The Arena. Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891

There is no obstructive limit to the achievements of the army of labor. Aside from agriculture and manufactures, there are roads to be built, buildings to be erected, improvements of many kinds, and there are about a thousand million acres of arid land, needing irrigation, the necessary works for which could employ more than would probably apply, for the wages should not be such as to attract men from profitable employments. The army of labor may not at first be wisely managed, but anything is better than the vast national losses by enforced idleness. It is not extravagant to anticipate an ultimate governmental administration of railroads, mines, manufactures, and government farms that may employ many hundred thousands. There is no apparent hindrance to the extension of the Department of Productive Labor until it shall embrace all who desire the comfort and security it gives, while those who prefer the strife of competition can remain outside of the experiment, and thus the governmental and the individual systems be fairly tried in competition with each other. Thus far no formidable difficulty appears in abolishing pauperism, but we find a more difficult task when we propose the abolition of Plutocracy, by what may be called a revolutionary measure.

Having thus gotten rid of the increasing army of paupers and tramps, providing, as it seems, a sound basis for a republic, we have the other problem of getting rid of the growing aristocracy—the plutocratic princes, the syndicates and trusts, who constitute the other great danger,—of whom we may say we must either master them or they will master us by managing our senators, governors, and presidents. They have already swallowed some such legislatures as we have been able to elect, with such facility as to show that it will not be long before they can swallow the entire government, and when it has been swallowed it may not be as fortunate as Jonah in getting out again, for there is some very important legislation necessary to this republic which the plutocracy may be expected to resist with all its power, and when the conflict comes it will be a grand one.

They will probably combat with all their might the doctrine which must sometime be presented, that the nation must rule itself on democratic principles, and that the dead shall not rule the living by entail, mortmain, or will. When a child is born it must become a member of the republic on conditions compatible with the safety of that republic. It cannot be allowed to come in as the born master of a hundred thousand fellow-citizens equally competent to serve the republic. Our young citizens approach us from a generation that has passed away.

It sleeps in the graveyard, or it leads a better life in the better world. It has left vast masses of wealth, surrounded by wretched areas of desolate poverty. Was it wise or just to do so,—to ignore brotherhood of man, and to perpetuate all possible inequality? No, a thousand times no. There is not one, perhaps, of the millionnaire dwellers in the better world who does not regret and mourn his earthly selfishness, and who would not order a more just and generous distribution of his estate if his voice could be heard.

But we need not ask them. We know what is just and we will correct the mistakes of the departed. We know that this hoarding in families is unjust to the republic and unjust to the Brotherhood of Humanity,—an injury to all, a benefit to none. Therefore it must not be permitted.

Already the law is beginning to recognize this principle, which is destined to revolutionize all the world; but we are not the leaders in this democracy, because our plutocracy is too strong. Switzerland in its mountain homes carries the banner of democracy, and has gone farther than any other country in asserting the rights of the commonwealth over inherited wealth. New York has ordained a little infinitesimal inheritance tax which, according to the Herald, in 1886 produced $60,000, in 1887 $500,000, in 1888 over a million. That will be enough to build schoolhouses for the 20,000 children kept out of school in the city of New York for want of room. The proposition is under discussion in Massachusetts, and if we do our duty Massachusetts may set the example of the greatest social revolution ever accomplished by law. If Boston received the benefit of such a tax on its own population, it might be adjusted to raise from one million to more than ten millions a year; at any rate a succession tax might produce more than all other taxes produce at present, and it would bring about such radical changes that it would be expedient to make the change gradual, and gradual it must be, for it will meet determined opposition, and we must enforce our principle by every argument of justice and expediency, for it is both just and expedient. What right have the millionnaires to say how the world shall be managed after they have left it? What right to say that when they have established a dangerous inequality, posterity shall be compelled to make it perpetual. The robber barons established inequality by the sword, and by the same power made it perpetual. The posterity of kings and barons, however worthless, corrupt, criminal, or imbecile, continue to occupy the saddle upon the public donkey. But inherited royalty is going, and inherited aristocracy must also go. We who survive are the responsible parties, and (as the Romans charged their rulers in times of danger) we must see that the republic does not suffer, and that aristocracy shall not be its permanent master.

