3 your drudgery—“ a class ” that shall obey ? Sir, labor should never be done by a class. If you obeyed the mandate of the Almighty, and labor were distributed among all the able-bodied men, it would cease to be a task; it would become a mere amusement, and it would tax no man’s physical powers above what would consist with his health and his welfare. It was designed—for G-od is jus? -that this drudgery of which the Senator speaks should be distributed among all the able-bodied men, so as to make it light, and then it would not be inconsistent with the highest perfection of civiliza tion and refinement; but, on the other hand, would lead directly to it. Labor done by a class I That, sir, was the old curse of the Old World. A class has been assigned to do the drudgery, to do all that is valuable, to produce everything that is beneficial; and the system leaves aristocratical drones, useless, vicious idlers, whom any community can well dispense with. I say this class you can dispense with, to the advantage of any community that I know of; but the class who do your labor cannot be dispensed with. The Senator says you must have a class to do your degraded labor. I deny that labor is degraded; and here is the point of difference between us, which I fear can never be overcome. That is one grand reason why we resist your system coming into our Territories; it is because you are determined to contaminate all labor by this degra ded class. Will the free, intelligent laborer place himself upon a level with your mere ab ject chattel, and toil there? Sir, he cannot do it, and ought not to do it, and will not do it. THE WORKING CLASSES. What an idea of labor! The Senator supposes that the la coring class want but very little mind and very little skill. Sir, there is nothing on earth that puts the human intellect to all that it can attain, like the varied labor of man. What does your drone, your refined aristocrat, do in his mind? What problems does he work out ? He consumes the products of labor; he is idle, and ten to one he is also vicious. He never invents. Go to your Patent Office, and see what are the products of your degraded labor and your refined aristocrat The latter never invents anything, unless it is a new way of stuffing a chicken or mixing liquor. [Laughter.] He invents nothing beneficial to man. Degraded labor, with a low intellect, is all you want! Sir, the machinery brought into operation by intelligent labor is doing now more drudgery than all the slaves upon the face of the earth. The elements are yoked to the machines of human usefulness, and there they are doing the work of bone and muscle, and your system cannot abide with it. The doom of Slavery would be fixed, if it was by nothing else than the products of intelligent labor. You drudge along in the old way; you invent no steam engine, because your labor is degraded. You do not want skill; you want but very little mind; and the Senator thinks the more ignorant the laborers are the better, for, he says, they are so degraded that they have no ambition, and they never will endanger this refined class that eats up the proceeds of their labor 1 That is the idea of government that prevails all through the slaveholding regions of the South. Again, the Senator says of the degraded class that do the drudgery: “It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to build either the one or the other, except on this mud-sill.” And then he goes on to say that we of the North have white slaves ; that we perform our labor by white slaves. This class must exist everywhere, and they must be a mudsill upon which you must erect civil societies and political organizations. How little that gentleman understood of the spirit of our Northern laborers! I would like to see him endeavoring to erect his political institutions upon their prostrate necks as mud-sills. I think it would be a little troublesome. He might as well make his bed in hell, or erect his building over a volcano, as to undertake to build on his Northern “ mud-sills/ Then, with a simplicity that shows he knows nothing of Northern society, he says we have sent our missionaries down to their very hearthstones, to endanger their system. I do not know how that is; but he turns round and asks how we would like them to send their missionaries up to teach our laborers their power. I was astonished at such an idea as that being presented to political men of the North, who know and see and feel the power of the laboring class of men. We are all laboring men, and the politician cannot live, unless they breathe upon him ; he cannot move, unless he moves with their entire approbation. They are the soul, the strength, the body, the virtue, the mainstay, of all our society. Deprive our State of its laborers, and what would it be? We have nothing else, and we have none of your refined society that is spoken of. We all labor, and are all disgraced, as the gentleman would call it, in our community. Labor with us is honorable; idleness is disreputable. That is the state of things with us, and the laboring man knows full well, and needs no missionary to tell him, the potency of his vote. We should like to have your missionaries come up and endeavor to endanger our society 1 Good heavens! Oue man has the same interest in upholding it as another. Suppose one man is richer than another in Ohio. There is no very great diversity, as a general thing ; but suppose he is; take the child of the poorest man in our State, and has he any temptation to overthrow our Government ? No/sir. Full of life, full of hope, full of ambition to go beyond him who has gone furthest, he wishes to avail himself of the same securities which have ministered to the upbuilding of others. He is a
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=