144 AMERICAN FARMS. 



requisite to keep the administrative machine in motion. 

 Oh, Father of Compassion ! is this the only gateway to 

 prosperity ? " 



After the masses of the ruralists have once begun to 

 lose their relative power, it has only been when the lands 

 have become the property of a monopoly of some kind or 

 other that the land-holding classes have been able to 

 dictate terms. 



" The progress of a community toward wealth and 

 power being in the direct ratio of the combination of 

 action among the people of whom it is composed ; it 

 follows that the advance towards both must be in the 

 ratio in which they are enabled to dispense with the 

 services of the politician, the soldier, the owner of slaves, 

 and the trader — of that class which lives by virtue of the 

 simple act of appropriation. Every movement, however, 

 in that direction, looking necessarily to a diminution in 

 the power of the latter, they are all — soldier, trader, and 

 politician — found uniformly banded together for the 

 subjugation of the people ; as was seen in Athens and in 

 Rome, and as may now be seen in all the countries of 

 Europe and America. The history of the world is but a 

 record of the attempts of the few to tax the many, and 

 those of the many to escape taxation ; and the tendency 

 of society to assume a natural and stable form is in the 

 precise ratio of the success of this latter class — a success, 

 however slowly and tediously accomplished, because of 

 the power of those who live by appropriation to come 

 together in towns and cities, while they who contribute 

 to their revenues are scattered throughout the country." ' 



' This, from the pen of Henry C. Carey (" Social Science," p. 235), 

 applies to America to-day even better than when it was written, — 

 thirty years ago. 



