protect himself, and wants nothing of government but to be let alone. Poor man! like our reviewer, he forgot the original inequality of men, and that the weak and simple need a Providence in the shape of government, to protect them against the strong and cunning.

Nor are men only naturally unequal; they are artificially unequal, and their extrinsic means of influence are very different. Their possessions, the world over, are exceedingly unequal, and it is a well settled fact, that a man's power is always to be measured by what he has, rather than by what he is. Power always inclines to the side on which is the balance of property. That portion of the community which possesses or controls the balance of the property, is, as Harrington in his "Oceana" has well established, the ruling portion. He who has the mess of pottage, can command his brother's birthright, and compel the elder to serve the younger. The relation between the owners or holders of the property, and the owners of simple labor, is always and everywhere, by whatever name it goes, the relation of masters and servants. They who have not, always serve them who have; or, if they will not, are exterminated, as Cain exterminated his brother Abel. Here is the great and stubborn fact, which knocks in the head all your fine spun democratic theorizing.

This fact is well established. In no country, in the ordinary course of things, have numbers without property ever availed against the few who possess property. Twenty or thirty thousand free Athenian citizens hold in servitude some four hundred thousand slaves. 'There have been numerous struggles between the rich and the poor, but there is no instance recorded, in which the poor ever came off victorious. The plebeians maintained for a time a doubtful contest with the patricians of ancient Rome; but then the plebeians, taken as a body, were hardly inferior in wealth to the patricians themselves, and some of them were superior in the nobility of their families. But as soon as the Senate opened itself and the equestrian order, to some four

hundred of the wealthy and noble plebeians, and by doing so, secured the permanent balance of property to its side, the contest became strictly one between the rich and the poor, in which the poor never gained a single advantage. The subsequent triumph of the plebeians, under Julius Cæsar and the Empire, was not in their quality of the poor, but as commoners, recruited and enriched by the wealthy and influential provincials.

The partial success in the last century of the French Bourgeoisie, and which has become complete since July, 1830, is owing to the fact, that the old Court and Noblesse had ceased to command the balance of property. The republic for which Robespierre so pertinaciously contended, after the Girondists had dethroned and decapitated the King, was sustained for a moment, only by the audacity of a feeble minority, and failed, because, in the general distribution of the property of France, the balance was never on its side. The English Commonwealth failed, and gave way to the restoration of the Stuarts for the same reason, as soon as it lost the support of the military genius of Cromwell, and the religious enthusiasm of the Independents which had established it. In neither country would universal suffrage have availed any thing. Some one advised Cromwell to introduce it. "Introduce universal suffrage," said he, "and in twenty-four hours you will have the Stuarts back upon you." There probably never was, during the French Republic, a moment, when the majority of the nation would not have voted for the Bourbons, and to-day, if the vote was put, five to one, we presume, would vote for the young Duke of Bordeaux. It was not Cromwell, who, by his Protectorate, overthrew the English Commonwealth; nor General Monk, that restored the Stuarts; but England herself. It was not Napoleon that overthrew the French Republic, but France who had never fairly accepted it.

Some there are, among ourselves, and also among Englishmen, who are predicting the speedy overthrow of the English Peerage; but that peerage was never in

less danger, and at no moment, since the stout old Earl of Warwick, the "King-maker," has the English nobility held its power with a firmer grasp. If the House of Lords were a close corporation, incapable of being recruited from the wealthy Commoners, in a commercial nation like England, whose merchants are princes, the Peerage might, indeed, be in some danger; but so long as every wealthy commoner may hope one day either to become a peer himself, or to make his eldest son a peer, however small the chance, it may count on having always the balance of wealth on its side.

