For many generations many of these people occupied the pulpits. They lifted the hand of warning whenever the human race took a step in advance. As wealth increased, they declared that honesty and goodness and self-denial and charity were vanishing from the earth. They doubted the morality of well-dressed people--considered it impossible that the prosperous should be pious. Like owls sitting on the limbs of a dead tree, they hooted the obsequies of spring, believing it would come no more. There are some patriots who think it their duty to malign and slander the land of their birth. They feel that they have a kind of Cassandra mission, and they really seem to enjoy their work. They honestly believe that every kind of crime is on the increase, that the courts are all corrupt, that the legislators are bribed, that the witnesses are suborned, that all holders of office are dishonest; and they feel like a modern Marius sitting amid the ruins of all the virtues. It is useless to endeavor to persuade these people that they are wrong. They do not want arguments, because they will not heed them. They need medicine. Their case is not for a philosopher, but for a physician. General Hawkins is probably right when he says that some fraudulent shoes, some useless muskets, and some worn-out vessels were sold to the Government during the war; but we must remember that there were millions and millions of as good shoes as art and honesty could make, millions of the best muskets ever constructed, and hundreds of the most magnificent ships ever built, sold to the Government during the same period. We must not mistake an eddy for the main stream. We must also remember another thing: there were millions of good, brave, and patriotic men to wear the shoes, to use the muskets, and to man the ships. So it is probably true that Congress was extravagant in land subsidies voted to railroads; but that this legislation was secured by bribery is preposterous. It was all done in the light of noon. There is not the slightest evidence tending to show that the general policy of hastening the construction of railways through the Territories of the United States was corruptly adopted--not the slightest. At the same time, it may be that some members of Congress were induced by personal considerations to vote for such subsidies. As a matter of fact, the policy was wise, and through the granting of the subsidies thousands of miles of railways were built, and these railways have given to civilization vast territories which otherwise would have remained substantially useless to the world. Where at that time was a wilderness, now are some of the most thriving cities in the United States--a great, an industrious, and a happy population. The results have justified the action of Congress.