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Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and of the Political History of the United States by the best American and European Authors, ed. John J. Lalor (New York: Maynard, Merrill, & Co., 1899). Vol 3 Oath - Zollverein

Editor: John Joseph Lalor

Part of: Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and of the Political History of the United States, 3 vols.

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PACIFIC RAILROAD

PACIFIC RAILROAD. (See INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS, RAILROADS.)

PAPER MONEY.

PAPER MONEY. If there be an experiment which has been seriously made and as to the results of which there can be no doubt, it is the experiment which demonstrates the chimerical advantages and grave dangers of paper money, employed as an instrument of production. Nevertheless, numberless deceptions, the injury done to public credit and national good faith, and the ruins of the past, do not seem to have entirely dissipated a dangerous illusion; recent facts, as well as the persistence of false doctrines, prove this but too well; the human mind frees itself with difficulty from the fatal influence exerted over it by the mirage of wealth acquired without labor, of a pretended increase of capital called into existence by the magic wand of credit, and of a new species of alchemy which transmutes paper into gold.

—Nothing, however, can be simpler than the examination of this problem, and nothing easier of solution. It suffices to know what is the part played by money, to measure how little such an arbitrary creation as paper money can do, and to understand its dangers.

—Ours is not the age in which the wealth of states was confounded with the possession of coin; money, the great wheel of circulation, as Adam Smith calls it, preserves nevertheless, however, an important place in the economy of nations; it constitutes the mechanism of exchange in the clearest and surest conditions; it enables us to set a value on all products and services; it gives activity to the creation and facilitates the distribution of wealth. It is in fact owing to money that all are impelled to the common work of the nation, and that the result obtained is divided among those who have contributed to it. It introduces a common language into the operations of social commerce.

—But it is not a language of the imagination; money is the sign and measure of values, because it is their guarantee, because it represents a value that is known, acknowledged and accepted everywhere. It is a universal commodity, while it at the same time affords each country its local instrument of purchase and sale, and of remuneration for both public and private services.

—In our day the fetters which cramp the international movement of exchanges are gradually disappearing, and a regular equilibrium may be established to adapt to the wants of each market the quantity of money necessary for the transaction of its business, when this business preserves its character of purity, and does not degenerate into fiction. Let us suppose, for a moment, that gold and silver alone, without any mixture of fiduciary signs, are the only instruments of exchange. As nothing prevents the transportation of the precious metals, they will always resume their level by going where a certain scarcity of them assures them greater advantage, and abandoning those places in which an over-abundance causes their depreciation. An admirable law of attraction governs them and proportions them to the useful services which they are called upon to render, by opposing equally a sterile abundance and a scarcity of specie. The very force of things establishes a weir for metallic wealth, which always falls into equilibrium with the wants of circulation.

—There is a risk of the situation being modified from the very moment that, in order to economize upon the mechanism of exchange, an effort is made to substitute for gold and silver artificial means more or less ingenious, and more or less sure, by calling to its aid what is called the magic of credit, whose power people are inclined to exaggerate. Two ways are open to reach this end. By following one of these ways the movement of exchanges is simplified and the number of actual payments reduced; recourse is had to those ingenious creations which render the actual intervention of specie superfluous, or limited in a number of cases, by means of bills of exchange, of open accounts in the banks, of set-offs and transfers; or else circulation is accelerated in such a manner as to increase the services rendered by each piece of money. In this way we obtain an advantage similar to that which two iron rails placed parallel upon the ground afford by the saving in friction, which increases the traction. The same result is obtained with less expenditure of force and capital, thanks to the economy and energy of the springs set at work. Here all is gain and no danger; such is the largest function of credit and an inexhaustible source of fecundity.

—But, by the side of these useful combinations, whose influence is too often ignored, we have the creation of a sign easy to manufacture, which costs next to nothing, and which is substituted in a greater or less proportion for metallic money: we refer to the bank note, which is called upon to act the part of money, because it is or ought to be accepted in business transactions to liquidate debts.

—If this fiduciary sign rests on the guaranty of a metallic value, against which it may be exchanged at will, and if we may accept or refuse it at pleasure, it constitutes money paper, which must be carefully distinguished from paper money. If it be imposed by authority, whether it emanates from the public treasury or from a private institution, and we are not at liberty to demand its equivalent in gold or silver, but are obliged to accept it, it degenerates into paper money. In the first case it aims to supply in part the metallic money, of which the country should reserve a sufficient amount to assure the exchange of bills for specie, and to serve in those transactions in which bank notes can not enter. In the second case it has for effect to replace metallic money even to the point of the issue of paper money with compulsory circulation or of so-called legal tender character.

—The aggregate of business transactions requires but a certain determinate amount of specie in each country at a given time. If bank bills are substituted for a part of the instruments of exchange, the surplus disappears under the form of merchandise, in order to restore the level, unless the coin be reserved in the treasury as a pledge of the paper money in circulation: thus it is that paper money drives out coin.

—We may in a certain limited measure, as we shall see, economize upon the portion of the national capital employed in the making of the instrument of exchange. An institution of credit, solidly established, may maintain in circulation a mass of bills which will be in as much favor as specie, provided the metallic reserve guarantees their payment at sight, and provided the bill represents a sufficiently important part of the monetary unit to facilitate transportation and shorten accounts. However, we can supply in this way only a portion of the money needed; but the amount of the latter relatively to the amount of business transactions diminishes in proportion as civilization advances, as society improves, and as credit is extended. In 1873 the wealth of England was estimated at two hundred milliards of francs, and its production at about twenty-four milliards; the total amount of money in the country, metallic and fiduciary, scarcely exceeded three milliards; the wealth of France in the same year was estimated at one hundred and sixty milliards of francs; its production was scarcely inferior to that of England; it had twice the amount (about six milliards) in specie and bank notes. It would be an exaggeration to reckon the wealth of Russia at 50,000,000,000 francs, and its products at 12,000,000,000; it employs about 4,000,000,000 francs in specie and paper money. The possible economy on the amount of capital employed in the medium of circulation, is therefore in an inverse ratio to the sum total of national wealth. The richer a country is, the less it gains by abandoning the solid ground of gold and silver.

—The saving of capital effected by the regular use of bank notes would be reckoned high if placed at from one-fourth to one-third of the sum required for the purpose of the exchange of wealth; if we take into consideration the necessary reserves, it does not amount to half a milliard of francs in England, and if it rises to two milliards in France, it is because of an abnormal condition, the result of the Franco-Prussian war, which can not last. It amounts, according to this showing, to the one four-hundredth part of the wealth of the United Kingdom, and to about one-hundredth part of the wealth of France. Regarding this comparison from another point of view, we may say that the interest of the metallic capital thus replaced frees England and France from an annual burden of twenty and eighteen millions of francs respectively, calculating the interest at 4 per cent. This is equivalent to about the one-thousandth part of the production of England, and to about the one three-hundredth part of the production of France. As a matter of course bank notes render much more important service in France by the facility and convenience which they afford, and by the saving which they render possible, even without taking any account of the inconveniences of compulsory circulation, to which France was subjected after 1870.

—These gains are not without their accompanying dangers, which grow more serious the more the volume of notes increases. In proportion as this volume increases, the metallic supply decreases, and as confidence is the stuff of which credit is made, if a period of calm and prosperity be succeeded by one of uneasiness, or if imperative needs require a great exportation of specie, every effort must be made to recall the absent metal, even at the cost of great sacrifices and by paying dear for it; this it is that makes the emission of bank notes so perilous; this it is that forbids us to go beyond a certain restrictive limit, unless we would resign ourselves to the dangers of compulsory circulation. If this limit, which is variable it is true, be passed, it necessarily leads to commercial crises when the fiduciary paper has been issued only as the representative sign of private engagements, and to a political crisis when paper money has been issued to meet the wants of the state.

—Adam Smith recognized the utility of the "wagonway through the air" of credit, which enables the "country to convert, as it were, a great part of its highways into good pastures and corn fields," highways represented by metallic money. "Nevertheless," he adds, "the commerce and the industry of the country, it must be acknowledged, though they may be somewhat augmented, can not be altogether so secure when they are thus, as it were, suspended upon the Dædalian wings of paper money, as when they travel upon the solid ground of gold and silver." After having pointed out the danger he endeavors to destroy the attraction of an imaginary benefit: "the whole paper money of every kind which can circulate in any country can never exceed the value of the gold and silver of which it supplies the place."

—Let us, by an extreme hypothesis, suppose ourselves in a society from which the use of the precious metals has entirely disappeared. If we should go beyond this, as paper money does not unite in itself the characters both of sign and of pledge, and as it does not become a commodity when it ceases to be a means of discharge from debt, it can not flow into foreign countries, and its excess produces depreciation. But who will flatter himself that he can measure exactly the amount of the media of circulation necessary in a country? This amount depends not only upon the mass but also upon the rapidity of exchanges. When the precious metals alone are employed, or when they effect the major part of business transactions, their level is maintained naturally, thanks to the weir which opens on foreign markets: this level can not but be violently disturbed when the bounds of prudence are overstepped by the issue of money paper, and especially when the nation abandons itself to the dangerous seductions of paper money.

—The danger exists even when a private institution is granted the dangerous privilege which excuses it from payment at sight; it assumes a much graver aspect when the state itself assumes this perilous function. History furnishes most sad and striking examples of the chastisement everywhere visited upon these same mistakes. France, England, Austria, Russia, and the United States, not to swell the list by citing the instances of secondary states, have paid the penalty of the system of Law and of the assignats, of the forced circulation of bank notes, of the Bankzettel, of paper roubles, and of continental money. It is a curious fact that Poland alone, a country which it is sought to blot out entirely from the map of Europe, preserved itself from this plague down to the very time of its subjugation by Russia. This latter country has, on the contrary, always had, upon a large scale, a fictitious system of circulation, which it inherited from Chinese, Tartar and Mongolian traditions. We do not wish to make any vain display of erudition, nor to enter into investigations which could be of interest only to the curious, and we shall therefore confine ourselves to recalling the fact that Genghis Khan made use of paper money, and that, toward the end of the thirteenth century, his grandson Koblai employed it in such a manner as to excite the ingenuous admiration of Marco Polo. This admiration proved only too contagious: the system, which from China and Mongolia had invaded Russia, was also admitted into western Europe. But we believe we ought to point out, as a remarkable fact, the scrupulous care with which Napoleon I, always guarded against a like attempt. He never consented to the issue of paper money. While England had resort to the compulsory circulation of paper money to resist him, and while Russia and Austria issued prodigious quantities of assignats, Napoleon ever held aloof from this disorder, and de Montalivet, minister of the interior, said, in a circular addressed to the prefects on the 25th of October, 1810. "The emperor regards paper money as the greatest scourge of nations, and as being, to morals, what the plague is in the physical order."

—By a singular concatenation of truths and errors the wisest operations of the most severely administered banks have in the end degenerated into a monstrous creation of paper money.

—Everywhere in Europe, except in Poland, the right of the crown to coin money, which had pretended to put an end to the fraud and pillage organized by local suzerains, ended by giving rise to successive lowering of the standard, lessening of the weight and debasing of the coin. The great Copernicus wrote, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, upon this important question in a treatise that is almost unknown: "However innumerable the scourges that ordinarily lead to the decline of kingdoms, principalities and republics, the four following are, to my mind, the most formidable: discord, pestilence, barrenness of the land, and the deterioration of the money. As far as the first three are concerned the evidence is such that no one is ignorant of them. But as to the fourth, if we except a few men of superior intelligence, very few concern themselves about it; and why? Because it does not ruin the state at a single blow, but little by little, by a sort of hidden action."

—The diversity and variation of moneys was one of the causes that led to the establishment of banks of deposit, which reduced these uncertain signs to a common denomination, by creating bank money fixed and invariable which took into consideration the metallic value of the specie deposited. The notes issued were fully represented by the specie deposited in the banks; to convenience and accuracy they joined the most complete security, and soon gained universal favor.

—It was noticed that the greater part of these titles continued in circulation, without any demand being made for the restitution of the specie guaranteeing them. Some banks employed the latter, thus leaving a part of their notes unsecured, at least as far as the metallic pledge was concerned. They were likewise led to attempt the inverse operation by issuing more notes than they possessed reserve in money or in bullion, thus increasing the profits of the institution and replacing a portion of their metallic stock by what we may call trust notes. They had obligated themselves to pay at sight: but as the demands for coin were not made simultaneously, these demands were met by diminishing the amount of their reserve corresponding to the titles issued. The declivity was a dangerous one, the enticement of gain urged the banks of issue to extend their operations, and to utilize more and more the marvelous power they possessed of coining in some measure money from sheets of paper rushed through a press. It is true that their obligation to immediately redeem it forced them to incessant precaution, which was constantly opposed by the allurement of gain: they were in constant danger, if they had not sufficient specie to pay at sight. The situation in this respect in our own day has not changed; it seems to us to lead to a clearer and clearer distinction between the issue of notes which perform the functions of money and banking operations properly so called, and to give a separate existence, by its concentration, to the power of creating these notes. The two principles, which always made war upon the liberty of the banks and the oneness of the note payable to bearer and at sight, are thus reconciled.

—At the time when the errors of the mercantile system estimated the wealth of states by the amount of gold and silver they possessed, the supplementary circulation furnished by the bank note could not but be received enthusiastically. As paper was raised to the level of gold and silver, which were considered as the equivalents of wealth, wealth could be increased at will. There remained, it is true, the troublesome condition of redemption; but this condition, it was said, was superfluous, it was an obstacle to the expansion of capital, and the sovereign authority, which was master of all, might readily do away with it. What an admirable discovery! Was not the genius of Law, as the poets of the time sang, to Enrichir à la fois, les sujets et les rois; since he opened an inexhaustible source to the spirit of enterprise, since Mississippi was called by him to become what California has since become! Thus people began by seeking in banks of deposit a remedy for the degradation of the coinage: the bank note circulated because based upon a full specie guarantee; afterward this guarantee was diminished in the banks of issue, and finally disappeared in paper money.

—Colbert denounced the unrestricted license to borrow, as a cause of ruin to the state; what would he have said of this formidable instrument of paper money, which was on the point of handing over abundant resources to the prodigality and rash enterprises of governments, by drawing to itself produced wealth, at the risk of destroying it by foolish expenses and by the squandering of a part of the public fortune, which was destined to disappear in smoke under the deceptive form of notes having a forced circulation and of assignats? Sophisms were not wanting to give a brilliant coloring to these disastrous operations. To procure for paper the value and efficacy of money was to make something out of nothing, and to have a share in divine power; wealth consisted in an abundance of money; thanks to paper, people were no longer tied to the precious metals, which would not increase at will, nor follow the commands of man, while paper money, the fruitful and docile agent of the supreme power, could be increased at will. The abbé Terrasson explains in a curious manner this phenomenon of financial optics. "A merchant's note," he says, "as it may be refused in trade, does not circulate like silver, and consequently soon returns to its source; its utterer finds himself obliged to pay, and deprived of the benefit of credit. This is not the case with the king: as every one is obliged to accept his note, and this note circulates as silver, he pays validly even with his promise." "Gold and silver," he adds, "are merely the signs that represent real wealth, that is, commodities. An écu is a note conceived in the following terms: any seller will give to its bearer, the commodity or merchandise which he may need up to the amount of three livres for as much of another kind of merchandise which has been given me; and the effigy of the prince takes the place of his signature. Now, what difference does it make whether this sign is of silver or of paper? Is it not cheaper to choose a material that costs nothing, and which one is not obliged to withdraw from trade, where it is employed as merchandise, which, in fine, is manufactured in the kingdom, and which does not render us necessarily dependent upon strangers and owners of mines, who eagerly take advantage of the seduction or éclat of gold and silver to cause the ruin of other nations; a material that can be increased according to his needs, without fear of ever exhausting the supply; finally, a material which no one will be tempted to use for any other purpose than for circulation? Paper has all these advantages which render it preferable to silver."

—We see that the pretended discoveries, pompously vaunted by the new social alchemists of our day, are but old rubbish, long since condemned by good sense and experience! Doctrines similar to those of the abbé Terrasson inspired Law's system, and led to an emission of 2,696,400,000 livres of irredeemable notes, absorbed by a disgraceful bankruptcy, at an epoch when the value of each piece of money was, we must bear in mind, much greater, and the needs of circulation much less, than to-day; these doctrines, allied with other errors in her coinage system, gave birth to the 45,000,000,000 of assignats in France. The attempt has been vainly made to palliate such a debauchery of credit, by saying that the assignats saved the revolution, just as it has been said that the reign of terror saved the republic. We protest against this view with all the energy of a conviction based upon a scrupulous study of facts. The able memoir communicated to the academy of moral and political sciences by Levasseur shows how the ruin brought about by the disordinate issue of assignats weakened France, and Michelet has eloquently said: "The reign of terror killed the republic by exciting in men's minds a feeling more powerful than that of fear, the feeling of pity!"

—A young ecclesiastical student, twenty-two years of age, who afterward became illustrious under the name of Turgot, completely annihilated the errors professed by the defenders of paper money in his admirable letter to the abbé de Cicé (Paris, April 7, 1749). It would be difficult to find more cogent logic enlisted in a better cause.

—Save a slight difference, arising from the cost of production, uncoined silver is on a par with coined silver, the money value being only a denomination. "It is as merchandise that silver is, not the sign, but the common measure of other kinds of merchandise, and this not by any arbitrary convention, based upon the splendor of this metal, but because, as it can be employed as merchandise under different forms, and has, by reason of this property, a salable value which is somewhat increased by its use as money, since it can, moreover, be reduced to the same title and divided exactly, its value is always known."