What right has the millionnaire to direct from the grave, that the wealth which he has left shall be used in the manner most dangerous and most injurious to society. He has no such right. He has no right in the matter, but what we in our justice or in our good-nature may give him. If these views are just, they must in time rule the world, but they are not yet asserted by those to whom the world looks for counsel.[3 - A year after this was written, the following advanced sentiment was uttered by Rabbi Schindler: “Have the dead the right of imposing laws upon the living, of making contracts of which future generations ought to bear the burden?”]

The sacred right of the living citizen in that which his industry has created, has no application here. It is a totally different case. It is the question what right has he to rule the world after he has enjoyed his full share and more, and gone away. We do not ask whether he got his wealth by fraud, or robbery, or industry. He has left it; he is done with it; he is dead in fact and ought to be dead in law! The law has no jurisdiction over him now, and he has no possible interest in what is done, nor any power to rectify his mistakes. To perpetuate his fictitious personality, and make the opinions which he has left in writing an authority like the acts of a living man, is a tremendous stretch of the imagination, much like the old superstitions which made a law by the preface “thus saith the Lord.”

I know the claim will be made that the wealth which the millionnaires could not carry away was truly theirs, and therefore that while they lived they had a right to dispose of it. But I deny it. In the highest sense of justice, it was not theirs, and even if it was, it was justly forfeited by their treason to humanity; for I hold that neither genius nor the business capacity that produces wealth ever releases a man from his obligations to society. In time of war to defend the city or State, we take every man’s property, so far as needed, and require him, in addition, to offer his life in battle to protect the community; and surely in the grand battle which every republic has to meet against its foes,—on the one hand oligarchy and despotism, and on the other social disorder and convulsions between capital and impoverished labor,—in this battle, I say, every man may be required to defend the republic with his money, his honor, and his life, if need be, and he should think himself very lightly released if society demands only to become his legatee, after he has provided for his family. He thus relinquishes what is nothing to him but everything to society.

