Through long, long ages has labor sighed and toiled under a worse than Egyptian bondage. Its utmost stretch of memory can scarce recall its pastoral days, when it frolicked and gamboled with the herd upon the plain or mountain side. Enslaved by the gold of civilization, which itself has mined and coined, it is no less oppresssed in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, than it was in the days of ancient barbarism, or more recent feudalism. Nor has it scarce other hope than the oppressed Hebrew felt, when his demand for freedom was met by an increase of task, while at the same time he was compelled to furnish his own material. […]