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 compelled to wrong others, in order to be just to himself. But man's nature is social, not selfish, and he longs and yearns to return to parental, fraternal and associative relations. All the isms concur in promising closer and more associative relations, in establishing at least a qualified community of property, and in insuring the weak and unfortunate the necessaries and comforts of life. Indeed, they all promise to establish slavery—minus, the master and the overseer. As the evils which we have described are little felt at the South, men here would as soon think of entering the lion's cage, as going into one of their incestuous establishments. Mormonism is only a monster development of the isms. They are all essentially alike, and that the most successful, because, so far, it has been socialism—plus the overseer. The mantle of Joe Smith descended on Brigham Young, and if he transmit to a true prophet, there is no telling how long the thing may work. Mormonism had its birth in Western New York, that land fertile of isms—where also arose Spiritual Rappings and Oneida Perfectionism—where Shakers, and Millenarians, and Millerites abound, and all heresies do most flourish. Mormonism now is daily gathering thousands of recruits from free society in Europe, Asia, Africa, and our North, and not one from the South. It has no religion, but in place of it, a sensual moral code, that shocks the common sense of propriety. But it holds property somewhat in common, draws men together in closer and more fraternal relations, and promises (probably falsely) a safe retreat and refuge from the isolated and inimical relations, the killing competition and exploitation, of free society. All the other isms do the same—but mal-administration, or the want of a master, soon explodes them. We saw last year an advertisement, under the hammer, of the last of fourteen phalansteries, established at the North on the Greely-Fourierite plan. The Shakers do better; but Mr. S. P. Andrews, who is an expert, informs us that they, like the Mormons, have a despotic head. Socialism, with such despotic head, approaches very near to Southern slavery, and gets along very well so long as the despot lives. Mr. S. P. Andrews should enlighten the public as to the progress of the Free Love villages of Trialville, in Ohio, Modern Zion, on Long Island, &c. "Self-elected despotism" is his theory of the perfection of society. Has any Cromwell, or Napoleon, or Joe Smith, seized the sceptre in those delightful villages, which we hope will soon inspire the pen of some Northern Bocaccio. Human opinion advances in concentric circles. Abolition swallows up the little isms, and Socialism swallows up Abolition. Socialism long since attained the point of the circle most distant from slavery, and is now rapidly coming round to the point whence it started—that is, to slavery. Mr. Andrews, who is no humbug, (except in so far as any philosopher is a humbug,) Mr. Andrews, who is probably the foremost thinker in America, could, if he would, prove to the Abolitionists and Socialists, that after a furious day's drive, like that of Toby Lumpkin and his mother, they are just about to haul up at the horse pond, in a few yards of the place where they started in the morning. The Socialists, Louis Napoleon included, are trying to establish slavery, whilst abusing the word.