usively, a war upon the first principle of popular government,--the
rights of the people. Conclusive evidence of this is found in the most
grave and maturely considered public documents, as well as in the
general tone of the insurgents. In those documents we find the
abridgment of the existing right of suffrage, and the denial to the
people of all right to participate in the selection of public officers,
except the legislative, boldly advocated, with laboured arguments to
prove that large control of the people in government is the source of
all political evil. Monarchy itself is sometimes hinted at, as a
possible refuge from the power of the people.

In my present position, I could scarcely be justified were I to omit
raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism.

It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made
in favour of popular institutions; but there is one point, with its
connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief
attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with,
if not above, labour, in the structure of government. It is assumed that
labour is available only in connection with capital; that nobody
labours, unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow, by the use of
it, induces him to labour. This assumed, it is next considered whether
it is best that capital shall hire labourers, and thus induce them to
work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to it without
their consent. Having proceeded thus far, it is naturally concluded that
all labourers are either hired labourers, or what we call slaves. And
further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired labourer is fixed in
that condition for life.

Now, there is no such relation between capital and labour as assumed,
nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the
condition of a hired labourer. Both these assumptions are false, and all
inferences from them are groundless.

Labour is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit
of labour, and could never have existed if labour had not first existed.
Labour is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher
consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection
as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always
will be, a relation between labour and capital, producing mutual
benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole