ists, I think is true. That men who are industrious, and
sober, and honest in the pursuit of their own interests should after a
while accumulate capital, and after that should be allowed to enjoy it in
peace, and also, if they should choose, when they have accumulated it,
to use it to save themselves from actual labor, and hire other people
to labor for them, is right. In doing so they do not wrong the man they
employ, for they find men who have not of their own land to work upon,
or shops to work in, and who are benefited by working for others, hired
laborers, receiving their capital for it. Thus a few men, that own
capital, hire a few others, and these establish the relation of capital
and labor rightfully, a relation of which I make no complaint. But I
insist that that relation, after all, does not embrace more than one
eighth of the labor of the country.

[The speaker proceeded to argue that the hired laborer, with his ability
to become an employer, must have every precedence over him who labors
under the inducement of force. He continued:]

I have taken upon myself in the name of some of you to say that we expect
upon these principles to ultimately beat them. In order to do so, I think
we want and must have a national policy in regard to the institution of
slavery that acknowledges and deals with that institution as being
wrong. Whoever desires the prevention of the spread of slavery and the
nationalization of that institution yields all when he yields to any
policy that either recognizes slavery as being right or as being an
indifferent thing. Nothing will make you successful but setting up a
policy which shall treat the thing as being wrong: When I say this, I do
not mean to say that this General Government is charged with the duty of
redressing or preventing all the wrongs in the world, but I do think that
it is charged with preventing and redressing all wrongs which are wrongs
to itself. This Government is expressly charged with the duty of providing
for the general welfare. We believe that the spreading out and
perpetuity of the institution of slavery impairs the general welfare.
We believe--nay, we know--that that is the only thing that has ever
threatened the perpetuity of the Union itself. The only thing which has
ever menaced the destruction of the government under which we live is this
very thing. To repress this thing, we think, is, Providing for the general
welfare. Our friends in Kentucky differ from u