"Old Icons and New Icons" 1877 essay by Mihai Eminescu
OLD ICONS
AND NEW ICONS
(1877
essay) (translated by Tatiana Danilova)
I.
The Reality
Sociology, not yet a
science, is based on a common and accessible principle, namely that specific
events in the life of a nation are subject to immutable laws, which are
enforced in a decisive and inevitable way. Writers with vast knowledge of
politics have ceased to believe that state and society are conventional issues
originating in the citizens' mutual agreement. No one, with the exception of
the gobs of ignorant journalists, can claim that the right to vote, the
assemblies, and the parliament are a country's foundation. The state must
continue to exist with or without them, being subject to immutable, inflexible,
and unmerciful natural law. The difference between a constitutional state and a
monarchic one is that, while in the first one the struggle for existence of
uneducated groups of people finds an echo, in the second that struggle is
overseen by a much higher power, namely that of the monarch, whose interest is
the well-being of all social classes and who can prevent each ones’
annihilation as a consequence of their constant clashing.
Nothing can more
unequivocally demonstrate that the public spirit is not ready to discuss
constitutional theories. We are confronted by the immaturity of our public
spirit from the beginning of our modern days’ development, starting from the
time when the first poorly educated or completely uneducated young people
returned home from Paris and tried to re-create the same status within our
country, introducing other countries' laws. They were so amazed by the glorious
effects of a historically rich existence of more than a thousand years that
they forgot that France has amassed its wealth and improved the quality of
science and industry in centuries. The expression “splitting hairs” comes to
mind. And if there were no hair, there would be no splitting. The metaphor is a
rather simplistic one, but nevertheless, it fits our times’ reality. The
benefits that the radicals get from the constitution and from public rights are
purely economic; the foundation of true liberalism is a middle class that
manufactures goods, making marble out of stone, silk out of linen, machines out
of iron, cloth out of wool, thus giving it tenfold of hundredfold of its
original value. Is our middle class represented by such hardworking people? Can
they represent the interests of the middle class?
Our middle class
consists of teachers and even worse, of lawyers.
For instance, Mr. X
is paid by the state to teach the Romanian language to university students,
from a linguistic and historical point of view, without any knowledge of the
subject.
Let us be clear. We
do not claim that our teachers should be geniuses. Far from it. But under
normal circumstances, this gentleman, who became a professor by chance, would
have began studying (presuming that he is not entirely senseless as to be
institutionalized in a mental hospital) and he could have shared his findings
with his students. Foreign linguists with great knowledge of the Romanian
language would have shown the way which was illuminated by wiser researchers,
to an extent in which the theory of a French scholar would have been proven,
namely that a student can learn more from his teacher than the teacher himself
knows. In this case we would not have heard Mr. X advocate the authenticity of
the Hurul Chronicles, which, even for rudimentary philologists, is crudely
fabricated gibberish, a fact that is obvious to the naked eye.
However, the circumstances are
abnormal, as such Mr. X doesn't become a knowledgeable professor, but a
politician instead. Inalienable rights, voting rights, ministerial
responsibility and the people's sovereignty are plain words which can be learned
by heart in just 15 minutes, thus helping him climb the social ladder and
making any intellectual activity superfluous. Under normal circumstances, Mr. X
would have become a mediocre professor. However, given the fact that he is not
controlled by anyone, he views himself as the king of the world, doing anything
he likes. So he leaves school and comes to Bucharest to do whatever he likes,
giving himself a false importance, one that is in conflict with nature itself.
The case of Mr. Y and of a myriad of
university professors is identical. I focus on university professors because a
highly placed cultural institution can clearly illustrate the state of our
nation's decay. And who pays the salaries of these middle-class gentlemen who
do not produce, neither intellectually nor physically, something of the
smallest value? The working class, that of the peasant, which in times of war
dies on the battle field and in time of peace works its life away in order to
pay taxes that essentially go to feeding this class of worthless sloths.
What can be said about lawyers?
Having returned from abroad, they didn't even try to learn
the laws and customs of the Romanian nation, but simply imported the Codex
which they had learned in Paris, as if the Romanian people lived like animals,
having no laws nor customs, a nation which needed to import foreign laws
without the slightest alteration, just like a factory imports its prime matter.
Thus, generally speaking, lawyers are the foulest of them all. For indeed, who
can approve something and disapprove the same thing, changing his mind in just
a couple of days, if not somebody whose line of work is to prove that black is
really white and white is black? No matter how much grey matter he has, in time
it is whitewashed and incapable of seeing the truth. This is the reason why
most of the Assembly's discussions are characterized by stratagems and
lawyerish tricks, by picking holes in everything and by senseless speeches.
These are the elements
which make Romania their own to rule through our French laws. Middle class
people are now politicians, the lower class is impoverished and, due to the
numerous burdens which are laid on its shoulders, is in danger of becoming a
minority. The burden that this representative and administrative council laid
on Romanian citizens does not fulfill any other purpose than to pretext the
establishment of positions in City Halls. Hence, all these useless positions
and those filling them are paid by the lower class with liquidities, thus
supporting the uselessness of the Romanian state.
Why do these unhealthy elements exist
in the state’s public life? The state is nothing more than the simplest
organization of the human needs. So why are these people, whose only intent is
to gain wealth and honors through their positions, ruling the country? How can
we call these uneducated puppets, who want to live and amass great wealth
without having to work, who are not able to carry out one public task out of
the three or four that they took on to fulfill? Why does Mr. X, have no
knowledge of the Romanian language, a university professor? How can he call himself
a great politician and statesman if he can be intellectually surpassed by a
primary school teacher from a foreign country?
What do these people want? We’ll tell
you what they want.
Our laws are foreign;
they are made to fit the stage of the social evolution which occurred in
France, but not yet in Romania. We made pews in our country's church, and not
having enough people of importance to fill them, we turned over the empty ones.
The worthy, those from the middle-class, were nowhere to be found. As such,
fools and loafers, intellectual and moral plebs, people whose intellectual and
physical capabilities are not worth a dime, filled them instead. They were
filled by heretics of all kinds, by people who risk everything because they
have nothing to lose, the product of the poorest of Romanian cities, as
unfortunately, our nation is on the border of three different civilizations:
the Slavic, the Western and the Asiatic. All of our surrounding neighbors are
the scum of the East and West, of the Greeks, the Jews and the Bulgarians, scum
that huddled in our cities and fostered children that became our very own
liberals. And when you criticize them, they say that you are criticizing
everything that is typical of Romania, and thus you are not a good citizen.
Indeed, Mr. Sera, who wrote a "Greek" poetry book,
Mr. Andrunopulos, who dishonors our military, making it part of a circus,
Messrs. C.A. Rosetti, Carada and Candiano, historical families that appear in
Romanian chronicles, are the only true Romanians. The native Romanians of the
lowest class, that of the peasants, are the ones who are selling the country to
the highest bidder.
The Liberals are the
cream and the foundation of Romania, while we are the remnants of the old
native population who do not deserve to be listened to. Oh, well! We should
apologize to the aristocracy, the Arionests and the Caradestines, for believing
that we are the citizens of our country and we have a say in political matters.
Forgive us for not noticing that we live in Bulgaria and for not wanting to
wage war with the poor Greeks and Bulgarians.
