Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1868-10-07

in Ireland, or in Germany, or in France,
nor did l ever see among our negroes or
Indians, or among the Chinese or Malays,
men whose tastes were such mere instincts,
and whose modes of life was SO low, so like
domestic animals altogether, as these farm
laborers." He spoke of them to an intel
ligent radical, who replied, " We are not
used to regard that class in forming a
Judgment of national character, and yet it
is probably the largest class in England"
The wisest English statesmen agree that
the root of the Irish difficulty is the land
tenure. They will presently see that it is
the root of the English difficulty, and thpt
England is in constant danger as long as
$4,000 proprietors own the soil cf the
country. They will soon question the
right of the Marquis of Breddalbane to
turn sheep walks into game preserves and
unless some method of increasing the own
ership of land is adopted, perhaps by redis-
! tributing taxation so that the land be sold
to escape the heavy burden. the great pro-
prietorships will be abolished in England,
as they were in France, by civil convul-
sion.
In New York, Charles O'Connor, a son of
spirit had ruined, insisted before the high
est court that slaves should be held in the
state. If they could be held they could be
sold, and thus the slave trade be restored
to the banks of the Genesee and the val
| ley of the Mohawk
Wherever the agricultural labor does
not own the land and has no share in po-
litical power, there Will be an ignorant
and degraded man; and the instructive
attempt Of an aristocracy to keep him in
/ that posi- ton will sooner or later involve
any country in the most relentless war;
for if the government is a popular govern
ment. the aristocracy Will aim to subVert
it or to change its nature. Our Southern
system of society and labor was an aris-
tocracy which controlled the government
by the power derived from four millions
of agricultural laborers deprived of every
right and by its alliance with ignorance
and avarice elsewhere Seeing the alarm
ing tendency Of a nation of small proprie-
tors and of free schools to oppose aristo-
cratic influence in every peaceful and legal
way, it steadily aimed to change the char
acter of the government by nationalizing
its system of slavery. 1t pursued this
purpose with relentless energy, and with
apparent appalling success. In 1860, AL
exander Ii. Stephens retired from Congress
because he was sure the Supreme Court
would uphold the aristocratic claim. In
Massachusetts, Daniel Webster, the son of
New England farmer, bowed his great
head to the cap of Gesler, and asked New
England to conquer its predictions IN IA
vor of liberty.
Emboldened by apparent success, the
aristocratic power laid its hand upon Kan
sas, the heart and garden of the continent.
Then at last the farmers saw themselves
face to face with their old remorseless
enemy who had pursued them in every
country and in every age. If slavery
could be planted in Kansas, the Yankee
boy who had gone there for more elbow
room-tor richer fields and better chance
for himself and his children, would find
the field slave who could be kept for less
1uau nundred dollars year, IN brutlsh
ignorance, his immediate rival The
snatch at Kansas was the old policy of
the aristocracy, everywhere and always,
to perpetuate ignorance and degrade labor
The response was the tremendous political
campaign Of 1860, when the battle cry of
the farmers range from sea to sea, free
land, free speech, free schools, free men"
and Abraham Lincoln, the representative
of a working people against proprietary
aristocracy, was elected president.
But arstocracy is brave,-and it did
not falter. Foiled at the polls it drew its
sword to overthrow a government whose
nature it could not change. Still the air
thrills with the tremendous story. The
farmers whose ancestors in the revolution
had left the plow in the furrow to march
to Bunker Hill, did not delay Over all
these sunny hills, through all these silent
valleys, are the darkened homes and
broken hearts to which thousands of the
farmer boys returned no more.
Gentlemen, if when Lee surrendered to
Grant under the Appomattox apple tree,
the spirit of aristocracy had also surren-
dercd its purpose in this country, we should
to-day be the happiest of nations But to
renounce Its purpose would be to change
its nature Defeat does not convert. A
cause which has been a tradition and a
passion, when it is lost cause becomes a
religion. 1t awaits its opportunity Fooled
at one point, it tries another. King |
Charles the First tried to assert the royal |
prerogative by force. He lost his head |
But his cause survived, for it was in hu-
man nature, and more than a century af- |
terwards King George the Third tried to
win 1t by corruption. So with the aristo- |
cratic spirit and system of this country. |
When Lee surrendered, Wall street sang
Old Hundred and thought the millennium |
at hand. But no man who remembered |
which is merely human nature
shared that sweet illusion. For |
the maxim that eternal vigilance is the
price Of liberty springs from the universal |
that the enemy of liberty is as
crafty as it is cruel and will change its
form as readily and rapidly as the devil
that tempted St. Anthony.
There was tabled river in Greece
which suddenly disappeared in the sand
and seemed wholly lost But far away in
Sicily 1t rose again undiminished and
flowed on as before. So the cause of aris-
tocracy vanished upon the battlefield, but
1t reappears IN the political arena. 1t
believes that the country so weary, so op-
pressed with debt, so strained by long and
severe exertion, so vexed by the delay of
pacification, Is like an army fatigued after
its victory, sleeping upon the field, and
fatally exposed to another cunning assault.
The ogre was yesterday a tiger-to-day
he Is fox-but he is always an ogre.
The antl-American, inhuman spirit Of
caste and aristocracy in this country yes
terday shouted Down with the Union in
the blood of its defenders" To-day it
shouts " Up with the constitution as we
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