—After having clearly stated the true principle, Turgot points out the danger of the arbitrary multiplication of paper. "But," says the abbé Terrasson, "it is to the king's interest, in order to preserve his credit, to keep paper money within just bounds, and this interest of the prince is sufficient to establish confidence." What are these just bounds? and how shall they be determined? Gold and silver are distributed by their very circulation, according to the proportion of products, of industry, wealth and revenue which they procure, as well as of the expenses incurred. Paper money has no measure but deceptive approximations, which a natural allurement is wont to swell at the wish of power. Instead of proportioning its issue to the unknown wants of the market, the latter made its issue conform to the insatiable requirements of the treasury; and ruin was the consequence. This is the common history of paper money wherever it has functioned as an attribute of public power, when the bank note ceased to be protected by a contract, and was transformed into an act of power.

—We must not confound the disastrous effects of inordinate emissions with the temporary privilege accorded to a bank, authorizing it to suspend the redemption of its notes in specie. When care is taken to limit the amount of notes in circulation, it is possible to ward off the bad effects of such an act, especially when it is easy to foresee the end of them, and when the prudent conduct of the institution has acquired for it great solidity.

—The act of 1797, which made compulsory the circulation of the notes of the bank of England, had but little effect, because they were not increased beyond the actual needs of the home circulation. The entire amount of notes in circulation in 1796 was £10,730,000; in 1797 it was but £9,675,000, and did not exceed £13,000,000 even in 1800. Their depreciation began when the needs of the treasury increased this sum. We must add, also, that the prodigious stir in industry about this time required more numerous instruments of exchange, while it at the same time furnished the sinews of war. Thanks to the inventions of Watt and Arkwright, the English mechanics spun gold, so to speak, and furnished material for the successive loans called for by the treasury, which reached colossal proportions. The bank of England facilitated these loans by discounting the notes of the exchequer, but the circulation of the notes never reached such proportions as to be a source of uneasiness; it never exceeded £20,000,000, except in 1810, and the maximum point reached was £28,000,000, before the resumption of specie payments in 1822. Still, even thus restricted, the prolongation of compulsory circulation was the cause of considerable losses, first by the rise in the price of gold, and then by the painful transition from a depreciated currency to the re-establishment of metallic money. The bank of England, does not, therefore, furnish any argument in favor of the inconsiderate issue of paper money; and it suffices to recall how comparatively moderate it was in its conduct, without, however, escaping the danger of the depreciation of fiduciary paper, to induce us to abandon rash designs of a similar character.

—There is much more reason not to cite the example of the bank of France in 1848, in defense of paper money. Every one knows what good services the good standing of this great establishment, the safety of its operations and the care it had always taken to maintain its specie reserve, enabled it to render to the government and to industry during this direful period, in spite of the terrible shock caused by the revolution of February. The compulsory circulation of its notes was in a measure only nominal: public administrations, the manufacturers and the merchants received the specie they needed. The confidence which the bank enjoyed attracted deposits to it. Although it had absorbed the departmental banks, and realized the grand idea of unity of issue, it was restricted at first to a circulation of 452,000,000 francs in notes; this figure was increased to 525,000,000 on Dec. 22, 1849, when its reserve was firmly re-established; its notes exchanged at par, and even at a small premium; and, in reality, it was the specie that had compulsory circulation, as the demand for notes exceeded the supply. The resumption of specie payments was urgently demanded by the bank itself, and prescribed by the decree of Aug. 6, 1850, without causing any trouble.

—Thus we see what is gained by not being carried away by chimerical facilities, and multiplying notes as Austria and Russia did, when the wants of circulation did not require it; this multiplication must necessarily lead to the instability of the measure of values, and to a variable lowering of the representative sign in all business transactions. We shall soon tell how France, in the face of apparently increasing financial necessities, in great part escaped this danger; for everything here is a question of proportion. The state which goes beyond this delicate measure tolerates or is guilty of an abuse, and is wanting in the performance of the high mission of power; instead of maintaining order, guaranteeing security, and maintaining the public faith, it becomes itself an instrument of sad disturbance, and at the same time aims a blow at moral law and the interests of production. From the moment that money loses its character of a solid pledge of business transactions, or that, instead of avoiding the variations of value, it suffers their effect, confidence disappears, operations extending over a long period are stopped, credit, the mainspring of industry, is destroyed, and circulation ceases. Paper money destroys the type, or, as Lord Liverpool styled it, the sovereign archetype of value, the precious metals. The bank note ceases to be their reflection and representative sign: the danger rapidly increases, if, instead of remaining an instrument of commerce, and of being backed by the discount on merchandise, it is handed over at the arbitrary will of the state, which transforms it into a mere resource of the treasury. It then becomes almost impossible to avoid a fatal declivity; an excessive emission leads to bankruptcy, for the state always issues more notes than the needs of circulation require, and, in proportion as the law of depreciation manifests itself, it hastens the catastrophe by the necessity of employing more notes to meet the same expenses.

—The loss which the country suffers is far from being confined to the diminution in price of the mass of fiduciary signs; it is increased by the unnatural amount of business transactions, rendered so by a fictitious value. The money of a nation never forms but a small portion of its wealth, and the depreciation of paper exercises a direful influence upon all products, which are henceforth distributed in a false proportion. All the relations of the sovereign power with citizens and of citizens with one another, are changed by it; contracts are violated; injustice triumphs, and the public fortune declines as a result of the ruin of individuals.

—How deplorable soever the system of paper money appears to us, we do not wish to exaggerate anything; it is not impossible to escape the dangers which it seems to provoke, but to do so we must renounce the idea of seeing in it too rich a mine, and of demanding of it more help than it can render. By confining it to well-defined limits, by scrupulously preventing it from exceeding a fraction of the receipts and expenses of the state, the government may find in paper money, if accepted by all the public treasuries, the means of effecting a real loan without interest. But this can never be but a limited resource, and as it may lead to dire consequences, it would be better to renounce it from the moment there appears a possibility of these consequences. Many of the small German states have treasury notes, which circulate as money, because there are but very few of them. In 1873, with a budget of 1,000,000,000 francs, Prussia had not 60,000,000 of Tresorscheine; the duchy of Baden reached a larger proportion, 3,000,000 florins of paper money to a budget of 19,000,000 florins. It is only in microscopic and needy states that the relative proportion is still further increased; but the amounts are small. Saxe-Meiningen had, in 1873, a budget of 2,000,000 florins and 356,000 florins of paper money. Saxe-Altenburg had 400,000 thalers of paper money when the treasury receipts reached only 874,192 thalers, and there were 950,000 thalers (more than $600,000) of this irredeemable paper in Anhalt alone. These modest figures seem insignificant by the side of the 3,000,000,000 of paper money of the Russian empire, which would like to appear less majestic in this respect. If France, at the close of a disastrous war, was compelled to carry such an amount of paper, she did it only by maintaining a larger specie reserve in the presence of wealth treble the amount, and of a trade four times that amount. She endeavored, besides, to resume her normal condition by a prompt redemption of the state's indebtedness to the bank of France.

—The two distinctive characteristics of paper money are, that it is not redeemable in coin, and that, instead of having public confidence for its limit, it is imposed by authority, by means of forced circulation and the usurpation of the power of discharging debts. Bad as an instrument of commercial credit, it becomes disastrous as an instrument of public authority, unless it be lessened to such an extent as to render only secondary services. As soon as the attempt is made to use it upon a very large scale, it leads to an abyss.

—Never more than in these later times have we seen numerous states applying the dread remedy of paper money upon a great scale. The United States at the close of the war of secession, Italy after gaining her independence, and France when defeated by Prussia, have put themselves side by side with Russia and Austria in the use of this dangerous expedient. This affords us a great lesson, for all these states were or are merely endeavoring to escape from a false situation, whose inconveniences they all appreciate. The old illusions have disappeared: men no longer extol paper money; they no longer see in it a source of wealth; they appreciate better the elements which constitute productive power; they know how often an apparent economy is transformed into losses of various kinds, whose amount far surpasses the pretended benefit.

—If we sum up the total amount of paper money issued by the five powers mentioned, we will find, after deducting the amount of the specie reserve, that it amounted, in 1873, to $250,000,000,000. This was not one-seventieth part of the accumulated wealth of these states; as a pretended increase of productive power, therefore, paper money is a feeble benefit, entirely counterbalanced by the trouble it causes in circulation. The measure is already full, and can not be increased. The common efforts of all civilized nations are directed toward a reduction of the amount of paper money. But should not this necessary reduction of notes render those more circumspect who, acknowledging only gold as a medium of circulation, would run the risk of destroying the necessary equilibrium between business and money? (See MONEY AND ITS SUBSTITUTES.)

L. WOLOWSKI.

PARAGUAY (Republic of).

PARAGUAY (Republic of). Paraguay was one of the numerous provinces included in the vice-royalty of Buenos Ayres, which comprised the Spanish-American possessions connected by the Rio de la Plata with the Atlantic ocean. Like all the other Spanish colonies of Central and South America, Paraguay, when the cry of independence resounded throughout the American continent, succeeded in shaking off the yoke of the mother country, almost without a struggle, in 1810. But this province, which had already had its separate history in the past, a strange history and one entirely different from that of any other state, also contributed to the revolution which it had just accomplished, features which contrasted in a most striking manner with those of the other republics of La Plata.

—A few words here about the past. Paraguay, like the greater part of South America, was conquered to the crown of Spain, about the middle of the sixteenth century, by the hardy adventurers who, on the heels of Columbus, Cortez, Pizarro and Americus Vespucius, had cast themselves upon the new world, as ardent in their endeavors to despoil and enslave the aborigines as to convert them to the Christian faith. But in these remote countries, in which relations with Europe were almost impossible, the religious element soon prevailed over the political element, and the powerful company of Jesus which, since 1588, had through its missions planted the germs of refinement of manners and community life in these countries, obtained, in 1611, the privilege of governing Paraguay, under the suzerainty paramount of Spain.

—This government of the Jesuits established a pure theocracy in Paraguay, and maintained it with firmness, moderation and success during more than a century and a half, until the year 1767, when the society was expelled under the ministry of the count of Aranda. We can not here undertake to defend theocratic government, as both experience and reason demonstrate that human societies develop only under the influence of ideas of progress and liberty. We must note, also, that individual action, under the enervating régime of their vast conventual organization, no longer had the energetic stimulus of the feeling of ownership or property. But, when we consider the savage state of the inhabitants, it is impossible to deny that the Jesuits worked a marvelous transformation during their prolonged domination. If they concerned themselves more about the souls than the intellects of the aborigines, if their religion itself was a sort of paganism, tending to divert the natives because external in form in almost everything, they nevertheless bent these large and lazy children to the law of labor; and it is a demonstrated fact that the agriculture of Paraguay was checked after the expulsion of the company, and that even to this day it has not regained its former development, so that numerous localities, formerly well cultivated, are now abandoned. What is specially worthy of note is, that the rule of the Jesuits left a strong impression upon their minds, and that respect for authority remained the heritage of the country when the declaration of its independence handed it over to the experiment of a republican form of government. Nor were its efforts in this direction long continued: while everywhere else, throughout Spanish America, the people sought their way amid endless commotions, the people of Paraguay found theirs without hesitation and without groping; or rather, as immutably disciplined disciples of the Jesuit fathers, the people of Paraguay allowed themselves to be led without a shadow of resistance, by the energetic man who took their destiny in his hands. With the aid of the patriots of Buenos Ayres, Paraguay had overthrown the Spanish domination in the month of May, 1811: a junta had been established, and the victorious insurgents gave the highest place to Doctor Francia, who had taken no part in these events, but whom they regarded as the only Paraguayan capable of directing public affairs.

—In fact, from the moment that Doctor Francia was accorded a place in the new republic, he became everything: he first presided over the junta, then when a congress had established, at his suggestion, a government with two consuls, he filled one of the consular chairs, which had been called by the names of Cæsar and Pompey. Soon after, in 1814, the chair of Pompey, which had been only an embarrassment, was removed from the hall of congress, and Francia was named dictator for three years. Finally, the assembly conferred perpetual dictatorship upon him. Thus was the republic of Paraguay governed until the year 1840, when the dictator, weighed down with years, but ever feared, respected and obeyed as a god, was called from the throne and from the world.

—Absolute power was not exercised during so many years without falling into excesses. Francia, who had obtained supreme power at the age when passions are extinct, and who had immediately renounced all taste for gaming and sensual indulgence, hitherto the sole object of his life, abandoned himself to the sombre passion of old men, vengeance. He was sure of the submission of the people, but he wished to inspire fear, and he cared little whether he was hated or not. Those who had known him best, those who, in the beginning of his career, had helped to bring him forward, and whose jealousy had been excited by his new greatness, were the more especial objects of his pitiless spite. Under pretext of conspiracy, his old friends were imprisoned, judged by him alone, and executed. His dictatorship was a veritable reign of terror, and even to-day scarcely any trace can be found of the bloody executions he prescribed, as his written orders were returned to him after the execution, and by him immediately destroyed.

—Francia had, we may add, no regard whatever for human life, and this is the odious feature of his dictatorship; but his cruelty, his strange and fantastic humor, did not constitute the entire man, for whose continued power there would be no pretext, even in Paraguay, if he were not possessed of certain striking public virtues and of extraordinary governing qualities. The old dictator, with a preconceived system, devoted himself to what he believed to be the interest of Paraguay. Much better informed than any of his countrymen, he took everything into his own hands, always knowing the end which he wished to attain. Without ministers, without counselors, without confidants, he had with him only a secretary of the lowest rank, called actuario, who recorded his wishes, without pretending to influence them. He was ever disinterested: he said that the state stood more in need of money than he did, and of the 9,000 piastres assigned him by congress he never took more than 3,000 piastres a year. Such being his own practice, Francia impressed upon his whole administration rules of austere probity which singularly contributed to render his name popular.

—The dictator's policy was very simple; it was the policy of isolation. He aimed at maintaining Paraguay free not only from all contact with Europe, but also and especially from all intercourse with the ancient provinces of the vice-royalty of Buenos Ayres. There was never a shadow of indecision in his conduct, in this regard. Despite all the attempts of the governments that succeeded one another in the Argentine Republic, he never would admit that the autonomy of Paraguay could be broken, and in the last years of his life he even refused to examine the pressing demands addressed to him on this subject by Rosas, who was then at the height of his power. This had been somewhat the policy of the Jesuits; but Francia, who was thoroughly imbued with the anti-Catholic ideas of the eighteenth century, had not the religious motive of his predecessors. He wished to defend himself against liberty, which, in fact, did not work wonders in the Argentine countries, where Rosas had inflicted upon the people a dictatorship more severe than that of Francia himself, without giving, in exchange, the profound peace which can scarcely be said to have been interrupted, during the thirty years of Francia's rule, by a few aggressions of the savages from the desert.

—The death of Francia, which occurred in 1840, left the work which he had created without a guide. But after him, in default of statesmen, there remained the people whom he had trained to obedience, and who, faithful to their tranquil habits, passed over the period of transition to a new government without any trouble. They remembered what had been done in 1810; a general constituent assembly was convoked, elected by universal suffrage, and composed of five hundred members. This assembly appointed two consuls to govern the republic, Don Carlos-Antonio Lopez, a wealthy landed proprietor, and Don Mariano-Roque Alonzo, commander-in-chief of the army, who had been called by the voice of the public to provide for the most urgent wants of the government, and for the convocation of the representatives. The powers given to the consuls were to expire at the end of three years; and superiority on the one hand, and deference on the other, were so firmly established, that the three years elapsed without the least collision. But in 1844, when the assembly met again, it happened, as in the time of Francia's administration, that one of the consuls absorbed the other. Antonio Lopez was named president for ten years.

—The presidency of Paraguay became a real dynasty. When his constitutional term had expired, Lopez wished to be succeeded by his son, Don Francisco-Salano Lopez, and the assembly very graciously lent itself to this notion. But Gen. Lopez declined the honor tendered him, and his refusal does not seem to have displeased the head of his family, who willingly allowed himself to be renominated. It was not until 1862, on the death of Antonio Lopez, that the congress finally called Don Francisco-Salano Lopez to the decennial presidency.

—The elevation to power of Don Carlos-Antonio Lopez had been of immense benefit to Paraguay, and his son, still more completely freed from the traditions of Francia, and more inclined to the civilization of Europe, which he had visited, promised to continue the benefit. Don Antonio had governed Paraguay with mildness, and his patriarchal justice was full of mercy. Of the foreign policy of Francia he had retained only his determined resolution to maintain the autonomy of Paraguay, and to preserve it against the attempted invasion of its turbulent neighbors. He would not at any cost return into the distracted pale of the old vice-royalty of Buenos Ayres, and exchange the order and prosperity which his fellow-countrymen enjoyed for the deceptive unity of the Argentine provinces, a unity fruitful only in endless civil strife. But what was his personal work, and remains his title to honor, is the intention he formed, and afterward accomplished, of demolishing the Chinese wall which Francia, after the example of the Jesuits, his predecessors, had built around Paraguay. He above all wished to open communications with Europe. Owing to the persistence with which he pressed the conclusion of treaties of navigation and commerce with France, England, the United States, Brazil, etc., the isolation of Paraguay was in part done away with in 1860. This isolation was due in great part to the very situation of Paraguay. It is a vast plateau of arable land, watered by mighty rivers and numerous streams, but elevated above all the other countries of South America, situated in the very centre of the continent, far from any sea, and has communication with the other states only by means of its two rivers, the Parana and the Paraguay. The fixed purpose of the two Lopezes was to secure the freedom of navigation of the two rivers. The second Lopez established it by a decree. He also had a railroad constructed. Very much inclined to the economic progress of Europe, whence he had returned decorated (an immense prestige in America), he had resolved to make of Paraguay a state of large resources, and economic works, after the fashion of France in 1852 and the succeeding years, whose political constitution he pretty closely copied. He acted as the ruler of a country of 901,640 square kilometres and 1,337,000 inhabitants. The revenues were increased to 12,450,000 francs, derived principally from the sale of the herb maté (Paraguay tea), from the domains (over 8,000,000 francs), and customs duties. Paraguay had no public debt, and its 4,500,000 francs of paper money were secured by a specie reserve of an equal amount. Its imports amounted to over 8,000,000 francs, and its exports to 7,000,000.

