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THE OLD AND THE NEW

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different from that presented in the New Testament when it bids us "prove all things and hold fast that which is good." Christianity was a new religion when Paul was preaching, and the old had to be rejected. "Old things are passed away," was the refrain of the heretics of that day.

Will not the future show greater prophets and mightier men than have lived in the past? The experience of the Old becomes the foundation for the New, to build upon. Knowledge increases. Was it not impossible for the men of "old time," to do and say what can be done and said by men now? I think we might behold a fairer picture if we could look forward on what will be, than when we look back on what has been. I would rather look for infallibility in the books that are as yet unwritten than in those of "old time." The past has depended upon dreams; the future will rely upon science.

But some one may reply: "If you had stood among the ruins of Thebes, or had looked upon the pyramids, or the Acropolis; or had studied what remains to us of ancient sculpture, poesy and painting, and the works of ancient historians and orators, then would you exclaim, "The future can never excel nor even equal the past. were wiser of old than ever they can be again.'"

Men

Does not a common sense view of the past lead to the conclusion that however highly educated and refined men became in certain favored cities and localities of old, we must expect that when civilization is become universal, and wars cease and the earth is entirely subdued, the achievements of mind will then be greater than in the past? Freedom has never fully asserted her strength. If at present we learn from the old past, it is because the world is yet unrecovered from the effects of the flood of barbarism that overwhelmed it in the middle ages. We are yet in the midst of the battle begun by Luther-the conflict for the unalienable rights of man. Nations can never be completely free before mind is emancipated. Ignorance and Superstition must be overcome, then will kings and priests and organized tyranny under the name of the "church" pass away.

And Oh, how rapidly is the New gaining upon the Old! The revolution is moving on at lightning speed in the Old World. She that sat a queen so long, putting her foot upon the necks of kings, and enslaving the nations, is now brought low. The German and French war has helped the world forward a thousand years. The powers of Ignorance met a Sedan indeed. . Never again will the Roman superstition gain respectability as a power in the world. Free thought is hurrying on. The common people are uniting in organizations for the protection of their rights against ancient feudal tryanny. The International is the mighty wedge dividing the Old and will rive it to pieces. The "United States of Europe" will one day be an accomplished reality. Republican governments will be universal, and the religion of mankind will be BROTHERHOOD.

While this is going on beyond the water, a great work is performing here. The hosts of the Old still fight, it is true, but only feebly. Their Vicksburg has already hung out the white flag. On the same "line" the troops of freedom contend in the Wilderness against those of slavery. There is no falling back across the Rapidan. Beecher, justly speaking, than God's reason. Is reason the test of truth? A man must reply: My reason is not, your reason is not. But reason is not a private instrument; it is universal, eternal, infinite. Our use of it is often poorer than the child's use of tools. We misunderstand it, and misuse it, and find error instead of truth. We understand and use it aright, and the soul rejoices that, guided by the thought of God, it attains to satisfying, sanctifying truth. No man attains to all truth; because no man is wise to use the test to perfection. But the test is perfect and supreme.Edgar Buckingham in Christian Register, July 12, 1873.

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standing between the lines and reaching out his hands to both Old and New, cries, "Compromise!" There will be no compromise; but an unconditional surrender of Old to New. So I preach and so I believe.

PART THE THIRD.

THE PENDING CONFLICT.

(Rocks and Shoals.-1883 to 1889.—Printed 1890.)

ESSAY I. THE QUESTION STATED.

I. The Constitution As it Was.

On the 26th day of May, 1787, George Washington was elected president of the Convention of Delegates of the several states of the Union assembled in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation, "to render the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of the government and the preservation of the Union." On the 16th day of September the Constitution, as amended, was agreed to by all the states, and ordered engrossed. On the following day, September 17th, after the reading of the Constitution, as engrossed, the venerable Franklin rose, and, placing a written speech in the hands of Mr. Wilson, requested him to read it. Franklin said: "Mr. President, I confess there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them; for having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise. It is, therefore, that the older I grow the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. In these sentiments, sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such, because I think a general government necessary for us; and there is no form of government but may be a blessing to the people if well administered and I believe further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall have become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other. I doubt, too, whether any other convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, sir, to find this system approaching so near perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded, like those of the builders of Babel; and that our states are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's throats."

