The vagaries of any faction with reference to their version of the true purpose of the organization of the State mattered but little, he thought, under a republican form of government, without votes to carry them into effect. The bookish speculations of abstract scientists upon the Economy of Society, he clearly saw, were of no more importance than the predictions of the savants in Egypt, whom Napoleon ordered with the jackasses to the rear. He reflected that both of the great parties had usually relegated theorists to the rear; that neither of them was able to command the millions of voters (who set up their own crude notion of the solution of the grave problems of the future of America, respecting the distribution and employment of the vast wealth accumulated, and daily accumulating, through the industrial developments of a mighty nation, which she must protect in every branch); that the standing army of Knights had established a thoroughly equipped trust over vast realms of commerce, and had set up their philosophy of government, and had undertaken the rectification of supposed economic maladjustments. The danger, he anticipated, was not so much in their theories as from their ballots. In the multifarious products of our social evolution, he could not clearly discern any insuperable obstacle to the final conquest by unscrupulous political agitators of those estrays from the Constitution whose tendency now was towards a gradual consolidation which would loosen Labor from all constitutional moorings.
Notwithstanding the several interests of the separate schools were at first apparently or professedly antagonistic, and although discordant bodies to-day respecting remedial forces, he thought to-morrow these various orders might unite their separate organizations to reap advantages in which none could participate without the combined effort of the whole.
He reflected that, although there may be a lull in sociological agitations, the main question would in the future reappear, and with increasing strength force its solution upon the nation. He also perceived that the present clap-trap arguments of their apostles aimed at a pretended justice above law, and had reared Labor to an equal height with thrones. The federation of the labor party, in all its departments, he saw, sympathized with
