Trade and Panics [pp. 159-164]

TRADE AND PANICS.
erable paupers, numbered by the million, are lorded over by
a few vulgar parvenu millionaires, like the "Troise gaza rari
nantes in gargite"-is a pandemonium! Such is England. Such
is our North with their starving operatives, their frequent panics
and their paupers; and such would be the South, too, but for
negro slavery, which checks trade and gives more fixedness and
stability to property and to society. But not enough; there is
too much of trade and speculation, even with us. It is painful
to see how rarely lands remain for four generations in the same
blood. Painful to reflect on the misfortunes, the extravagan ces, the misplaced credits and confidence, and various other
causes, that have driven forth the former inmnates of our old
mansions to seek their fortunes in distant lands. Our gratu lations with the present occupants, who have risen in the
world by luck or labor, by merit or demerit, for " some rise by
sin and some by virtue fall," do not compensate and balance
our sympathies for the outcasts. Independent of our congratulations with the new possessors, and our sympathies with the
former ones, we are oppressed with an overwhelming sense of
instability and insecurity, like one standing for the first time
on the illusory shores of the Mississippi. The great object in
most men's lives is to rear up a respectable family, and to leavo
to them a respectable and long-continued maintenance. Every
living man longs for a home where his bones shall rest, and
where his children, to the third and fourth generation, shall
revere his memory and guard his burial-place. The Romans
consecrated the family mansion, or home, and offered daily
sacrifices to their ancestry, the Lares and Manes, who were
supposed to invisibly hover about it, as guardian genii. It
was a beautiful superstition, and must have ennobled and purified those who believed and practised it. Who would not be
a better and a happier being, if he thought the disembodied
spirits of his father and his sainted mother, were tenderly
watching over his conduct, and guarding him from harm.
In modern society, Trade, the god Mammon of our day, has
expelled the Manes and Penates, and the new possessor, with
no fear of being haunted by the spirits of the dead, drives the
ruthless ploughshare through their re.iting-places. In such
society there can be little of happiness or contentment, no attachment to home, to the soil and to country, no feelings of
conservatism; and no stability in men's fortunes, faith, or
opinions; and hence no stability in government, nor in governmental, religious, or other institutions. Our moral, social,
religious, and political world, is like the Mississippi valley,
161