Year: 1868

peaceful and prosperous progress. How
powerful it is, the late rebellion revealed.
How crafty it is, its present appeal to the
ballot-box shows It is vast, organized
skilful influence, intrenched in the very
weakness and passions of human nature,
throwing its whole force in an agricultural
country in favor of ignorance and the deg
radiation of labor. Ten years ago when
its iron hand was feeling among the New
England hills for fugitive slaves, it blighted
the farms and disgraced the farmer. You
spurned that spirit but it was not des-
troyed. You feel its power to-day in
every remotest corner of New England.
You hear its voice in every word that asks
you to swindle the public creditor and to
refuse to pay the honest cost of the war.
You hear its naughty treason to humanity
and to national peace in the demand that
the Southern laborer be thrust again un-
der its feet and submitted to its pleasure.
Flashing its rebellious sword in our eyes
it promises peace ; and throttling the poor
man, it prates of fraternity. Aristocracy
played for this continent and it has not
abandoned the game. Does not expert
ence teach us nothing? Do you suppose
this spirit could prevail and you not suf-
fer? Can labor in half the land be dis
graced and the laborer imbruted, and labor
and the laborer everywhere not be de-
graded? Do we know that the principle
of New England and of the mighty north
west has won in the field? The hostile
spirit is waiting to see 1t believes that
we do not understand our own victory or
that we are afraid of it. Had it won,
Robert Toombs would to-day be calling
the roll of his slaves upon Bunker Hill.
But since we have conquered let us call
the roll of freemen upon Robert Toomb's
plantation Let us have peace by secur-
ing and organizing the principle of fair
play for all men, which has won the vic
tory.


Massachusetts, farmers, citizens of the
noblest commonwealth in history, it is for
the American farmer to deal the final
blow at the aristocratic spirit and system,
the hereditary enemy of equal rights, of
skilled labor, of the free laborer. and con-
sequently his especial foe. Graphing
with that, he wrestles with the remote but
the efficient cause of the lethargy which
has historically paralyzed the primeval
tudb uONn hc VI lHSc WIN
it the ignorance upon which it rests Then
by generous education let him reverse the
curse fabulously imposed upon labor. Let
him heartily believe that to make two
blades of grass grow where one grew
before it. as truly noble a work as to find
the Northwest passage or the sources of
the Nile and infinitely nobler than TO make
one million of dollars two millions by a
happy guess of knavish trick in trade.
For here at last in our America is the
golden opportunity With the feudal taint
removed with an infexible faith in equal
rights and an infexible will TO put that
faith into law with immeasurable resour-
ces for homes and enlightened toll, and a
consequent ability as was lately shown, to
pay the great debt easily within sixteen
years; with church, school house, library,
lyceum with brave press freely discus
sing every subject; with cheap postage,
cheap travel. and telegraphic wires like
nerves circling the land and piercing the
sea, until the world throbs, feels and moves
Ior Us, Unu great senuleuU being the agOo
seem to have ripened all their opportuni-
ties and all their powers for the educated
American