Daily Los Angeles herald., 1882-05-31

physical strength could never do. Hence,
if we look carefully and intelligently, we
find steady tendency among certain
kinds of men to grasp at power and
having obtained it they use it without
regard to the rights of those who started
with them in the race of life. As men.
become interested in holding property,
those who by fortune obtain the most by
combining one with another, are able
to shape the character of the legislation
in their interests until q network of
laws and precedents place them beyond
the pale of the law. To-day we see
GREAT COMBINATIONS OF WEALTH
Controlling the legislative councils of the
nation, disregarding the welfare of the
people, and granting away the public do
main, which should be held for those
who, year after year, come as honest set
tiers. We see these great monopolies
overriding the law, and the law, if not
protecting them, seems almost ever to
fail to grant relief; we see growing up
in the republic for which you fought
great combinations of wealth which de-
fy taxation, gathering to themselves an
undue share of the fruits of honest labor;
we see them debating to the farmer and
the merchant the amount of profit their
toll shall net; we see them controlling
the action of political parties till those,
at one time conflicting and distinct in
their principles of political conduct, be-
come conformity either the willing or un-
conscious tools Of the same strong hand;
and, finally, we see the government of
the corporations, by the corporations and
for the corporations. In the great strug
gle in which you were engaged your
watchword was Liberty" 1t was for
A MORE PERFECT FREEDOM
That you fought, not for yourselves alone,
but for every human being throughout
the length and breadth of the land, and
while you did your duty then, it is
equally your duty now to do all in your
power to preserve the principles for
which you have fought, and not allow
the results which you accomplished
and the patriotic feeling caused by war
to be used as instruments to blind the
people till new tyrrany shall have con-
troll. Rather that our forefathers had
remained among the struggling masses
of European tyranny; rather that the
frail barks that bore them over stormy
ocean to the Western world had sunk in
it's dark waters; rather that murderous
savages had slain them upon the shores
upon which they landed; rather that
they had failed in the struggle for inde-
pendence in the war with England;
rather had they never united into one
country and under one flag after their
independence had been achieved; rather
that they had fallen back into the hands
of the mother country in the subsequent
war; rather that the union had been dis
membered and broken into separate
states, each forming petty nation by
itself and maintaining precarious exist
ence only because of the weakness of
the sovereignties surrounding them;
rather that they had relapsed into the
condition of the barbarous tribes who
once inhabited this continent and lived
nomadic lives, but free and independent
as the bird that flies, than that we, who
have fought to save, should ever live to
see our children, or our children's chill
dren, should ever live to see, the day
when the descendants of brave and
valiant ancestry should allow themselves
to be enslaved by the subtle power of
money.
Let us of the Grand Army of the Re-
public remember that there are
MORE WAYS THAN ONE
In which nation may lose its liberty,
and if we live to see the farmer working
without profit, the merchant selling at
prices dictated by controlling power,
the mechanic working at wages not
sufficient to support family in comfort,
the laborer earning but pittance and a
few living in luxury and surrounded by
all that wealth can give, then you
may know that though the ballot is
preserved to you by law, yet the power
to use it in your own interest is gone,
and you have again returned to the
condition from which your fathers fed.
Comrades of the Grand Army, let us not
forget the graves Ger which the flowers
were so profusely strewn to-day. Let
us not forget the cause for which so
many died; let us not forget that it was
not only for union of the States, one
and inseparable and forever, that they
died, but for that grander and more noble
object, the preservation of form of
government which should comprise in
substance as well as form every princi-
pie dear to true American hearts; an
enduringperfect liberty, such as was con
templated by our fathers as the birth
right Of every American child forever.
AT the conclusion of Col. Godfrey's
Grafton, the quartette sang 'My Coun-
try, It's of Thee" the audience assist
ing.
An impressive benediction was then
pronounced by Rabbi A. w. Edelman,
after which the assemblaoe dispersed