Wealth is the product of the nation—of all its work of brain and muscle. No one man by himself ever accumulated wealth. But in the entangled social co-operation, struggle, and battle, wealth is scattered strangely and gathered in heaps like the money at a gaming table. One man seizes a gold mine, another seizes for a trifle a piece of parchment giving the title to land where a million are going to settle, and both become millionnaire princes at the expense of the commonwealth. There would be very few rich men if the real production of each was all that he could hold. To seize by a legal fiction a mine that yields a million annually is simply a robbery of the commonwealth. The robbery of the commonwealth and the toiler is our chronic condition. The urban population, strong in capital and skilful in combination and chicanery, has drained the agricultural regions, until agriculture,[4 - It is necessary to illustrate this by a few decisive facts which have not been made familiar to the majority of readers, as farmers’ interests have received very little consideration in the East. The financial policy of the general government ever controlled by capital against labor, has been the most gigantic imposition by financial jugglery that history has recorded, and has been effected chiefly by manipulation and contraction of the currency to make debts more oppressive, and during the war by depreciating the people’s money. After the war when $500,000,000 were needed to compensate the destruction of confederate money, a criminal contraction of $500,000,000 dealt a crushing blow to the South, and to the whole country. Let us look at it from the standpoint of the largest body of laborers, the farmers. A very intelligent Illinois farmer, Bert Stewart, presents the case as follows, and if his data are all correct, he has demonstrated a wholesale robbery: The national debt at the end of the war was about $2,800,000,000. What would it then have cost the farmers to pay this debt? He estimates that it could have been paid by 996,000,000 bushels of wheat; or 1,380,000,000 bushels of corn; or 10,000,000 bales of cotton. But financial legislation has increased the value of money (magnifying the debt), and decreased the value of the products of labor, so that practically, the debt has been increasing faster than it has been paid; and, after paying nearly $2,000,000,000 of the principal, and over $2,000,000,000 of interest, it will cost more to pay the remaining third of the debt than to have paid the whole at first. It would require to-day, instead of 1,380,000,000, over 4,000,000,000 bushels of corn to pay the remaining third. This being the case, it would seem that the payment of about four thousand millions during the last twenty-six years, leaving the debt substantially unpaid, was virtually a robbery of the commonwealth by corrupt or ignorant legislation. Mr. Stewart mentions also, that in one year the binding twine trust, by raising prices, drew $21,000,000 “from the farmers of the West to the sharpers of the East.” The reports of the State Board of Agriculture of Illinois show (what is a fair statement for the whole country) that during the last thirty years the corn crops of Illinois have for more than half the time brought less than the cost of their production; and taking the entire thirty years together, the losses so nearly balanced the profits that the average net profit of the thirty years has not exceeded seventeen cents an acre for each year, in the cultivation of over six millions of acres of corn. In the official report of Iowa also, it is stated “the general range of farm products have sold below cost of production, since 1885.” The official “Farm Statistics of Michigan,” just issued, tell the same sad story. It shows that the wheat crop of 1889 cost more than it sold for, the loss being $1,471,515. The entire loss on wheat, corn, and oats amounted to $9,226,510. Thus is agricultural labor crushed that millionnaires may grow. Hence it is that farmers are sinking under their burdens of mortgage indebtedness, paying seven per cent. or more, losing their farms, and often compelled to mortgage crops, tools, and stock. In the single year, 1887, 35,334 farm mortgages were recorded in Illinois, amounting to $37,040,770, and “nine million mortgaged homes” is the war-cry of the Farmers’ Alliance.Thus the independent farmer is disappearing, and although there was scarcely a tenant farmer in Illinois in 1840, there are more than 110,000 tenant farmers now; and we have a vast increase of large farms. But while the farmer sinks into poverty, those who handle his products grow rich. The Chicago Stock Yard that was started with a million of capital has grown so prosperously that its stock now amounts to $23,000,000. The monetary interests control all things, and Mr. Stewart forcibly says: “The time has come, gentlemen, when the government must run the railroads, or the railroads will run the government. In Pennsylvania to-day two roads own the State, its legislature, its governor, its courts, its people, own them body and soul, and stole the money from the people to buy them with. You elect men to positions and pay them salaries, and then the railroads buy them and make you pay for bribing your own officers, in the freight rates they charge you. The net income of the railroads of the United States is three times that of the entire revenue of the government.”] toil, and poverty, are closely associated, while urban wealth displays its ostentatious ease, and farmers are driven by the million into a desperate political struggle for self-protection.

The great mass of accumulated wealth was all unearned. It was the donation of absurd law to monopolists,—to men who procured the titles to lands. Their value came from the entire community, created by the people, and when that amount is rescued from landlordism, the millions vanish and society reclaims its own. Thus do I assert the ownership of the community in millionnaire hoards. And when the tenant for life has gone, to whom the law has been by far too generous, and left his hoards, out of which he has already squandered more than he was entitled to—the commonwealth from which this wealth was gathered may rightly step in and reclaim it.

It is but a waif on the ocean of commerce—the jetsam and flotsam, of which the law must direct the disposal. The heirs, as they have been called, may come in to the wreck that lies on the shores of time, after the soul has gone to eternity—but law must decide whether these wreckers are entitled to the cargo,—to goods which they did not produce, and whether it is safe and patriotic to allow them to carry off what is substantially in the majority of cases morally and justly the property of the commonwealth. There may be some exceptions to these general statements as to property, but when we recollect how land monopoly and other monopolies have robbed the commonwealth, I hold that the commonwealth is bound to reclaim the stolen wealth wherever it can find it, and certainly wherever the commonwealth can find it abandoned by the claimant, the action of trover should come in when the tenant for life has ceased to exist.

