Cannibals All - free ebook by George Fitzhugh

GEORGE FITZHUGH,

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by ADOLPHUS MORRIS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Virginia....

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TO THE HONORABLE HENRY A. WISE.

Dear Sir : I dedicate this work to you, because I am acquainted with no one who has so zealously, laboriously and successfully endeavored to Virginianise Virginia, by encouraging, through State legislation, her intellectual and physical growth and development; no one who has seen so clearly the evils of centralization from without, and worked so earnestly to cure or avert those evils, by building up centralization within. Virginia should have her centres of Thought at her Colleges and her Univer

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PREFACE.

I have endeavored, in this work, to treat the subjects of Liberty and Slavery in a more rigidly analytical manner than in "Sociology for the South;" and, at the same time, to furnish the reader with abundance of facts, authorities and admissions, whereby to test the truth of my views. My chief aim has been to shew, that Labor makes values, and Wit exploitates and accumulates them ; and hence to deduce the conclusion that the unrestricted exploitation of so-called free society, is more oppressive

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INTRODUCTION.

In our little work, "Sociology for the South," we said, "We may again appear in the character of writer before the public; but we shall not intrude, and would prefer that others should finish the work which we have begun." That little work has met, every where, we believe, at the South, with a favorable reception. No one has denied its theory of Free Society, nor disputed the facts on which that theory rests. Very many able co-laborers have arisen, and many books and essays are daily appearing,

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THE UNIVERSAL TRADE.

We are, all, North and South, engaged in the White Slave Trade, and he who succeeds best, is esteemed most respectable. It is far more cruel than the Black Slave Trade, because it exacts more of its slaves, and neither protects nor governs them. We boast, that it exacts more, when we say, "that the profits made from employing free labor are greater than those from slave labor." The profits, made from free labor, are the amount of the products of such labor, which the employer, by means of the co

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LABOR, SKILL AND CAPITAL.

Nothing written on the subject of slavery from the time of Aristotle, is worth reading, until the days of the modern Socialists. Nobody, treating of it, thought it worth while to enquire from history and statistics, whether the physical and moral condition of emancipated serfs or slaves had been improved or rendered worse by emancipation. None would condescend to compare the evils of domestic slavery with the evils of liberty without property. It entered no one's head to conceive a doubt as to t

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SUBJECT CONTINUED—EXPLOITATION OF SKILL.

"The worth of a thing, is just what it bring." The professional man who charges the highest fees is most respected, and he who undercharges stands disgraced. We have a friend who has been, and we believe will continue to be, one of the most useful men in Virginia. He inherited an independent patrimony. He acquired a fine education, and betook himself laboriously to an honorable profession. His success was great, and his charges very high. In a few years he amassed a fortune, and ceased work. We

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INTERNATIONAL EXPLOITATION.

As individuals possessing skill or capital exploitate, or compel other individuals in the same community to work for them for nothing, or for undue consideration, precisely in the same way do nations possessed of those advantages exploitate other nations with whom they trade, who are without them. England lends, say, five hundred millions of dollars to governments and individuals in America. In a hundred years, she will have withdrawn from us, in interest, six times the amount loaned or advanced

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FALSE PHILOSOPHY OF THE AGE.

The moral philosophy of our age, (which term we use generically to include Politics, Ethics, and Economy, domestic and national,) is deduced from the existing relations of men to each other in free society, and attempts to explain, to justify, to generalize and regulate those relations. If that system of society be wrong, and its relations false, the philosophy resulting from it must partake of its error and falsity. On the other hand, if our current philosophy be true, slavery must be wrong, be

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FREE TRADE, FASHION AND CENTRALIZATION.

Liberty and political economy beget and encourage free trade, as well between different localities and different nations, as between individuals of the same towns, neighborhoods or nations. The nations possessed of most skill and capital, and commercial enterprise, and cunning, gradually absorb the wealth of those nations who possess less of those qualities. The effect of international free trade, aided by the facilities of the credit system, of the mail, and speedy steam communication, is to ce

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THE WORLD IS TOO LITTLE GOVERNED.

Whether with reason or with instinct blest, All enjoy that power that suits them best; Order is Heaven's first law, and this confessed, Some are, and must be greater than the rest— More rich, more wise; but who infers from hence That such are happier, shocks all common sense. Heaven to mankind impartial, we confess, If all are equal in their happiness; But mutual wants this happiness increase, All nature's difference, keeps all nature's peace: Condition, circumstance, is not the thing; Bliss is

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LIBERTY AND SLAVERY.

