daily toils of a carpenter or a blacksmith? In what does the modern Pharisee differ from the Roman publican? Change of circumstances has produced changes of expression, but it has produced no fundamental change of sentiment. If we leave the easily misinterpreted dogmas of theoretical writers, and contemplate the actual internal condition of ancient communities, we shall find that industry was as diligently, though not as feverishly, encouraged in them, and that hard work was equally honored during the periods of their healthy prosperity as at present. The writers who have handled this subject have multiplied their citations from the Greek and Roman philosophers and moralists, to prove that slavery engendered the conviction that labor was unworthy of a freeman. We will not stop to ask whether the recent asseveration of the dignity of labor by communists, socialists, and demagogues of every hue, means in its legitimate consequences anything more than the desired emancipation of the laborer from the necessity of working. The life of the early Greeks and Romans, of the Jews and the Tyrians, might have suggested the prudence of modifying the hasty inferences drawn from the Utopian theories and loose declamations of the classics. But even in their philosophical literature there is evidence, which has been overlooked, to establish the fact that the speculative doctrine was limited and conditional. Socrates, in a remarkable conversation, reported or imagined, and at any rate endorsed, by Xenophon,* acknowledges the dignity of labor as perspicuously as any of the moderns; and it is well known that he himself earned a scanty support with his own hands, preferring, like Spinoza, the humble independence acquired by manual labor to any advantages of a more brilliant position. Nor do we find that Socrates, the associate of the noble Alcibiades and the wealthy Critias, the friend and teacher of the illustriously descended Plato and the distinguished Xenophon, the intimate acquaintance of Aspasia, the president of the senate, was treated with any contumely or disdain because he was a mechanic. That, ordinarily, men who had the means of living comfortably without bodily labor preferred to depend upon their revenues or the superintendence of the labors of others, was true then: but is it less true now? If there has been any great change in this respect, how does it happen that the learned professions, government appointments, political avocations, trade, manufactures, speculation, and what are curiously termed intellectual and liberal occupations, are so constantly pursued by young and old, rather than the actual culture of the soil * Xen. Memorabil. lib. I, cap. vii. and handicrafts? And how does it happen that pursuits of the former class are so much more highly estimated than the latter by public sentiment and social remuneration? There is very little difference between ancient and modern feelings in this respect; although the difference of circumstances renders it so easy to disguise or overlook the inherent similarity. The homilies on the supposed contrast come with a very bad grace from the apostles and disciples of a system, whose tendency is to substitute inanimate machines for living men-to depress the condition and the character of the laborers-to thrust mature workmen out of employment and the means of adequate subsistence by the cheaper but immoral substitute of women and children-to degrade human capacities and human prospects by constantly applying a higher order of ability to an inferior service, which could be equally well performed by inferior talent and ultimately to eliminate altogether human labor, and destroy the laboring class. The difference of opinion and condition between the two ages consists in the presence of slavery in one community, and its absence in those later societies where the treacherous doctrine of the dignity of labor and the freedom of the laborer has prevailed. The ancients bought labor in the lump and furnished the entire support of e laborer. This is still done in slaveholding populations The rest of the moderns buy labor by retail, and curtail the subsistence to the time of employment and the degree of competition, not measuring it by the wants of the man. Both display the same contempt of labor, and the same repugnance to work; and both seek, as far as possible, to escape from the dire necessity. The esteem, or disesteem, has been nearly equal in both periods; but it was honest and avowed in antiquity, and is pretended or disguised at present. But there is one point in which the ancient philosophers differed essentially from modern fanatics and political economists. They taught the contempt of money, and illustrated their precepts by their conduct. Our contemporaries encourage, by preaching and example, by theory and practice, the acquisition and multiplication of gain, without mercy for the sufferers, or consideration for the starving multitude. Quoad vixit, credidit ingens. Divitiis parent; quas qui contraxerit, ille Clarus erit, fortis, justus. Sapiens ne? Etiam; et rex, Et quicquid volet. Hoc, veluti virtute paratuno, This is the language of satire reproving the vices of nearly the most depraved period of Roman history. But this is the serious doctrine of abolition-the sober philosophy of the advocates of exclusive free labor. We do not propose to justify the ancients by condemning the moderns, or to cast out devils in the name of Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. Nil agit exemplum, litem quod lite resolvit. We simply design to show that the charges of the moderns against ancient slavery may with equal justice be directed against themselves, and the practices which they so strenuously, but so blindly, vaunt. [Concluded in our next.] MANUFACTURES, MINING, AND INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS. AGENCIES TO BE DEPENDED ON IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS WITH REFERENCE TO TEXAS---NO 3. My definition would be, mismanagement, either public or private, connected with the requirement on the part of the people to bear the loss resulting from it. When a burden is inflicted on the people beyond just necessity, to that degree does the infliction emanate from a false political economy. True statesmanship seeks to avoid existing evils at the least possible expense to community, and looks carefully to the employment of means adequate to guard the future. It goes further. It seeks to promote and accelerate the prosperity of * Hor. II., Sat. III., vv. 91-'99. The line afterwards quoted occurs v. 103 