the busy season, when they are making hay or collecting the grapes; or, finally, by those who are working out the payment of a debt. I speak of all farms in general, as it is more profitable to cultivate the unhealthy districts with hired laborers than with slaves; and even in the healthy localities, the great labors of the husbandmen, such as the collection of the fruits, the harvest, and the vintage, ought to be confided to free hired workmen, or mercenaries." Those who belonged to a caste, as the slaves did, and who, consequently, were not stimulated to labor by the hope of rising or the fear of falling in the world, could not be trusted with the most important work, even on a farm. Modern experience fully confirms this result, as no kind of cultivation is found to succeed if conducted by slaves, except that of tropical products, where the laborers can be employed in gangs.

After the fall of the Roman empire in the West, and the establishment of various tribes of barbarian conquerors upon its ruins, a great step was taken in social economy by the virtual emancipation of one large class in the community from the fetters of caste. I refer to the inhabitants of the Free Cities or towns, the foundation of which, in Germany, France, and Italy, was the first step towards the creation of the social polity of modern times. Their population, indeed, says Adam Smith, "consisted of a very different order of people from the first inhabitants of the ancient republics of Greece and Italy. They were chiefly tradesmen and mechanics, who seem in those days to have been of servile, or very nearly of servile, condition. They seem, indeed, to have been a very poor, mean set of people, who used to travel about with their goods from place to place, and from fair to fair, like the hawkers and pedlers of modern times." They were liable, while thus travelling about, to great exactions; they were either plundered without mercy by the arrogant and rapacious, or they paid heavy taxes and tolls as a price of protection. Sometimes the king, sometimes a great lord, would grant to particular traders, especially to such as lived on their own lands, a general exemption from such taxes; and then, though in other respects nearly servile in their condition, they were called free traders."

When thus chartered, they were allowed to give away their own daughters in marriage, their children were permitted to inherit their property, and they could dispose of their effects by will; in

short, they were released from the most oppressive of the feudal burdens, to which, as of the lower class in society, they had previously been subject. "They were, generally, at the same time erected into a commonalty, or corporation, with the privilege of having magistrates and a town-council of their own, of making bylaws for their own government, of building walls for their defence, and of reducing all their inhabitants to military discipline by obliging them to watch and ward." The nobles despised the burghers, or citizens, whom they regarded as a parcel of emancipated slaves, devoted to base mechanic arts, and whose wealth excited their envy and indignation. The king, on the other hand, favored them, as a counterbalance to the power of the nobility, whom they hated and feared; and the weakest monarchs, consequently, were most liberal in their grants of privileges to the cities and towns. Thus the prosperous cities of France and the Low Countries, the famous Hanse towns of Germany, and the flourishing commercial republics of Italy and Switzerland came into being.

In the country, the distinctions of caste and the consequent limitations of employment still existed. The great barons lived remotely from each other, each on his own estate, surrounded by his retainers and serfs, whose only occupations were war and agriculture, and who had no hope of improving their condition. Exposed to every sort of violence, they naturally contented themselves with a bare subsistence; for to accumulate more would only excite the rapacity of their oppressors. If one of them did make some small savings, he hoarded them with care and secrecy, till he could find some opportunity of running away to a town, where, if he could conceal himself for a year, he was free forever. Thus a city often grew up to great wealth and splendor, while the country in its neighborhood was in poverty and wretchedness. The great lords themselves could obtain the articles of luxury which they desired only by bartering raw agricultural produce for them, at a great disadvantage, with the inhabitants of the towns. As the wealth and military strength of these municipal corporations increased, they could no longer be taxed but by their own consent ; hence they were empowered to send delegates to parliament or the general assembly of the states of the kingdom, where, in connection with the clergy and the nobles, they granted extraordinary

aids to the king, and had a potential voice in managing the affairs of the nation.

These cities were not merely republican; they were essentially democratic, in their origin, their institutions, their social relations, and their tendencies; and my point is to show that this democratic character was the first cause of their rapid growth in opulence. Being originally servile, or nearly servile, in condition, the inhabitants had no distinctions of rank to begin with; their natural enemies were the nobles, from whose oppressive sway they were but recently emancipated. Trade and manufactures, being their only occupations, were necessarily held in high esteem among them; and he enjoyed their highest confidence and respect who had been most successful in these pursuits. A common interest and common perils bound them very firmly to each other; and the direction of affairs in their little state was naturally intrusted to those whose skill, prudence, industry, and economy had been already rewarded with the largest accumulations of wealth. No one was ashamed of his craft; no one had anything to be proud of but his riches. A brewer and a tanner, a weaver and a goldsmith, sat side by side in the town-councils, or led the citizens to the defence of the walls, and even conducted them in armies to the field, where they often defeated the chivalry of France and Germany, and sometimes triumphed over their own monarchs. Van Artevelde of Ghent was a brewer; the Medici of Florence, though popes and kings were reckoned among their posterity, were at first only successful merchants. Wealth being thus the only passport to distinction, and all the avenues to it being in high repute, its possession was eagerly coveted, and the virtues of industry and frugality were practised to the farthest extent. With the growth and spread of opulence, and the calling forth of talent from the whole community through the absence of artificial distinctions, the rise and progress of literature and the fine arts were necessarily associated. Poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture had their origin, in modern times, in the commercial republics of Pisa and Florence, and the free cities of Flanders.

