“Do we not perceive, at this very moment, the extraordinary and melancholy spectacle of less than one hundred thousand capitalists, by means of this unhallowed combination, exercising an absolute and despotic control over the opinions of eight millions of free citizens and the fortunes and destinies of ten millions? “Sir, I will not anticipate or forbode evil. _I will not permit myself to believe that the Presidency of the United States will ever be bought and sold._ But I must say that there are certain quarters of this Union in which, if the candidate for the Presidency should come forward with this Harrisburg tariff in his hand, nothing could resist his pretensions if his adversary were opposed to this _unjust system of oppression_.” * * * * * “Indeed, Sir, when I contemplate the extraordinary infatuation _which a combination of capitalists and politicians_ have had the heart to diffuse over more than one-half of this Union—when I see the very victims who are about to be offered up to satiate the voracious appetite of this devouring Moloch, paying their ardent and sincere devotions at his bloody shrine; I confess I have been tempted to doubt whether mankind was not doomed, even in its most enlightened state to be the dupe of some form of imposture, and the victim of some form of tyranny. [Illustration: How American Capital Protects American Labor] “Sir, in casting my eyes over the history of human idolatry, I can find nothing, even in the _darkest_ ages of ignorance and superstition, which surpasses the infatuation by which _a confederated priesthood of politicians and manufacturers_ have bound the great body of the people of the farming States of this Union as if by a spell, TO THIS MIGHTY SCHEME OF FRAUD AND DELUSION.” * * * * * Bear in mind that this speech was made in 1824. Then look around you and see how prophetically Mr. McDuffie pictured the future. The Presidency is bought and sold. Congress is bought and sold. The confederated priesthood of politicians and manufacturers do dominate an infatuated people whom it deludes and plunders. The Trusts are nothing in the world but the legitimate children of Privilege and Protection. Campaign boodle-funds are nothing in the world but the sop which the Corrupt Combination of Capitalists pay to renew the lease which they hold on the Government. And, as Mr. McDuffie said, the most astounding feature of the whole diabolical system is the completeness with which the politicians and the Privileged can dupe the victims of Protection into the belief that _Privilege_ benefits the unprivileged. With the doors of immigration standing wide open vomiting into our industrial world all the cheap white labor of the universe, our Protected capitalists are still able to convince our wage-earners that American capital protects American labor from the competition of foreign “pauper” labor!