Another great and manifest evil in our society, and one closely connected with that of which we have just spoken, is the inordinate love of wealth, and the elevation of the money god to the highest seat in our temple of worship. Human nature craves distinction. The divisions and castes in the society of the Old World, from the present day back to the remotest ages, is not only an evidence, but a practical exemplification of this fact. The abolition of all these distinctions consequent upon the establishment of our republican government upon the ground of political equality, swept away from our ancestors almost the only means of gratifying this innate propensity. A hard-working, practical, agricultural people, with no literature, and little if any cultivation of the fine arts, there was but one road to distinction open to the mass of the population, and that lay through the avenues of wealth. Hence it was but natural that affluence should take the place of the hereditary honors of the olden times, and that the people should bow to the only distinction, however spurious it might be, which elevated any portion of themselves above their fellows. With all the evils connected with a hereditary aristocracy, the distinction which attends upon a nobility is in a great measure an ideal one. It is not either its wealth or power which constitutes its charm, but a certain nameless something pertaining to the ideal, which affects not only the tenants and retainers, but even our republican selves. It may well be questioned whether we have been the gainers by substituting for such distinctions a gross and material one, affecting the bodily senses alonethe animal part of our natureand which contains little either to expand the mind or exalt the aspirations. With us but comparatively few can become distinguished in the ranks of literature or of art, or, indeed, in any of the higher or intellectual branches of human attainment; hence for the great mass there is but one road to distinction, one object to claim every exertionthe pursuit of wealth. And as a natural consequence, we see every art, every profession hinging upon this motive. Most of the evils connected with the administration of our public affairs, the fraud and corruption which are so prominent, the quadrennial scramble for place, with its consequent degrading of those positions which should be those of the highest honor, may be traced to this one source. More than this, we find the so-called aristocracy of our great citiesa moneyed one purelyexcluding from its ranks those who earn their livelihood in the pursuit of literature and art, and who, if true to their professions, are entitled to the very highest rank in society. There are of course exceptions, but not more than sufficient to prove the rule. A striking exemplification of the power of wealth among us is seen in these days of shoddy, when those who have hitherto moved in the humblest circles suddenly take their positions among the 'upper ten thousand,' and are treated with a deference to which they have all their lives been strangers, by virtue of a successful contract or a towering speculation. The effect of such a state of things upon our civilization is easy to be seen. A low motive is sure to bring down its followers to its own level. A people without a lofty and ennobling object is sure to fall into decay. The grasping spirit which everywhere pervades our society is fast lowering our people to the level of a race of mercenary jobbers. Truth, justice, honor, purity, and even religion, are in a great measure lost sight of in the general scramble for gold, until the strictest integrity, the most self-sacrificing honesty, are beginning to be looked upon as marvels, and we have won for ourselves among the nations of the world the unenviable title of worshippers of the 'almighty dollar.' Religion itself is twisted and distorted into every imaginable shape to bring it into harmony with our all-absorbing pursuit: all our ideas of public policy and of social progress are made to depend upon and modified by this unworthy motive. We mean not to include those individuals who, with loftier motives and a true appreciation of man's spiritual capabilities, are prominent among us, battling earnestly in the cause of true progress; we are speaking of the mass of our population. Those few are the goodly leaven who are yet to prove the regeneration of our race. Bad as is the state of affairs in this respect, it will, if left to itself, become infinitely worse as each succeeding year rolls around, for the spirit of greed is progressive in its nature, growing fatter and fatter upon its success.
Yet, in another point of view, this same strife for wealth is one great secret of American prosperity and progress. It is the motive power to that energy which has peopled the wilderness, erected as if by magic a mighty republic among the savage wilds, and, above all, spread American ideas, and with them the germ of human liberty, over the whole broad earth. To this spirit of greed upon our shores the Old World owes much of its advancement and most of those useful inventions which are fast revolutionizing humanity itself. But we are not considering it in this light; we are viewing it in its moral aspect, that respect in which it most strongly affects true civilization, which must soon fall away and lapse into the condition of the ages long past, if it be not sustained by an enduring moral and religious element. The moral advancement must keep pace with the intellectual, else the latter will some day reach that point where extremes meet, and have its weary journey to commence again.
It is to be hoped that this evil is already on the wane. It is to be hoped that the present stirring up of our society from its uttermost depths, with its consequent exploding of worn-out theories, which have hitherto held their places only through our national lethargywith its sweeping away of old-time prejudices, and mingling together of elements which have hitherto existed distinct and aloof from each other, will result in bringing true merit to the surface, in awakening our people to a loftier appreciation of the good and the true, thereby establishing a higher moral standard among us; that purer motives will henceforth actuate our society. The fears which are entertained by some that the present war will prove a severe shock to our civilization, are not sustained by the facts which are everywhere appearing around us. The frequent demands upon the generosity and forbearance of a great people, the constant calls for the exercise of the noblest qualities, the most self-sacrificing devotion, and that too in support of a great principle rather than of any present material interest, the very necessity for an exalted civilization and intellectual development on the part of the masses, which shall enable them to see in that principle the groundwork of all their future well-being, both as regards material prosperity and political position, are constantly bringing before the people, in a clearer light than ever before, the blessings of honor and uprightness, the necessity of national purity, and developing a moral element in our midst, whose good effects will far outbalance the ephemeral and spasmodic immorality and vice which a state of war usually engenders. Our people are becoming acquainted with those blessings of individual well-doing and those principles of philanthropy to which they have for so long been comparative strangers. And it is this, together with the unveiling, through the present convulsion, of those errors, both in our political system and in our society, which have so nearly proved our ruin, which will make this war in very truth the greatest blessing that has ever befallen us. And if this moral progress shall be such and so great as to throw down the golden calf from his throne and make the place of honor the reward of true merit alone, then shall we have cause, for the remotest generations, to thank God for this seeming calamity which has fallen upon us.