Gambling speculation was the madness of the day; and, in the wide-spread ruin which we are now witnessing as the last stage of this moral pestilence, Texan bonds and Texan lands form no small portion of the fragments from the wreck of money corporations contributing their assets of two or three cents to the dollar.
Quincy critiques the speculative frenzy of his era, linking it to the broader economic ruin and the collapse of financial institutions.
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But the first principles of morals and politics, which have long been settled, acquire the authority of self-evident truths, which, when first discussed, may have been vehemently and portentously contested.
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