BRIGHTLY. What is liberty? An unwanted, useless thing, stamped upon in every prosperous part of the country. Even the old cradle of our fabled liberty rocks for the benefit of the capitalist, who starves his brainless neighbor for the benefit of his vanity. I do not disagree with him. From the beginning, custom, law and tradition have said, it is to him that can. In nature, the large fish eat the smaller. The same of the birds and beasts. The _world_ is a slave pen. Statutes never made a man free. Take in the boasted freedom and civilization of New England, are her working people more free than ours? Does the working man dare assert the rights of a freeman there? The hypocrisy of this presumption is manifest everywhere. The rich demand the servile submission of the poor, and they give it or starve! Be frank. Say that you fight to control for your pocket and stomach. Unite with the slaveholders of the north and shed no more aristocratic blood. Say he that works for another is a slave, and I am with you. D’A. Are you done? BRIGHTLY. For the present. D’A. For the last three years the regulators have lived a life of brigandage for your benefit. They now demand that you shall receive your orders from the department commander. BRIGHTLY. Ah, indeed! Then they propose that the tail shall wag the dog. D’A. The last trap to which you led cost half the command. Take your orders from the proper source, or they refuse to follow you farther. BRIGHTLY. This is treason! D’A. In this instance, it is to him that can. BRIGHTLY. Then they would command? D’A. Or be commanded for a less purposeless object. BRIGHTLY. How long since these brainless brutes set themselves up to direct the intellectual part of this campaign? D’A. Since they have learned that they are without a competent leader. BRIGHTLY. Are they not thieves and drunkards by instinct? D’A. I will convey the insult to the troops. BRIGHTLY. And as much to yourself! D’A. When the country has used my life to its satisfaction, I will resent that in a proper manner. For the present it shall help to make the nation. BRIGHTLY. A nation? What are nations? The synonym of two neighbors who fight across a fence over the scratch of a hen. Their dogs assume the dangerous roles. If the leaders of this breakup were compelled to shoulder a rifle and take themselves to the front, there would be no war. Instead, that Christian concession they call the “Peace Congress,” would come to the front so quick, it would excite your admiration, and its present auxiliaries would still live to swallow insults, instead of sneaking behind the servile hounds they push to the front. D’A. And the brave and honorable Brigand Chief, whose chivalrous ilk forbids such dishonor, would still steal on his helpless enemy at night, though it wore a petticoat, in sightless slumber, and compel the knife and torch to hide his cowardice! BRIGHTLY. (_Drawing knife._) I will not wait for the birth of a nation to settle that insult!