And this result of disobedience is ever present with the man in uniform,
and has been engraved into his very soul, for his only God is the
drum-head court-martial. This is the creature that has made the
aristocratic parasite a fixture in Europe, and he is all that is needed
to make the same curse a fixture in our own country, and every attempt to
increase his number should be resisted with all the means in our power,
until the plunder he is wanted to guard shall have found its way back to
its rightful owners.
IV.
We will now show how the principle of Confiscation should work in the
case of railroads. This class of property, by the way, should never have
been given over to private ownership to begin with. They are for the
convenience of the public, just as much as any harbor or navigation ever
was. And if it was right that the founders of the Republic should, in
the interests of the country's commerce, deny the right of private
ownership in our navigable waters, then it was wrong to concede the
right of private ownership in railroads. As for the capital to build
them with, it was just as easy to get it for that purpose as it was to
get capital to dredge harbors, build lighthouses, build forts or the
Stanford University.
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