The southern press., 1851-04-30

hardly keeps pace with its numbers. All can
not be rich. The rich and The poor chang
places oftener than where there are fixed hered
itary distinctions; so often, that the sense o
insecurity makes every one unhappy; so often
that We see men clutching at security through
means Of Odd Fellows Temperance societies
&c, which provide for members when sick, ant
for the families OF deceased members; so often
that almost every State in the Union has of lat,
years enacted laws, or countehanced decisions
giving more permanency to property. Entails
and primogeniture are as odious to us as kings
were to the Romans; but their object, to keeI
property in our families, is as dear to US as t
any people on earth, because we love our fami
lies as much Hence laws to exempt small
amounts Of personal property from liability te
debt, are daily enacted and hence Iowa or Wis
consin has provision in her constitution, thai
the homestead of some forty acres shall be ex
empt from execution. Hence, also, the mighty
impulse oflste in favor of womans rights. Leg
isatures and courts are vieing with each Other
which shall do most to secure married woman's
property to them. The ruin of thousands OIL
families in the revulsion of 1887, taught the ne.
cessity of this new species OF entail, this new
way of keeping property in the family. The
ups and downs of life became too rapid to be
agreeable to any who had property to lose, or a
family to provide for. We have not yet quite
cooled down from the fcryor of the revolution
We have been looking to one side only of our
institutions. We begin to feel, however, that
there is another and dark side. A side where
all are seen going down the hill Of fortune Let
us look closely and fearlessy at this feature OF
free society, so much auded and 80 little under
stood. What object more laudable, what so
dear to a mans heart, rs to continue compe.
tency of property, refinement Of mind and NOR
ais to his posterity! What nobler incentive to
virtuous conduct, than the belief that such con-
duct will rebound to the advantage of our de.
scendants! What reflection so calculated to
make men reckless, wretched, and immoral, as
the conviction that the means they employ TO
improve the moral, mental, and pecuniary con-
diton of their offspring, are, in this land of ups
and downs, the very means TO make them the
prey of the cunning, avaricious, and unprinc-
pied, who have been taught in the school of ad.
versity and poverty! We constantly boast that
the wealthy and powerful Of to-day, are the sons
Of the weak, ignorant, and destitute of yester-
day. IT'S the other side of the picture that we
want moral courage to look at. We are deal.
ing now with figures of arithmetic, not of rhet-
oric. Those who rise, pull down class as nu-
merous, and often more worthy than themselves,
to the abyss of misery and penury. Painful as
it may be- the reader shall look with Inc at this
dark side of the picture; he shall view the van
pushed as well as the victors on this battle
ground of competition; he shall see those who
were de'icately reared, taught no tricks of trade,
no shifts of thrifty avarice spurned, insulted,
down.trodden by the coarse and vulgar, whose
wits and whose appetites had been sharpened
by necessity. If he can sympathize with fallen
virtue, or detests successful vice, he will see
nothing in this picture to admire.
The wide fields of the newly rich will rease
to excite pleasure in the contemplation, they
will look like Golgothas covered with hnman
bones. Their coarse and boisterous joys while
they revel in their spoils will not help to relieve
the painful sympathies for their victims
But these parvenus are men with all the feel
ings of men, though somewhat blunted by the
race for wealth; they love their children, and
would have them unlike themselves, moral, re-
fined and educated-above the necessities and
tricks of their parents. They rear them a. gen.
tlemen, to become the victims in their turn OF
the children of fallen gentlemen Of a past gen
erltion-these latter having learned in the school
of adversely the patti Of fortune. In Heaven's
name VIII is human fe worth with snch pros
poets ahead2 Who would not rather lie down
and die,than exert himself to educate and make
fortunes for their children, when he has reason
to fear that by so doing he is.to heap Goals of
fire on the heads. And vet this IL an exact pic
ture ofthe prospect which universal liberty holds
out to its votaries. 1t is true. it hides with
veil the agones Of the vnnquished, and only ex-
hibits the vulgar mirth of the vietors. We haze
lifted the veil. In Boston, city famed for il.
wealth and the prudence of its inhabitants, nine
tenths Of men in business fail. In the slave
holding South, except in new settlements, fail
ures are extremely rare; small properties de-
scend from generation TO generation in the same
family; there Ia as much stability and perma-
nency of property as is compatible with energy
and activity in society fortunes are made rather
by virtuous industry than by tricks, cunning and
speculations.
We have thus attempted TO prove from theory
and from actual experiment, that a society Of
universal liberty and equality is absurd and i'm
practicable. We have performed our task, we
know, indifferentry, but hope we have furnished
suggestions that may be proftaby used by those
more accustomed TO authorship.
ITO BE coNcLUDED)