PHYSICAL COlSrSERVATION AND RESTORATION. 53 



The geological, hydrograpliical and topographical surveys, 

 which ahnost every general and even local government of the 

 ci\'ihzed world is carrying on, are making yet more important 

 contributions to our stock of geographical and general physical 

 knowledge, and, within a comparatively short space, there will be 



make a grant to a corporation, without express reservation of what many 

 sound jurists now hold to be involved in the very nature of such grants, the 

 power of revocation. Similar evils have become almost equally rife in Eng- 

 land, and on the Continent ; and I believe the decay of commercial morality, 

 and of the sense of all higher obligations than those of a pecuniary nature, on 

 both sides of the Atlantic, is to be ascribed more to the influence of joint-stock 

 banks and manufacturing and railway companies, to the workings, in short, 

 of what is called the principle of "associate action," than to any other one 

 cause of demoralization. 



The apophthegm, " the world is governed too much," though unhappily too 

 truly spoken of many countries — and perhaps, in some aspects, true of all — 

 has done much mischief whenever it has been too unconditionally accepted as 

 a political axiom. The popular apprehension of being over-governed, and, I 

 am afraid, more emphatically the fear of being over-taxed, has had much to do 

 with the general abandonment of certain governmental duties by the ruling 

 powers of most modern states. It is theoretically the duty of government to 

 provide all those public facilities of intercommunication and commerce, which 

 are essential to the prosperity of civilized commonwealths, but which indi- 

 vidual means are inadequate to furnish, and for the due admiuisti'ation of 

 which individual guaranties are insuflicient. Hence pubhc roads, canals, rail- 

 roads, postal communications, the circulating medium of exchange whether 

 metallic or representative, armies, navies, being all matters in which the nation 

 at large has a vastly deeper interest than any private association can have, 

 ought legitimately to be constructed and provided only by that which is the 

 visible personification and embodiment of the nation, namely, its legislative 

 head. No doubt the organization and management of these institutions by 

 government are liable, as are all things human, to great abuses. The multi- 

 plication of public placeholders, which they imply, is a serious evil. But the 

 corruption thus engendered, foul as it is, does not strike so deep as the rotten- 

 ness of private corporations ; and official rank, position and duty have, in 

 practice, proved better securities for fidelity and pecuniary integrity in the 

 conduct of the interests in question, than the suretyships of private corporate 

 agents, whose bondsmen so often fail or abscond before their principal is de- 

 tected. 



Many theoretical statesmen have thought that voluntary associations for 

 strictly pecuniary and industrial purposes, and for the construction and con- 

 trol of public works, might furnish, in democratic countries, a compensation 

 for the small and doubtful advantages, and at the same time secure an exemp- 

 tion from the great and certain evils, of aristocratic institutions. The exam- 

 ple of the American States shows that private corporations — whose rule of 



