Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/190

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS bases those whose toil alone can produce wealth and resources for defense to the lowest degree of which human nature is capable — ^to guard against mutiny and insurrection; and thus wastes energies which otherwise might be em- ployed in national development and aggrandize- ment. Russia yet maintains slavery and is a despot- ism. Most of the other European States have abolished slavery and adopted the system of free labor. It was the antagonistic political tendencies of the two systems which the first Napoleon was contemplating when he predicted that Europe would ultimately be either all Cos- sack or all republican. Never did human sagac- ity utter a more pregnant truth. The two systems are at once perceived to be incongruous. But they are more than incongruous — they are incompatible. They never have permanently existed together in one country and they never can. It would be easy to demonstrate this im- possibility from the irreconcilable contrast be- tween their great principles and characteristics. But the experience of mankind has conclusively established it. Slavery, as I have already intimated, existed in every State in Europe. Free labor has sup- planted it everywhere except in Russia and Turkey. State necessities developed in modem times are now obliging even those two nations to encourage and employ free labor ; and already, despotic as they are, we find them engaged in 180