were made for something better, and that we have a right to aspire to something higher. An apostle has said, "If any man will not work, neither shall he eat." And this we believe should apply to one man as well as to another. Why, if we must bear all the burthens of society, shall we not in common justice enjoy all its blessings?

"Brethren, we have reflected on our condition, and we have come to the conclusion, that it is not the true condition of men. We are made of the same blood with those who work us as they do their horses and oxen, and who value us only for the profit they can derive from our labors. As pure blood courses in our veins as in theirs; as generous, as noble emotions swell our bosoms, and we have by nature capacities, to say the least, every way equal to theirs. Why then are they regarded as the better sort? Why then do they fatten on our labors? Why then are they rich and we poor? Why shall not our condition be as good as theirs? Why shall they call themselves our masters, and work us for their profit?

"Brethren, we have said that we are men. We have then the rights of men - we are then by virtue of our rights, equal to one another, and to all men.

"The rights of men belong to us by virtue of the fact that we are men. We hold them not by the grant of civil society; they are anterior to civil society; and in coming into civil society, we do not surrender them, nor can we be justly deprived of their exercise. "We hold that every man by virtue of the simple fact that he is a man, a human being, has a right to all the means necessary for the free and full development of all his faculties, and for providing for his moral, intellectual, and physical well-being. "Before God, all men are equal, are children of a common parent; for one God hath made them all, and all are his offspring. Before the Gospel all men are equal, for one and the same Saviour hath died for them all; and the same faith, repentance, and means of salvation are preached to them all, and declared to be equally necessary to them all. Before society, then, should all men be regarded as equals. Consequently, the burthens of society and the blessings of society should be shared equally by all.

"Government is not society, but the agent of society. Its true end is to secure to each individual member of society the full enjoyment of his rights, and to ensure the due performance of each one's social duties. It is false to its trust whenever it leaves any individual in a condition below that which is proper to man; whenever any individual is left without the power to protect his rights, and to attain according to his aptitude to the full development of his nature as a moral, intellectual, and physical being.

"Brethren, in saying all this, we say only what all our countrymen admit. Our rights are acknowledged-in words; but what avails the acknowledgment of our rights, when we want the MIGHTS to maintain them. It is with us a question as to our MIGHTS, rather than as to our RIGHTS. Nobody dare deny our rights; but our rights are trampled upon, because it is thought we have not the power to punish the aggressor. Here then is the difficulty. We

are men with the rights of men, with rights equal to those of the wealthiest and the proudest; but we are poor men; men obliged to labor for our daily bread; dependent on those who choose to employ us, and compelled by the invincible law of hunger to accept the wages they offer. They hold us then at their mercy, and make us work solely for their profit. Here, not our rights, but our mights fail us.

"How stands the case with us? We labor more hours and with more intensity than we did formerly. We are aided by the discoveries of science, and the introduction of machinery which gives to our labor a thousand fold additional power of production; and yet our condition relatively to the capitalist does by no means become better. There is scarcely a country in Europe where, in proportion to the labor they perform, the laboring classes are worse off than they are here. If we worked no more hours in a day, no more days in a week, and with no more intensity, than do the Italian peasants, we should find ourselves in a condition scarcely superior to theirs. We receive only about the same proportion of the proceeds of our labor.

"Moreover everything is tending to reduce the workingmen of this country to the condition they are sunk to in the old world. And what is that condition? In England, Scotland, and Wales, fourteen millions of the population, it is said, are obliged to subsist on an annual income of about ninety dollars a year and under. Five millions of these subsist on an annual income of less than twenty-five dollars each. In some counties in England, prior to the new poor laws, the paupers amounted to 63 per cent. on the whole population, and in Liverpool every third individual was in indigence. Of Ireland, we need say nothing more than that one third of the whole population experience a deficiency of even third rate potatoes for thirty weeks out of fifty-two. In France, out of a population of about thirty-two millions, nearly thirty-one millions receive an annual income of under seventy-five dollars each; seven millions five hundred thousand, under twenty-five dollars; seven millions five hundred thousand, about eighteen dollars each. The expense of living is higher in England than in this country, and probably about one fourth less in France. But what must be the condition of the laboring classes even in France, where it is better than in England, and perhaps as good as in any country in Europe with the exception of Belgium?

