PRACTICAL LESSONS. 
55 
be an accumulation of well established constant and historical 
facts, from which we can safely reason upon all the relations 
of action and reaction between man and external nature. 
But we are, even now, breaking up the floor and wains¬ 
coting and doors and window frames of our dwelling, for 
fuel to warm our bodies and seethe our pottage, and the world 
cannot afford to wait till the slow and sure progress of exact 
science has taught it a better economy. Many practical 
lessons have been learned by the common observation of 
unschooled men; and the teachings of simple experience, on 
topics where natural philosophy has scarcely yet spoken, are 
not to be despised. 
In these humble pages, which do not in the least aspire to 
rank among scientific expositions of the laws of nature, I shall 
anties are insufficient. Hence public roads, canals, railroads, postal com¬ 
munications, the circulating medium of exchange, whether metallic or rep¬ 
resentative, armies, navies, being all matters in which the nation at large 
has a vastly deeper interest than any private association can have, ought 
legitimately to be constructed and provided only by that which is the visi¬ 
ble personification and embodiment of the nation, namely, its legislative 
head. No doubt the organization and management of these institutions 
by government are liable, as are all things human, to great abuses. The 
multiplication of public placeholders, which they imply, is a serious evil. 
But the corruption thus engendered, foul as it is, does not strike so deep as 
the rottenness of private corporations ; and official rank, position, and duty 
have, in practice, proved better securities for fidelity and pecuniary integ¬ 
rity in the conduct of the interests in question, than the suretyships of 
private corporate agents, whose bondsmen so often fail or abscond before 
their principal is detected. 
Many theoretical statesmen have thought that voluntary associations 
for strictly pecuniary and industrial purposes, and for the construction and 
control of public works, might furnish, in democratic countries, a compen¬ 
sation for the small and doubtful advantages, and at the same time secure 
an exemption from the great and certain evils, of aristocratic institutions. 
The example of the American States shows that private corporations— 
whose rule of action is the interest of the association, not the conscience 
of the individual—though composed of ultra-democratic elements, may 
become most dangerous enemies to rational liberty, to the moral interests 
of the commonwealth, to the purity of legislation and of judicial action, 
and to the sacredness of private rights. 
