POLITICOLOGY

RIGHTS—WRONGS.

This term is intended to designate every thing relating to political and social science, either in its progressive or highest state of improvement. It is classed into two orders, nine genuses and twenty four species of rights with their corresponding wrongs.

The rights of man, are his title to the constituents of his nature and constitution, and his wrongs, the violation of these.

Laws, in regard to man, are his ever-improving principles of action.

Liberty, is the practise of all man’s rights, and slavery, the practical destruction of them.

Right, then, is the title, law, the mode, liberty, the practice, and happiness, man’s enjoyment of the constituents of his existence. Man’s wants, and powers of production, being so nearly equal, he is invested by nature with equal rights. His desires and wants being felt by himself, he can always judge what is better for his own interests than others. All must therefore participate in prescribing their rule of action. Law, therefore, should be prescribed and obeyed by the same superior power. All assumed superiority except what is given by nature, is usurpation of sovereignty and brute force. Thus Blackstone errs in supposing that it is the superior that enacts and the inferior that obeys. Neither is he correct in his theory, that there are different kinds of liberty, or a time when there is no society or government, so as to make civil the residue of natural liberty, given as the price of protection, when in truth if man could ever be out of society he would not acquire thereby more liberty. Although, right and liberty, have been but gradually developed and known, yet in the abstract, they are the same in all circumstances and in all ages.

The only just division in the commentaries, is that of rights and wrongs. The imperfect distinction of rights of persons and rights of things has been sufficiently criticised by his commentators. By reference to the classification of rights and wrongs in this work, it will be seen how deficient his analysis is, into the rights of personal security, personal liberty and private property, with no recognition of the right of every man to his sovereignty, his labor and his domain.

In Jefferson’s enumeration of rights, the term ‘life’ is sufficiently specific; but ‘liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ are too indefinite, as well as the terms ‘equality, liberty, safety, and property,’ used in the French Constitution of 1793, to designate the generic equal, individual and inalienable rights, and to give a clear, distinct and definite conception of them.

Rights naturally divide into two orders, Person and Property.

Mind, being the inseparable property of the nervous system, is the foundation of the inalienable right of sovereignty ; the in separable union of vitality with the vascular system is the origin of the indissoluble right of life; motion, the inseparable quality of the muscular system, is the basis of the inalienable right of labor or production; and the inseparable connection of man’s organs of alimentation, respiration and sensation, with the food, air and light of the great womb-like external world, establishes the foundation of his imprescriptible right to land, improvements, and commodity.

But these rights are subdivisible again into species with their opposing wrongs, and are shown in opposition in the following

ANALYSIS OF RIGHTS AND WRONGS.

INALIENABLE RIGHTS—WRONGS OF ALIENATION.

The principle of inalienableness, upon which this order of rights is founded, is the most important improvement that has been made to modern political science. The subversion of this principle by its opposing wrong of alienation, is now seen to be the most deeply seated cause of political evil; and nothing short of of its entire extinguishment, can enable man to obtain the whole of his rights.

It is from the inseparable connection of the vital principle and the body upon which is founded the inalienableness of the right of life; it is from the intimate union of motion with the limbs from which flows the inalienableness of the right of freedom and labor; it is from the close alliance of reason with self-love which requires the inalienable exercise of the right of sovereignty by each man in his own proper person; and it is the necessitated dependence of man upon his pedestal the earth and its appurtenances, for his subsistence, upon which is founded his inalienable right to domain. No man, has therefore, a right to destroy his life, to sell his freedom, defame his honor, to delegate his sovereignty, to alienate his domain or to suffer others to violate any of these inalienable rights.

The declaration of independence intimates, that there are more inalienable rights than it enumerates, by asserting that “man is endowed with certain inalienable rights—that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Those other rights are here clashed will the above, and are found to be that of sovereignty, honor, labor and domain. The author of the declaration, may be credited as among the first who asserted the inalienableness of rights, upon which the era of equality is destined to be founded.