"Now, what saves us from a similar condition? We are saved from a similar condition mainly by the paucity of our numbers, and the superior freedom of our industry, which creates a greater competition among capitalists, and therefore a greater demand for laborers. But this competition is less among manufacturers than it was. The principal manufacturers having adopted in regard to labor nearly uniform prices, rarely bid upon one another. The multiplication of large corporations is rapidly changing the whole character of our laboring population, by bringing them under the control of corporate bodies. These corporations check individual enterprise, lessen competition between individual capitalists, bind the capital

ists together in close affinity af interest, and enable them to exert a sovereign control over the prices of labor. Let these corporations continue to increase for a few years longer, and they will be able to reduce our wages to the minimum of human subsistence. There will grow up around them a population bearing but little resemblance to that which won our political independence. It will be enfeebled in mind and body, and without either the mental or physical energy to shift its employment, or to make a firm stand for the amelioration of its condition.

"Hitherto the great mass of our laboring population has been bred in the agricultural districts, and consequently could easily shift from the city or the factory village to the farm. But this will not continue to be the case for another generation. Nor is this all. Lands are monopolized; the whole earth is foreclosed. However well disposed the laborer might be to cultivate the soil, he has not the means of becomming its owner. He has no spot on which to erect him a cabin, or on which he may raise a few potatoes to feed his wife and little ones; for the broad hands of the few cover it all

over.

"Nor can we stop here. It would seem that the more we produced the better should be our condition. But this is not the fact except for short seasons. We suffer from over-production. To-day the supply is small, and the demand is brisk, we find employment and receive tolerable wages. But a hundred capitalists have rushed simultaneously into the work of producing; all hands are employed; forthwith the demand is supplied; the market is glutted; sales are diminished; and the diminished sales return upon us in the shape of a reduction of wages. To make up for this reduction of wages, we must labor more hours, or with greater intensity, and increase the amount of our production; and this increased amount of production, returns upon us again in the shape of a still farther reduction of our wages; and thus on, till they are reduced to the lowest point compatible with our existence.

"Brethren, put these things together, and tell us, if the natural tendency in this country is not to reduce us, and that at no distant day, to the miserable condition of the laboring classes in the old world? We stand on the declivity; we have already begun to descend! What is to save us?

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Brethren, this is a question of fearful import to us and our children. It is a question we must put to ourselves in sober earnest. It is a question we must put now, for a little more delay and it will be TOO LATE. Is it not already too late? God forbid! We will not believe it too late; but we feel that not a moment is to be lost. Now or never, must our salvation be secured. How shall it be done? "Brethren, our salvation must, through the blessing of God, come from ourselves. It is useless to expect it from those whom our labors enrich. It is for their interest to augment our numbers and our poverty. It is their interest to purchase our labor at the lowest rate possible; it is ours to sell it at the highest rate possible. Their interest and ours, then, stand in direct opposition to each other. The greater our numbers, the more necessitous our con

dition, the greater is the facility with which they can obtain laborers, and the lower the price they are obliged to pay for labor. The fewer our numbers, the more independent our condition, the higher is the price we can demand and obtain for our labor. This refutes the pretensions of the aristocracy, that their interests and ours are one and the same. As men, as human beings, no doubt their interest and ours are the same; but their interests as capitalists, and ours as laborers, are directly opposite, and mutually destructive. In fact there is less identity of interest between the capitalists and us, than there is between the master and the slave. The slave is the master's property, and it is for the master's interest to take care of his property it is for his interest to give his slave a sufficiency of food, and to be careful not to overwork him; for the sickness or death of his slave would be a loss of property. The same principle, which leads a man to take good care of his horses, sheep, and oxen, would lead him to take good care of his slaves. But the capitalist has no other interest in us, than to get as much labor out of us as possible. We are hired men, and hired men, like hired horses, have no souls. If a man owns the horse he drives, he will take care not to injure him; but if the horse be a hired one, what he will do, is told in a common saying, "Hired horses have no souls; drive on." "Hired men have no souls; drive on." If we sicken and die, the loss is ours, not the employer's. There are enough more ready to take our places.

