EVERETT'S

LECTURE

ON THE

WORKING MEN'S PARTY.

MAN is by nature an active being. He is made to labor. His whole organization—mental and physical-is that of a hard-working being. Of his mental powers we have no conception, but as certain capacities of intellectual action. His corporeal faculties are contrived for the same end, with astonishing variety of adaptation.-Who can look only at the muscles of the hand, and doubt that man was made to work? Who can be conscious of judgment, memory, and reflection, and doubt that man was made to act? He requires rest, but it is in order to invigorate him for new efforts;-to recruit his exhausted powers; and as if to show him, by the very nature of rest, that it is Means, not End that form of rest, which is most essential and most grateful, sleep, is attended with the temporary suspension of the conscious and active powers. Nature is so ordered as both to require and encourage man to work. He is created with wants, which cannot be satisfied without labor; at the same time, that ample provision is made by Providence, to satisfy them, with labor.-The plant springs up and grows on the spot, where the seed was cast by accident. It is fed by the

moisture, which saturates the earth or is held suspended in the air; and it brings with it a sufficient covering to protect its delicate internal structure. It toils not, neither doth it spin, for clothing or food.—But man is so created, that, let his wants be as simple as they will, he must labor to supply them. If, as is supposed to have been the case in primitive ages, he lives upon acorns and water, he must draw the water from the spring; and in many places he must dig a well in the soil; and he must gather the acorns from beneath the oak, and lay up a store of them for winter.-He must, in most climates, contrive himself some kind of clothing of barks or skins; must construct some rude shelter; prepare some kind of bed, and keep up a fire.-In short, it is well known, that those tribes of our race, which are the least advanced in civilization, and whose wants are the fewest, have to labor the hardest for their support; but at the same time it is equally true, that in the most civilized countries, by far the greatest amount and variety of work are done; so that the improvement, which takes place in the condition of man, consists, not in diminishing the amount of labor performed, but in enabling men to work more, or more efficiently, in the same time.—A horde of savages will pass a week in the most laborious kinds of hunting; following the chase day after day; their women, if in company with them, carrying their tents and their infant children on their backs; and all be worn down by fatigue and famine; and in the end they will perhaps kill a buffalo. The same number of civilized men and women would probably, on an average, have kept more steadily at work, in their various trades and occupations, but with much less exhaustion; and

the products of their industry would have been vastly greater; or, what is the same thing, much more work would have been done.

It is true, as man rises in improvement, he would be enabled by his arts and machinery, to satisfy the primary wants of life, with less labor; and this may be thought to show, at first glance, that man was not intended to be a working being; because, in proportion as he advances in improvement, less work would be required to get a mere livelihood. But here we see a curious provision of nature. In proportion as our bare natural wants are satisfied, artificial wants, or civilized wants, show themselves. And in the very highest state of improvement, it requires as constant an exertion to satisfy the new wants, which grow out of the habits and tastes of civilized life, as it requires in savage life, to satisfy hunger and thirst, and keep from freezing. In other words, the innate desire of improving our condition keeps us all in a state of want. We cannot be so well off that we do not feel obliged to work, either to ensure the continuance of what we now have, or to increase it. The man, whose honest industry just gives him a competence, exerts himself, that he may have something against a rainy day ;-and how often do we not hear an affectionate father say, he is determined to spare no pains, to work in season and out of season,-in order that his children may enjoy advantages denied to himself.

In this way, it is pretty plain, that Man, whether viewed in his primitive and savage state, or in a highly improved condition, is a working being. It is his destiny-the law of his nature-to labor. He is made for it,-and he cannot live without it; and the Apostle Paul summed up the mat

ter, with equal correctness and point, when he said, that “if any would not work, neither should he eat."

It is a good test of principles like these, to bring them to the standard of general approbation or disapprobation. There are, in all countries, too many persons, who, from mistaken ideas of the nature of happiness, or other less reputable causes, pass their time in idleness, or in indolent pleasures; but I believe no state of society ever existed, in which the energy and capacity of labor were not commended and admired, or in which a taste for indolent pleasure was commended or admired by the intelligent part of the community. When we read the lives of distinguished men, in any department, we find them almost always celebrated for the amount of labor they could perform. Demosthenes, Julius Cæsar, Henry the Fourth of France, Lord Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton, Franklin, Washington, Napoleon,-different as they were in their intellectual and moral qualities,-were all renowned as hard-workers. We read how many days they could support the fatigues of a march; how early they rose, how late they watched; how many hours they spent in the field, in the cabinet, in the court; how many secretaries they kept employed; in short, how hard they worked. But who ever heard of its being said of a man in commendation, that he could sleep fifteen hours out of the twenty-four, that he could eat six meals a day, and that he never got tired of his easy-chair?

It would be curious to estimate, by any safe standard, the amount in value of the work of all kinds done in a community. This, of course, cannot be done with any great accuracy. The pursuits of men are so various, and the dif

ferent kinds of labor performed are so different in the value of their products, that it is scarcely possible to bring the aggregate to any scale of calculation. If we would form a kind of general judgment of the value of the labor of a community, we must look about us. All the improvements, which we behold, on the face of the earth; all the buildings of every kind in town and country; all the vehicles employed on the land and water; the roads, the canals, the wharfs, the bridges; all the property of all kinds, which is accumulated throughout the world; and all that is consumed, from day to day and from hour to hour, to support those who live upon it,—all this is the product of labor; and a proportionate share is the product of the labor of each generation. -It is plain that this comprehensive view is one, that would admit of being carried out into an infinity of details, which would furnish the materials rather for a folio than a lecture. But as it is the taste of the present day, to bring every thing down to the standard of figures, I will suggest a calculation, which will enable us to judge of the value of the labor performed in the community in which we live.-Take the population of Massachusetts, for the sake of round numbers, at 600,000 souls. I presume it will not be thought extravagant to assume, that one in six performs every day a good day's work, or its equivalent. If we allow nothing for the labor of five out of six, (and this certainly will cover the cases of those too young and too old to do any work, or who can do only a part of a day's work,) and if we also allow nothing for those whose time is worth more than that of the day-laborer, we may safely assume, that the sixth person performs daily a vigorous efficient day's work of body