nating over love of life, — is not indeed an unmitigated evil, but it widens and makes permanent the artificial distinctions of society, strengthens the claims of power, degrades the laboring classes, and treats human beings as mere food for powder in the general arrangements of a campaign of glory. But what the positive provisions of law or government, have failed to accomplish in marking out the arbitrary distinctions of classes, has been carried to a great extent, by an erroneous and delusive public opinion. The Providence of God, which can regard nothing as personal but character, assigns to each individual his peculiar condition in the family of mankind, and establishes his measure of duty and his ultimate reward, according to his conduct in a position where a seeming fatality has placed him. But the world is full of artificial distinctions, produced by its own false judgment. It degrades one man, or one class of men, by false and irrational opinions, by perversion of natural right, by unjust estimates of human action. It often adopts the very errors in practice, which it has forbidden by law; establishes an aristocracy of wealth, where it has prohibited the nobility of birth; allows an exclusiveness of pretension, where it abolishes the claim of right; and assigns the honors and rewards of life by some theory of excellence, which is from time to time modified according to the caprice of the age. It would be difficult to explain, on any rational principle, how this theory has been constructed, during a great part of the history of our race. It seems to have rested principally on two considerations, REVERENCE FOR POWER, AND CONTEMPT FOR LABOR; reverence for power over mankind, no matter by what means it was acquired; and contempt for labor performed in their service, no matter how useful might be its products to the community. A sentiment of this kind, in its full force, is the characteristic of a barbarous people; but with modifications of no very considerable importance, it outlived the ruder ages of antiquity, sustained by a class that everywhere arrogated exclusive superiority; and conceded by the multitude, unconscious of its dignity or its strength. It was natural, perhaps, that in the earlier formation of society, personal prowess or heroic courage should be the source of personal honor, as being the most obvious qualification for the security of a defenceless people; and we do not therefore wonder that the opinion of that age assigned to the fabled Hercules a place next to the Gods. But it was after the imposing magnificence of Roman story, its arts, its arms, its philosophy, its fame, but indeed in the period of its decline and approaching fall, that a Thracian peasant, by his skill in wrestling and the foot-race, made himself master of the Roman World.* In periods, which by a delusive light, have been considered the most splendid in history, the mechanic arts were, by an epithet of intended humiliation, termed the servile arts; and the exercise of them confined chiefly, as now they are among the North American Indians, to women and slaves. When the accommodation of a luxurious people demanded some skill beyond that which these classes could exercise, the artisan was numbered among nominal freemen, but indeed in public estimation, and even in his own, was little elevated above the domestic animals with whom he labored. We open the records of a past age to learn the labors of our race. A false philosophy directs the opinions they commonly inspire. We read with astonishment of a Chinese wall traversing high mountains and deep valleys, and throwing its arches over wide rivers, for a space of fifteen hundred miles. We are told of the great power by which this tremendous effort of human labor was commanded, as if the control of the millions who accomplished it was the proper subject * Gibbon, Vol. I., p. 8. of our admiration; but these millions of human beings, collectively or individually, excite no more interest than the stones of which it is composed. We listen to a description of the Pyramids, and to the controversy of learned men for what probable purpose this gigantic effort was made. Here again it is power; individual personal power we are taught to admire; while the degradation of the uncounted population passes by as a natural incident of the age. The Parthenon and the Pantheon are objects now of as much idolatry as to the enthusiastic Athenians. The surpassing magnificence of the Imperial City, its temples, theatres, circusses, porticoes, baths, gardens, arches, bridges, aqueducts, columns, sepulchres, carry to its seven hills all who in this age of motion can travel, and bewilder the imagination of all who can read. But notwithstanding the romance of history in relation to Grecian glory and Roman renown, what were the men by whom these wonders were accomplished ? In the relative situation of the government and the people, .in the comparative estimate then made of power and labor, these mighty monuments are everlasting witnesses of the degradation of the great family of mankind; triumphal arches of oppression on one side, and ignorance on the other; when the condition of the mechanic, by whose arm their stones were rolled one upon another, and the temples covered with transparent Capadocean marble, notwithstanding the occasional outbreaks of a spirit of freedom, which was in truth nothing but sedition; and temporary power in the government, which was a mockery of popular rights; was in all that regards the character or personal influence of the individual or the class, wholly without consideration or respect. Personal labor was a degradation, and the laborer was a slave. It would afford very little satisfaction to follow this illustration into more recent periods, or to trace the difference between the ruling and the laboring classes, where such distinctions are preserved, either by positive provisions in the political organization of society, or by an overpowering influence of public sentiment equally tyrannical. We look for a new era of history. A change is taking place in the institutions of society, in the course of human action, in the force of moral principle and in the sovereignty of public opinion, which will influence all the relations of life. The causes of this change are to be found in the intellectual improvement of the age; in the diffusion of the principles of Christianity, which by means of this improvement, will more and more commend themselves to the hearts, as they are found more and more consonant to the welfare of mankind; and as a consequence of these, the extension of that system of civil government, the offspring of intelligence and religion, by which Power is limited, defined and responsible; which is reconciling by its efficient chemistry, the conflicting elements of liberty and law, proposing the advancement of the race as the object of honorable fame; bestowing its rewards on successful labor, corporeal or intellectual; bringing into fraternal connection all whose work of any kind is industriously performed; and making the wORKING MEN'S PARTY THE NOBILITY OF THE WORLD. But this anticipated progress of mankind is not founded on any fanciful theory of the actual divinity of human nature, inconsistent with past experience, or in a re-construction of society upon any imaginary basis of perfection. The attributes or faculties of man may be enlarged or diminished, but their essential character cannot be changed. Providence has given him no passion, no inclination, no desire, which, within the restraints of reason, is not calculated to promote his welfare; and has implanted no virtue in his nature, and no tendency to it, which, unregulated by discretion and judgment, does not degenerate into vice. Neither can there be any rational expectation of a re-construction of the frame-work of society. Civil power must exist, because political government is essential to good order. Labor too must be performed, because it is a part of the machinery of life; but both will be conducted upon the principle, practically as well as theoretically admitted, that the great object of human existence is universal happiness; the great means of happiness, universal virtue; and the only security for virtue, universal intelligence. This new era is already commenced in the country which it is our happiness to call our own. Government and people are here one and the same. Here is no hereditary right of power; no aristocratic privilege of birth; no formation of castes for specific employment; and the option of peace or war, so far as the nation itself has a voice in declaring it, rests with those by whom its burthens must be borne. Above all, the force of public opinion goes with the current of established law. There is indeed nominal classes, and great variety of individual condition, but nothing that perpetuates these relations, which are changing with every wind. They rise and fall "Like summer seas that know no storms, but only The right of possessing and protecting property is secured in the amplest manner by our fundamental laws, and it seems impossible. that the practical right of property, and the theory of equal rights, should be adjusted by a more reasonable standard. But this right of possessing property, which is at the foundation of all liberal government, and is solemnly secured by the original compact of the people, is itself the foundation of an inequality of condition, inseparable by any human alchymy from the right itself. There is not by the Constitution, nor can there be in practice, any limitation of this right, but the honesty of the means used in its |