Frances Wright: “The People at War”

What distinguishes the present from every other struggle in which the human race has been engaged, is, that the present is, evidently, openly and acknowledgedly, a war of class, and that this war is universal. It is no longer nation pitched against nation for the good pleasure and sport of Kings and great Captains, nor sect cutting the throats and masting the carcasses of sect for the glory of God and satisfaction of priests, nor is it one army butchering another to promote the fortunes of their leaders—to pass from a James to a George or a Charles to a Louis Philip the privilege of coining laws, money and peers, and dividing the good things of the land among his followers. No; it is now everywhere the oppressed millions who are making common cause against oppression; it is the ridden people of the earth who are struggling to throw from their backs the “booted and spurred” riders whose legitimate title to starve as well as to work them to death will no longer pass current; it is labor rising up against idleness, industry against money, justice against law and against privilege. And truly the struggle hath not come too soon. Truly there hath been oppression and outrage enough on the one side, and suffering and endurance enough on the other, to render the millions rather chargeable with excess of patience and over abundance of good nature than with too eager a spirit for the redress of injury, not to speak of recourse to vengeance.