But the government actually established by the federalists—by the false construction of the Constitution, and the usurpations in practice which would have kept the producing classes—the toiling millions—in the same or similar subjection to a ruling oligarchy, as is now witnessed in England, and which, in the course of time, would render them equally abject, poverty-stricken, ignorant, and miserable, would seem to be, in view of all the circumstances then existing, beyond their power to change or reform by a civil revolution like that which did occur in 1800, or to overthrow by the strong hand of physical force. The great civil revolution, therefore, when able and accomplished statesmen of the South, the equals in talent, and vastly superior to any class in Christendom in political knowledge, led the northern producing classes through the great conflict then pending, and overthrowing the centralists restored the government to its original purity and simplicity, must be deemed, as has been said, only second in importance to the great event of 1776. And the social condition in the South, the so-called slavery, which invariably renders the southern planter the natural ally of the northern farmer, must be considered, as it obviously is in fact, the sole, or at all events the leading cause for the successful working of democratic institutions, as it was originally the sole and unquestionable cause that originated the great American idea of government embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Nor are the consequences of that condition of so-called slavery—the existence of a subordinate social element at the South which has thus, with more or less directness, worked out the equality, freedom, and happiness of the laboring classes of the North—limited to our own land or to our own people. As has been observed, the conflict of capital and labor is the great question of the day—the question that is at the bottom of all the European revolutions of modern times, and its solution must, of necessity, involve the destruction of every government now in existence except our own. _Capital_ in the old world has the education and intelligence as well as the government on its side against the people, and the simple fact that, in half of the American States, capital and labor are united, inseparable, and indissoluble, is of transcendent importance to the future liberation of the laboring millions of Europe.