Effugit imago, Par livibus ventis, volueri que simillima somno. It seems to us that the vain attempts to define liberty in theory, or to secure its enjoyment in practice, proceed from the fact that man is naturally a social and gregarious animal, subject, not by contract or agreement, as Locke and his followers assume, but by birth and nature, to those restrictions of liberty which are expedient or necessary to secure the good of the human hive, to which he may belong. There is no such thing as

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PALEY ON EXPLOITATION.

Paley maintains, to its fullest extent, the doctrine of exploitation which we have endeavored to expound and illustrate in the last three chapters. Yet, neither Paley nor any of his readers were ever aware of its tremendous consequences. It is only when those consequences are pointed out, that the mind revolts at the theory. He saw and said, that capital paid labor nothing, yet discovered no iniquity in the transaction. He saw that labor produced every thing—capital nothing, and "all that the ca

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OUR BEST WITNESSES AND MASTERS IN THE ART OF WAR.

I think few worth damnation, save their kings; And these but as a kind of quit-rent, to Assert my right as lord. Vision of Judgment. We intend this chapter as our trump card, and have kept it in reserve, because it is rash to "lead trumps." We could produce a cloud of witnesses, but should only protract the trial thereby. We call into court Horace Greely, Wm. Goodell, Gerrit Smith, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, and Stephen Pearle Andrews, and propose to prove by them (the actual leaders and faithful expon

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DECAY OF ENGLISH LIBERTY, AND GROWTH OF ENGLISH POOR LAWS.

Blackstone, whose Commentaries have been, for half a century, a common school-book, and whose opinions on the rise, growth and full development of British liberty, are generally received as true, as well in America as in Europe, maintains a theory the very opposite of that for which we are about to contend. He holds that the appearance of the House of Commons, about the reign of Henry the Third, was the dawn of approaching liberty. We contend that it was the origin of the capitalist and moneyed

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THE FRENCH LABORERS AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

Each of the many French revolutions was occasioned by destitution almost amounting to famine among the laboring classes. Each was the insurrection of labor against capital. But until the revolution of 1848, the revolutionists were unconscious alike of their motives and their objects. They believed, till then, that political changes would remedy the evils which oppressed them. After the revolution of 1830, philosophers and statesmen, seeing the inadequacy of change of dynasty or of political poli

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THE REFORMATION—THE RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT.

The Reformation, like the American Revolution, was originated and conducted to successful issue by wise, good and practical men, whose intuitive judgments and sagacious instincts enabled them to feel their way through the difficulties that environed them. Wise men know that there is too much of complexity in the tangled web of human affairs, to justify the attempt at once to practice and philosophise, to act and to reason. Fools and philosophers too often mar the good works of such men, by prete

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THE NOMADIC BEGGARS AND PAUPER BANDITTI OF ENGLAND.

Under various names, such as Proletariat in France, Lazzaroni in Italy, Leperos in Mexico, and Gypsies throughout all Europe, free society is disturbed and rendered insecure, by the class, a description of which we shall draw from the British writers. We do not hesitate to assign to the Gypsies the same origin with the rest. They are all the outgrowth of runaway and emancipated serfs. The time of the appearance of the Gypsies is coeval with the universal liberation and escape of the villeins. If

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"RURAL LIFE OF ENGLAND."

From "Rural Life of England," by Wm. H. Howitt , we take the following extract: "The wildness into which some of these children in the more solitary parts of the country, grow, (recollect this is in Lancashire, near the great city of Manchester,) is, I imagine, not to be surpassed in any of the back settlements of America. On the 5th July, 1836, the day of that remarkable thunder-storm which visited a great part of the kingdom with much fury, being driven into a cottage at the foot of Pendle by

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THE DISTRESSED NEEDLE-WOMEN AND HOOD'S SONG OF THE SHIRT.

We take what follows from the January No., 1849, of the Westminster Review—we having nothing to remark, except as to the line from the French song, which has taken the place of the Marseilloise as the great National Song, we should rather say, National Dirge. It is the maddening cry of hunger for employment and bread, and more resembles the howl of the wolves of the Pyrennes, as they start in quest of prey, than the Anthem of Liberty. It truly represents, embodies and personifies the great Socia

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THE EDINBURGH REVIEW ON SOUTHERN SLAVERY.