The doctrines of Paine, substituted the elective for hereditary government; which, though some advance, is only another form of the delegation and usurpation of the inalienable right of sovereignty. He will not now be deemed too radical, by our demoristocrats, with whom universal suffrage is considered the ultimatum. The real democrats will now become those who will advocate the doctrine of the inalienableness of rights, of universal self-legislation by every man in his own proper person in townships. For the present representative system of government with its offices, salaries and taxes, is but a species of monopoly of power and property, and never has and never will have much sympathy for the producers of wealth, the laboring millions.

SOVEREIGNTY—OFFICERY.

The first genus of the inalienable rights, is that of sovereignty. It is the supreme power, wisdom and goodness of the entire body of society in establishing and administering government; while officery, is any violation of sovereignty, either by delegation, usurpation or force.

This power according to Blackstone, is vested in the king, parliament and constitution, and we now see its despotic effects in the monopoly of all property. Representative governments have already in theory placed this power in the hands of the people; but they have yet to advance to the knowledge of its inalienableness, that it should not be exercised by delegation.

Mankind, have through all time been petitioning the monopolizers of their sovereignty for a redress of grievances, instead of simply taking their right to legislate in their own hands. With the example of the Grecian democracies before them, they are still charmed with the apparent equality of the modern representative system of government between ins and outs. They have been so stultified in reason by the simple assertion of Blackstone and others, that democracies are impracticable, be cause the mass of the people cannot meet at one place, that they have not yet, recovered from this potent stroke of aristocratic logic. But, they will yet learn, that the country can be divided into legislative townships, as easily as into elective districts.

Revolution, is the exercise of the highest species of sovereignty. It consists in improving the principles of government by the assemblage of the people in convention; while, treason will consist in the attempt to exercise sovereignty by force of arms, instead of in the assembly of the people in township hall.

Revolution is deeply founded in the principle of progress, in the ever-improving constitution of nature. It gives facility to the operations of nature, and to the progress of civilization. It exhibits nature sublimely laboring through her creation, until she wears out a certain set of elements and principles; and then of creating more perfect instruments to work out a higher order of existence. Every change, through the action of even the same principle, is often attended with improved circumstances, until each era becomes decked in an entirely new livery of creation.

The sacred deference for existing institutions lays an embargo upon future enquiry and improvement. The first principle that should be taught, is, that the institutions of each period, are only progressive stages of existence, that become modified and amended as the mind outgrows them. Jefferson asserts the true principle of progress, by declaring the right of any people to amend or abolish the government when it becomes repugnant to their wisdom and subversive of their right’s, liberty and happiness Revolution then, consists in changing the fundamental principles of government. Being the highest exercise of sovereignty, it should result from the most profound discussion by the entire body of society assembled in convention.

Under the improved organization of government in the era of equality, into towns and peopledoms, every facility will be given to the discussion of new doctrines in the order in which the respective sciences to which they belong, are enumerated in the constitution; and if voted down, as the majority may err, the minority still have the right of discussion and remonstrance.

Thus, were every man to claim his inalienable right of sovereignty to legislate in his own proper person, there would be no motive to swerve him from an adherence to principle, we would then have more disinterested patriotism, honest legislation and protection of inalienable rights. This will obviate the evil of the elective system, where, the candidates, to secure their election, adhere to one or other of the two great parties, contrary to their better private opinion and instruction of the true reformers.

