Under these conditions they will soon come to argue like this:—Was it
not enough to demand of industry that it should fight the battles for
the government? Was it not enough that the working-classes should lay
down their lives by thousands upon a hundred fields of battle? Was it
not enough that mothers and wives should give their sons and husbands to
fill the soldier’s grave that the wealth of the country might remain
inviolate? Was it not enough that we did all this without now being
forced to give our toil year after year to return these rich, who did
nothing, these loans? Is it too much to ask of wealth that it pay the
expenses of the war? Should we not rather demand, in tones of thunder if
lesser ones are insufficient to rouse its holders to a sense of their
duty, that it shall bear its part of the burden? We have looked on
quietly and seen the sufferings to which this people are reduced by the
rapacity of the usurers, until we can no longer hold our peace; and if
it be in our power, we intend that wealth and not industry shall yet be
made to pay what it should have been made to pay at first; that it shall
return to the government the bonds which the toiling masses have
redeemed by the rivers of blood that they have shed, and that the
government shall return the $2,000,000,000 of interest that it has
already filched from industry for interest on this most unjust debt. In
other words, since we gave the lives that it was necessary to sacrifice
to conquer the rebellion from our ranks, we intend that the rich shall
give from what they had when the rebellion broke out, to pay all the
expenses of the war, and we will never rest until this be done.
These, I say, are the arguments to which the suffering labourers will
resort if you permit them to is driven to desperation by hunger from
want of employment. If the rich were wise, they would forestall all
opportunity for such arguments to be used, by coming forward voluntarily
to do them justice. If what I have suggested will be their arguments, is
true, as you know that it is, then wealth should pay the expenses of the
war without any further delay, because it is a gross injustice, not to
say an unwarrantable imposition on good nature, to make the men who did
the fighting also pay this debt, while those for whom it was mostly
fought have done nothing but to speculate out of it. Perhaps you have
never looked at it in this light; but if you have not, then I pray you
look at it so now, before your attention shall be called to it in an
unpleasant way; for, unless relief come soon to those who are suffering
the pangs of hunger, by reason of your blindness, there will be an
imperious demand made of you.