A like executive system, by which the power is vested in a citizen that magnifies him to the proportions of a monarch.

A like judiciary system, that brings with it the accumulation of hundreds of years of reports of decisions which are made to serve as precedents, and complicated and intricate methods of pleading, necessitating a class of skilled experts who alone are permitted to be heard in the pursuit of justice or in defense of wrongs in behalf of their clients.

All these are in direct violation of the principles and affirmations as clearly set forth in the Declaration of Independence, and were incorporated in a government formed by the memorable convention held in Philadelphia in 1787, in the name of freedom and popular rights.

Its logical results are seen to-day in a government in the present order of things, in which landlords and tenants, millionaires and paupers, palaces and hovels, masters and slaves, are rapidly and inevitably increasing, and in which crime, under the guise and protection of law, holds sway over a people robbed, impoverished, and practically disfranchised.

CHAPTER VI.

HISTORY OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE UNITED STATES, AND THE EVILS OF PARTY SPIRIT.

"My ear is pained,

My soul is sick with every day's report

Of wrong and outrage with which the land is filled.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart;

It does not feel for man; the natural bond
Of brotherhood is severed as the flax
That falls asunder at the touch of fire."

It is sufficient for our purpose to date the origin of those causes that in the events of history have culminated in the political parties of the United States to the Norman invasion.

In the eleventh century, William of Normandy crossed the English Channel with an armed force, overpowered the Saxon monarch, and took possession of his kingdom. He parceled out the land to his officers, requiring of them allegiance to his crown and military service as compensation therefor. These lands were let for a rental which secured to the landlords an income, as they were worked by the conquered people, most of whom I went with the land.

In the course of time the military service was exchanged for contributions in money, with

which armies were raised and equipped. As events progressed, the nobility-as William's officers and courtiers were called-began to clamor for more rights and privileges, which in the reign of King John were conceded and specified in the Magna Charta. The party under its authority increased in strength and efficiency so as to ef fectually limit the power of the king.

In the mean time, England became a great maritime power, and when enterprises were opened by the discoveries in the western continent, they were largely entered into by Great Britain, by which extensive additions of territory were made to her dominions. Especially was this the case along the eastern coast of the Atlantic, extending from the Gulf of Mexico. to Newfoundland. Stimulated by the spirit of enterprise, British subjects came over to the colonies and built up societies, calling into requisition political institutions which became objects of interest to the home government.

In a country so distant and possessing such abundant natural resources, the people became more self-reliant, and the love of liberty, which first found expression in religious dissensions in the mother country, blazed afresh amid the freedom of nature in the New World. The spirit of independence was fostered, and grew unconscious

ly, as evidenced by the increasing resistance to the tyranny of the home government; and the disposition to assert their natural rights finally became so strong that an open revolt was the result. Thus originated the Patriot or Republican party. In that revolt, the party demanding natural rights, supported by sympathy and material aid from France, Holland, and Spain, and voluntary exiles from other lands, compelled an acknowledgment of independence.

This was the first real victory for freedom based on a recognition of the natural, equal, and inalienable rights of man. But brief was its triumph. The advocates of vested power derived from kingly authority were unceasing in their vigilance, and when the occasion arose for improving the form of government adopted for the preservation of these rights so gloriously won, a plan was consummated that established in the organic act of the new government the principles of the party that originated with William the Conqueror.

This party was at this time led by Alexander Hamilton, whose fundamental doctrine was that of a natural and inherent division of the people of all civilized countries into distinct classesthe rich and the poor, the rulers and the ruled; and so thoroughly was he imbued with this idea

that he sought with all his energies to frame a government whose powers were as far removed from the control of the people as a government republican in form could be.

In 1786, Mr. Madison, at that time an ardent adherent to Hamilton's views, proposed in the Virginia legislature a convention of deputies to meet at Annapolis, to revise the form of government then existing. Hamilton, a deputy from New York at that convention, presented a plan which was adopted by that convention, for a general convention of all the States to revise the Articles of Confederation. At that convention, which met in May, 1787, the dominant party, known as the Federalist, ignoring the grand and fundamental idea of the divinity and equality of human rights that was the inspiration of the patriot fathers, and for which they sacrificed so much blood and treasure to gain, succeeded in overthrowing them, and establishing a government based on vested powers, over which the people have no control, and whose chief officers are not elected directly by the people nor responsible to them- -a government more favorable to aristocratic rule than that which the Revolutionary fathers had struggled so hard to free themselves from.

But scarcely a decade had passed after its