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countries they forget this tnith. So long have improvements been 

 made, so often have they been bought and sold, so firmly is a money 

 value attached to them, that men come to speak of property as equiva- 

 lent to money, and the original value and scarcity of human labor is 

 forgotten. The man, therefore, who possesses money, acquires an un- 

 due importance in society ; but here, standing as we do, not only in 

 the midst of the result of pure labor, but among the very men who ac- 

 complished that labor, the men who took an useless wilderness and sub- 

 dued it to utility : standing, I say, with the result of labor and the la- 

 borers side by side, we honor the labor, we give credit to the labor, we 

 recognize that money is only labor in another shape, and we give the 

 credit to the man who has thus labored, and not to the money in which 

 he has invested the results. In such a position, it is the man we honor — 

 the hands and the sinews as the instrument, but the mind and the cou- 

 rage as the director and the moving power of the hands. And it is in 

 this view of the case only, that man holds his just position in society. 

 He who has inherited a fortune from his father, or made it by a lucky 

 speculation, may dress in purple and fine linen, may live sumptuously, 

 may buy the bodies of his fellow men to serve him in his indolence, 

 but such an one, if devoted merely to self-indulgence, is utterly con- 

 temptible by the side of the hard-handed settler of a new country, who 

 has brought a trained and educated mind with him, who is capable of 

 being his own master, who has taken that which is useless and turned it 

 to utility — that which was wild and cultivated it^who has raised food 

 for man where none was known — who has forwarded civilization, and been 

 a blessing to his race. 



Daily do I thank God that he has given me the will and the power 

 to work, for whether it is with the mind, or with the body, work is the 

 glory of man, indolence is his shame. If the curse delivered in Eden 

 was that thorns and thistles shall the earth bring forth, and in the sweat 

 of our brow must we eat bread, the curse has become a blessing, for all 

 that is good in man is dependent on labor for its development, all that 

 is worth possessing, depends on labor for its acquirement ; and he who 

 works the best, in the best way, for the best end, is the greatest man. 

 Indolence, I repeat, is the shame of our race. Eveiy human being is 

 sent into the world to do something, to accomplish something, to leave 

 the world better than he found it ; and he who fails, through selfish in- 

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