Peace meeting in New York.
In the New York
News, of the the 24th February, we find the proceedings of a large and enthusiastic meeting of the working men of that city.
It was presided over by
Mr. M. D. Bucklin,
President of the
Working Men's Association, who opened the proceedings with a spirited address.
The following are the resolutions adopted and leading speech delivered on the occasion:
Resolved, That it is time the people moved in their primary meetings and announced their sentiments upon the great issues soon to come before them for decision — that if we would save our Government, we must rescue it from the hands of professional politicians, who merely pursue their selfish once, regardless of their country's welfare.
[Applause]
Resolved, That the present party in power is revolutionary in its character and designs; that it does not aim to save the
Union but to destroy it. [Applause] That its promises have been lies and its professions frauds; that it seeks two bold and glaring innovations, either of which it carried out, are destructive of the
Government as it was formed.
First, I seeks to overthrow the reserved rights of States, thereby establishing a consolidated despotism; and second, it proposes to change the from the white race, as it was placed by the
Constitution, and include negroes as equals of white men, thereby turning it into a mongrelism.
[Cheers]
Resolved, That the attempt by the so called Republican party to equalize the races, is but the carrying out of a deep laid scheme of the monarchists of
Europe to destroy republican institutions on this continent, by degrading the laboring and producing classes to a level with negroes, and to introduce the artificial distinctions of classes, as in the old world, in the place of the natural distinctions of races, looking forward to the day when the masses will become as effete and demoralized as in
Mexico, thus paying the way for a monarchy, as in that country; and we hereby arraign the present party in power as in league with the monarchists and despots of
Europe for this purpose, and as having basely and ignominiously surrendered the
Monroe doctrine, a principle essential to the safety of Democratic institution.
[Applause.]
Resolved, That the present war, whatever may have been its design in the outset, is now unequivocally nothing but a pretext for carrying out the traditional policy of
England in this country--first commenced by the old Federal or Tory party under
John Adams's administration, and now continued under this its legitimate successor; that the proof that the
Lincoln Administration is acting in concert with
England is to be found in
Solicitor Whiting's letter, in which he says that to reverse the Abolition policy would be to "break faith with
Europe."
Resolved, That we protest against lighting for kings and despots, and paying our own expenses to enslave ourselves, that the present war has already inflicted untold miseries and privations on the working classes, taking them thirty cents on every pound of coffee they need for their families, ten cents on every pound of sugar, fifty cents on every pound of cotton, while their wages are paid in a depreciated rag currency, worth only sixty cents on the dollar, and their shoulders loaded with a public debt which will put them and their children on "half rations" to pay the interest into the pockets of shoddy contractors and greenback patriots.
[Enthusiastic applause.]
Resolved, That the first duty of the people of the
North is to restore the constitutional Government which the present usurper at
Washington has overthrown; that when the
Constitution, as construed by the Supreme Court and as administered by every
President from
Washington to
Buchanan is re-established, the
Union will be re-established, and not till then.
[Applause.]
Resolved, That the war is prosecuted for the sole and only purpose of preventing this restoration of the
Union; that it is so avowed by all the leading Republicans in and out of Congress, and hence all who support the war aid in preventing a restoration of the
Union, and are allies of the Abolition disunion party, which for thirty years has declared it would, if possible, accomplish just what it has done and is doing.
[Applause.]
Resolved, That the time has arrived when it is necessary to form a Democratic Union party upon an anti-war, anti Abolition, State rights basis, place the
Government back where it stood before
Mr. Lincoln and his party demoralized it, and then the Federal Union becomes what it was intended to be — a Government to secure the "domestic tranquillity" of all the States, as essential to the
South as to the
North, and a benefit of such transcendent importance as to be rejected by no one of them.
Resolved, That the entire financial policy of the present Administration tends to divide the community into two classes, viz: those who produce nothing and enjoy all, and those who produce all and enjoy nothing; [applause] and that the time has arrived when the working men must organize for their own protection; that the evils that now afflict the trades and mechanic arts are wholly political in their origin, and a permanent remedy for them is only to be found in one grand and general "strike" to get the present Abolition oligarchy out of power.
[Applause.]
Resolved, That we are not in favor of Abolition or negro equality, and that history has proved that freeing the negroes is simply a tax upon the white laboring classes; and that we protest against the policy which will allow four millions of negroes to cease the production of cotton, sugar, rice, etc.--articles essential to the laboring classes — as a gross outrage upon them, and as tending to increase the price of those articles to such a degree as to allow of their consumption only by the wealthy and pampered Abolition aristocrats, who invest their money in "five twenties," where, exempt from all taxation, it pays nine per cent interest, even in war times!
[Applause.]
Resolved, That the
Chairman of this meeting be requested to appoint a committee, consisting of thirteen members, of which he shall be the ex-officio
Chairman, to draft an address to the working men of the
United States, calling their attention to the evils which now affect the laboring classes, the unequal taxation with which they are now burdened by the unjust laws of Congress, which exempt the rich at the expense of the poor — to the national debt, which is at all times a despotism, and to suggest such remedies or modes of action to mitigate present wrongs and avert new ones as shall be most likely to accomplish these ends.
[Applause.]
The
Chairman then stated that as soon as the committee to draft an address shall have been appointed, the names of the gentlemen constituting the committee will be officially announced.
Chauncey C. Burr was then introduced to the meeting, and received a most cordial and enthusiastic reception from the audience.
As soon as the enthusiasm had subsided,
Mr. Burr spoke substantially as follows:
‘
Mr. President: On being called up to address this association of working men I call to mind a passage in
Edmund Burke's celebrated "Thoughts on Scarcity," in which that great observer of the relative position and duties of the rich and laboring classes confesses that "Not only States and states men, but all classes and descriptions of the rich are pensioners of the working class, and are maintained by their superfluity.
They are under an absolute, hereditary, and indispensable dependence on those who labor, and miscalled the poor, and in reality feed both the pensioner and themselves." It is pleasing to read these compendious admissions, when the newspaper organs of the Administration are seriously discussing the necessity of restricting the franchise by a property qualification — when Congress is passing laws to throw taxation off of banks and capital that the whole weight may be rolled upon the shoulders of labor and industry — and when the whole machinery of revenues is being so constructed as to make capital the master of labor.
What is there in the present hour that does not mortify and alarm and make desperate the friend of the people and the well-wisher of his country?
’
The money you receive for your labor is depreciated forty per cent, from the good old fashioned Democratic dollar.
But your wages have not gone up four hundred per cent. Your real income from your labor does not keep in sight of your increased necessary expenditures.
That is the way the Administration have made the working classes prosperous.--Partisan contractors may be prosperous.--Those who have the handling of the public funds may be prosperous.
A good chance to steal may render those prosperous who are within the ing, according to
Mr. Lincoln's and
Mr. Seward's comprehension of prosperity.
But their prosperity is the ruin of the masses.
The boundless avarice which this war feeds is the eternal foe of the working man; and it will usual labor here into the same dependent and helpless condition of labor in the Old World, unless the working classes, the masses of the people, throw off the yoke which is now being placed upon their necks.
War enriches a few at the expense of the many.
This is why the plundering few always rave as if possessed of the devil at the least mention of peace.
