Coming down to a representative government, of which personal liberty is the basis, the despotism of laws enacted in the interest of privileged classes are substituted for the personal despotism of monarchs and nobles. What the absolute monarch possesses himself of by the right of might, the privileged class in the popular government possess themselves of by the right of law, everything legal being held to be just. Now is not that precisely the case in this country? Do not all the results of labor accrue to the privileged few? and are not the producing classes just as much enslaved to them as the subjects of an absolute monarch are to him? With this mortification, however. In the last instance, they suffer from conditions over which they have no control; whilst in the former case the conditions by which they are enslaved are of their own formation. And I say, I would rather be the unwilling subject of an absolute monarch than the willing slave of my own ignorance, of which advantage is taken by those who spend their time in endeavoring to prove to me that I am free and in singing the glories of my condition, to hoodwink my reason and to blind my perception. And I further say, that that system of government by which it is possible for a class of people to practice upon my credulity, and, under false pretenses, first entice me to acquiesce in laws by which immense corporations and monopolies are established, and then to induce me to submit to their extortions because they exist according to law, pursuing none but lawful means, is an infernal despotism, compared to which the Russian Czar is a thousand times to be preferred. This may at first seem a sweeping indictment of our form of government, but I say it is just. Suppose we take our railroad system, now amounting to fifty-five thousand miles. At an average cost of eighty thousand dollars per mile for construction and equipment, its total cost would be four billions four hundred millions dollars. To pay the shareholders an eight per cent. dividend for doing nothing, the industries of the country would have to be taxed three hundred and fifty millions dollars over and above the cost of maintenance and operation. Did this enormous drain from the products of the people stop here, the fertility of the country, made use of by the ingenuity of the people, might possibly keep pace with the demand. But it does not stop there. The net earning of the railroads enables their directors to make larger dividends than eight per cent. Do their managers relinquish this increase in favor of the people? Never a bit of it. But they increase their stock either by selling new shares, or by making stock or scrip dividends, and to neither process has there been found any legal bar or cure.