i8 



hy which to ascend. They see but two classes, themselves 

 and the very rich and powerful. To them home is a camp 

 to be broken if possible, to be endured as shelter if not. 

 The idea of the independent New England home is but a 

 dream of the fancy. Men seek homes where they love to 

 stay and expect to pass their future. They build where it 

 is well with them, where they believe there exists the best 

 human advantages they shall attain. The daily life of 

 such a people accentuates the idea of a sharp division of 

 society into two classes, and the conviction settles upon 

 them that accident of birth, with few exceptions, casts the 

 lot of man. Just as of a people, whose early history was 

 characterized by violence and a rude and arbitrary admin- 

 istration of justice, the traditions remain, modifying their 

 views of the sources of law, and presenting force as a 

 remedy for public ills, to be used without hesitancy and 

 without dread, so of a people in whose history the dividing 

 iline between two great classes has been sharp and deep, 

 after the conditions which created the division may have 

 passed away, when the mine has given out, the richness of 

 the soil become exhausted, or the boundless forests of vir- 

 gin lumber have been cut down, when the ordinary indus- 

 tries of men have taken the place of former occupations, 

 yet the traditions of the earlier day remain, making ever 

 present in the thought of the people a separation of men 

 into classes, and the existence of a barrier in social life, 

 which, while not openl}' recognized, is tacitly acknowl- 

 -edged, and which equality of political rights cannot entire- 

 ly obliterate. Generations must pass away in such com- 

 munities before the idea that there are fixed class distinc- 

 tions among men can be eradicated. The traditions of a 

 ilanded aristocracy remain where labor has once been en- 

 slaved. The gold and silver, the iron and coal, the lumber 

 and the cotton of this country, as perhaps could not be 

 avoided in a new land, have made rather too prominent 

 with us the idea and example of class distinction. It will 

 •be well for us that they both be somewhat modified in the 