Perhaps the devotees of precedent may be bold enough to call this robbery, but it is simply reclamation of that which has too long been lost or stolen. For the chief foundations of large fortunes, the chief source of the great flood of accumulated wealth, has been the taxation of the people by the monopoly of land and monopoly of mines—the monopoly by private individuals of what justly belonged to the commonwealth, but was captured by the sword or by law—aided by cunning financial operations which stand on no higher plane than gambling or fraud.

The British peerage draw an annual rental from their lands of $66,000,000, and the American princes draw far more, but I have not had time to find the statistics.[5 - Parker Pillsbury mentions a Governor of Maine, who owns in Maine, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Dakota, and Canada, 691,000 acres.] It will not be long before foreign landlords shall draw $50,000,000 annually from the United States, if they do not already, for they hold more than 20,000,000 acres, and on these they may practise the eviction of tenants in the Irish fashion. The wrongs of Irish tenants elicit universal sympathy, but they are far surpassed now in America without outcry or comment. About twenty-four thousand evictions occurred last year in the city of New York, and this indicated more than a hundred thousand human beings turned homeless into the streets, generally in a penniless condition! The distressing evictions of the great cities, and the selling out of thousands of western farmers under foreclosing mortgages, are preparing a terrible mass of discontented population to whom a social convulsion would not be alarming. Those who live under the pressure of a terrible social system will not be sorry if it is overthrown by violence.

A large portion of the city of New York is held at values ($50 a foot) which would make its annual ground rental over $100,000 a year for a single acre. When we think of the vast sums which have been accumulating for centuries in the form of rent—say, for example, the land rents of England, which, outside of mines, amount to $330,000,000 a year,—it will be apparent that the grand flood-tide of wealth, which has passed into the possession of private individuals who have been fortunate enough to acquire land titles long ago, and their successors, exceeds by more than a hundred times all the wealth that has not been squandered and remains in sight to-day.

But it is gone—squandered—and we never can reclaim it; and there is another mountain mass of wealth not quite expended yet, which came from corrupt financial monopoly, which has sometimes generated financial lords more rapidly than land monopoly. Upon questions of finance and political economy, our people have been as blind as they have upon the land question, and our entire financial legislation has been but a trap to catch the commonwealth and rob it, and the commonwealth has been caught, and robbed of far more than two thousand millions.[6 - As a single specimen of this, I would mention that those eminent politicians, John C. New, and Wm. H. English, of Indiana, under the laws engineered by cunning and accepted by ignorance, invested $200,000 in a national bank scheme when greenbacks had been knocked down to forty cents, and in thirteen years from 1864 to 1877 they made a clear profit of $2,133,000—more than ten for one of their investment. But this is very moderate in comparison with land speculation. The Elyton Land Company at Birmingham, Alabama, with a cash capital of $100,000, has declared in five years, ending in 1888, dividends amounting to $5,570,000, and is believed to own property still that will amount to $5,000,000, a return of more than a hundred dollars for every one invested—a clear profit absorbed of over ten millions—the gift of law to monopoly. Will this ever return to the commonwealth? The robbery of the commonwealth goes on in every direction. Shall we continue the present system under which, while the nation is losing its inheritance daily, one man in Chicago tied up the wheat crop of the United States, and one man also tied up or cornered pork, and both levied millions on the people?]

The follies and crimes of the past cannot be readjusted—but its legacy of robbery to the present must submit to the arbitration of justice, and the demands of philanthropy. The millions exacted from the tenants of England and Ireland by the descendants of the robber barons and brigand soldiers, who took the soil by the sword, still cry aloud for justice.

