XIX
The Superstitious Belief in Pretended "Authorities"

Now, what is true in Europe, is substantially true in this country. The difference is the immaterial one, that, in this country, there is no visible, permanent head, or chief, of these tyrants, robbers, and murderers, who call themselves "the government." That is to say, there is no one man, who calls himself "the state," or even "emperor," "king," or "sovereign"; no one who claims that he and his children rule "by the Grace of God," by "Divine Right," or by "special appointment from Heaven." There are only certain men, who call themselves "presidents," "senators," and "representatives," and claim to be the authorized agents, for the time being, or for certain short periods, of all "the people of the United States"; but who can show no credentials, or powers of attorney, or any other open, authentic evidence that they are so, and who notoriously are not so; but are really only the agents of a secret gang of tyrants, robbers, and murderers, whom they themselves do not know, and have no means of knowing, individually; but who, they trust, will openly or secretly, when the crisis comes, sustain them in all their usurpations and crimes.

What is important to be noticed is, that these pretended "presidents," "senators," and "representatives," these pretended agents of all "the people of the United States," the moment their exactions meet with any formidable resistance from any portion of "the people" themselves, are obliged, like their co-robbers and murderers in Europe, to fly at once to the lenders of blood-money, for the means to sustain their power. And they borrow their money on the same principle, and for the same purpose, viz., to be expended in shooting down all those "people of the United States" - their own constituents and principals, as they profess to call them - who resist the robberies and enslavement which these borrowers of the money are practicing upon them. And they expect to repay the loans, if at all, only from the proceeds of the future robberies, which they anticipate it will be easy for them and their successors to perpetrate through a long series of years, upon their pretended principals, if they can but shoot down now some hundreds of thousands of them, and thus strike terror into the rest.

Perhaps the facts were never made more evident, in any country on the globe, than in our own, that these soulless blood-money loan-mongers are the real rulers; that they rule from the most sordid and mercenary motives; that the ostensible "government," the pretended "presidents," "senators," and "representatives," are merely their tools; and that no ideas of, or regard for, justice or liberty had anything to do in inducing them to lend their money for the war. In proof of all this, look at the following facts.

Nearly a hundred years ago we professed to have gotten rid of all that religious superstition, inculcated by a servile and corrupt priesthood in Europe, that supposed "rulers" derived their pretended "authority" directly from "heaven"; and that it was consequently a religious duty on the part of the people to obey them. We professed long ago to have learned that governments could rightfully occur only by the free will, and on the voluntary support, of those who might choose to sustain them. We all professed to have known long ago, that the only legitimate objects of government were the maintenance of liberty and justice equally for all. All this we had professed for nearly a hundred years. And we professed to look with pity and contempt upon those ignorant, superstitious, and enslaved peoples of Europe, who were so easily kept in subjection by the frauds and force of their terrocrats.

Notwithstanding all this, that we had learned, and known, and professed, for nearly a century, that these lenders of blood-money had, for a long series of years previous to the civil war, been the willing accomplices of the slave-holders in perverting the pretended "government" from the purposes of liberty and justice, to the greatest of crimes. They had been such accomplices for a purely pecuniary consideration, to wit, a control of the markets in the South; in other words, the privilege of holding the slave-holders themselves in industrial and commercial subjection to the manufacturers and merchants of the North (who afterwards furnished the money for the war). And these Northern merchants and manufacturers, these lenders of blood-money, were willing to continue to be the accomplices of the slave-holders in the future, for the same pecuniary consideration. But the slave-holders, either doubting the fidelity of their Northern allies, or feeling themselves strong enough to keep their slaves in subjection without Northern assistance, would no longer pay the price which these Northern men demanded. And it was to enforce this price in the future - that is, to monopolize the Southern markets, to maintain their industrial and commercial control over the South - that these Northern manufacturers and merchants lent some of the profits of their former monopolies for the war, in order to secure to themselves the same, or greater, monopolies in the future. These - and not any love of liberty or justice - were the motives on which the money for the war was lent by the North. In short, the North said to the slave-holders: If you will not pay us our price (give us control of your markets) for our assistance against your slaves, we will secure the same price (keep control of your markets) by helping your slaves against you, and using them as our tools for maintaining dominion over you; for the control of your markets we will have, whether the tools we use for that purpose be black or white, and be the cost, in blood and money, what it may.

On this principle, and from this motive, and not from any love of liberty, or justice, the money was lent in enormous amounts, and at enormous rates of interest. And it was only by means of these loans that the objects of the war were accomplished.

And now these lenders of blood-money demand their pay; and the "government," pretended, becomes their tool, their servile, slavish, villainous tool, to extort it from the labor of the enslaved people both of the North and the South. It is to be extorted by every form of direct, and indirect, and unequal taxation. Not only the nominal debt and interest - enormous as the latter was - are to be paid in full, but these holders of the debt are to be paid still further - and perhaps doubly, triply, or quadruply paid - by such tariffs on imports as will enable our home manufacturers to realize enormous prices for their commodities; also by such monopolies in banking as will enable them to keep control of, and thus enslave and plunder, the industry and trade of the great body of the Northern people themselves. In short, the industrial and commercial slavery of the great body of the people, North and South, black and white, is the price which these lenders of blood-money demand, and insist upon, and are determined to secure, in return for the money lent for the war.

