Neither will there be any pacification of this angry controversy through violence.  God never blessed murder.

The poorest use you can put a man to is to kill him.  Blow up to-morrow all the country-seats on the banks of the Hudson, and all the fine houses on Madison Square, and Brooklyn Heights, and Bunker Hill, and Rittenhouse Square, and Beacon Street, and all the bricks and timber and stone will just fall back on the bare head of American labor.  The worst enemies of the working-classes in the United States and Ireland are their demented coadjutors.  Assassination—­the assassination of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke in Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland, in the attempt to avenge the wrongs of Ireland, only turned away from that afflicted people millions of sympathizers.  The recent attempt to blow up the House of Commons, in London, had only this effect:  to throw out of employment tens of thousands of innocent Irish people in England.

In this country the torch put to the factories that have discharged hands for good or bad reason; obstructions on the rail-track in front of midnight express trains because the offenders do not like the president of the company; strikes on shipboard the hour they were going to sail, or in printing-offices the hour the paper was to go to press, or in mines the day the coal was to be delivered, or on house scaffoldings so the builder fails in keeping his contract—­all these are only a hard blow on the head of American labor, and cripple its arms, and lame its feet, and pierce its heart.  Take the last great strike in America—­the telegraph operators’ strike—­and you have to find that the operators lost four hundred thousand dollars’ worth of wages, and have had poorer wages ever since.  Traps sprung suddenly upon employers, and violence, never took one knot out of the knuckle of toil, or put one farthing of wages into a callous palm.  Barbarism will never cure the wrongs of civilization.  Mark that!

Frederick the Great admired some land near his palace at Potsdam, and he resolved to get it.  It was owned by a miller.  He offered the miller three times the value of the property.  The miller would not take it, because it was the old homestead, and he felt about as Naboth felt about his vineyard when Ahab wanted it.  Frederick the Great was a rough and terrible man, and he ordered the miller into his presence; and the king, with a stick, in his hand—­a stick with which he sometimes struck his officers of state—­said to this miller:  “Now, I have offered you three times the value of that property, and if you won’t sell it I’ll take it anyhow.”  The miller said, “Your majesty, you won’t.”  “Yes,” said the king, “I will take it.”  “Then,” said the miller, “if your majesty does take it, I will sue you in the Chancery Court.”  At that threat Frederick the Great yielded his infamous demand.  And the most imperious outrage against the working-classes will yet cower before the law.  Violence and contrary to the law will never accomplish anything, but righteousness and according to law will accomplish it.