is an eventful moment. On the great questions which
occupy us, we all look for some decisive movement of public opinion. As
I wish that movement to be free, intelligent, and unbiassed, the true
manifestation of the public will, I desire to prepare the country for
another appeal, which I perceive is about to be made to popular
prejudice, another attempt to obscure all distinct views of the public
good, to overwhelm all patriotism and all enlightened self-interest, by
loud cries against false danger, and by exciting the passions of one
class against another. I am not mistaken in the omen; I see the magazine
whence the weapons of this warfare are to be drawn. I hear already the
din of the hammering of arms preparatory to the combat. They may be such
arms, perhaps, as reason, and justice, and honest patriotism cannot
resist. Every effort at resistance, it is possible, may be feeble and
powerless; but, for one, I shall make an effort,--an effort to be begun
now, and to be carried on and continued, with untiring zeal, till the
end of the contest.

Sir, I see, in those vehicles which carry to the people sentiments from
high places, plain declarations that the present controversy is but a
strife between one part of the community and another. I hear it boasted
as the unfailing security, the solid ground, never to be shaken, on
which recent measures rest, _that the poor naturally hate the rich_. I
know that, under the cover of the roofs of the Capitol, within the last
twenty-four hours, among men sent here to devise means for the public
safety and the public good, it has been vaunted forth, as matter of
boast and triumph, that one cause existed powerful enough to support
every thing and to defend every thing; and that was, _the natural hatred
of the poor to the rich_.

Sir, I pronounce the author of such sentiments to be guilty of
attempting a detestable fraud on the community; a double fraud; a fraud
which is to cheat men out of their property, and out of the earnings of
their labor, by first cheating them out of their understandings.

"The natural hatred of the poor to the rich!" Sir, it shall not be till
the last moment of my existence,--it shall be only when I am drawn to
the verge of oblivion, when I shall cease to have respect or affection
for any thing on earth,--that I will believe the people of the United
States capable of being effectually deluded, cajoled, and _driven about
in herds_, by such abominable frauds as thi