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D. Thew Wright.

IS MARRIAGE A FAILURE?

How like the ague is this boon
Of matrimonial strife!
The fever ends in one short moon,
The chill runs on through life.

EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT.

THE COMMUNISM OF CAPITAL.

The President in his late and last message to Congress calls
attention, in his incisive and felicitous style, to a condition of our
people that must strike all intelligent minds with alarm. The
corner-stone in the foundation of communism is that agency of the
government which makes of the sovereign power that legal process which
controls all private affairs for the good of the people. In popular
phrase, it upholds the paternal form which enters every man's house
and regulates by law all his transactions. This is the foundation,
while the holding of property in common is rather a consequence than a
cause. If there are no rights pertaining to the citizen but those
derived from government, to give practical effect to the scheme all
property owned by the government must be held in its care in common by
its dependents.

Heretofore this theory has been advocated by the poor and oppressed,
and stoutly resisted by the rich. We are treated to a reversal of
position in the parties, and the rich are practically pressing the
scheme upon the poor.

Jefferson, the father of modern democracy, taught that the government,
a mere form of expression, in the way of rule, by the people, who held
the sovereignty was only a trust of power, instituted for the sole
purpose of keeping the peace between the citizens. To use a popular
phrase, it was nothing but the intervention of the constable.

Our central government, not being built altogether upon this broad yet
simple proposition, opened in its mixed nature the door to communism
found in the paternal form. Indeed, it would have been entirely
divested of the Jeffersonian theory had it not been for the necessity
under which the framers found themselves of conciliating the States,
that then jealously fought every proposition looking to a deprivation
of their sovereign rights. All that we so happily gained then came
from a regard to the several States and not to any thought of popular
rights.

This fact gave us