ndeed an irrepressible and inextinguishable contest,
or whether all this while we have not been fighting with shadows. King
Cotton has now reigned for thirty years, be the same less or more. To
feel sure that we know what its policy has wrought in that time, we must
first seek for the conditions under which it originally began its work.

Ever since Adam and Eve were forced, on their expulsion from Paradise,
to try the first experiment at self-government, their descendants have
been pursuing a course of homoeopathic treatment. It was the eating of
the fruit of the tree of knowledge which caused all their woes; and
in an increased consumption of the fruit of that tree they have
persistently looked for alleviation of them. Experience seems to prove
the wisdom of the treatment. The greater the consumption of the fruit,
the greater the happiness of man. Knowledge has at last become the basis
of all things,--of power, of social standing, of material prosperity,
and, finally, in America, of government itself. Until within a century
past, political philosophy in the creation of government began at the
wrong end. It built from the pinnacle downward. The stability of the
government depended on the apex,--the one or the few,--and not on the
base,--the foundation of the many. At length, in this country, fresh
from the hand of Nature, the astonished world saw a new experiment
tried,--a government systematically built up from the foundation of
the many,--a government drawing its being from, and dependent for its
continued existence on, the will and the intelligence of the governed.
The foundation had first been laid deep and strong, and on it a goodly
superstructure of government was erected. Yet, even to this day, the
very subjects of that government itself do not realize that they, and
not the government, are the sources of national prosperity. In times of
national emergency like the present,--amid clamors of secession and
of coercion,--angry threats and angrier replies,--wars and rumors of
wars,--what is more common than to hear sensible men--men whom the
people look to as leaders--picturing forth a dire relapse into barbarism
and anarchy as the necessary consequence of the threatened convulsions?
They forget, if they ever realized, that the people made this
government, and not the government the people. Destroy the intelligence
of the people, and the government could not exist for a day;--destroy
this government, and the people wo