If I were asked the cause of that change, little short of revolutionary, if indeed in any respect short of it, which has occurred in the material condition of the American people, and consequently in all its theories and ideals, within the last thirty years, I should attribute it to a wholly different cause. Mr. Lecky some years ago, in his book entitled "Liberty and Democracy," made the following statement, in no way original, but, as he put it, sufficiently striking: "The produce of the American mines [incident to the discoveries made by Columbus] created, in the most extreme form ever known in Europe, the change which beyond all others affects most deeply and universally the material well-being of men: it revolutionized the value of the precious metals, and, in consequence, the price of all articles, the effects of all contracts, the burden of all debts."
In other words, referring to the first half of the sixteenth century,—the sixty years, we will say, following the landfall of Columbus,—the historian attributed the great change which then occurred and which stands forth so markedly in history, to the increased New-World production of the precious metals, combined with the impetus given to trade and industry as a consequence of that discovery, and of the mastery of man over additional globe areas. Now, dismissing from consideration the so-called American protective system, likewise our currency issues and, generally, the patchwork, so to speak, of crazy-quilt legislation to which so much is attributed during the