—Lopez's position as head of the state was a unique one; less than 7,000 square kilometres of this vast country belonged to private parties; the remainder was state domain administered by Lopez. All the farmers were therefore his tenants, so to speak; the manufactures which they produced were his; Paraguay was but an immense farm in his hands. Its means, however, were not in keeping with the greatness of its natural resources: these fertile plains were worked with the spade; the farmers who used the plow were few. There was no industry but that which was improvised for the necessities of war. The navigation of the Paraguay was at the mercy of Buenos Ayres, which commands the mouth of the river. The hostility of the Argentine Republic was surpassed by that of Brazil, which, for the ownership of vague and contested territory, drew the other states bordering on the Parana into a coalition which overcame Lopez.

—Brazil demanded the left bank of the Paraguay (1864), and the Argentine Republic the right bank, which is possessed by Uruguay. It was against Uruguay that the coalition was first formed. The two greedy governments, refusing the intervention of Italy, put in power, in opposition to the moderate (blanco) government which regularly governs Uruguay, the revolutionary (colorado) party, which invaded the republic. Lopez, who was friendly to the blancos, felt himself threatened, and while refusing an alliance with Uruguay, he protested against the invasion of the Brazilian squadron in lower Paraguay, Nov. 17, 1864. He declared war against Brazil, and invaded the Brazilian territory. Flores, the colorado, who, with his Indians and half-breeds, and the assistance of the allies, took possession of Montevideo, joined the coalition. This struggle of one against three, of a great military farm against three nations provided with every industrial and maritime resource, moved Europe. Lopez was on good terms with the governments of Europe, and also with the United States; but American intervention was rejected by Brazil. This empire, which evidently dragged the two republics of La Plata into the struggle against their will, pushed matters to extremes. Lopez, five times conquered, five times repaired his losses by a general conscription, comprising women and children. He was finally captured and killed. There are few examples in history of a war so desperate, and so complete a ruin (1865). The population of Paraguay fell from 1,330,000 to 500,000, and the revenues from 13,000,000 francs to 2,000,000.

—It seems that the conquerors wished partially to justify their ordinary, and in this case plausible, pretense of making war only in the interest of civilization and liberty; for, after having stipulated for the territorial acquisitions which they had long demanded, they left the Paraguayans free to manage their own home government. By the treaty of Suret, concluded with Brazil and the Argentine Republic May 1, 1865, and ratified June 20, 1870, Paraguay was allowed to retain only the territory situated between the Paraguay and Parana rivers. Hence the area of the republic is at present only about 172,500 square kilometres. A constitution, proclaimed Nov. 25, 1875, provided for a president for four years, and a legislative congress composed of a senate and a chamber of representatives. It is substantially a reproduction of the constitution of the United States.

—Examples of such efforts as Paraguay now made to repair so complete a catastrophe are as rare as the catastrophe itself. The government of Paraguay proposed the sale of the immense national property, which comprised almost its entire territory. But these lands had to be hypothecated to guarantee a loan of £25,000,000, which was effected in England. In 1862 there was no public debt: in 1870 it amounted, besides the English loan, to 1,180,000,000 francs. Disorganization was such that the government had lost the titles to its property; a special commission had to be appointed to enforce the rights of the state. The instruments of production and the products themselves were everywhere damaged, when they were not destroyed. The railroad had to be supplied anew with rolling stock, workshops and stations. They had to rebuild public edifices, reestablish tribunals, issue paper money, take measures for the representation of Paraguay at the international exposition of Cordova, and to encourage immigration. Slavery was abolished (1871), the standing army reduced, and foreigners admitted to the enjoyment of all the rights of natives, but not to high political and administrative functions.17

—BIBLIOGRAPHY. L. A. Demersay, Histoire physique, économique et politique du Paraguay et des établissements des Jesuites, 2 vols., 8vo, Paris, 1865: Alfred Du Graty, La République de Paraguay, 8vo, Bruxelles, 1865; K. Johnston, Paraguay, (in "Geographical Magazine," July, 1875), London, 1875; A. J. Kennedy, La Plata, Brazil and Paraguay, during the War, 8vo, London, 1869; Chas. Mansfield, Paraguay, Brazil and the Plate, new edit., by the Rev. Charles Kingsley, 8vo, London, 1866; G. F. Masterman, Seven Eventful Years in Paraguay, 8vo, London, 1869; M. G. and E. T. Mulhall, Handbook to the River Plate Republics, etc., and the Republics of Uruguay and Paraguay, 8vo, London, 1875; Commander Thomas G. Page, La Plata, the Argentine Confederation and Paraguay: Narrative of the Exploration of the Tributaries of the River La Plata and adjacent countries during the years 1853-6, under the orders of the United States Government, 8vo, New York, 1867; Charles Quentin, Le Paraguay, 8vo, Paris, 1866; George Thompson, The Paraguayan War, with sketches of the history of Paraguay and of the manners and customs of the people, 8vo, London, 1869; Joh. Jac. v. Tschudi, Reisen durch Suedamerika, 2 vols., 8vo, Leipzig, 1866; Chas. A. Washburn, The History of Paraguay, with notes of personal observations, 2 vols., 8vo, Boston and New York, 1871; Fregeiro, Diccionario geografico e historico del Rio de La Plata, etc., 1878.

CHAS. REYBAUD.

PARASITES

PARASITES, Social. The parasite is one who lives at the expense of other men. The number of parasites is so great, and their place in this world so considerable, that we can not speak of the general economy of societies without concerning ourselves with them. No human being can live unless he has become exclusive master, that is to say, proprietor, of some portion of matter, be it but the piece of bread or of fruit which he is on the point of eating, or of the clothing which covers him. Some men live by the honest acquisition and accumulation of property, or by the just conservation of property previously acquired; these constitute the useful and active part of the human race. Others live on the resources of their neighbors; but it is none the less necessary that they should obtain the proprietorship of the things indispensable to their subsistence. A man may live by the use and consumption of the things or the product of the things which he has previously obtained by occupation, or which have been acquired, preserved or accumulated by virtue of the right of inheritance. We call individuals thus provided, proprietors, capitalists. The usage of speech reserves these names to persons who possess more material objects than are needed to satisfy the immediate wants of life. It is not customary, though he really is one, to call a proprietor the unfortunate man who possesses merely his clothing or his food for the day. A man may own nothing, either in capital producing an income or in stocks of provisions or other property, or he may possess only an insufficient quantity of these, and yet live upon his own resources. Within each one of us there is a powerful instrument of acquisition capable of furnishing material objects for our enjoyment. This inner most personal force, superior if not to all, at least to the usual and probable, risks of chance, is labor; in other words, the development of our powers of activity. Through this force we are enabled to render useful service to ourselves and others; and we acquire with certainty our share of property by the exchange of services, and accidentally by occupation. When a man lives neither by his own labor nor capital, a term in which, for greater convenience, we include all property previously acquired actually laid by, he must live by the labor or capital of others. Every man belongs then, necessarily, to one of these classes: capitalists, workmen, parasites. We are wrong in speaking of three classes: in truth, what are called classes here are only three attributes, three aspects of humanity. Two of these qualities, or all three of them, are often united in the same person. When we range men in these three classes, we take principally into consideration which of the three qualities is predominant in each of them.

—Mirabeau, in the discussion on the tithes in France, uttered the following words, which provoked the murmurs of the assembly. "It is time to renounce the prejudices of a proud ignorance which disdains the words wages and wage-workers. I know of but three ways of existing in society: a man must be a beggar, a thief or a wage-receiver Proprietors themselves are merely the first among wage-receivers; what we commonly call his property is nothing but the price which society pays him for the distribution which he is intrusted with making to other individuals, in return for his consumption and his expenses. Proprietors are the agents and stewards of the social body." The following day the abbé Duplaquet, on resigning from a priory, said: "I commit myself to the justice of the nation, considering, whatever M. de Mirabeau may have said on the subject, that I am too old to earn my wages, too honest to steal, and that the services which I have rendered should excuse me from begging." This witty repartee of the abbé was misleading; the right to the continuation of his wages was already earned, for the reward for past services is one of the elements of honest wages. The assembly, therefore, did wrong to receive it with murmurs, and to take offense at the term wage-receivers, which its great orator, obeying the luminous boldness of his good sense, tried to free from an unmerited reproach. Mirabeau's classification approached the truth, but did not reach it; proprietors are not wage workers; beggars and thieves constitute the principal branches of parasites, but do not include them all. Mirabeau was right in saying, with the physiocrates, that, being the agents and stewards of the social body, proprietors distributed wages for their consumption and their expenses: the inaccuracy consisted in pretending that they received social wages for that distribution. This was to confound the origin of its acquisition with the use of the thing, and to take account only of the service rendered by property, and not of its right over the thing. Owners of property gain the right to wages only in so far as to the character of proprietor is joined the character of workman, which, it is true, is usually added and in varying proportions, but which corresponds to a different order of relations. Owners, masters of their property, use it to suit themselves, in their own interest, at their own risk; the utility accruing indirectly to society from this use is the only service inherent in their quality as owners, and calls for no reward. It is in this use itself that they find the pay for this service. When society guarantees them the peaceable, permanent possession and the free enjoyment of their property, it does not pay them wages; it fulfills its own duty by causing the rights of owners to be respected; they it is who, by paying their taxes and bearing other public burdens, pay society for the service it renders them by guarding and guaranteeing their property. They distribute wages only because these wages bring them a profit by means of the values in things or services, of which wages are the representation, and the thing given in exchange for. The social utility of property is the consequence of its right, but neither its basis nor its measure. To lift the respect due to property to its true height, it is necessary to go to the length of saying that even if property remained idle, unproductive or badly used, it would still be sacred for the same reason and in the same degree as if employed in useful consumption and productive expenditure. Very distinct in theory, the quality of the proprietor and that of the wage-earner are linked together in the concrete realities of life by numerous points of contact, and are frequently found united in the same individual. Every workman possesses in his own person an immaterial capital, which consists in his capacity for labor. It is composed of his natural activity, his theoretical instruction, his practical skill; the direction which his moral development imparts to his powers must also be included as of great importance. Even if we confine ourselves to the consideration of material objects which may become property, it is not necessary, in order to find workmen capitalists, to consider only great manufacturers, etc., operating on a large stock previously accumulated. The artisan who has become owner of his tools and furniture is a capitalist, though on a modest scale; for he possesses articles which enable him to live, and things which he can use without destroying, and which will continue to be ulterior instruments of gain to him. In proportion as his property increases, as his tools become more numerous or better, as his stock of provisions accumulates for future consumption, his character as capitalist becomes more evident.

—There are capitalists who live only on their capital or on their income; but they are in the minority. The majority employ a certain amount of paid labor in giving life to, fructifying and increasing their property. Of all the sophisms used to pervert the understanding of the public sentiment, one of the falsest and most productive of danger is that which, exalting labor at the expense of property, endeavors to range capitalists among parasites so far as that part of their fortune not produced by actual labor is concerned. The full and peaceful enjoyment of property, accompanied by its essential character of indefinite transmissibility, would be the wisest of calculations and the most useful of combinations, even if it were only the result of human convention. But property is more than this it is a right, and, to consider it only in its relations with labor, it is the right of labor itself. Take away the certainty of being recognized as the master of goods legitimately acquired, and you break the spring of the activity which acquires them; deprive the father of a family of the assurance of transmitting the property acquired or preserved for his children, and you have destroyed the family spirit, and with it saving, temperance, providence, resignation, and plans for the future. Man is born for labor; but he craves repose, leisure, and the serene and disinterested culture of the mind. To stigmatize in theory, or disturb in practice, the past of which capitalists are the depositaries, would be the death of the present and the future. Labor, which is future property, has confidence in its forces only through the stability of property, which is, mainly, past labor.

—The parasite uses his neighbor's goods, that is, his property or his labor, without giving in return anything or any service. But it does not follow because an object was acquired parasitically, that it was illegitimately obtained. Ownership of things originates in several legitimate ways. Its first source is in the right of occupation; by virtue of which a vacant thing is appropriated by the person who first takes it. This origin excludes all idea of a parasitic acquisition, since it relates only to things to which no other person had acquired a right. Things already occupied can only be acquired by transmission. Transmission is legitimately effected in three different ways. One is inheritance, which, considering as a unit the natural association of relationship or affection, transfers the property of a deceased person to his heirs, by title of the civil continuation of his person. The heir is not a parasite, since he acquires in virtue of his own right, which is the complement and consequence of the full and entire right of his parent. Another way is exchange, through which property is acquired for an equivalent furnished in things or in services. Thanks to exchange, each man need owe to himself alone the means of living and owning property, and thus obtain independence and dignity from his own free acts. The third legitimate way of transmission is the way of gift. This is the only source of existence regularly open to parasite life. Outside of these four modes of acquisition, morality and law recognize no other. Robbery, rapine, cheating, extortion, confiscation, war, every act which takes another's goods by fraud or violence, should be ranked as a crime or misdemeanor. There are some distinctions to be made on the subject of confiscation and war, which may be legitimate by way of exception, but which are then resolved into forms of exchange, and as a reparation for damage caused.

—Parasites live irregularly, by misdemeanors, or regularly by gift. With regard to parasites of the first order, Mirabeau was right when he called them robbers; it is for the penal laws to settle with them. These parasites are found in every station of life, in all degrees of the social scale, and even among the wealthy. To live by confiscation, to grow rich by unjust privileges, to receive pay for work which is never done, for a place which is never filled, to break a contract or one's word, to appropriate by violence, by cunning, by credit or by power, the goods, the work, the liberty, the rights of others, is to take the place of the lowest of parasites without any exhibition of shame.

—Society, in its relations with this corrupt and corrupting class of men, has duties of various kinds to fulfill. The first is to punish them; the second is to see that the punishments inflicted furnish security and serve as an example to the rest of the people; the third is to turn the penalties into an effort to reform the guilty, and above all to prevent their becoming, through the fault of institutions, a new cause of individual corruption and social danger. With these public duties is connected everything which relates to penal legislation, to the administration of repressive justice, to the management of prisons, to banishment, and to the penitentiary system. Too mild punishment disarms and discourages society. Excessive severity destroys the sentiment of justice, and causes it to degenerate by putting vengeance in its place. It invites impunity. The cause of the greatest moral disturbance is to be found in a cowardly complaisance toward wealthy parasites, whom their social position raises up to serve as an example, which position they have not been able to protect from the baseness of living at the expense of others. To surround illy acquired wealth with honor, to lavish unmerited bounties, to urge to cupidity, to arouse vicious inclinations, as happens, for instance, when the official character is soiled by connecting it with lotteries and gaming establishments, is to widen the breach for the invasion of parasites. The want of enlightenment and mistakes of calculation lead society to such a result, when, even without immoral intent, it combines or manages its institutions in such a manner as to take from the common fund, made up of the contributions of all, the means to support monopolies, privileges or franchises, which return nothing to compensate therefor, monopolies created in certain kinds of labor, services, commerce, industry. If we examine the protective system closely, it will not be difficult to perceive that its principal wrong is that it establishes and develops artificially parasitic privileges, covering them, often in good faith, and without understanding their real effect, with the cloak of general utility. It is not given to human laws to remedy everything; and, whatever be their wisdom, a part of the race will always live on the spoils taken from the other part. But we are justified in wishing that laws and governments should have a sound understanding of what is just, and should unite to the sagacity which points out evil, the probity to hunt it down, and the constancy to stop its progress as far as lies in the power of man.

—The parasites who live on gifts, and whose existence thus depends on a regular title, even in the case when irregular causes have given birth to this title, are a curious and difficult subject of study. All the questions of pauperism belong to this subject, but they are not the only ones that belong to it. Gift, a legitimate source of acquisition, is an indispensable element in the harmony of society. It is a result of the completeness of the power of the proprietor, who is free to deprive himself of his property gratuitously, without receiving anything in return. To receive gratuitously the services or the property of another is a parasitic act, the character of which is determined by the circumstances which accompany it, and which is, in itself, neither good nor bad. The name parasite is given to persons who, by habit and these parasitic acts, live altogether or principally by donation. The moral disfavor which custom attaches to the acceptance of the services or property of others without giving an equivalent therefor, arises from an honorable susceptibility, and answers to a respectable instinct of dignity, but is not always just. This acceptance, if confined strictly to its economic meaning, should be morally neutral, in spite of the idea of inferiority and dependence which it implies; it is right in some cases, but wrong in others, to make such gratuitous acceptance an expression of contempt. What is beyond all controversy, is, that we must not apply the harsh term beggar to all those who live by gift. The idea of mendicancy is connected with the idea of a permanent condition of solicitation based on the allegation of entire helplessness to procure the necessaries of life in any other way. The man is not a mendicant who receives the donation without asking for it, especially he is not one who receives it as a consequence of affection existing between him and the donor, or as the satisfaction of an obligation connecting the donor with him. Beggary is confounded with rapine and robbery when it exacts assistance instead of requesting it.

