This wind bag is forever holding up before the eyes of his dupes a picture painted in the most gorgeous colours; plenty without labour, and a general basking in the sunshine of idleness. He points the finger at wealth, and cries out with a loud voice, "There lies the cure for all your suffering; see how high above your heads the rich man looks. Go take, eat and be merry, to-day live, for to-morrow you die." To the empty stomach, and the ragged back this doctrine has a pleasant sound. Neither is it without its effect upon that large multitude who have to earn a scanty living by the sweat of their brow. The uncertainty of the daily bread; the fear of sickness, and the cry of hungry children open the ears sometimes even of the well disposed. Then amongst many other things, man is by nature a lazy animal, and will not work except in rare instances, unless necessity compels him. Take the noble savage of whom honourable mention has already been made. He only hunts by compulsion; for want of food in fact, which, having found, he lies down and sleeps, and idles his time away until necessity prods him in the stomach again, and sends him off to his happy hunting grounds. Man is the same wherever found, and if anybody will provide him with food and clothes, without any exertion on his part he will not say him nay, nor will he show much gratitude. He will soon learn to look upon it as a right.
There were a good many kind-hearted people in the Buccaneer's island who were doing all they could to develop and foster this innate love of idleness. Already the people had their food for the mind given to them free of charge in the shape of free libraries, and soon the cry for free food for the body might be expected to rise up all over the land, to be followed in due course by a demand for community of property. This, indeed, was already being whispered about. It is an unmitigated evil to take from the individual the responsibility of keeping himself, and bringing up his family. He will not work if you do, and the train of poverty becomes increased, and there is no limit to the extension. As the Devil even is supposed at times to quote Scripture, so do the wind bags, who play upon the wants of the people, frequently base their doctrine of universal plunder upon the teachings of Christ. But did not a small band of early Christians try this share and share alike principle? But it did not answer, and see what has come of it. The pomp, magnificence, splendour and wealth of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy with its Priest-King. Who too would think that the pride and majesty of the Buccaneer's State Church with its High Priest clothed in temporal as well as spiritual power took its rise from the teachings of Him, who gathered on the shores of the sea of Galilee a few simple and faithful disciples to whom He preached the doctrine of humility, chastity, poverty, and love, and a charity as bountiful as the rain which falls from heaven on flowers and weeds alike. Did He not say to them "Provide neither gold nor silver, nor brass in your purses, nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves; for the workman is worthy of his meat?" Ah! the meat, sometimes called hire; there lies the rock upon which so many run, and their frail barks are shivered to pieces; allured to their destruction by the songs of a siren called Mammon.
But the priest he has a stomach as well as the layman. He has a back too which must be covered, and he has his many other wants that must be attended to. One has taken to himself a wife, and he would fain have his Lord excuse him, on her account. Another has many children who have to be fed, clothed, and taught, and put out into the world. Then things have changed since the days even of St. Paul. Wages have very much increased, and around religion there has grown surroundings that must be attended to for the sake of the uncrowned queen Respectability. Ask not how all these mighty things have been brought about. Without doubt, the Buccaneer's High Priest or anyone of his learned ecclesiastics could explain all to you in a most satisfactory manner. They would tell you how the Scriptures have to be construed to suit the needs of modern Christians. The mighty "This" has he contracted and the small "That" has to be stretched; but so long as an orthodox priest sits upon the box of your coach and four, it matters little where, and through what he drives.
Briefly, it may be said, that community of property has no charm except for that class of a community known by the name of rogues and vagabonds. Then, as if the very Devil was in it, the Buccaneer's women were beginning to cry out for more liberty, and disaffection seemed to have taken a strong hold upon the female breast. The advanced portion of these wanted to overturn the present order of things, and to put up in its place, a sort of Hen Convention in which women were to have equal rights and apparently man's privileges as well as their own. To tell these women that they had a sphere, was merely to excite their ridicule, and court their contempt. But the strangeness of the thing was, that while the men were crying out because they had not work sufficient to keep them in many cases from starving, the women wanted to increase the difficulty still more by entering the same fields of labour. Of course poor women must live, and if men are so selfish that they will not keep them in the Holy bonds of matrimony, why, the women must keep themselves. It is true that the men did show an indisposition to set upon their hearth a rival, who instead of attending to domestic duties, might give them a political lecture or a discourse upon either ethics, philosophy, or science. The women too out-numbered the men; spinsters growing more numerous every day, and as it is well-known that the mortality amongst the males of all species is far greater than that amongst the females, on account of the greater risk they run, the above evil might be expected to increase rather than diminish, unless nature took the matter in hand and balanced matters by an epidemic amongst the women. But as matters now stood, the conspiracy amongst the Buccaneer's female sex bid fair to be far more serious than that of the cook's caboose.
