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 land-fall 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 last
thirty years, I confidently submit that in the production of the results
under discussion, they are quantities and factors hardly worthy of
consideration. The cause of the change which has taken place lies far
deeper and must be sought in influences of a wholly different nature,
influences developed into an increased and still ever increasing
activity, over which legislation has absolutely no control. I refer, of
course, to man's mastery over the latent forces of Nature. Of these
Steam and Electricity are the great examples, which, because always
apparent, at once strike the imagination. These, as tools, it is to be
remembered, date practically from within one hundred years back. It may,
indeed, safely be asserted that up to 1815, the end of the Wars of
Napoleon and the time of your Professor Lieber, steam even had not as
yet practically affected the operations of man, while electricity, when
not a terror, was as yet but a toy. Commerce was still exclusively
carried on by the sailing ship and canal-boat. The years from the fall
of Napoleon to our own War of Secession--from Waterloo to
Gettysburg--were practically those of early and partial development. Not