to withstand the attacks made upon it will lessen,
and this process must go on until capital abandons the contest to defend
itself as too costly. Then nothing remains but flight. Under what
conditions industrial capital would find migration from America
possible, must remain for us beyond the bounds even of speculation. It
might escape with little or no loss. On the other hand, it might fare as
hardly as did the southern slaveholders. No man can foresee his fate. In
the event of adverse fortune, however, the position of capitalists would
hardly be improved by the existence of political courts serving a
malevolent majority. Whatever may be in store for us, here at least, we
reach an intelligible conclusion. Should Nature follow such a course as
I have suggested, she will settle all our present perplexities as simply
and as drastically as she is apt to settle human perturbations, and she
will follow logically in the infinitely extended line of her own most
impressive precedents.

FOOTNOTES:

[42] In these observations on the intellectual tendencies of capital I
speak generally. Not only individual capitalists, but great
corporations, exist, who are noble examples of law-abiding and
intelligent citizenship. Their rarity, however, and their
conspicuousness, seem to prove the general rule.

[43] By the Law of November 27, 1790, priests refusing to swear
allegiance to the "civil constitution" of the clergy were punished by
loss of pay and of rights of citizenship if they continued their
functions. By Law of August 26, 1792, by transportation to Cayenne.

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