wealth centred in the hands of a few, it has no longer the conservative force or the beneficent influence which it exerts when equably distributed,—­even loses more of both where a system of absenteeism prevails so largely as in the South.  In such communities the seeds of an “irrepressible conflict” are purely, if slowly, ripening, and signs are daily multiplying that the true peril to their social organization is looked for, less in a revolt of the owned labor than in an insurrection of intelligence in the labor that owns itself and finds itself none the richer for it.  To multiply such communities is to multiply weakness.

The election in November turns on the single and simple question, Whether we shall consent to the indefinite multiplication of them; and the only party which stands plainly and unequivocally pledged against such a policy, nay, which is not either openly or impliedly in favor of it, is the Republican party.  We are of those who at first regretted that another candidate was not nominated at Chicago; but we confess that we have ceased to regret it, for the magnanimity of Mr. Seward since the result of the Convention was known has been a greater ornament to him and a greater honor to his party than his election to the Presidency would have been.  We should have been pleased with Mr. Seward’s nomination, for the very reason we have seen assigned for passing him by,—­that he represented the most advanced doctrines of his party.  He, more than any other man, combined in himself the moralist’s oppugnancy to Slavery as a fact, the thinker’s resentment of it as a theory, and the statist’s distrust of it as a policy,—­thus summing up the three efficient causes that have chiefly aroused and concentrated the antagonism of the Free States.  Not a brilliant man, he has that best gift of Nature, which brilliant men commonly lack, of being always able to do his best; and the very misrepresentation of his opinions which was resorted to in order to neutralize the effect of his speeches in the Senate and elsewhere was the best testimony to their power.  Safe from the prevailing epidemic of Congressional eloquence as if he had been inoculated for it early in his career, he addresses himself to the reason, and what he says sticks.  It was assumed that his nomination would have embittered the contest and tainted the Republican creed with radicalism; but we doubt it.  We cannot think that a party gains by not hitting its hardest, or by sugaring its opinions.  Republicanism is not a conspiracy to obtain office under false pretences.  It has a definite aim, an earnest purpose, and the unflinching tenacity of profound conviction.  It was not called into being by a desire to reform the pecuniary corruptions of the party now in power.  Mr. Bell or Mr. Breckinridge would do that, for no one doubts their honor or their honesty.  It is not unanimous about the Tariff, about State-Rights, about many other questions of policy.  What unites the Republicans is a common