Again: Every capitalist holds property in his fellow men to the extent of the profits of his capital, or income. The only income possibly resulting from capital, is the result of the property which capital bestows on its owners, in the labor of other people. In our first three chapters we attempt to explain this.
All civilized society recognizes, and, in some measure, performs the obligation to support and provide for all human beings, whether natives or foreigners, who are unable to provide for themselves. Hence poor-houses, &c.
Hence all men hold valuable property, actual or contingent, in the services of each other.
If, Mr. Garrison, this be the only difficulty to be adjusted between North and South, we are sure that your little pet, Disunion, "living will linger, and lingering will die."
When Mr. Andrews and you have quite "expelled human nature," dissolved and disintegrated society, and reduced mankind to separate, independent, but conflicting monads, or human atoms--then, and not till then, will you establish the 'sovereignty of the individual,' and destroy the property of man in man.
The Abolitionists are all willing to admit that free society has utterly failed in Europe, but will assign two reasons for that failure--"Excess of population, and want of equality and liberty."
Were the population of England doubled, the labor required to support that population would be lessened, could all labor and expenses be supported alike; because the association and division of labor might be rendered more perfect, and the expenses of a single family, or single individual, might be divided among and borne by many. The Socialists and Abolitionists understand this. When one family has to support its own school, its own mill, its own mechanics, its own doctor, parson, &c., living is expensive; but where these and other expenses are divided among many, living becomes cheap; hence it is far less laborious to live in a densely settled country than in a sparsely settled one, if labor and expenses can be equally divided. The soil of England will readily support double its population, if its products be not wasted in luxury, in feeding deer, and game, and horses. England has not attained that density of population which enables men to live by the least amount of labor. Her laboring population has been thinned and labor rendered dearer and scarcer, by emigration, of late years, to America, California and Australia--yet, in the winter of 1854, there was a general outbreak and riot of her operatives, because a fall in prices occasioned a large number of her factories to stop work, and turn their hands out of employment. This happens every day in free society, from the bankruptcy of employers, or from the glut of markets and fall of prices. We will add, that a meeting of the working men of New York, in the Park, asserted that there were 50,000 working men and women, in that city, out of employment last winter.