Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/398

Rh of products wherever they go, and whosoever cannot rise upon the benefits they confer, will be left in poverty, misery and contempt.

“Not only in all the departments of business are there everywhere more life, energy and compass, but the masses of the people are investing themselves, or are becoming invested, with new social and political prerogatives. The free man who may go where he pleases, and select whatever occupation he pleases, needs vastly more judgment and intelligence than the subject of a despotism who is born in some niche of labour, and must stay where he is born. The citizen, who manages not only his own personal affairs, but those of his municipality; who governs himself in all his political relations, through representatives chosen by himself; whose vote may determine not only who shall be the rulers, but what measures of national or international policy shall be established or annulled, on whose will peace or war, national honour or national infamy, may depend—such a citizen in capacity, in knowledge, and in wisdom, should be as a god in comparison with a Russian serf or a Hindoo pariah. At this time I say, there is vastly more for the mind of man to do and to understand than there ever was before; and, therefore, that mind must be proportionably strengthened and illumined.

“There never was a time when the moral nature of man needed culture and purification more than it needs them at the present hour. What we call civilisation and progress have increased temptations a thousand fold—in this country ten thousand fold. The race for wealth, luxury, ambition, and pride, is open to all. With our multiplied privileges have come, not only multiplied obligations, which we may contemn, but multiplied dangers, into which we may fall. Where oppression and despotism reign, all the nobler faculties of man are dwarfed, stunted, and shorn of their power. But oppression