uge from the power of the
people.

In my present position I could scarcely be justified were I to omit
raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism. It
is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made
in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with its
connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief
attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if
not above, labor in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor
is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless
somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to
labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital
shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or
buy them and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so
far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers
or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a
hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.

Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is
there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition
of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences
from them are groundless.

Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of
labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor
is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other
rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a
relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits. The error is
in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that relation.
A few men own capital, and that few avoid labor themselves, and with their
capital hire or buy another few to labor for them. A large majority belong
to neither class--neither work for others nor have others working for
them. In most of the Southern States a majority of the whole people of
all colors are neither slaves nor masters, while in the Northern a large
majority are neither hirers nor hired. Men, with their families--wives,
sons, and daughters,--work for themselves on their farms, in their houses,
and in their shops, taking the whole product to themselves, and asking no
favors of capital