in all quarters, and that the whole body is made to suffer for the stupidities and rascalities of any of its individual members; second, that the good of all is. bound up in the real good of each; and now, after thus indicating the identity of individual interests with the general intcrest, and placed political economy on its true foundation in the Christian religion, the idealists can further show the perfect practical sagacity of their great principle, that material possessions lack all the elements of permanency, certainty, and satisfying content which inhere in spiritual possessions.

We think the most rapid and superficial survey of the things in which men invest, and in which they are invested, will prove the proposition. In regard to the darling object to which American energy and intelligence are directed, the obtaining of property and social station, we have already shown its transitory and visionary character. All of us have seen men go up and down with Erie and Michigan Southern, with Cumberland Coal and Cotton, until the doubt insinuated itself whether they were not mere phantasms to which stocks and stones gave all the appearance of reality they possessed. Soul, manhood, vitality, dropped out of them as Erie fell twenty per cent, or Cotton tumbled from its proud eminence of price and place. This fact shows that while these men were cunningly investing in Erie and Cotton, Erie and Cotton were far more cunningly investing in them. To say that they became bankrupt is not to express

the whole tragedy of their lives. In the pursuit of material objects they were insensibly building up their characters, and becoming what they pursued. Mentally and morally they were "breeding in and in” with the transactions of their business. When they failed, their bankruptcy was not merely a bankruptcy of the purse but a bankruptcy of nature. Their souls were insolvent. They consented to be nothing in themselves in order to be everything by the grace of the objects in which they dealt; and when these last proved deceptions they literally had nothing they could call their own. Wall Street bowed before them for the wealth which was in them. When the wealth vanished, neither civility nor servility could detect anything in what was left to repay the trouble of a nod or a cringe. Fifth Avenue made them members of its society for their establishments. When these came under the auctioneer's hammer, no social qualities were left which "good company," even by the aid of a microscope, could recognize. The universe, it is true, was still full of objects which wealth could neither purchase nor take away; but in them our ruined millionnaires had never thought of investing any portion of their souls. We might have pardoned their venturing their whole fortunes in two or three securities; but it is difficult to tolerate their venturing also in them their whole natures, with a like oversight of the prudence which keeps on the safe side of the world's chances by a wise distribution of its resources. When we contrast the attitude of resolute scorn which

these men formerly assumed toward the highest objects of human concern with their present forlorn aspect, we can but murmur pathetically, "O Bottom!. how art thou invested!"

But investments of the kind we are now considering, namely, investments of human nature, are not merely made in property: they are also made in politics and party; and when made in politics and party, they rest on a foundation as insecure, and are liable to end in bankruptcies as fatal, as when made in business. Investment of the soul in politics is often investment in the changing caprice of the hour, — in rage, envy, hatred, disappointed ambition, in lies, heartache, hypocrisy, and self-deception. The man is possessed by the delusions and passions, instead of possessing the realities, of political power. Even if he be so fortunate as to obtain an office, he finds that he has to undergo a larger amount of vituperation for a smaller amount of money than the holder of any other kind of office. No president of a railroad or manufacturing company would consent, for ten thousand a year, to be the subject of so much public abuse as is lavished on many a postmaster whose salary is hardly a thousand a year. Few voters will take the trouble to perform the necessary business of a political organization, but they are all willing to indulge in more or less contempt for those who do,-for those who do the "dirty work," as they are too fond of calling the work which is done for their profit and success. There is enough sympathy for broken-down merchants, but who has any

sympathy for a broken-down politician? The orange is thoroughly squeezed; who heeds the peel that is cast into the street?

It may also be doubted if the investment of the brain in partisan catchwords and declamation is a judicious investment of the mental powers. No more efficacious mode of dissipating the mind from a force into a vaporous phantom has ever been devised than the mode of cramming the minds of the young with political phrases, and then irritating their sensibilities to that pitch of enthusiasm which urges them to "utter all themselves into the air." The tendency of such speechifying is to make the mind incapable of observing a fact, analyzing a combination, grasping a principle, or thinking closely, accurately, and consecutively upon any subject. The vagabond thoughts and shreds of thought, decked out in faded finery selected from the "old clo"" of eloquence, reel from the orator's lips in jubilant defiance of order and sequence. Or, to change the figure, the brain is inflated to that extent which justifies the hope that the defects of a logic of wind will be overlooked in a rhetoric of whirlwind, and that the absence of ideas will hardly be noted in the terrific clatter of words. Such are the characteristics of many of those astonishing displays of juvenile political eloquence, which should be witnessed, not by citizens desirous of obtaining some facts and principles to guide them in voting sensibly and honestly, but by an audience composed of ladies whose lips are engaged in dissolving the organized

perfume of peppermints, and gentlemen whose teeth are busy in penetrating into those appetizing "Aids to Reflection" which lie hid in the shell of the peanut. It is next to impossible ever to reclaim a young man who has once accustomed his mind to think vagrantly in order that he may spout "eloquently." But we still may be permitted to hope that every young person who has made a foolish speech, and been applauded therefor by his party, will consent, for his own good, to abandon his intention of being President of the United States. That his qualifications for the office are undoubted, the peculiar style of his eloquence abundantly proves; but we would respectfully suggest to him the remote chance that some three or four millions of his countrymen may not be sufficiently familiar with his claims to select him for the post.

In regard to all the lower forms of politics, we much doubt the wisdom of the man who invests his nature in their perilous chances and changes. But politics have their higher ambitions and more splendid rewards, those which inflame the passions and stimulate the intellect of the statesman. Even here it is dangerous to invest in anything lower than patriotism; for patriotism affords the only real compensations for that "laborious, invidious, closely-watched slavery which is mocked with the name of Power." It is the misfortune of the United States that few of our eminent statesmen can be content to serve their country and gain an honorable fame in those situations which, though really of the first, are seemingly of secondary