Legislation, is also a species of the genus sovereignty, and consists in the enactment of laws in accordance with the paramount law of the constitution. It is the next highest exercise of sovereignty to that of revolution, and should also be performed in proper person, and not by representation. Legislation can be practiced in the most simple and convenient manner conceivable. The whole country must be divided into townships of six miles square with a central village, and town hall. This size is thought, will embrace the proper proportion of each employment, for production, distribution, consumption and assemblage in one place. Now, with such an organization, instead of the people wasting their time in electing officers (who have seldom been known to attend to any interest, only so far as it is connected with their own,) they can always meet, each in his own person at all or any time in the year, being always in session, and by direct speech and vote prescribe their rule of action; thus consolidating the governors and governed in the same persons. These assemblies will discuss not only political, but every other science, according to parliamentary rides in a certain order; and thus all society of both sexes will become intelligent according to ability, and consolidate legislature, court and lyceum in one establishment. Every opinion and grievance can thus receive a proper hearing; and not be smothered under the sanctuary of a throne or a party. Then the real producers of knowledge will become the professors of science, instead of those learned venders of common place, who have persecuted a Socrates, a Galileo, a Columbus and a Paine. Genius will not as now pine in garrets, while mere learning fattens in colleges.

Administration is here classed as the third species of sovereignty, and should embrace all the powers now divided into executive and judiciary. Thus revolution, establishes constitutional law, legislation statutory, and administration applies all law to the protection of rights, and the redress of wrongs.

This being also an inalienable right, all cases of felony should be adjudicated upon by the whole assemblage of the people; but civil injuries to small amount, may be investigated by arbitrators, with an appeal to the people. Under this organization of society, so little wrong could occur, that trials would occupy less of the time of the people than they now do.

The word Officery is proposed as the most specific and expressive of the wrong that violates sovereignty. This term shows that it is not only usurped, hereditary but even delegated power that destroys this right. It is not in the power of nature to secure the honest and disinterested exercise of rights by deputy or representation. Hence office is merely a species of property used by the officer for the emolument of himself and the class of non-producers to whom he belongs. How will the masses he disappointed when they attain universal suffrage to see how little they have gained of their inalienable rights. But more advanced, behold the main wrong beyond wrongs arise like the highest range among mountains.

The deeply seated cause then of the criminal practises of present governments against the producing millions, is the creation of the system of offices and salaried officers, whereby the inalienable right of sovereignty is alienated, and society divided into governors and governed, in the same manner that the alienation of land and labor by rentage and hire divides it into landlords and tenants, masters and hirelings. Sovereignty is alienated as much by the elective franchise as the domain is by tenure, the body by slavery, labor by hire, or life by warfare. Constituents or electors pay fees and salaries to officers for the imaginary use of their own sovereignty, as tenants pay rents fur their share of domain, or as producers pay profits upon their own productions.

The common doctrine that sovereignty never departs from the people, though wielded by an exclusively elected few, supposed to have only a delegated power, defrauds the understanding by its speciousness. The farce of the elective franchise does not practically give the electors the sovereign power, but only a partial power of selection, just as the choice of a landlord does not give the tenant the freehold title of the tenement. Though the sovereign power rightfully belongs to the whole body of the people, it is not yet wielded by them in any nation on earth. Representative government is only an elective aristocracy. There can be no pure democracy or government of the people until they organize and meet in township assembly. Neither universal suffrage nor the election of all officers, will secure the masses the freehold of sovereignty any more than universal tenure will that of domain. They are as much cheated by the doctrine of constituent and representative in this era as they were by that of vassal and protector under the feudal system. Nothing but inalienable sovereignty, labor and domain, can redeem mankind from the damnation of monopoly and class. Nothing short of an organization into townships, where every man upon his own in alienable farm or village lot, can with his own hands only, produce and equitably exchange his surplus products for those of his neighbor; and, assembling in township hall, participate by direct speech and vote in prescribing his rule of action.

Are other reasons necessary to prove the despotism of both the hereditary and representative system of government? Then, behold in history but a continued catalogue of the crimes of kings and officers against each other and the people. Remember the horrid murders of a Richard and a Henry. Call to mind the shocking cruelties of the Bourbon race—the Bartholomew persecution, the iron mask and the slaughter of five hundred citizens within the wall of the Bastille from a trifling private pique! See the despot of Russia exterminating whole nations. Behold the emperor of China, the great usurper of both sovereignty and divinity, claiming relationship to the sun though it so far outshines him, and whose subjects are hewn down who do not prostrate themselves as he passes!