Do you not see that
we have enslaved ourselves? Do you not see that we have sent our children to be
slaughtered in order for Mr. Anghelescu to rest on their laurels? It is even
possible for gypsies, with hair as blond as the ravens' and skin white as tar,
to write derogatory articles about us in newspapers. Masters, have mercy on us!
But now, whether we
are forgiven or not, let us talk productively. Please, tell us of your desires.
And, in order for us to know what you are entitled to, we should know what you can
produce. Show us the representatives who own big companies and huge capitals
and those of the middle-class who do not speak in the same voice as the
"Telegraph" and "The Romanian," the producers of whims who
do not get the speeches written by the Metropolitanate Hill, your very own
factory of words! For you cannot ask us to confuse or disregard the differences
between the silk of Lyon and the trifles of Mr. N. Ionescu, nor between the
cloth of Manchester and the cleverness of Mr. Popovici-Ureche.
We live in a strange
country indeed! Most of these gentlemen were raised by the state, giving them a
shelter in boarding schools so that later on they could earn an honest living.
But the state managed
to get the contrary effect. After these gentlemen concluded their studies, they
asked the state to make them rich and to feed them until the end of their
lives. However, the list of their whims is not finished.
Their lordships want
to play the aristocrats. 3, 4 or 500 francs a month is not enough for them and
cannot motivate them to be of use to the nation that carries the burden of
their existence on its shoulders. They were born for higher positions, as
deputies, ministers, ambassadors, professors, academicians, positions that
their parents, who sold manure and went from house to house as priests, did not
dream or dare to dream of; for they, time and again, gave birth to these slow-minded
and simple folks, not to charming and noble people.
The apple does not
fall far from the tree. Are these people all geniuses and through the
"quality" of their intellectual work, do they deserve the position
they hold, or are they useless, not generating anything of real worth, not
representing any other interest but their own, and thus needing to be thrown
back in the abyss of their existence?
Are they peasants?
No. They are not landholders, nor are they educated, they are not businessmen,
nor are they craftsmen; they do not work in honorable fields, so what does that
make them? Usurpers, demagogues, simpleminded sloths that depend on the
nation's sweat without giving it anything in return; they are false
aristocrats, wealthy and cocky, more arrogant than the oldest noble Romanian
families.
The terrible envy for
any sign for true merit and the strenuous race against the country's real
intellectuals are born from these useless peoples’ desires. But when the time
comes that people sober up from their intellectual drunkenness, they would be
delivered by the reign of the demagogues.
Indeed, the people would see them
clearly if someone said, "Wait a minute! The state is giving a paycheck to
uneducated teachers who do not and cannot teach; the state is paying for unfair
judges and corrupt administrators, for their wage alone does not satisfy them.
The state does not see that the only thing they could offer is sweet and untrue
words. And when the state needs something from them, they all ignore it. Having
nobody to hold them on a short leash, they do whatever they want and impoverish
the nation by creating more positions, as deputies, mayors, in commissions and
so many others institutions, all of which are paid for by Romanians, giving
nothing, absolutely nothing, in return. On the contrary, they will strip you
off all your clothes so that they can wear them. Wouldn't it be better for
those who have their own wealth, not needing yours, to be the ones to rule? Or
for intelligent people who repay you for your contribution?
Therefore, chase away
this flock of incompetents who do not work and do not have any wealth but want
to live as the wealthy aristocrats. Chase away those who do not know anything
but still wish to teach, and those who are not capable of managing their own
finances but that want to manage yours.
II. ECONOMIC
PARALLELS
We must admit that
between 1830 and 1840 there have been enough abuses and shortcomings regarding
our country, but shortcomings are natural in this world. As such, in old age,
we pray to God to keep us safe and not give us more than we can bear. Back in
the time the Regulation was born and the first liberal concepts had emerged,
the faults were attributed, as always, to the ruling class. If the nation was
not doing well, the boyars were the ones to blame. Abuses were a normal part of
life due to the lack of guarantees, the people’s sovereignty and control. As
such, everybody was stealing and the liberals were saying: “Hand over the
country and you will see how we will turn the situation around, we'll make it
heaven on earth!” They were then, as they are now, making false promises and
blaming the privileged ruling classes for all shortcomings, saying that the
country's wealth, which was in the hands of the boyars, was being plundered and
that these boyars used the submissive and uncomplaining people to amass even
more wealth.
Good. We got rid of the privileged.
Today the nation controls everything. There is no more abuse, nor are there
thieves; we are governed by rightful laws, which guarantee us all the freedoms
that we can have.
Let us draw the list
of our wealth.
By wealth we mean:
Chambers, County and Province Councils, City Halls, academies; notaries,
lawyers, professors, etc., all paid from our treasury.
We are full of debts.
The public debt is half a billion francs, the farmers and craftsmen are fewer
and fewer, the peasants and even the upper class are increasingly poorer, commerce
and professions are done by foreigners, all of which have brought a general
impoverishment of the country.
We enforced foreign laws not for the
interest of the common Romanian, but for the economic interests of those that
know how to use the law in their benefit. We have created an atmosphere from
which exotic plants can grow, leaving our own aboriginal plants to die out.
For today we have the most advanced
liberal institutions. Control, the people's sovereignty, the French Codex,
County and Municipal Councils. Are we better off because of them? No, we are
ten times worse, because the new institutions don't fit the state of our
civilization, the total of our nation's working hands and the quality of our
work. As such, the liberals drain the working class of their power and money so
that they can maintain our modern state’s expensive and unprofitable state
apparatus.
We are, without a
doubt, peasants, and we must rule as such. The peasant, no matter how many
properties he owns, does not have money and the modern state needs money. For
every step that a deputy takes in the Chamber, any mistake that he makes, the
state ends up paying, and money equals work. A paper signed by a state official
is paid for by the state, and money equals work. A bad lecture held at the
university costs money, and money equals work. In the end, money is the
representative and the proof of work, proving that sweat, power, and time were
spent so that one can have it. The amount of money in my pockets is directly
proportionate with the amount of time I spend working.
But someone will say:
“So what? A constitutional state with liberty, equality, fraternity, and
sovereignty cannot rely on the labor carried out by Romanians. Did the French
succeed because they are wizards and this is why we can't succeed? Are we not
entitled to the same life-style? Are they smarter than us?”
Their question is just.
The French are not smarter than us, but there is an element which hinders us
from succeeding as they have.
The Frenchman buys a
piece of metal for 50 coins and produces a watch and sells it for 40 francs. A
Romanian sells a kilogram of wool for 1 franc and the French manufacturer turns
it into a coat and sells it for 20 francs. The Frenchman takes rice straws for
free and braids a straw hat for which a Romanian woman would pay 60 or 80
francs.
Isn't it true that a
shepherd can be just as smart and as open-minded as a watchmaker in Paris? Yes,
for intelligence is not developed but inherited. What is developed, however, is
one's business ability. The reason for which the shepherd earns in a year the
amount of money that the watchmaker earns in a day is that he has not developed
this ability.
This is why the craftsman from Paris
can afford to pay for Chambers, universities, theaters, libraries, and can even
buy a unicorn if he wishes to and can find one. But we, a people of peasants,
can afford all these things in time, taking baby steps to reach this goal. If
the French are generous with their money, we must save as much as we can, for
an agricultural nation will never be wealthy. Let's look at how Romanians work.
