Here in New York are a million of human beings who would all die
within a few days, if the abundant provisioning of nature were not
flowing towards this great metropolis.
Imagination takes fright in the effort to appreciate the immense
multiplicity of articles which must cross the Bay, the Hudson, the
Harlem, and the East rivers, to-morrow, if the lives of its
inhabitants are not to become the prey of famine, riot, and pillage.
Yet, as we write, all are sleeping; and their quiet slumbers are not
disturbed for a moment by the thought of so frightful a perspective.
On the other hand, forty-five States and Territories have worked
to-day, without concert, without mutual understanding, to provision
New York. How is it that every day brings in what is needed, neither
more nor less, to this gigantic market? What is the intelligent and
secret power which presides over the astonishing regularity of
movements so complicated--a regularity in which each one has a faith
so undoubting, though comfort and life are at stake.
This power is an _absolute principle_, the principle of freedom of
operation, the principle of free conduct.
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