Chinese empire, will fully justify us to suppose the effusion of the sixth vial "upon the great river Euphrates" has already commenced.* If this be so, who can be but startled to find at what age of the world we have arrived, and what are the mighty things of God that may be fulfilled in these our days! "Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy : for all nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy judgments are made manifest!"

ART. V.-The Rich against the Poor. The Laboring Classes. By O. A. BROWNSON.

THIS strange production first made its appearance in the Boston Quarterly Review, but has been since circulated in the form of a pamphlet, with a view, no doubt, to its influence upon the then pending presidential election. As, however, this political struggle will have been over before these strictures will make their appearance, they can have no bearing upon that agitating question, whatever may be their character. But this does not supersede the necessity of exposing the dangerous doctrines set forth in the pamphlet before us. They are of a general character. They strike at the root of social order. And the main principle which the author aims to establish, according to his own showing, is of such a startling character that it will require a long time to bring it into practical operation. He does not, indeed, "propose this as a measure for the immediate action of the community." He only means to discuss it now, with a view to prepare the public mind for its full development and for final and decisive action. What this main principle is we shall see presently.

The following are the principal points which our author seems to think are essential to accomplish his object :

1. That property must cease to be hereditary.

"As we have abolished hereditary monarchy," says he, "and hereditary nobility, we must complete the work by abolishing hereditary property. A man shall have all he honestly acquires, so long as he himself belongs to the world in which he acquires it. But his power

"And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates, and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared," Rev. xvi, 12.

over his property must cease with his life, and his property must then become the property of the state, to be disposed of by some equitable law, for the use of the generation which takes his place."

And this is so essential for the accomplishment of his object that he adds

"We see no means of elevating the laboring classes which can be effectual without this."

2. The laws of matrimony must be abolished. This preliminary step to the consummation of his wishes is so contrary to the common sentiments of civilized society, that our author, with all his boldness of thought, seems afraid to take it with his customary independence, lest he might shoot so far ahead of the public feeling as to produce a shock in the community, and thereby defeat his benevolent plans of reform. He therefore hints at this rather obscurely; yet it is sufficiently plain not to be misunderstood. It is to be one of the rounds in the ladder on which he is to ascend the throne of popular dominion. Speaking of the iron sceptre which custom, religion, and civilization hold over the freedom of man, he says

"He cannot make one single free movement. The priest holds his conscience, fashion controls his tastes, and society with her forces invades the very sanctuary of his heart, and takes command of his love, that which is purest and best in his nature, which alone gives reality to his existence, and from which proceeds the only ray which pierces the gloom of his prison-house."

The meaning of this passage, though veiled in obscurity, cannot well be misunderstood. It teaches, as an indispensable preliminary to freedom of thought and action, and to that equality of condition for which the author most strenuously pleads, that society must be broken loose from the shackles of wedlock, that instead of having love centred in one object, it may roam at large, and mix its longings among the many hearts which may, each in its turn, solicit its wild and ungovernable embrace. This is freedom from the restraints. of the laws of matrimony. This is turning our youth loose to graze and luxuriate in the field of licentiousness, and to choose their pastures as the lawless instinct of their natures shall dictate. And to enforce this wholesome precept Mr. B. says

"It is not strange, then, that some should prefer the savage state to the civilized. Who would not rather roam the forest with a free step and unshackled limb, though exposed to hunger, cold, and nakedness, than crouch an abject slave beneath the whip of the master?"

This writer seems to forget, in his eagerness to emancipate the race from the manacles of civilization, that woman, in the hands of a savage, is the slave of a brutal appetite, and of a lordly, lounging despotism, as relentless as the tiger, and as lawless in its rule as the ferocious bear. But we shall have occasion to recur to this topic before our remarks are closed.

3. The next step in Mr. B.'s race of reform is the annihilation of priests-the utter extermination of this order of men from the face of the earth. Indeed, this seems so essential for the consummation of his grand object, that he dwells upon it with a peculiar zest, as if he enjoyed the pleasurable emotion of their utter annihilation by anticipation. Hear him in the following language:—

"But, having traced the inequality we complain of to its origin, we proceed to ask again, What is the remedy? The remedy is first to be sought in the destruction of the priest. We are not mere destructives. We delight not in pulling down; but the bad must be removed before the good can be introduced. Conviction and repentance precede regeneration. Moreover, we are Christians, and it is only by following out the Christian law, and the example of the early Christians, that we can hope to effect any thing. Christianity is the sublimest protest against the priesthood ever uttered, and a protest uttered by both God and man; for he who uttered it was God-man. In the person of Jesus both God and man protest against the priesthood. What was the mission of Jesus but a solemn summons of every priesthood on earth to judgment, and of the human race to freedom? He discomfited the learned doctors, and with whips of small cords drove the priests, degenerated into mere money-changers, from the temple of God. He instituted himself no priesthood, no form of religious worship. He recognized no priest but a holy life, and commanded the construction of no temple but that of the pure heart. He preached no formal religion, enjoined no creed, set apart no day for religious worship. He preached fraternal love, peace on earth, and good-will to men. He came to the soul enslaved, 'cabined, cribbed, confined,' to the poor child of mortality, bound hand and foot, unable to move, and said, in the tones of a God, Be free! be enlarged! be there room for thee to grow, expand, and overflow with the love thou wast made to overflow with!'