See the danger of even delegated sovereignty, when the French people’s representatives turned traitors and destroyed the democratic constitution of 1793, that provided for the final pas- sage of laws by the primary assemblies of the people. And see the effects of even delegated sovereignty in the boasted republic of the United States, where not a single national or state legislature has ever been sufficiently intelligent and honest to enact a law that directly benefits the producer of property.

See the pernicious effects of the elective system upon every candidate for president. Principle, honesty and every philanthropic sentiment are merged in self in the strife to embrace popular, instead of reform measures to stand out in relief on the presidential canvass. The extensive patronage of president and governor in the appointment of such an army of officers, whose connection with the balance of society keeps a majority in the ranks of party, makes it a herculean task to undeceive the people, or to hurl from office the corrupt minions of perverted power.

Office-holders, like other non-producers, can never have real sympathy for laborers. Their corrupt nature must be regenerated by honest and productive employment to fit them for duty.

Reputation is also a species of the inalienable right of sovereignty. It belongs to each of mankind according to merit and is alienated by the degenerating institution of rank, caste and titles of nobility, by which respectability is monopolized by the most worthless portion of society, to the degradation of the really useful and respectable class. This right with its opposing wrong of rank and the specific one of slander will be fully treated in a subsequent part of this work.

Conscience, the highest property of the thinking principle, is also a species of sovereignty and the most vitally important inalienable right. It is in the freedom of discussion that the advance in knowledge and civilization mainly depends. But, Nature’s God to make sure of progress, has so constituted this right, that, while other rights are temporarily impeded by their respective wrongs, persecution only facilitates its advancement.

As original views are entertained by but an isolated few, or by a single person of genius at first, the persecution of doctrinal opinion by the common place thinker, proves either its depth or shallowness. All describe themselves as well as the object they criticise, and which must receive the coloring of their minds. All history, experience, proofs of progress in the vestiges of creation in the physical or moral world or even improvements within the observation of men, seldom make them philosophic and generous enough to appreciate an advance of knowledge upon them selves where it disturbs their interest.

This shows that the deeply-seated wrong that violates the liberty of conscience, is the institution of creeds with salaried professorships, a species of officery and property, by which when ever they are disturbed by the progress of knowledge and discussion, are sure to persecute it, and further proves the inalienable nature of the rights accruing from the personal qualities of men as well as from external objects. None of these rights will bear the sacrilege of being reduced to property except that which is the creation of labor, such as improvements and commodities. The exclusive teaching of opinion as a means of living, will ever tend to persecute that which declares its absurdity. The power of reason is not sufficiently strong in any man to ratiocinate against the stronger sentiment of property. The most universal practice of the ignorant rascality of those who subsist by the sacrilege of the rights of their fellow creatures, is to slander the reformer and martyr the patriot of their own age, while deifying those of some preceding. So corrupted, omnipotent and heaven daring do they become, who live by the alienation of human rights in the form of salaried office, that the Incarnated Almighty Himself was crucified in redeeming mankind and in reforming the abuses of the priesthood, rulers and profit-mongers.

But, that variety of conscience constituting the religious sentiment, is equally corrupted by its alienation in the form of ecclesiastical office as legislation is by delegation. If religion had been in all ages left to the exercise of each one in its own proper person without the intervention of a priest, what a salutary effect would the heart-felt sentiments of the Divinity have had upon human virtue and happiness. But, a mammon serving priesthood seized upon this sublime sentiment and blasphemously represented the Deity in images and personifications, of performing the most ridiculous actions, of uttering the most absurd dogmas, thereby ignoring and vulgarizing mankind.

