The rush to California, for instance, and the attitude, not merely of merchants, but of philosophers and prophets, so called, in relation to it, reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind.  That so many are ready to live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of others less lucky, without contributing any value to society!  And that is called enterprise!  I know of no more startling development of the immorality of trade, and all the common modes of getting a living.  The philosophy and poetry and religion of such a mankind are not worth the dust of a puff-ball.  The hog that gets his living by rooting, stirring up the soil so, would be ashamed of such company.  If I could command the wealth of all the worlds by lifting my finger, I would not pay such a price for it.  Even Mahomet knew that God did not make this world in jest.  It makes God to be a moneyed gentleman who scatters a handful of pennies in order to see mankind scramble for them.  The world’s raffle!  A subsistence in the domains of Nature a thing to be raffled for!  What a comment, what a satire on our institutions!  The conclusion will be, that mankind will hang itself upon a tree.  And have all the precepts in all the Bibles taught men only this? and is the last and most admirable invention of the human race only an improved muck-rake?  Is this the ground on which Orientals and Occidentals meet?  Did God direct us so to get our living, digging where we never planted,—­and He would, perchance, reward us with lumps of gold?

God gave the righteous man a certificate entitling him to food and raiment, but the unrighteous man found a facsimile of the same in God’s coffers, and appropriated it, and obtained food and raiment like the former.  It is one of the most extensive systems of counterfeiting that the world has seen.  I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold.  I have seen a little of it.  I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit.  A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.

The gold-digger in the ravines of the mountains is as much a gambler as his fellow in the saloons of San Francisco.  What difference does it make, whether you shake dirt or shake dice?  If you win, society is the loser.  The gold-digger is the enemy of the honest laborer, whatever checks and compensations there may be.  It is not enough to tell me that you worked hard to get your gold.  So does the Devil work hard.  The way of transgressors may be hard in many respects.  The humblest observer who goes to the mines sees and says that gold-digging is of the character of a lottery; the gold thus obtained is not the same thing with the wages of honest toil.  But, practically, he forgets what he has seen, for he has seen only the fact, not the principle, and goes into trade there, that is, buys a ticket in what commonly proves another lottery, where the fact is not so obvious.