MAN THE REFORMER
_A Lecture read before the Mechanics' Apprentices' Library
Association, Boston, January 25, 1841
Mr. President, and Gentlemen,
I wish to offer to your consideration some thoughts on the
particular and general relations of man as a reformer. I shall
assume that the aim of each young man in this association is the very
highest that belongs to a rational mind. Let it be granted, that our
life, as we lead it, is common and mean; that some of those offices
and functions for which we were mainly created are grown so rare in
society, that the memory of them is only kept alive in old books and
in dim traditions; that prophets and poets, that beautiful and
perfect men, we are not now, no, nor have even seen such; that some
sources of human instruction are almost unnamed and unknown among us;
that the community in which we live will hardly bear to be told that
every man should be open to ecstasy or a divine illumination, and his
daily walk elevated by intercourse with the spiritual world. Grant
all this, as we must, yet I suppose none of my auditors will deny
that we ought to seek to establish ourselves in such disciplines and
courses as will deserve that guidance and clearer communication with
the spiritual nature. And further, I will not dissemble my hope,
that each person whom I address has felt his own call to cast aside
all evil customs, timidities, and limitations, and to be in his place
a free and helpful man, a reformer, a benefactor, not content to slip
along through the world like a footman or a spy, escaping by his
nimbleness and apologies as many knocks as he can, but a brave and
upright man, who must find or cut a straight road to everything
excellent in the earth, and not only go honorably himself, but make
it easier for all who follow him, to go in honor and with benefit.
In the history of the world the doctrine of Reform had never
such scope as at the present hour. Lutherans, Hernhutters, Jesuits,
Monks, Quakers, Knox, Wesley, Swedenborg, Bentham, in their
accusations of society, all respected something, -- church or state,
literature or history, domestic usages, the market town, the dinner
table, coined money. But now all these and all things else hear the
trumpet, and must rush to judgment, -- Christianity, the laws,
commerce, schools, the farm, the laboratory; and not a kingdom, town,
statute, rite, calling, man, or woman, but is threatened by the new
spirit.
What if some of the objections whereby our institutions are
assailed are extreme and speculative, and the reformers tend to
idealism; that only shows the extravagance of the abuses which have
driven the mind into the opposite extreme. It is when your facts and
persons grow unreal and fantastic by too much falsehood, that the
scholar flies for refuge to the world of ideas, and aims to recruit
and replenish nature from that source. Let ideas establish their
legitimate sway again in society, let life be fair and poetic, and
the scholars will gladly be lovers, citizens, and philanthropists.
It will afford no security from the new ideas, that the old
nations, the laws of centuries, the property and institutions of a
hundred cities, are built on other foundations. The demon of reform
has a secret door into the heart of every lawmaker, of every
inhabitant of every city. The fact, that a new thought and hope have
dawned in your breast, should apprize you that in the same hour a new
light broke in upon a thousand private hearts. That secret which you
would fain keep, -- as soon as you go abroad, lo! there is one
standing on the doorstep, to tell you the same. There is not the
most bronzed and sharpened money-catcher, who does not, to your
consternation, almost, quail and shake the moment he hears a question
prompted by the new ideas. We thought he had some semblance of
ground to stand upon, that such as he at least would die hard; but he
trembles and flees. Then the scholar says, `Cities and coaches shall
never impose on me again; for, behold every solitary dream of mine is
rushing to fulfilment. That fancy I had, and hesitated to utter
because you would laugh, -- the broker, the attorney, the market-man
are saying the same thing. Had I waited a day longer to speak, I had
been too late. Behold, State Street thinks, and Wall Street doubts,
and begins to prophesy!It cannot be wondered at, that this general inquest into abuses
should arise in the bosom of society, when one considers the
practical impediments that stand in the way of virtuous young men.
The young man, on entering life, finds the way to lucrative
employments blocked with abuses. The ways of trade are grown selfish
to the borders of theft, and supple to the borders (if not beyond the
borders) of fraud. The employments of commerce are not intrinsically
unfit for a man, or less genial to his faculties, but these are now
in their general course so vitiated by derelictions and abuses at
which all connive, that it requires more vigor and resources than can
be expected of every young man, to right himself in them; he is lost
in them; he cannot move hand or foot in them. Has he genius and
virtue? the less does he find them fit for him to grow in, and if he
would thrive in them, he must sacrifice all the brilliant dreams of
boyhood and youth as dreams; he must forget the prayers of his
childhood; and must take on him the harness of routine and
obsequiousness. If not so minded, nothing is left him but to begin
the world anew, as he does who puts the spade into the ground for
food. We are all implicated, of course, in this charge; it is only
necessary to ask a few questions as to the progress of the articles
of commerce from the fields where they grew, to our houses, to become
aware that we eat and drink and wear perjury and fraud in a hundred
commodities. How many articles of daily consumption are furnished us
from the West Indies; yet it is said, that, in the Spanish islands,
the venality of the officers of the government has passed into usage,
and that no article passes into our ships which has not been
fraudulently cheapened. In the Spanish islands, every agent or
factor of the Americans, unless he be a consul, has taken oath that
he is a Catholic, or has caused a priest to make that declaration for
him. The abolitionist has shown us our dreadful debt to the southern
negro. In the island of Cuba, in addition to the ordinary
abominations of slavery, it appears, only men are bought for the
plantations, and one dies in ten every year, of these miserable
bachelors, to yield us sugar. I leave for those who have the
knowledge the part of sifting the oaths of our custom-houses; I will
not inquire into the oppression of the sailors; I will not pry into
the usages of our retail trade. I content myself with the fact, that
the general system of our trade, (apart from the blacker traits,
which, I hope, are exceptions denounced and unshared by all reputable
men,) is a system of selfishness; is not dictated by the high
sentiments of human nature; is not measured by the exact law of
reciprocity; much less by the sentiments of love and heroism, but is
a system of distrust, of concealment, of superior keenness, not of
giving but of taking advantage. It is not that which a man delights
to unlock to a noble friend; which he meditates on with joy and
self-approval in his hour of love and aspiration; but rather what he
then puts out of sight, only showing the brilliant result, and
atoning for the manner of acquiring, by the manner of expending it.
I do not charge the merchant or the manufacturer. The sins of our
trade belong to no class, to no individual. One plucks, one
distributes, one eats. Every body partakes, every body confesses, -with cap and knee volunteers his confession, yet none feels himself
accountable. He did not create the abuse; he cannot alter it. What
is he? an obscure private person who must get his bread. That is the
vice, -- that no one feels himself called to act for man, but only as
a fraction of man. It happens therefore that all such ingenuous
souls as feel within themselves the irrepressible strivings of a
noble aim, who by the law of their nature must act simply, find these
ways of trade unfit for them, and they come forth from it. Such
cases are becoming more numerous every year.
But by coming out of trade you have not cleared yourself. The
trail of the ...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Go to the beginning of the document
Go to previous page
Go to next page
Go to the end of document
