Spoliation! here we have a new element in the economy of society.
From the day when it first made its appearance in the world down to the day when it shall have completely disappeared, if that day ever come, this element has affected and will affect profoundly the whole social mechanism; it will disturb, and to the extent of rendering them no longer recognisable, those laws of social harmony which we have endeavoured to discover and describe.
Our duty, then, will not have been accomplished until we have completed the monography of Spoliation.
It may be imagined that we have here to do with an accidental and exceptional fact, a transient derangement unworthy of the investigations of science.
But in truth it is not so. On the contrary, Spoliation, in the traditions of families, in the history of nations, in the occupations of individuals, in the physical and intellectual energies of classes, in the schemes and designs of governments, occupies nearly as prominent a place as Property itself.
No; Spoliation is not an ephemeral scourge, affecting accidentally the social mechanism, and which economical science may disregard as exceptional.
The sentence pronounced upon man in the beginning was, In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread. Whence it appears that effort and satisfaction are indissolubly united, and that the one must be always the recompense of the other. But on all sides we find man revolting against this law, and saying to his brother, Thine be the labour, and mine the fruit of that labour.
Repair to the hut of the savage hunter, or to the tent of the nomad shepherd, and what spectacle meets your eyes? The wife, lank, pale, disfigured, affrighted, prematurely old, bears the whole burden of the household cares, while the man lounges in idleness. What idea can we form of family Harmonies? The idea has disappeared, for Strength here throws upon Feebleness the weight of labour. And how many ages of civilizing effort will be needed to raise the wife from this state of frightful degradation?
Spoliation, in its most brutal form, armed with torch and sword, [p320] fills the annals of the world. Of what names is history made up? Cyrus, Sesostris, Alexander, Scipio, Cæsar, Attila, Tamerlane, Mahomet, Pizarro, William the Conqueror—pure Spoliation from beginning to end in the shape of Conquest. Hers are the laurels, the monuments, the statues, the triumphal arches, the song of the poet, the intoxicating enthusiasm of the fair!
The Conqueror soon finds that he can turn his victories to more profitable account than by putting to death the vanquished; and Slavery covers the earth. Down to our own times, all over the world this has been the form in which societies have existed, bringing with it hates, resistance, internal struggles, and revolutions. And what is Slavery but organized oppression—organized for the purpose of Spoliation?