Cannibals all! or, Slaves without mastersFitzhugh, George
General
Cannibals all! or, Slaves without masters
Fitzhugh, George
Slave labor; Slavery -- Justification; Slavery -- United States; Working class
The true greatness of Mr. Jefferson was his fitness for revolution. He
was the genius of innovation, the architect of ruin, the inaugurator of
anarchy. His mission was to pull down, not to build up. He thought
everything false as well in the physical, as in the moral world. He fed
his horses on potatoes, and defended harbors with gun-boats, because it
was contrary to human experience and human opinion. He proposed to
govern boys without the authority of masters or the control of
religion, supplying their places with Laissez-faire philosophy, and
morality from the pages of Lawrence Sterne. His character, like his
philosophy, is exceptional--invaluable in urging on revolution, but
useless, if not dangerous, in quiet times.
We would not restrict, control, or take away a single human right or
liberty, which experience showed was already sufficiently governed and
restricted by public opinion. But we do believe that the slaveholding
South is the only country on the globe, that can safely tolerate the
rights and liberties which we have discussed.
The annals of revolutionary Virginia were illustrated by three great and
useful men. The mighty mind of Jefferson, fitted to pull down; the
plastic hand of Madison to build up, and the powerful arm of Washington
to defend, sustain and conserve.
We are the friend of popular government, but only so long as
conservatism is the interest of the governing class. At the South, the
interests and feelings of many non-property holders, are identified with
those of a comparatively few property holders. It is not necessary to
the security of property, that a majority of votes should own property;
but where the pauper majority becomes so large as to disconnect the mass
of them in feeling and interest from the property holding class,
revolution and agrarianism are inevitable. We will not undertake to say
that events are tending this way at the North. The absence of laws of
entail and primogeniture may prevent it; yet we fear the worst; for,
despite the laws of equal inheritance and distribution, wealth is
accumulating in few hands, and pauperism is increasing. We shall attempt
hereafter to show that a system of very small entails might correct this
tendency.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE NOMADIC BEGGARS AND PAUPER BANDITTI OF ENGLAND.
Under various names, such as Proletariat in France, Lazzaroni in Italy,
Leperos in Mexico, and Gypsies throughout all Europe, free society is
disturbed and rendered insecure, by the class, a description of which we
shall draw from the British writers. We do not hesitate to assign to the
Gypsies the same origin with the rest. They are all the outgrowth of
runaway and emancipated serfs. The time of the appearance of the Gypsies
is coeval with the universal liberation and escape of the villeins.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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