A Romanian sells a kilogram of wool for
the price of 1 franc, which is his to spend but not on the final product, as it
is sold back to him for 20 francs, twentyfold of the received sum. How does he
earn the other 19 francs that he needs in order to pay for the final product?
By selling another
prime matter; not wool, but wheat. But to grow a limited amount of wheat you
must work intensively. To produce a grain of wheat you need a whole summer, and
even then all your hardship might be in vain as the crop is conditioned by rain
or wind. The French tailor, on the other hand, only buys a kilogram of wool and
manufactures something worth tenfold of its original value in just a few hours.
From this we can conclude that a peasant must work for a whole summer to buy a
luxury product that was manufactured abroad within a day.
The peculiarity of
industrial work is significant. A painter who paints a beautiful icon will sell
it and live 10 years out of the money he receives for it. A lumberjack works on
a daily basis and lives from hand to mouth. Talk about the differences between
these types of labor! The first one works out of pleasure and earns a lot of
money while the other drudges and earns little in return. Is there any
resemblance between the two? Can the lumberjack, whose work is
underappreciated, view himself as the painter's equal?
The same is the
difference between nations. A country that produces wheat can be plentiful, we
don't deny that, but it will never afford the luxury that highly industrialized
countries can.
We must strive to
become an industrialized country, leaving our agricultural heritage behind, but
in order to do so we must educate our people so that later on they can be
successful. Hence, in order to enforce the laws of foreign nations, we must
first become their equal, namely an industrial country.
Let's say, for
example, that someone has as big a palace as that of a voievoda and his sole
income is that of 62 acres of land. How can that person live on that income
alone and how can he pay the salary of all his servants?
An agricultural
country is to an industrial one, like a yeoman to a boyar who owns 124000 acres
of land.
The yeoman can be as
smart, as hardworking and as well-spoken as can be, but still, he cannot lead
the lifestyle of the boyar; for where nothing is, the king must lose his right.
Now every sage person can understand why we should not have imported foreign
institutions.
Only puppeteers do
not understand the fact that these changes will end up costing us dearly, no
matter how many workers Romania has.
Now, after proving that such concepts as
sovereignty, freedom, equality and fraternity indebted us of 18 million francs
per year, let's find out what the country's expenditure was when the boyars
ruled.
Twenty two million
for both Romanian territories with two separate Princely Courts. But maybe this
sum was spent on trivialities. Maybe the nation was so poor and badly
administrated that they were suffering more than they are today and more than
in times of famine. Oh, the horror, maybe they were dying of starvation on the
streets.
Let's us do some
research. Reading the “Romanian Courier” published on the 5th of August, 1840,
we find out that:
“In the years 1837,
1838 and 1839 139,263 people were born and 90,207 people have died”. Thus, in 3
years' time, the population grew by 43,993 people, approximately 50.000, in
Muntenia alone. Taking into account the 40,000 population growth as registered
in Moldavia, we see that the population grew at about the same rate throughout
every region of Romania.
However, nowadays the population is
exponentially decreasing and not growing in arithmetic progression. If we
remained under the plundering government of the boyars, today we would be
speaking of a population of 8,000,000. However, after getting rid of the
boyar’s tyranny, we are left with a population of 4,000,000, two times less
than that of 1840.
What more can we read in the Romanian Courier?
“In my granaries, in
the course of 3 years, 4,441,106 kilograms of corn, out of which 299,700 belong
to me, were stored.”
What do we have stored in our granaries
nowadays? As many kilograms, not of grains but of liberal lies.
What is there left for us to read?
“The amount kept in
the Treasury, which was recently inventoried, is of 2,357,483 lei”.
What is the amount of
lei being kept in our Treasury? The country is inundated in debts, owning 500,000
francs and, even the rural communes owe debts of 10,000-20,000 francs.
Still, the liberals
say that the boyars were the ones robbing the nation. By saying that the boyars
were Satan's spawns, by regurgitating the same inept speech, we immensely
satisfy the liberals.
Still, the fact remains that the
population was growing and that, even in troubled times, it did not go hungry;
that there were many weddings and few burials which made even the priests more
rich that they are today, as any priest will more willingly officiate weddings
than they would burials. Back then, priests staggered back home after baptismal
ceremonies, whereas today, they return stone cold sober and painfully aware of
it. In those times, everything was done constructively.
But maybe today we
have more guarantees that justice will be delivered.
Stan finds the bag
that Bran has not yet lost. What is the sentence?
After proving his crime, Stan will be
beaten by the mayor and the prefect, then he is preemptively arrested, loses 10
workdays which equal 10 francs, one for each day. The judge loses his time
studying the case instead of dealing with more important cases, and the state
pays him 10 francs to do so .The verdict is given the next day, another working
day, thus another 10 francs are spent by the state. Stan in imprisoned for 2
months and loses 60 francs that equal 60 missed workdays. After those 2 months,
Stan returns home to find his fields and vineyard in ruins and desolation, thus
losing all the crops that could have been sold for 100 francs. Then Stan needs
to pay taxes and borrows money to do so, a debt that can be repaid in a few
years’ time. In simpler words, Stan is left in ruins as a consequence of
finding the bag that Bran has not yet lost, without even taking into
consideration the state of his health after the beating.
How was justice delivered before?
Bran denounced Stan's
crime to the boyar, and while Bran received his rightful belonging, Stan
received a beating worth remembering and then got back to minding his own
business. Simple, just and... free. Today, apart from receiving the same
physical punishment as in those times, he is left in ruins.
Did we really need these French laws?
Do we really need thousands of lawyers and thousands of mayors, prefects,
notaries and Councils to settle such simple cases as stealing, poaching,
disturbance of possession and so on and so forth?
This is nonsense!
And what do we get in return? A more
developed civilization?
Hardly. If a nation's
civilization is judged by its writers, then we have to regretfully acknowledge
the fact that Eliad and Asachi were tenfold more knowledgeable than Messrs. CA.
Rosetti, Costinescu, Carada and Fundescu; that Anton Pann was a more talented
and humorous a writer than a hundred journalists who are attempting and failing
to write in the same style; that one particular comedy, "Proper
education" written by C. Balacescu, is more original than all the writings
of V.A. Ureche. And let's not forget about our greatest writers, who wrote both
with clarity and with beauty as to be understood by the peasant and appreciated
by the voievoda, namely, Alexandri, C. Negruzzi, Bolintineanu, Donici, and Bălcescu
etc., all of whom lived in the time of the cursed boyars.
Authorities and
obedience were common concepts. When the voievoda said “Jump,” everyone jumped.
Today, the situation is different.
Today you command the
dog, the dog then passes the command to the cat, the cat to the mouse, and the
mouse to a piece of cheese which he then eats.
Nowadays, ministerial
orders are not followed despite the fact that the mayor wrote on them "to
be followed according to the Orders given by Mr. Minister". The only time
that they are followed is when Mr. Prefect or Sub prefect wants to take revenge
on a certain conservative.
The government is the
weapon of cowards who want to take revenge on their political opponents.
This is what concepts as the people's sovereignty,
freedom, equality and fraternity brought. Are they good concepts? Yes, but they
have a flaw. They are not
adaptable for our country.
III. OLD AND YOUNG
PEOPLE
The common person
hardly comprehends that there is no such thing as constant, unchanging social
truth and state of affairs. Life itself is an ever-changing continuous cycle,
as is the social truth, the mirror of reality. What today might be considered
certain tomorrow may be seen as doubtful, this cycle affecting destinies as well
as ideas. However, in this ever-changing world, art is the only thing that
remains unmoving, which is strange, as it is not a necessity of life but a way
of living it.
