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reasons can be shown for them than against them, they will stand; if the contrary, they will not."

Here he admits that there were enlightened governments before "the beam of light" came; and positively asserts, that if better reasons cannot be found for their continuance than for their destruction, they will fall, and in seven years from the time he was writing. We find, however, that not only seven, but forty-seven years have elapsed, and not a monarchical government in Europe has yet been changed to any other form. Therefore, according to Mr. Paine's own logic, better reasons have been shown for them than against them. He tells us again—

"Government founded on a moral theory, on a system of universal peace, on the indefeasible hereditary rights of man, is now revolving from west to east, by a stronger impulse than the government of the sword revolved from east to west. It interests not particular individuals, but nations, in its progress, and promises a new era' to the human race."

The promise was fulfilled, and a "new era" came; and what are the consequences? Lynching, firing, stabbing, shooting and rioting are daily taking place in this "his beloved America," where, he told us, there was nothing to engender riots and tumults.

"Excess," said he, " and inequality of taxation, however disguised in the means, never fail to appear in their effects. As a great mass of the community are thrown thereby into poverty and discontent, they are constantly on the brink of commotion; and deprived, as they unfortunately are, of the means of information, are easily heated to outrage. Whatever the apparent cause may be, the real cause is always the want of happiness. It shows that something is wrong in the system of government, that injures the felicity by which society is to be preserved.

"But," he adds, "as fact is superior to reasoning, the instance of America presents itself, to confirm these observations. If there be a country in the world where concord, according to common calculation, would be least expected, it is America. Made up, as it is, of people from different nations, accustomed to different forms and habits of governments, speaking different languages, and more different in their mode of worship, it would appear that the union of such a people was impracticable; but, by the simple operation of constructing government on the principles of society and the rights of man, every difficulty retires, and all the parts are brought into cordial union. There the poor are not oppressed, the rich are not privileged. Industry is not mortified by the splendid extravagance of a court rioting at its expense. There taxes are few, because their government is just; and as there is nothing to render them wretched, there is nothing to engender riots and tumults."

A beautiful picture, indeed! but three years had not elapsed before these assertions were proved to be false, as we find from President Washington's message to the congress of 1794, for which see Appendix.

From this message we learn that "the judiciary was stripped of its capacity to enforce the laws; crimes, which reached the very existence of social order, were perpetrated without control; and the friends of government were insulted, abused, and overawed into silence, or apparent acquiescence" in these treasonable proceedings, which had for their object the prevention of the collection of taxes authorised by the constitution of the United States, and imposed by the legislature of the whole Union.

"What apparent cause of any riots may be," says Paine, "the real one is want of happiness." Then, certainly, his "beloved America,” where the light beamed, the veil was rent, and ignorance dispelled never to be restored, is at this time greatly in want of happiness, for riots and lawless proceedings abound in every part of the union, and these things "show that something is wrong in the system of government," which, in fact, admits of every fraudulent scheme that can be devised to cheat the unsuspecting people, whose capacity for managing their own national affairs is, as it has, and ever will be, not sufficient to protect themselves from becoming the prey of the wicked and designing politicians, who are ramified into every part of the government, and, on account of their short periods of elections, are eternally shifting their places; and when the people discover that their pockets have been picked, there is no getting at the thieves; they have effected their purpose; have made way for another gang, whose deeds of darkness will not be discovered by the multitude until it is too late; and so they go on, and no kind of responsibility can ever exist. Give me, instead of such a system, even a despotism centered in one man, who is to be found when we want him, who has no interest in oppressing his subjects, and who must be accountable for his conduct.

Paine says, that "facts are superior to reasoning," and then he states that the "government in America is so constructed on the principles of society and the rights of man, that every difficulty retires, and all the parts are brought into cordial unison." If this were true, what foul fiend has been at work to produce that which we now behold? Surely a canker-worm must have been concealed in the root at the time of planting the tree of liberty, which worm worked in darkness until it had gnawed the vital part, for now that tree, which ought to be covered with green and luxuriant foliage, appears withered, if not blighted past recovery, exhibiting such a frightful aspect that men turn from it with horror and dismay. If Paine's spirit be now permitted to look upon us, what a contrast it beholds! He said "the poor were not oppressed, the

rich were not privileged." Tens of thousands are now in want of the necessaries of life, and tens of thousands are rioting in extravagance, privileged by chartered monopolies to take from the poor their last mouthful of bread. To be allowed to make the money of the country out of unredeemable paper, for this, in fact, they are allowed to do, is to have a privilege greater than any other that man can possibly bestow on man. The right of making money, even out of gold and silver, of proper weight and fineness, belongs to none but the sovereign power, and, by none else, till of late years, has it ever been used. Now, however, it is in other hands. Bankers, fraudulent bankers, impudently claim the prerogative in "happy America," and rule the United States with papermoney, which they have no means of redeeming, and which they would not if they had.

Again, Paine says, "I proceed to the defects of the English government; I begin with charters and corporations. It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives right. It operates by a contrary effect, that of taking rights away." These then were the defects that enabled him, in his comparison of the two governments, to triumph over the English. What he says of charters is true; but America, then so pure in these respects, is now overrun with charters; not less than nine hundred or perhaps a thousand chartered banks, besides myriads of other charters; so hemmed in are they by them that one can hardly get about without infringing upon them; and it will be hazarding nothing to say, that this republic has more chartered companies in it than all the governments of Europe put together.

