We could not see what should again
alienate us from one another, or how one brother could again oppress
another. With a free field and no favor we believed we should prosper on
together, and there would be peace and plenty for all. We had the republic
again after so many ages now, and the republic, as we knew it in our dim
annals, was brotherhood and universal happiness. All but a very few, who
prophesied evil of our lawless freedom, were wrapped in a delirium of
hope. Men's minds and men's hands were suddenly released to an activity
unheard of before. Invention followed invention; our rivers and seas
became the warp of commerce where the steam-sped shuttles carried the woof
of enterprise to and fro with tireless celerity; machines to save labor
multiplied themselves as if they had been procreative forces, and wares of
every sort were produced with incredible swiftness and cheapness. Money
seemed to flow from the ground; vast fortunes 'rose like an exhalation,'
as your Milton says.
"At first we did not know that they were the breath of the nethermost pits
of hell, and that the love of money, which was becoming universal with us,
was filling the earth with the hate of men.
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