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tion -nhether ihey can produce as cheaply as other countries, their 

 energies "would decline — their infellects would dwindle — their 

 aspiratious would sink — their sentiments would becoioe grovel- 

 ling, and their souls would waste in torpid sluniber, like the dull 

 weed on Lethe's oblivions' banks. Where would be the wealth, 

 of such a people ? Not in gold and silver does the real " wealth 

 of nations" consist. It is in the muscles, and the brains, and the 

 hearts of* men. With these developed to their full power, no 

 people can be poor ; without them, none can bft rich. The wealth 

 of our own country consists not in its mines of goid ; its banks j 

 its debts due from one citizen to another; nor yet entirely in 

 what its labor has already wrought ; its cities, its palaces, its 

 churches and railroads, and human dwellings filled with all that 

 ingenuity can devise for the comfort of man ; not in these. Sweep 

 all these from existence, and leave the energy, the fortitude, the 

 power to conceive, and the skill to execute ; and more than all, 

 the lofty and poetic sentiments which exalt, ennoble and purify 

 our race, and you leave the true wealth of the Nation untouched. 

 A few years would restore all. 



What value, then, has the wealth of a nation which stagnates 

 in the platitude of a few limited employments — such wealth as 

 that which corroded ill the cotfers of Spain, when the ores of Mex- 

 ico and Peru were exhausted to freight her galleons ? Grant 

 Adam Smith and his followers all they claim, and yet when they 

 have showu how the Wealth of Nations may be increased, they 

 have not touched that greatest question, the V/eal of Nations. 

 Wealth, in this sense, and weal or welfare, are totally different 

 t'« ings. They leave out of view the noble and lofty sentiments 

 which are inspired by a feeling of liational independence — the 

 ideas elicited by a collision of minds occupied in diversified em- 

 ployments — the useful friction created by various, perhaps jarring 

 interests, by which the thoughts of men are heated to action, and 

 made to germinate and expand and bear fruit. All this is noth- 

 ing to them, but the sole question is. Where can you make the 

 best bargains 1 Whore can you clothe yourself with the least 

 gold \ How vain and empty .seems suck an enquiry at this day, 

 when mankind are every where becoming inspired with the great 

 idea, that the weal of Ihehuman soul, with its heavenly aspira- 



