Confiscations; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918
And this foreigner whom we are done with, so far as his power to injure
us goes, is the counterpart of our own millionaire, and the scowl with
which he leaves these shores means another crunch of the iron heel
on the necks of his own slaves, and it is only the magnitude of the work
that is before us, which none but the blind will deny, in the subduing
of our own masters, that makes it a sad necessity to refuse aid to the
oppressed the world over. One thing is certain however: whether Bunker
Hill led to the fall of the Bastile or not, the liberation of the slave
in the New World will show way to his liberation in the Old, and in this
way do we render him a service, even if we cannot see our way to help
him in any other.
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The foregoing should make plain how the principle of Confiscation will
work in the case of railroads, and all other paper-represented property
that can be, and is, owned elsewhere than where the property itself is
found.
And there is no need of interfering with or changing any of the
functions of the different branches of our Government in order to make
Confiscation a part of our organic law any more than there would be to
increase the duty on imported wool and to collect it. The machineries
of the law making, judicial, and executive branches of our Government,
are sufficient for any calls that Confiscation can make on them. Any
other construction that may be put on what has been said heretofore
or may be said hereafter, is all error. If insisted on, what then? Have
we run up against the impassable? It is sufficient to say that what is
ours is ours to change when the need is evident, and the Constitution
itself is not, an exception to the truth of this.
The laws regulating the rising and the setting of the sun are not of our
creating, and we cannot hasten or retard its coming and going one iota
of time, and we do not live in the age when it could be done.
But the Constitution is a man-made thing, and when growth has made it a
straight jacket then the time for ripping has come.
VI.
Once more resuming our pursuit of the millionaire whom we have
dispossessed of his railroad plunder, we find the chase taking us into
town, where Confiscation will find many problems which it alone can
solve - where it will find his sixteen story building, for his hours of
plotting, and his suburban palace for his hours of ease, and the hiving
humanity between over whom he had to walk to reach either. Those palaces
on the Nob hills of these United States are the toadstools of the decay
that is going on in this Republic to-day.
The master crime of all ages was the building of those pyramids on the
Egyptian sands, for they were useless, but the whim and the slaves and
the lash of power were there, and the pyramids went up.
Let us see to it that the power of our pyramid builders is destroyed
before it gets beyond five million dollar palaces.
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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