The political morality of producerism, it might be argued, is still another expression of the folk wisdom that condemns every attempt to get something for nothing. "Unearned increment" is the producer's version of hubris, or pride, which defies limits, overrides natural boundaries, challenges fate, and thus provokes the retaliation of the gods. Emerson repeatedly draws on the proverbial "petty-bourgeois" wisdom about money and credit, thus recognizing its affinity with the principle of "compensation"—itself a resonant term in the realm of exchange. "Always pay; for first or last you must pay your entire debt." Those who live on moral credit will have to pay their debts with interest—with a vengeance, as it were.

A "third silent party," Emerson notes, attends "all our bargains"— nemesis or fate. He translates the old Puritan idea of an honorable calling into the idiom of nineteenth-century populism, thereby achieving, among other things, a new understanding of sin, the old doctrine of the fall of man. Sin is tax evasion—the attempt to escape the duty on desire. Our misplaced confidence in our ability to defraud destiny springs from a "disease" of the will, the disease of "rebellion and separation." Here again, Emerson follows his Calvinist forebears. He regards rebellion and separation as inherent facts of human nature, the natural disposition of human desire. Our fallen nature, "our lapsed estate," discloses itself precisely in our blindness to the "deep remedial force" in nature that pursues us relentlessly. Each man thinks he can avoid the clutches of the revenue collector, even though experience ought to show that no one (not even the high and mighty man with his consultants, accountants, and highly paid tax lawyers) escapes without payment. Each thinks the tax laws apply to everyone but himself—an oversight almost comical in its conceit, if it did not lead to such tragic consequences.

The justification for reading Emerson's work as a kind of theology of producerism does not lie in "Compensation" alone. In that seminal essay, and in many others besides, Emerson addresses himself to concerns shared by the Calvinist, republican, and even some early liberal tradi

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