If we grant that an individual may by his own exertions justly acquire a hundred thousand dollars, which is an ample competence, and that as an encouragement and reward for his industry, society may justly allow him to dispose of it by will, which I think is a liberal concession, I see no sufficient reason for extending his authority beyond that amount. All above that amount, I hold, should belong to the commonwealth in justice, for two reasons—first, because it was taken from the commonwealth, and second, because the commonwealth suffers from two dangerous classes, which ought not to exist,[7 - To save the nation we must reform and stop the production of 60,000 boy tramps and the half million of paupers and criminals which our horrible system has produced, which at the present rate of increase will, in fifty years, be a million and a quarter, and in a hundred years will probably exceed four millions. I see no measures but those I propose that will save us from this terrible condition. They will not be adopted in time to prevent civil war, but they must be adopted afterwards.]—the tramps becoming demoralized and desperate, and the idlers, becoming demoralized and worthless, who think themselves a privileged class, born with a right to live in everlasting idleness upon the toil of those who are not thus well born. This division into the aristocracy, the proletariat, and the middle class struggling to become the aristocracy, does not make a republic. It is an ancient falsehood and injustice established by absurd laws of inheritance (as absurd as the Hindoo castes), which have cursed the world, and will continue to curse it until America shall establish democratic justice. Yet as experience shows that men’s opinions in all things are swayed by their interests, there must be but few of the patrician class who can perceive these truths, and we must rely for their appreciation upon the vast majority who are not born to wealth.

What policy the commonwealth may observe,—whether it shall allow the millionnaire to dispose of ten, twenty, or fifty per cent. as an encouragement and reward for his accumulations,—is a debatable question. To give him post-mortem control of fifty per cent. would be, it seems to me, an act of prodigal generosity to millionnaire heirs. That a dead man of a hundred millions should be allowed to keep fifty millions hoarded in private possession appears to me an extravagant claim, for even ten per cent. of that amount would be enough to spoil his children and unfit them for good citizenship. I believe it would be better for society if all inheritance of wealth were forbidden, and every boy and girl required to begin life with a few hundred dollars, and gain the position they deserved by their own abilities alone.

This reclamation of millionnaire estates by the commonwealth would not be so necessary but for the fact that the world has been ruled by false principles, and in all past ages millionnaires have, with few exceptions, regarded their vast possessions as something on which the public had no claim in justice, as being the true sources of wealth—something on which the brotherhood of humanity had no claim—something which was not a sacred trust for the benefit of mankind—something which they should clutch with an iron grasp, as long as possible, to keep it intact and unbroken, and still speaking from the grave, hold it protected from all the claims of humanity, to magnify their own names in their descendants, and keep their offspring the lords dominant of society,—thus making it really a curse instead of a blessing; and as neither the moralists nor the clergy have ever taught them anything else, such is still their tendency, with a few such exceptions as Peter Cooper and George Peabody. But when society substitutes rational ethics and simple justice for old traditions and debasing customs, the destruction of wealth will be recognized as a crime, no matter how it was obtained; and such profligates as the Prince of Wales, who spends half a million yearly, and then calls upon his avaricious mother for one or two millions to silence the clamor of creditors whom he has defrauded, will be no longer feasted, admired, and imitated, for justice will be embodied in law and the race of profligates will have been exterminated.

If any owner of these hoards, when he is compelled to give them up, politely throws out five per cent. or even two per cent. for something that he considers worthy, it is received with great laudation as something not to have been expected. A Cleveland millionnaire was lauded for a petty donation, less than he had expended on his old wife’s laces. As philanthropists millionnaires are generally great failures. They did not study the public welfare through life, and they do not know how to promote it; their benefactions generally go to institutions that perpetuate the old order of mediæval conservatism, and delay the progress of humanity. They are incompetent as trustees. One man with the wealth of an Astor or a Rockefeller, and the overflowing love guided by the wisdom of intuition (so conspicuous in Jesus that men have worshipped him as a God, and elevated their own natures by the worship), could accomplish more than all that American wealth has ever done upon this continent.

