MR. Oliver's address. 23 



And to such men and to their deeds, and to their far-seeing 

 and far-reaching policy, you owe, in a special manner, the 

 proud contrast of your rank and condition over that of the 

 farmer of Europe. You are, I speak in the general way, the 

 owners of the soil you cultivate. You own the house you 

 live in ; the barns that shelter your cattle, and secure their 

 winter's food ; the contrivances and tools, that are needed to do 

 your work. None but God is your master, and to none but 

 Him, and to the wholesome laws of the land, which you 

 yourselves have helped to enact, and to the requirements of that 

 social community which you aided to organize, are you re- 

 sponsible. You call no man master,'and you are master of ov- 

 er no man. Servitude is unknown in your vocabulary. Your 

 labor is voluntary, and your assistant laborers are volunteers to 

 you, receiving from you the recompense for that labor, stipu- 

 lated for between you and them, each his own master, and 

 each following out his own judgment and his own inclination. 

 You and they are citizens, in the highest and noblest sense of 

 that word. You are each and all of you electors, and you 

 may each of you be elected to places of power and trust, — 

 Yea, you, farmer Jones, may be made a legislator or a govern- 

 or ; or you may find Tom Jenkins, who worked for you last 

 summer, at seventy-five cents a day and his board, put up a 

 candidate for the House of Representatives, and elected by 

 his party, perhaps, over you, the candidate of the opposite 

 party. Such are you, and constituting as you do, by far the 

 most numerous portion of the people of these United States ; 

 spreading far over the rugged hills and the beautiful valleys of 

 New-England, covering the more fertile regions of our Middle 

 States, holding in possession the beautiful and wide spreading 

 prairies of the West, and pouring out a healthful tide of emi- 

 gration in exodus towards those limitless realms, that lying on 

 the shores of the Pacific, receive at their noon, the rays of our 

 setting sun, your influence is of the widest diffusion and of 

 the deepest power, and you are and will be held responsible 

 that that influence be of the purest kind. You are and you 

 always have been, and must continue- to be, the natural conser- 

 vators of your country's liberties, both in the field and in the 



