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 Abolitionists boast, that lands are dearer and labor cheaper in free
than in slave society. Either proposition contains the admission that
free laborers work more for others and less for themselves than
slaves--in effect, that they are less free than slaves. The profits of
land are what the land-owner appropriates of the results of work of the
laborer. Where he appropriates most, and leaves the laborer least, there
lands are dearest, labor cheapest, and laborers least free. In Europe,
lands sell much higher than at the North; hence, laborers are less free
in fact than at the North. In the North they sell higher than in the
South, because the slaves consume more of the results of their own labor
than laborers at the North, and leave less profit to the land-owner. The
high price of land is, in the general, an unerring indication of the
poverty and actual slavery of the laboring class. Its low price, equally
proves that the laborers, whether called slaves or freemen, work more
for themselves, and less for the land-owners, than where lands are dear.
In settled countries, where all the lands are appropriated, this theory
is undeniable and irrefutable.
As this is a short chapter, we take the opportunity to apologize and
account for our discursive, immethodical and unartistic manner.
In the first place, the character of the enemy we have to contend with
prevents anything like regular warfare. They are divided into hundreds
of little guerrilla bands of isms, each having its peculiar partizan
tactics, and we are compelled to vary our mode of attack from regular
cannonade to bush-fighting, to suit the occasion.
Again, we practiced as a jury lawyer for twenty-five years, and thereby
acquired an inveterate habit of cumulation and iteration, and of various
argument and illustration. But, at the same time, we learned how "to
make out our case," and to know when it is "made out." The lawyer who
observed the Unities in an argument before a jury would be sure to lose
his cause; and now the world is our jury, who are going to bring in a
verdict against free society of "guilty."
We admire not the pellucid rivulet, that murmurs and meanders, in
cramped and artificial current, through the park and gardens of the
nobleman; but we do admire the flooded and swollen Mississippi, whose
turbid waters, in their majestic course, sweep along upon their bosom,
with equal composure, the occupants of the hen-roost and the poultry
yard, the flocks, the herds, the crops, the uprooted forest, and the
residences of man. The Exhaustive, not the Artistic, is what we would
aspire to. And yet, the Exhaustive may be the highest art of argument.
The best mode, we think, of writing, is that in which facts, and
argument, and rhetoric, and wit, and sarcasm, succeed each other with
rapid iteration.
Intonuere poli, et crebris micat ignibus æther!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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