When the last members were signing their names to the immortal instrument, Dr. Franklin, looking toward the president's chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that "painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. I have," said he, "often and often in the course of the session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the president without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting; but now,

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at length, I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun."

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George Washington was inaugurated the first president of the United States April 30, 1789. That was the day, then, on which the new Constitution went into effect. In his inaugural address the first president said:

"No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency; and in the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their united government, the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities from which the event has resulted, cannot be compared with the means by which most governments have been established without some return of pious gratitude, along with humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past seems to presage."

One hundred years have now gone by since President Washington made these pious remarks and indulged these hopeful anticipations. It is well for us to examine, with the same patriotic heart-throbs as those that beat in the bosoms of Franklin and Washington, the real situation of public affairs to-day. Have we reached, we may appropriately ask, that period when the government has ceased to be well-administered, and when despotism is about to step in and supersede it?

It would not be patriotic to attempt to cover up and conceal the truth. Great corporations have grown up within the government that overshadow it as the loftiest peaks of the Rocky Mountains overshadow the lowest knobs-the combined incomes of the railroad corporations of the United States exceeding the combined incomes of the federal and all the forty-two state governments, to say nothing about the incomes of the three thousand national banks and of the thousands of insurance corporations, oil syndicates, telegraph companies, etc., etc. But all these unite against the people to control the government, national and state, for their own selfish ends. The question to be answered is, can the people by means of the ballot control government, and by legislation hold the interests of corporations subordinate to the common welfare? or must the common welfare be set at naught to build up millionaire barons?

To maintain unimpaired the good bestowed upon us by the authors of our liberty, the creators of the Federal Constitution, is our first, most important, most essential duty. This good is being filched from us by the influence exercised over the three departments of government, legislative, judicial and executive, by the powerful interests represented by gigantic corporations, the creations of law, that should be its obedient creatures; but they assume to be above their creator and the masters of the people. Trmendous progress has been made by them toward the utter destruction of the great Temple of Liberty founded on the Constitution. It is being mined. Batteries have been planted that threaten its demolition. These must be stormed and taken and the guns spiked.

From certain classes of foreigners domiciled among us, unacquainted with American ideas and prejudiced against American institutions, we have also much to fear. They are slow to believe that, as far as institution can go, the "perfect commonwealth" is already realized in the United States, if only he American people enact those subordinate measures of legislation that they have the constitutional right to enact, for the building up of co-operative production and distribu

*Madison Papers.

tion of products, rendered imperative by the progress of society. The fundamental law is not responsible for the curse of class legislation that afflicts us now. The people only are responsible. Why do the masses not dictate all our laws? There is no reason why they do not except that they do not take hold. Nothing can be done with folded arms. If the Constitution has become a “dead letter” it is because of the indifference of the masses. Are they too ignorant to govern themselves? Then is our condition hopeless until there has been an advance made in popular enlightenment.

The American Constitution is ample now without further "amendments" (which may, however, be added when necessary) to assure us a harmonious and happy social condition, equal to that anticipated for the Twentieth Century Commonwealth of Edward Bellamy, if "to the people, by the people, for the people" be extended the benefits of legislation now monopolized by the "corporation kings." The many, regaining possession and control of the helm of the Old Ship of State, will direct her course toward the ancient haven of "the greatest good to the greatest number." That supreme good is the ripened fruit of the Tree of Liberty planted by our Puritan forefathers.

II. The United States of the World.

I would then rejoice to see Great Britain, the United States of America, and all other nations, united under one flag-the flag of the United States of the World-wars forever brought to an end. and all disputes between the various independent commonwealths referred for settlement to a world's congress. This will at once be realized as soon as the people universally rule. Then will the billions of money now spent in the support of armies, and the muscular power of man wasted in idle military camps and barracks, be dedicated to subduing the deserts and rendering all the waste places fertile. I believe that every acre of the desert lands of Africa, Asia, Australia and America may be made productive by means of artesian wells and machinery, and that the world can be made to support in plenty and happiness a population a million times more numerous than at present inhabits the earth.

