet stands, we know what it is. But the church of America--which shall represent American vigor aspiring to realize the ideas of Christianity, of absolute religion,--that is not yet. No man has come with pious genius fit to conceive its litany, to chant its mighty creed, and sing its beauteous psalm. The church of America, the church of freedom, of absolute religion, the church of mankind, where Truth, Goodness, Piety, form one trinity of beauty, strength, and grace--when shall it come?

Soon as we will. It is yours to help it come.

For these great works you may labor; yes, you are laboring, when you help forward justice, industry, when you promote the education of the people; when you practise, public and private, the virtues of a Christian man; when you hinder these seemingly little things, you hinder also the great. You are the nation's head, and if the head be wilful and wicked, what shall its members do and be? To this cla.s.s let me say: Remember your Position at the head of the nation; use it not as pirates, but Americans, Christians, men. Remember your Temptations, and be warned in time. Remember your opportunities--such as no men ever had before.

G.o.d and man alike call on you to do your duty. Elevate your calling still more; let its n.o.bleness appear in you. Scorn a mean thing. Give the world more than you take. You are to serve the nation, not it you; to build the church, not make it a den of thieves, nor allow it to apologize for your crime, or sloth. Try this experiment and see what comes of it. In all things govern yourselves by the eternal law of right. You shall build up not a military despotism, nor a mercantile oligarchy, but a State, where the government is of all, by all, and for all; you shall found not a feudal theocracy, nor a beggarly sect, but the church of mankind, and that Christ which is the same yesterday, to-day and for ever, will dwell in it, to guide, to warn, to inspire, and to bless all men. And you, my brothers, what shall you become? Not knaves, higgling rather than earn; not tyrants, to be feared whilst living, and buried at last amid popular hate; but men, who thrive best by justice, reason, conscience, and have now the blessedness of just men making themselves perfect.

FOOTNOTES:

[23] I gather these facts from a Review of Major Poussin's _Belgique et les Belges, depuis 1830_, in a foreign journal. The condition of the merchant manufacturer I know not.

[24] Subsequent events (in 1850 and 1851) show that he was right in his statement. What was thought calumny then has become history since, and is now the glory and boast of Boston.

[25] Mr. _Robert J. Walker_ published a letter in favor of the annexation of Texas. In it he said: ”Upon the refusal of re-annexation ... THE TARIFF AS A PRACTICAL MEASURE FALLS WHOLLY AND FOR EVER, and we shall thereafter be compelled to resort to direct taxes to support the Government.” Notwithstanding this foolish threat, a large number of citizens of Ma.s.sachusetts remonstrated against annexation. The House of Representatives, by a large majority, pa.s.sed a resolve declaring that Ma.s.sachusetts ”announces her uncompromising opposition to the further extension of American slavery,” and ”declares her earnest and unalterable purpose to use every lawful and const.i.tutional measure for its overthrow and entire extinction,” etc. But the Senate voted that the resistance of the State was already sufficient! The pa.s.sage in the text refers to these circ.u.mstances.

[26] It was then thought that the aqueduct would cost but $2,000,000.

[27] I refer to the Report of M. Villerme, in the _Memoires de l'Inst.i.tut, Tom._ lxxi.

[28] This was printed in 1846. In 1850, and since, these men have publicly gloried in a similar act even more atrocious.

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