Under these circumstances the friends of the constitution deemed a reply fit and proper and urged the writer to undertake the task. In the discharge of this duty he has endeavored to vindicate the rights and interests of the laboring classes from the unjust aspersions and cruel implications contained in the gentleman's speech. He has endeavored to rescue the constitution which secures equal rights and privileges to all-to the poor and to the rich, the native-born and the resident foreigner-from the grasp of sharpers and monopolists and the slanders of their advocates. What is here written has been written in great haste and at intervals snatched from other and pressing engagements. Imperfect as it is, it is committed to the public in the hope that it may aid in accomplishing the great design which the true friends of the people and future state of Wisconsin have in view. In closing it may be proper to remind the people that the present is for them a fearful struggle. The cup of liberty, equal rights, and constitutional protection is presented to them. Every effort is used to induce them to dash it away and still cling to the beggarly remains of feudal oppression. Every species of misrepresentation is resorted to in order to prevent a calm consideration of the instrument itself. Frightful predictions are uttered by mouthing politicians to induce the people to forget that the fertility of the soil and the products of labor are the elements of prosperity and that just and equal laws are the foundation of happiness. But, fellow citizens, be not deceived; your rights are now placed in your own hands. Let not your grasp loosen for a moment, that your enemies may snatch them away. Be not inactive. The foe is aroused to his most desperate energies. He is putting forth all his strength and subtlety. The power of self-government is now with you. Let it not départ, lest it depart forever. Come up to the contest with the shout and strength of freemen who know their rights and dare maintain them. Adopt the constitution and make Wisconsin what Nature designed her, the Queen of the West, and what your votes will thus render her, "the land of the free and the home of the brave." HOMESTEAD EXEMPTION [March 3, 18471 Many of the opponents of the constitution make this the ground of their opposition. They contend that it is fraught with more mischief than was contained in Pandora's box. They say it is a “new” measure and of course a dangerous one. They reason on the positions taken by a learned English bishop of bygone times "that an old error is worth two new truths." But is this principle so very new, as these sticklers for antiquity contend? As they have great veneration for "authorities," let us give them some names in support of these measures, which have generally been supposed to carry some weight. Says Jefferson: "I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self-evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living." Blackstone affirms: "There is no foundation in nature, in natural law, why a set of words on parchment should convey the dominion of land." This is good common sense. Paley declares: "No one is able to produce a charter from heaven, or has any better title to a particular possession than his neighbor." The affirmation of Gray is equally in point: "The earth is the habitation, the natural inheritance of all mankind, of ages present and to come; a habitation belonging to no man in particular, but to every man ; and one in which all have an equal right to dwell." To the same effect are the words of M. Jacques: "What are the rights to which men are entitled by the laws of nature, or the gifts of the Creator? The Declaration of Independence has already named some of them; that is, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; to which I will add an equal right to the earth, and other elements, all equally indispensable to the existence of man." Said Mr. Channing: "The remedy I propose for the increasing pauperism of the United States is the location of the poor on the lands of the far West, which would not only afford permanent relief to ou unhappy brethren, but would restore that self-respect and honorable principle inseparable to citizenship." President Jackson proposed the same thing in his annual message, 1831: "To afford every American citizen of enterprise the opportunity of securing an independent freehold, it seems to me best to abandon the idea of raising a future revenue out of the public lands." Said Black Hawk, when asked to sell out his country: "My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon, and cultivate, so far as is necessary for their subsistence; and so long as they occupy and cultivate it, they have the right to the soil. But if they voluntarily leave it, then any other people have a right to settle upon it. Nothing can be sold but such things as can be carried away." The Great Spirit gave the earth to man-to the race-not to the favored few; and a portion of it is the birthright of every man. If so, then for the government in its legislation to deprive any part of their just inheritance is downright usurpation. Says Burlamaqui: "They are all inhabitants of the same globe, placed in a kind of vicinity to each other; have all one common nature, the same faculties, same inclinations, wants, and desires. Man finds himself naturally attached to the earth, from whose bosom he draws whatever is necessary for the preservation and conveniences of life." We repeat that a man has a right to live and to be upon the earth; he has a right to breathe the air, to a free use of light and water; he has equally a right to share of the products of the earth, and hence he has a right to a portion of this earth on which to rear those products. These are natural rights. But without entering into a discussion of these, let us meet the objections of the opponents of this measure. The first and foremost in the catalogue is, "It will keep out capital." But how, no man has told us and no man can tell. We sincerely believe the reverse of this will prove true; for whatever tends to secure to labor its full reward must tend to the increase of capital among the masses. What is capital but an accumulation of the products of labor? Capital is created by labor; and without labor money itself is of no account-it is as valueless as pearls upon the desert, which can furnish the lost traveler neither bread nor water. But