But the lesson which the example of Tazewell presents to the American
mind is of yet greater significancy. If there be one unpleasant trait
more revolting than another in our national character, it is the
inordinate pursuit of wealth: _rem, quocunque modo rem_. To get money is
the first lesson of childhood, the engrossing purpose of middle age, and
the harassing employment of declining years. Such is the rabid thirst
for money, its effects are seen over the whole moral and intellectual
character of the people. It constitutes wealth as the standard of worth,
and all the noblest qualities of the head and the heart are despised in
the comparison. As wealth is the point of honor, it must be sought at
every hazard, and the mortifying occurrences of the last twenty years,
the dishonest bankruptcies, the numerous forgeries, perpetrated by the
first people in social position, on a scale never known before, the
innumerable defalcations which have crowded the papers, until they have
become a matter of course; the insatiable craving for the money and
lands of others, which seems to have passed from the workshop and the
counting-room to the halls of legislation; the unbounded extravagance of
expenditure which might serve to indicate the possession of the darling
prize, and, above all, that worst sign of all, the almost perfect
indifference with which the most enormous frauds are received by the
public; these and similar things show the bitter consequences of this
vulgar passion.
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