The Labor enquirer., 1886-11-13
.1mosEs. Z =
Governments Becoming but a
Means for the Robbery Of
the People.
Life Has Become an Ignoble.
British Struggla to Heap-up
. Gold Pile.

The Mosaic Code Aims 1t the Pre-
lection OF Humanity, Not
Property.
| The following is an extract from
Henry Georges lecture on Noses" de-
livered recently in New York:
| There is in modern thought q ten
dency to look upon the prominent char
acters of history as resultants, rather
than initiatory forces. As in an earlier
stage the irresistible disposition is to
personi6cation, 80 now it Is to reverse
this process and to resolve into myths
mighty figures long enshrined in mys.
terry. Yet, If We try to trace to their
sources movements whose berpetuated is
impulses eddy and play In currents of
our times, we at last reach the individ-
ual. Itis true that institutions make
men. but it is also true that in the be-
ginnings men make institutions. Three
great religions place the leader of the
exodus upon the highest plane they
allot to man. To Christendom and to
Islam. as we'll as to Jn1aism. Moses is the
law-giver and mouthpiece of the Most
High. Here is case in which s,cred
history may be treated as we should
treat profane history, without any shock
to religious feeling, for the keenest crit
icism cannot resolve Moses into myth.
1T matters not when. or by whom
were complied the books popularity
attrib lted to Moses; it matters not how
much of the code there given may be
survivals Of more ancient usage of the
amplifications of later age. its great
features bear the stamp of a mind far in
advance Of people and time-of a mind
that beneath effects sought for causes, of
a mind that drifted not with the tide Of
events, but arrived at definite purpose.
''It is not the protection Of. property,
but the protection of humanity that is n
the aim of the Mosaic code. Its sane
tions are not directed to securing the
strong In heaping up wealth so much as
to preventing the weak from being
crowded to the wall. At every point it
interposes its barriers to the selfish
greed that, II left unchecS ed, will surely
differentiate men into landlord aud serf,
capitalist and workman, millionaire and
tramp, ruler and ruled. Its Sabbath day
and Sabbath wear secure, even to the
lowlisst, rest and leisure. With the
blast of the jubilee trumpets the slave
goes free, the debt that cannot be paid
Is cancelled and redivision of the land
secures again to the poorest his fair share
in the bounty of his common Creator.
The reaper must have something for the
CLEANER; even the OK cannot be muzzled
as he treadeth out the corn. Every
where, in every thing, the dominant
idea Is that of our homelv phrase, Live
aad let liveP Amid the forms of splen-
did degradation in which at once noble
religion had in Egypt sunk to petrlfac-
ton, amid a social order in which the
divine justice seemed to sleep, Am was
the truth that dawned upon Mo ses.
"In the full blaze of the nineteenth
century, when every child in our schools
may. know as common truths things of
which the Egyptian sages never
dreamed; when the earth has been
mapped and the stars weighed; when
steam and electricity have been pressed
into our service, and science is
wrestling from nature secret after secret,
it is natural to look back upon the wis
dom of 5000 years ago as the man looks
upon the learning of the child And yet,
for all this wonderful increase of knowl-
edge, for all this enormous gain OF pro-
ductive power, where ls the country in
the civilized world in which there is
not want and suffering the
udooco hEc COuuouluou VI IOll Ltldt RiN0b
no leisure aud all classes are hot pur-
sued by greed of gain that makes life
an ignoble struggle to get and to kespf
Three thousand years of advance and
still the moan goes up, They have made
our lives bitter with hard bondage, Ia
mortar and in brick and in al! manner
of servicep Three thousand years of
advance, and tue piteouI voices of little
children are IN the moanl Over ocean
wastes far wider than the Syrian desert
we have sought our promised land-no
narrow strip, but wide and virgin con-
tinent. Here in greater freedom. with
yaster knowle ige and fuller experience
we are building up nation that leads
the van of modern progress. And vet,
while we prate,of the rights OF man,
there are already among US thousands
who find it difficult to assert the first OF 5
natural riyhts-the right to earn an
honest living-thousands who, from
time to time, must accept of degrading
charity or starye. We boast Of equality
before the law, yet notoriously justice (.
is dead to the call of him VII has not
gold, and blind to the sin sof him who
has We pin onr faith to universal suf-
frage, vet with all power in the hands Of
the people, the control Of public Affairs
IS passing into the ha DIS of g class of
professional politicians, and our govern
ments are becoming but 4 means for the
robbery of the people. We have pro-
hibited hereditary distinctions, we have
forbidden titles of nobility. vet there is
growing up among ms an aristocracy OF
wealth, as powerful and as merciless as
ever held sway"