"In the name of Jesus we admit there has been a priesthood instituted, and, considering how the world went, a priesthood could not but be instituted; but the religion of Jesus repudiates it. It recognizes no mediator between God and man but him who dies on the cross to redeem man; no propitiation for sin but a pure love, which rises in a living flame to all that is beautiful and good, and spreads out in light and warmth for all the chilled and benighted sons of mortality. In calling every man to be a priest, it virtually condemns every possible priesthood; and in recognizing the religion of the new covenant, the

religion written on the heart, of a law put within the soul, it abolishes all formal worship.

"The priest is universally a tyrant, universally the enslaver of his brethren, and therefore it is Christianity condemns him. It could not prevent the re-establishment of a hierarchy, but it prepared for its ultimate destruction, by denying the inequality of blood, by representing all men as equal before God, and by insisting on the celibacy of the clergy. The best feature of the church was in its denial to the clergy of the right to marry. By this it prevented the new hierarchy from becoming hereditary, as were the old sacerdotal corporations of India and Judea.

"We object to no, religious instruction; we object not to the gathering together of the people on one day in seven, to sing and pray, and listen to a discourse from a religious teacher; but we object to every thing like an outward, visible church; to every thing that in the remotest degree partakes of the priest. A priest is one who stands as a sort of mediator between God and man; but we have one mediator, Jesus Christ, who gave himself a ransom for all, and that is enough. It may be supposed that we, Protestants, have no priests; but for ourselves we know no fundamental difference between a Catholic priest and a Protestant clergyman, as we know no difference of any magnitude, in relation to the principles on which they are based, between a Protestant Church and the Catholic Church. Both are based upon the principle of authority; both deny in fact, however it may be in manner, the authority of reason, and war against freedom of mind; both substitute dead works for true righteousness, a vain show for the reality of piety, and are sustained as the means of reconciling us to God without requiring us to become Godlike. Both, therefore, ought to go by the board.

"We may offend in what we say, but we cannot help that. We insist upon it, that the complete and final destruction of the priestly order, in every practical sense of the word priest, is the first step to be taken toward elevating the laboring classes. Priests are, in their capacity of priest, necessarily enemies to freedom and equality. All reasoning demonstrates this, and all history proves it. There must be no class of men set apart and authorized, either by law or fashion, to speak to us in the name of God, or to be interpreters of the word of God. The word of God never drops from the priest's lips. He who redeemed man did not spring from the priestly class, for it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Judah, of which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning the priesthood. Who, in fact, were the authors of the Bible, the book which Christendom professes to receive as the word of God? The priests? Nay, they were the inveterate foes of the priests. No man ever berated the priests more soundly than did Jeremiah and Ezekiel. And who were they who heard Jesus the most gladly? The priests? The chief priests were at the head of those who demanded his crucifixion. In every age the priests, the authorized teachers of religion, are the first to oppose the true prophet of God, and to condemn his prophecies as blasphemies. They are always a let and a hinderance to the spread of truth. Why then retain them?

Why not abolish the priestly office? Why continue to sustain what the whole history of man condemns as the greatest of all obstacles to intellectual and social progress ?"

We have given this quotation entire, that the reader may be convinced that we do the writer no injustice when we affirm that priests are the particular objects of his hostile feelings—that they, above all others, stand in the way of his chariot of universal reform.

Now it may be asked, What is the grand ultimatum of all this? And it is certainly proper, before we proceed further in our animadversions, that this question should be answered. It is, then, to restore mankind to a state of perfect equality in respect to property-that the distinction between the rich and the poor should cease to exist, now and for ever-that all should work alike—that there should be no longer master and servant, the hirer and the hired, the teacher and the taught, the priest and the people.

That this is the final object of all this upsetting of institutions, uprooting of long-established societies, relations, usages, customs, and laws, is manifest from the following language:

"No one can observe the signs of the times with much care, without perceiving that a crisis as to the relation of wealth and labor is approaching. It is useless to shut our eyes to the fact, and, like the ostrich, fancy ourselves secure because we have so concealed our heads that we see not the danger. We or our children will have to meet this crisis. The old war between the king and the barons is well nigh ended, and so is that between the barons and the merchants and manufacturers,-landed capital and commercial capital. The business man has become the peer of my lord. And now commences the new struggle between the operative and his employer, between wealth and labor. Every day does this struggle extend further, and wax stronger and fiercer; what or when the end will be, God only knows.

"In this coming contest there is a deeper question at issue than is commonly imagined; a question which is but remotely touched in your controversies about United States Banks and Sub-Treasuries, chartered banking and free banking, free trade and corporations, although these controversies may be paving the way for it to come up. We have discovered no presentment of it in any king's or queen's speech, nor in any president's message. It is embraced in no popular political creed of the day, whether christened Whig or Tory, Juste-milieu or Democratic. No popular senator, or deputy, or peer seems to have any glimpse of it; but it is working in the hearts of the million, is struggling to shape itself, and one day it will be uttered, and in thunder tones. Well will it be for him who, on that day, shall be found ready to answer it.

What, we would ask, is, throughout the Christian world, the actual