The Northern party, or that of equal rights and free labor, like their
predecessors, hold many ideas which coming years will see realized,
for--as has always been the case in these contests--science and learning
are always on the liberal side. By a strange accident, for the first
time almost in history, the Republican party is for once in its
constituted rights, on its own ground, while the feudal or conservative
wing form the aggressors. As of old, too, the Southern conservatives are
enforcing theories once the property of their foes, who have now
advanced to broader, nobler, and more gloriously liberal views.
For instance, the men of the South believe that labor and capital are
still antagonisms. Now it is true enough that they _once_ were, and that
when the _people_ in different ages first began to rebel against their
hereditary tyrants, the workman was only a serf to his capitalist
employer. That was the age when demagogues flourished by setting 'the
poor' against 'the rich.' A painful, sickening series of wars it was,
ending too often by labor's killing itself with its adversary. Then, a
foul, false 'democracy' was evolved, which was virtually a rank
aristocracy, not of nobility, but of those who could wheedle the poor
into supporting them.
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