THE RANDALL FAMILY 1 75
selves (chiefly politicians) have been equally employed in undermining each other. Could there have been such a thing as a really patriotic party, things would not have come to this pass. Nay, even had honest fanatics held sway, it would not have been so bad.
As to philanthropy, it has been a mere pretence to serve the purposes of those who have been amassing wealth by swindling the country. The late treatment of negroes in the North will, I think, cure the slaves of whatever confi- dence they may have had in their pretended friends. We have lost but few of the sneaks and drunkards who have gone to the war, and almost none of the fanatics who dragged us into it, and who, I wish, had been themselves forced to fight it out. The war has been fatal chiefly to the brave and the loyal, and the new generation will come upon the stage bereft of its chiefest ornaments. Tens of thousands who, like Stanley, fought to protect their coun- try have been made a sacrifice to the selfishness of indi- viduals. The laws disregarded in high places are now dis- regarded in low ones, and a new revolution in the North, which was easily to have been predicted, seems to threaten what little yet remains of Liberty and Union. It was once the boast of our country that a poor man could secure com- petency in it ; but the enormous debt, if paid (and univer- sal suffrage will not, I think, pay it), must keep back the poor and advance the rich. When a contest shall com- mence between the poor and the rich, the taxpayers and the debtholders, what else will capital do save unite itself to military power and secure stability by despotism } The end of things is as yet wholly shut out from us. The re- lations of the West to the East are yet to be determined, and no man can foresee the result.
Let us turn from the picture to those social relations
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