Saint Paul weekly Minnesotian. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1858-1859, 1858-11-06
s = T. f @ II
HON. WILLIAM II. WARD,
DELIVERED AT
Rochester, N. Y, Oct. Is, 1858.

| DELIVERED AT
Rochester, N. Y, Oct. Is, 1858
There was an immense meeting at Roches
ter to listen to speech from Governor Sew
ARD. He was greeted with overwhelming en-
thusiasm, and spoke for an hour and a halt
Ills speech was substantially as follows
FELLOW OIrIzENs:-Th unmistakable out
breaks of zeal which occur all around me
show that you are earnest men-and such /
man am l. Let us, therefore, at least for I
time, pass by all secondary and collateral
questions, whether Of personal or OF a gen
eral nature, and consider the main subject
the present canvass The Democratic party
or, to speak more accurately-the party
which wears that attractive name, is in pos
session of the Federal Government. The Re
pu5licans propose TO dlSlodSe that party ant
dismiss it from its high trust
The main subject then is, whether the Dem
ocratic party deserves to retain the confidence
of the American People. In attempting to
prove it unworthy, | think that am not ac
tuated by preudices against that party, or by
prepossessionS in favor of its adversary; for
have learned by some experience, that virtue
and PATRIOTISM and vice and selfishness, ar,
found in all parties, and that they differ less
in their motives than in the policies they pur
sue.
Our country is a theatre which exhibits, il
full operation, two radically different political
Svstems-the one resting on the basis.o ser
vile OF Slave Labor the other on the basis O.
voluntary labor of Freemen.
The labOrers who are enslaved, are all ne
groes, or persons more or less purely of Afri
can derivation. But this is only accidental
The principle of the system is, that labor, in
every society, by whomsoever performed, is
necessarily unntellectual, groyeling and base
and that the laborer, equally for his own good
and for the welfare of the state, ought to be
enslaved The white laboring man, whether
native or foreigner, is not enslaved only be-
cause he cannot, as yet, be reduced to bond
age.
You need not be told now that the slave
system is the older of the two, and that once
it was universal
The emancipation of our own ancestors,
Caucasians and Europeans, as they. were,
hardly dates beyond period of five hundred
years. The great moderation of human So
due to the substitution Of the system of vol
untary labor for the old one of servile labor,
which has already taken place. This African
slave system is one which, in its origin and its
growth, has been altogether foreign from the
habits of the races which colOnized these
States and established civilization here 1t
was introduced ON this new continent as an en-
CINE of conquest, for the establishment of
monarchial power by the Portuguese and the
Spaniards, and was rapidly extended by them
over all South America, Central America,
Louisiana and Mexico. Its legitimate fruits
are seen in the poverty, imbeeility and anar-
chy which now pervade all Portuguese and
Spanish America. The Free Labor system is
of German extraction, and it was established
in our country by emigrants from Sweden,
Holland, Germany, Great Britain and Ire
land.
We Justly ascribc to its influences the
strength wealth, greatness, intelligence and
freedom which the whole American people
now enjoy One of the chief elements of the
value of human life is freedom in the pursuit
of happiness. The slave system is not only
intolerant, unjust and inhuman towards the
laborer, whom, only because he is laborer, it
loads down with chains and converts into
merchandise, but scarcely less so to the free
man, to whom, only because he is a labOrer
from necessity, it denies facilities for employ
ment, and whom it eXpels from the cOmmun-
ity because it cannot enslave and convert him
into merchandise also. 1t is necessarily i'm
providcnt and ruinous, because, as general
truth, communities prosper and flourish, or
droop and decline in ust the degree that they
ties of Justice and humanity The free labor
system conforms to the divine law of equality
which is written in the hearts and conscicnccs
of men, and therefore is always and every
where beneticent.
This slave system is one CT constant dan
ger, distrust, suspicion and watchfuness. 1t
debases those whose toll alone can produce
wealth and resources for defense, to the lowest
degree of which human nature is capable to
guard against mutny and instruction, and
thus wastes energies which otherwise might be
employed in national development and az
grandiZemont.
The free labor system educates all alike,
and by opening all the fields of industrial en-
ployment and all the departments of authori-
ty to the unchecked and equal rivalry of all
classes of men, at once secures universal CON
tentmcnt and brings into the highest possible
activity all the physical, moral and social en-
orgies of the whole state. In states where
the slave system prevails, the masters, direct
ly or indirectly, secure all political power, and
constitute a ruling aristocracy. In the states
where the free labor system prevails, univer-
sal suffrag Unnecessarily obtains, and the state
evitablfbecOmes, sooner or later, a Repub-
lie or Democracy.
Russia yet maintains slavery, and is des-
potism Most of the other European states
have abolished slavery and adopted the sys-
tenn of free labor. 1t was the antagonistic
political tendencies OF the two systems which
the first Napoleon was contemplating when
he predicted that Europe would ultimately be
either all Cossack or all Republican. Never
did human sagacity utter a more pregnant
truth. The two systems are at once percciv-
ed to be incongruous. But they are more
incongruous, they are incompatible. They
never have permanently, existed together in
one country, and they never can. 1t would
be easy to demonstrate this impossibility
from the irrcconcilablc contrast between theil
great principles and characteristics. But the
experience of mankind has conclusiyely es
tabshed it. Slavery, as | have already init
mated, existed in every state of Europe. Free
labor has supplanted it everywhere except il
Russia and Turkey. State necessities, devel
oped in modern times, are now Obliging ever
those two nations to encourage and employ
free labor, and already, despotic as they are
we find them engaged in abolishing slavery
In the United States slavery came into COLI
sion with free labor at the close of the last cen
fury, and fell before it in New England, New
York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, but tri
umphed over it effectually, and excluded it fo
period yet undetermined, from Virginia, tn,
Carolinas and Georgia Indeed, so incompat
ible are the two systems that every new stat
which is organized within our ever extendin:
domain, makes its first political act choic
of the one and exclusion Of the other, even a
the cost of civil war, if necessary. The slav
states, without law, at the last national cleo
ton, successfully forbade, within their owl
limits, even the casting of votes for a candi
date for President of the United States sup
posed to be favorable to the establishment o
the free labor system in new states.
Hitherto the two systems have existed il
| d;Fnropt Stotoc hnt c;Jo hv c;do within, ~,