TENURE OF LANDS. 21 



down, with a ruthless hand, the pillars of the constitution on 

 which their own safety and prosperity must rest. 



No adequate cause for this state of feeling is offered in any of 

 the proclamations or manifestos which the leaders of the con- 

 spiracy to overthrow the government have put forth to the 

 world. They specify no act of national legislation which 

 violates any of the compacts of the constitution. Indeed the 

 policy, and, for the most part, the administration of the federal 

 government has been in the hands of the very conspirators 

 themselves, or of those whom they affect to represent. 



Something deeper than all this has been at work in throwing 

 the delicate machinery of our national system out of gear. It is 

 not the work of a day or of a year. It has been operating for 

 more than a generation, and the men are in their graves who 

 first detected and sought to avail themselves of the elements of 

 discord which had grown to be palpable to the careful observer. 



If we can get at the true cause of this lamentable revolution 

 in local policy, my belief is that it will be found that the outside 

 agencies of lust for ofiice, bitter invective and political rancor, 

 are but the stimulants that have brought into action seeds of 

 disorganization which are more deeply planted in the body 

 politic. 



I do uot overlook the mighty power of the press, nor the 

 influence of party organization for political action. Nor am I 

 unmindful of the control wliich the population and business and 

 capital of our cities and our towns, or of those engaged in man- 

 ufactures and mechanical industry, are always sure to exert in 

 any community where they are found. But most of these 

 agencies are comparatively feeble at the South, when measured 

 by their power at the North, and, as it seems to me, go but a 

 little way to account for the present radical difference there is 

 between these two sections, when compared with tlie influence 

 whicli the agricultural condition and pursuits exert upon the 

 thoughts, the feelings and the habits of the people. 



It is not necessary that the agriculturists of the two sections 

 should originally have cultivated hostile feelings towards each 

 other, or even be conscious that they were in a condition of 

 antagonism to eacli other. If the system of policy pursued by 

 one section or the other, as to the mode of cultivating their 

 lands, the kind of operatives they employ or the social position 



