The Coming Plunder of America
The day will come when, in the State of New York, a multitude of people, not one of whom has had more than half a breakfast, or expects to have more than half a dinner, will choose a Legislature. Is it possible to doubt what sort of a Legislature will be chosen? On one side is a statesman preaching patience, respect for vested rights, strict observance of public faith; on the other is a demagogue, canting about the tyranny of capitalists and usurers, and asking why anybody should be permitted to drink champagne and to ride in carriages, while thousands of honest folks are in want of necessaries. Which of the two candidates is likely to be preferred by the workingman who hears his children crying for more bread? I seriously apprehend that you will, in some such seasons of adversity as I have described, do things which will prevent prosperity from returning. Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand, or your Republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the fifth, with this difference, that the Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country and by your own institutions."