masters allow them? The very modest requisition the oppressors make, is truly as follows: 39. Suppose either foreign invasion or civil war is expected; on the ground of an undue quantity of land being appropriated, the few engrossers thus practically address the many, who are despoiled. A large army is coming to deprive us of our possessions, be good enough to drive them away at the hazard of your lives. We cannot deny that the assailants, and you who are to oppose them, have quite as good a right to the land as we who engross it have; yet still we beg of you to risk your lives in our defence. As to such of you as survive the conflict, no care shall be wanting on our part that you shall never disturb us in our possessions. We will make enactments, declaring that the land shall belong to us and our heirs for ever. Other enactments shall declare, that a few years' undistured possession shall give a sound title; no matter how the miscalled right was attained. A third class of enactments shall declare it to be high treason, even to inquire whether the constitution and code, under which the possession of the land is first acquired, and maintained afterwards; are in accordance with the will of Heaven, or utterly opposed to it. A fourth class of enactments shall declare, that you shall not meet together to deliberate about your rights. A fifth class, that none of you shall have arms, to enable you to assert such rights, in the only way to which we shall ever be inclined to listen. A sixth class, that we shall arm as many of you as we please, and in what manner we please, to prevent the slightest opposition on your part. And how much soever, through the land being engrossed, you oppress one another and compete with one another, and are thereby impoverished; you will of course have to maintain the armed force, as we can contribute nothing towards it; being indeed scarcely fit for any thing, but to eat, drink, and sleep at your expense. We shall amuse you with a seventh class of enactments, that will pretend to direct that a few of you shall be educated; but we have no more intention, that you shall be so far enlightened, as to comprehend the real nature of your rights, than we have to turn cannibals and eat you. Indeed, we scarcely know ourselves what are truly the rights of men. As many of you must necessarily, through the oppression and competition, of which we have just spoken, be reduced to starvation; an eighth class of enactments shall declare, that you shall have such a pittance doled out to you, as shall prevent your starving outright. You must be perfectly satisfied, that if all these things will not maintain us in the possession of that which we unlawfully engross, and effectually prevent you from ever possessing land, nothing will. If we have not said enough to induce every one of you, if necessary, to shed every drop of his blood on our behalf; it is impos sible to imagine that any thing will induce men. Hesitate not, therefore, to risk your lives in our defence; and as the best encouragement, we may repeat that both the right of the assailants and yourselves to the land is quite as good as ours. Consequently, gentlemen, we rely on every one of you proving a hero in our behalf. 40. If, reader, you imagine to yourself some spiritual being, ignorant of rebellion to his Great Creator, and told of the existence of the human race, the Bible being placed in his hands, wherein the apostacy of mankind is so forcibly depicted; and he were to be asked in what manner he considered the question of the land had been treated; he would probably say, as to some nations in some of their generations, that the engrossing system had been tolerated; but he could scarcely imagine it to have prevailed so extensively and so durably as it has in reality. 41. It is usual to talk of causes and effects, but the most accurate mode is to speak of one Great First Cause, and all besides as a connection of effects,-such connection being good if the divine will is obeyed; ill, if it is contravened. Every thing being done throughout the universe by synchronous and consecutive association, it is easy to trace the series of effects by which any man and all men are placed in the situations in which they are found. 42. A part of any generation of any nation may violate the rights of others, and of course set up what constitution and code they please. Such a state of things may prevail through many generations. And it may be done in many nations. But however extensively these things may operate, both the spoilers and the despoiled assuredly only treat the divine law as atheists. And both must answer for their conduct at the high tribunal of Heaven. 43. The different constitutions prevailing in the world are conclusive evidences that the will of God is set at nought. In Russia, the right of making and executing the laws is in a single individual,-in France it is in about 161,000,-in England in a much larger number,-in North America in a still larger number. In Russia, again, the right is wholly hereditary,-in France partly hereditary, partly elective for life, and partly for a limited. period; in England partly hereditary, and partly elective for a limited period; in North America wholly elective for a limited period. If the doing such things is not treating the law of God as an idle tale, or rather as though there was not any law, or any God to make a law; will any reader tell us what would be so doing? Suppose the constitution of any one of these countries to be lawful, the constitutions of the other countries must necessarily be unlawful. How can there be two modes of obeying the divine law? (vi. 290, 291.) A nation, it must be remembered, may in the same or different ages vary the number of persons it will have to make and execute its laws, which is all it can do. This in no degree affects men's rights. To vary in any manner the number of those who are to appoint a legislative and executive, as it affects men's rights, is the divine prerogative alone. 44. Those who make andexecute the laws, or appoint those that shall do so, in most or all the nations of the European continent, might, as to any one nation, be changed for those who do it in any other; without any greater wrong being done than what mankind now sustain. Nicholas and his satellites may exchange places with Louis Phillip, the members of the chambers of peers, and the constituents of the deputies; without the slightest further infringement of the rights of the Russian and French nations. Nicholas has as much right to be chief magistrate of France as he has of Russia! Louis Phillip has as much right to be chief magistrate of Russia as he has of France! It is of little importance to a nation, whether bayonet law is administered by natives or foreigners. 