The Edinburgh Review well knows that the white laborers of England receive more blows than are inflicted on Southern slaves. In the Navy, the Army, and the Merchant service of England, there is more of cruelty, more physical discomfort, than on all the farms of the South. This Review, for twenty years, has been a grand repository of the ignorance, the crimes, and sufferings of the workers in mines and factories, of the agricultural laborers, of the apprentices, and, in fine, of the whole laborin

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THE LONDON GLOBE ON WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION.

We find the following frank and explicit admission in the Globe of 10th July, 1856: "Our own West India Islands are fast relapsing into primitive savageness. When the rich lands of Jamaica are being yearly abandoned, and when in Trinidad and Guiana cultivation has almost ceased, it is not likely that England will care to extend her sovereignty further over tropical territory, which can only be brought into use by a system which has been solemnly condemned." Now, let us rigidly examine and ascert

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PROTECTION, AND CHARITY, TO THE WEAK.

A mere verbal formula often distinguishes a truism from a paradox. "It is the duty of society to protect the weak;" but protection cannot be efficient without the power of control; therefore, "It is the duty of society to enslave the weak." And it is a duty which no organized and civilized society ever failed to perform. Parents, husbands, guardians, teachers, committees, &amp;c., are but masters under another name, whose duty it is to protect the weak, and whose right it is to control them.

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THE FAMILY.

All modern philosophy converges to a single point—the overthrow of all government, the substitution of the untrammelled "Sovereignty of the Individual," for the Sovereignty of Society, and the inauguration of anarchy. First domestic slavery, next religious institutions, then separate property, then political government, and, finally, family government and family relations, are to be swept away. This is the distinctly avowed programme of all able abolitionists and socialists: and towards this end

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NEGRO SLAVERY.

Until the lands of America are appropriated by a few, population becomes dense, competition among laborers active, employment uncertain, and wages low, the personal liberty of all the whites will continue to be a blessing. We have vast unsettled territories; population may cease to increase, or increase slowly, as in most countries, and many centuries may elapse before the question will be practically suggested, whether slavery to capital be preferable to slavery to human masters. But the negro

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THE STRENGTH OF WEAKNESS.

An unexplored moral world stretches out before us, and invites our investigation; but neither our time, our abilities, nor the character of our work, will permit us to do more than glance at its loveliness. It is pleasing, however, to turn from the world of political economy, in which "might makes right," and strength of mind and of body are employed to oppress and exact from the weak, to that other and better, and far more numerous world, in which weakness rules, clad in the armor of affection

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MONEY.

From the days of Plato and Lycurgus to the present times, Social Reformers have sought to restrict or banish the use of money. We do not doubt that its moderate use is essential to civilization and promotive of human happiness and well-being—and we entertain as little doubt, that its excessive use is the most potent of all causes of human inequality of condition, of excessive wealth and luxury with the few, and of great destitution and suffering with the many, and of general effeminacy and corru

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GERRIT SMITH ON LAND REFORM, AND WILLIAM LOYD GARRISON ON NO-GOVERNMENT.

Within the last week, we have received the Land Reformer , an agrarian paper, just started in New York, in which we are sure we recognize the pen of Gerrit Smith, the leader of the New York abolitionists; and also a No. of the Liberator, in which Mr. Garrison, the leader of the New England abolitionists, defines his No-Government doctrines. In calling attention, North and South, to opinions openly and actively promulgated by such distinguished men, which opinions are at war with all existing ins

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IN WHAT ANTI-SLAVERY ENDS.

Mr. Carlyle very properly contends that abolition and all the other social movements of the day, propose little or no government as the moral panacea that is to heal and save a suffering world. Proudhon expressly advocates anarchy; and Stephen Pearl Andrews, the ablest of American socialistic and abolition philosophers, elaborately attacks all existing social relations, and all legal and governmental restraints, and proposes No-Government as their substitute. He is the author of the Free Love ex

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CHRISTIAN MORALITY IMPRACTICABLE IN FREE SOCIETY—BUT THE NATURAL MORALITY OF SLAVE SOCIETY.

It is strange that theories, self-evidently true so soon as suggested, remain undiscovered for centuries. What more evident, obvious, and axiomatic, than that equals must from necessity be rivals, antagonists, competitors, and enemies. Self-preservation, the first law of human and animal nature, makes this selfish course of action essential to preserve existence. It is almost equally obvious, that in the natural, social, or family state, unselfishness, or the preference of others' good and happi

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SLAVERY—ITS EFFECTS ON THE FREE.

