e, and liberty in chains. Only a few years ago men were
denounced because they doubted the inspiration of the bible--because
they denied miracles and laughed at the wonders recounted by the ancient
Jews.

Only a few years ago a man had to believe in the total depravity of the
human heart in order to be respectable. Only a few years ago, people
who thought God too good to punish in eternal flames an unbaptized child
were considered infamous.

As soon as our ancestors began to get free they began to enslave others.
With an inconsistency that defies explanation, they practiced upon
others the same outrages that had been perpetrated upon them. As soon as
white slavery began to be abolished, black slavery commenced.

In this infamous traffic nearly every nation of Europe embarked.
Fortunes were quickly realized; the avarice and cupidity of Europe were
excited; all ideas of justice were discarded; pity fled from the human
breast; a few good, brave men recited the horrors of the trade; avarice
was deaf; religion refused to hear; the trade went on; the governments
of Europe upheld it in the name of commerce--in the name of civilization
and of religion.

Our fathers knew the history of caste. They knew that in the despotisms
of the old world it was a disgrace to be useful. They knew that a
mechanic was esteemed as hardly the equal of a hound, and far below
a blooded horse. They knew that a nobleman held a son of labor in
contempt--that he had no rights the royal loafers were bound to respect.

The world has changed.

The other day there came shoemakers, potters, workers in wood and iron
from Europe, and they were received in the city of New York as though
they had been princes. They had been sent by the great republic of
France to examine into the arts and manufactures of the great republic
of America. They looked a thousand times better to me than the Edward
Alberts and Albert Edwards--the royal vermin, that live on the body
politic. And I would think much more of our government if it would fete
and feast them, instead of wining and dining the imbeciles of a royal
line.

Our fathers devoted their lives and fortunes to the grand work of
founding a government for the protection of the rights of man. The
theological idea as to the source of political power had poisoned the
web and woof of every government in the world, and our fathers banished
it from this continent forever.

What we want to-day is what our fathers wrote