how is it to keep out capital? Why, it will destroy confidence. But how? Is confidence between man and man founded in the right of the one to turn the other into the street, with a dependent family? Is this the basis of confidence and credit? We think not. The Indians of our forests are trusted by the trader on a different principle, and the Arab of the desert is trusted by merchants of the caravans, and the instance of a failure of one to redeem his promise cannot be found. It is our opinion that the knowledge that our fundamental law secures a man in the possession of his homestead, and that, whatever may be the vicissitudes of fortune, there is no law that can turn his family into the street and make him a vagabond will be one of the greatest inducements to emigration. The principle of exemption has obtained in every state of the Union. The only question now is, Are we going a step too far? The community requires of an individual that he shall be able to support and educate his family. If he cannot do it under existing laws he will violate those laws by covering up his property. Have not the community a right to say to the creditor, "If you trust a man you do it on that portion of his property which is not necessary for the support of his family? If you trust him beyond that it is at your own risk; we will not allow you to reduce the family to beggary." Laws for the collection of debts without exemption are nothing but licensing intriguing individuals to reduce the balance of community to starvation or slavery. They are laws to make men dishonest. No system ever devised by man can be imagined more demoralizing in its influences than that which strips a man of his all and turns him and his family out as vagabonds. Such laws men will resist, say what you will, and do what you will. We envy not the man who can enforce such laws or see them enforced without emotion, though done according to law and in the most approved style of legal proceeding ARGUMENTS OF W. K. WILSON [March 17, 1847] Down to the earth oppression shall be hurled. As the portentous time is at hand when the people of Wisconsin shall be called on to vote for or against the proposed constitution, it becomes the paramount duty of every honest man of whatever party previous to the giving of that vote to scan carefully the leading principles involved in that instrument, fraught as they are with so much importance to the future well-being of the present generation and thousands on thousands yet unborn; and on examination to lay his hand on his heart and say, "I am resolved before heaven and my fellow men to do my duty in this matter as a patriot and a man, untrammeled by the dictates of narrow-minded, selfish, and interested party leaders, and cast my vote for the ratification of an instrument, the most just, liberal, and humane ever presented for the adoption of any people under the blue canopy of heaven." The grand and leading features of the constitution which I contend for are the following: First, the exemption of the homestead, a farm, or village lot from forced sale for debt; second, the total suppression of that abominable and nefarious system of fraud and gambling trick, called paper money; third, the liberal and enlightened support which it gives for encouragement of public education; the effectual barriers which it places in the way of creating those monstrous evils, state debts; the wise and human protection which it gives to the property of married women; and last, though not least, which I shall mention, is the electing of judges by the direct vote of the people-the only and true source of legitimate power. It would be intruding too much on the space of your journal to state my opinions on each of the above propositions. I beg to make a remark or two, however, on the first mentioned, viz., the exemption of the homestead from forced sale, etc. This, in my humble opinion, is of the first importance for the consideration and approbation of every workingman. What next to the family on earth can be more endearing to the heart than home? The pleasing associations connected with that sacred spot cannot be adequately portrayed. Yet when the rude blast of adversity attacks the guardian of that hallowed spot the heretofore happy family is expelled from under the roof by the ruthless hands of some puny officer strutting about in all the majesty of his "little brief authority," and the loving family thrust out without shelter, for aught he cares, to endure perhaps, all the peltings of the pitiless storm. Had the generous sons and daughters of Ireland the protection of the law on this all important point, we should not hear of the wailings of distress which are at this time brought to us on every breeze from that lovely isle— which to its size may be called the garden of Europe. Yet with all its proverbial fertility, its inhabitants are going to the grave for the want of the common necessaries of life. The soil is robbed from her children and is monopolized into the hands of a callous-hearted oligarchy. The homestead and its effects are victimized to appease the voracious maw of some wretch, a disgrace to humanity, having the law with the bayonets at his back, to enforce immediate payment for something in the shape of rents, taxes, and tithes. In our own country I see some people ascribing all this lamentable state of things to the "mysterious workings of Providence." Such an idea is as unjust as it is impious. If the soil belonged, as it should, to the inhabitants of that country, had each family its equal share of the soil, were the homestead exempted from the merciless fangs of the law, there would be more than enough to supply all the wants of every individual in the island. In proof of this I have seen with my own eyes whole shiploads of flour, oatmeal, oats, cattle, and pigs landed at ports of Liverpool, Glasgow, etc., some few years ago; at the same time the Irish press contained the most awful accounts of appalling distress in that country, particularly in the western part, where the inhabitants had to subsist on seaweed or any other substance which the ocean wave might cast on the famishing shore. The cause of all this can be easily assigned. It is as palpable as the sun at noonday. The parent curse is the monopoly of the soil into the tiger paw of the few which God gave to all. Its legitimate offspring is paper money-and the curse which it entails on society, namely, |