No. 200.] 237 



other the strength it needs. But of the process going on before his 

 eye, he is ignorant, and ignorant without fault. From early child- 

 hood he has awaked day by day to the san:ie dull round of toil ; sus- 

 pended only by the welconrie night, that his wearied body might be 

 strengthened for renewed labor. 



But his children may know, for now the time is at hand when the 

 claims of labor shall be heard. 



" Far back in the ages 



The plough with wreathes was crowned. 

 The hand of kings and sages 



Entwined the chaplet round, 

 Till men of spoil disdained the toil 



By which the world was nourished, 

 And dews of blood enriched the soil 



Where green their laurels flourished ; 

 Now, the world her fault repairs ! 



The guilt that stains her story, 

 And weeps her crimes, amid the cares 



That formed her earliest glory." 



But her earliest glory did not shine with the lustre that shall crown 

 her brow when science shall weave the wreath and the laborer shall 

 wear it. 



There are in other lands, esteemed free, and favored above most of 

 the nations of the earth, obstacles which the constitution of society 

 presents to those who acknowledge the rights of labor, and advocate 

 its claims. Where men are classed by birth, and titled proprietors 

 own the soil, which descended from their fathers, and must be trans- 

 mitted unalienated to the generations that shall succeed, the lot of the 

 laborer may be with difficulty improved. But here, thank God, we 

 are not cursed by institutions which stamp the freeman as a slave be- 

 cause he tills the ground. From his humble cottage, the farmer's 

 boy may walk by quick step into the high places of honorable trust, 

 nor is there any home so lowly that may not send forth its son to judge 

 or rule the land. With us the laborer is also the freeholder ; and 

 that one fact removes us by a gulf world-wide from the proudest na- 

 tions of the earth. To own the soil he cultivates is the rare privi- 

 lege which our laborer enjoys. The home he lives in is his own. 

 From the hearth-stone around which parent and child gather, and from 

 which the prayer and the hymn ascend, no man shall separate him. 



