e
province assigned them, and to a use in the economy of the world,--the
higher and more complex organizations to higher and more catholic
service; and man seems to play a certain part that tells on the general
face of the planet,--as if dressing the globe for happier races of
his own kind, or, as we sometimes fancy, for beings of superior
organization.

But thus use, labor of each for all, is the health and virtue of all
beings. ICH DIEN, _I serve_, is a truly royal motto. And it is the mark
of nobleness to volunteer the lowest service,--the greatest spirit only
attaining to humility. Nay, God is God because he is the servant of
all. Well, now here comes this conspiracy of slavery,--they call it an
institution, I call it a destitution,--this stealing of men and setting
them to work,--stealing their labor, and the thief sitting idle himself;
and for two or three ages it has lasted, and has yielded a certain
quantity of rice, cotton, and sugar. And standing on this doleful
experience, these people have endeavored to reverse the natural
sentiments of mankind, and to pronounce labor disgraceful, and the
well-being of a man to consist in eating the fruit of other men's labor.
Labor: a man coins himself into his labor,--turns his day, his strength,
his thought, his affection into some product which remains as the
visible sign of his power; and to protect that, to secure that to
him, to secure his past self to his future self, is the object of all
government. There is no interest in any country so imperative as that
of labor; it covers all, and constitutions and governments exist for
that,--to protect and insure it to the laborer. All honest men are daily
striving to earn their bread by their industry. And who is this who
tosses his empty head at this blessing in disguise, the constitution of
human nature, and calls labor vile, and insults the faithful workman at
his daily toil? I see for such madness no hellebore,--for such calamity
no solution but servile war, and the Africanization of the country that
permits it.

At this moment in America the aspects of political society absorb
attention. In every house, from Canada to the Gulf, the children ask
the serious father,--"What is the news of the war to-day? and when will
there be better times?" The boys have no new clothes, no gifts, no
journeys; the girls must go without new bonnets; boys and girls find
their education, this year, less liberal and complete. All the little