Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/290

 98 THE CONDITION OF LABOR.

sojourning here, and that this exclusive ownership they may transfer to other exiles yet to come, with the same right of excluding their fellows.

You tell us that virtue is the common inheritance of all ; that all men are children of God the common Father ; that all have the same last end ; that all are redeemed by Jesus Christ; that the blessings of nature and the gifts of grace belong in common to all, and that to all except the unworthy is promised the inheritance of the King- dom of Heaven ! Yet in all this and through all this you insist as a moral duty on the maintenance of a system that makes the reservoir of all God's material bounties and blessings to man the exclusive property of a few of their number you give us equal rights in heaven, but deny us equal rights on earth !

It was said of a famous decision of the Supreme Court of the United States made just before the civil war, in a fugitive-slave case, that "it gave the law to the North and the nigger to the South." It is thus that your Encyclical gives the gospel to laborers and the earth to the landlords. Is it really to be wondered at that there are those who sneeringly say, "The priests are ready enough to give the poor an equal share in all that is out of sight, but they take precious good care that the rich shall keep a tight grip on all that is within sight " ?

Herein is the reason why the working masses all over the world are turning away from organized religion.

And why should they not ? What is the office of reli- gion if not to point out the principles that ought to govern the conduct of men toward each other ; to furnish a clear, decisive rule of right which shall guide men in all the relations of life in the workshop, in the mart, in the forum and in the senate, as well as in the church ; to supply, as it were, a compass by which amid the blasts of

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