A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.

Alcott contrasts a living commonwealth—grounded in moral purpose and the cultivation of persons—with a merely instrumental state that exists to safeguard commerce. Calling such a government a “carcass” suggests it has the outward form of civic life but lacks animating spirit: justice, education, conscience, and care for the whole community. The warning that it “soon falls” implies that corruption is not an accidental flaw but a predictable outcome when public power is organized chiefly around private economic interests. In Alcott’s Transcendentalist frame, political legitimacy depends on ethical and spiritual ends; when government serves only business, it undermines civic virtue and erodes its own stability.