45. The pauperism and destitution of the many, in the countries just spoken of and others, is one of a series of effects, another of which is the enriching the few. That the former is educed by the latter is abundantly evident. If any deny this, we ask-how the state of the many is educed? There is little hope but that mercantile oppression and competition would prevail, if all were in possession of the land. Whilst it is engrossed, these evils necessarily must prevail, from the operation of the laws. Nothing can be more obvious than that the many millions which compose the grand commercial association of the world, can never rightly associate whilst the land is engrossed. Such engrossing, it must be remembered, operates on the labour from its inseparability from the land. (i. 11.) The time may perhaps arrive when legislators will discover, that every farthing earned by the productive classes whilst the engrossing is allowed, is unlawful gain in the sight of God. 46. The earth, says Say, is not the only agent of nature which has a productive power, but it is the only one, or nearly so, that one set of men take to themselves to the exclusion of others; and of which, consequently, they can appropriate the benefits. The waters of rivers and of the sea, by the power which they have of giving movement to our machines, carrying our boats, nourishing our fish, have also a productive power; the wind which turns our mills, and even the heat of the sun, work for us ; but happily no one has yet been able to say,-the "wind and the sun are mine, and the service which they render must be paid for."-(Econ. Pol.) To multitudes from whom the land is abstracted, from the unfavourable operation it has on their labour, the beneficial influences of both the "wind and the sun" are frustrated. The Most High,' says a prophet 'ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will.' He has, as we have seen, given the land to all the children of men. (vi. 110.) But unlawful rulers interfere with his government, giving the land to whomsoever they will! The time will arrive, when they will find that the Most High perfectly knows how to govern the universe which he alone created, and which he alone preserves. 47. Consider, reader, for a moment, what an unspeakable wickedness it is for any one man to set the Most High at defiance, as to any matter, however inconsiderable. And then endeavour to form some notion of the mighty, mighty, mighty, sum of guilt arising from whole multitudes, in many nations and for many ages; treating the will of the Lord God Almighty, as declared in the constitution of human nature, and the revelation he has made to mankind; with no more attention, (to use the expression elsewhere adopted, v. 134.) than the wanderings of a sot or a madman. And this in reference to a matter of such inconceivable importance as the constitutions and codes of nations. 48. To every man it may be said- Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground, without your Father.-But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.' Such eminent holiness, it must be remembered, is required in every man, that for every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.' (i. 33.) Seeing these things, nothing can be more derogatory to the divine character, than to suppose that all the three great rights are not inviolably secured to every man that comes into the world by the Most High, if men live according to his will; and that it is only rebellion to such will that causes the rights of any man, in any country, or any age, to be in any manner infringed. Every thing that emanates from Infinite Perfection being alike perfect, is not susceptible of degrees. But if one thing could be supposed to be more perfect and exact than another, it would, assuredly be, how lawful constitutions and codes should be maintained; seeing that thereon every thing that is holy is dependent. 49. It is, perhaps, difficult sufficiently strongly to impress on some readers, the utter impossibility of drawing a line between the abstraction of any one of the rights of any individual of mankind; and the total abstraction of all the rights of the whole human race throughout its generations. This aggregate of rights flowing to mankind by the exercise of the prerogative of the Most High, no atom of it can be violated, without an infringement of the divine prerogative. The moral government of God over our world is superseded, whether one atom or the whole aggregate of human rights is infringed. The difference is only in the degree. The attributes of wisdom, power, and benevolence, will not be ascribable to the Deity, if an atom can be violated, any more than they would be if the whole aggregate can be infringed. It is equally incumbent on him to provide for the happiness of any one as of every one of his children. 50. To secure to every man his rights, the laws must be righteous. To be righteous, they must be executed by those alone who will make righteous laws-namely, persons appointed by a whole nation. Every man thus has his rights in his own keeping: Heaven has afforded all the security that the constitution of human nature admits, that these two great points shall be attained. If such security is insufficient, there is obviously no remedy. (vi. 200.) We have seen that it is not only the duty of every man to do all that lies in him, that the constitution and code under which he lives shall be lawful; but besides this, he is bound, as far as his power extends, to remedy the evils brought on men by the abstraction of their rights, (vi. 127) and the misapplication of their powers. (v. 134.) It is also his duty to do all that he can to cause all wicked persons to repent, and then to trust them as righteous persons. (v. 182.) Heaven designs that universal righteousness shall reign on earth, (Mat. vi. 10), and thence the prosperity and happiness such a state of things would generate. 51. That rights may be neither abstracted nor misapplied, Heaven makes men liable to evils proportionably great with the prevalence of unrighteousness of themselves or others. (vi. 196.) Assuredly, if men's being placed on a weekly income that "amounts to less than tenpence each,"-to have to wear their dress "day and night till it literally falls to pieces,”—to be stupified, bewildered, and reduced to almost a state of idiotcy, -to have to feed on "the undigested grains of corn from the dung" of animals (v. 15 to 20,)-will not induce them, by all lawful means, to endeavour to possess themselves of the rights Heaven awards them-and also cause all righteous men to assist them in the undertaking, (vi. 227) and in the application of such rights; nothing will have this effect. Men are brought not only to the level of the brute creation, but below it, when circumstanced as in the examples just noticed. What can Heaven do more than to make a whole nation the guardians of the rights of each of its members? And, after lawful rulers are appointed and rights lawfully assigned, for every man in a nation to be amenable, in a less or greater degree, for every unlawful act done by such rulers, and for the acts of his other contemporaries and future generations? And, necessarily, therefore, in a less or greater degree, for the misapplication of the productive and other powers of any and every man. In other words, if one only of the whole human race labouring under the slightest privation, every other of the whole human race, as far as is practicable, is bound to eman was |