IS MARRIAGE A FAILURE?

How like the ague is this boon
Of matrimonial strife!
The fever ends in one short moon,
The chill runs on through life.

231

EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT.

THE COMMUNISM OF CAPITAL.

The President in his late and last message to Congress calls attention, in his incisive and felicitous style, to a condition of our people that must strike all intelligent minds with alarm. The corner-stone in the foundation of communism is that agency of the government which makes of the sovereign power that legal process which controls all private affairs for the good of the people. In popular phrase, it upholds the paternal form which enters every man’s house and regulates by law all his transactions. This is the foundation, while the holding of property in common is rather a consequence than a cause. If there are no rights pertaining to the citizen but those derived from government, to give practical effect to the scheme all property owned by the government must be held in its care in common by its dependents.

Heretofore this theory has been advocated by the poor and oppressed, and stoutly resisted by the rich. We are treated to a reversal of position in the parties, and the rich are practically pressing the scheme upon the poor.

Jefferson, the father of modern democracy, taught that the government, a mere form of expression, in the way of rule, by the people, who held the sovereignty was only a trust of power, instituted for the sole purpose of keeping the peace between the citizens. To use a popular phrase, it was nothing but the intervention of the constable.

Our central government, not being built altogether upon this broad yet simple proposition, opened in its mixed nature the door to communism found in the paternal form. Indeed, it would have been entirely divested of the Jeffersonian theory had it not been for the necessity under which the framers found themselves of conciliating the States, that then jealously fought every proposition looking to a deprivation of their sovereign rights. All that we so happily gained then came from a regard to the several States and not to any thought of popular rights.