supreme court of the United States, these ominous words: "It is absolutely essential to the independent national existence that _government_ should have a firm hold on the two great sovereign instruments of the _sword_ and the _purse_." This announcement is made from the bench of the supreme court of the United States, on the fifteenth of January, 1872. The government must have a firm hold on the purse and sword. This is the declaration of the court made but a few months before it decided that railroad corporations were public, and that the property of private third parties of the whole people could be taxed to build them. We claim that under our form of government the people are the power to retain the control of the purse and sword; that to place them together in the hands of those persons who fill, for the time being, the government offices, is to take from the governing power its rights. But when the people's purse and the government finances are subject to the action of corporations and rings, the special favorites of the courts, the people are imperatively called upon to arise and assert their rights as freemen--to throw off this oppressive yoke--to stamp with the seal of condemnation, not only the enunciation of such anti-republican sentiment, but the judge who uttered it. The real question at issue between the people and monopolies fostered and protected by government is, whether the people shall rule, or remain the servants and vassals of the monopolists. The final determination of this question will decide whether we are to live under the republic planned and formed for us by our revolutionary ancestors, or are to submit to the oligarchy shaped for us by recent enactments and decisions in favor of a class of men, who, for the sake of private gain, are overturning and destroying our free institutions. The issue is fairly presented; the lines distinctly drawn. The corporate hosts are marshaling their forces; the people, under the lead of the tillers of the soil, are preparing for battle. When the Union was threatened with disruption, and the armies were about to engage in conflict, they armed themselves with the death dealing sword and gun. Hundreds of thousands of brave and patriotic men proved their devotion to their country by the sacrifice of their lives for its preservation. No such sacrifices are now demanded. In a legal, constitutional manner, these corporations, rings, and combinations, can be routed "horse, foot, and dragoons;" their friends "at court" can be displaced; their paid agents and attorneys can be driven from the halls of congress and state legislatures; their judges can be invited to vacate their seats that others, elected by the votes of the people, may fill them; and the standard of "equal rights" can be again reared aloft without the use of bullets or the shedding of blood.