Today, we happily
read Homer's epic poems, which the Greek shepherds used to read as a way of
killing time, as well as the hymns from Rig-Veda, which the Indian priests read
in order to pray to nature for grass and cattle. With equal pleasure we read
the beautifully written stories of the greatest poet ever born, namely those of
Shakespeare, enjoying them more than his coevals. We enjoy the statues made by
Phidias and Praxiteles, the painting of Raphael and Palestrina’s music. We
greatly enjoy reading the characterization of Stephen the Great; the author,
Grigorie Ureche, being able to clearly depict his Highness's virtuousness and
worth.
Entirely different
are the concepts that humanity needs, namely its well-being and harmonious
coexistence.
By importing the most
perfect and glorious laws that are not adapted for our country, no matter the
purity of your intentions, you are essentially leading the country to disaster.
This is because everything, with the exception of art, is alive, organic, and
needs to be handled like any other living organism. Being organic, it is born,
it grows, it can get sick and either be healed or die. Countries, being afflicted
by different "diseases," need not take the same medicine; while Stan's
affliction is healed by a plant, Bran's only gets worse because of it.
How do we describe
those who say that they have discovered a single medicine that treats every
disease there is, a cure that guarantees to make you sane if you've gone mad
and heal you of deafness if you've gone deaf, which treats any illness that you
can possibly imagine; baldness, acne, frostbite, blindness, toothache?
We call such doctors
charlatans.
What can we say of
Romanian doctors who prescribe medicine, only to cure the sick of their life?
You cannot walk
barefoot towards your goal. The concepts of liberty, equality, and fraternity
don't necessarily lead to the same result; while France is prospering, Romania
is drowning in debts. Liberty, equality and fraternity don't work the same way
here as they do there. All these concepts have given us are uneducated
teachers, poor peasants, sick cattle, fewer craftsmen and even less wheat.
Adopting the concepts of freedom, equality and fraternity doesn't mean that
everything will miraculously improve.
I have proven, within
a single line, that these concepts are to liberals as miraculous cures are to
charlatans, but we still accept them, even though they make us sicker and
sicker.
Maybe these concepts,
these medicines, can cure one nation's sickness, but not ours.
Let's see how the
Liberals came across their medical formula, which promises to cure all
sicknesses, but cures none. In the past century the French revolution began as
a result of the ever-growing expenses of the royal house and the rising of food
prices which impoverished the nation. The nation was starving due to the fact
that the country was so deep in debt that the French had to choose between
starving and fighting the regime.
Romania however, after
Barbu Stirbei was dethroned, still had 16 million lei in its Treasury and 3
more million lei in its banks. The situations cannot be more different!
In France, all tax money was given to
companies that used it to feed the Court and all its loafers. In Romania, great
amounts of tax money were saved, as our Voievoda was wealthy, owning great
properties and lands, and didn't need that money for himself. The situations
cannot be more different!
In France, everything
could be bought with money, including positions in the Court of Justice and in
the army, positions that could be used as a way of making more money, as
justice itself was bought. In Romania, however, such positions could only be
held only by the educated, no matter their social status. Again, the situations
could not be more different!
In France, economic inequality was at its peak, the royal
house living in luxury while the common people were starving. Most of the money
was used to buy luxurious items. In Romania, the boyar inherited a fur coat
from his great grandparent, a Turkish Shawn from his grandfather, a costume
from his father, all of which he had to pass on to his nephew and apart from
that he had, as any ordinary commoner, winter clothes and savings for times of
trouble. In other words, the boyars and the commoners had everything they
needed, for, back then; Romania was a "conservative" country. Once
again, the situations cannot be more different!
What had the boyars
done so wrong to deserve the wrath of the liberals? They had done what they
thought was best. Churches, monasteries, schools, hospitals, wells, and bridges
that would serve as a constant reminder of their rule. They had also educated
young poor boys so that they might one day serve the nation. In other words,
they warmed viper in their bosom.
For these young men
were educated in a country whose social life was rotten. The extremely rich
upper class was importing extremely luxurious objects from all corners of the
earth, literature and art was replaced by gossip, every whim was seen as a
necessity. Perfume, chocolate, poison and everything else that you could spare
was seen as a necessity, but water was not seen as one.
There, instead of
educating themselves in useful areas, namely agriculture, education, medicine,
tailoring, shoemaking and other such areas which are paramount to a nation, they
all wanted to become politicians instead, namely to learn the workings of a
country and how to improve the living conditions of its people. They read all
the articles from Le Figaro and Petite Republique Françoise, and
returned unchanged and as clueless as before, but with a plan to make Romania
great. These youths, having an easy and happy life in Romania, found themselves
living in a poor country such as France, but still somehow got used to the
customs of the rich middle class and wanted to live as millionaires, despite the
fact that they had less money than a French shoemaker. These youths,
characterized by disinterest towards the immutable dignity of ancestral
inheritance, speaking a corrupt language instead of their own beautiful
Romanian language, misjudging people and situations and disapproving of
everything that their feeble minds could not comprehend, these youths got used
to the operas which they heard in the slums of Paris, and having amounted this
“vast” knowledge, returned to Romania wanting to immediately be made deputies,
ministers, professors, members of the Academic Society and other societies, all
empty shells, used by the Bulgarians by the Danube river banks as adornments.
For most of these praised young men are
the children of Greeks and Bulgarians who settled in this country and used the
following instructions in order to turn them into true Romanians: leave a
Bulgarian in Paris and you will find him turned into a Romanian.
In 1840, before he changed his name from
Heliade- Radulesco as a result of being intoxicated by the Parisian atmosphere,
Eliade wrote the following to the great economist Mr. Ghica:
“Being a father, I am not even
considering educating my children abroad, but in Romania, because if my
children receive foreign education, how could they live in Romania not having
knowledge of Romanian customs and laws, a knowledge that can only be learned
here, within our country. Those that send their sons to be educated by foreign
people, in foreign lands, with different customs, only for those sons of theirs
to return and live in this country with its own special customs, are bastards
and their sons are bastards too.”
We can show, with
great difficulty, what these people, whom we call Romanians for geographical
reasons, not for nationalistic ones, lack. They lack historical and linguistic
knowledge - knowledge of our customs - and their perspective makes them think
that they are Romanians only because they were born on this land, in this
country.
As a result, hordes
of young men return to Romania with the strangest ideas, which they picked up
from French Cafes or from the writing of Saint Simon and other insane authors
wanting to change the country. They managed to do what they had planned, and as
a result, our lives were changed for the worse, for we let ourselves be ruled
by these clueless people who believed that there is such a thing as absolute
truth and that whatever concepts work in France can be easily imported in
Romania. When they returned, they
were greeted by their elders, with candles in hand, who did not know what
awaited them. Being blinded by the happiness of seeing all these young,
educated, and well-dressed men, they did not see that they were the
personification of trouble!