of the same passage. Here is the commentary: "C'est en vain qu'on tenterait d'innocenter la falsification Parisienne; elle existe; elle a ses maîtres, ses habiles, sa litterature, ses traités didactiques et classiques," &c. M. Louis Leclerc, apud Proudhon. "Were the shop keepers put upon their examination, how would they excuse their trade practices? Is it moral to put potatoes and alum in bread to add salt, tobacco, and colchicum to beer-to mix lard with butterto manufacture milk in various known and unknown ways; to adulterate oils, chemicals, colors, wines, in short, everything capable of adulteration? Does the existence of inspectors of weights and measures indicate morality? Or is it honest to sell over the counter goods whose quality is inferior to that of the samples ticketed in the windows?' *** "Disagreeable questions might be asked concerning the proportion of cotton woven into some fabrics pretended to be wholly of silk. The piracy of patterns, too, would be a delicate subject. And the practice of using gypsum to increase the substance and weight of paper could hardly be defended on the principles of the decalogue," &c., &c. Spencer's Social Statics, ch. xx., § 4, P 222-3. See also § 7, p. 231-2. INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS. the masses by the common means of the State, brought into systematic requisition by the enactment of laws. Internal improvements, therefore, connect themselves in all their incidents with either true or false political economy, and produce benefits corresponding exactly with the degree of sound statesmanship in which measures have their origin. My present object is to deal principally with the comparatively false political economy connected with the corporate system. Men generally regard the result of mismanagement under it as a matter in which the corporator alone is interested. They do not look far enough to observe the extent of its unjust effect on society. Mismanagement, whether under the State or corporate system, will inflict the same injury on the people. Take, for instance, the want of economy in adjustment. If we expend thirty millions of dollars in consequence of local distraction, when the same amount of public accommodation could have been obtained on an outlay of twenty, we shall have thrown away ten millions, on which the interest or dividend is obliged to be paid by productive industry. Any one who will be at the trouble of looking over the location of railways in the United States, will find that two-fifths, or more, of the whole outlay, has been thrown away by the want of proper economy in adjustment. Take the railway charters of Texas, and suppose the roads all built; then, again, see how much better the State could be accommodated with one-half the length of road by a better location merely. Thus much does corporate folly propose to mismanage, and thus much would it require community to pay income on the sacrifice. The most objectionable kind of mismanagement is that connected with fraud. Take, for instance, the New York and Erie railroad. Fraud was a disease of so long standing with this concern that it became chronic. Without enumerating the nauseating details, we have it from the Railroad Journal, that this company mismanaged its concerns to the amount of thirteen millions in a pretended expenditure of thirty-three; the road being represented by ten millions of stock, and twenty-three millions of bonds, averaging seven per cent. interest. Here, then, thirteen millions are thrown away. The public should have been accommodated by paying a fair income on twenty millions, instead of which, productive industry must yield its exactions to pay interest and dividends on thirty-three. In this case we observe that the cost of transportation must be increased so as to pay nine hundred and ten thousand dollars yearly on that which has become a fiction. Over one-third of the business of the road 99 66 should be done in connexion with tickets and freight bills headed, "FARE ON FICTION, “FREIGHT ON FICTION," in order to show people how much they have been, and are being, imposed upon by mismanagement and fraud. Take the Central Railway of New York. This company was formed by the consolidation of several different companies between Albany and Buffalo. After consolidation, instead of graduating the prices for travel and transportation, so as to give a reasonable income on actual investment, ten millions of bonds were issued by the company and divided among the stockholders. This was done in order to evade the statute, and enable the company to draw seven hundred thousand dollars fraudulently from the people to pay the interest on this fiction. The legislature of New York ought to compel this company to head their tickets and freight bills so as to show that about one-third of the aggregate receipts of the road are paid to fiction. It would be the best lesson in political economy New York has had since the old teachers died. Put these operations with the frauds of Schuyler and his associates, and it aggregates the corporate railway fiction of New York to an amount greater than its whole State debt. It demands and receives annual tribute, principally to fraud, to the amount of eighteen hundred thousand dollars. Mercenary speculation, in these arrangements, has been more vigilant and sharp-sighted than popular sagacity. Another reflection also arises. Had one-fifth of this fraud and mismanagement been connected with the State system of New York, what a deafening howl would have come up from every demagogue out of office and who wanted to get in! the newspaper press of the State would have been freighted with complaint sufficient to have sunk the public credit as low as that of Mississippi. But I am talking of things at a distance. Let us home nearer come. I must now make our friends of the State Gazette responsible for the truth of their publication. In reference to the arrangement by those to whom the Pacific Road contract was awarded, it was alleged that $200,000 of paid-up stock was to be issued to each; and a further arrangement contemplated by which it was to be increased to $600,000. I do not recollect the number of contractors, nor how many they designed to associate in this part of the enterprise; nor do I remember whether it would have required ten or twenty millions to have satisfied this offering to corporate patriotism. My only business is with the fact, whether it was contemplated to make exactions upon the productive industry of the country in order to make it yield dividends to the holders. If so, our |