[52]
Christian honesty, is impossible.
This is a broad and strong assertion, but we appeal to the inmost consciousness of those of our readers who are acquainted with the matter if it be not true.
There was truth and justice in the action of the Saviour, when he drove the merchants out of the temple, telling them they had made it a den of thieves.
Modern commerce wears a more decent coat, perhaps, but underneath it is but little altered.
Whatever exceptions we may find, all will admit that its constant tendency is to destroy individual integrity.
Is not this enough to condemn civilized commerce, and incite us to substitute for it a system of guarantees and security, by removing commerce entirely from the grasp of individual selfishness?
The method of doing this with security and advantage is known to us; we shall hereafter take occasion to bring it forward.
So far as I am able to ascertain,
Dana did not bring forward his method of freeing commerce from the grasp of individual selfishness.
Perhaps, after all, he came to the conclusion that it was a subject beyond his powers, though he may have included his treatment of it in his disquisitions upon the scope and advantages of “Universal Association,” as found in various numbers of the
Harbinger.
In a review of
Downing's
Fruit and Fruit Trees of America, he reached a conclusion to which but few people of the present day will object.
It runs as follows:
There are many in the list of gentlemen whose aid he (Downing) acknowledges which bring before us golden and purple recollections, visions of fruits which in themselves are arguments enough against the doctrine that the earth is accursed and the mother of no good thing.
If any man believe that social harmony is impossible we will agree to silence his most obstinate assertions with some of the pears named in Mr. Downing's catalogue.
No one whose soul such flavors had ever approached could refuse to assent to the most glowing anticipations of the Future of Mankind.