What do these young
men do? Instead of kissing their hands and thanking them, they give their
useless monologues of liberty, freedom, equality and sovereignty, confusing the
elders with their speeches. It was as if the world stopped spinning. They were
telling them such fantastic stories, full of greatness and marvel, it is no
wander that the poor, old people were confused. No Christian can ever hope for
this much greatness in this world. Then, they started to make up nicknames for
their elders: ghouls, vulgarians, backward people, etc., and even went to
denying that their elders were truly Romanians. Only they were, for they know
the writing of Saint-Simon by heart, and whoever doesn’t cannot call himself a
Romanian. The saying “Don’t believe your eyes, believe me instead” perfectly
mirrors that situation, these young people being able to call themselves
anything but Romanians.
Frankly, the elders
did not even understand what was being said to them. Having the purest Romanian blood rushing through their
veins, not knowing any other language other than the one in which they said
their prayers, the one that they correctly spoke on a daily basis, they marveled
at such strange words as “nation,” “empires,” “admissible,” and “parliament”
and through to themselves: “Maybe we are clueless. We thought that if we know
the psalms, how to plow the earth, how to raise cattle and save money, we know
it all. But according to them, we
don’t even speak proper Romanian.” And instead of taking out their belts and
putting those young men on their knees to give them a good whipping, they said:
“Yes, dear children, you must be right. Maybe we don’t even speak proper
Romanian. But you are many and we are few and soon you will be the ones to rule
the world and manage it according to your own liking.” And these young people
left the countryside and went to the capital, a place from which our nation’s
decline began. A place where this saddened and impoverished people, which was
destined to live in these awful times in which the country forgets, little by
little, its history and culture. A place where nobody can call these young men
bad Romanians, a group that boasts of being Romanians without knowing what that
means. What made them quietly withdraw from public life, without resistance,
without anger, was the amazing power of the discourses; the fact that many
liberals were their own children who could not wait to bury them in order to
inherit their wealth and spend it; the belief that the "educated"
were more useful to the country than they were, the weakened sense of
patriotism after 5 centuries from laying the foundations of the country.
The people were
deceived by the liberals like they had been, a century ago, by the Phanariot
Mavrocordat. This devious and greedy gentleman could not force the yeomen to
pay bigger tribute, as the tributes collected from them were enough to pay the
Ottoman Porte, but not enough for himself. We don’t know what the economic
situation of the yeomen was, and because of this we speculate that it must have
a decision made by the ruling class in order to prevent the fleeing of the
yeomen as a consequence of long years of invasions and confusion. If the yeomen
were in distress, the chronicles would have written about it, as they wrote
about other wrongdoings that left the population in distress. As the liberals
call them “ghouls” so did the Phanariot call them “tyrants” and “slavers” and, together with the
Metropolitan, manipulated the yeomen to rise in revolt, and they abolished yeomanship,
and swore that they will never pay tributes again. This is exactly what the Phanariot
wanted.
The newly freed men,
not having the boyars to rule over them, were forced to pay fivefold or tenfold
bigger tributes within just a few years’ time.
Then as now, the
consequences of their blind faith were terrible. The elders were sheep in
wolves’ clothing while the liberals are wolves in sheep’s clothing, spreading
their sweet deceit all over the country. Next, we will look at the liberals’
actions.
IV. ADMINISTRATIVE
ILLUSTRATIONS
Once the liberals attacked the boyars,
the country’s public opinion followed their lead and in turn attacked them.
Nobody understood what we are just
beginning to understand, namely that the foundation of a country is not the
laws, but labor. Nobody understood that the wealth of a nation isn’t
represented by money, but by labor.
Money is labor’s
consequence and cannot be viewed as separate from labor. If a Romanian earns
enough money abroad in order to invest in an unindustrialized country, he will
pay 20 francs for a days’ salary, 100 francs for a pair of shoes, and so on and
so forth until we will, once again, be poor. The one who earns 2 francs and
spends 1 is richer than the one that earns 10 francs and spends 11. Worse is
the general misconception that Romania is an extremely rich country, with
endless recourses. Nobody understood that wealth cannot be found in the ground
or in the sky, but in the arms of men, and if a country has no such thing as a
working class—or if it exists, but the quality of its work is bad—the country
can never be rich.
In other words, we wanted to faithfully
copy Western civilizations and introduce them as such in Romania.
We needed to build
schools, but how, if there is no money? As I said, through hard work. Instead
of building new schools, those that were already built should have been brought
to the highest possible level of development, as Meuss. Laurian and Mr.
Cogalniceanu and others began doing, even though they were just high school
teachers. They were, however, very good ones. The next generation would have
followed in their footsteps and further developed the educational system, and
today we would have had good schools that would have produced a pragmatic,
reasonable generation, able to clearly write their thoughts.
This would have been
our reality if we chose work instead of politics. We made professors out of
high school teachers even though they had no knowledge of what they were
teaching. Then we built high schools and hired those who were willing to try
their luck in this area, then thousands of primary schools whose personnel is a
joke, as hundreds of teachers don’t even know proper Romanian, the concepts of
grammar or punctuation being foreign to them, not to mention syntax or spelling,
as they appear to be speaking in tongues, each one of them having made up their
own personal language.
Then we needed a
better administration. The boyars promoted their overseers to tribute
collectors, thus enriching them. These overseers kept an eye on the peasants
when they were working the earth, collected money, and sent them to do errands
as the boyar commanded. This is all they could do, we can’t deny this, but what
did the liberals do? They took the same uneducated overseers and made them
state officials, thus giving them the authority to torment and mistreat their
old masters.
Are these people entitled to be state
officials? By God, no! Nowadays, the people are free; they don’t have to work
the earth, essentially being free to starve if this is their wish; the sub prefect,
who has no clue of his responsibilities, no more than his predecessor, passes
orders from the prefecture to the mayor’s office. Last but not least, the
prefecture’s office passes orders from the ministry to the sub prefecture’s
office, and the mayor’s office passes orders from the state to private companies--a
job for the post office, a company that does the same job better and faster.
The overseers’
responsibilities were taken away from them and they were given different ones.
They, however, had no knowledge of how to fulfill these responsibilities, as
public administration is a science and the sub prefect isn’t even able to write
down a few words without misspelling them or confusing one notion for another.
Did any of the
liberal geniuses ever wonder what it really means to administrate? What does it
mean to handle the nation’s wealth in a wise manner? What does it mean to think
for a nation that does not think? To them, it means to indebt the parish and to
force the people to pay numerous taxes, adding taxes on honey, wine, milk, and
on everything that you can think of in order to milk the cash cow that is the
peasant!
What is more natural
than a liberal asking what it really means to administrate? If they asked themselves
this, they would have undoubtedly found out how fragile public administration
is, and how necessary it is for the sub prefect to know at least the basis of
public administration and political economy, and then to know how to
practically use this knowledge in the parish in which he lives.
The public servant is
a like a second father for the rural population, a fact that cannot be said of
the Romanian public servants. He must think of ways to stimulate the population
growth when it is decreasing; he must build roads where they are a necessity,
build schools when the schools are needed to be built and find the right
location to do so, etc. Putting it in simpler terms, he is authority itself
that can persuade the peasants to vote for the most honest and hardworking
candidate running for the mayor’s office, not the one who promises the most and
delivers little. He is the one who must judge if the teachers or the notaries
are educated and if the priest takes care of his congregation and so on. In
order to be a good sub prefect, one needs to a true patriot, an educated and
objective person. The fact that
honest people exist in Romania’s political life is not something that we can
disprove. However, experienced and educated ones are a rarity.
