These privileged classes of the people have an enduring hatred for me, and I am glad they have. I am the friend not only of freedom in all things, and in every form, but also for equality and justice as well. These cannot be inaugurated except through revolution. I am denounced as desiring to precipitate revolution. I acknowledge it. I am for revolution, if to get equality and justice it is required. I only want the people to have what it is their right to have—what the religion of humanity, what Christ, were he the arbiter, would give them. If, in getting that, the people find bayonets opposing them, it will not be their fault if they make their way through them by the aid of bayonets. And these persons who possess the monopolies and who guard them by bayonets, need not comfort themselves with the idea that the people won’t fight for their rights. Did they not spring to arms from every quarter to fight for the negro? And will you say they will not do the same against this other slavery, compared to which the former is as a gentle shower to a raging tempest?
Don’t flatter yourselves, gentlemen despots, that you are going to escape under that assumption. You will have to yield, and it will be best for you to do it gracefully. You are but as one to seven against them. Numbers will win. It will be your own obduracy if they are goaded on to madness. Do not rely upon their ignorance of the true condition. Upon that you have anchored your hopes as long as it is safe. There are too many reform newspapers in circulation. And though the columns of all our great dailies are shut to their truths, still there are channels through which they flow to the people—aye, even to those who delve in the coal mines of Pennsylvania, seldom seeing the joyous sunshine. And this education shall continue until every person who contributes to the maintenance of another in luxurious idleness shall know how such a result is rendered possible.
Hence, I say, it lies in the hands of those who have maintained this despotism over the common people to yield it up to them and recognize their just relations.
And remember what I say to you to-night: If this that is claimed is not granted—if, beside freedom, equality is not made possible by your giving up this power, by which the laborer is robbed of the results of his labor, before our next centennial birthday, July 4th, 1876, you will have precipitated the most terrible war that the earth has yet known.
For three years before the breaking out of the slavery rebellion I saw and heard with my spiritual senses the marching of armies, the rattle of musketry, and the roar of cannon; and I already hear and see the approach of this more terrible contest. I know it is coming. There is but one way in which it can be averted. There was one way by which the slave war could have been avoided—the abolition of slavery. But the slave oligarchy would not listen to our Garrisons, Sumners, Tiltons and Douglases. They tried the arbitration of war, but they lost their slaves at last. Now, will not these later oligarchies—the land, the railroad, the money aristocracies—learn a lesson from their terrible fate? Will they not listen to the abolitionists—to the Garrisons, the Sumners, the Tiltons and the Douglases—of to-day? Will they try the arbitration of war, which will result as did the last, in the loss of that for which they fight? I would that they should learn wisdom by experience. The slaveholders could have obtained compensation for their negroes. They refused it and lost all. Ponder that lesson well, and do not neglect to give it its true application. You can compromise now, and the same general end be arrived at without the baptism of blood. It shall not be my fault if that baptism comes. Nevertheless, equality and justice are on the march, and they cannot be hindered. They must and will attain their journey’s end. The people shall be delivered.
I have several times referred to the methods by which these things may be accomplished. They are impossible under our present Constitution. It is too restricted, too narrow, to admit even an idea of a common humanity. True, its text is complete, but its framework does not carry out the original design. Even George Washington, himself, was accused of treachery for countenancing so great a departure as was made; and the late war justified the grounds upon which that accusation was founded. The text of the Constitution held these truths to be self-evident, “That all men (and women) are born equal and entitled to certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The Constitution should have been erected in harmony with those declarations. It was not. There is no such thing as equality provided for. Life and liberty have not been held inalienable under it; the pursuit of happiness has been outrageously interfered with, and the government has been made to exist without the consent of the governed; and exists to-day against the protests of a large number of its subjects.
Is it to be expected that anything so false as that is to its basic propositions can be made enduring? It is against the constitution of nature itself that it should be so. Nature is always true to itself, and will always vindicate itself. If hedged in and obstructed, it will burst through or find its way around. The needle is not truer to the pole than is Nature to the truth. And Nature is always just. Those propositions were deduced from human rights, regardless of any authority or despotism. Had they been elucidated—had their principles guided the construction of the Constitution itself, all would have been well. What our fathers failed to do is left for this generation to perform; and it must not shirk the duty. It must look the condition squarely in the face, and meet the issue as squarely.
What issues must be met and provided for in order that human rights may be respected and protected? I have already referred to the monopolies that must be abolished. But there are also many other things. I will call attention first to minority representation, which lies at the base of a representative government. The State of Massachusetts has eleven representatives in Congress, and they are all Republicans. Justice would infer that there are no Democrats in the State. But such is not the fact. There are a large body of Democrats. They are not represented. That is the fault of the system of arriving at representation. While it is true that majorities must rule, that is not equal to saying that minorities shall have no voice. But the practice in Massachusetts does say just that. I suspect if it were possible for all the real differences, politically, to be represented, that the Congressmen would stand something as follows: The Democrats would have, say, four out of the eleven, the Republicans, say, three, while the remainder would be divided between the Labor and Temperance Reformers and Woman Suffragists. Indeed, I am not certain if the door were to be opened that there would be any straight Republicans left, since all reformers are, under the present system, compelled to congregate together in this party, so as not to entirely throw away their votes. The Democrats are always Democrats. Like the hard-shell Baptists, you always know where to find them.
They are always on hand to vote early, and often also, if opportunity permit. Admit minority representation, and the Republican party in Massachusetts would be abolished, except that part who carry the loaves and eat the fishes. They are as certain to be found “right there” as the Democrats are. I think the Woman Suffragists cover about one-half the Republican party. But a large body of them are Spiritualists and Temperance men, while as many more are Labor Reformers. But those who are more Labor Reformers than anything else, are perhaps two-sevenths; who are more Woman Suffragists than anything else, are perhaps two-sevenths; who are more Spiritualists than anything else, perhaps two-sevenths; and who are more Temperance men than anything else, one-seventh; therefore, if the delegation were elected by the representation of minorities, it would stand four Democrats, two Spiritualists, two Labor Reformers, two Woman Suffragists, and one Temperance man. But all of these, however, would be again swallowed up whenever a Human Rights party should be evolved, and that will be the party of the near future, in whose all embracing arms the people, long suffering and long waiting, will at last find repose, while the Goddess of Liberty, with her scales of equality, shall find no more of her subjects to whom justice is not measured out. Then will partisan politics have received its death warrant; then will the people become one in heart, one in soul and one in common purpose—the general good of the general whole. The “greatest good of the greatest number” will be supplanted by: “the general welfare, is best maintained when individual interests are best protected.” The new government, then, must be the result of minority representation, and all legislative bodies, and, where possible, all executive officers, be so elected, while the people shall retain the appointing as well as the veto power. Our lawmakers must be made law proposers, who shall construct law to be submitted to the people for their approval, in the same manner as our public conventions appoint committees to draft resolutions, which are afterward adopted or rejected by the convention itself. This will make every person a legislator, having a direct interest in every law. The people will then no longer elect representatives to make laws by which they must be bound whether they approve or disapprove. The referendum is the desired end. The referendum is what the people require, and it is what the new Constitution must provide. So that in all future time the people themselves will be their own lawmakers—will be the government.
The people must appoint all their officers, heads of departments and bureaus at regular intervals, and all under assistants, during faithful performance of duty. We want no Civil Service Commissions. Every person who shall be eligible to office under the new government will be competent; and when once familiar with the duties, will not be removed to give room for the friend of some politician belonging to the party in power, since it would be the people in power at all times.