Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 359 of Gordon Wood’s great 1991 book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (in this paragraph Wood quotes two observers – Frances Wright and Edward Everett – of early 19th-century America; footnotes deleted):

But it was increasingly clear that no one was really in charge of this gigantic, enterprising, restless nation. Government was weak, the churches were divided, and social institutions were fragmented. Nevertheless, “order” somehow seemed to “grow out of chaos,” and people guided themselves “without the check of any controlling power, other than that administered by the collision of their own interests balanced against each other.” The promotion of self-interest did not create the predicted anarchy, for in the new commercial society it became evident that “no man can promote his own interest, without promoting that of others.” The society was held together by an “interminable succession of exchanges.” And every single one of these exchanges counted, such that “the minutest excess or defeat in the supply of any one article of human want, produces a proportionate effect on the exchanges of all other articles.”