But assume, on the contrary, that the prediction is essentially well
founded; that we have before us, in the immediate future, a period of
extreme exhaustion, depression, and even of temporary discouragement in
the public mind. All this need not, to the philosophic mind, cause the
slightest apprehension of permanent evil results--of any serious check
even, to our inevitable destiny, as the heirs of unbounded prosperity
and the leaders of the vanguard of the progress of the world. A halt, in
this sense, in the rapidity of our career, would be only the necessary
price of our immense and invaluable achievement, the elimination of
chattel slavery from the constitution of our social and political life.
We have still other and great social evils remaining behind. The
scientific and harmonious adjustment of the relations of capital to
labor, of the employers to the employed, in the constitution of our free
competitive society as it will still remain after Slavery is dead, is
the next great practical question which will force itself upon our
attention, and insist upon being definitively settled, before we can
enter upon that ulterior triumphant national development which is
reserved, in the decrees of destiny, for us as a people. This problem,
seemingly so difficult, will be found unexpectedly easy of solution, so
soon as the thinking and practical mind of the people is seriously
called to its consideration.
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