54 
PRACTICAL LESSONS. 
The geological, hydrographical, and topographical surveys, 
which almost every general and even local government of the 
civilized 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 
where engineers and directors of railroads, with long grades above one 
hundred feet to the mile, have regularly sworn in their annual reports, for 
years in succession, that there were no grades upon their routes exceeding 
half that elevation. In fact, every person conversant with the history of 
these enterprises knows that in their public statements falsehood is the 
rule, truth the exception. 
What I am about to remark is not exactly relevant to my subject; but 
it is hard to “ get the floor ” in the world’s great debating society, and 
when a speaker who has anything to say once finds access to the public 
ear, he must make the most of his opportunity, without inquiring too nicely 
whether his observations are “in order.” I shall harm no honest man by 
endeavoring, as I have often done elsewhere, to excite the attention of 
thinking and conscientious men to the dangers which threaten the great 
moral and even political interests of Christendom, from the unscrupulous¬ 
ness of the private associations that now control the monetary affairs, and 
regulate the transit of persons and property, in almost every civilized 
country. More than one American State is literally governed by unprin¬ 
cipled corporations, which not only defy the legislative power, but have, 
too often, corrupted even the administration of justice. Similar evils 
have become almost equally rife in England, and on the Continent; and I 
believe the decay of commercial morality, and I fear 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 unhap¬ 
pily too truly spoken of many countries—and perhaps, in some aspects, 
true of all—has done much mischief whenever it has been too uncon¬ 
ditionally 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 pros¬ 
perity of civilized commonwealths, but which individual means are inade¬ 
quate to furnish, and for the due administration of which individual guar- 
