landed aristocracy," not applying
the phrase especially to the South, but making an argument which tended
to sow dissension in that section. He declared that "the withholding
of the use of the soil from the actual cultivator is violative of the
principles essential to human existence," and that when "the violation
reaches that point where it can no longer be borne, revolution begins."
His argument startlingly outlined a condition such as has long existed
in Ireland, and applied it with suggestive force to the possible fate
of the South.

He then sketched his own ideal of a rural population, an ideal
obviously based on free labor and free institutions. "You make a
settler on the domain," said he, "a better citizen of the community.
He becomes better qualified to discharge the duties of a freeman. He
is, in fact, the representative of his own homestead, and is a man in
the enlarged and proper sense of the term. He comes to the ballot-box
and votes without the fear or the restraint of some landlord. After
the hurry and bustle of election day are over, he mounts his own horse,
returns to his own domicil, goes to his own barn, feeds his own stock.
His wife turns out and milks their own cows, churns their own butter;
and when the rural repast is ready, he and his wife and their children
sit down at the same table together to enjoy the sweet product of their
own hands, with hearts thankful to God for having cast their lots in
this country where the land is made free under the protecting and
fostering care of a beneficent Government."

The picture thus presented by Johnson was not the picture of a home in
the slave States, and no one knew better than he that it was a home
which could not be developed and established amid the surroundings and
the influences of slavery. It was a home in the North-West, and not in
the South-West. Proceeding in his speech Johnson became still more
warmly enamored of his hero on the homestead, and with a tongue that
seemed touched with the gift of prophecy he painted him in the possible
career of a not distant future. "It has long been near my heart," said
he in the House of Representatives in July, 1850, "to see every man in
the United States domiciled. Once accomplished, it would create the
strongest tie between the citizen and the Government; what a great
incentive it would afford to the citizen to obey every call of duty!
At the first summons of the note of war you would find him leav