20 MR. Oliver's address. 



iency, servitude in reality, has withered and wasted the life- 

 blood of their souls. They toil and labor, they sweat and starve, 



" They fight and they slay, 



For a penny a day," — New Song. 



while they who possess the fortuitous privilege of high birth 

 and transmitted wealth, do but occupy and enjoy. Were I an 

 English laborer, no wife should ever share my sorrow, no child 

 should ever call me fathor, for the perpetual wrongs and un- 

 requited toil of the manhood of such child, would be too dear 

 a cost for all the joys of paternity. Now wherever class is le- 

 galized, or established by usage, or sanctioned by public opin- 

 ion, the state cannot long continue free from peril. There 

 they who once obtain power, and whose high caste becoines 

 strengthened by increase of power, will naturally enough strive 

 to maintain and to perpetuate both, and to transmit them gene- 

 alogically. With perpetuity of power and its transmission by 

 family, come wealth and its accumulations, and in the train of 

 these, follow luxury, sensuality, effeminacy and tyranny ; and 

 then follow the decay and the ruin of the state, — and the rot- 

 tenness and jarring elements within, give easy access to as- 

 saults of foes from without, and these once in, 



*' Troy is no more, my country was a state." — Virgil's ^neid. 

 Labor, I know there musi be, with books, with spade, and 

 with plough ; with shaft and furnace ; with fire and steam ; with 

 loom and anvil and ship ; amidst the whirl of swift machin- 

 ery ; abroad in the silent fields, beneath the arching sky ; up- 

 on the broad ocean ; down in the cavernous depths of earth ; 

 every where, at all times and always, man must labor. It is 

 his destiny, and God be praised that it is so. " But I am yet 

 to learn that ignorance and debasement are essential to a sup- 

 ply of labor. The most productive labor is educated labor, 

 and an educated laborer cannot be debased nor hopelessly 

 poor, — and in that country, be it monarchy or republic, the 

 equilibrium of society is best preserved, and its various classes 

 most prosperous and happy, where property and labor frater- 

 nize, without jealousy and without oppression, under the con- 

 stant influence of a wise and diffusive education." — From an 

 Address to Teachers at Keeiie, N. H., Aug. 1851, bi/ H. K. O. 