—Among those who receive without giving, and who live on the substance of others without furnishing anything of their own in return, must be reckoned nearly all the human race during the period of childhood. Our first years are passed in absolute impotence as far as productive labor is concerned. This time is devoted to physical, intellectual and moral development, destined, no doubt, to create in those who reach the age of maturity an immaterial capital of force and activity, but which may never have this result. The age of productive labor is reached at different periods by different persons. Ordinarily it commences too early in the poor families of artisans and agricultural laborers, who hasten to employ their children in a lucrative occupation, while the more provident or well-to-do families are not so hasty to consume the present at the expense of the future. The quality of capitalist belongs to children only in exceptional cases. The number of those who are born with a fortune of their own and who can be supported and reared by means of their own property, is extremely small, even in the wealthy class. If we consider children in individual isolation only, they must be called parasites, for they live solely on the resources of others given to them; but they figure in society as members of the collective being called the family, of which they form an integral part by right; and the family itself would become a parasite, if by impotence or bad will, it should allow the cost of their subsistence to fall on others. The child lives at the expense of the family without giving any actual return, unless in affection, in happiness, in morality, in hopes, precious values indeed, but which can not be measured. Later, the child should make a return for the assistance and services rendered it in advance. Its right to existence rests on a two-fold foundation: on the duties which the instincts of our nature engrave on our hearts and dictate to the positive law; and on the continued mutuality of obligations, which, contracted to some, are paid to others, converting our debts to our fathers and mothers into credits to our children. The civil law obliges parents, fathers and children, the ascending and descending lines, to support each other reciprocally. The natural law extends beyond this circle of family duties.

—The family is not the only collective being on which the responsibility rests of supporting its members. The same duty is imposed, in different measures and proportions, on numberless associations into which men are collected. There is a class of associations, such as the societies of mutual aid, whose capital, formed by means of individual contributions, is intended for those of its members who are in distress or who reach a certain age, or a certain time of service. The assistance demanded in this case is not a donation, it is a credit, a regular and foreseen employment of a common saving collected for this purpose. The party who receives aid here is in no way a parasite, not even with regard to those particular bodies, so long as he receives his share only after having fulfilled the conditions of his contract. He becomes a parasite with reference to the association, if, without having furnished his due, he receives from its bounty, instead of from his own contribution, the assistance which is given him. But the individual thus assisted is not a parasite on the rest of society, since he lives on resources which the rest of society did not contribute to provide for him. A county undertakes the support of its poor. These are parasites with reference to it, but not to the rest of the country, which is not called on to do anything for them. The same must be said of individuals assisted by private charity; which, by taking them in charge, relieves society in general to that extent. It is to be remarked, however, that, as the resources of private charity are limited, the parasites who exhaust it prevent it from being extended to others who need it as much or more than they; and in this manner they contribute to increase the number of the needy. It is a fundamental truth, too little recognized, that, different from other duties, which have corresponding rights, there is no right which corresponds to the duty of charity. The rich man must relieve the poor without the poor having any right as against the rich. Religion has admirable doctrines on this subject which public law might profit by: while it teaches charity to some, it commands gratitude and resignation to others. Private charity is a debt of conscience and love, and not a debt by right; it does not obey precise rules, and is not governed by the calculations of human prudence; it feels that its most urgent cares, its most bountiful assistance, its most affectionate consolations, should be given to unmerited suffering, but it desires to assist even those who have deserved their misfortune by their faults. Thus, to extend its benevolent duties, it is enough for charity to say that each man ought to feel his weakness to be such, that he should not arm himself arrogantly against indulgence. Charity has its eyes fixed, not on what it gives, but on what it has itself received. All men would be charitable if they would remember the large number of services which each one receives from his neighbors, no matter how brilliant his actual situation may be. There is not an individual who does not draw abundantly from this large capital of the universal domain transmitted and increased from generation to generation, and who does not take much more from it than he can ever return to it. We owe too much to others to be authorized to bargain our assistance to those whom it is possible for us to aid.

—Public charity is governed by narrower and more worldly rules than private charity. Consequently, men correctly cease to call it charity, and give it the more modern name of public assistance. Charity, which is love, strips itself to give to others. When the state gives and assists, it strips itself of nothing; its action is limited to distributing in a certain fashion the contributions which it levies on its citizens. Not every gift is charity; the assistance distributed by the state is only a branch of the public administration. The only parasites at the expense of the state should be the poor who can not be properly cared for by their families, associations or private charity. To live in a purely gratuitous manner at the expense of the state when not compelled to accept the gifts by which it supports the needy and unfortunate, is to belong to the worst class of parasites, to that class of people who are able not to be parasites, a perverse class, a public pest, whose close relationship with robbers we have previously pointed out, and to which we need not return. It only remains for us to speak of parasites who are really poor people. State donations, like private gifts, are essentially one-sided, in this sense, that the moral duty imposed on the donor does not suppose any right in the recipient. Where credit begins, donation ceases. It is the desire of humanity that human beings should not be left to perish of distress; it is the dictate of prudence that a mass of men excited to disorder and crime by the spur of want should not be left to increase in the bosom of society; but the duty of the state to be humane and prudent creates no right to demand its assistance. The destructive sophism which converts want into credit has been revived in our time under the names of the right to existence, the right to labor, the right to assistance. It has been frequently refuted in this cyclopædia. (See ATELIERS; CHARITY; COMMUNISM; LABOR, RIGHT TO.) The falsest sophisms are generally the exaggerations of a correct idea, or the improper generalization of a particular truth. The numerous varieties of the anti-social sophisms which parade the name of socialism, place their point of support on the undeniable theory of reparation of wrongs, but they draw strange conclusions from this. By attacking not only society, but also the law of sociality, the sacred foundation of society, they affect to see in the conditions of every-day life, such as it has been organized by the universal consent of nations, the abasement and ruin of individuals, instead of finding in it a fruitful and efficient cause of their prosperity and development. A proposition which remains true in spite of the crookedness imparted to it by these sophisms is this, that when suffering is born of the sins of society or governments and the vice of institutions and of laws, it is no longer a question of humanity, decency and wisdom, but of a strict obligation of the state to alleviate it. It is no longer a case of donation, but of credit. Society, being held to repair its own wrongs, is not obliged to correct those which individuals inflict on themselves, any more than those which they suffer from others or from undeserved misfortune. It would be to destroy the dignity, the liberty, the responsibility of individuals, to transfer to the social body the task belonging to each one of guarding, preserving and developing himself. What society owes its members, is, to protect and guarantee the free exercise of their rights with all its strength; its office is not to think, to will or to act for them. The more liberty a state insures to its citizens, the less attention it owes their interests, since it leaves these interests more completely to the management and responsibility of the citizens themselves; if it interferes in private life and exerts an influence in managing the property of individuals, its responsibility to individuals increases with every extension which it gives to its guardianship. For societies, as well as individuals, to do good, is a secondary duty; not to do wrong is the first. The wants of a wise administration counsel the state to assist the parasitic mass, but the obligations not to create parasites itself, an obligation a hundred times more serious and binding, is antecedent to this. It should not act like a surgeon who would first would the passers by, and then offer them his services. Society creates paupers, and consequently parasites, when it turns from the straight road of justice, and, changing the noble office of guaranteeing and protecting property into a tyranny, takes possession of property and labor, or injures them by its exactions: it creates paupers when it arrests or hampers the free exercise of moral, intellectual or physical activity, the natural expansion of labor, the legitimate acquisition or transmission of property; it also creates paupers when it offers a premium on vice, idleness and lack of courage, by too great a readiness to grant relief. Society, through the enormous power which it wields, feeds and increases the evil when it distributes imprudently what it believes to be its benefits. The moderation in public assistance commanded by prudence, rests also on another basis. The state, which can levy only on the services and the property of workmen and capitalists, should never forget that whatever it gives is necessarily taken from the goods of its citizens; generosity at the expense of others easily degenerates into spoliation.

—The assistance given to parasites is an expedient rather than a remedy. Social progress consists, not in maintaining and supporting a greater number of parasites, but in decreasing and eliminating the parasites in existence. The perversion of manners, the extinction or abasement of the moral sense, makes most parasites. A had book, a vicious sophism, an evil example, creates more misery than hail, fire or famine. If it is necessary, because they are men, to assist human beings who consume without producing and receive without giving, it is imperative to attempt their reformation and endeavor to make them acquire property through morality and labor. Next to the task of improving its institutions and its laws in order to free itself from participation in evil, society has no more important mission than to obtain good results from good laws by improving the morals of men. The amount of misery is enormous, and alarms the most civilized societies. The true problem would be to dry up or lessen the thousand impure channels through which it is formed and increased. Society should by law leave religion free to propagate its principles; it should open schools, make education and enlightenment general, honor letters, sciences and arts, elevate the moral sense, exalt disinterestedness, remunerate services rendered, give life to indolence, smooth obstacles, remove all obstructions of the market. Its firm and vigorous humanity should avoid, as far as possible, the degrading form of alms; it should without asperity, uniting prudence to kindness, never forget that severity is generally more merciful than weakness. The danger is great, when the instinct of natural dignity which finds unearned bread bitter, grows weak and loses its honorable sensitiveness. The loss of the feeling of responsibility in individuals toward themselves, in families and other collective bodies toward their members, throws into the ranks of parasites persons of equivocal morality who find it more convenient to receive aid than to work. In the train of idleness follows covetousness; then corruption, which, increasing more and more, impels all to live at the expense of all.

—The only efficacious and honorable means of combating the parasitic spirit, the last extremity of human abasement, and assisting pauperism, is a gradual increase of the freedom of labor and property. All other methods serve simply to conjure the necessities and dangers of to-day, without promising, but often preparing, a worse to-morrow. When workmen can display their activity in peace, when capitalists can with confidence accumulate and lay up their property, the products of which will enrich all, the class of parasites decreases and is quieted through the development of the other two classes. Just as workmen and capitalists prosper and suffer together, and as it would be to impel them to suicide and to mutual oppression, to arouse rivalry and envy between them, parasites should respect capitalists and laborers, not only on account of moral obligation and the command of positive law, but also from calculation of what is useful for themselves. Parasites in fact or in intention, the unfortunates who are, and the cowards who wish to be, parasites, would be, like the rest of society, ruined by the despoiling of those who labor and those who own property. Swarms of rivals, left behind, would be excited by the contagion of victory, and would rise up as enemies and destroyers of the success of the violence of a day. Ill gotten gains are not easily kept. A few days of dissipation would quickly throw back into misery those who had escaped from it by detestable means. Their momentary triumph, by removing further from them the capacity of suffering with dignity, would only redouble their incapacity for labor and their helplessness to acquire property honestly. The man accustomed to live only on others, destroys his most lasting resources, if he ruins those who alone are able to acquire and preserve. (See PAUPERISM.)

CH. RENOUARD.

PARDON.

PARDON. Pardon is the remission, granted by the sovereign or head of the state to a sentenced person, of the penalty imposed on him by the courts. Such penalty is sometimes replaced by a less severe one. This is what is called a commutation of sentence.

—Pardon, in contradistinction to amnesty, abolishes neither the offense nor the sentence.

—The utility of the right of pardon has been questioned by some publicists, as for instance, Beccaria, Bentham and even Rousseau, who have contested the necessity of its intervention. Beccaria desired to introduce clemency into the law, but not into the execution of its judgments. He thought that the moderation of penalties and the "perfection of the law" would render pardons superfluous. "The right to remit the penalty imposed on the culprit," he said, "is a tacit disapprobation of the laws." This inflexible rule, which attributes the same weight and measure to all acts of the same nature, although in the infinite variety of human affairs they differ considerably one from the other, and never have the same moral value, has been condemned by experience, which has rejected the system of the fixity of penalties. J. J. Rousseau, although less absolute than Beccaria, reached almost the same conclusions. "The right of pardon," says Rousseau, "or of exempting a culprit from the penalty declared by the law and pronounced by the judge, belongs only to one who is above the judge and the law, that is, to the sovereign; moreover, the right of the sovereign to exercise the pardoning power is not quite clear, and the cases in which that power should be exercised are very rare. In a well-governed state there are but few punishments, not because pardon is very frequent, but because there are few criminals; the multitude of crimes insures their impunity when the state is in a condition of decay. * * Frequent cases of pardon indicate that crimes will soon have no need of it."

—More recently than Rousseau's time clemency in the execution of penalties found new adversaries. Mr. Livingston, an American, opposed it in principle, and proposed at least to restrict its application to certain cases. "The pardoning power," said he, "should not be exercised except in cases in which the innocence of the prisoner is discovered after he has been condemned, or in case of his sincere and complete reformation." These few words give utterance to several errors: first, if a person condemned is found to be innocent after his condemnation, there can be no such thing as pardon; the judicial error should be corrected, and the sentence of condemnation annulled. Then, it is not correct to say that the reformation of the person condemned and his moral amendment should of themselves constitute a motive for the intervention of the pardoning power. Mr. Livingston, whom we have just cited, would, without doubt, have expressed himself differently had he borne political crimes and offenses in mind. We do not deny that repentance and the return to moral sentiments may, in the case of ordinary crimes, be made a condition of pardon. The thief and the murderer should not be allowed to re-enter society without giving it a pledge for their moral behavior. But political crimes and offenses have a special character: they do not manifest in their author the same degree of perversity as common crimes, and conscience does not express the same reprobation for them. This class of offenses, in most cases, constitutes just as serious a violation of a moral law as ordinary offenses, but not of the same law. Common crimes are crimes everywhere; political acts are crimes only in a variable and, in a sense, conditional manner. It might be said that circumstances make and unmake them. "The immorality of political offenses," says Guizot, "is neither as clear nor as immutable as that of ordinary crimes; it is always crossed or obscured by the vicissitudes of human affairs; it varies with the time, with events and with the rights and merits of power.

—Public conscience is subject to reaction in favor of persons condemned for political offenses; it can not be so subject in favor of persons condemned for ordinary crimes. Public conscience amnesties the former, it pardons the latter, but it never amnesties them, it forgives but does not forget them.

—How, then, can we subordinate the right of pardon in matters political to conditions of reformation and private morality, as has been proposed by Mr. Livingston? What makes repression necessary in cases of this kind is not the immorality and perversity of the person committing the offense, but political causes which must be subjected in their action to the general principles of justice and of right; the opportuneness, sometimes even the necessity, of pardon, depends on the same causes. Circumstances which change, occasions which pass away, passions which become abated, parties which are dissolved: all of these contribute toward diminishing the importance of a person condemned for a political offense." (Théorie du Code pénal, by MM. Chauveau et Faustin Hélie.)

—In politics, the pardon granted the culprit (who sometimes is but a vanquished adversary) produces the happiest effect in favor of the power granting it; it impresses the minds of the people with the spectacle of power and greatness, and at the same time disarms the parties. "Monarchs," says Montesquieu, "have so much to gain by clemency, they derive so much glory from it, that in almost every instance it is for them a piece of good fortune to have an opportunity to exercise clemency.

—How many examples are there, on the contrary, of powers pursued to death by the cry of blood uselessly spilt, and which have perished for not having pardoned in time!

—But when should we punish and when pardon?" Montesquieu proposed that question to himself, which it is not an easy task to solve. Clemency, says he, should not degenerate into weakness, nor should it bring the prince who exercises it into contempt. Clemency, it is true, may have its dangers, but neither is implacable severity without its dangers; the latter produces terror, which offers but an unsteady basis to power: Non diuturni timor magister officii, and provokes retaliation. If we can not help going to extremes it is better to sin by an excess of clemency. It is not certain that this is not the better policy, even as far as duration is concerned; and posterity, which admires the victor, gives its love to the indulgent.18

EMILE CHÉDIEU.

PARIS MONETARY CONFERENCE

PARIS MONETARY CONFERENCE. Under this title will be given a sketch of the three international monetary conferences held in the city of Paris in the years 1867, 1878 and 1881. Bimetallism in the abstract having been considered in the article on MONEY, that subject will be treated here only in the narrative form as it was presented in the discussions of the conferences.

—Conference of 1867. This conference was brought together on the invitation of the French government, which was moved thereto by the successful conclusion of the treaty of Dec. 23, 1865, between France, Belgium. Italy and Switzerland, constituting what is commonly known as the Latin monetary union. The letter of invitation transmitted by the French government inclosed a copy of this treaty, and suggested the holding of an international conference "to consider the question of uniformity of coinage and to seek for the basis of ulterior negotiations." The conference assembled June 17, under the presidency of Marquis de Moustier, minister of foreign affairs, the following named countries being represented: Austria, Baden, Bavaria, Belgium, Denmark, the United States, France, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Prussia, Russia, Sweden and Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, and Würtemberg. The United States were represented by Mr. Samuel B. Ruggles of New York, and Great Britain by Mr. Thomas Graham and Mr. Rivers Wilson. The most eminent of the French representatives, as an economist and financier, was Mr. E. de Parieu. A committee was appointed to formulate the work of the conference.

—At the second session (June 19) the committee reported a "questionnaire" or series of interrogatories to be debated by the conference. These were twelve in number, all having relation to the possibility of establishing a universal monetary unit, either by adopting some existing unit or by making a new one approximating to existing units, and to the means of securing the practical adoption of the same. The conference voted unanimously against the adoption of an entirely new system, and in favor of "the mutual co-ordination of existing systems."

—At the third session a vote was taken on the question whether the standard of the proposed unit should be silver exclusively. It was decided in the negative unanimously. When this vote was taken, Mr. Feer-Herzog (Switzerland) noted it as a fact of much significance, that the representatives of Prussia and Sweden, countries having the silver standard, should have voted in effect in favor of the gold standard. The conference then voted unanimously (with the exception of The Netherlands) in favor of the single gold standard, "leaving each state the liberty to keep its silver standard temporarily."

—At the fourth session, on the motion of Baron de Hock (Austria), the conference voted that the advantage of internationality, which the proposed gold unit would have, would not be sufficient to keep the coins in circulation in states having the silver standard or the double standard, unless suitable measures should be adopted regarding the ratio between the two metals.

