ually
ameliorated, and that in any case it is our sacred duty to legislate for
the poor, on this basis, by allowing them equal rights, and making every
exertion to extend the best blessings of education to them, and open to
every man, without distinction, every avenue of employment for which he
is qualified.

The Northern party, or that of equal rights and free labor, like their
predecessors, hold many ideas which coming years will see realized,
for--as has always been the case in these contests--science and learning
are always on the liberal side. By a strange accident, for the first
time almost in history, the Republican party is for once in its
constituted rights, on its own ground, while the feudal or conservative
wing form the aggressors. As of old, too, the Southern conservatives are
enforcing theories once the property of their foes, who have now
advanced to broader, nobler, and more gloriously liberal views.

For instance, the men of the South believe that labor and capital are
still antagonisms. Now it is true enough that they _once_ were, and that
when the _people_ in different ages first began to rebel against their
hereditary tyrants, the workman was only a serf to his capitalist
employer. That was the age when demagogues flourished by setting 'the
poor' against 'the rich.' A painful, sickening series of wars it was,
ending too often by labor's killing itself with its adversary. Then, a
foul, false 'democracy' was evolved, which was virtually a rank
aristocracy, not of nobility, but of those who could wheedle the poor
into supporting them. Such was the history of nearly all 'radicalism'
and 'democracy' from the days of Cleon and Alcibiades down to the
present time.

But the enormous developments of science and of industry have of late
years opened newer and broader views to the world. As capital has
progressed in its action it is seen that at every step labor is
becoming--slowly, but surely, as Heaven's law--identified with it. The
harmony of interests is now no longer a vague Fourieristic notion,--for
nothing is plainer than that the more the operative becomes interested
in the success of the enterprise which employs him, the better is it for
him and it. And all _work_ in it--the owner and the employee. But then,
we are told that 'the owner gets the profits.' Does he? Sum up the
companies and capitalists who have failed during the past
decade,--compare what they have lost with what they have paid their