Let me repeat. I have told you my views as to what I regard to be the most important matter of internal national legislation that in the immediate future will be before this people. I wish to say again that, important though that legislation is, it is nothing like as important as the spirit in which we approach it. If we approach it in the spirit of demagogy, if we permit ourselves as a people to be deluded into the belief that permanent good will come to us as a mass, if we attack unjustly the proper rights of others because they are wealthy, we shall do ourselves just as much damage as if we permitted an attack upon those who are poor because they are poor. In time past republic after republic has existed in this world and has gone down to destruction, sometimes because the republic was turned into a government of the poor who plundered the rich, sometimes because it was turned into a government of the rich who exploited the poor. It made no difference whatever to the fate of the republic which form its fall took. That fall was just as certain in one case as in the other. It was just as certain to follow the triumph of a class which plundered another class, whether the class thus given mastery was the class of the poor who plundered the rich, or the class of the rich who exploited the poor. The destruction was as inevitable in one instance as in the other.

We have the right to look forward with confident hope to the future of this Republic because it will not and shall not become the Republic of any class, either poor or rich, because it will and shall remain as its founders intended it to be, and as its rescuers under Abraham Lincoln intended it to be, a government where every man, rich or poor, so long as he does his duty to his neighbor, is given his full rights, is guaranteed justice and has justice exacted from him in return.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.

Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added, when a predominant preference was found in the original book.

Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.

Pg[47]:“appoached” replaced with “approached”
Pg[78]:“maunfactories” replaced with “manufactories”
Pg[148]:“everwhere” replaced with “everywhere”
Pg[195]:Replaced “that” with “than” in “...none was greater than what the late Secretary...”
Pg[216]:Removed duplicate “be” in “Deep will be your shame...”
Pg[246]:“commerical” replaced with “commercial”
Pg[250]:Replaced “if” with “of” in “...interest at the rate of 1 to 2...”
Pg[336]:“Amercians” replaced with “Americans”
Pg[341]:“Civl” replaced with “Civil”