—At the fifth session (which was presided over by Prince Napoleon) the question, what unit should be adopted, came up for discussion. Mr. Rivers Wilson, on behalf of Great Britain, read a paper saying that his government had been glad to participate in the conference, regarding it as a means of enlightening public opinion on an important question, but could not hold out the expectation that it would abandon its own monetary unit or assimilate it to that of any continental system. The conference voted that an international coinage should consist of "types with a common denominator for weight, in gold coins of identical fineness," and that the fineness should be nine-tenths.

—At the sixth session the conference voted by thirteen to two in favor of the five-franc gold piece (equal to 96½ cents) as the common denominator. England and Sweden voted against this proposition; Prussia, Bavaria, Baden, Würtemberg and Belgium did not vote. It was voted also that gold coins with the common denominator of five francs should have legal circulation in the countries agreeing to the action of the conference, and that it would be expedient to coin gold pieces of the dimensions of twenty-five francs for international circulation.

—At the seventh session it was voted to refer the decisions of the conference to the several states for diplomatic action; that the answers of the several states should be transmitted to the French government, which should have power to reassemble the conference; and that it was desirable that the answers should be received before Feb. 15, 1868. The conference adjourned July 6, and was not reassembled.

—Conference of 1878. By the coinage revision act of Feb. 12, 1873, the gold dollar of twenty-five and eight-tenths grains nine-tenths fine was declared to be the unit of value in the United States, and the silver dollar was omitted from the list of coins authorized to be struck at the mint. By the act of Feb. 28, 1878, the silver dollar was restored to the list of coins and made full legal tender, and the secretary of the treasury was directed to purchase silver bullion and coin into such dollars not less than two million dollars' worth, and not more than four million dollars' worth per month. By the same act the president was directed to invite the governments of Europe "to join in a conference to adopt a common ratio between gold and silver for the purpose of establishing internationally the use of bi-metallic money and securing fixity of relative value between those metals." That portion of the act of 1873 which made the gold dollar the unit of value was not altered by the act of 1878.

—The conference assembled in Paris, Aug. 16. Delegates were appointed by Austria-Hungary, Belgium, France, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Russia, Sweden and Norway, Switzerland, and the United States. Mr. Mees (The Netherlands), Mr. Brock (Norway), Mr Feer Herzog (Switzerland), and Mr. Delyanni (Greece) had been members of the conference of 1867. The representatives of the United States were Reuben E. Fenton of New York. W. S. Groesbeck of Ohio, and Francis A. Walker of Connecticut, with S. Dana Horton as secretary, Mr. Horton being admitted to the conference as a member. Great Britain was represented by the Rt. Hon. Geo. J. Goschen, Mr. Henry Hucks Gibbs, Sir Thos. L. Seccombe, and Mr. Wm. B. Gurdon. The most distinguished representative of France was Léon Say, minister of finance. Germany declined to send delegates. No action was taken at the first session beyond the election of Léon Say as president.

—At the second session Mr. Groesbeck, on behalf of the United States, offered two propositions for the consideration of the conference: 1, That it is not to be desired that silver be excluded from free coinage in Europe and the United States; 2d, That the use of both gold and silver as unlimited legal tender may be safely adopted by equalizing them at a ratio fixed by international agreement. Mr. Groesbeck said that that portion of the law of 1873, by which the silver dollar was made to disappear from the coinage, had been passed through inadvertence rather than intentionally, and that the United States, although desiring to restore silver to absolute equality with gold, had been compelled to limit the coinage of silver on account of the market value of the metals, and also by reason of the action of the Latin Union restricting the coinage of silver. Mr. Goschen and Mr. Gibbs inquired what was to be understood by the "inadvertence" of the act of 1873, and whether that act had been passed without debate. Mr. Groesbeck replied that "no newspaper or chamber of commerce" had considered or recommended the bill, and that several members of congress had confessed to him that they did not know at the time what they were doing. Mr. Feer-Herzog said that silver had disappeared from circulation in the United States long before the act of 1873 was passed, that there had been only eight millions of silver dollars coined from the beginning of the government down to that time, and that he had documents which he would lay on the table showing that the section of the law of 1873, by which the silver dollar was made to disappear from the coinage of the United States, was not passed by inadvertence, but voluntarily and with reflection, and determination to establish the single gold standard, which was in fact, and had for a long time been in practice, the standard of the country. Mr. Walker said that he himself, although at that time occupying a chair of political economy and lecturing on money, was not aware of what was being done, and he presumed the great majority of his fellow citizens were equally ignorant. The president (M. Say) said that Mr. Groesbeck's observation that the action of the Latin Union restricting the coinage of silver had been one of the motives impelling the United States to restrict it also, did not seem to be well founded. It seemed to him that this restriction was a compromise effected in congress by means of which a majority could be obtained. Mr. Horton replied that the Bland bill had been introduced in 1876, and that between that time and the passage of the silver remonetization act the subject had been discussed in all its phases, and that the action of the Latin Union had not been overlooked in the discussion. Mr. Pirmez (Belgium) said that the real question before the conference was whether the double standard should be made universal. His country could not do otherwise than reject such a proposition, whose immediate result would be to give enormous profits to speculators in the metals by withdrawing the one and substituting the other with every change of market value. Count Rusconi (Italy) thought the conference might pronounce upon the question of principle: "Is it possible to establish a fixed relation between gold and silver?" and then, if it be decided affirmatively, consider the means to establish such ratio. Mr. Broch (Norway) said that the double standard was a delusion and a misnomer; there was no such thing anywhere. Countries having the double standard in law had the gold standard in fact to-day and the silver standard to-morrow, but the double standard never. Silver, by reason of its weight and bulk, was not adapted to the wants of civilized countries and an active circulation. Gold alone responded to those needs. Silver was suited only to countries which were backward or stationary. Even if all European countries could be persuaded to adopt the double standard, the influence of India and China would produce incessant perturbations and fluctuations by alternate importations and exportations of silver. Mr. de Thoerner (Russia) believed that it was opposed to the very nature of things to endeavor to establish a fixed relation between the value of silver and that of gold. After some further discussion it was resolved, on the motion of Count Rusconi, that an invitation be extended to the German government, in the name of all the delegates, to send representatives to the conference.

—At the third session Mr. Goschen said that England could not adopt the double standard, but that she had, nevertheless, so large an interest in the question under discussion, through her Indian possessions, that she could not fail to give her aid and co-operation in any intelligent movement to arrest the fall of silver. If all states should resolve on the adoption of the gold standard, and if Italy. Austria and Russia should resume specie payments, would there be sufficient gold for the purpose without a tremendous crisis? It was better for the world at large that the two metals should continue in circulation than that one should be universally substituted for the other. The conference could not adopt the American proposition, but efforts might be made in other directions to check the downward course of silver by making some definite disposition of the German surplus, estimated at $75,000,000. If, for instance, this could be taken into the United States treasury in place of an equal amount of gold, it would no longer weigh on the market. Mr. von Hengenmuller (Austria-Hungary) said that Austria was attached to the principle of the double standard, and in theory must subscribe to the American proposition, but unfortunately the advantage of it depended upon its general adoption, which was not to be looked for. His government was, therefore, compelled to maintain an attitude of expectancy. If the conference were asked to formulate its opinions on the American proposition he should, however, vote in favor of it. Mr. Mees said that so long as England and Germany adhered to the single gold standard it would be impossible for Holland to adopt another system. There was not, at the present time, a single state in Europe where the coinage of silver was free, not even among those which have theoretically the silver standard or the double standard. The United States might, nevertheless, find powerful allies in Asia and South America, as well as among those countries of Europe which are still under the régime of paper money. The general demonetization of silver undertaken everywhere at once, would have the most fatal consequences. The president (M. Say) explained the monetary position of France. In closing her mint against silver, the government had no intention of moving toward the single gold standard. France had about twenty-five hundred million francs in silver, of which nine hundred millions were in the vaults of the bank. To demonetize such a mass and throw it on the market was inadmissible. But to hold the mint open to take a further indefinite quantity at the ratio of fifteen and one half to one, especially when it was known that Germany had fifteen or seventeen million pounds sterling in hand ready to sell, was impossible. Hence, the attitude of France was that of expectancy. France was waiting to get clearer ideas of the causes of the depreciation of silver, and to see what disposition was to be made of the German stock. She held herself in readiness to adopt the single gold standard or to revert to the double standard, according to circumstances. She could vote readily for the first clause of the American proposition, that it is not to be desired that silver be excluded from free coinage in Europe and the United States. She could vote also that silver already coined and holding the legal tender character ought to be maintained in that character, but could not acquiesce in the other clauses of the American proposition, although at some future time, when the atmosphere should be cleared, she might be able to do so. Mr. Delyanni said that the position of Greece was identical with that expressed by M. Say on behalf of France. Mr. Feer-Herzog was not able to coincide with other speakers in giving such prominence and gravity to the unsold stock of silver in the German treasury as a disturbing cause in the market. This stock was only equal to one year's supply from the mines, or to the demand from India last year. The commerce of India was the greatest factor in the silver market, the production of the mines the next greatest, while the German monetary reform could only be counted as the third in importance. He disclaimed for himself and other adherents of the single gold standard the thought of suppressing silver money. He merely desired that it should take its natural and proper place as the money of the less advanced portions of mankind, while gold should take its place as the money of a higher civilization. It was the persistent fall of silver, showing itself as a constant fact, which had led governments, even against their will, to adopt the single gold standard. Switzerland had given her delegates no authority to agree to the adoption of the ratio of sixteen to one, or any other ratio between silver and gold. Count Rusconi did not consider it impossible to establish a stable relation between silver and gold. Law alone, he said, makes money. If the uncoined metal was subject to variations of the market, the coined metal, having legal tender power, had a price which did not vary. It had the power of paying obligations which the uncoined metal did not possess. The metal might change in value, but the coin did not change. It had, actually and effectively, the value which was indicated by the imprint. Mr. Brock could not share in the opinions which had been expressed concerning the quantity of gold which would be required to enable those countries now under the paper régime to resume specie payments. In his opinion more silver would be required than gold; for those countries would not discard their note issues when they should resume, but the fractional notes would be retired and silver coin would take their place in the hands of the people. Norway and Sweden were on the gold basis, but scarcely any gold was seen. The circulation consisted of notes and silver. So it would be in Italy and Austria and the United States after resumption. Specie resumption in the United States would necessarily be in gold. The coinage of silver dollars under the limitations of the present law would do no harm for a long time. The dollars would circulate at par with gold so long as they were not in excess. But a time would come, especially if they should adopt unlimited coinage, when the two would not circulate at par with each other. The power of the United States, or of all the nations of Europe together, would not suffice for the struggle against the balance of international trade, or to change the terms of the balance. He agreed with the delegate from Switzerland that the greater or less demand for silver in India was the governing factor of the silver problem. In other words, it was the condition of trade between Europe and Asia that determined from time to time the relative values of silver and gold. Holding this opinion, he did not believe that the means proposed by the United States to secure fixity of value between the two metals would have the results which they expected from it, even if accepted by all Europe. Nevertheless, he had the most profound respect for the motives which led to the calling of this conference, and he believed that great good would result from the interchange of views, even if no resolution should be adopted.

—At the fourth session, the president said that the German government had replied, through Prince Hohenlohe, to the invitation to send delegates to the conference by expressing thanks for the invitation, and regretting its inability to accede to the wishes of the conference. Mr. Walker replied to the remarks of Mr. Feer Herzog at the previous session. Silver, he said, had not ceased to be money in Europe through natural causes, but by the action of man, by political action, by laws and decrees of governments suggested and urged by political economists of a certain school. The action of Germany in 1871, involving important changes in the policy of the Latin Union, was wholly gratuitous, not suggested by any commercial exigency. It was taken under bad advice, with little or no consideration as to the general effects upon the production of wealth which would be wrought by so great a diminution of the money supply of the world. Mr. Feer-Herzog had said that he expected and desired to see the world divided into gold countries and silver countries, the former civilized, the latter uncivilized. He (Mr. Walker) affirmed that "there are not more than three territorially extensive countries in the world which could possibly maintain a single gold standard upon true economic principles." A diminution of the money supply was one of the gravest evils that could menace mankind. Whether the money supply of Europe should be reduced by silver demonetization 40, 30 or only 20 per cent., the consequences would be most disastrous. "Suffocation, strangulation, are words hardly too strong to express the agony of the industrial body when embraced in the fatal coils of a contracting money supply." Against so great a wrong to civilization and to the hopes of mankind, the representatives of the United States were here to raise their earnest protest and warning. The interest of the United States in this question as a silver producing country, was utterly insignificant as compared with their interest in it as it stands related to trade and industry in general. Mr. Waern (Sweden), thought it right to reply to so much of Mr. Walker's speech as implied that only the richest nations would be able to obtain and keep gold sufficient for their needs under the single gold standard. Sweden was a country very inferior in wealth, and she had adopted the single gold standard in 1873, yet she had experienced no difficulty upon this score. She had found all the gold she needed as the basis of her fiduciary circulation, and she had had no difficulty in retaining it. Mr. Horton replied to Mr. Feer Herzog's historical citations, and especially to his statement that England, in adopting the single gold standard in the year 1816, had simply conformed the law to what had been the practice for nearly a century. The English gold standard law, said Mr. Horton, really dated from 1798. Much of the monetary confusion which England suffered between 1798 and 1821 was to be attributed to this unwise proceeding. Mr. Horton thought that the conference was diverging into collateral discussions, and that it would be better to adhere to the real question suggested by the United States government, viz.: Is it in the interest of nations to wage a monetary war, each seeking to get rid of a falling metal? or ought they to unite together to give to the monetary basis of business a stability which it does not now possess? If the conference should separate without answering this question it would have left only an interrogation point at the end of its labors. Mr. Baralis (Italy) urged that a sub-committee be appointed to consider and report upon the subject of an international coinage. The president thought it was better to pursue the discussion of the American propositions till a definite conclusion should be arrived at. Mr. Feer-Herzog, replying to Mr. Horton's statement of the real question before the conference, said that, if England were asked to establish a fixed ratio between the rupee and the sovereign, she would refuse to do so. If Holland were asked to do the same as between the gold florin and the silver florin, she would refuse to do so. And so it would be all around. It was politically impossible and commercially impossible to establish a fixed and permanent relation between the two metals. All governments together, with their united efforts, could not do it. Mr. Horton could not admit that it was a good answer to say that it was impossible to come to an agreement merely because this or that nation would not agree to it. The conference was inquiring whether the agreement ought to be made, whether it was for the interest of the nations that it should be made. Until 1873, the variations of supply and demand had not prevented silver from remaining comparatively steady for a long period. This was due to the bi-metallic system of France, which kept the two metals in equilibrium. By giving a wider basis to this system a still more complete stability would be obtained. Mr. Goschen said that, if Mr. Horton asked the conference to pronounce upon the utility of bi-metallism, irrespective of the possibility or impossibility of establishing it, he did not consider it necessary to give a categorical answer to a question thus hypothetically put. But if the practical question were put, he should not hesitate to affirm, as Mr. Feer Herzog had done, the entire and absolute impossibility of establishing a fixed ratio between the metals, and this for many reasons of a scientific and economic nature which he need not enter into in detail.

—At the fifth session the theoretical discussion of bi-metallism was continued by Mr Groesbeck, Mr. Pirmez and Mr. Horton.

—At the sixth session the president (M. Say) laid on the table a memorandum agreed upon by the European delegates as their collective answer to the American propositions. After thanking the government of the United States for calling the conference, the memorandum declares that the European delegates recognize, 1. that it is necessary to maintain in the world the monetary function of silver as well as of gold, but that the selection of one, of the other, or both simultaneously, should be governed by the special situation of each state or group of states; 2, that the question of the restriction of the coinage of silver should equally be left to the discretion of each state or group of states; 3, that the differences of opinion which have appeared exclude the discussion of the adoption of a common ratio between the two metals. The representatives of Italy dissented from the conclusions of the other European delegates.

—At the seventh session (Aug. 29), the representatives of the United States filed a paper expressing their thanks to the European states for accepting their invitation, but dissenting from that portion of the memorandum which refers the question of bi-metallism to the separate action of each state or group of states. After a vote of thanks to the president and secretaries, and the exchange of civilities, the conference adjourned.

—Conference of 1881. This conference was called in the month of January, 1881, by the governments of France and the United States, "to examine and adopt, for the purpose of submitting the same to the governments represented, a plan and a system for the establishment, by means of an international agreement, of the use of gold and silver as bi-metallic money according to a settled relative value between those metals." It met at Paris, April 19. Delegates were present from Austria-Hungary, Belgium, British India, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Norway, Switzerland and the United States. Mr. Brock (Norway), was the only delegate who had been a member of both the preceding conferences. Mr. Vrolik (The Netherlands) had been a member of the conference of 1867. Count von Kuefstein (Austria), Mr. Pirmez (Belgium), Count Rusconi (Italy), Mr. de Thoerner (Russia), and Mr. Horton (the United States), had been members of the conference of 1878. The other representatives of the United States were Wm, M. Evarts, of New York, ex-secretary of state, Allen G. Thurman of Ohio, and Timothy O. Howe of Wisconsin, ex-senators. At the first session Mr. Magnin, minister of finance of the French republic, was chosen president, and a committee of one from each state appointed to draft a "questionnaire," or list of questions to be discussed.