Religion as well as politics should be discussed and exercised by every man in proper person without salary or tythe; but, when reduced to chattels in the form of office with livings attached, all sincerity and purity of profession is destroyed. The transmutation of any thing into property, but that which is the pure product of labor is fraught with damnation.

Kings and popes, nobility and priests have ever usurped the sovereignty and religion vested in universal man, and impiously pretended to govern by divine right. But, modern representatives and clergy still wield those rights for their own emolument by ignorantly believing their deeds conduce to the good of the people and the church.

So unconsciously does an erroneous principle corrupt the sentiments and actions of frail humanity, that the clergy of all nations see no impropriety of trafficing in every thing relating to religion. While class legislators only enact laws enabling property still more to accumulate property, the clergy for a money consideration have actually absolved from sin and excused eve ry crime in the penal code of nations. They have through all time perverted religion into hierarchies, and by means of a system of officers, secret associations, inquisitions, tythes, contributions, by hovering like vultures around the death beds of their devotees to secure their estates, they have monopolized more of the product of labor in some countries than all the other institutions of society. They have, even after thus trafficing in human nature sacrilegiously Speculated by the sale of grace and the relics of Jesus Christ. And such, will ever be the practice of an impious and worthless priesthood, engendered by the alienation of the exercise of religion, and its desecration to goods and chattels in the form of tythes and church livings.

How great then must be the native goodness of human nature and the strength of the religious sentiment to have improved to so great an extent, in spite of their universal pervertion: but which, will more effectually scourge mankind into the knowledge of the truth and necessity of the inalienableness of all their rights.

LIFE—VIOLENCE.

The right of life, a genus of the order person, is one of the inalienable rights of man. All wrongs more or less directly affect life; but its most immediate opposing wrong is that of violence, subdivisible into species and these again into varieties; all of which will be fully discussed in a subsequent part.

Life is so inseparably connected with the existence of the per son and all its rights which rise and fall with it, that its accidental destruction is the greatest calamity and murder the most heinous of all crimes. There may be a restoration of the other inalienable rights, but none of life. Hence no man, no judicial or legislative tribunal can be justifiable in inflicting capital punishment. Life can only be destroyed in self-defence and in defensive war, where the death of the criminal assailant must be preferred to that of the party assailed.

Nations have no more right than individuals to begin war with each other. It proves the highest degree of savage is in and while ever society is governed by non-producing, vain-glorious, unpatriotic and misanthropic demagogues, with an ignorant, servile and landless class of vassals, who delight in pouring out their blood for a country whose institutions rob them of their home and their labor and yet call it patriotism, the world will abound with depredating wars. But when the whole people can govern and defend themselves in person, be equally required to produce what they consume, when none can shield themselves from the common duties of society by ill-gotten wealth, then will these hell-engendered wars be provoked no more.

As the very essence of all the inalienable rights, consists in their being exercised and enjoyed by every man in proper person, as sovereignty should not be delegated, labor hired, or tenements rented, so neither should life be hired. A hired soldiery should be equally criminal as hired labor. But while a non-fighting class can kindle a war with impunity and have its expense paid by a lax upon labor, they will ever he as lavish of the blood of the soldier, as the non-producing capitalist, manufacturer and landlord are of the sweat of the laborer.

Under the township organization of society, all could be equally armed, trained and required to partake in defensive war, as well as in production. The whole people could be made a perpetual standing army, at every point and always prepared to de fend themselves and country upon their own domain, while rein forced every hour; and would thus soon repel invaders with but little expense. Thus each people instead of being the tools of tyrants to forge each other’s chains would fight only for their rights.

LABOR—SERVITUDE.

The inalienable right of labor or production, is also a genus of the order of rights accruing from the properties of the person of men. Labor is the great instrument by which man procures the means of enjoyment and continues the work of creation. But a portion of mankind have usurped the power of forcing the balance to produce all their wealth, through the simple device of substituting their ill-gotten capital for their labor, by means of hire and wages, tenancy, mancipation, &c.

