Washington encountered a somewhat analogous problem when dealing with
the thirteen petty independent states, which had escaped from England;
but his problem was relatively rudimentary. Taking the theory of
sovereignty as it stood, he had only to apply it to communities. It was
mainly a question of concentrating a sufficient amount of energy to
enforce order in sovereign social units. The whole social detail
remained unchanged. Our conditions would seem to imply a very
considerable extension and specialization of the principle of
sovereignty, together with a commensurate increment of energy, but
unfortunately the twentieth-century American problem is still further
complicated by the character of the envelope in which this highly
volatilized society is theoretically contained. To attain his object,
Washington introduced a written organic law, which of all things is the
most inflexible. No other modern nation has to consider such an
impediment.
Moneyed capital I take to be stored human energy, as a coal measure is
stored solar energy; and moneyed capital, under the stress of modern
life, has developed at once extreme fluidity, and an equivalent
compressibility.
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