—At the second session (May 5) the questionnaire was presented by Mr. Vrolik, chairman of the committee, in substance as follows: Has the fall of silver been hurtful to commerce and to general prosperity? Is it desirable that the relative value of gold and silver should possess a high degree of stability? Is the fall of silver due to increased production, or to acts of legislation? If a large group of states should agree to the free coinage of gold and silver, of full legal tender, at a uniform ratio, would substantial, if not absolute, stability of relative value be obtained? If so, what measures should be taken to secure such result? The delegates of Germany then read a declaration on behalf of their government, giving the reasons which led them, in the year 1871, to adopt the gold standard. This reform was now so far advanced that they could not change their monetary system, but they were disposed to second the efforts of other powers which might desire to unite for the purpose of rehabilitating silver, by agreeing to abstain during a period of some years from all sales of silver, and during another period to sell only a limited quantity, so that the market should at no time be glutted thereby. Germany might even make other concessions short of changing her own monetary system. She might retire her gold pieces and treasury notes of five marks, leaving their places to be filled by silver. This would make room for 78,000,000 marks. Mr. Fremantle, the delegate of Great Britain, read a declaration of his government to the effect that they had decided in the first instance not to take part in this conference, understanding that the terms of the call issued by France and the United States committed the participating governments to the double standard. Having been subsequently assured that no committal was intended, and that entire liberty of action was reserved, they considered that they would be lacking in consideration toward friendly powers if they should persist in refusing to send a delegate. His instructions limited him to furnishing information concerning the laws and monetary system of England. They did not permit him to vote upon the proposition submitted. The delegates of British India and of Canada made similar declarations to that of Mr. Fremantle, except that the delegate of Canada was authorized to vote, reserving liberty of action for his government. The delegate of Denmark said that, as his government had no intention of abandoning the single gold standard, he was instructed to abstain from all discussion of means for establishing the double standard. The delegate of Portugal made a similar statement in behalf of his government. Any opinions which he might express in the debates should be understood as merely his private and personal views. The delegate of Russia said that his government reserved entire liberty of action and of opinion. If he should take part in the debates, it would be upon the same understanding as that announced by the delegate of Portugal. The delegate of Greece made a similar declaration. The delegates of Austria Hungary said that their position was the same that it had been in the conference of 1878. They had an ardent sympathy for all measures to restore silver to its former position, but they reserved for their government full liberty of action. The delegates of Sweden and Norway said that their government authorized them to take part in all discussions, reserving their right to deal with their own monetary system. The delegates of Switzerland were not authorized to take part in the discussions of the conference until its action should have been first reported to the federal council. Mr. Cernuschi (France) thought that the prospect of an agreement in favor of bi-metallism was encouraging. It was only necessary to secure the co-operation of England and Germany to insure success. England had indeed refused to join in a bi metallic union, but there was reason to believe that she might join at a later period. Germany had shown, through the declaration read to the conference, that she could not now change her course without great loss and inconvenience. He (Mr. Cernuschi) would suggest (but only on his personal responsibility) that the loss incurred by Germany in changing from the silver to the gold standard, estimated at ninety-six million marks, be reimbursed to her by the other nations which had bought her silver. These nations, he contended, had made a gain by purchasing the silver of Germany, equal to the loss which Germany had incurred in selling it—the silver being worth one to fifteen and one-half, if bi-metallism were put in force, whereas Germany had sold it at one to seventeen or one to eighteen. Mr. Brock (Norway) thought that bi-metallism was not only impracticable, but undesirable. The substitution of gold for silver in Europe and America was not an accident, but the natural, logical and necessary result of the progress of civilization. There was sufficient gold in the world to supply the wants of all the civilized races, including those now under the régime of paper money. So far from looking upon bi-metallism as a thing to be striven for, he thought it was something to be avoided. So far from seeing danger in the single gold standard, he could only see advantages in it. Mr. Moret Y. Prendergast (Spain) moved that the conference take into consideration, first, the important declarations of Germany, England, British India and Canada, in order to get at their true scope and value, and then to adjourn to a fixed date, in order to open negotiations with those governments if it were found that the declarations afforded a reasonable basis for negotiations. It was agreed to pass over this motion for the present, and to take it up at a later stage.

—At the third session Mr. Cernuschi, in furtherance of the suggestion made by him respecting the reimbursement of ninety-six million marks to Germany, asked for information from the several governments in reference to the amount of silver coined by them since 1874, and the prices at which it had been bought. Mr. Pierson (The Netherlands) called attention to the limping-standard countries (Etalon boiteux), meaning by this the countries where the coinage of gold is free and the coinage of silver is not free, but where silver coins of unlimited legal tender circulate side by side with gold. The Latin Union, Germany and Holland, were in this condition, a condition which could not last. The metallic stock of the banks must be all of equal goodness. Bank notes must be covered by coin having a real and not an artificial value. The danger of counterfeiting was very great when the legal tender value of silver coins was much above their metal value. The clandestine coinage of silver was a permanent menace in countries where the limping standard prevails. The demonetization of silver had not only brought trouble upon the limping standard countries, but upon the gold-standard countries, upon England and Germany as well as upon Holland. The fall of the value of the rupee had wrought confusion in the trade of England with India, and caused great losses to British merchants and manufacturers. The only remedy for these evils was international bi-metallism. Mr. Pirmez (Belgium) denied that the gold-standard countries were suffering by reason of the demonetization of silver. They had announced on the floor of the conference that they felt very well and that they did not desire any change. As to English trade with India, the English merchant merely added to the selling prices of his goods a sum sufficient to make good the decline in the value of the rupee. The Indian government had lost a certain percentage of its fixed receipts, by reason of the decline of silver, but British trade had not suffered, and the British government remained insensible to the adjurations of the bi-metallists; Germany was equally insensible. The sole result of universal bi-metallism would be the spreading over Europe of a large portion of the silver of Asia, and the sending to Asia of a corresponding amount of the gold of Europe. The production of silver would be stimulated by the artificial value conferred upon it, and the production of gold would be correspondingly checked. Thus a fresh depreciation of silver would be produced, this time irremediable. Gold would not be sold at fifteen and one-half for silver, because it would cost more to produce it. Gold would continue to circulate, but it would circulate at a premium, as it now does in Austria, Russia, and all the countries under the paper money system. All the governments in the world would be utterly powerless to decree the respective value of silver and gold.

—At the fourth session, Mr. Luzzatti (Italy) replied to the argument of Mr. Pirmez. He contended that there was a strong party in England in favor of bimetallism. He instanced the pamphlet of Mr. Gibbs, former governor of the bank of England, published with the approval of the present governor of the bank; also the remarkable work of Mr. Ernest Seyd; also the resolutions of the Liverpool chamber of commerce. As regards British India, he said that English trade with that country was injured by oscillations in the exchange, just as it is injured by oscillations in the paper money countries of Europe. These oscillations were uncertainties, and all uncertainty was prejudicial to the best interests of trade. Public opinion in Germany was likewise divided on the question, and Prince Bismarck seemed to have conceived doubts as to the value of the gold monometallic reform. There was really a dearth of gold in the world. This would be proved unmistakably when Italy, Austria and Russia should make the attempt to resume specie payments. Mr. Fremantle said that it must not be inferred from the pamphlet of Mr. Gibbs, that that gentleman, or the present governor of the bank of England, expressed the opinion of the bank of England, still less the public opinion of Great Britain. Mr. de Thoerner (Russia) said that gold was preferable to silver just as railways were preferable to roads and bridle paths, but it did not follow that roads and bridle paths should be discarded. For the purposes of a standard gold was certainly the best; for an instrument of exchange having an intrinsic value there was still room for the use of silver. Might it not be possible to treat silver in the light of a stock exchange security selling for what it was worth? If coined or stamped by governments in the form of ingots at its exact value in gold, it might be made to play an important part in the work of international exchange without danger to any interest. Count Rusconi (Italy) contended that money was not merchandise, but a creation of law; consequently the ratio of fifteen and one-half was just as good as the ratio of sixteen or twenty. Mr. Burkhardt Bischoff (Switzerland) contended that money was merchandise, and not the creation of law. All that the state could do was to give a certificate of its weight and fineness. This it effected by means of a stamp. When that stamp was affixed, the state had exhausted its powers. The double or alternative standard was unjust in that it allowed the debtor always to pay in the cheaper metal. The greatness of London as a centre of the world's exchanges was due in large part to the invariableness of the English standard. You could always know what a pound sterling was; you could never know with certainty what a franc was under the double standard régime, when that standard existed. Replying to Mr. Cernuschi's observation on the loss of ninety-six million marks incurred by Germany, he contended that this was a fallacious assumption. Instead of incurring a loss, Germany had really made a gain. She had sold her silver at rates considerably higher than the present market price. If she wished to repurchase it she could do so now at a profit. The proper way to deal with the great stocks of silver in the banks of the Latin Union was to melt them down into ingots, and issue silver certificates for them, of so many kilogrammes each, which might pass into the world's commerce at their value according to the weight represented by them. Mr. Cernuschi reiterated that Germany had lost ninety-six million marks by her monetary reform. This was testified to by the memorandum of the German government submitted to the conference. (This memorandum showed a loss of 96,481,136 marks, comparing the sales with the original cost of the silver.)

—During the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth sessions the theoretical discussion was continued by Mr. Horton, Mr. Howe and Mr. Evarts on the part of the United States, by Count von Kuefstein and Chevalier von Niebauer (Austria-Hungary), Mr. Cernuschi and M. de Normandie (France), Mr. Pierson and Mr. Vrolik (The Netherlands), and Mr. SeismitDoda (Italy), in favor of bi-metallism; and by Mr. Brock (Norway), Mr. Pirmez (Belgium), Mr. Forssell (Sweden), and Count San Miguel (Portugal), against it. Sir Louis Mallet, on behalf of the government of British India, made some important statements. He said that he was authorized to engage that India would continue to keep her mint open to the free coinage of silver for a certain definite period, provided and upon the condition that a certain number of the principal states of the world engage on their part to maintain within their territories during the same period, the free coinage of silver, with full legal tender faculty, in the proportion of fifteen and one-half of silver to one of gold. He would explain how the depreciation of silver affected the Indian government. The government of India had to pay £15,000,000 in gold in London annually. This was the interest on the Indian debt contracted in gold, the interest on railway and canal obligations, also pensions and annuities, and that portion of the military expenditure which relates to pay and commissariat. These expenses were fixed by contract, and could not be reduced. The loss resulting on these remittances by reason of the fall of silver was £2,000,000 per annum. The government could not increase its revenue materially, the land revenue in Bengal being fixed in perpetuity, and in other provinces for long periods. It would be impossible, without serious political danger, to propose new taxes for reasons which the mass of the people would not be able to understand. But this actual loss was not the worst part of it; it was the absolute uncertainty which hung over the future, and which prevented any accurate calculation of the resources of the government. Then, there was a loss in trade resulting from the uncertainty of the exchanges and a loss of 20 per cent. on the great quantity of silver hoarded by the natives. The great wish of the financial authorities of India had been to have a common monetary system with England. Silver being impossible as a common standard on account of the English system, the choice must be between bi-metallism and gold, and although the latter was at present too difficult, it was certain that if any opportunity should offer itself India would seize it and enter into the struggle for the sole metal left as a solid basis for an international currency. Mr. Moret Y. Prendergast suggested that England might second the undertaking of Germany in behalf of silver by keeping one-fourth of the bank reserves in that metal as authorized by Sir Robert Peel's act. Mr. Fremantle replied that his government would take into very serious consideration the views put forward by the conference, but he suggested that the proposals be put in as definite form as possible. Mr. Forssell (Sweden) said that it was vain to talk about the sufferings and groans of this country and of that country, of this great bank and of that great bank, for the want of bi-metallism, so long as England and Germany refused to be converted. Notwithstanding all that had been said about the growth of bi-metallic opinion in Germany, here was the imperial government absolutely inflexible in its adherence to the single gold standard. There was not one ray of hope in that quarter. England was equally unmoved. Her Indian interests were so far inferior to her general interests that there was not the smallest prospect of her entering into a bi-metallic union. It was said that £2,000,000 per year are lost in the Indian exchanges. That was an ascertained sum, but the loss to be sustained by entering into a bi-metallic union was an indefinite and unascertained sum. Was an exact amount of loss ever bartered for an indefinite amount of risk? Was the monetary supremacy of a country ever sold for two millions sterling? Bi-metallism would always fail of adoption in face of the disproportion between the comparatively slight ailings complained of and the perfectly enormous remedy proposed, and however skillfully those ailings might be added up, the amount would never be deemed sufficient to justify the remedy. Mr. Forssell suggested three additional topics of discussion to be added to the questionnaire, viz.: Has there been, in the last ten years, a fall of general prices which may be attributed to the demonetization of silver and to a dearth of gold? Is there reason to believe that the successive adoption of the single gold standard will lead to a contraction of the metallic and paper circulation sufficiently great to exhibit itself in a fall of general prices? Is there ground for taking legislative measures to economize the use of gold in view of the progressive adoption of the single gold standard? Mr. Moret Y. Prendergast renewed his motion that the conference adjourn from the 19th of May to the 30th of June, in order that delegates who desired to communicate with their governments and receive further instructions upon propositions formulated in the conference, might have the opportunity to do so. Lord Reay (British India) thought that the excellent speeches which had been heard would be valuable contributions to economic science, but when the conference should reassemble it would be necessary to take practical steps to come to an agreement. The habits of English statesmen tended to make them give attention to facts rather than theories. If it were sought to persuade the United Kingdom to adopt bi-metallism, gentlemen could not do better than practice what they preached. They should begin by adopting bi-metallism at home. It would be another glory for the bi-metallists to accept the slight burden of some inconveniences which, on their own showing, would be only temporary. France and the United States were strong enough financially to make the experiment of bi-metallism. Great Britain had not waited for other nations to join her in adopting free trade. If other nations should show their faith in what they professed by adopting bi-metallism, Great Britain would be the first to render them the homage which she had always paid to any work tending to draw closer the bonds which unite nations. Mr. Seismit-Doda (Italy) seconded the motion for adjournment to June 30. The motion was unanimously adopted. On motion of the delegates of India the conference requested the several governments to take the opinion of the chief banks of issue in each on "the monetary question." Mr. Pierson (The Netherlands) asked the delegates of the United States what measures that country would take, in the event of the adoption of bi-metallism, to require the banks to receive silver on the same footing as gold. In most European countries the obligation could be imposed on banks of issue of buying gold and silver at a fixed price. What analogous steps could be taken in America? In short, what could she do in order that bi-metallism should exist there, not only in name, but in reality? He did not ask an immediate reply, but requested that a definite answer be made when the conference should reassemble.

—After an adjournment of six weeks, the conference held its ninth session, June 30.

—At the tenth session Mr. Horton regretted that he was, as yet, unable to present a response to the question which Mr. Pierson had put to the American delegates at the eighth session, or rather, to enter into the practical discussion to which the question would necessarily give rise. Mr. Thurman, reverting to the declarations of Germany and British India, which he read at length, said that these propositions required France and the United States to keep their mints open to the free coinage of silver of unlimited legal tender, this being the condition upon which Germany would agree to suspend her sales of silver for a definite period of time. While the United States would not reject any and every proposition which comes short of perfect bi-metallism, he was bound to say that a proposition which would expose them to alternate drains of gold and silver, according as the one or the other should command a premium in the market, would not be acceptable. The United States held a large stock of gold at the present time, and only a small stock of silver. They would hesitate to enter into an agreement the effect of which might be to lessen the amount of their gold. They would cheerfully become parties to a great bi-metallic union, but without such union would not surrender their power over their own coinage. He said this without underrating the importance of the German and English propositions, which were entitled to most respectful consideration, but which, in his judgment, fell far short of what the exigency required. Mr. Schraut (Germany) desired to combat the assertion that the sales of silver by his government had been the principal cause of the depression of that metal. The largest sales had been made in the year 1877, when the average price was one and three fourths pence higher than in 1876, and two pence higher than in 1878, showing that there were other and more powerful causes at work than the sales of silver by Germany. These causes, in his opinion, were the increase of production, and the increase of sales of India council drafts on the London market, which, taking the place of silver as remittances to India, lessened the demand for silver by an equal amount. The sale of such bills in London from 1871 to 1879 had exceeded the sales of silver by Germany more than three to one. Mr. Cernuschi contended that neither the more plentiful issue of bills by the Indian government nor the increased productiveness of silver mines had caused the depreciation of silver. If Germany had not adopted monometallism, France would have continued to coin the two metals freely: therefore the depreciation could not have taken place. Germany was the sole author of the silver crisis. Unless she had further declarations to make to the conference, she had as yet made no proposition which the United States and France could regard as a concession. Mr. Horton, while agreeing with Mr. Cernuschi as to the mistake which Germany had made in her monetary legislation, could not look upon her as the sole cause of the mischief. It dated further back. England began it, and the Paris conference of 1867, in which the United States took part, propagated it. The responsibility was not only on Germany, but on the civilized world. Baron von Thielmann (Germany) said that his government had nothing to add to the declaration presented at the first session of the conference. Mr. Fremantle said that at a later session of the conference he should present a fresh communication which he had just received from his government.

—At the eleventh session Mr. Dumas (France) made an extended argument in favor of bi-metallism. But if bi-metallism were for any reasons found to be impracticable, he would suggest the suppression of small gold coins, in order to give greater employment and steadiness of value to silver. Mr. Schraut concurred in this suggestion, and would add to it the suppression of bank notes of less denomination than twenty francs, and of the one and two dollar notes in the United States. Mr. Brock (Norway) said that all monometallists would concur in those suggestions, but he pointed out that the proposal of Mr. Dumas differed from that formulated by his colleague, Mr. Cernuschi. Mr. Cernuschi said that all such measures were only half measures; they only looked at small sides of the question, and could come to nothing. The internationality of silver at fifteen and onehalf was the point to be arrived at. Without that, nothing would be effected. "We must have all or nothing." Mr. Pierson presented a declaration of The Netherlands government saying that it would join in a bi-metallic union consisting of "all the great states of Europe and America," but could not engage to act thus if the system were confined to a more restricted area. It would, nevertheless, give serious attention to a project, if proposed at the conference, for establishing bi-metallism in an area comprising only several great states of Europe and America.