Therefore by that right of eminent domain which is good over lands occupied by the living, and far better over estates abandoned by the dead, it becomes the duty of society to maintain the republic, to assert the supreme law of justice, and thereby teach the doctrine so long forgotten by followers of Christianity, that all our powers and resources beyond our own necessities belong to our brothers. Such are the principles of every real Christian. Such was the sentiment of John Wesley; and his expression, if I recollect rightly, was that he would consider himself a thief if he died with more than ten pounds in his possession.

These doctrines are not entirely strange—the world is beginning to look in this direction already. The heirship of the state is an idea already broached in France, sustained by Clemenceau, Pelletan, and many other distinguished citizens, and discussed in the Chamber of Deputies. The proposition was to limit the law of inheritance, and substitute the heirship of the state for all collateral heirs. That eminent and practical philanthropist, M. Godin, whose name has been immortalized by the Industrial Palace at Guise, warmly espoused this idea in all its breadth, and said:—

“When an individual dies, society has then the right to take to itself what he leaves, for it has been the chief aid of the deceased. Without its aid, without its institutions, he could never have been able to amass the riches of which he is at his death the holder. Society inherits wealth, then, to use for the same work of social progress already accomplished; that is to say to allow others, the surviving in general (not the privileged strangers to the creation of the existing riches), to continue their labor and co-operation in the common social work. The heredity of the State is then just, both in principle and in fact.”

The two measures which are necessary now are the Department of Productive Labor and the law of inheritance by the commonwealth, which limits the transmission of estates above a hundred thousand dollars, giving the commonwealth a share, rising from one to ninety-nine per cent. according to the magnitude of the estate—or some other form of taxation (if there be a better) producing equivalent results.

I do not propose these measures as the remedy par excellence for our unhappy social condition. Not at all. They are merely the gigantic blows from the right arm of the commonwealth, by which the curses established in the dark and bloody past, crushing man and woman to the earth, shall be hurled into oblivion. The true, absolute, and complete remedy is that industrial, intellectual, hygienic, and ethical training of all, which I have published as the “New Education” which will make new men. These are bold and revolutionary measures,[8 - Succession and income taxes are now beginning to be considered. Two very feeble propositions have been brought forward. The Massachusetts Legislative Committee, on probate, reported a bill well adapted to be worthless—to discourage benevolence and keep property in the family by imposing a tax of five per cent. on property left by will, except when going to relatives or connections. Congressman Hall, of Minnesota, introduced a bill in the last Congress for an income tax, a fourth of one per cent. on incomes between two and three thousand rising gradually to one per cent. on incomes over $10,000. This very small business is not what was demanded by “The Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union” in the Ocala convention, which demanded the abolition of national banks and “the passage of a graduated income tax law.” These demands were reiterated by the last legislature of Missouri, in a resolution calling upon Congress to act upon them, and pledging the legislature to enforce the farmers’ demand as far as in their power. North Carolina, too, has adopted the Alliance principles. The income tax will probably be a growing one—one per cent. will not be its maximum. The British income tax under Mr. Gladstone in 1885 was three and a third per cent. But this is mere child’s play, being about equivalent to a property tax of one seventh of one per cent. When seriously considered, the question will be between five, ten, twenty, and thirty per cent.] but the surgery of the knife is sometimes what humanity demands. The mad riot of rivalry and selfishness must be restrained before it brings the republic to ruin. The power of land monopoly must be broken by a land tax, and the post-mortem despotism which perpetuates accumulated evils must be thrown off by just and practicable legislation.

We must act upon the undisguised truth that individual humanity is not yet properly educated, and not yet qualified to exercise its trusteeship of wealth, for the hard struggles against the oppressive power of poverty, sickness, robbery, fraud, and sudden calamity have made the self-protective faculties predominant, and the sharp rivalry and competition of business has so increased their predominance that the thought of public welfare is never paramount, and is but an occasional glimmer, and the death-bed surrender of wealth, if it considers the welfare of society at all, considers it so blindly that a large proportion of the benevolent endowments are of little real value.