"Brethren, we conjure you, therefore, not to believe a word of what is said about your interest and that of your employers being the same. Your interests and theirs are in the nature of things, hostile and irreconcilable. Then do not look to them for relief. Be not so mad as to suppose that they will voluntarily work out your salvation for you. You must expect them to be governed mainly by their own interests, and must never rely on their doing, as a body, what it is not for their interest to do. If then you have ever expected the capitalist, the accumulator, contractor, and employer, to conspire to elevate your condition, expect it no longer. As well might the poor and depressed have expected the Gospel, which is good news to the poor, from the scribes and pharisees, the chief priests and elders, who crucified Jesus for proclaiming it. Where, then, shall we look?

"Shall we look to politicians? What have politicians done for us, during the last fifty years? They have talked much about the rights, interests, and dignity of labor; they have had smiling faces, soft voices, and fair speeches for us; but what have they DONE for us? We want DEEDS, not words; deeds not promises. Only two measures, having special reference to the laboring classes, have as yet been carried, or even partially carried by our politicians; one the extension of the elective franchise, and the other a mitigation, for we cannot call it the abolition, of imprisonment for debt. This is all that the American politicians have as yet done, to carry out the American system, and to reduce to practice the great truth, that "all men are created equal." Politicians can therefore, give but a poor accout of themselves. All parties profess to have a special

affection for our interests, and assure us that, if we will give them our suffrages, our interests shall be protected; but thus far whichever party has succeeded at the polls, the interest of the capitalist has been sure to triumph in the halls of legislation and at the tribunals of justice. Politicians want our votes; but, when they have obtained our votes, we are the least of their concern. Nothing is to be hoped from politicians; unless we give them to understand, that our votes are for them only on one condition; namely, that they wed themselves, indissolubly, to our interests, which are in fact the true interests of all men, viewed simply as men.

"What have we to hope from the political parties of the day, each of which is vociferating its friendship for us? From the whig party we have nothing to hope. It represents the interests of the capitalist, of the employer, and, therefore, interests directly adverse to ours. Its professions of regard for the poor laborer, we understand and despise. We have heard them too often to be able to confide in them; we have, and can have, no confidence in those who feel that to take us by the hand it is necessary for them to descend. Nobody will be true to us, who does not feel in his soul, that his feet stand on the same level with ours. We have, then, nothing to hope from the whigs. And so far as we can see, they have not the shadow of a claim to our suffrages.

"What have we to hope from the democratic party? Certainly, if there be any difference, more than we have from the whig party. We are far from having entire confidence in the leaders of the democraite party, so called. We could find no little fault with many of them. They seem to us to have no clear conceptions and no ardent love of the great doctrine of equality, on which they harp so much; and we trust we do them no wrong, when we say that they will defend equal rights only so far as is necessary to place themselves in office. A considerable portion of the democratic party differ from the whigs only in name. They have the same attachment to banks, corporations, and high tariffs; and if they could have their way, government would still be administered in the interests of business, not of labor. Nevertheless, at the present moment, there is apparently no little preference due to the administration party. So far as it concerns the General Government, this party appears to us to have adopted just principles. It adheres to the Constitution; and labors to restrict the General Government to the few, but important purposes, for which it was originally instituted. It favors State rights; and opposes any encroachment upon them, not only by the Federal Executive, but also by Congress and the Federal Judiciary. It opposes a national bank, and provides for the collecting, keeping, and disbursing the public revenues, without recourse to banks, or the business of banking. It also opposes a national debt, and, we believe, a protective tariff. It would leave all the great interests of the country to the protection of the natural and immutable laws of trade. This is much, and all that we can ask of the General Government.

"It is not from the action of the General Government that we are to look for relief. The matters which chiefly concern us come not