But because the state
doesn’t require its public servant be expertly educated in order to fill a
public position, we see that peasants, leaving their plows, their lands and
herds to the mercy of God, fill these positions and try to rule their parishes.
They can only contribute to the making of thousands of other positions that can
be filled by thousands of other uneducated peasants. Having done this, they
thought about introducing another law, another of their whims, namely to
enforce decentralization and elections so that everybody, taking turns, can
enjoy the authority given to them by the state. In simpler terms, they want to
create a tenfold more expensive government, with a tenfold more personnel and
more useless than the one we have today, personnel that will change every three
years so that everybody can get wealthy. They need money, as liberty, equality,
and fraternity do not keep them from starving.
But let’s not
deviate. Romania has many uneducated and illiterate people, and soon there will
be even more of them. Every Romanian citizen can become a public servant and
everybody aspires to higher positions.
Everybody hopes that they will at least be sub prefects.
This is why the
liberals want to be in the government; because that is the position from which
they can make big money, the position for an unscrupulous lawyer to become a
school principle, mayor, school inspector, or prefect. And once they govern,
they will do everything they can to remain in power, and because they can only
stay in power if the Chamber elects them, they move mountains in order to make
deputies out of their friends. But their friends--who are either landholders or
landholder’s relatives, or entrepreneurs working in the public sector, or
entrepreneurs’ lawyers who wage trials against the state--they themselves want
to be elected so as to make ministers do their jobs for them, out of fear. The
seller, the merchant, the priest and everybody who isn’t aware of this, vote
for them, because their “liberty” may be taken away from them and because they
listen to the liberals’ vain promise that they will never pay taxes. Stamps,
taxation of any kind will be unheard of and the same with the monopoly of
tobacco, alcohol, or the army. The only monopoly to be had will be over the
numerous public positions, from one corner of the country to the other.
The common citizen,
thinking firstly of himself, does not see the connection between politics and
his work and earnings; does not see that the liberals use him for their own
material purposes. The common citizen reads the newspapers, printed on credit
in Yid printing houses, that bob up like corks with stories of elections and,
without thinking for himself, votes for the proposed candidates. Thus the
Liberal Chamber is formed.
The hoards of charlatans from the
Metropolitan Hill are getting ready to select the candidates like they did for
previous governments as, from ministers to public servants, they were all also
chosen by them.
This process means
the defeat of the public servant. If there is one perfect public servant who is
educated in his field of activity, and he cannot be unseated for any apparent
reason, then one must dissolve his position on the grounds of saving the state
some money, and then reintroduce the position and give it to some trainee,
making it all seem a coincidence.
On the eve of the
elections, the mayors are advised to help farmers who support the government
and assist the ministers’ relatives and those of the prefects. The ones who
don’t support the government will face requisitions, inquests and official
reports so that no peasant can work for them. This is why the record of
employment was enforced, so that the peasant could not work for the one who
pays him more without having signed an agreement; instead, he must work for
those with whom he signed one for little money. And less, if we take into
consideration all the penal clauses which the liberal sub prefect later decides
were broken by the peasant, without so much as looking into things, and forces
the given peasant to pay his liberal landholder damages until he has nothing
left.
Ultra-liberal
families got used to this situation. They drew lots to figure out which one is
to be a “conservative” and does the others’ work for them when the
conservatives are in power, and which one gets to be a liberal and does the
same thing when the liberals are in power.
And thus, millions of
Romanians aspire to get wealthy and receive honors from the state and thus live
without having to work. The concept of liberty is most definitely a relative
one, as on the one hand it has a negative meaning for the peasants, a ban that
prevents them from working the earth and from manufacturing goods, and on the
other hand, it has a positive meaning for the liberals of this country, as for
them it means that liberty itself must feed them and clothe them with fine
clothes and get everything their heart desires, not troubling themselves with
the lives of the working class. Après
nous le deluge[1]. If we
are born, let us live! If we live, let us live prosperously! The merciful God
will take care of the lower classes that we impoverish and ruin.
This is what
liberalism means in our country. The ones who stand for nothing and form a
political movement, then county committees and offices, so that they have exact
lists with all of the state’s domains and its official positions; they cite the
newspapers in order to give proof that “the nation’s liberty is in danger,” and
that they are the only ones capable of defending it, that they are the
country’s own personal saviors, thus deceiving people. Then, during the election,
the deceived nation votes for them and ...hold on to your hats.
Corruption spreads
throughout the country, from one corner to the other, with no man being left
untouched by it. We find someone being thrown out of his own house together
with his family, which he struggled to provide for by working day after day. We
find a landholder who is stripped of his lands, because even though he plowed
and sowed his land, he didn’t pay his taxes in time, and a deputy wants to buy
his land for half the asking price and to gain all of the land’s yields. So
many other similar cases are seen all over the country.
The conservatives tried to lay the foundations of a useful institution,
the Court House. Thus, being frightened by the public sector fraud and by
liberal false documentation and so on, they sued the public officials for
malpractice, bringing them in front of people who could understand the gravity
of their actions. They wanted to bring down the numbers of the prefectures and
the mayor offices from the parishes in order to more freely control the mayors
and the notaries. Then, new teachers were about to establish useful and vocational
made to teach even the spawns of this corrupt generation, so that later on they
could earn an honest living. But alas, the liberals came and, like wolves, blew
this institution down as if it were made out of straws and sticks.
But every time someone
shows them what their contribution to Romania was, they say: “We were governing
with only a handful of people”. But gentlemen, the building took two years to
make and took you only two days to ruin it. If you found a magical sponge to
erase all of this country’s historic development, you would use it just one
time, as all that remains to be erased are the buildings the conservatives
began rebuilding.
V. FROM THE ECONOMIC ALPHABET
Every
time a Christian writes an article and publishes it in the newspaper, for the
newspaper is the carrier of wisdom, or so they say, he grabs a German or French
book and goes through it until he finds some kind of proof for his claim. As we
buy Viennese overcoats and Parisian boots without knowing the economic elements
that went into their making, so do we accept their discourses, without paying
them much thought. We read information printed aboard and translate it into
Romanian so that, just like the merchants that don’t know where their
merchandise is produced, so are those who read the articles and accept
everything they read as a fact. Even our scholars, when they want to debate a
certain issue, do so using quotes. The foreign genius, Mr. X or Mr. Y, spoke of
this and that and thus, it must be true because somebody as superior as
themselves cannot be wrong.
The fact that Mr. X
is a genius, together with all his companions is one thing, but the fact that
his remarks cannot be true for all civilizations is entirely different.
When it comes to
Romanian journalists, they simply regurgitate all the words that they can think
of. Among the few words written in their intellectual dictionary, a dictionary
with too few pages, are the words liberty, equality, fraternity, legality and
sovereignty and other such “practical” words, which they use in their speeches
about Stephen the Great and Michael the Brave so that they could trick the
population into giving them their money.
Poor Stephen the
Great! All he knew was how to defeat the Turks, the Huns and the Hungarians. He
could speak a little Slavonic, he had numerous wives and drank old Cotnari wine
and once in a while he cut off some boyar’s head or the nose of a Hun prince;
he established fairs along the river banks, he gave mercenaries and
legionnaires good grazing grounds for their studs and cattle, he build
monasteries and churches, and then he fought the Turks some more and repeated
this cycle on an on until he died in his Suceava stronghold and was buried with
honors in the Putna monastery. Did he waste his time thinking about futile
things like our times’ journalists are doing? Could have he foreseen today’s
state of ignorance?
