The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery: How it came into the world and how it shall be made to go outO'Brien, James Bronterre
History
The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery: How it came into the world and how it shall be made to go out
O'Brien, James Bronterre
Labor; Labor movement; Slavery; Social problems; Working class
Sir Robert Peel calls all this “civilization;” and the House of Commons
cried, “Hear, hear,” and cheered and supported him, when he declared
that the remedy for such a state of things lay not within the compass
of legislation; that Parliament depended, itself, upon the people,
and not the people on Parliament; and that the only and proper remedy
for the distressed classes was for them “to take their affairs into
their own hands”! Well, in the foregoing paragraph from the Devizes
newspaper, we see them essay to take their affairs into their own
hands; and we see also, that no sooner do they attempt to do so--no
sooner do they proceed to act upon Sir Robert’s advice--than soldiers
and police are brought down upon them, and warrants issued for their
apprehension. If this be not the perfection of human slavery, as well
as the perfection of inhumanity and injustice, we really know not what
is.
But is it true that no Parliamentary cure is findable for the
disease?--that the evil is one beyond the reach of legislative
control?--that, after all, the boasted “omnipotence of Parliament”
(which, Blackstone tells us, can do anything and everything not
naturally impossible)--is it true that this boasted omnipotence cannot
secure for an Englishman the food he has raised, the bread he has
earned--nay, doubly, trebly, quintuply, decuply earned? Is this true?
No, no; a thousand times no! What Parliament has done, it can undo;
what Parliament ought to do, and can do, it ought to be made to do, or
else to abdicate. There is not a member in either House of Parliament
that does not know, as well as we know, that our _land_ and _money_
laws are at the bottom of all the distress in the country, and that
the repeal of bad laws, and the enactment of good ones, are all that
is wanted to make England a paradise. There is not a member in either
House that does not know that all the slavery in the world, or that
has ever been in the world, is, or has been, the work of landlords
and money-lords; and that, consequently, the only true and proper way
to put an end to slavery is to make laws to deprive landlords and
money-lords of the power to enslave and rob their fellow-creatures.
If it be said, this cannot be done without interfering with the
rights of private property, we answer emphatically that it is laws
against robbery, and not against property, that are wanted. We assert
emphatically (because we know we can prove satisfactorily) that the
repeal of unjust laws, and the enactment of a few just and salutary
ones, upon Land, Credit, and Equitable Exchange (the latter including
Currency), is all that is needed to terminate poverty and slavery
for ever; and that it is perfectly within the compass of Parliament
to enact such laws without violating the rights of private property,
or confiscating to the value of one shilling of any man’s estate, or
otherwise dealing with it than in the legitimate way of taxation and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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