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FRANCES WRIGHT'S

NASHOBA ADDRESS.

Men are virtuous in proportion as they are happy, and happy in proportion as they are free. This truth is exemplified in the history of modern as of ancient times. Every where knowledge, mental refinement, and the gentler, as the more ennobling, feelings of humanity, have kept pace, influx or reflux, with the growth or depression of the spirit of freedom.

But while human liberty has engaged the attention of the enlightened, and enlisted the feelings of the generous of all civilized nations, may we not inquire if this liberty has been rightly understood? Has it not been with limitations and exceptions, tending to foster jealousies, or to inspire injurious ambition? Has it, in short, been pure and entire in principle, univeral in the objects it embraces, and equal for all races and classes of men? Liberty with out equality, what is it but a chimera? and equality, what is it also but a chimera unless it extend to all the enjoyments, exertions, and advantages, intellectual, and physical, of which our nature is capable?

By political liberty we may understand the liberty of speech and of action without incurring the violence of authority or the penalties of law. By moral liberty may we not understand the free exercise of the liberty of speech and action, without incurring the intolerance of popular prejudice and ignorant public opinion?

If the possession of the right of free action inspire not the courage to exercise the right, liberty has done but little for us. It is much to have the fetters broken from our limbs, but yet better is it to have them broken from the mind. It is much to have declared, men free and equal, but it shall be more when they are rendered so; when means shall be sought and found, and employed to develope all the intellectual and physical powers of all human beings, without regard to sex or condition, class, race, nation, or color; and when men shall learn to view each other as members of one great family, with equal claims to enjoyment and equal capacities for labor and instruction, admitting always the sole differences aris

ing out of the varieties exhibited in individual organization.

It were superfluous to elucidate, by argument, the baleful effects arising out of the division of labor as now existing, and which condemns the large half of mankind to an existence purely physical, and the remaining portion to pernicious idleness, and occasionally to exertions painfully, because solely, intellectual. He who lives in the single exercise of his mental faculties, however usefully or curiously directed, is equally an imperfect animal with the man who knows only the exercise of his muscles.

Let us consider the actual condition of our species. Where shall we find even a single individual, male or fe male, whose mental and physical powers have been fairly cultivated and developed? How then is it with the great family of human kind? We have addressed our ingenuity to improve the nature and beautify the forms of all the tribe of animals domesticated by our care, but man has still neglected man; ourselves, our own species, our own nature are deemed unworthy, even unbecoming, objects of experiment. Why should we refuse to the hu man animal, care at least equal to that bestowed on the horse or the dog? His forms are surely not less susceptible of beauty; and his faculties, more numerous and exalted, may challenge, at the least, equal develop

ment.

It is time to examine into the meaning of words and the nature of things, and to arrive at simple facts, not received upon the dictum of learned authorities, but upon attentive and personal observation of what is passing around us. And it is time to inquire why occupations the most useful and absolutely necessary to our existence and well being, should be held in disrepute, and those the least useful, nay, frequently the most decidedly mischiev ous, should be held in honor. The husbandman who supports us by the fruits of his labor, the artizan to whom we owe all the comforts and conveniences of life, are banished from what is termed intellectual society, nay, worse, but too often condemned to the most severe physi cal privations and the grossest mental ignorance; while the soldier, who lives by our crimes, the lawyer by our

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