THE PEOPLE AT WAR. What a season of deep interest is the present!..... 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 roasting 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 every where 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.

It has been long clear to me that in every country the best feelings and the best sense are found with the laboring and useful classes, and the worst feelings and the worst sense with the idle and the useless. Until all classes shall be merged into one however by gradual but fundamental changes in the whole organization of society, much bad feeling must prevail everywhere. . .