Beaten at every other quarter, we learn that a distinguished writer at the North, is about to be put forward by the Abolitionists, to prove that the influence of slavery is deleterious on the whites who own no slaves. Now, at first view it elevates those whites; for it makes them not the bottom of society, as at the North—not the menials, the hired day laborer, the work scavengers and scullions—but privileged citizens, like Greek and Roman citizens, with a numerous class far beneath them. In sla

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PRIVATE PROPERTY DESTROYS LIBERTY AND EQUALITY.

The Abolitionists and Socialists, who, alone, have explored the recesses of social science, well understand that they can never establish their Utopia until private property is abolished or equalized. The man without property is theoretically, and, too often, practically, without a single right. Air and water, 'tis generally believed, are the common property of mankind; but nothing is falser in fact as well as theory. The ownership of land gives to the proprietor the exclusive right to every thi

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THE NATIONAL ERA AN EXCELLENT WITNESS.

In an article in the Era of August 16, 1855, criticising and denying our theory of the Failure of Free Society, the writer begins by asserting, "We demonstrated, last week, from history, that the condition of the poor of England has greatly improved in modern times, as they have become free from the restraints of feudal bondage." He then goes on to criticise us, but, before concluding, contradicts and refutes his work of the week before, and adopts our theory in its fullest extent. He admits the

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ISMS—SHEWING WHY THEY ABOUND AT THE NORTH, AND ARE UNKNOWN AT THE SOUTH.

The exploitation, or unjust exactions of skill and capital in free society, excite the learned and philanthropic to devise schemes of escape, and impel the laborers to adopt those schemes, however chimerical, because they feel that their situation cannot be worsted. They are already slaves without masters, and that is the bathos of human misery. Besides, universal liberty has disintegrated and dissolved society, and placed men in isolated, selfish, and antagonistic positions—in which each man is

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DEFICIENCY OF FOOD IN FREE SOCIETY.

The normal state of free society is a state of famine. Agricultural labor is the most arduous, least respectable, and worst paid of all labor. Nature and philosophy teach all who can to avoid and escape from it, and to pursue less laborious, more respectable, and more lucrative employments. None work in the field who can help it. Hence free society is in great measure dependent for its food and clothing on slave society. Western Europe and New England get their cotton, sugar, and much of their b

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MAN HAS PROPERTY IN MAN!

In the Liberator of the 19th December, we observe that the editor narrows down the slavery contest to the mere question, whether "Man may rightfully hold property in man?" We think we can dispose of this objection to domestic slavery in a very few words. Man is a social and gregarious animal, and all such animals hold property in each other. Nature imposes upon them slavery as a law and necessity of their existence. They live together to aid each other, and are slaves under Mr. Garrison's higher

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THE "COUP DE GRACE" TO ABOLITION.

The Abolitionists are all willing to admit that free society has utterly failed in Europe, but will assign two reasons for that failure—"Excess of population, and want of equality and liberty." Were the population of England doubled, the labor required to support that population would be lessened, could all labor and expenses be supported alike; because the association and division of labor might be rendered more perfect, and the expenses of a single family, or single individual, might be divide

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NATIONAL WEALTH, INDIVIDUAL WEALTH, LUXURY AND ECONOMY.

It is a common theory with political economists, that national wealth is but the sum of individual wealth, and that as individual wealth increases, national wealth increases, pari passu . We think this theory false and pernicious, and the more so because it is plausible. All profit-bearing possessions or capital, tend to exonerate their owners from labor, and to throw the labor that supports society on a part only of its members. Now, as almost all wealth is the product of labor, this diminution

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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 for

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WARNING TO THE NORTH.

Macbeth. The reader must have remarked our propensity of putting scraps of poetry at the head of our chapters, or of interweaving them with the text. It answers as a sort of chorus or refrain, and, when skillfully handled, has as fine an effect as the fiddle at a feast, or the brass band on the eve of an engagement. It nerves the author for greater effort, and inspires the reader with resolution to follow him in his most profound ratiocinations and airiest speculations. We learnt it from "our Ma

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ADDENDUM.

Virginia, Nov. 18, 1856. Wm. Lloyd Garrison , Esq.: Dear Sir —I have observed so much fairness in the manner in which slavery and other sociological questions are treated in The Liberator , that it has occurred to me you would not consider suggestions from an ultra pro-slavery man obtrusive, and might deem them worth a place in your columns. I shall not promise that the example of your liberality will be followed at the South. It is a theory of mine, that "recurrence to fundamental principles" i

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