This program having been fully arranged and systematized, they put their sword into the hands of the chief murderer of the war (pretended "general" Grant), and charge him to carry their scheme into effect. And now he, speaking as their organ, says: "Let us have peace." The meaning of this is: Submit quietly to all the robbery and slavery we have arranged for you, and you can have "peace." But in case you resist, the same lenders of blood-money, who furnished the means to subdue the South, will furnish the means again to subdue you. These, alone, are the terms on which terrocrats ever give "peace" to "their people."

The whole affair, on the part of those who furnished the money, has been, and now is, a deliberate scheme of robbery and murder; not merely to monopolize the markets of the South, but also to monopolize the currency, and thus control the industry and trade, and thus plunder and enslave the laborers, of both North and South. And the impostors who masquerade as "congress" and "the president" are today the merest tools for these purposes. They are obliged to be, for they know that their own power, as "rulers," pretended, is at an end, the moment their credit with the blood-money loan-mongers fails. They are like a bankrupt in the hands of an extortioner. They dare not say nay to any demand made upon them. And to hide at once, if possible, both their servility and their crimes, they attempt to divert public attention, by crying out that they have "Abolished Slavery!" That they have "Saved the Country!" That they have "Preserved our Glorious Union!" and that, in now paying the "National Debt" as they call it (as if the people themselves, all of them who are to be taxed for its payment, had really and voluntarily joined in contracting it), they are simply "Maintaining the National Honor!"

By "maintaining the national honor," they mean simply that they themselves, tyrants, robbers, and murderers, assume to be "the nation," and will keep faith with those who lend them the money necessary to enable them to crush the great body of the people under their feet; and will faithfully appropriate, from the proceeds of their future robberies and murders, enough to pay all their loans, principal and interest.

The pretense that the "abolition of slavery" was either a motive or justification for the war, is a fraud of the same character with that of "maintaining the national honor." Who, but such usurpers, robbers, and murderers as they, ever established slavery? And why did these men abolish slavery? Not from any love of liberty in general - not as an act of justice to the black man himself, but only "as a war measure," and because they wanted his assistance, and that of his friends, in carrying on the war they had undertaken for maintaining and intensifying that political, commercial, and industrial slavery, to which they have subjected the great body of the people, both white and black. And yet these impostors now cry out that they have abolished the chattel slavery of the black man - although that was not the motive of the war - as if they thought they could thereby conceal, atone for, or justify that other slavery which they were fighting to perpetuate, and to render more rigorous and inexorable than it ever was before. There was no difference in principle - but only one of degree - between the slavery they boast they have abolished, and the slavery they were fighting to preserve; for all restraints upon men's natural liberty, not necessary for the simple maintenance of justice, are of the nature of slavery, and differ from each other only in degree.

If their object had really been to abolish slavery, or maintain liberty or justice generally, they had only to say: "All, whether white or black, who want the protection of this government, shall have it; and all who do not want it, will be left in peace, so long as they leave us in peace." Had they said this, slavery would necessarily have been abolished at once; the war would have been saved; and a thousand times nobler union than we have ever had would have been the result. It would have been a voluntary union of free men; such a union as will one day occur among all men, the world over, if the several "nations," so called, shall ever get rid of the usurpers, robbers, and murderers, masquerading as "governments," that now plunder, enslave, and destroy them.

Still another of the frauds of these men is, that they are now establishing, and that the war was designed to establish, "a government of consent." The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a "government of consent," is this - that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot. This idea was the dominant one on which the war was carried on; and it is the dominant one, now that we have gotten what is called "peace."

Their pretenses that they have "Saved the Country," and "Preserved our Glorious Union," are frauds like all the rest of their pretenses. By them they mean simply that they have subjugated, and maintained their power over, an unwilling people. This they call "Saving the Country"; as if an enslaved and subjugated people - or as if any people kept in subjection by the sword (as it is intended that all of us shall be hereafter) - could be said to have any "country." This, too, they call "Preserving our Glorious Union"; as if there could be said to be any union, glorious or inglorious, that was not voluntary. Or as if there could be said to be any union between masters and slaves; between those who conquer, and those who are subjugated.

All these cries of having "abolished slavery," of having "saved the country," of having "preserved the union," of establishing "a government of consent," and of "maintaining the national honor," are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats - so transparent that they ought to deceive no one - when uttered as justifications for the war, or for now compelling people to pay the cost of the war, or for compelling anybody to support terrocrats against their will.

The lesson taught by all these facts is this: As long as mankind continues to pay "national debts," pretended - that is, so long as they are such dupes and cowards as to pay for being cheated, plundered, enslaved, and murdered - so long there will be enough to lend the money for those purposes; and with that money a plenty of tools, called soldiers, can be hired to keep them in subjection. But when they refuse any longer to pay for being thus cheated, plundered, enslaved, and murdered, they will cease to have cheats, and usurpers, and robbers, and murderers, and blood-money loan-mongers for masters.

CONCLUSION

Inasmuch as the pretended "constitution" was never signed, nor agreed to, by anybody, as a contract, and therefore never bound anybody, and is now binding upon nobody; and is, moreover, such a one as no people can ever hereafter be expected to consent to, except as they may be forced to do so at the point of the bayonet, it is perhaps of no importance what its true legal meaning, as a contract, is. Nevertheless, the writer thinks it proper to say that, in his opinion, the pretended "constitution" is no such instrument as it has generally been assumed to be; but that by false interpretations, and naked usurpations, the gang of terrocrats has made in practice a very widely, and almost wholly, different thing from the intended "government" the supposed "constitution" itself purports to "authorize." He has heretofore written much, and could write much more, to prove that such is the truth. But whether the pretended "constitution" really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either "authorized" such a "government" as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.