It is, therefore, necessary that the outcry of suffering and the warning of danger should rouse the public conscience to nobler principles, and that society in its maximum wisdom, which embraces a few earnest philanthropists, many capable financiers and economists, very many tender-hearted women who will not consent to suffering, and who are destined to participate in government, as well as a great many who are personally conscious of wrongs that need rectifying, should assume the administration of the superfluous wealth abnormally accumulated.

The change proposed is so great that its realization may be far off, and the evolution of law may be rivalled by the evolution of evasive ingenuity, so that the commonwealth may be compelled to prohibit evasive ante-mortem donations, and to reinforce the succession tax by more stringent measures, from which there can be no escape, and which will control plutocracy as effectively as any succession tax, and thus render the latter of less importance; but it is none the less important that the principle should be asserted, that the dead shall not rule the living.

There are two obvious measures, and one of them is sure to be adopted soon, without waiting for the abolition of unlimited inheritance. The income tax is made almost necessary by the last Congress, which emptied the treasury, and the income tax, if made accumulative, increasing its rates with the increase of income, will be as effective a control over plutocracy as the people wish to make it. The increasing rate of taxation upon superfluous wealth, is a sacred principle for which every reformer should contend.

But even this is not fortified against evasion, and we need the most efficient tax of all—the progressively accumulating tax on wealth, which will gather a large rental from all the superfluous millions, compelling the holders to use them profitably. A three per cent. tax on all over ten millions would not only enrich the commonwealth, but stimulate industry in millionnaires. How long will the millionnaires be able to defeat such legislation?

These are the coming taxes. They are not untried theories, for Switzerland, the foremost nation in democracy, enjoys both the income tax and the progressively accumulating tax, which falls most heavily on the largest properties.

It is to be hoped that political corruption and intrigue will not delay many years this assertion of the sovereignty of the commonwealth by taxation, which will give the republic a solid foundation, and that the power of the commonwealth thus enlarged will, through the Department of Productive Labor, and by educational progress, give us a true and a happy republic. These suggestions are not farther in advance of public opinion to-day, than was the nationalization of the land, when I urged it in 1847. They will find fit champions in a few years.

To what extent the Department of Productive Labor should be fostered by every State, and to what extent it may be authorized by the federal constitution, we need not yet consider, for it is apparent that the due administration of the national domain and development of the arid region by irrigation, will furnish ample employment, if we adopt as a sacred principle, the demand of justice, that not another acre of the national domain shall ever be sold. Let us give settlers the easiest possible terms, but never surrender to monopoly the land of the commonwealth.

“ÆONIAN PUNISHMENT.”

BY REV. W. E. MANLEY, D. D

Some months ago an article with the above heading appeared in The Arena. It was written by Rev. C. H. Kidder, and was intended as a reply to one written by myself, on the eternal punishment.

It appears that a friend of Mr. Kidder, a physician “of great ability,” on reading my article was caused great disquietude. “He felt that if all the statements contained in the article were accurate, his religious instructors had been either knaves or fools—knaves, if they taught what they did not believe, and fools, if they believed what they taught,” p. 101. I have only to say that the statements of my article are, in all important respects, accurate, explain the rest as he may; nor has Mr. Kidder shown that they are not accurate, except in one particular, not affecting the main question. This will be noticed in the proper place.

It is often true that men “of great ability” are men of hasty judgment, especially when they are “much disquieted”; and the doctor is certainly mistaken in supposing that his instructors were either knaves or fools. The men who teach eternal punishment are in the main honest, and of fair intelligence. The doctrine came into the church in a dark age; and for centuries it was dangerous to believe or teach anything else. When the human mind was set free, and it was no longer dangerous to teach what one believed, the doctrine had become so firmly established by a false system of interpretation, that it was a long time before much impression could be made toward its removal. But the Gospel leaven has been working in all these ages since the reformation to the present century; so that now there is little faith of that kind in the Orthodox church and none out of it.

