Since we expect to say some things to the rich, and to those who are by other advantages besides wealth in an elevated social position, which will be severe, and perhaps to some unpalatable, we may as well begin by placing a guard against a possible misunderstanding of our intent. No careful reader of our magazine can suppose that we would sympathize with or encourage any movement hostile to the just rights or reasonable privileges of the wealthy class. Moreover, we cherish a deep respect for all the hierarchical institutions of the political and social order, as well as for their more sacred and elevated counterparts in the ecclesiastical system. We recognize the necessity, even in our republican commonwealth, of a certain elevated social class, in which men of wealth must unavoidably have an eminent position. Whatever we have which can check our ultra-democratic tendencies, infuse a conservative spirit into our public opinion, give dignity, decorum, and stability to our institutions, elevate and refine our social tone, and add a becoming splendor to our civilization, calls forth our sympathies, and receives our deliberate and reasoned approbation. Whatever censures, therefore, we may pronounce upon
the vices, follies, and delinquencies of the rich and the otherwise highly placed in social rank, and whatever admonitions we may address to them respecting the duties and dangers of their position, must be taken as coming from a friend, not only to themselves as individuals, but to their class. With these preliminaries, we address ourselves to our task.
We have placed the title “In Reference to Communism” at the head of our first article for one special reason. Communism threatens the wealthy class with a war of extermination. It is obvious, therefore, that the rich have more need to reflect on the duties and dangers of their position, at the present time, than they have ever had before. So, then, we call their attention at the outset to the war which the fanatics of revolution are preparing for them, in order that our words may have more weight, and that they may give more serious thought to the subjects we intend to discuss with them. And here we will explain that we employ the single terms “rich,” “rich people,” etc., for convenience’ sake, including under this designation other qualifications besides moneyed wealth, and other persons besides those who possess great fortunes; namely, all those who possess any species of privilege or power which gives them social dignity and influence.
We say, then, to the rich: your class, your privileges, your possessions, your lives, are threatened by an enemy whose character is disclosed by the bloody orgies of the Paris Commune. What application do we make of this grave and alarming fact? Simply this. The rich members of society ought to reflect seriously on all the questions which relate to their position in the commonwealth. They ought to think of their duties, to examine their own delinquencies,
to consider the line of conduct they ought to adopt, to use their power and influence rightly and rationally, to educate their children carefully, and in every way to prevent and defeat the nefarious plots of the party of revolution. We say, earnestly and emphatically, that there is now a special necessity and obligation to use wealth, education, intellectual power, social influence, political power, moral and religious force, to avert the dangers which threaten society, and to promote its solid and firm establishment on a right basis. Moreover, the self-interest of the rich demands this of them most imperatively. All their private and personal interests depend on the peace and good order of society. Their own safety demands of them that they should work for the salvation of political and social order, when they are in danger, just as they would bear a hand at the pumps on board a leaking ship, or man the batteries of their own beleaguered city. Hostility between the wealthy and the laborious classes is a great evil in society. When the hostility of the masses against the aristocracy becomes violent, and tends to produce a revolution and an exterminating war of the former against the latter, there is a deadly sickness in the body politic which threatens its dissolution. This state of things exists at present in Christendom. We are not so deeply affected as yet in this country; but we are not altogether sound or safe from the infection, and there is reason enough to be on the alert to protect ourselves from it. The rich have duties toward society in general, and toward its several classes and individuals in particular. And they have, at the present time and in present circumstances, a special obligation to give these duties careful attention.
All this would he strictly true and sufficient to arouse the rich to a greater vigilance in fulfilling the duties of their high position, even if they were free from blame, as a class, for the disorders and evils of modern society; but, if they are chiefly to blame for these evils through their past neglect and delinquency, there is an additional and imperative motive in this fact for a strenuous effort on their part to repair the past in the present and the future by a redoubled fidelity and energy. We think they are to blame. It is our deliberate judgment that communism, and the whole mass of social disorders which have lately come to the surface of the body politic under this loathsome and deadly form, are principally to be traced to the abuse of power and wealth by the governing classes. Kings, nobles, rich men, authors, politicians, have, in part by their gross abuse of the trust committed to them, and in part by their neglect and indifference, generated the moral petroleum to which demagogues and leaders of revolution, the Mazzinis, Garibaldis, Karl Marxes, Dombrowskis, and Raoul Rigaults, have applied the torch. There have been many great and good things done by kings, and by the members of the political, social, and intellectual aristocracy. There have been many admirable and excellent persons, many heroes and saints, among these elevated classes in society. Nevertheless, on the whole, they have been, especially for the past three centuries, grievously delinquent, and continually becoming worse; and even more extensively delinquent by neglect than by positive criminality. The greatest part of the miseries and crimes which darken the annals of history may be traced to kings and their associates in government. Their ambition, their selfish policy, their
unjust or unnecessary wars, their disregard of the happiness of the common people, their haughtiness of demeanor, their personal vices and corrupting example, have been the fruitful causes of misery and vice among their subjects. They have reacted against themselves by producing hatred and contempt of thrones and kings, of authority and government. The aristocracy have followed closely the royal example set before them. And the men of genius and intellectual culture, the princes and rich men of the realm of arts and letters, since the fatal epoch of the renaissance of paganism, have prostituted their heaven-born gifts to the service of every destructive error and every corrupting vice. The greater number of those who have not positively aided the work of ruin have been apathetic and indifferent, and have not positively aided the work of salvation, at least with the zeal and energy which might justly be expected from them.
Moreover, kings, nobles, and the wealthy class have made war on the church. They have revolted against the Holy See, enslaved the hierarchy and the clergy, and despoiled the church.
They have robbed and well-nigh suppressed the monastic orders. In this way, they have sapped and undermined the foundations of their own stability; for it is the principle of religious obedience and reverence, first of all toward God, and then secondarily toward all powers established and sanctioned by the law of God, which is the source of the sentiment of loyalty. The rebellion of the state against the church must, therefore, terminate in the rebellion of the lower against the higher classes in the state. The monastic institution was the strongest of all links between rich and poor, great and humble, by reason of the fact that its members belonged to both classes at the same
time. The destruction of monasticism, therefore, resulted necessarily in a hostility of these two classes toward each other. So it has come about that the aristocracy, excited by kings against the church, turned next against the kings, the commercial and middle classes turned against the aristocracy, and now the masses are turning against the men of wealth, or, as their own leaders express it, against “the supremacy of cash.” The condition of the laboring classes is, at best, in many respects a hard one. It is a great and an arduous thing which is required of them; to submit patiently to the supremacy of the higher classes. Religion alone makes their position tolerable; religion, binding together both the superior and the inferior classes in divine love. The hierarchy and the aristocracy must be recognized by the people as holding their high position for the common good of all, and as working with a self-denial equal or superior to their own; that is, as really laborers in another sphere of action, but with a common end in view, in order that they may contentedly acquiesce in the inequality of rank, wealth, and social privileges which prevails in society. So soon as the people are convinced, whether wrongly or rightly, that the privileges of their spiritual or temporal superiors are mere privileges of a caste, which despises, rules, and taxes the people for its own selfish aggrandizement and pleasure, they begin to hate them with a deadly hatred. The Catholic people are content that the Pope govern, rebuke, and punish them; that he possess the wealth and splendor of a spiritual and temporal sovereign; that he reign as the vicegerent of God on earth—because they believe that all this is for their own highest good. They are content that bishops and priests possess