“We must pamper superstition, and pension energetic fanaticism—as on ‘Change we degrade commercial honor, and make ‘success’ the idol. We may fairly and reasonably calculate, that within a succeeding generation, even our theoretical schemes of republican subversion may be accomplished, and upon its ruins be erected that noble Oligarchy of caste and wealth for which we all conspire, as affording the only true protection to capital.
“Beside these general views, we may in a thousand other ways apply our combined capital to immediate advantage. We may buy up, through our agents, claims upon litigated estates, upon confiscated bonds, mortgages upon embarrassed property, land-claims, Government contracts, that have fallen into weak hands, and all those floating operations, constantly within hail, in which ready-money is eagerly grasped as the equivalent for enormous prospective gains.
“In addition, through our monopoly of the manufacturing interest, by a rigorous and impartial system of discipline, we shall soon be able to fill the masses of operators and producers with such distrust of each other, and fear of us, as to disintegrate their radical combinations, and bring them to our feet. Governing on ‘Change, we rule in politics; governing in politics, we are the despots in trade; ruling in trade, we subjugate production; production conquered, we domineer over labor. This is the common-sense view of our interests—of the interests of capital, which we represent. In the promotion of this object, we appoint and pension our secret agents, who are everywhere on the lookout for our interests. We arrange correspondence, in cipher, throughout the civilized world; we pension our editors and our reporters; we bribe our legislators, and, last of all, we establish and pay our secret police, local, and travelling, whose business it is, not alone to report to us the conduct of agents already employed, but to find and report to us others, who may be useful in such capacity.
“We punish treachery by death!”
Such is a partial schedule of the terms of one of these terrible confederacies, as furnished in a detached note by Yieger, which held its secret sessions in New York city. He seems to have obtained a sight of some of their records, but by what means, the most daring could only conjecture. He appears to have regarded this particular organisation as the most formidable of all, and to have traced many of its ramifications, in their covert results, with a singularly dogged tenacity.
Among the extraordinary papers contained in the Cabinet he has left, are to be found short notes, containing what are clearly reports and proceedings of this formidable conclave. Its mysterious signature, Regulus, seems to have been known throughout the world; and even he, though clearly a fierce and relentless foe, never writes it, but with the involuntary concession of respect, which large, clear letters, underscored, would seem to convey.
Having now presented such an outline of the character and designs of this secret conclave, as the means of information furnished him have enabled him to do, the Editor will proceed with the promised extracts from its proceedings, such as relate to those in regard to whom the reader may be supposed to have some curiosity.
First, we have here
“A NOTE CONCERNING ETHERIAL SOFTDOWN.
“This woman, whose patronymic was Softdown, first married a Quaker, named Orne; which name, after her separation, and until after her divorce, she continued to bear, with the alias of Marie. She began her public career, soon after her marriage, as a Quaker preacher; but the straitness of this sect not conforming at all to her latitudinarian principles, she recanted in disgust, and left the society. She now plunged at once into Physiology, and, after a miraculously short gestation, produced a few lectures, with which she went the rounds of two or three New England States, accompanied by her husband, whom she, sans ceremonie, dubbed M. D., without putting him to the trouble of reading, or ever having read, a book on any subject. He officiated as her doorkeeper, and received the ‘shillings;’ but, refusing to render any account of the proceeds, a furious feud grew up between them, and soon the war waxed hot and fierce.