—At the twelfth session, Mr. Seismit-Doda presented a declaration of the government of Italy, saying that Italy would unite with the other states of the Latin Union and the United States of America "in resuming the limited coinage of silver" for a fixed term, provided Germany would agree during the same term (which should be at least five years) to suspend her sales of silver and replace her gold five-mark pieces and treasury notes with silver money, and provided the British government would increase the paying power of its silver crowns. Italy could in no case agree to the free and unlimited coinage of silver, unless England and Germany, or one of them, should unreservedly adhere to it. Mr. Fremantle presented a declaration from his government transmitting to the conference a communication from the bank of England. This communication was in effect an agreement on the part of the bank to receive silver and issue its (gold) notes therefor, to the extent of one-fourth of the gold held by the bank in its issue department, as authorized by its charter, provided that the mints of other countries would return to such rules as would insure the certainty of the conversion of gold into silver and of silver into gold. All its notes were payable in gold on demand, and it was required by law to receive all the gold offered to it in exchange for its notes. The president suggested that it would be well at the next session to consider the subject of adjournment. After such profound discussions it was not likely that any fresh light would be thrown upon the subject or additional eclat be given to the proceedings.

—At the thirteenth session (July 8) Mr. Evarts, in behalf of the delegates of France and the United States, and in the name of their respective governments, read a declaration stating, 1, that the depression and great fluctuations of the value of silver relatively to gold are injurious to commerce and to the general prosperity, and that the establishment of a fixed relation of value between them would produce most important benefits to the commerce of the world; 2, that a bi-metallic convention entered into between an important group of states for the free coinage of both silver and gold at a fixed ratio and with full legal tender faculty, would cause and maintain a stability in the relative value of the two metals suitable to the interests and requirements of commerce, 3, that any ratio now or lately in use by any commercial nation, if so adopted, could be maintained, but that the adoption of the ratio of fifteen and one-half to one would accomplish the object with less disturbance to existing monetary systems than any other ratio; 4, that a convention which should include England, France, Germany and the United States, with the concurrence of other states which this combination would assure, would be adequate to produce and maintain throughout the commercial world the relation between the two metals that such convention should adopt. The president said that a considerable number of delegates had expressed a desire to see the conference suspend its labors and adjourn to some later date. He suggested that this subject should be discussed. Mr. Forssell (Sweden) objected to this proposal as likely to lead to no practical result, while it would give a character of permanence to the conference which was not contemplated or authorized by the governments represented. It would be better to acknowledge at once that the projects of bi-metallism had collapsed, and to reaffirm the conclusions of the European delegates at the conference of 1878. Baron von Thielmann (Germany) asked that the reasons for adjourning the conference to a future date be formulated. After a recess of twenty minutes, the president read an explanatory resolution saying that, considering the speeches and observations of the delegates and the declarations of the several governments, there is ground for believing that an understanding may be established between the states which have taken part in the conference, but that it is expedient to suspend its meetings; that the monetary situation may, as to some states, call for governmental action, and that there is reason for giving an opportunity for diplomatic negotiations; therefore the conference adjourns to Wednesday, April 12, 1882. The resolution of adjournment was supported by Mr. De Normandie, Mr. Pirmez, Lord Reay, Count von Kuefstein and Mr. Brock. Mr. Forssell withdrew his objection. The resolution was adopted. On motion of Baron von Thielmann, the thanks of the conference were awarded to the president for the impartiality with which he had directed the proceedings. The conference then separated. It did not reassemble at the time fixed in the resolution of adjournment. There has been no public statement of the reasons why it was not reconvened.

HORACE WHITE.

PARLEY.

PARLEY. Two hostile armies often have need, even in the very midst of hostilities, of holding some correspondence with each other; for example, concerning the burial of the dead or the exchange of prisoners, or to propose a capitulation, to arrange for a suspension of arms, etc. This correspondence is effected by means of persons charged with the parley. In antiquity, at least in Greece and Rome, as well as in the middle ages, the persons sent to conduct the parley were always heralds, that is to say, men who held that office, not only for a special mission, but, in a way, permanently. Heralds fill a large place in Homer's poems, and many passages bear witness to the profound respect which was paid them in those remote times. For example, Talthybius and Eurybates, sent by Agamemnon to demand Briseis from Achilles, stopped overcome with terror at the door of the hero's tent; but the latter saluted them with these words: "Welcome, sacred heralds, ministers of gods and of men, you are innocent of the insult which I receive." For a long time the custom has been simply to send as parlementaires, officers accompanied by a drummer or a fifer, bearing a white flag.

—The inviolability of the parlementaire (person of truce), which appears to have been founded in antiquity upon the sacred and almost priestly character of the herald, rests to day upon international law. It is one of the oldest, most elementary and most essential regulations of this law. "Nomen legati," says Cicero, "ejusmodi esse debet, quod non modo inter speiorum jura, sed etiam inter hostium tela incolume versetur." Whoever attacks this principle, not only injures his adversary of the moment, but, to use Vattel's expression, "he injures the common security and safety of nations; he renders himself guilty of an atrocious crime against all peoples." It would not do to allow any departure from this sacred rule, even in civil war and toward the envoy of a party which is considered, rightly or wrongly, as rebellious; but there is always the right to refuse to admit a parlementaire, or person of truce, or to make his admission subject to such conditions as may seem proper; for example, that he shall be introduced into the lines with his eyes bandaged. Once admitted, the parlementaire should be protected, not only against all bad treatment, but against all insult.19 The parlementaire is not obliged spontaneously to close his eyes and ears during the course of his mission, and he has a perfect right to observe what he is allowed to see, sometimes with design, and to let his side take advantage of his observations. But if he should abuse his character to act as a spy and to concoct plots, he would expose himself to be ignominiously expelled; he might even, in certain cases, be deprived of his immunities, be detained as a prisoner, or even be put to death. The rigor of the law can even go to this extremity; but it is almost always not only more humane, but even more politic, not to have recourse to it, and to respect the character of the parlementaire, even in those who have abused it.

GASTON DE BOURGE.

PARLIAMENT

PARLIAMENT, The British, is the supreme legislature of the United Kingdom, and its history is, to a large extent, the history of the growth of political freedom. The attempts to trace the origin of this parliament to the Saxon period fail to connect the Wittena-gemote (meeting of wise men) with the representative principle, the hereditary character, or the royal summons, three characteristics of the present British parliament, which are deemed essentials of its constitution. It is by act of the crown alone that parliament can be assembled; only twice have the lords and commons met by their own authority—first, before the restoration of Charles II., and again at the revolution in 1688. Parliament is also prorogued (adjourned to a certain day), or dissolved by royal proclamation only.

—While the main constitution of parliament, as Blackstone says, was marked out in magna charta, A. D. 1215, when King John promised to summon the nobles, bishops, etc., to council, its actual first existence is commonly referred to the year 1265, when the writs of Simon de Montfort first summoned knights, citizens and burgesses to parliament. From that time parliament has consisted continuously of two houses, the lords and the commons, while the Saxon Wittena-gemote and later councils consisted of one chamber only. The creation of a house of commons elected by the people (or by the property element), may be said to have had its birth in that jealous care of the rights of property, so all-pervading in the British mind. The early kings had so abused the power of raising money, and the lords and bishops were so subservient to the royal will, that it became necessary to have the check of an elective body to assert and jealously maintain control over the taxing power. This control, claimed and exercised by the lower house of parliament for centuries, is so absolute that all bills, whether for the raising or the expenditure of money, must originate in the commons. The successive steps by which the important power over the public purse was transferred from the king to the commons, is a history of determination on the one hand and of stubborn resistance on the other, the English monarchs using every wile to secure supplies, which the parliament stubbornly refused except on condition of redress of grievances. The steady increase of the power of parliament during the reigns of the arbitrary house of Tudor, culminated during the Stuart dynasty in that struggle for supremacy between Charles I. and his parliament, which ended in the complete victory of the latter, the subversion of the monarchy, the abolition of the house of lords, and the establishment of the commonwealth.

—The duration of a parliament, outside of the seven years' limitation embodied in the act of 1715, is dependent upon the policy and measures of the ministry commanding a majority in the lower house. Practically, the average life of a parliament in the present century has been less than four years; the shortest one having lasted only four and one-half months (in 1807), and the longest a little over six years. The "appeal to the country," caused by the resignation of ministers who fail to command a majority, is made through writs of election. The last general election was in 1880, returning 338 liberals, 239 conservatives, and 60 home rulers. Members are chosen by what is regarded in England as nearly universal suffrage. There are, however, but 3,181,701 actual voters (in 1883) out of the population of 35,246,633, or about one in every eleven inhabitants: while in France and in the United States, where manhood suffrage is really universal, the proportion of voters to the population is one in every four or five inhabitants. The reform act of 1867-8 was a large extension of the franchise, giving it to all householders in boroughs (cities and towns), and to occupants of lands or houses bringing £12 rent or upward in counties, or in the country. This leaves the large class of agricultural and other laborers unrepresented. Since 1872 parliamentary elections are by secret ballot. (See BALLOT.)

—The omnipotence of parliament is regarded as the great feature in British polity. "The power and jurisdiction of parliament, "says Coke, "is so transcendent and absolute that it can not be confined, either for causes or persons, within any bounds." It wields not only the whole legislative power, but, for nearly two hundred years past, the executive power as well. In theory, the queen appoints the ministers or heads of administrative departments; in practice, these heads can be no other than the representatives of the will of the house of commons for the time being. What is called the government of England embraces not only the cabinet, but from forty to fifty political heads of departments, who quit their places with every change of administration. These changes, as we have seen, occurring every four years on an average, are effected by the majority in the house of commons, and this in its turn is dependent upon qualified suffrage. The powers of parliament are theoretically divided between three co-ordinate branches—the crown, the peers, and the commons—for the sovereign is, by the constitution, a part of parliament, having to be present in person or by proxy, and every law requiring the royal assent to its passage. The veto power, still lodged in the crown, has not been exercised since 1707, or for nearly two centuries. The house of lords, which has in theory equal law-making powers with the commons, can really do little but register the edicts of the latter. Although there are some measures of policy, such as the right of Catholics and Jews to sit in parliament, the extension of the suffrage, and the reduction or abolition of taxes or prescriptive privilege, upon which the stubborn opposition of the lords has for years stood in the path of reform, that reform has always sooner or later been carried. The political history of England is one long testimony to the weakness of precedent and prerogative when standing in opposition to the power of an enlightened public opinion.

—It may appear something like a paradox to assert that the powers of the popular branch of parliament are even greater now than in the days of Cromwell, when both the throne and the house of peers were abolished, and all sovereignty was swallowed up in a parliament of one chamber. Yet it is apparent that, with the single exception of the judicial power, which is still reserved to the house of lords, the commons of England, through their legislation and through their cabinet, wield a far more comprehensive authority than did the long parliament under the lord protector. The very constitution of the kingdom, that unwritten yet all-controlling governmental power, is nothing but the net result of the long series of parliamentary assertions and statutes, down to the latest embodiment of administrative power in the cabinet, which is defined by Bagehot as "a committee of the legislative body, selected to be the executive body."

—The organization of parliament is attended with great formality. The lord chancellor announces to the house of commons (previously summoned by the gentleman usher of the black rod to attend in the house of lords) that as soon as the members of both houses shall be sworn, her majesty will declare the causes of her calling this parliament; and further requests them to choose their speaker, who must be presented in the house of lords the day after, for the royal approbation. This being done, the speaker formally claims, on behalf of the commons, "all their ancient and undoubted rights and privileges." These being graciously confirmed, the commons, with the speaker, withdraw to their own chamber: then follows the taking of the oaths, and an address in answer to the speech from the throne.

—The queen's speech is delivered in the house of lords by herself in person, or by the lord chancellor, reading it in her presence, or by commissioners whom she appoints (and this is called opening parliament by commission). Before this, neither house can proceed with any business. The lord high chancellor presides as speaker of the house of lords. The presence of forty members or upward is required in the commons to constitute a quorum (the whole number of members in 1882 being 652). In the house of lords, which consists of 516 members, business may proceed with only three peers present. The parliament is obliged to meet at least as often as once a year. Customarily, the annual sessions of parliament begin early in February, and end some time in August: but this depends upon the public business, the ministry, and the concurrence of the two houses, so that parliament not unfrequently has a special session in November, or else does not rise until September, long after the close of the London "season." The opening of the daily session (formerly at 10 o'clock, and later at 12 M.) is now fixed at 4 P. M.—except morning sittings for private business, or toward the close of a session, in which cases the house resumes at the hour of 6 P. M.—the sittings often continuing far into the night. Both houses are opened with a fixed ceremony. At ten minutes to four, two gentlemen in court suits of black, steel buckles and swords, accompanied by a third, carrying a huge golden mace upon his shoulder, precede the speaker, who is dressed in a full-bottomed wig and robes of black silk, and who enters the house followed by a train-bearer, chaplain and secretary, to the cry of "Way for Mr. Speaker! Hats off for Mr. Speaker!" Then all persons must be uncovered, except only the members of the house of commons, whose peculiar privilege it is to wear their hats, a right usually exercised except when speaking. The chaplain reads prayers; the strangers' and reporters' galleries are then opened; the members present are counted. If after four o'clock there are not forty present, the house is adjourned till the next day. At half past four public business begins (half an hour being devoted to private business and petitions), after which the leading members of the government are all found in their places to answer any questions put by members of the house, of which one day's notice has been given. The house of lords usually meets at 5 P. M., but frequently sits as a court of appeal during the day, when it is open to the public like other judicial tribunals. At other times admission to the strangers' gallery is had only through a peer's order. In the house of lords the bishops always sit together, and the members of the administration occupy a front bench on the right of the woolsack (speaker's chair). The peers who vote with the government occupy the benches on the same side of the house; the peers in opposition are ranged on opposite benches. In the commons no particular places are allotted to members; but the front bench on the speaker's right is occupied by the members of the administration, while the leading members of the opposition usually take the front bench on the other side of the speaker's chair. The mass of members sit somewhat promiscuously, though approximately divided into supporters of the government, occupying benches on the right of the chair, and members of the opposition party on the left. The members of parliament in both houses serve without salary. Members elected to the house of commons serve as such until the next general election for a new parliament.

—It was formerly illegal to publish any of the proceedings or debates in parliament; and history records a long series of exclusions, punishments for contempt, and disgraceful persecutions against writers and printers who had presumed to make the people acquainted with what was said and done in parliament. At length, however, all restrictions were removed, and the daily press contains pretty full reports. Besides this, effected by private enterprise, "Hansard's Debates" are a full report (though in the third person) of the speeches made in both houses, taken in short-hand, and paid for, though not published, by the government. The journals of the house of lords have been printed officially ever since 1509, and those of the commons since 1547, in great folio volumes, with numerous indexes.

—The restrictions as to who may be elected members of the house of commons have been gradually removed, and since 1870 any subject over twenty-one years of age (even a naturalized alien) is eligible to election to parliament, except clergymen, contractors, judges, peers, bankrupts and office-holders. In several instances members elect below the legal age have been permitted to sit. Curiously enough, dissenting clergymen may be members of the commons, while those of the church of England, the established religion, are excluded, although bishops sit in the house of lords. The houses of parliament do not adjourn on occasion of the death or funeral of members of the body, nor are there any mortuary eulogies on such occasions.

—Although members of parliament serve without salary, the expenses of their election are frequently very heavy. The honor or reputation incident to a seat in parliament, as well as the influence which it enables a man of talent to wield, counts for much. It is not uncommon in vigorously contested elections to have from £1,000 to £5,000 expended in the numerous appliances for political meetings, printing and publishing, lights, brass bands, decorated hustings, and other devices to rouse and to keep up popular enthusiasm. Bribery, also, was formerly a too common channel for expenditure, but since the abolition of the rotten boroughs, the stringent anti-bribery laws, and the adoption of the secret ballot, the control of votes by purchase has been greatly diminished.

—Members of the commons have not the right to resign their places. To accomplish this object one must ask to be appointed "steward of the Chiltern Hundreds," an old and nominal office, without any functions, which is given to any member who applies for it. By this pleasant fiction a member can get out of parliament without violating the law which requires him to serve out the term for which he is elected.

—If the sovereign dies during a recess of parliament, it must convene immediately; and if it has been dissolved, it may resume its powers for a period of six months. All bills affecting the rights or privileges of the peerage must be offered in the house of lords, and can only be amended by the commons. All motions proposed in the house of commons are required to have a second: but this rule is not enforced in the house of lords. In neither house of parliament is any journal read of the previous day's proceedings.

—In the progress of business the ministers have the precedence in bringing forward motions of every kind—In taking a vote in the house of lords the members vote in the order of their rank, the lords voting in the affirmative answering "Content," and those opposed. "Not content." Each peer might vote by proxy for two absentees until 1868, when the practice was discontinued by a standing order. In the house of commons the members vote. "Aye" or "No," instead of "Content" or "Not content." When the vote is counted the ayes pass into a lobby on the right, and the noes into one on the left, in each room is a secretary, who checks off the names of members on a printed list, aided by two tellers appointed by the speaker. The tellers report the figures of the vote to the speaker, who announces it in open house.

—The speaker of the house of commons is precluded from participating in debate on legislative business: but in the lords the presiding officer, if a member of the body, may leave the chair and speak in his character of a peer. On the other hand, he has no casting vote; if the lords are evenly divided, the question is lost. But if the house of commons is tied, it becomes the duty of the speaker to give the casting vote, which determines the question one way or the other.

—The following table exhibits the duration of each parliament since the accession of Henry VIII. in 1509:

See GREAT BRITAIN. HOUSE OF COMMONS, HOUSE OF LORDS, PARLIAMENTARY LAW.

