The federal party embodied the British idea of government, and their notions of liberty differed little, if any, from those of the mother country. _Liberty_ in England consists in the equal protection of person and property in an ordinary sense, but, as liberty, in fact, consists in an equal citizenship or an equal voice in the creation of laws that all are called on to obey, of course those who have no vote or voice in these laws are, to that extent, slaves. It was the policy of the federalists to limit this great natural right of suffrage, and in all the States where they were in the ascendency they sought to do so, as indeed was legitimate and consistent with their fundamental idea of government. Equally consistent and legitimate was their habit of expecting pecuniary benefits from government, for this, as has been said, was the practice in England, and the idea or theory that sprung from it was deeply engraved on the northern mind. While the federalists, therefore, sought to consolidate power in the hands of the federal government and to weaken the States, all the selfish and mercenary interests of the day were naturally attracted to a party whose public policy thus favored and invited their coöperation. The conflict of labor and capital—the frightful antagonism between those whose labor produces all wealth and those who own the wealth produced by past generations of laborers—is at the bottom of all the revolutions and civil commotions of modern times, for it involves the whole subject of government, as well as all those mighty social evils which so disfigure and deform European society. In England this conflict has, in one sense, reached its utmost limit—while in another respect it may be said to be least active or less palpable than anywhere else. The few who own the wealth produced by past generations are the wealthiest in the world, while the many who produce all the wealth of the present are undoubtedly the poorest! _Those who produce every thing enjoy nothing, while those who produce nothing enjoy every thing!_ A political economist of great eminence has made an estimate of the present wealth of England, and declared that, if equally divided, every man, woman, and child in England would have ten thousand pounds, or fifty thousand dollars, and yet supposes that there are ten millions of people who never own a dollar beyond their daily support! The land is owned by some thirty-five thousand proprietors, many of whom have large parks containing many thousand acres, filled with game and left untilled, while millions of men and women of their own race—their own kind—are without a single foot of that which God designed for the common sustenance and comfort of all! Education, moral development, and happiness must go hand in hand with these things, of course; indeed, it is a truth that should always be recognized when estimating the well-being of masses of men, that their moral and physical well-being are necessarily inseparable.