As property is the product of labor only, whoever servilely hires himself, increases his toil, produces more than he consumes and an idle non-producer besides. All property acquired by any mode than labor, is taken from that of other’s, and a mass ed in the form of capital, renders labor tributary, and the creature sways the creator. Capital levies a tribute of from six to ten per cent per annum in the form of rent upon the laborer; thus extorting the full value of tenements every ten or sixteen years; and defrauds him on commodities two or three times their cost in passing through a series of profit-mongers.

Each man’s labor to allow of proper recreation is only adequate to supply his own wants when assisted by his equal share of the capital stock of the earth. But supposing one eighth of the human race to be in possession of their proper share of the domain, and another eighth usurping the other seven eighths, it follows that three fourths are shorn of their share of capital and reduced to the degrading servitude of hiring their labor to work the materials of others; which creates a great class of non-producing landlords, officers, profit-mongers and masters, and another of producing tenants, electors, hirelings and slaves.

The laborer’s want of materials to set himself at work, forces him to hire his labor, which alienates it, and it becomes the property of the master-capitalist, who receives a tribute in the form of profit upon his wages. The freehold of labor then is in him who has the power of employing it, the hireling having only a choice between reduced wages and starvation. It is stupid to expect that men can exercise the rights of each other for each other; that the legislator will exercise sovereignty for the benefit of the producing constituent, that the landlord will monopolize tenements for the use of tenants, or that the capitalist will employ labor for the advantage of the laborer. It is a law of nature that the character of things is changed when their attributes are transferred to each other. It is impossible for the hireling to reap the full product of his labor and to retain the sublime characteristics of man, until he ceases the servile and criminal.

Labor, a species of the genus freedom, is the sacred and honorable employment of the hands of a human being upon his own domain, freehold and materials.

The proximate cause of the wrongs of labor, is the principle of hire and wages, caused by the more remote one, the usurpation of the land, and the tribute extorted for the use of it. Thus property, that cannot multiply itself, must therefore accumulate that of others by means of rent, profit and interest, and be taken from the product of labor; but mostly from hired labor, as it is the immediate means of subsistence. Labor then, should never be performed under another. All should work only for them selves and under themselves. The relations of employer and employed, master and servant, boss and journeyman, capitalist and laborer, non-producer and producer, should be eternally extinguished. No modification of the principles and institutions constituting the present era of monopoly—no universal suffrage can give to man the full rights of labor. Nothing short of the exercise of rights upon the principle of their inalienableness can create and perpetuate equality and happiness among mankind.

Though, property now, accumulates most all property, yet, labor creates it all. It is the accursed principle of the acquisition of more land by many than they can cultivate, that they can extort the labor of others by a rentage for the use of it, and thus without laboring accumulate all the product of the laborer over the meanest subsistence. Thus, when property is made to accumulate other property, it must be taken from the product of labor, as it alone can only create it.

As labor creates from the raw elements of nature, all property, it, of course pays every private and public expense. Thus, lie purchase money for the sale of lands and tenements, in whatever way appropriated, is mostly paid by hired labor. Thus, rent, for the use of farms and tenements, is always swelled by the taxes and insurance; and the farmer, by adding the whole mount to the price of his produce, can shift it upon the grocer; who can again add it to his profits and collect it from the consumer, who, if he be some other trader, can still parry it off, by the profit he also receives, until it ultimately comes out of the reduced wages of the laborer, who produces all products.

Thus, profit on commodities is also increased by the tariff and bank, and if the consumer be a landlord, a farmer, a manufacturer or a shopper, the increased price is charged along with the rent too, and extorted from the wages of hired labor.

Thus, the whole bill of costs including the purchase money, direct and indirect taxes, tythes, insurance, dividends, interest, rent and profit, received by the various classes of non-producers, having recourse upon each other, is ultimately paid out of the wages of the hired laborer who has no recourse, but in revolution.