The mode proposed has many decided advantages. It inspires self-reliance, disciplines the mind to think for itself, accustoms it to express its own conclusions in its own chosen language, leads to clear and comprehensive forms of expression, gives decision and confidence, and tends to produce individuality of thought and character.
The Children’s Progressive Lyceum, instituted upon this idea, has already been inaugurated, and should receive the careful and unprejudiced attention of all interested in educational reform. Children who have been under this system but a few months are able to stand before an audience, and, in a clear and comprehensive manner, speak without embarrassment upon any subject comprehended by their minds. The coming generations will acknowledge a debt of gratitude to the founder of this system which no depth of respect or reverence could fully express.
No proposition can be made which will be more readily accepted by the general progressive mind than that, as the world advances in knowledge and wisdom, its general welfare becomes more and more dependent upon reciprocal interests; that is to say, as persons and nations become more and better individualized, their reliance upon interests outside of themselves becomes more positively and distinctly defined; thus a system of mutual dependence and reciprocal interests is every day being more widely inaugurated, which will continue to spread until the whole world will be brought into harmonious co-operation. This is commerce! Commerce, to the material world, is what thought is to the spiritual—interchange and exchange of material product in the one and of spiritual in the other—hence no restrictions or embargoes should be placed on the one which would not be legitimate if placed upon the other. The dependence and independence of each is mutual and general.
Restrictions upon commerce is a system of commercial slavery, flowing from politic and special legislation, and is in violation of the eternal principles of right, because it renders equality in interchange impossible. If it is the right principle to restrict commerce between nations, it extends to States, to cities and to individuals as well.
Under the rule of an unrestricted commercial intercourse throughout the world, the principle of supply and demand would control the movements of commerce without the aid of legislation; and, when once fully established, it would give stability and security to production everywhere. The products of the world entering into commerce would localize themselves where they naturally belong—where most could be produced with the least labor; and, population obeying the laws of equalization, would adjust itself to the demands of the respective interests of productive labor. This is a vast problem, in the solution of which the whole world is vitally interested, and one which, sooner or later, must be solved. If its solution were possible now, coming generations would look back and bless us for the solving. An international congress should be called to consider the subject, and to take proper measures for the inauguration of a system of general economy in production and consumption. The prophecies of the age point to this as a reform of sufficient magnitude to demand the immediate attention of the nations, and to call for a Christ to rise up for their salvation more powerful than the Democratic Party.
The political, national or personal advantages which are supposed to flow from restraints upon commerce, have nothing to do with the question of general reform. While it is the duty of every nation and every individual person to press forward the work of reform upon general principles, each nation and person must always keep in view the law of self-preservation, otherwise individuality will be lost in the struggle for supremacy, which has hitherto characterized the legislation of nations and the conduct of individual persons. The great principle of unrestricted universal commerce can only be practically established by universal acquiescence in its wisdom and justice. When legislation shall conform itself to general principles, instead of sectional, local or personal policy, and when its course shall be shaped by such broad action, it may be safely prophesied that the government it represents will be perfect and perpetual. Commerce will then obey the law of progress, and rise from the petty policies of nations, which strangle its development and limit its benefits: it will rise to be conducted upon the dignity of principle, untrammeled by policy; and on this platform the world will unite in harmonious prosperity under a universal government, not limited even by the boundaries between the material and the spiritual world.
Underlying all advancement and prosperity, material and spiritual, is action—motion—which, guided by intellect, results in labor, without which the world would be as though man had never been; for no form of creature below him has ever left permanent artificial beauty, systems of economy or usefulness as the result of its workings, except in so far as the form itself may be accounted such.
What, in two hundred years, has so changed the face of this country from the wilderness it was to the teeming garden it is, dotted all over with the habitations of men? What has produced the floating palaces that everywhere walk its deep waters “like a thing of life?” What has united all its distant parts by iron bands, along whose guiding lines those other representatives of art and motion speed, almost outstripping the wind? What has overcome time and space, and is now extending its arms to embrace the globe, that we may speak, and that the ends of the earth answer our call? Marvelous demonstration of the rapidly growing mutual and reciprocal dependence of the children of men! What has made the wilderness to blossom as the rose? What has achieved all these glorious, god-like results? Labor! labor! labor! physical, mental and spiritual labor!
Labor, therefore, is the fulcrum of the great lever of progress, lifting humanity from the material up to the spiritual realm. One short century ago nearly all physical labor was performed by the hands of man. Since then the mind has come up to the work, and rescued the body from the laborious servitude of former times; and now a single mind, directing a single machine, produces an hundred-fold more than it could when acting through its own personal machine. The inventive powers of the mind will continue to produce more labor-saving machines until labor directly with the hand will be almost, perhaps entirely, superseded.
The products of the mind, when compared with purely physical labor, are of inestimable value, and the great distinction everywhere recognized in their relative compensations is still too limited. No argument is needed to establish the dignity of labor; it has established itself in becoming the architect of the great future, by building the past and the present.