Litchfield enquirer. [volume] (Litchfield, Conn.) 1829-current, 1855-05-24
UTILITY OF Ups AND DOWNS.

| UTILITY OF Ups AND DOWNS.
One of the most wonderful laws of Po-
liticai Economy is that by which the rich
and the poor continually keep changing
places in state of society where verything
| is !ettfree. Few consider either the causes,
| or TIE important results of this arrangement
on the word at large. By industry, intelli-
gence and good morals, man soon rises
from poverty to wealth and social standing,
| just as certain as the heated stratum of water
at the bottom of tea-kette rises to the top.
And just as the water, when thus at the
greatest distance from the fire, cools and
sinks, so wealth too often begets habits Of
expenditure and ease; families soon come
to point where they consume more than
they produce-and then, by degrees, have to
| give place to Others. more fresh and warm
from the regions of industry. OF course,
this subsistence into comparative poverty is
painful to the individual, but is all par,
ofthat great law Differentiation which belongs
| as truly to the moral as to the physical
world.
The obstruction of this law brings down
upon society stagnation and decay, but its
natural operation produces gradual elevation
of all classes Of society, and a progressive
civilization, geniality, and warmth, benefit
ing each in turn. Every farmer knows the
advantage Of the rotation ofcrops, and nature
herself has arranged for the migration of
seeds, providing even for the downy thistle,
in the corner of the fence, an apparatus by
which its seeds may fly upon the wings of
the wind, and emigrate in quest of fresh
soil.
The same great law of circulation belongs
TO the Intellectual and social world quite as
certainly as to the physical. He who has
ordered even the flight of the thistle seeds,
has also arranged that riches shall make to
themselves wings and fly away-that men
of strong bone and sinew shall reap gold the
fastest In California, and that men of manly,
independent, bold, clear minds, and fresh,
unsophisiicated hearts, shall be continually
replacing in society the wastes produced by
luxury, effeminacy and idleness. This Is a
great natural law.
Riches give leisure, and leisure expansion
and delicacy to all the finer instincts and
feelings Of our nature. They give opportu-
nifty for abstract investigations and curious
inventions. While a man is struggling for
daily bread, he will not push out mathemati.
cal discoveries, or measure the distance of
the stars. But men of leisure seldom apply
the abstract knowledge they acquire to pur-
poses of utility as well as the industrious
classes, and the rough sailor best appropri-
ates the most abstract knowledge of astrono-
my to daily use in navigating the Atlantic.
Thus necessity teaches men to apply knowl-
edge to purposes of practical usefulness, ac-
quired in times of ease and wealth. A fam
lily rises to wealth through industry and in
telligence; their minds expand, their views
all their knowledge to useful pu.pcscs.-
Or the emigrate to the far West, and carry
with them their habits, tastes and thoughts,
which, combined with the energy acquired
through hardship, raise them to much
higher level than before. Refinement and
education are taken with them into every
walk Of life they enter, and thus the whole
are elevated.
In the emily settlement Of this country,
men of learning and refinement were thrown,
comparatively poor, on new country
They had been accustomed to the expensive
colleges of Europe-they formed cheap ones
for their children. All knowledge, all COM
forts, all refnements are in this way popu-
larized, cheapened and brought within the
compass of the masses in this country as in
no characterization, newspapers, books,
lectures, railroads, telegraphs. Thus re-
finement is impaired to the classes that
have most strength of character, while the
men of strength reinvigorate with new life
and health the drawing-rooms Of the refined.
t.. 4 =,
made to check this natural circulation of So
ciety. BY entails and laws of prinogeni-
ture, an hereditary aristocraey is supported
at the top Of society, and not allowed to fall
to its natural level, nor can merit RISE
Hence it is that, while the aristocracy all
over Europe gives every symptom of stag
nationand decay from an extreme and effemi-
nate refinement. the poorer classes are pro-
portionally degraded and brutalized, so as to
be very far in point of intelligence, below
,. any class of freemen in this country In
England, they attempt to heat society with
the warmth of civilization downwards from
the aristocracy, instead OF upwards from the
industrious classes, which is as ify you should
put fire on the top Of tire boiler, instead of
underneath. DIR. franklin started the true
American and common sense policy. and by
siuply letting the industrious and hard
working man be well paid, educated and
| virtuous. he saw that all the rest might be
left to the working out Of natural laws. He
put tie fire underneath, to make the water
| boil.
THE BULL DOG.
The Bull Dog is the most brutal and least
int lligent OF its species; its depressed fore
head. its under.hanuinu laws and blood. sh OF