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sweets of death. Let him beware who takes to him- self more than his share of good, for upon him the gods will lay a corresponding quota of evil.
To a gold-laden ass all doors open. But the wealth- winners of California were not asses, whatever may prove to be some of their descendants, who like an oyster have much mouth but no head. Their lives, it is true, were too much like the life of an ass, enticed to drag its load by the fodder held before it, and which sees nothing but the fodder. They worked for money as if they had a wolf in their stomachs. Some were made wealthy by their avarice ; others were made ava- ricious by their wealth. There were men among them of whom it might be said, as it was of Jeremy Taylor, "His very dust is gold"; there were others of whom we are compelled to admit, "His very gold is dust."
Wealth does not accumulate in the hands of a com- munity by accident, nor by divine interposition, neither does literature, art, nor science. Because men will so and so is not a sufficient reason for their doings ; all human actions are the result of cause, and individ- uals will to act, or they act, because of that cause. It was the application of the principles of political economy to social philosophy, though carried not quite so far as at the present time, that made the Wealth of Nations of Adam Smith so long the popular and powerful ex- })onent of economic principles.
Early in the sixties there arose a race of bonanza kings with silver souls ; silver were their friends, and silver were their enemies, for to be worthy their con- sideration at all, they must be of silver; silver was their meat and meditations ; their doors were barred with silver, and silver paved their way to the final abode of souls. There was a whiskey demon and a silver demon, and these two demons fought; the silver demon caught the whiskey demon, but the whiskey demon gnawed out the vitals of the silver demon. Great is whiskey, and great is silver, but the
