w era of humanity. If they are determined by the vulgar successes of
a mere material civilization, it is an experiment not worth making. It
would have been better to have left the Indians in possession, to see if
they could not have evolved out of their barbarism some new line of
action.

The Pilgrims were poor, and they built their huts on a shore which gave
such niggardly returns for labor that the utmost thrift was required to
secure the necessaries of life. Out of this struggle with nature and
savage life was no doubt evolved the hardihood, the endurance, that
builds states and wins the favors of fortune. But poverty is not commonly
a nurse of virtue, long continued, it is a degeneration. It is almost as
difficult for the very poor man to be virtuous as for the very rich man;
and very good and very rich at the same time, says Socrates, a man cannot
be. It is a great people that can withstand great prosperity. The
condition of comfort without extremes is that which makes a happy life. I
know a village of old-fashioned houses and broad elm-shaded streets in
New England, indeed more than one, where no one is inordinately rich, and
no one is very poor, where paupers are so scarce that it is difficult to
find beneficiaries for the small traditionary contribution for the church
poor; where the homes are centres of intelligence, of interest in books,
in the news of the world, in the church, in the school, in politics;
whence go young men and women to the colleges, teachers to the illiterate
parts of the land, missionaries to the city slums. Multiply such villages
all over the country, and we have one of the chief requisites for an
ideal republic.

This has been the longing of humanity. Poets have sung of it; prophets
have had visions of it; statesmen have striven for it; patriots have died
for it. There must be somewhere, some time, a fruitage of so much
suffering, so much sacrifice, a land of equal laws and equal
opportunities, a government of all the people for the benefit of all the
people; where the conditions of living will be so adjusted that every one
can make the most out of his life, neither waste it in hopeless slavery
nor in selfish tyranny, where poverty and crime will not be hereditary
generation after generation, where great fortunes will not be for vulgar
ostentation, but for the service of humanity and the glory of the State,
where the privileges of freemen will be so valued that no one will be
mean enough