Machinery has never cheapened the supply of raw materials which come directly from the soil, because its use for cultivation has only been exceptional, and it can never become general as long as land is held in small tracts. This very condition is the one which will engage the attention of investors in land for the profits of use, and at the first permanent advance in the price of your food staples the operation of turning small farms into large ones will begin. The privilege and the hope of all to get possession of a large or small portion of the earth’s surface, gives to your personal ownership system an appearance of fairness not at variance with your popular aspirations of equality, and the evil will not be generally admitted, until it gets to be more seriously felt. I am sorry to say of you that the principle of equality, as we understand it, has never been sincerely considered or acted upon by any of the governments of the earth. You have taken it for granted that a serving and dependent class, composing four-fifths of your numbers, must always assist to make up the sum of your population, and no legislative measure can be found in your records which sustains this large body of your people against the encroachments with which wealth and capital are continually permitted to invade their interests. Liberty itself is of but little value, when life becomes a forfeiture of all the ways and means to improve it. There is, in fact, no liberty in the correct sense, where all the moments of life must be bartered for the means to live. So far as your development has progressed, the sentiment of brotherhood, as we know it, has never intruded itself into the spirit of your legislation. The spectacle of four-fifths of your number toiling from sun to sun to no purpose but that the balance may be enriched has inspired no compassion, and evoked no measure of relief. In the regions of your authority, where there should be some touch of the fraternal instinct, nothing presides but the selfish and mercenary genius of Mammon. The divine impulse for better things is among you, but instead of laying out its work in the practical affair of life, it has been diverted into the channels of your busy but unfruitful creeds. You wear your religion like a holiday garment. We have learned to wear ours as a common garb.