ABSTRACT
Sympathy, sociability, the sense of justice, and resentment are competent, under favorable circumstances, to work out by themselves a true, natural order, that is to say, an order without design or art. While such an order is far from perfect, it may permit a considerable unfolding of personal enterprise and mutual aid. The order of 1848 was literally a natural order. The old restraints of religion had for the most part fallen away, and new ones had not yet been forged. Law had not commenced to exert its pressure, for there were no courts and no jails. There was no social imperative, no arbitrary code, no traditional requirement, no conventional standard. There were no social institutions to protect, no vague corporate welfare to safeguard. One was called on to be true not to an abstraction, but to his fellow-miner. Under these circumstances, a natural order grew up and flourished for a brief time.
