Stop
that exchange, and there would be no manufacturing; we would all be
living off raw nature once more, and our ball-games would give way to
the pelting of cocoanuts and hanging by our tails.
XI.
The opening of these forfeited lands would be the salvation of that
pitiable creature, the victim of the 8 per cent. grind. The homeless
wanderer can get shade and shelter from the burning sun and driving
storm, and with these is content, for he has long since resigned
ambition to those who are willing to continue the hopeless struggle; but
the man, on the 8 per cent. treadmill, who has not yet acknowledged
defeat, has no way of escape from the glare of the master's eye, except
by self-murder or the pauper's grave. There is nothing that excites our
hatred against the infamous laws of our times as much as does the sight
of this brave man struggling against the fate that is crushing him, and
whose patriotism will soon be kindred to that of the Russian serfs, if
it does not go to the other extreme and make him a nihilist or some
other brand of the political desperado. It was from this quarter, forget
it not, that the old flint locks came, "whose report was heard around
the world," and the serf will never be his model, for the old spirit has
still enough of life left for another blaze, as these new oppressors
will find to their awful cost.
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