21 



are avoided, and republican simplicity lives and flourishes 

 in the locality of its birth. 



If there is a class which more than another may be said 

 to result from a diversified industry and the pursuit by a 

 people of the ordinary avocations of men, it is a great 

 middle class, powerful in numbers and intelligence, con- 

 servative of every acquirement and lesson of the past, pro- 

 gressive towards every reasonable promise of the future, 

 wedded to freedom and a strong government, chained to 

 the rock of sound morals and sound money, believing in 

 the right of property as one of the dearest rights of man, 

 frowning upon all schools and 'isms which would deny that 

 right in its simplicity and entirety, and loving peace and 

 hating violence. This class, in other days and in other 

 nations, hasfonght the battle of freedom against priest and 

 king, and its name is equally hated by the tyrant and the 

 anarchist. In a republic it stands arrayed against the en- 

 croachments of an oligarchy and the destructive rule of the 

 unreasoning mob. Intelligent in a high degree, the so- 

 phistries of the socialist and the dreamer and the argu- 

 ments of the subtile and designing are alike put aside with 

 derision. This larg-e and conservative class have their 

 stake in this country. Their property and oiterprises are 

 here. Their investments are, generally speaking, home 

 investments, and while the class of immense wealth and 

 power may for a portion of the year have a home in one 

 pait of the country, and for another in another part, and 

 for yet another in a foreign land, the members of this class 

 usually have one home, they usually own it, about it cen- 

 tres their love and affection, and from it springs the attach- 

 ment to locality which is the germ of patriotism. Such 

 local ties of interest and sentiment tinge and guide, if they 

 do not control their life and thought, both moral and po- 

 litical, and in days of some unrest in the republic, when 

 all sorts of ready-made panaceas for social ills are put for- 

 ward, and varied and variegated 'isms are presented as ral- 

 lying cries, about which it is hoped men may be organized 



