166 
Annual Report of the 
toil favors mental activity. Mental activity gives mental force 
and clearness. Hence, the tendencies of realized wealth, aris¬ 
ing both from the power inherent to wealth itself, and the active 
shrewdness of those enjoying its use. These tendencies manifested 
themselves in various ways, in primitive history, without any spec¬ 
ial pertinence to the subject other than the uniform result of seiz¬ 
ing upon the control of everything within its reach that could be 
tortured into subservience to its sway. Its conflicts and triumphs 
are written upon every page of the civilization of the Old World. 
Our fathers, however, thought that they had given it an effective 
root-pruning in withholding the right of primogeniture and entail. 
But they vitalized it greatly by admitting and cherishing that mon¬ 
strous wrong —the proprietorship of African* labor. 
This not only degraded the ruder forms of human effort, but 
brought into contempt the rights of the many in contradistinction 
to the comfort of the few. The Boston tea-party, the clash of arms, 
and the promulgation of the magna charta of American Liberty, 
though they gave to mankind a nation, gave neither personal free¬ 
dom nor the rights of labor to the African. In the meantime came 
the rage for creating artificial persons, to secure such public good as 
could not be accomplished by the means and enterprise of natural 
persons. This rage grew apace, and ultimately absorbed the vital 
control of public sentiment. The accumulative result became an 
array of palpably growing artificial persons. As they grew in 
number and power, they grew into a philosophizing frame of mind. 
Forgetting their origin, they philosophized themselves into the con¬ 
ception that, as artificial persons, their rights were commensurate 
with the rights of natural persons, and the transition-idea to them 
became easy, that they were an integral element in the aggregate 
sovereignty of the state, and to the extent within their reach, they 
might define and control the powers of the state, not even denying 
themselves the privileges of intimidating or subsidizing the legiti¬ 
mate authority of the state. Corroborative of this, we have had re¬ 
sistance to the Potter-Law in Wisconsin. Corroborative of this, we 
have had Pacific-Mail and Credit-Mobilier investigations at Wash¬ 
ington. Corroborative of this, the greenback, originally receivable 
for all dues, was finally made receivable for dues to the people but 
not to the government. Corroborative of this, the 5-20 bonds 
originally redeemable in greenbacks were made redeemable in gold. 
