their owners. Thus, the burden of the support of society, so far as the ordinary comforts and necessaries of life are concerned, are thrown on fewer and fewer, as private wealth and luxury increase. It requires a thousand pauper laborers to sustain one millionaire, and without them his capital will produce no profit. This accounts for the great numbers and excessive poverty of the mass in England. Half the boasted capital of England, probably twothirds of it, is but a mortgage of the bones and sinews of the laborers, now and forever, to the capitalists. The national debt, stocks of all kinds, money at interest, and indeed all debts, represent this sort of private wealth, which is national poverty.

Sumptuous houses, parks, and all establishments that are costly to sustain and keep up, and do not facilitate, but check the production of necessaries, are also part of private wealth, and of national poverty. Four-fifths of the private wealth of England, and half of that of our Northeast, is a severe tax on labor, and a constant preventive of the accumulation of national wealth.

Private wealth at the South consists chiefly in negro laborers, and improvements of land, that increase its productive capacities. Fine enclosures, improved stock, good granaries, and machines and implements for farming, comfortable negro cabins, good orchards, &c., are as strictly a part of nation

al, as of individual wealth. Not so with the costly private dwellings in our Northern cities. The expense of building, of repairing, of furnishing, and of keeping servants for their owners or tenants, is a constant drawback from productive industry, increases the burdens of the laboring poor, and diminishes national wealth. The poverty-stricken fields of New England are the necessary consequence of the luxurious expenditure in her cities. Yet that luxury is no part of national wealth, but a constant tax on it, whilst improved farms constitute almost three-fourths of all her real wealth, for they feed and clothe mankind.

This is a most interesting subject; one which we have not mastered, or, if we had, this work on which we are engaged is not the proper one for its full discussion and exposition. We merely throw out a few suggestions for the consideration of the thinking and ingenuous. If we are right, luxury is the greatest sin against society; economy and industry, the chiefest of social virtues.

CHAPTER XXXV.

GOVERNMENT A THING OF FORCE, NOT OF CONSENT.

We do not agree with the authors of the Declaration of Independence, that governments "derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." The women, the children, the negroes, and but few of the non-property holders were consulted, or consented to the Revolution, or the governments that ensued from its success. As to these, the new governments were self-elected despotisms, and the governing class self-elected despots. Those governments originated in force, and have been continued by force. All governments must originate in force, and be continued by force. The very term, government, implies that it is against the consent of the governed. not derive their authority, as heads from the consent of wife and children, nor do they govern their families by their consent. They never take the vote of the family as to the labors to be performed, the moneys to be expended, or as to anything else. Masters dare not take the vote of slaves, as to their government. If they did, constant holiday, dissipation and extravagance would

carried on

Fathers do

of families,

be the result. Captains of ships are not appointed by the consent of the crew, and never take their vote, even in "doubling Cape Horn." If they did, the crew would generally vote to get drunk, and the ship would never weather the cape. Not even in the most democratic countries are soldiers governed by their consent, nor is their vote taken on the eve of battle. They have some how lost (or never had) the "inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness;" and, whether Americans or Russians, are forced into battle, without and often against their consent. The ancient republics were governed by a small class of adult male citizens, who assumed and exercised the government, without the consent of the governed. The South is governed just as those ancient republics were. In the county in which we live, there are eighteen thousand souls, and only twelve hundred voters. But we twelve hundred, the governors, never asked and never intend to ask the consent of the sixteen thousand eight hundred whom we govern. Were we to do so, we should soon have an 'organized anarchy." The governments of Europe could not exist a week without the positive force of standing armies.

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They are all governments of force, not of consent. Even in our North, the women, children, and free negroes, constitute four-fifths of the population; and they are all governed without their consent. But

they mean to correct this gross and glaring iniquity at the North. They hold that all men, women, and negroes, and smart children, are equals, and entitled to equal rights. The widows and free negroes begin to vote in some of those States, and they will have to let all colors and sexes and ages vote soon, or give up the glorious principles of human equality and universal emancipation.

The experiment which they will make, we fear, is absurd in theory, and the symptoms of approaching anarchy and agrarianism among them, leave no doubt that its practical operation will be no better than its theory. Anti-rentism, "vote-myself-afarm" ism, and all the other isms, are but the spattering drops that precede a social deluge.

Abolition ultimates in "Consent Government;" Consent Government in Anarchy, Free Love, Agrarianism, &c., &c., and "Self-elected despotism,” winds up the play.

If the interests of the governors, or governing class, be not conservative, they certainly will not conserve institutions injurious to their interests. There never was and never can be an old society, in which the immediate interests of a majority of human souls do not conflict with all established order, all right of property, and all existing institutions. Immediate interest is all the mass look to; and they would be sure to revolutionize government, as often as the situation of the majority was