esses of American liberty,
and our Federal government moves in its orb with scarcely a perturbation
to mark the influence of the war upon it.

Gentlemen, we have successfully worked out the problem of
self-government, and our example will undoubtedly and in due time be
followed by the world. What else is there for this Republic to do? There
is a tremendous question yet unsolved which is now rising unbidden in
this and in every enlightened nation. It is the question of the proper
distribution of the earnings of labor and capital combined. This is a
question that will not down, and we have got to meet it. British
publicists and statesmen from whom we have taken in the past far too
much of our politics have either ignored that question entirely, or have
treated it as practically settled by the apothegm of Ricardo, that the
laborer is entitled out of his earnings to just enough food and clothing
to keep the machine of his body in working order, and that when that
machine becomes disarranged or worn out, he must go to the almshouse.

In the United States, so far as the question does not lie outside of the
powers of the State or general Government, so far as those powers can be
used fairly to adjust the question, methods of adjustment will fall
within the lines relating to revenue, currency, corporations, police
regulations. The settlement of the intricate problem and of that
immensely important one, will not be added to by flagrant assaults on
public authority, nor by the interference by bodies or individuals with
the free right of every single workingman to work for whatever he
pleases and for whomever he pleases and as many hours as he pleases; nor
by the confiscation of real or personal property. And on the other hand
that question will not be solved nor aided in its solution by police
interference with the right of free assembly and discussion, nor by
police interference with the right to form organizations open or secret,
nor by police interference with the right of laboring men to combine for
their own benefit if they keep within the limits of the law. On the
other hand, I dissent _in toto_ from some of the sentiments expressed in
the letter of Mr. Hewitt. [Abram S. Hewitt, Mayor of the City of New
York.] This question will only be settled by the people at the
ballot-box and by the enactment of such laws as will fairly distribute
the net earnings which labor and capital combine to make.

Gentlemen, let us who have bo