And State Papers 99 



Wise laws and fearless and upright administration 

 of the laws can give the opportunity for such pros 

 perity as we see about us. But that is all that they 

 can do. When the conditions have been created 

 which make prosperity possible, then each individual 

 man must achieve it for himself by his own energy 

 and thrift and business intelligence. If when people 

 wax fat they kick, as they have kicked since the 

 days of Jeshurun, they will speedily destroy their 

 own prosperity. If they go into wild speculation 

 and lose their heads they have lost that which no 

 laws can supply. If in a spirit of sullen envy they 

 insist upon pulling down those who have profited 

 most in the years of fatness, they will bury them 

 selves in the crash of the common disaster. It is 

 difficult to make our material condition better by 

 the best laws, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad 

 laws. 



The upshot of all this is that it is peculiarly in 

 cumbent upon us in a time of such material well- 

 being, both collectively as a nation and individually 

 as citizens, to show, each on his own account, that 

 we possess the qualities of prudence, self-knowledge, 

 and self-restraint. In our government we need 

 above all things stability, fixity of economic policy; 

 while remembering that this fixity must not be fos- 

 silization, that there must not be inability to shift 

 our laws so as to meet our shifting national needs. 

 There are real and great evils in our social and 

 economic life, and these evils stand out in all their 

 ugly baldness in time of prosperity; for the wicked 



