LIFE IN THE WEST.

FROM THE JOURNAL OF A TRAVELLER.

"I WAS present at one of the daily sales in the woman-market. A man strangely clad in a long white garment, officiates in these markets to superintend the completion of the bargain, and give the purchasers a legal title to their property. The females (for the name of woman is not known in this country), are ranged in rows, with or without dress, according as their parents deem best calculated to display their natural advantages, or to conceal some deformity or defect. A youth, of rather agreeable appearance, was chaffering with a venerable old man (most respectably attired) about the price of a delicate-looking girl whom he had taken a fancy to for a bed-fellow. The father was loud in praise of the maiden's capabilities, while the mother was busily engaged in displaying her proportions, (she was quite naked), and in pointing out her peculiar fitness for the young man's purposes. He, however, seemed rather difficult to please. He required that she should also be a good domestic servant, and of a disposition that did not object to brutality and caprice. As to the former, the father declared that she was a good girl, very obedient, and neither gluttonous nor a drunkard, tolerably honest, not encumbered with thought, and not too fond of the open air; and that he might search the market through without finding a better article for his money. For the latter requisition, both parents assured him she had been expressly educated; and after a little closer survey, the young man seemed satisfied. Indeed to any tolerable physiognomist, the girl's face was sufficient evidence of her qualification in this respect; for I never saw a more spiritless and passionless expression, though united with faultless features, and with some underneath faint traces of a better character, which had not been developed, because it would not have been marketable. These objections being waived, after some little further haggling between the merchant and the buyer, the bargain was struck; the mother gave some excellent advice which she had learned from her husband; and the whole party went before the officer of the market, to legalize the contract. Some few ceremonies (of about as much importance as the technicalities attendant on the transfer of property, whether live-stock or pedlary, in my own beloved country) were gone through. The girl was pronounced the property, 'till dead or done with' of her purchaser; she was permitted to sign her father's name on a scrap of paper, in proof of her willingness as a free agent to be bought and sold; an eloquent oration was pronounced by the officer, in which he earnestly adjured the young couple to make the best possible use of their physical propensities, for the supply of the market and the prosperity of the market dues; a fine was paid by the buyer for leave to use and abuse his own property; and the parties were dismissed with the customary form of 'The peace of God which passeth all understanding,' by which, as I was informed, no ridicule of our religion was intended. Will it be credited that the people of this barbarous country are so wedded to their ancient customs, that these daily occurrences neither excite public disgust nor draw upon them the animadversion of the lecturers on public morality (who are well-paid and very numerous), and even by the few who are so schismatic as to express their disapproval of doing what their fathers did, the practice is quietly acquiesced in. Not the least offensive part of the business, to me, was the solemnly invoking the omnipresent God to bear witness to the bargain: but I understood that it is the custom in this country to use the name of God in all matters of trade, and, indeed, that this was their most respected form of worship, and considered very efficacious for the general purposes of piety. It is not the part of a philosopher to quarrel with the manners of a foreign country solely because they differ from the most reasonable prejudices in every day use at home."

[Further on, the author very satisfactorily proves, that this disgusting social arrangement results from the various absurd and iniquitous laws which have

been enacted by the principal proprietors, to uphold a consistent system of private property. God keep us priest-protected and moral or christian people from such loathsome depravity! but there is no knowing to what we may come.]

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REVELATIONS OF TRUTH.

AND Commerce became God.

CHAP XV.

It robed itself with a Lie, and stood in Christ's place, before the altar, in the Holy of Holies, to mediate between the Father and his earthly children.

Cities were built in its honour: Men with passioned souls and heavensoaring thoughts were pent up in narrow cells, in their own filth, like beasts in a market-place, to be sacrificed by thousands and tens of thousands, with variety of torture, amid loud gratulations and exulting shouts and laughter of the sacrificers, to feed the insatiable hunger of the new Divinity.

And there was no view of the clear heaven; but darkness, sunless and starless night, enroofed humanity for the Spirit of Commerce had spread itself over the earth; and the mediation of Wealth was that of a terrible shadow which stood between men and the grave, the home of desired rest.