The charters that he spoke of were those of incorporated cities and boroughs. The chartering of private companies, except in the case of the Bank of England, and two or three others, had never been heard of, and now they are as nothing when in the opposite scale to those of this republic" This model government-this wonder of the world!!” ! Paine acknowledges, that the English, in former days, would not be imposed upon. "The people of England," said he, "of the present day have a traditionary and historical idea of the bravery of their ancestors; but whatever their virtues or their vices might have been they certainly were a people who would not be imposed upon, and who kept government in awe as to taxation if not as to principle.” "The annual amount of taxation," he remarks, "at five hundred years from the Conquest, was but about five hundred thousand pounds."

Lastly, he told us that "the insulted German, and the enslaved Spaniard, the Russ, and the Pole, were beginning to think; that the age in which he lived would hereafter be called the age of reason, and that his generation would appear to the future as the Adam of a new world." If this new world should continue a hundredth part as long as the old

one has, and should progress in iniquity at the rate it has already done, it will, towards last, exhibit a state of things which can only be compared to that we are taught to believe exists in the regions below.

The New World has already its bastiles, the advocates of which boast of their skill in inflicting torture; their system is solitary confinement in a small cell, out of which it is impossible to see or hear any kind of thing; not a human voice ever cheers the prisoner's soul; he is literally built up in a stone wall of immense thickness; his furniture consists only of a straw bed, just wide enough for him to lie down; and there is no reflection by which he can see even his own face or his own shadow. Think, Sir, if you can for a moment think, of such horrors. I was once in one of these cells, and the gaoler, in sport, swung to the door; "the iron entered into my soul," and I verily believe that if I had been really confined I should have died or gone mad in twenty-four hours. This is a part of the system, and besides this, it is the practice of the gaolers to do whatever else they like with their victims; they frequently kill them by all sorts of inhuman, and before unheard-of, tortures. But I intend to give the world a particular account of the working of the "American system of prison discipline" in another part of my book.

The New World can boast, and, strange as it may appear, does boast of cruelty to the poor; of reducing them to the lowest possible degradation. There is much said against the New Poor Law of England; for my own part I regret that such a law should ever have disgraced my native country, and I attribute that circumstance to its government being already too much tinctured with democracy; for I cannot believe that the old aristocracy of England, not even those that were living in my young days would ever have thought of passing such a law; but that law, as far as it goes, is only a copy of the poor-law of Pennsylvania; it does not, however, go so far into oppression as does the American laws, of which, in due time, I engage to convince you.

I went to America in the year 1824, when everybody appeared to me to be well off; and I have often been surprised at the plenty, and at the waste of good provisions; I believe that there was then one quarter wasted, such as was fit for anybody to eat, and thrown into the streets to the dogs and hogs. As to eating sheep's-heads, and such-like things, it was never thought of by anybody; they were thrown into the streets : but now they are all eaten, and the poor are as glad to get them as the poor of any other part of the world. A great part of all this I attribute to the fraudulent system of banking, which system is the fruits of the democracy of America, and which, I am quite sure, cannot be carried on without the aid of cheating and deception. At any rate, it is carried on by these means, and by these means alone. As a specimen of the way

in which chartered banks carry on their oppressions towards the working classes, I give you the following, which I extract from an American paper, called the Merchant's Transcript :

"The Mississippi banks, after having gone headlong into cotton, have turned their attention towards provisions: they have bought up nearly all the pork in this city, and their purchases in Cincinnati and other places have been on a monopolizing or forestalling scale; the article, in consequence, has advanced six dollars per barrel. These heroes in ragpower are determined on going the 'whole hog' any how."

These things drive the poor Americans mad, and cause all the outbreakings that now astound the world. Why, Sir, they have deliberately burnt down the city of Charleston twice since I have been among them; they have attempted to burn down every principal city in the Union, and incendiary fires are of every night's occurrence. The fact is, Sir, that New York was burnt down by incendiaries. The authorities wished to cloak this, but it is a well-known fact. The Committee of Investigation, as to the cause of the fire, attribute it to the bursting of a gas-pipe; and the reason they assign for such opinion is, that something was heard to go off like a cannon, and that the fire was first observed in the lower and upper stores of a high warehouse, at one and the same time; but the truth is, it was set fire to in different parts of the town, and the authorities knew that, and suggested that every occupant of a house or store, or building of any description, should take measures to watch all night.

You must know that the laws of Pennsylvania, respecting banks, are, that no bank, or any other moneyed institution, shall issue notes of a less denomination than five dollars, to be paid, in silver or gold, on demand. You are not unacquainted with the fact, that about the 10th of May, 1837, these banks all simultaneously stopped payment; they had all the government money, both of the States and of the United States, in their banks, as well as being enormously indebted to the people for notes in circulation. There were a thousand of these banks, situated in every part of the Union, and they all said to the people, "We bid you, your government, and your laws defiance, and we will make you not only continue to take our unredeemable five-dollar notes, but we will issue what we like; we know that our charters are forfeited, but you have not the power to enforce the law against us; you cannot transact your business without something that shall be called money, and we have decided what that thing shall be!!" The cheated people were so enraged against them at first, that they talked of pulling down and scattering to the wind every bank in the country; but, on reflection, those that owed money, and that was by far the greater part, found that their property—if, in such a state of things, none but good money was allowed to pass-would have to

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