had for its object the extinction of individual rights and the
deification of capital. Church and state united in the unholy effort to
Crush the masses, and intriguing politicians, by dint of dazzling
rhetoric and plausible promises, lured the people on to secure their own
downfall at the polls. The only remedy for this Lyon saw in the
elevation of the masses. 'It is the greatest political revolution yet to
be effected,' he says, 'to bring the laboring man to know that honest
industry is the highest of merits, and should be awarded the highest
honor; and, properly pursued, contributes to his intelligence and
morality, and to the virtues needed for official station.' 'The
calamity,' says an eminent writer from his far Platonean heights, 'is
the masses;' but liberty is a new religion that is to sweep over the
world and regenerate them. And to this end Lyon boldly advocated
emancipation for the sake of the white man. If to-day, when patriotism
is at a premium, men tremble before the acknowledged necessity of this
measure, and are either too cowardly or too indolent to meet the demands
of the times, it required no little boldness in 1860 to advance a theory
so decided, even in a Kansas newspaper. But Lyon knew the inefficiency
of half-way measures, and the moral degradation they inevitably entail
upon the community so weak or so deluded as to adopt them. The hue and
cry of abolitionism did not disturb him; he was not afraid of names.
Conservatism that sat in state at Washington, and pulled the wires all
over the country,--a tremendous power, none the less fearful in that it
was only a galvanized one,--was a dead letter to him, its dignity
departed with the age that had demanded it. Conservatism would have
resented no impositions, established no new landmarks, asserted no
independence; would carry its mails on horseback, creep over the ocean
in schooners, fight by sea in piked brigantines, and by land with spear
and battle-axe; it would have emancipated no slaves in Great Britain and
France, and no serfs in Russia. But if freedom means anything, it means