ABSTRACT
The present important crisis is pregnant with the most serious events, and involves consequences, on the direction of which depends the future welfare or misery of millions of our fellow-beings. As labour is the source of all wealth, so is the fair distribution of its produce the true foundation of all national greatness. The end of all legislation is to protect the weak against the strong, and to accomplish this object is the great purpose of national combination and the only source of human justice; hence the injustice and impolicy of those laws and institutions, whatever might have been the motives that induced their formation, which tend to increase the disproportion of means between the various classes of society. The rights of labour cannot be held sacred in the legislature of the state, and the labourer will reciprocate his respects to the law.