Until the Phanariot,
we didn’t have a Codex, not did we need one. The laws written by Vasule Lupu
and Matei Basarab, except for those dealing with religion, were never enforced.
People knew right from wrong without giving it much thought. Romania was a poor
and free country. Those that lived here paid few taxes for they had only one
wagon drawn by one horse so that they could flee when the Huns invaded; they
had houses with straw roofs so that they could set them afire as soon as the
enemy approached, so that the enemy had no shelter and, so that they could not
so much as drink or eat; they even set their fields on fire and poisoned their
wells. Then they retreated to the mountains until the Voievoda lured the Turks
into forests, where they finally met their death!
The Moldavian and Romanian
Voievoda were known for defying the Turks and for their bravery on the battlefields;
they were known as strong, rational but uneducated people, neither wealthy nor
poor.
And so it was until
the Organic Regulation, the first important enforced law. Romanians are a
nation of shepherds and if somebody doubts this, needing a genetic proof of
this fact, he need only to listen to Darwin and look at his hands and feet. The
Romanians have bigger hands and bigger feet, for nations that work the lands
have developed as such.
This is why the Romanian nation has
many distinct regions and speak in different and embellished dialects
throughout the country; this is why Romanians are so kind as, being shepherds
they were often alone and meditated on their own existence, developing a sense
of respect for nature and its beauty, appreciating the woods, the horse, the cattle
and making up songs, stories and legends about it. Putting it simply, our
nation is an original and strong nation, a strength he developed through hard
but pleasant work; however they are also advert to other forms of civilization
that they do not appreciate and rejected.
The Greeks ruled for
one hundred years. When they left, no trace of them could be seen throughout
parishes. It was as if someone erased all traces of their existence, from their
dishes to their architecture. Our nation remained indifferent to the Greek, the
Russian and the French reforms and, even today, hesitate to educate their
children in Romanian schools, as they sense the quality of education it provides.
In those times, this sentiment of a
healthy primitiveness was predominant.
The voievoda Radu the Great was the one
who brought St. Neophon II to make Romania a harmonious country. He wondered
what civilization is and wanted to witness it. But the Saint started giving
advice when it came to laws and customs, proposing that they are changed. The
Voievoda, having enough of his follies, said : “Leave us alone, for you are
ruining our traditions.” Saint or not, he found out who was really in charge
the country he came to change!
This is the reaction
of any sane nation that one wants to graft using foreign scions when it is
capable of growing on its own and producing its own yield in a natural way.
This type of nation however, also imposes its customs on neighboring nations.
What would our liberals say if someone told them that as they are importing the
French history, language and traditions into our institutions, likewise in
Ukraine, Romanian customs are imported on a daily basis, customs which are
loved by the Ukrainian nation?
But another question
is born, namely, who could have thought of importing all the expensive heating
agents that are used in the Occident in an agricultural country in the 1830s?
Surely, it was those Romanians who didn’t know their own country.
Did the reformers not
know that all these things cost money? And if they knew that, did they know who
would give their money in order to pay for all of this? Absolutely no one was
aware that every institution and everything that a country is made of, be it
the government, the army, the church, culture and so on is, as they themselves
are, sustained by the public money. And if you think about the taxes, which are
paid in order to sustain all these institutions, you reach the conclusion that
you take away the honest earning of the people, economically killing them, both
spiritually and physically.
Then why do the
people work? So that they have food on their tables. So that they can feed
their spirit and that of their children by listening to music or keeping the
holidays, all essential to the mind and spirit.
But man’s strength is
limited, as nature gave him a finite amount to use in order for him to provide
for himself and for his family and did not take into consideration that it
would feed the liberals, the lawyers, these good-for-nothing parasites. They say
that these workers’ contribution to civilization is small, and smaller still
for the young men raised in Paris. The liberals admit this, but deny that their
actions are essentially impoverishing the nation.
Mr. D.A. Rosetti, in
his tabloid, looked down on the best quality of the boyars. He wrote: “The
country, when I was young had 40 big boyars and 40 small ones.” We defer to his
opinion. The country carried but 80 people on its shoulders, meaning a ratio of
30,000 commoners for only one boyar and maybe one without luxurious needs. 80
people who lived in danger and offered so much wisdom, and often self-sacrifice,
for the well being of the country, fully compensated the taxes that were paid
by the commoners.
Today we have millions
of liberals who are in no danger, as the Turks, the Hungarians or the Poles
don’t want them dead; they don’t offer anything at all, not giving society
something in return for paying their salaries, a society that is being worked
until it bleeds.
The Transylvanian is
a very good merchant. He doesn’t need middlemen in order to do business, not
even money. He makes kerchiefs and vessels, crosses to Hungary and instead of
selling them, he barters them for wheat. A price in wheat for a vessel, another
for a kerchief.
If we were to apply
the Transylvanian’s business strategy we would say that we barter 100 kilograms
of wheat for one kilogram of liberal lies, for imported goods or for the young
men who waste their time abroad. Some hundred kilograms of wheat are bartered
to maintain the Constitution, the French laws; in other words, Liberalism.
The individual
savings amount to a certain sum. If you use it to feed the few thousands
liberal losers, how much is left for maintaining a healthy, well-balanced civilization?
200 fools surely eat more than one wise man.
Hence, our economic
alphabet claims that:
“Nature gave limited power to man, for he needs only as much
in order to provide for himself and for his family”
Man produces more
than he can consume. But this surplus is used for housing, for one needs a
house to start a family, and for a little contribution to the society he lives
in. These small amounts of money, namely the taxes, are used for maintaining
our entire civilization.
If we use a small
amount of money collected from all our country’ citizens to sustain the useless
ideas and the void institutions which the liberals labeled as “purely
Romanian”, then we are left with nothing to sustain that what truly is Romanian, namely our
civilization in its truest meaning.
VI. DISCOURSE AND
TRUTH
It
is only natural that people would look at what is presented to them and take
what they see as given.
Nevertheless, people
are overlooking the truth that is right in front of them and go on uncharted
roads in search for the same truth.
Before we give examples found in our
country, we shall give one that is found aboard.
The socialist Babel wrote in 1873, in
his newspaper “Volksstaat”, the following: “If there is a God, we are fooled
and if there isn’t, we can do whatever we like”. If we read the discourse backwards,
“If there isn’t a God than we are fooled and if there is, we can do whatever we
like.” The clarity of the message
will not be hindered.
The same rule applies
for the discourses made by radicals. No matter how you read them, their message
either does not alter because it is void of one or, if you read it backwards,
you might find it more truthful than the original.
“I am enlightened therefore I am”. The sentence, if read backwards, is
also true “I am, therefore I will be enlightened”, for a long existence will
attract with itself the light of knowledge. The same goes with reading “Seek
and you shall find” backwards, “You shall find if you seek” because man only
seeks that which he can find, for only the insane seek something which they
know they could not find.
But, be that as it
may, words don’t feed, as they are only concepts. It is better to use plain
words that ones that are abstract, as the message should be clear.
But our reform-makers
learned from the journalists to talk as ambiguously as possible. Without a
doubt, all they learned from living abroad was to dress fashionably and to talk
ambiguously so that no one would see that their discourse is void of meaning
and. This education of theirs was surely gained by reading foreign newspapers.