I have not intended to admit that all the teachers of eternal punishment in the church have been honest. Some have been dishonest, in order, as they claimed, to do the more good. There was a class of ministers in the ancient church who had two sets of opinions, one set for the congregation, and another for the private circle. Dr. Edward Beecher mentions several venerable men, who preached eternal misery, but who had not a particle of faith in the doctrine, as he believes. They are Chrysostom, Gregory Nazianzus, Athanasius, and Basil the Great. See Historical Retribution, p. 273. These were great men; but a greater than these had taught that it is right to lie for the good of mankind, namely, Plato. Who will say there have been no others since that day? For the honor of humanity, I trust not many.

I would say here that all Mr. Kidder has advanced, may be admitted, without the least detriment to the main purpose of my article. The greater part of his paper is devoted to incidental topics that are not essential to the main subject, and what he says on the main point utterly fails to invalidate my argument, as the reader will clearly perceive before I get through.

So far as our version favors eternal punishment, the fact is due chiefly to a wrong translation; and it is difficult to suppress the conviction that the translators, in much of their work of this kind, were perfectly conscious of the wrong they were doing. The word hell in every place where it is found (with one or two exceptions, where the heathen hell is referred to) is the rendering of a word that has no such meaning. The word everlasting combines a wrong rendering and a wrong exegesis. These are the main points. They are the Jachin and Boaz of the orthodox temple. But the translators have sought to favor their doctrines in other ways; sometimes by supplying words not found in the text, and sometimes by rejecting words that are there.

My article was devoted chiefly to these last, particularly a wrong use of the Greek article, and the rejection of an important word, when it conflicted with their views, though they often employ it at other times.

I say with the fullest confidence that the doctrine of eternal punishment is not in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. It came into the church chiefly with converts who had believed it before their conversion, and continued to believe it by a misconstruction of the Scriptures.

THE SON OF GOD

By not paying particular attention to what I said, my critic has misrepresented me in an important particular; and has repeated the idea a number of times, namely, that I deny the sonship of Jesus Christ. I simply refer to some passages to show the importance of the Greek article, and some of these have the expression, “the Son of God,” when they ought to have been rendered “a Son of God,” or “a Son of a God” not only because the article is omitted in the Greek, but it is the language of Satan, and of the heathen, and therefore more characteristic than the words the Son of God. The sonship of our Lord has evidence enough, without that of Satan and the heathen, especially as the evangelists have represented them as giving no such testimony.

The reference in my article to insanity and suicide was incidental; and whether strictly correct or not, the thousand that have been ruined in this way is a picture sufficiently frightful, and shows that the Christian religion has been greatly misapprehended; for in its purity, it never has, and never can, produce a single case of either insanity or suicide.

THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

Of the six theological seminaries, which I referred to, on the authority of Dr. Edward Beecher, as existing in the early days of the church, I find on further reading that two were not theological seminaries, but “schools of thought,” as the doctor afterwards calls them. One of these was in Asia Minor; and there, the annihilation of the wicked was believed and taught. The other was in North Africa; and here, endless punishment was the prevailing belief on the subject of future destiny. The four others were real seminaries, in which the doctrine of the final holiness and happiness of all intelligent beings, after future disciplinary punishment, was inculcated by men as much distinguished for piety and virtue and missionary zeal, as any in the whole church.

The four schools were located at Alexandria, in Egypt, Cesarea in Palestine, Antioch in Syria, and Edessa or Nisibis. This last school was held at the one or the other of these places, in Eastern Syria. When persecution drove it out of one of these cities, it held its sessions in the other. All these four schools were numerously attended, often having hundreds of scholars at one time. Mr. Kidder thinks there must have been more than this number; but as it is a mere conjecture with him, his opinion can have but little weight against the statement of a man who has thoroughly investigated the subject. It will not do to judge them after our little schools, at the present day, when the church is divided into scores of little communities, each having its insignificant seminary or seminaries. The church was then one body, though each school varied slightly from the rest.