Wealth passed freely from hand to hand. Feudalism was barred out by the city-walls; and the father's property, instead of being kept together for the aggrandizement of the family in the person of the oldest son, was distributed equally among the children. If

one or more of these were prodigal, careless, or indolent, they sank to that level whence the thrift of the father had raised them, and their places were filled by the more capable and industrious. These alternations of fortune, rapid and frequent, kept up in the community a thirst for gain, and kept down discontent and civil commotions. An aristocracy of wealth has this at least to recommend it, if wholly disconnected with an aristocracy of birth, that by its fluctuations it rather encourages effort than represses it. While society stagnated among the feudal nobility and at the courts of feudal monarchs, it was galvanized into an almost preternatural activity within the precincts of the little civic republics of Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries. The proud nobles were compelled to seek aid of the fat and wealthy burghers, the painstaking artisans, whom they affected to despise. They obtained loans from them, for which they gave their lands in pawn, and even sold to them outright their castles and hereditary estates. Ennobled by the possession of these, the ambition of the citizens grew by what it fed on, and not infrequently, as in the case of the Medici at Florence, they became the ancestors of a line of kings.

This sketch of the causes affecting the growth of opulence in ancient and modern times is introduced principally for the purpose of illustrating the most remarkable difference in the social condition of Great Britain and the United States. The most striking thing in the aspect of American society is the constant strain of the faculties, with all classes, in the pursuit of wealth, the restlessness, the feverish anxiety to get on, which English writers, at least, are apt to regard only as "the disagreeable symptoms of one of the phases of industrial progress." In whatever light it ought to be viewed, they are certainly mistaken in attributing it to our favorable position, with an abundance of fertile land, and with sources of opulence as yet fresh and unexhausted. Were such causes adequate to produce this particular effect, we should find society exhibiting the same characteristics wherever it is similarly situated, - in British America, for instance, in British Australia, and over a great portion of the South American continent. But it is not so; and we must therefore look for an explanation of the phenomenon to some cause which is peculiar to our own social state, stimulus acting upon what political economists call "the effective desire of accumulation," which has full scope to operate here, while

to some

it is repressed or much restricted in all other nations, even in England, where the character of the population in other respects is so similar to our own.

I find such a peculiar cause in the evident fact that every individual here has the power to make savings, if he will, and almost as large as he will; and has the certainty that the savings when made, the wealth when accumulated, will immediately operate, in proportion to their amount, to raise the frugal person's position in life, to give him, in fact, the only distinction that is recognized among us. Neither theoretically nor practically, in this country, is there any obstacle to any individual's becoming rich, if he will, and almost to any amount that he will; no obstacle, I say, but what arises from the dispensations of Providence, from the unequal distribution of health, strength, and the faculties of mind. In other words, there are no obstacles but natural and inevitable ones; society interposes none, and none exist which society could remove. And ours is the only community on earth of which this can be said. Here there are no castes, and not even an approach to a division of society by castes. Our whole population is in that state which I have attempted to describe as the condition of the inhabitants of a free town in the Middle Ages. The property which is rapidly gained is often quite as rapidly spent, for the sake of that consideration and influence which the reputation of riches alone can give. Hence, wealth circulates among us almost as rapidly as the money which is its representative. A great fortune springs up, like the prophet's gourd, in a night, and is dissipated by some unforeseen accident on the morrow. Every one is made restless and anxious by this exposure to sudden change; but one great good comes of it, that it keeps down permanent discontent, and stifles the jealousy that is usually nursed by social differences and inequalities of fortune. How is it possible, indeed, that the poor should be arrayed in hostility against the rich, when to adopt a former illustration — the son of an Irish coachman becomes the governor of a State, and the grandson of a millionnaire dies a pauper?

The effect of democratic institutions is to stimulate an energy and activity in the pursuit of wealth, which accomplish greater wonders than all the modern inventions of science, which actually generate enthusiasm of character, and are regarded by foreigners with surprise and distrust, as the tokens of some constitutional