Never at any stage of American history was there such a crisis of ideas as at present, and never was there such urgent necessity of setting promptly, vigorously and clearly before the people the great and new principles which this crisis is bringing to life. So vast are the issues involved, so tremendous their inevitable consequences, that we acquit of exaggeration the statesman who, in comparing even the gradual unfolding of the mighty past with this our present, exclaimed, 'Now is the first of the world's progress.'[A] [Footnote A: Hon. Daniel S. Dickinson.] The reader is doubtless perfectly familiar with the fact that in the battle between the North and the South two opposite principles are involved,--the same which have been at the bottom of all wars for freedom, from the beginning of time. The one party believes that one portion of society must flourish at the expense of another part, of a permanently sunken class; while the other holds that history proves that the lot of all persons in a commonwealth is capable of being gradually ameliorated, and that in any case it is our sacred duty to legislate for the poor, on this basis, by allowing them equal rights, and making every exertion to extend the best blessings of education to them, and open to every man, without distinction, every avenue of employment for which he is qualified. The Northern party, or that of equal rights and free labor, like their predecessors, hold many ideas which coming years will see realized, for--as has always been the case in these contests--science and learning are always on the liberal side. By a strange accident, for the first time almost in history, the Republican party is for once in its constituted rights, on its own ground, while the feudal or conservative wing form the aggressors. As of old, too, the Southern conservatives are enforcing theories once the property of their foes, who have now advanced to broader, nobler, and more gloriously liberal views. For instance, the men of the South believe that labor and capital are still antagonisms. Now it is true enough that they _once_ were, and that when the _people_ in different ages first began to rebel against their hereditary tyrants, the workman was only a serf to his capitalist employer. That was the age when demagogues flourished by setting 'the poor' against 'the rich.' A painful, sickening series of wars it was, ending too often by labor's killing itself with its adversary. Then, a foul, false 'democracy' was evolved, which was virtually a rank aristocracy, not of nobility, but of those who could wheedle the poor into supporting them. Such was the history of nearly all 'radicalism' and 'democracy' from the days of Cleon and Alcibiades down to the present time.