Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 01.djvu/398

, one of the ablest and fairest of the many gifted men of the North, said thirty-four years ago that the great passion of the South was for political power, while the great passion of the North was for money. We give his language in the contrast which he made between the North and the South: "The South," said he, "has abler politicians, and almost necessarily so, because its opulent class makes politics the business of life. *   *   *   In the South an unnatural state of things turns men's thoughts to political ascendency, but in the free States men think little of it. Property is the good for which they toil perseveringly from morning to night. Even the political partisan among us has an eye to property, and seeks office as the best, perhaps only way of subsistence." This is a pretty frank confession from a Northern scholar that Northern politicians seek office mainly in order to make money thereby. It reads very much like prophecy in the revelations of the last few years of Credit Mobilier, Emma Mine Stock, Seneca Stone Contracts, Whisky-Ring Frauds, Pacific Mails Subsidies, and Sales of Sutlers' Posts, etc., etc. But while Dr. Channing gave the distinction in the characteristics of the two sections with great fairness, he did not give the philosophy of that distinction. We might still inquire, Why does the North covet money and the South political power? We think that the solution of the problem is to be found in the density of the population in the one section, and the sparseness of population in the other, with all the modifying influence brought in by this difference of population. The North has devoted itself, from necessity, to commerce and the mechanic arts; the South has devoted itself to a pure agriculture. In rural districts there may be great stinginess and meanness, but greed of money is not a prominent vice, and great wealth is almost unknown. The temptation is wanting, and therefore the vice is not found. Literature and the arts and the sciences are not cultivated to a high point among an agricultural people. These studies require debate, discussion and antagonism. It is true that the great thinkers of the world have generally been born and reared in the country, but it is equally true that they did not become distinguished until their minds had received the attrition of town life. Plodding, pains-taking historians, hard-working students of science, enthusiastic devotees to the arts are not found in the rural districts. The free, fresh air of the country is unfavorable to all that sort of thing. Literary and scientific men, if not born in great centres of trade and commerce, go there to meet congenial spirits,