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
It is with Land-reform as with Currency; it would be of comparatively
little use to nationalise landed property with the view of throwing
open the land to labourers and small farmers, unless you at the same
time enabled them, by a sound system of Credit, to procure implements
and stock for their holdings, and to subsist themselves till after they
gathered in the first year’s crop. And even with competent allotments
of Land and Credit to stock them, the occupants’ condition would be
still but a very indifferent one without the aid of an efficient
Currency wherewith to effect easy and equitable exchanges of their
surplus agricultural produce for money or for other produce, as their
wants might require. In short, each element is imperfect in itself as
the means of social reform. But all, from operating conjointly and
harmoniously, go to make social reform perfect. And seeing that it
is just as easy to legislate upon all forms conjointly as upon each
separately, it appears to us a sad waste of time and labour to agitate
for any one without including the rest at the same time, the more
especially as the peculiar virtues of each are only brought into full
play and development by being made to operate in unison with the other
three.
There is not one warrior that ever fought for king, people, or
commonwealth: they have all fought for landlords and profitmongers,
to whom alone they could look for pay and promotion; consequently, no
good to the human race ever accrued from their conquests or victories.
Nor will the millions ever gain by any war not waged by themselves on
their own account, nor by any victories not won by themselves over
their hereditary eternal foes, the landlords and profitmongers--over
the latter especially, the more numerous, deadly, and irreclaimable of
the two. Profitmongers are, indeed, perfectly irreclaimable enemies
of the human race, because as such they can possess no one virtue, no
one quality of head, heart, or conscience, by which they could be won
over to God or humanity. In all the higher professional callings--in
those associated with the arts and sciences--the pursuit of truth, and
the culture of a taste for the Sublime, the Beautiful, the Chaste,
the Sympathetic, form an essential part of their studies and the very
foundation of success. Such is the case with engineers, architects,
sculptors, painters, musicians, historians, mathematicians, physicians
and surgeons, artists of every kind, orators, poets, professors of
science, advocates, &c. The higher qualities of the human mind must be
more or less cultivated by all those descriptions of persons, if they
would excel; and it is in the very nature of their studies to generate
in them some appreciation of truth, taste, sympathy, or refinement.
But the profitmongering devils of society neither need nor care for
such ennobling pursuits. Indeed, the less they are tinctured with
them, the more fitted they are for their nefarious callings. Genius,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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