When the "Central America" sinks to the bottom of the sea with five hundred souls on board, though it is in the midst of a terrible tempest, the public instinct is inclined to impute the disaster less to the mysterious uproar of wind and wave than to some concealed defect in the vessel. Had she sunk in a tranquil ocean, while the winds were idle and the waves asleep, the incident would have produced a burst of indignation, above the deeper wail of sorrow, strong enough to sweep the guilty instruments of it out of existence. The world would have felt that some great law of mechanics had been wilfully violated. But here is a whole commercial society suddenly wrecked, in a moment of general peace, after ten years of high, but not very florid or very unwholesome prosperity, on the heel of an abundant recompense to the efforts of labor,--when there has occurred no public calamity, no war, no famine, no fire, no domestic insurrection, scarcely one startling event, and when the interpositions of the government have been literally as unfelt as the dropping of the dew, a whole commercial society is wrecked; values sink to the bottom like the California gold on the "Central America"; great money-corporations fall to pieces as her state-rooms and cabins fell to pieces; the relations of trade are dislocated as her ribs and beams were dislocated; and the people are cast upon an uncertain sea, as her passengers were cast,--not to struggle for physical existence like them, but to endure an amount of anguish and despair almost equal to what was endured by those unhappy victims. How can this have happened arbitrarily, capriciously, mysteriously, without some gross and positive violation of social law, some wilful and therefore wicked departure from the known principles of science? Every random conjecture as to the causes of the prevailing distress implies an answer to the question, and it need not be repeated. It is more important to inquire what those violations and departures have been, than to reiterate the general principle. What has led to the lamentable results under which we suffer? What has rendered the winds so tempestuous that they must needs blow down our noble ship? What has provoked the ire of those big bully waves so that they advance to demolish us? Ah! hark just here how the Diogenidæ tumble and thump their tubs! each one rapping out his own tune; each one screaming to boot, to be heard above the din!