trially if you will; rally for eight hours, for a little division of profits, for co-operation; rally for such a bankingpower in the government as would give us money at three per cent.

Only organize, and stand together. Claim something together, and at once; let the nation hear a united demand from the laboring voice, and then, when you have got that, go on after another; but get something.

I say, let the debts of the country be paid, abolish the banks, and let the government lend every Illinois farmer (if he wants it), who is now borrowing money at ten per cent, money on the half-value of his land at three per cent. The same policy that gave a million acres to the Pacific Railroad, because it was a great national effort, will allow of our lending Chicago twenty millions of money, at three per cent, to rebuild it.

From Boston to New Orleans, from Mobile to Rochester, from Baltimore to St. Louis, we have now but one purpose; and that is, having driven all other political questions out of the arena, having abolished slavery, the only question left is labor, the relations of capital and labor. The night before Charles Sumner left Boston for Washington the last time, he said to me, "I have just one more thing to do for the negro, - to carry the Civil Rights Bill; and after that is passed, I shall be at liberty to take up the question of labor."

Now, one word in conclusion. If you do your duty, -and by that I mean standing together and being true to each other, the Presidental election you will decide, every State election you may decide if you please.

If you want power in this country; if you want to make yourselves felt; if you do not want your children to wait long years before they have the bread on the table they ought to have, the leisure in their lives they ought to have, the opportunities in life they ought to

write on

have; if you don't want to wait yourselves, your banner, so that every political trimmer can read it, so that every politician, no matter how short sighted he may be, can read it, "We never forget! If you launch the arrow of sarcasm at labor, we never forget; if there is a division in Congress, and you throw your vote in the wrong scale, we never forget. You may go down on your knees, and say, '1 am sorry I did the act; and we will say, 'It will avail you in heaven, but on this side of the grave never.'" So that a man, in taking up the Labor Question, will know he is dealing with a hair-trigger pistol, and will say, "I am to be true to justice and to man; otherwise I am a dead duck."

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12

THE MAINE LIQUOR LAW;

OR,

THE LAWS OF THE COMMONWEALTH-SHALL THEY BE ENFORCED?

Address before the Legislative Committee, February 23, 1865.

G

ENTLEMEN OF THE COMMITTEE: The question you have to consider at this time grows out of the question of Temperance, the interference with the sale, the public sale, of intoxicating drinks. It is not a new question. What we call the Temperance cause in this Commonwealth is half a century old; and on the other side of the water, if you analyze strictly the legislation of the old countries, the attempt to limit and prohibit, to a certain extent, in the cause of public protection, the free use and sale of intoxicating liquor, is many centuries old. The new point in the discussion is, that any man should assume that a government trespasses on the rights of individuals when it attempts, at last, to legislate on this subject. I think I may safely say, that there is no statute-book in the world, no matter how old its first page is,- no statute-book since the discovery of alcohol, which has not in it a law in regard to this subject; and if you go behind the Christian era, and into the legislation of the older countries, the same attempt is visible, I think, there. We are not, therefore, trying to gain or clutch any new ground; we are only

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examining the method by which an old and constantly acknowledged power shall be used.

Again, some men say the Temperance cause is a very narrow, petty, sentimental enterprise, fit for half-witted men, weak-minded women, theorists, but utterly repudiated by the manly and practical intellect, and commonsense of the public. On the contrary, to my mind, the Temperance cause is one of the weightiest, broadest, most momentous, that a citizen, under democratic institutions, can contemplate, especially under democratic institutions here, and leading a race like ours.

Every race, every blood, every climate, has its own special temptation. The tropics have one, the colder climates have another. Some races are distinguished from others by peculiar temptation and weakness. Our climate, our blood, is peculiarly open to the necessity of material stimulus, something that shall wake up and hurry the currents of the blood. The old idea of heaven, to the fathers of our race, was a drunken revel, overflowing with mead and every intoxicating drink. The race craves these stimulants naturally, and still more incidentally, from the fast life, from the incessant activity, from the hurried and excited nature which modern life gives us,-from some special need of the body itself.

That is our temptation. Again, science, in modern times, has elaborated the processes of manufacturing intoxicating liquor to such a cheap and lavish extent, that a man with one hour's work may be drunk a day; with one-half day's toil may spread his drunkenness over a week. And yet, with this blood, and with science holding out this temptation, and wages holding out these means, and the heavy working of republican institutions. resting on the basis of the people themselves, with no breakwater of bayonet or of despotism, the sense, virtue, purpose of the masses, the pedestal upon which

the great, heavy machine of government must be built, - with these yawning gulfs on each side our national progress, there are men who set their faces against the Temperance agitation, and bid us beware of taking up too much time with the narrow and petty interest which we assume to champion! A drunken people were never the safe depositaries of the power of self-government. Hurried on, the mere victims of demagogues, uncontrollable passion their temptation and their guide, who can safely trust his future and the institutions secured by such toil and such blood, to a race making or groping its way amid such evils and such weakness? I contend that every man who desires the security of democratic institutions is to see to it, first of all, that every possible means be exhausted to secure, so far as human means can, a sober people. To my mind, that is the significance of the Temperance enterprise. I know its other phases, alluded to by my friend, Rev. A. A. Miner, who has just stood here, - the domestic desolation, the individual ruin, the spiritual wreck, the pecuniary loss, the family destruction. I know all that; and to the right mind, there lies the real strength of the Temperance. agitation. But if any man is of too low a level, too sordid a logic to appreciate or acknowledge that argument, at least citizenship and patriotism, at least selfishness may be brought, for one moment, to reflect, when the very ground around him rests secure only so long as the statute-book is upborne, and the rights of life and property secured by a sober people.

The question which we meet to discuss to-night is one of this nature, whether this great principle is to have a fair trial? Mark me! That is my text, Whether this great principle is to have in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts a fair trial? That is all we ask. Boston is a part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The