dangerous accumulation of wealth by individuals and associations not public. Great wealth in the bands of a few must with the utmost certainty be balanced by the poverty of many. The dangers and injustice to society of this are so great that no specious plea for liberty must be allowed to cover the acquisition of undue wealth. The liberty of the strong and capable to get all they can and keep all they get, although obtained at the expense of the weak and incapable, is only the liberty of the highwayman glossed over and refined by subtle methods; the liberty of the bold and strong to do as they please with the weak and timid, the liberty of the shrewd and cunning to deal as they can and will with the simple and uncalculating, is a sort of anarchy.
He warned the people especially against the dangers from corporations, which were then beginning to grow strong in England. He had seen a good specimen of corporation rule in the early settlement of Virginia. A corporation is the very worst of rulers. It has all the vices of the avarice, greed, selfishness, and cruelty of all its members combined and increased in geometrical ratio by the combination, with none of the virtues of the benevolence and