It is now admitted by both Whigs and Tories, that the Reform bill has, contrary to the expectations of both friends and enemies, tended to extend and consolidate the power of the landholders. We venture to tell the Complete Suffrage Union, and the Chartists, that the success of their schemes will tend to the same result. The poor Chartists are seeking in a cold winter's night to warm themselves with moonshine. The secret ballot, for which English Radicals are contending, will, if obtained, operate against them; for the tenantry have more fear of the radical leaders in their own ranks, than they have of the landlords, and are more disposed, if they can conceal it from their leaders, to vote for their landlords than they are to vote against them. It is worthy of remark, that the only member, the Complete Suffrage Union has as yet been able to return to Parliament, when a question came up in Parliament affecting the principles of the Union, was either absent or silent. We have similar facts in regard to radical members, returned to some of our own legislatures. The weight, and, above all, the confidence of a member depend less on what he is in himself, than on the relative wealth and importance of his constituency. The member returned by the poor and feeble will rarely be able to hold up his head before the members returned by the wealthy and powerful.

Universal suffrage does not, then, in giving to every man an equal vote in the State, give to every man equal ability to protect his own rights and interests. The

master can always command the vote of his servant; or, if he cannot, he can always contrive some way to escape its effects, and, indeed, to turn it against his servant. We see this in the history of our own country. Free suffrage has done very little with us to protect labor against the usurpations of capital; in most of the States, it has done nothing. In the Federal legislature, through the influence of that portion of the representatives of wealth, who own labor, and, therefore, have an interest identical with that of our Northern laborer, a severe contest between the two elements has thus far been maintained. But these are now a feeble minority, and the contest is no longer doubtful, as the reviewer may read in the fact, that the confidential friends of his favorite candidate for the Presidency seek to win the support of Northern Manufacturers, rather than that of the Southern Planters, and are restrictionists, and abolitionists, rather than constitutionalists.

The great danger of modern times is this growing Industrial Feudalism, which is springing up in all the more advanced nations of Christendom, and taking the place of the old Feudalism, founded on conquest and territory. It is, in many respects, worse than the Feudalism of the Middle Ages, and, so far as we can see, better in none. The old Feudalism was territorial, and the serf lived on, and drew his support from, the land he tilled, and his means of living were in proportion to the productiveness of his labor. He might, indeed, sometimes want, but only in seasons of general scarcity. This new Feudalism is founded on trade, much more fluctuating than agriculture, and the operative's means, instead of being in proportion to the productiveness of his labor, are in proportion to the demand in the market. As his products, owing to the vast increase of the productive power of all industrial nations, run always ahead of the demand, he suffers most, experiences his greatest want, when warehouses and granaries are the fullest.

Now, we ask the reviewer, what universal suffrage has done, in this country, to check the growth of this

system. So far as at present informed, we believe this system has received more direct encouragement with us, than in any other country. By means of corporations, joint-stock companies, for vast industrial enterprises, the whole industry of the country, and the whole legislation which concerns industry, have fallen under the control of, probably, less than two hundred individuals; and there was a moment when it threatened to fall, and had we, instead of Great Britain, been the leading commercial nation, would actually have fallen, under the control of one man alone, the first President of the United States Bank of Pennsylvania. They were not the votes of the Democracy, that prostrated Mr. Biddle. All the voting in the world was impotent before him. We owe our deliverance from him to some few blunders of his own, but mainly to the fact that English cotton spinners could live longer on their old stock of cotton, than he could afford to keep his new stock in warehouses, waiting for higher prices. The commercial superiority of England, not universal suffrage, saved us.

In all our contests with the money power, we have seen the impotence of the reviewer's democracy, and the truth of Harrington's assertion, that power goes always with the balance of property. How did General Jackson sustain himself in his war against the Bank? Was it universal suffrage that sustained him? Or did he sustain himself by separating the interests of the State Banks from those of the National Bank, and thus gaining to his side the balance of property? Deprived of the aid of the State Banks, especially the banks of the State of New York, which wanted the government deposites, then embracing a large surplus, and to get rid of a competitor who paid no taxes, and loaned money at six per cent., instead of seven, would he, with all his overwhelming energy of character and unbounded personal popularity, have been able to sustain himself? He himself thought otherwise, and this was his reason for adopting the "Pet Bank" policy, to which, in his own private opinion, we are assured on good authority, he was opposed.