UNITED STATES. 



751 



briof speech, lie expressed some views of an 

 opposite kind, which obtained much public 

 notice. He said : 



You went to war upon the same question for which 

 your ancestors and theirs contended in the first Kevo- 

 lution against the Government of Great Britain the 

 right of commercial independence or State sover- 

 eignty. You secured it in that first war, and State 

 sovereignty must again be restored, or else the Be- 

 public of America is a failure. Despotism cannot be 

 exercised under a republican form of government, 

 and, my friends, if you can but wait, all will be well. 

 If any of us die before the day of peace and liberty 

 dawns, let us die in the faith that it will come at last. 

 The people of the North will never surrender their 

 rights ; and, when they see the danger at home, then 

 they will need your aid and will come to you, ana then 

 you will be crowned with victory and triumphant suc- 

 cess. I am not of those who " accept the situation." 



These cant phrases that we hear so much of about 

 " accepting the situation," and about our rights 

 having been submitted to the " arbitrament of the 

 sword," are but the excuses of cowards. I admit 

 t'aat power prevails over truth ; I admit that power 

 is so great that it would be folly to resist it, and there- 

 fore fam in favor, myself, of being acquiescent, and 

 I advise y^u to the same course, but I do not admit 

 that our rights have ever been submitted to the arbit- 

 rament of the sword. Who has the power to submit 

 your liberties to the arbitrament of battles ? You never 

 delegated that power to y_our representatives. I, as 

 your executive, never claimed it, and never, dying 

 or living, will I admit it. And then, my friends, 

 about this much-talked-of subject of " accepting the 

 situation." You are not called upon to acknowledge 

 that you have done wrong unless you feel it. I don't 

 believe I did any wrong, and therefore I don't ac- 

 knowledge it. All that a government has a right to 

 claim from any of its subjects is that they will quietly 

 submit to the law. Liberty of law is their inherit- 

 ance, and submission to the law, as long as it is such, 

 is their duty and their obligation, and it should be 

 their pride. 



A series of resolutions of a conservative 

 nature was drawn up by friends of Chief- 

 Justice Chase, in Parkersburg, West Virginia, 

 and submitted to him for his approval, which, 

 after a few verbal alterations, was fully given. 



A National Labor Congress was held in St. 

 Louis on August 10th, which adopted the fol- 

 lowing platform of principles upon which it 

 proposed to appear before the country in 1872, 

 as a distinct political party : 



Eeferring to the call for a national convention to 

 nominate a President and Vice-President, they say : 

 In making this call, and presuming to enter into 

 competition with existing parties, it is meet that we 

 should give to the world our reasons as well as our 

 remedies which we propose for the wrongs of which 

 we complain. Starting, then, with the maxim that 

 our government is founded on the sovereignty^ and 

 consent of the governed, and that its purpose is to 

 protect property and enforce natural rights, and thus 

 give to all an equitable chance in the race of life ; 

 that land, water, air, and all the material elements 

 are common gifts, governments being only trustees 

 to guard against their misapplication, and that as 

 trustees they have no right to alienate them unless 

 th 3 consent of the owners is freely given, that all 

 class legislation whereby these original and common 

 elements or proceeds of the same enhanced by intel- 

 ligent labor are perverted from their original design, 

 and made to inure to the benefit of non-producers 

 and injury of producers, is wrong and subversive of 

 the purposes of good government ; that all able- 

 bodied, mtolligent persons should contribute to the 



common stock, by fruitful industry, a sum or quan- 

 tity equal to their own support, and legislation should 

 tend as far as possible to an equitable distribution of 

 surnlus products. 



It these propositions arc true, our government is 

 wholly perverted from its true design, and th> 

 names of democracy and republicanism, Bynonynu-s 

 of despotism, and the parties represented thereby, 

 as now organized, engines of oppression crushing out 

 the lives of the people. We need only point to facts. 

 In this beneficent country of unlimited resources, 

 with the land annually groaning beneath the products 

 of human effort, the mass of the people have no sup- 

 ply beyond their daily wants, and are compelled, 

 from these unjust conditions, in eickness and mis- 

 fortune, to become paupers and vagrants. Pauper- 

 ism and crime are the prevailing questions or all 

 modern statesmanship, and it is with these we have 

 to deal. How far these evils are connected with the 

 abuses inflicted on labor, a superficial statesmanship 

 seems not to perceive. Chattel slavery has been 

 abolished, but the rights and relations of labor stand 

 just where they did before emancipation, in respect 

 to a division of its products. The difference lies only 

 in the methods of abstracting the results and con- 

 centrating them in a few capitalists, who are now 

 masters and dictators of the terms, and thus all labor 

 is practically placed in the same condition of the 

 slave before his emancipation. In thus placing it, 

 the interests of all labor become common, and they 

 must fight their battles in unity if they would suc- 

 ceed. What, then, are the instrumentalities by which 

 these wrongs are inflicted ? 



1. Banking and moneyed monopolies, by which 

 through ruinous rates of interest the productions of 

 human labor are concentrated in the hands of non- 

 producers. This is the great central source of these 

 wrongs, and through which all other monopolies 

 exist and operate. 



2. Consolidated railroad and other transit monop- 

 olies, whereby all industries are taxed to the ' last 

 mill they will bear for the benefit of stockholders 

 and stock-jobbers. 



3. Manufacturing rnonopolieSj whereby small op- 

 erators are crushed and the prices of labor and its 



Eroducts are determined with mathematical certainty 

 i the interest of capitalists. 



4. Land monopolies, by which the public domain 

 is absorbed by_ a few speculators. 



5. Commercial and grain monopolies, speculating 

 to enrich their bloated corporations on human neces- 

 sities. 



We propose to restore the Government to its origi- 

 nal purpose and as far as possible to remedy these 

 evils and remove their results : 



I. By establishing a monetary system based on 

 facts and resources of the nation in harmony with 

 the genius of the Government and adapted to the 

 exigences of legitimate commerce. To this end the 

 circulating notes of national and State banks, as well 

 as all currency that is not full legal tender, should 

 be withdrawn from circulation, and a proper cur- 

 rency issued by the Government which shall be a 

 legal tender in payment of all debts, public and pri- 

 vate, dues on imports included, and declared the 

 lawful money of the United States. This currency 

 money is to be interchangeable at the pleasure of 

 i holders of Government bonds bearing three per 



or 

 the 



cent, interest, the Government creditors to have tho 

 privilege of taking the money or bonds at their elec- 

 tion, reserving to Congress the right to regulate the 

 interest on bonds, and the value of the currenoy, so 

 as to effect an equitable distribution of the products 

 of labor between money, or non-producing capital ; 

 and productive industry. 



II. By paying the national debt in strict accordance 

 with the laws under which it was originally con- 

 tractedgold where specifically promised, but all 

 other forms of indebtedness, including the principal 

 of the five-twenty bonds, shall be discharged at the 



