Social history; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918
Another proverb says that Money is power. And in this form, no doubt, it
receives the most fervent worship, for luxury palls sooner or later,
while ambition is never satisfied. But we constantly meet, on the other
hand, with instances in which money is not power. Money does not give
talent or intelligence. You cannot buy good government, good manners, or
good taste: You cannot buy health or life. Do some of you remember the
shipwreck, some twenty years ago, of a steamer homeward-bound from
California? The few survivors told how the desperate passengers brought
their belts and bags of gold to the cabin, and threw them about with a
bitter contempt of their worthlessness. States have such shipwrecks, in
which avenging Fate seems to say to those who have sacrificed all for
wealth, "Thy money perish with thee."
The heroics of history are full of the story of great ends, accomplished
by very small means. Now a handful of resolute men hold the forces of a
great empire in check, and beat back the ocean surge of barbarism from
the marble of their strong will. Now a single martyr turns the scale of
the world's affection by throwing into the balance the weight of one
small life. Now a State with every disadvantage of territory, cursed
with sterility, or exposed to the murderous overflow of the salt sea,
takes its stand upon the simple determination to conquer for itself a
free and worthy existence. Frederick of Prussia and his small army,
Washington, with his handful of men, in these and so many other
instances, we admire the attainment of mighty ends through means which
seem infinitesimal in proportion to them. How shall it be in our
country, to which Nature has given the widest variety of climate, soil,
and production? Shall we become a lesson to the world in the opposite
direction? Shall we show how little a people may accomplish with every
circumstance in its favor, and with nothing wanting to its success but
the careful mind and resolute spirit? God forbid!
The belief in pacific methods of settling international differences has
made a noticeable progress in my time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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