Labor, in the conflict of life, draws to itself the capital of that country in which its productions are used, or to the hands which produce them; consequently, when a society is composed of two kinds, or divisions of people, one of whom are better, or more enduring laborers than the other, that division, so favored, will, sooner or later, obtain the property, and with it political and social dominion of the nation.
Already is our property in rapid transit from native to immigrated hands, and we, even rejoicing at the opportunities which circumstances give us, of selling or giving our country away. Look around you, and see who are vendors and who are purchasers of real estate, and the point will at once become palpable and plain. See, too, who are becoming landlords, and who are becoming tenants; and, under the new order of things—outside of that combination of wholesale swindlers who converted our property into national securities, and then stole to their fullness—who are the holders of our national bonds? Look at them here and abroad, as they are now sporting on property wrenched from American hands, and you may have some idea of the condition into which you are driving your nation.
The political tendency is no less marked than the transition of estates, and may by as simple an effort be disclosed. You can try it by the same rule, no matter what may be your party relations. If you be a democrat, try and elect even a constable in any ward of any city of the United States without first consulting your Irish supports, and then see the point at which your efforts will end. Or if you be a republican, and think your condition more tolerable, try the same “experiment” without in like manner first asking permission of “my German friends,” and when you have ended the trial let us know the end of the horn at which you made your exit. You know that you can not so elect, therefore are you humbled to influences from abroad.
Such are conditions before the ballot. Americans no longer masters of their own position. But what are conditions behind it?
When you wanted revenue, you unhesitatingly imposed a duty of two dollars on a gallon of whisky; but when you came to lager beer, you very modestly stopped at the short figures of three cents on the gallon. Why did you do so? We will not venture an answer for you; but, as Americans make whisky, and Germans make lager beer, we have no trouble in seeing who are favored, and who are oppressed. The American man, and particularly the Western one, whipped out of his independence, submits to whatever you dare to impose. But Deitrich is not quite so pliable. He waits upon his servants in force. This he did with his various committees, while his servants were imposing duties, and, shaking his fingers in their faces, with a leer of the eye, and a significant turn of the mouth, said: “You must not dax te lager peer!” What then followed? Deitrich knew his power, and Mr. Congressman his dependence—both, of course, alike manly, unterrified, and impartial. But when the bill came forth, we found a tax of two dollars on whisky and three cents on beer. Further comment might be disrespectful.
In this picture may you see your condition. Deprived of your own laborer, and made dependent on laborers from abroad, you are passing into subjugation almost as fast as you transformed four millions of useful negroes into four millions of vagabonds.
Why are you thus hastening downward? It is because you have drank of foreign ideas until you have become frenzied, and, in an apish vanity of foreign things, have turned your backs on advantages which the God of nature, has, during the whole of your existence, been arduously forcing upon you.
He prepared your country for a great purpose, brought it forth at the proper period of time, and made it the joint receptacle of two great species of the genus man—the one a race of masters, the other a race of subordinates or slaves.
To the subordinate, in his subordinate condition, he gave an increase of physical power, and to the superior whom he deprived of some portion of his laborious indurance, that he might be charitable and humane, gave a high-toned manhood, an undaunted spirit, and, for the privation which he imposed, gave him the subordinate hands with which to do his labor. Thus, in this, as in all other things, is he alike good in what he gives and in what he denies. But you, in your spite or vanity, have rejected his blessings.
Our Northern system—now made national—is but the European system in all its material phases, and under its present character—equality of whites and blacks, States reduced to dependencies, power centralized, bond-holding lords sapping the labor of the people, and the foreign mind controlling interior forces—is probably little, if any thing, more or less than the European system botched or spoiled. It is a system under which men of fortune, having their wealth in money, seek the localities in which profit and luxury unite, and as the poor, the menial, and the artful, like the mistletoe, draw their succor from larger boughs, they, too, congregate around the same centers, and thus are made up great cities which, under a political and social view, have very justly been characterized as great sores.