A majority which more than doubled itself in 40 years. Do these figures show aggressions of the South?

It is not true that the South has ever demanded that a single inch of free territory should be devoted to slavery. Slavery existed on every foot of the territory of the Louisiana purchase. The position of the South was, that as laws protecting slavery already existed over all that regionlaws which had not been repealed-it was not competent for the territory during its minority to repeal those laws. It always agreed that the instant any State was formed out of that territory it might repeal or retain the old laws protecting slavery, as it chose, by the sovereigu power of a State. Not so the North. It planted itself upon the aggressive and preposterous doctrine that a State might not come into the Union unless its constitution agreed with the northern prejudice on the subject of negro servitude. The demand of the North was no more slave States!" When did the South set up her dictum that any State might not abolish or retain slavery as it pleased, by the free exercise of its so

vereign choice? Never. The dictation, the interference, the aggression, have been always, and everywhere, on the part of the North. This is history. On the part of the South nowhere-never! It has always been willing that every State should manage its own domestic affairs in its own way, subject to no limitations except such as are specified in the Constitution of the United States. History shows that it had kept, in good faith, the compact of the Union for more than forty years after it had been broken by the North. This is not a pala

of an independent and faithful journalist, like that of the historian, is to tell the truth. If Mr. Lincoln, or Mr. Seward, or any of their supporters, can show that we do not state the facts fairly, we shall be most happy to give their article a place in THE OLD GUARD. We repeat again, that in this difficulty between the North and South, the "aggressions" have ever been the work of the North, and we challenge contradiction. It is easy to deny, to denounce, to assert, to complain-" as easy as lying"-but let us see the Republican who dare step forward to vindicate his assertions by an appeal to history. We have in vain sought for such a Republican. Perhaps Mr. Phillips, or Mr. Sumner, might, by their friends, be supposed willing to come forward and accept this offer. But they will not. They dare not trust their cause to a fair and open debate. We are not aware that either of these gentlemen ever attempted to debate the merits of their cause. They are fluent enough in "glittering generalities," and can make a plausible case from assumed

but false premises; but when have they ever ventured to trust these premises to the scrutiny of debate? Mr. Douglas once knocked away the scaf folding on which Mr. Sumner set up an argument on the floor of the United States Senate, and Mr. Sumner replied by representing Mr. Douglas as a "skunk." We are not aware that the Senator from Massachusetts ever approached any nearer to a debate than this. It is the way with his class. If it were not for assumption and impudence their public harangues would be meagre indeed. Masters of the art of

declamation, they ignore the use of facts and the logic of reason. They can take a fictitious Uncle Tom through a vast variety of scenes, calculated to harrow the imagination and inflame the passions. But what could they do with a real Uncle Tom? He would be as uninteresting and as inanimate in their hands as a piece of charred wood. Their Uncle Tom is an own brother to their "southern aggressions." Neither has any existence except in the imaginations of their own brains. Their facts are fictions-their proofs lies.

IN referring to the late meetings of the workingmen of our country, a popular journal sneeringly says: "The "The people who have nothing to lose, generally make the greatest fuss about their losses in times of financial embarrassment."

This sentence is as heartless as it is false and unjust. It is the language of ignorance, or delirious pride. The "people" of whom it speaks must have the means of subsistence, and the loss of that means is something as vital to them, and indeed more vital, than the loss of millions of money to the capitalist. It is their all. Shall we be told that the man who has no wealth but that which is in his muscle, has nothing to lose? The coarse garments that cover his body, the small rented room for which he must somehow pay, the little income with which he maintains his wife and childrenall that, to be sure, is not land, is not a splendid mansion, is not equipage of fine horses; and opulence and ignorance may call it nothing, and it may be nothing to opulence and ignorance; but it is something to humanity, it is everything to a man's wife and children.

It is a sacred property--as sacred, unquestionably, as the superb domains of opulence. This man's right in the means of support should be as sacredly guarded by the laws as the banker's hoarded gold.

And the right of the workingmen to peaceably meet and freely discuss the causes of the failure of the means of support, is as unquestioned as their

right to life. A full and free canvassing of all the causes that have led to the suffering of the masses, so far from being ridiculed by the press, should be abundantly encouraged by every friend of freedom and humanity. But, the newspapers tell us, "there is danger that they will combine against property." The way to prevent disagreeable and dangerous combinations is to give to all classes of society their rights, and never force them to brood over in secret what they are forbidden to discuss in public. The bitter sense of wrong will be only the deeper and more dangerous for suppression.

We have been told that "the meetings of the laboring men are carefully watched, and will not be allowed to go beyond a point of prudence." Who, but themselves, shall be the judges of what is prudent for them to say? No matter if the opinions they utter are not agreeable to us, that does not, in the least, affect their eternal right to hold and speak them. Shall they whose toil and industry have reared all the mansions and supplied all the feasts of the world be told that they are "watched," whenever they meet to consider how they shall best escape the destitution and want that stare them in the face? When such insulting threats are made, is it not time. the people began to "watch" those who make them? We say yes.