It has been said that the man who allows a woman to usurp his authority is in a pitiful condition, for that it shows he has lost somewhat of his manhood. One thing is certain, the woman he has to live with will not respect him, and it is more than probable that she will take the earliest opportunity to show her contempt. It is still worse when this applies not to an individual here and there, but to the majority of a people.
What voice is that crying out that we insult the whole of womanhood? Good lady, if you cast aside your bodkin, and take up the weapons that have hitherto been considered as peculiar to man, you must not cry out when you feel yourself injured. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. "A foolish woman is clamorous; but a good woman retaineth honour." So said one, who is accounted the wisest man that ever lived.
It does not appear that the true position of woman in the world's economy has yet been clearly defined. She was once man's slave. She is now supposed, in all civilised countries, to be his helpmate and companion, and in the Buccaneer's island she showed a strong disposition to become his rival. Poetry has assigned to her a place amongst the angels; reality, on the other hand, has frequently given her a place amongst the devils. Then again she is supposed to be weak and fragile, but though she may not be able to walk a mile in pure fresh air, she will dance many, and several nights a week in the fetid atmosphere of a ball-room. Although she takes little or no healthy exercise, the general woman's appetite is good if not absolutely robust, and although they are all more or less invalids, they generally outlive man. A recent philosopher amongst the Buccaneer's people had said, when speaking of woman, that though eminently adapted to that position for which God apparently intended her, she is not from her constitution and make, adapted to take man's place in the world, and by attempting such a thing all concerned must lose. Unfortunately, the Buccaneer's advanced women did not seem to see this, and they seemed disposed to quarrel with the work of our Creator. The woman's character is conflicting. When she is drawn by her sister, she does not at times appear in too beautiful colours; for she is frequently depicted as vain, silly, jealous, weak, cruel and revengeful, often kissing the sister she intends to stab, and in this resembling somewhat those reptiles which slobber over the victim they intend to devour. But is it the model or the artist who is at fault?
From history we learn that the presence of woman upon the earth has not been an unmixed blessing, for she seems to have caused as much sorrow as ever she has joy, and the estimation in which she was held in ancient Biblical times is pretty well manifested by the author of the Mosaic Cosmogony, who attributes to her the damnation of the whole human race. Through her first act of disobedience man first tasted of the cup of misery, and she has been holding the cup to his lips ever since. Constituted as woman is, was it not cruel to place an injunction on that fatal tree? for, tell a woman not to do a thing and she is pretty certain to do it. Of course our first father did not act over honourably. If he had been imbued with the principles of modern chivalry he would have screened Eve; have sworn, perhaps, that she was not at all to blame, and finished up by flinging the apple at the tempter's head. But man ever had, and always will have an ungodly stomach, and so Adam took the apple and did eat. Notwithstanding the chivalry aforesaid it is generally believed that there are more Adams in the world now than what there are Josephs, and if the trial of the apple came over again, man would fall even as he fell before, though he were to be ten times more damned. It is a thousand and one pities that the arch Fiend did not wait until Eve had become a little old and ugly, for then Adam might have refused the apple and the whole human race might have been saved.
The Essenes would not marry, not because they denied the validity of the institution or its necessity, but because they were convinced of the artfulness and fickleness of the female sex. Then again, the Buddhist believed, if he does not believe, that no woman could attain a state of supreme perfection. The accomplished woman becomes man.
Read where we will, and what we will, and let us bend our steps whither we like, and we find that woman is generally believed to be at the bottom of everything. We are told that Metellus Numidicus, the censor, acknowledged to the Roman people in a public oration that had kind nature allowed us to exist without the help of women, we should be delivered from a very troublesome companion. But, though man still growls, poets still sing about woman, lovely woman, and though man sometimes finds her a devil, painters still depict her in the form of an angel, and man's imagination fills heaven with beings in her shape and likeness.