ation, but surely there must be a system which will make
unlimited wealth and unlimited poverty impossible, for such conditions
are incompatible with a permanent, peaceful, and prosperous republic. As
well might we expect a successful voyage from a ship with four-fifths of
its cargo on the upper deck, as from a republic top heavy with
millionaire capital. Can we believe that republics are forbidden by the
laws of progress and evolution; that they must, as Macaulay maintained,
come to a fatal crisis? I trust not. But does not our social system,
inherited from barbarism, built up on the hot ashes left where the fires
of war have desolated, necessarily develop that inequality which has
swept the great empires of antiquity to their doom. When all the wealth
of the nation has fallen into the possession of two per cent. of the
population, the period of danger has arrived. Five per cent. of our
population had, in 1880, absorbed four fifths of the national wealth,
and at present, according to the careful statistics of Mr. Shearman,
less than two per cent. hold seven tenths of our wealth, and are rapidly
advancing to nine tenths, their progress being assisted by the indirect
taxation which places the burden of government on the shoulders of
poverty. Popular ignorance of public affairs has tolerated this, and has
tolerated a financial system far worse, which has given capital all
possible advantage of labor. We are drifting in the rapids; how far off
is our Niagara? But labor is roused, and a change in our system of
taxation is imminent.

Unlimited wealth and unlimited poverty are the necessary results of the
warlike stage of progress, which develops the conquerors and the
conquered in the great battle of life. Unnumbered centuries of tribal
and international war have developed to high perfection the wolfish and
tigerish instincts of humanity. What is called peace is a state of
financial war. Beneath the smooth skin of the civilized man, we find the
wolf in undiminished vigor. The triumphant wolf rides in his chariot;
the conquered wolf sleeps in the open air along the alleys, wharves, and
streets; but what cares the wolf triumphant for that? for the 30,000
homeless in London? The policeman's club, or the bayonet, is the only
thing that keeps down riot and arson, and the uncertainty of the result
is all that hinders the French, German, and Russian wolves from turning
a continent into a pandemonium. Is Europe truly a civilized coun