The true relative position of capital and labor is nowhere put with more terseness and truth than in Burke's

celebrated "Thoughts on Scarcity." That great man having long employed his unrivalled powers in defense of rank and riches, not as mere abstractions, but as elements of order and security, closed his career with recording his settled conviction on the relative position of the wealthy and the laboring classes. 'Not only state and statesmen," he says, "but all classes and descriptions of the rich are the pensioners of the poor, and are maintained by their superfluity. They are under an absolute hereditary and indefeasable dependence on those who labor, and are miscalled poor; and who in reality feed both the pensioners and themselves."

These compendious admissions, the result of long experience acting on a most acute and capacious intellect, receive additional value from their having proceeded from one who was practically, and in heart, as determined an opponent of the socialistic levelling doctrines as ever lived. There is nothing in them that encourages the mad and suicidal schemes of labor seeking to war upon capital, while it clearly recognises the stupendous folly and injustice of capital attempting to scourge or coerce labor.

Hundreds of thousands of working people are now descending, by no fault of their own, and will soon be deprived of the means of support for themselves and families. Shall no effort be made to remedy this great calamity? While thousands of contractors are making at this moment millions and millions out of the government, shall the people who do all the labor of the country be left to starve, and to be told, if they meet to consider their case, that they are "watched?"

In our opinion, the workingmen should begin, in steady, solemn earnest, to "watch," and to prepare to protect themselves from the selfishness and madness of the men who seem to think they are only the dependent, passive agents of capital and power. The working man who now receives nominally twelve dollars a week for his services, really gets but five, or at most six dollars. How is he to support his family off of this pittance? Every day the stuff he receives as money is growing less in value, while the necessaries of life are constantly increasing in price. What is to become of him? Is he to wait in supineness until starvation is actually upon him? Is he to sit still until he is too weak and too helpless to save himself and his family from destruction? We see no possible relief but in combination - peaceable, but resolute and carnest combination. A single poor man is powerless to protect or save himself; but a hundred, or a thousand, or ten thousand, or a hundred thousand poor men, wisely acting in concert, are a power which is able to say to those who insultingly tell them that they are "watched," So are you watched," and by those who hold the forces of the country in their hands! When a free people consent to be watched, their liberties are already half gone. The laboring men of New York are reminded almost every day by silly people who have grown suddenly rich out of the profits of shoddy, that "Gen. Dix is here with 20,000 soldiers to watch you." What stupidity! What impolicy! Cannot these inflated dolts, these despicable accidents of shoddy, see that if it has really come to watching, the laboring

classes are here, to the number of two hundred thousand, to watch Gen. Dix, or whoever else may be sent to intimidate them? We wish the delirious disciples of Mr. Lincoln's despotism could be made wise in time. We wish the press in Mr. Lincoln's interest could be persuaded to lower its haughty and insulting tone when it speaks of the movements of labor. We see that in West Hoboken, N. J., the laboring men have in good sound earnest rebuked the intolerance with which they are treated by the support ers of the war. At a town-meeting of the taxable inhabitants a vote was unanimously passed to issue township scrip to raise the necessary funds to either exempt, or get substitutes, for all the conscripts of that place. It was left optional with the drafted man whether he would take the $300 and pay his exemption, or take $400 and add of his own funds what might be necessary to procure a substitute. But capitalists and the banks, while they were ready to advance, on the credit of the town, all funds necessary to procure substitutes, refused to advance a cent to pay exemptions. A laborer's meeting was called, numerously attended, at which the following resolutions were unanimously passed:

"1. Resolved, That the poor man is the one who least of all can afford to go to the war ; that the rich can best afford to go, because if they should be killed, or maimed, or lose their health, they would not leave their families to the wretched fate of the pauper, as the poor inevitably would do.

"2. Resolved, That it is true economy, as well as justice and humanity, to keep the poor at home to labor for the support and education of their own families, while they cheerfully accord to the rich and the ambitious the honor and glory of fighting the battles of their country.

"3. Resolved, That those banks and capitalists who refuse to lend money, abundantly secured by the faith of townships and coun

ties, to pay the exemption of those who are, unfortunately, too poor to procure substitutes, evince an inhumanity, and a contempt for the poor, which shuts them out from the application of the divine rule, 'Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.'

"4. Resolved, That it is the duty of the poor to thoroughly understand who are their friends, and to faithfully stand by each other, whatever the pressing emergency that may overwhelm them."

At the same meeting it was resolved to form an association of laboring men to hold weekly meetings for the purpose of aiding one another in the midst of the want which so threateningly scowls at the poor. If the war lasts six months longer, the poor man will find himself working six days to get dinners for his family for three days. Shall he wait until starvation is upon him before he moves for safety and defence? Now, while yet they can, the laboring masses ought to form, in every neighborhood, associations, which, by paying small weekly dues, may gather a little fund, to be used for relief, however small, in some hour when all other sources may fail for a day's subsistence. That politician who would quiet the poor with the assu rance that all is going well-that there is no danger of want-is either a knave or a dolt. The trash they now receive as money is worth only about thirty-five cts. on the dollar, and growing every hour less, while all the necessaries of life are rapidly going up in price. A few stages more, and the man who receives nominally $12 a week for his labor, will really get only $3. That sum will not support his family for one day. But the Abolitionist will say, "let him go into the army!" And leave his family to starve, or to be made paupers! And finally, his wife left a widow, and his children orphans! The rich can better afford