And men, scourged continually, worked on without heart, in the unvarying midnight, by the pale glare of torches, ever digging for gold-for the earth was a vast mine: and when they confronted each other in the ghastly torchlight, they recoiled loathingly and shrieked with fear, beholding the livid and care-withered countenances from which the image of God had been effaced by their long exposure to the corrosion of misery.

Ever and ever they wasted, till in their shrunken forms there was no room for hope; and the incessant dropping of agonies upon their bare heads, from the mine's roof, damp like a charnel-house, wore out their minds; they became idiots: their pulses were but the monotonous echoes of their labour, the ebbing and flowing of a foolish sorrow; and thought and feeling a mere sensation of gnawing and wasting pain. Yet they did not die.

And their eyes, aching under the intense gaze of the fiendish torches which seemed ever to sneer upon them, were turned inwards: where their hearts had been was nothing but a hollow darkness in which obscene and crawling worms were miserably prisoned.

Yet they laboured incessantly, digging for gold. Their scourgers were the priests of the omnipotent Commerce. They were clothed in royal vestments, they gorged themselves with luxurious viands, they lay upon voluptuous couches-but they slept not: for a curse possessed them, and dwelt watchfully within them-a fiend which even the Redeemer Wealth could not cast out.

And the temples were filled with thieves. All things were bought and sold therein. The blood of man was bartered for dirt; the soul of man was sold for a gilded agony. Women were exposed upon the altar to the common gaze; they were sold to proprietors, who made a profit of them, compelling their labourers to hire them for the propagation of slaves.

And God afflicted them with madness: they mutilated their children, and sacrificed them on the altars of Commerce; and many flung themselves into molten gold for the honour of their deity.

And Love, which could not quit the earth, was brought in bonds to the temple, and condemned as a blasphemer, and sentenced to an ignominious death.

Commerce was yet unsatisfied.

The earth was desolate; and the ever-craving Commerce turned to prey

upon its own entrails. Its Omniscience had not foreseen this.

It was a day of unclouded glory. Men with the aspects of angels were

clearing away the unsightly ruins of a barbarous temple, to make way for the ploughshare.

Beneath the pedestal of a golden idol-prostrate and broken amid the ruins -lay the skeleton of a man; on his breast was a small tablet, on which was engraven the name of Christ. The inscriptions of the temple had been worn out: this alone remained.

When the joyous reapers gathered in their abundant harvest, they talked gently and smilingly of the old-time burial of Love, of the Resurrection, and of the Immortality of Good.

A CHAPTER FOR THE ORTHODOX CREATURES OF

PROPERTY.

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SOME remove the land marks; they violently take away flocks, and feed thereof.

They drive away the ass of the fatherless, they take the widow's ox for a pledge.

They turn the needy out of the way: the poor of the earth hide themselves together.

Behold, as wild asses in the desert, go they forth to their work: rising be times for a prey the wilderness yieldeth food for them and for their children. They reap every one his corn in the field: and they gather the vintage of the wicked.

They cause the naked to lodge without clothing, that they have no covering in the cold.

They are wet with the showers of the mountains, and embrace the rock for want of a shelter.

They pluck the fatherless from the breast, and take a pledge of the poor. They cause him to go naked without clothing, and they take away the sheaf from the hungry;

Men groan from out of the city, and the soul of the wounded crieth out. The murderer, rising with the light, killeth the poor and needy, and in the night is as a thief.

Though his excellency mount up to the heavens, and his head reach unto the clouds;

Yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung: they which have seen him shall say, Where is he?

He shall fly away as a dream, and shall not be found: yea, he shall be chased away as a vision of the night.

The eye also which saw him shall see him no more; neither shall his place any more behold him.

His children shall seek to please the poor, and his hands shall restore their goods.

His bones are full of the sin of his youth, which shall lie down with him in the dust.

Though wickedness be sweet in his mouth, though he hide it under his tongue: Though he spare it, and forsake it not; but keep it still within its mouth : Yet his meat in his bowels is turned, it is the gall of asps within him. He hath swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again: God shall cast them out of his belly.

He shall suck the poison of asps; the viper's tongue shall slay him.

That which he laboured for shall he restore, and shall not swallow it down : according to his substance shall the restitution be, and he shall not rejoice

therein.

Because he hath oppressed and hath forsaken the poor: because he hath violently taken away a house which he builded not.

April 13, 1839.

The Book of Job.