Foreigners, having
nothing to talk about, read ambiguous articles from their newspapers day in and
day out as the main quality of ambiguity is that it is like a bottomless well. You can write hundreds of ambiguous
articles without saying anything at all. But let’s not fool ourselves; Romanian
newspapers have surpassed the foreign newspapers in their ambiguity. We are
less educated, having less information to share with the public, than foreign
journalists; as such we need to write more ambiguously than our foreign
friends. However, it is known that abroad, newspapers aren’t taken seriously.
It is known that they are written in order to mobilize the public and to create
a public atmosphere that the government or its opposition wants to create, in
order to facilitate the rise or fall from power of certain political figures.
In other words, the media is but a company that produces discourses that reflect
interests which are presented as national ones.
For what is a country and what is its
goal? The goal is not written in some book, but can be found looking at reality
itself.
Should some peasant look objectively at
his parish, he will know what the reality is. He will see someone selling,
someone buying, someone tailoring, someone sawing; some will forge iron, some
will plough, some will saw, some will harvest hemp and others will clip sheep.
Only during holidays are their hands idle and their minds active. Men use the
holidays to go to church and then go dancing. In other words, the working week
serves the stomach while the weekend serves the heart and the brain.
The country’s
citizens want to be able to live decently, and their work is what keeps a
country alive. Hence, we can conclude that the biggest evil within a society is
poverty.
Poverty is the basis
of all of the world’s evils; disease, alcoholism, crimes, envy, atheism,
hatred, all have the same cause, poverty, either created by them or inherited
from their parents.
Poverty must be
looked at as it is.
A poor man is the one who feels poor,
the one who needs more than he has.
To prove this theory,
we have only to present all the words that have changed their meaning from poverty
and sickness to moral wrongdoing. “Penurious” meant “poverty-stricken” but
today means to be “niggardly with money”. The same can be said with the French
“miserable” or the German “elend”. Back in the days, the voievoda often gave
the penurious tenancy of their domains, while today, the penurious are the ones
ruling the country, from one corner to the other.
The moral qualities
of a nation depend on its economic status, not taking into consideration the
climate or the race. The characteristic kindness of the Romanian people proves
that in the past they had all that they needed from an economic point of view.
Hence, the condition
of a country’s civilization is its economy. Importing the characteristics of a
foreign civilization, without having both countries at the same level from an
economic point of view, is futile. But our liberals imported them anyway!
Instead of looking at ways of fixing
the lesser evil of society, they should have started with the greatest ones.
In this day and age
the demand is growing thus the offer must grow accordingly along with the
number of blue collars. We understood it backwards. The number of
manufacturers, essentially the number of peasants, is decreasing as such the
few remaining workers are working harder and harder. However, the white
collars, society’s parasites, the ones that are selling the nation’s merchandise
within the country and abroad; their number is increasing. In the countryside,
the grains are rotting while in the cities a loaf of bread is sold for the same
price as in Vienna or Paris. Wheat is sold from producer to tens of middlemen
until it reaches the consumer; thus the final product is artificially overpriced
as the tens of middlemen must also get their share in money.
In other words, given
the fact that the demand is growing, the production companies and entities must
have also grown, not the number of middlemen. In the end, the distribution
business is one made between the producer and the consumer, a manipulation that
artificially overprices the products. Due to this manipulation, the farmers are
the ones that up losing as their product are a necessity that is produced
throughout the country in big amounts and, as the demand is bigger than the
offer, the prices are lowered.
While the
agricultural country imports an industrial article, paying its price, its
export fees and its transport, thus more than it was originally worth, the same
agricultural country exports its products, selling them for a lower price than
the original one, as the export and transport fees are deducted from the
original price. Thus, from exporting and importing merchandise, the country
finds itself in debt. Then, the difference between the two merchandises is
terrible. 500 carloads of wheat are bartered for half a carload of luxury
items. In other words, the agricultural country is either exploited by the
industrial neighboring countries, or losses its workers, which, being unable to
compete with industrial companies, become proletarians.
The best proof of
this is our own country. The middleman business, an agent between our products
and exported ones, is being carried out by foreigners. Elders need only
differentiate the state of Bucharest as we know it today with its state from 50
years ago. Even though the merchandise was not much better, at least it was not
imported, it was made within the country. And the situation was the same in
Iasi as well as in other Moldavian cities.
However, these
circumstances cannot be changed through discourses but through vocational
schools. Our nation lacks craftsmen as a consequence of the lacking of
vocational schools.
But these circumstances
will not improve through civil laws that regulate the way in which the
transaction X is made between A and B, that stipulate that all people are born
equal and free, or through the citizens’ participation in the working of the
government.
The middle Ages had a way of keeping
every production branch through the freedom of professions and by defending
them against any foreign aggression. The Romanian Middle Ages have recently
ended and there still are elders who remember the days in which a foreigner
craftsman could not work in Romania. Not to mention that the conflicts that
arose between the craftsmen were settled by starostas and by the Voievoda. Not
to mention that this institution was so well regarded that the Austrian
Kingdom, tactical as always, introduces its consulates in Romanian by the name
of “Crafts Starostas”.
Salus reipublicae
summa lex eslo.[2] We couldn’t care less about the metaphysical
and constitutional principles that improve the well-being of the nation. We
have proof that liberalism wasn’t one of those principles.
The country needs
powerful social classes and all liberalism did was to strip them of their
powers. For, 30 or 40 years ago we had a powerful but not wealthy class of
peasants, which also encompassed the lower middle class.
Nowadays, the
peasants and the landholders are gradually impoverished, we have more foreign
distributors than we have native craftsmen; if we decide that we wish to sell
everything we have, we will find some foreign buyers right here, in Romania, and,
packing everything we have left, emigrate to America. It would be advisable to
buy an estate in Mexico so that we will have a place to go to when we find
ourselves broke in our native country.
Let’s not delude
ourselves. Our economic situation is dependent on foreign influences. As
adamant as the government is in denying this fact, as to admit it would mean to
admit that the government itself is useless. The boyars as well as liberals are
passing the blame for one another, as they feel the terrible situation in which
Romania finds itself. But this terrible situation is the consequence of the
historic wrongdoings. The curse of our descendants should fall on the ones
whose actions lead to this situation, namely on all liberals, who comprise all
useless institutions in which the Romanian society’s scum have infiltrated; the
blame should fall on the liberals who’ve created a government filled with
uneducated people that made it such that the middle class, instead of being
productive, is the one to rule the country, holding all executive power.
The biggest evil that
resulted from their rule was that the demand stagnated as the offer increased.
Class inequality, lack of liberty and the restrictions regarding the peoples’
participation in the government, were lesser evils.
If I had to choose between monarchy
that keeps its people healthy and wealthy and liberalism that keeps its people
sick and poor, I would always chose the monarchy. Moreover, in absolute
monarchical countries, the people will feel more equal and freer than the ones
living in liberal countries as they will be healthier and wealthier than the
latter. This is because the liberty and equality of a man is directly
proportionate to his wealth. The poor will always be enslaved, thus inferior in
relation to the upper class.
“The time”, II, no. 279, December, the
11th 1877
No. 281, December, the 13th 1877
No. 285, December, the 14th 1877
No. 287, December, the 21st 1877
No. 289, December, the 23rd 1877
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