“In a country of such recent civilization as ours, whose almost limitless treasures of material wealth invite the risks of capital and the industry of labor, it is but natural that material interests should absorb the attention of the people to a degree elsewhere unknown.”

In other words, in a constitutional republic established upon the rights of the People as supreme, the people will assume the role of masters of their own destiny and thus take on the responsibilities of rulers instead of being ruled. The people are ultimately responsible for the actions of the government, so it is natural that they would pay more attention to these matters as participants rather than passengers.

False. The Founders were 97% Anglo Saxons, and such it was a very very old civilization based on idealism and not materialism. Materialism gradually seeped in over the century and a half when he wrote this.The author is a Quasi Marxist from the looks of it. The brunt of the attacks by materialists are on the original colonist descendants, slurs such as Crackers. This quote is entirely inappropriate given the history of America.