State Con vent ion—Republican-Democracy, i 79 
“A tale of little meaning, tlio’ the words are strong; 
Chanted from an illused race of men that cleave the soil, 
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil; 
Storing yearly little dues of wheat and wine and oil.” 
But you and I knpw better. The question is, whether you and I 
are to be freemen or the serfs of corporations; whether these states 
and this nation are to be governed by the capital of corporations 
or by the unbought votes of the men who create wealth. It is 
an irrepressible conflict, and the Higher Law, the Declaration of 
Independence, and the Grangers are all on one side. 
VII. I have spoken thus far of individual, social and class 
conditions under our republican democracy. I wish now to speak 
of our different grades of government, commencing with 
MUNICIPALITIES, 
Under which I include township, town and city governments. 
Municipal governments have acted very opposite parts in history. 
On the one hand, the experience of New York and other of our 
larger cities, where there is a great mass of ignorance and vice, 
has struck the patriot with profound discouragement and made 
him despair of free government when great cities multiplied 
among us. Yet even in New York, after a long and unwise sys¬ 
tem of legislative interference, the body of good men rose and 
put down, for the time at least, the terrible corruption that had 
resulted from their own neglect of political duties. On the other 
hand, free cities of the middle ages were bulwarks of civil liberty. 
Our New England towns, organized between 1630 and 1640, and 
more than a century old when the revolution began, were “ schools 
and nurseries of freedom.” John Adams, Jefferson, Webster, 
Kent, DeTocqueville, Bancroft, Hildreth, Choate, Sumner, Eliot, 
Palfrey and Greeley, all unite in extolling their merits as giving 
practice in public affairs, ensuring thorough political organization, 
and awakening, fostering and perpetuating an interest in civil 
affairs by committing the management of their own roads, bridges, 
taxation, etc., to every little body of citizens. Particularly is the 
township system of value to our agricultural population. We 
find in our counties, under township organization, not only a bet¬ 
ter opportunity for acquainting and educating ourselves in public 
