Cannibals all! or, Slaves without masters

A sustained polemic against free-market wage labor and abolitionist critique, arguing that capital, credit, and professional privilege systematically exploit workers more than legalized servitude. The author surveys historical, economic, legal, and moral examples to challenge liberal reforms, free trade, and philanthropic remedies, and to defend a paternalistic, coercive social order as promoting stability, family cohesion, and moral discipline. Chapters analyze labor, capital, taxation, poor laws, revolutions, religion, and political theory to show how various isms and industrial arrangements produce poverty and social disorder, concluding that hierarchical property relations and enforced subordination better preserve public order than unfettered individualism.