No wonder that the people are becoming alarmed, and are preparing for the conflict. The attempt made to dissolve the Union was an open and bold one. The people met the issue, and triumphed. The attempt made to divide the country aroused the national patriotism. The attempt of this great combination of monopolists to obtain absolute control of the government, the finances, and commerce of the country, presents more serious cause for alarm than did the attempt to dissolve the Union. Our institutions cease to be of any value when they are perverted to means of oppression. When men in high official positions trifle with the liberties of the people and encourage their oppressors, an indignant constituency should hurl them from power. If, knowing the wrongs that are committed against us, the encroachments being made on our liberties, the threatened and partially accomplished destruction of republican institutions, we silently acquiesce, we are not freemen, and we deserve to be held as the bond-servants of our oppressors for all time to come. But while the people are long-suffering and patient under adversity, there is a point beyond which their oppressors cannot venture without arousing them to action. That point is now reached; the fiat of the sovereign power in this land has gone forth; the voice of the people is heard from all portions of our common country demanding redress, and that the government shall be brought back to constitutional limits; that the power of their oppressors shall be destroyed; that their rights as freemen shall be restored to them; that the halls of legislation and the courts of justice shall be filled by men who do not legislate for bribes, and who administer justice without respect to persons or interests, and prize constitutional restrictions and the liberties of the people above the interests of corporations and rings formed to oppress them. If redress cannot be obtained at the ballot-box; if the influences which now control the government and business of the country cannot be overcome; if redress is denied in legislative halls and in the courts—then the people have the right, the "God-given right," to arise in their sovereign power and take what their servants have refused to give them. If reform cannot be obtained, or the wrongs of the people redressed in any other method, a resort should be had to revolution—peaceable, if possible, but such as will bring the country back to the days of its purity, and compel all to acknowledge the sacred binding force of the constitution.
Having an abiding confidence that the reform being inaugurated by the farmers of the country will advance to a triumphant issue, we present this volume to the public, as an humble but honest champion of the cause, acknowledging its imperfections, expecting criticisms and condemnations from the monopolists and their dependents, but asking a careful perusal and earnest consideration of the doctrine advocated.