efficient. One after another disappear forests and swamps that have
occupied the fertile lands, separating ten, twenty, fifty, or five
hundred communities, which now are brought into connection with each
other; and with each step labour becomes more and more productive, and
is rewarded with better food, clothing, and shelter. Famine and
disease disappear, life is prolonged, population is increased, and
therewith the tendency to that combination of exertion among the
individuals composing these communities, which is the distinguishing
characteristic of civilization in all nations and in all periods of
the world. With further increase of population and wealth, the desires
of man, and his ability to gratify them, both increase. The nation,
thus formed, has more corn than it needs; but it has no cotton, and
its supply of wool is insufficient. The neighbouring nation has cotton
and wool, and needs corn. They are still divided, however, by broad
forests, deep swamps, and rapid rivers. Population increases, and the
great forests and swamps disappear, giving place to rich farms,
through which broad roads are made, with immense bridges, enabling the
merchant to transport his wool and his cotton to exchange with his
now-rich neighbours for their surplus corn or sugar. Nations now
combine their exertions, and wealth grows with still increased
rapidity, facilitating the drainage of marshes, and thus bringing into
activity the richest soils; while coal-mines cheaply furnish the fuel
for converting limestone into lime, and iron ore into axes and spades,
and into rails for the new roads needed for transporting to market the
vast products of the fertile soils now in use, and to bring back the
large supplies of sugar, tea, coffee, and the thousand other products
of distant lands with which intercourse now exists. At each step
population and wealth and happiness and prosperity take a new bound;
and men realize with difficulty the fact that the country, which now
affords to tens of millions all the necessaries, comforts,