PERILS. — WEALTH. 173 



men should be the fruit of kixurious countries; for we 

 never find that the same soil produces delicacies and 

 heroes." Is there not danger that our civilization will 

 become tropical? The temperate zone has produced the 

 great nations, because in it the conditions of life have 

 been sufficiently hard to arouse energy and develoj^ 

 strength. Where men are pampered by nature, they 

 sink to a low level; and where civilization is of the 

 pampering sort the tendency is the same. By means of 

 coal, which Mr. Emerson calls a "portable climate," 

 together with increasing wealth and luxuries, we are 

 multiplying tropical conditions here in the North. 



The splendor of our riches will doubtless dazzle the 

 world ; but history declares, in the ruins of Babylon and 

 Thebes, of Carthage and Rome, that wealth has no con- 

 serving power; that it tends rather to enervate and cor- 

 rupt. Our wonderful material prosperity, which is the 

 marvel of other nations, and the boast of our own, may 

 hide a decaying core. 



4. Again, another danger is the marked and increas- 

 ing tendency toward a congestion of wpcilth. The enor- 

 mous concentration of power in the hands of one man is 

 unrepublican, and dangerous to popular institutions. 

 The framers of our government aimed to secure the dis- 

 tribution of i30w^er. Thej^ w^ere careful to make the sev- 

 eral departments — executive, legislative, and judicial — 

 operate as checks on each other. An executive, chosen 

 by the people and responsible to them, may exercise but 

 little authority ; and after a short period he must return 

 it to them. But a money-king may double, quadruple, 

 centuple his wealth, if he can. He may exercise vastly 

 more power than the governor gf his state; but he is 

 irresponsible. He is not a constitutional monarch, but a 

 czar. He is not chosen by the people with reference to 

 his fitness to administer so great a trust ; he may lack 

 utterly all moral qualifications for it. We have indeed, 

 some rich men who are an honor to our civilization ; but 

 the power of many millions is almost certain to find its 

 way into strong and unscrupulous hands. Our money- 



