The value of legislative control to our enemies is shown by the
desperation with which they oppose any effort on the part of the people
to recover it. They know it to be the true creator of their fortunes,
and they look to it alone for future "fruits of labor" and "rewards of
genius."
We are rich, but we have been ousted from our patrimony. How shall
we recover it? By the same means through which we lost it, namely,
legislation. The oppressions that curse man are all entrenched in,
and owe their power to, legislation. If we are to be freed from them,
it will be by legislation. In primitive times, government was openly,
frankly exercised for the enrichment of a class at the expense of the
mass. For ages the "right divine" was believed in honestly. Later when
its justice was denied, its benefits were seen to be too valuable to be
relinquished. So duplicity was employed, and the art of "plucking the
goose without making it squeal" was invented.
Money-making heretofore has not been so much a function of government
as money-taking, and this function can be made to work one way as well
as another.
If thieves by government action can despoil honest men, honest men by
government action can despoil thieves.
If legislation has been made the instrument of crime, it also can be
made the instrument of restoration. No personal temperance, thrift and
industry can enrich men so long as the power to legislate rests in
other hands. Labor makes wealth but legislation decrees how it shall
be divided. When the people legislate directly and intelligently the
division will be in accord with justice. By the ballot we can enter
upon our inheritance.
Poverty exists and we are told that it is the natural order, with which
legislation has nothing to do. There has been told no more transparent
lie. Wealth is created by the union of man's labor with nature's gifts.
What is it but legislation that keeps apart in unnatural divorce these
two that God hath joined together? What but legislation can remove the
barriers and allow them again to come together?
Legislation CAN make money; so lavishly that no man need want. How? By
making conditions favorable to labor, and securing the laborer in the
fruit of his toil.
WE CAN ACTUALLY VOTE RICHES INTO EXISTENCE.
Our instructors say, "Government cannot legislate a single dollar into
existence." Let us see.
While riding to market with a crop of potatoes, I am dispossessed.
In the struggle a portion of the crop is injured. The highwayman, in
escaping, lames the horses by overdriving. Instead of going to work the
next day, in company with an officer, I start in pursuit. The robber,
alert, removes to another state at an expense of half his booty.
Whether successful or not, my time, the officer's time and the thief's
time are all wasted, in addition to three-fourths of my product.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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