he world.
It is the utter impossibility of peace, in a territory made by nature a
geographical unity, inhabited by a people, or peoples, of one lineage,
one language, bound together in historical reminiscences, yet divided
into petty sovereign States too small for any respectable nationalities
themselves, and yet preventing any beneficent nationality as a whole. No
animosities have been so fierce as those existing among people thus
geographically and politically related. No wars with each other have
been so cruel; no home factions have been so incessant, so treacherous,
and so debasing. The very ties that draw them near only awaken occasions
of strife, which would not have existed between tribes wholly alien to
each other in language and religion.

[Footnote 49: State sovereignty.]

* * * * *

=_Horace Greeley,[50] 1811-1873._=

From a "Lecture on the Emancipation of Labor."

=_164._= THE PROBLEM OF LABOR.

The worker of the nineteenth century stands a sad and careworn man.
Once in a while a particular flowery Fourth of July oration, political
harangue, or Thanksgiving sermon, catching him well filled with creature
comforts, and a little inclined to soar starward, will take him off his
feet, and for an hour or two he will wonder if ever human lot was so
blessed as that of the free-born American laborer. He hurrahs, and is
ready to knock any man down who will not readily and heartily agree that
this is a great country, and our industrious classes the happiest people
on earth.... The hallucination passes off, however, with the silvery
tones of the orator, and the exhilarating fumes of the liquor which
inspired it. The inhaler of the bewildering gas bends his slow steps at
length to his sorry domicile, or wakes therein on the morrow, in a sober
and practical mood. His very exaltation, now past, has rendered him more
keenly susceptible to the deficiencies and impediments which hem him
in: his house seems narrow, his food coarse, his furniture scanty, his
prospects gloomy, and those of his children more sombre, if possible;
and as he hurries off to the day's task which he has too long neglected,
and for which he has little heart, he too falls into that train of
thought which is beginning to encircle the globe, and of which the
burden may be freely rendered thus: "Why should those by whose toil all
comforts and luxuries are produced, or made available, enjoy so scanty a
share of them? W