Page:The Civil War in America - an address read at the last meeting of the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society.djvu/23

Rh labour of his fellow. But here, as in many other cases, as in the stories of duelling and stabbing, what was true only of the Slave States has been carelessly said of the Free. In the Free States probably labour is more honoured, idleness more despised, than in any other country in the world. Very rare are the instances, if my observation was correct, of men, however wealthy, who are merely living in luxury on their riches and adding nothing to the common store. As in Italy of old, so in America now, the merchant, however large the fortune he may have secured, seems almost always to retain his connection with commerce; and like the Bardi, the Pitti, and the founders of the house of Medici, to act as a chief of industry and trade. However high men have risen, they are proud to own that it was by labour, even manual labour, that they rose. To have split rails with his own hands was in the eyes of Northern men a proud addition to Mr. Lincoln’s escutcheon, and a recommendation to the highest office in the State. That the American community is immensely wealthy, its bitterest enemies cannot deny; and if labour were not honoured, whence could the wealth come?

In Europe divisions of class are sharp, as we feel to our cost whenever any political or social question is approached. And they run all down the scale. The farmer is an aristocrat, too often a very haughty aristocrat to the labourer; the great tradesman to the small. And each class is ever dreading the claims and struggling against the pretensions of those beneath it. In America class divisions, though by no means extinct, are comparatively faint, and the jealousies and dangers which they entail are mitigated in proportion. All are politically equal, all are comparatively on a level in education and even in