This idea of a United World is not impracticable; for upon the American Continent we behold united under one flag forty-two independent republics, covering an area nearly, if not quite, as large as all Europe. Why is this happy condition of things realized here? Because we have abandoned many of the pernicious political maxims of mother England. Malthusism is the controlling principle of her polity. Blanqui in his History of Political Economy, refers to that terrible doctrine in the following words, viz:

"Malthus pronounced this sentence on the unfortunates, in crual terms: A man who is born into a world already full, if his family have no means to support him, or if society has no need of his labor, has not the least right to claim any portion of food whatever, and he is really redundant on the earth. At the great banquet of nature there is no plate for him. Nature commands him to go away, and she delays not to put that order into execution.'"'

This is a cold-blooded justification of barbarism. This is the doctrine that aristocratic England revels in and acts upon-a doctrine that neutralizes every principle of Christianity, every impulse of philanthropy-justifying war and the barbarous principle that "might makes right," and she enforces it against her own subjects and against all nations. "This world is the property of the few," she says to the people of Ireland, India and Africa, and to her own stalwart workers on the island of Britain, and the many must be offered a sacrifice

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upon the altars of Moloch and Mammon; and no pitying tears shall be shed. This is the Pagan idea that our fathers resisted with arms in 1776, antagonizing it with the Christian idea that "all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Upon this divine idea the American Union rests as upon a granite rock, and upon this rock will be founded the Greater Republic-the UNITED STATES OF THE WORLD.

III. Mob Violence and Organized Tyranny.

Mankind have never suffered from "mob violence" (so-called) as they have constantly suffered from organized tyranny of governments. Of mob violence we need have little fear; of organized tyranny, much. No ship loads of emigrants have ever fled to the shores and wilds of America from the danger of mobs. but always from the tyranny of coercive laws enacted by well organized governments. So the German anarchists are surely right in their one pious wish to put down coercive laws everywhere. This is what they mean, I think, when they say they are "opposed to laws," they mean that they are opposed to coercion. But, says one, "all laws rest on the principle of coercion. This is what penalty means always." The laws of Moses, I grant, rested on the principle of coercion, but the law of Christ rests on that of "overcoming evil with good," an entirely different and contrary principle that as yet has met little acceptance. It will be put in practice universally when mankind have become their own rulers. A reform school is not a penal institution. It overcomes evil with good. "Penalty," Noah Webster says, "is the suffering in person or property which is annexed by law or judicial decision to the commission of a crime, offense or trespass, as a punishment. A fine is a pecuniary penalty. The usual penalities inflicted on the person are whipping, cropping, branding, imprisonment, hard labor, transportation or death."

And it was what Jefferson meant, no doubt, when he said, "The less of government the better, if society be kept at peace." This is a glorious idea; and it will never do for us to lose sight of it in our fear of "mobs" and anarchist riots and bombs-an insane scare, gotten up by the cunning enemy of the people, the plotters for a "stronger government," a military despotism for America, who are determined not to “deal justly and love mercy," in relation to the toilers, but to coerce them into downright serfs and slaves, and to this end they manipulate government and are, through its instrumentality, building up quietly, "so as not to arouse opposition" (they say) a standing army of "State Regulars" under the false plea of "organizing the militia." An attempt no doubt will be again made by them soon to lobby through the lower house of congress, the revolutionary bill to "nationalize the militia" that, several months ago, through the influence of combined wealth, passed the senate-a more dangerous move of "overweening cupidity and selfishness," it seems to me, than anything the crazy Anarchists, on our shores, have ever attempted, proposed or even dreamed of in their wildest hallucinations. A profound truth President Cleveland uttered when he said in his last annual message to congress: "The communism of combined ealth and capital, the outgrowth of overweening cupidity and selfishness, which insiduously undermines the justice and integrity of free institutions, is not less dangerous than the communism of oppressed poverty and toil, which, exasperated by injustice and discontent, attacks with wild disorders the citadel of rule.' Then, let the workers not dream of peace when there is no peace.

A Hydra is

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