—BIBLIOGRAPHY. Cobbett (W). Parliamentary History of England, 1606-1803, 36 vols; Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, 3 series, 1803-83, 343 vols.; Journals of the House of Commons, 1547-1883, 138 vols.: Journals of the House of Lords, 1509-1883. 115 vols.: Standing Orders of the House of Commons, 1882: Standing Orders of House of Lords, 1876; Parliamentary Reports, Accounts, and Papers, 1812-83, about 5,000 folio vols.; May (T. E). Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament, 8th ed., 1879; Hallam (H.), Constitutional History of England, new ed., 3 vols., 1872; May (T. E.). Constitutional History of England since the accession of George III., 1760 to 1870, 5th ed., 3 vols., 1871; Hatsell (J.), Precedents and Proceedings in the House of Commons. 4 vols., 1818; Townsend (W. C.), History of the House of Commons, 1688-1832, 2 vols., 1843; Todd (A.). On Parliamentary Government in England, 2 vols., 1867, Grey (Earl), Parliamentary Government, 1867; Cooke (G. W.), History of Party, 3 vols., 1840; Dod (C. R). Parliamentary Companion, 1833-83; Bisset (A.), History of the Struggle for Parliamentary Government in England, 2 vols., 1877.

A. R. SPOFFORD.

PARLIAMENTARY LAW.

PARLIAMENTARY LAW. This term is commonly used to designate the formal rules, and precedents having the force of rules, which govern the proceedings of legislative bodies. In a larger sense parliamentary law is held to regulate the course of business in all deliberative assemblies, public meetings, societies, conventions, and voluntary organizations of every description. In countries where the principle of representative government is firmly established, nothing can be more important than a clearly defined, well-established, and firmly-adhered-to system of conducting legislative business in such manner as to preserve at once the equality and independence of the representatives and the rights of the people. It is also most important that the public business should proceed in an established order, and with as little interruption and delay from controversy upon side issues as possible. Yet the endless and oft-renewed discussions in congress and legislatures upon points of parliamentary order, or upon the proper way to proceed with the business in hand, attest at once the confusion of mind of the average legislator, and the indefiniteness of the parliamentary law itself. So far from constituting a systematic code, by which difficult or doubtful questions can be settled with precision, what parliamentary law we have is largely made up of rules subject to constant change, and of precedents liable to be reversed. "What is the law upon any subject," said an eminent lecturer on jurisprudence, "is hidden in the breasts of our judges, and can only be ascertained by experiment;" and the great uncertainty which attends the administration of the rules which are presumed to govern public bodies might lead one to conclude that what is parliamentary law upon any occasion is hidden in the breast of the speaker, or the president, or the moderator, or the chairman, and has little other force than his decision. While such decisions are at all times subject to the test of an appeal from the presiding officer to the assembly, experience shows that the time wasted in long debates often proves a more costly obstruction to the progress of public business than any supposed advantage in establishing a principle. It has been computed that almost one-third of the time of the annual sessions of congress, and nearly one-third of the pages of the costly and voluminous official record, are consumed upon points of order. In parliamentary bodies where there is no restriction upon debate, as in the senate, time enough has frequently been wasted in discussion whether to take up a certain measure to have fully debated the measure itself pro and con., and to have passed or to have rejected it besides. There are growing signs, in and out of congress, that the progress of public business will be more insisted upon than the right of unlimited utterance, or "the superstition of talk," which is an advertisement of the individual. Parliamentary action is very rarely affected by long speeches, or by sharp or finely-drawn distinctions of what may or may not be done under the rules. The loss of the precious and unreturning hours which should be given wholly to the well-considered legislation of a great people, in frivolous disputes over inadmissible motions and points of order, leaves so little time that the most important public measures are imperfectly discussed, hastily considered, and crudely framed into law, while the soul of the intelligent legislator is vexed continually, and the legislature itself is brought into contempt. Amid the mass of good and bad precedents, and of rules heaped upon rules, it is not strange to find that the business of direct legislation is hindered rather than helped. What the legislator requires, but does not find, is simplicity instead of intricacy, and an assured standard of appeal instead of a jumble of conflicting decisions. Equally important is it to the ready dispatch of business in conventions and public meetings that there should be a recognized code of procedure, as well as a firm, skillful and courteous presiding officer to enforce it.

—The origin of the great body of what is recognized as parliamentary law is directly traceable to the usages of the British parliament (treated in a preceding article). From the days of the anonymous "Order and Vsage of Keeping of the Parlements in England," by John Hooker, published at London in 1572, (the earliest publication on the subject of which we find record), to the latest edition of Sir Thomas Erskine May's elaborate "Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament," the English books are the fountains from which the American and in great part the continental treatises on the subject are drawn. It were greatly to be wished that along with the formal principles and precedents of the science (if so it can be called) we had also drawn from them one of the best features in the practice. Perhaps there is no element in the conduct of our legislative business more palpably a source of weakness than the fact that in the parliaments of America there is no responsibility for measures. In the house of commons, as in the legislative assemblies of nearly all European nations, the ministry are not only present, but are held to a direct responsibility. The party which has been for the time being intrusted with the conduct of the government, brings in its measures, supposed to be in consonance with the public will, and explains and defends them in debate. All appropriations (bills of supply) needed to carry on the government, and embracing the army, the navy and the civil service, are thus brought in and supported by able men familiar with all their details, because concerned in the administration of each department. Not only so, but most measures of the session demanded by public opinion, whether connected with parliamentary reform, education, public morals or the widely diversified interests of the United Kingdom at home or abroad, find in the ministry on the floor of parliament vigilant advocates, courting and not shunning debate, answering objections, and ready to take the responsibility of success, or the result of failure, which will consign them from their places of power to private life. How wide the difference in our American legislatures. There, no executive officer can be so much as questioned respecting the acts, the demands or the service of his department, except in the furtive obscurity of a committee room. The only responsibility for public measures which attaches anywhere resides in one or at most two committees of the house, overwhelmed with multifarious business, and utterly unable, though never so competent, to make themselves masters of the infinite detail of the bills they present, and give attention at the same time to other public business, and to the never-ending wants of their constituents. Candid confession comes from one baffled congress after another that under the existing practice no systematic law-making is possible. Instead of a well-digested, clear and easily administered body of laws, the statute book is filled with crudities and contradictions which those who administer them are unable to reconcile. It is some consolation, doubtless, to reflect, in presence of the 8,000 to 12,000 bills that do not become laws with which every congress is flooded, how much greater calamities we have escaped. What is true of congress is true in a modified sense of all the state legislatures: the mass of crude legislation which is irresponsibly gotten through, places before the executive a perilous task of arresting it by vigorous use of the veto power, or the perhaps still more perilous responsibility of approval.

—For the sake of greater clearness and facility of reference, the various subjects embraced under Parliamentary Law will here be treated in alphabetical order. Substantially the same course of proceeding here noted as prevailing in congress is followed in the legislatures of the several states of the Union, with many variations as to details, according to the rules adopted by each body.

—ABSENCE. The presence of members of the body is taken for granted in all representative assemblies, as due to their constituents. This can only be suspended by leave of absence, or employment in the service of the body. Absenteeism embarrasses business, and is unjust to other members, as well as to those represented; yet it sometimes goes so far in protracted sessions as to threaten the loss of a quorum. In congress, the constitution itself empowers less than a quorum to compel attendance of absentees; a rule of the house prohibits absence except from actual necessity or with leave; and no senator can be absent without leave first obtained. The statutes require deduction of salary pro rata for absence of a senator or representative, except for sickness of himself or family. In both houses, when votes by yeas and nays are recorded, the names of members absent (or not voting because paired) are published in the journal. In parliament leave of absence is usually given in case of domestic affliction or urgent business, but it is occasionally refused. In the French chambers absence is not allowed without leave of the body except in urgent cases, when the president may grant it. Requests for leave of absence are reported upon by a committee and announced by the president. The salary of deputies is stopped when absent without leave.

—ADJOURNMENT. A motion to adjourn takes precedence of all others. It may be made at any time (except when a member is speaking, or the house is voting) unless a motion to adjourn has just previously been negatived: it is not debatable, nor can it be amended. The unfinished business cut off by adjournment generally has precedence in the orders of the day; and this is an express rule of the house and senate. No adjournment for more than three days is permitted to either house of congress by the constitution, unless the other house concurs. If the houses disagree as to the time of adjournment, the president may adjourn them to such time as he thinks proper. In parliament the motion to adjourn is debatable, and may be amended as to time of adjournment. In the commons the speaker adjourns the house when a quorum is found wanting, and the fact is noted; but in both houses of congress business may proceed without a quorum by unanimous consent, or until the question of a quorum is raised by a division. After this no motion is in order except for a call of the house, or to adjourn. In the French chambers, before each day's adjournment, the president consults the chamber as to the day and hour of its next meeting, as well as the subjects to be considered.

—AMENDMENT. Any alteration proposed to a motion or to a bill is an amendment. Amendments are often proposed to defeat a proposition, as well as to promote its object. Amendments may be simply to strike out a portion, or to insert new matter, or to strike out, and insert in place of the matter stricken out. They are to be offered in the order of sequence, if the proposition being considered consists of several sections or paragraphs. It is not in order to refer back and amend parts which have been considered, after a latter part has been amended. Every amendment proposed is itself capable of amendment; but there can be no amendment in the third degree, i.e., of an amendment to an amendment. To accomplish such an object the mover should seek to have the amendment to the amendment rejected, then moving his amendment as an alternative, with due notice to the body of the intent to be accomplished. A rule of the house permits a third amendment by way of substitute, to which one amendment may be offered. Amendments once agreed to or rejected can not afterward be altered or amended. Motions to amend may be withdrawn or modified before the previous question is ordered, but not afterward; and amendments withdrawn may be offered again at a further stage of proceeding. Amendments in parliament need not be of the same subject matter with the proposition before the body. A member may move to substitute a wholly different proposition for the one moved, and such an amendment is to be voted upon. But in committee of the whole house this rule does not apply, the house being authorized only to consider the subject referred to it. In congress no amendment is to be admitted on a subject different from that under consideration. In amendments the form of words, and not their substance, is concerned; and as anything may be moved, the opponents of a motion often attempt its defeat by rendering a proposition absurd or obnoxious, or even reversing its substance, so that its supporters join with its opponents to defeat it. No amendment can be in order which contravenes the law or the standing or special orders of either house, or which is the same with any proposition already voted upon during the same sitting. An amendment to strike out is in this country put directly, but in parliament the speaker puts the question whether the words proposed to be stricken out shall stand as part of the question. If an amendment to leave out is passed, it is not in order to move to insert the words left out in the same place, but they may be moved in another place. The same rules apply as to amendments by insertion. Motions to amend, being properly considered previous to what it is proposed to amend, take precedence, and the question is first taken on the amendment; the same rule applies to an amendment of an amendment. Amendments moved by a member who has already spoken can not in parliament be introduced by a speech. In congress the opposite rule prevails. In congress no amendment to an appropriation bill is in order which increases expenditure or provides for expenditure not previously authorized by law, or which changes existing law. To the last an exception is made admitting amendments which are germane to the subject matter and at the same time retrench expenditure. In committee of the whole it is usual to limit debate upon proposed amendments to five minutes for each speaker; but the majority may at any moment close all debate upon any paragraph or pending amendment; whereupon further amendments may be offered, to be decided without debate. Any bill sent by one house to the other is subject to amendment in all its parts: when returned, the usual course is to disagree to the amendments as a whole or in part. If each house adheres to its disagreement, the bill or resolution is lost; but the differences are commonly adjusted by a committee of conference, whose report is usually accepted by both houses. No bill can be amended after the agreement of both houses. Amendments do not require a second in congress; in the house of commons every amendment must be proposed and seconded the same as an original motion. In the French chambers amendments are offered through the president, who refers them to the committee having similar measures in charge. They are printed, and their authors have the right to be heard before the committee.

—APPEAL. The presiding officer's decisions upon questions of order are made subject to an appeal to the assembly. It is optional with the chair to decide the point of order himself, or to submit it to the body. In the house of representatives the speaker must decide. If any member appeals from the decision of the chair the question is then put, "Shall the decision of the chair stand as the judgment of the body?" If the decision is not sustained, the chair is overruled by a majority of the members, and such a vote forms a precedent of some importance on similar questions. A motion to lay the appeal on the table, if carried, has the effect to sustain the decision of the chair. This motion can not be made in committee of the whole. Questions of order just decided on appeal can not be renewed. In parliament the speaker of the lords as well as of the commons refers most questions of order directly to the judgment of the house; the process of an appeal appears not to be provided for.

—APPROPRIATIONS. In parliament all bills granting supplies to carry on the government (money bills) must originate in the house of commons; and in 1678 this prerogative was carried so far as to exclude the lords from all power of amending bills of supply. This exclusive power has been jealously maintained by the commons for more than two centuries. In congress a similar claim for the house of representatives to originate all appropriation bills has been made, but not insisted on nor maintained; though the constitutional privilege of the house to originate all bills for raising revenue has always been jealously adhered to. The house committee on appropriations was first formed in 1865, to relieve the committee of ways and means of part of its too onerous duties. The senate committee on appropriations was organized in 1867, its functions having been previously vested in the committee of finance. In congress appropriation bills always have precedence, and may be reported at any time. They must be considered in committee of the whole house on the state of the Union. By one rule of the house and senate they must not embrace expenditures not previously authorized by law, nor provisions changing existing law: but such provisions are frequently incorporated by the committees reporting them. The yeas and nays must be recorded on their passage in the house, but not necessarily in the senate. After being considered and debated in committee of the whole, the bill is reported to the house for passage; but a separate vote is taken upon any clauses or amendments upon which any member claims the right to divide the house. In the French chambers the budget is in charge of a committee of thirty-three members, to whom are referred all matters of public revenue or expenditure.

—ARREST. (See Privilege).20

—AYES AND NOES. (See Yeas and Nays.)

—BALLOT. Voting by ballot, while it preserves secrecy, is out of favor in legislative bodies, and the constitutions of eleven states require all votes taken in the legislature to be vivâ voce. In other states it is left to the legislature to regulate its own methods of voting. A rule of the house makes a majority of the votes given necessary to an election. When the house votes by ballot the speaker is required to vote. For many years past no vote by ballot has occurred in either house of congress, the speaker and the president pro tem. of the senate having been elected by vivâ voce votes. The other officers of each house are chosen by resolution by the controlling party, the minority usually proposing and voting for their own candidates by way of substitute. In parliament secret committees are usually chosen by ballot. The speaker of the commons is chosen upon motion and second by assent or informal vote, unless the house divides, when the usual count of votes is had. (See BALLOT, vol. i., p. 197; Vote.)

—BAR. The bar of the house implies the railing in the rear of the outer seats of members. Formerly members were required to be within this bar in order to vote; now, a member may vote on a roll-call from any place within the hall. In counting the house he must be within the railing. In another sense, the bar of a legislative body is the area in front of the presiding officer; and offenders are brought to the bar to be examined, tried, admonished, reprimanded, imprisoned or discharged, as the case may be. The speaker appears, followed by the commons, at the bar of the house of lords on ceremonious occasions. Members of the commons not yet sworn must sit below the bar.

—BILLS. A bill is any proposed act of legislation, commencing with the formula, "Be it enacted," etc. Every Monday in the house of representatives the speaker must call the states and territories, through their members, for bills offered for printing and reference without debate. In the senate one day's notice for bringing in a bill is required, unless received by unanimous consent. Bills are referred at once to the committee to which by their subject matters they properly belong. Every bill must be read three times before its passage, the first and second readings by title, on introduction; the third reading in full, when put upon its passage, or by sections, when debated and amended. No bill can be amended by incorporating in it the substance of any other pending bill. Bills or resolutions may be reported at any time from six committees only: the committee on elections, on members right to seats; ways and means, on bills to raise revenue; appropriations, on general appropriation bills; printing, on printing for congress; accounts, on house expenditures; and enrolled bills, such bills as are enrolled. Other bills from committees must take their chance of being reported back when the committee is called in its order. Bills reported favorably by committees must go on the proper house calendar in the order so reported, and the senate has the same rule. The enacting clause of all bills must be uniform, thus "Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled." Formerly every section of a bill, no matter how numerous, began with the words, "And be it further enacted"; but this tedious and useless verbiage was dispensed with in 1871, shortly before the statutes were codified, and no enacting words are now used in any section except the first. It is the right of every member to have a bill read through at each stage of its progress, though it is customarily, by unanimous consent, read only by title, except upon its passage, when a full reading is mandatory. After a bill has been read three times, the question is, "Shall the bill pass?" after which it is not amendable, although open to debate, unless the house at once seconds the demand for the previous question on its passage. When a bill is passed, the member in charge of it moves that the vote last taken be reconsidered, and that the motion to reconsider be laid on the table. If the house votes aye, no reconsideration can take place, and the bill goes at once to the senate. In the senate the passage of bills involves no such formalities. All bills passed by the house must be certified by the clerk with his signature and the day of their passage, and conveyed by him or an assistant to the senate. While bills are on their passage between the two houses, they are on paper; after being passed by both houses they must be enrolled on parchment, and examined (compared or collated) by the joint committee on enrolled bills. Next, they are signed by the president of the senate and the speaker of the house, and presented to the president for his signature. Bills signed by the president are filed in the department of state, where they form the official acts of congress, from which the annual "Statutes at Large" are printed. The president notifies his approval with its date to the house in which the bill originated, and this appears in the journal. Any bill not returned by the president within ten days becomes a law by force of the constitution, unless congress adjourns meanwhile, in which case it does not become a law. (For bills failing to become laws through the president's objections, see Veto.) Bills passed in one house and rejected in the other must be notified to the former: they can not be renewed the same session without ten days' notice, and leave of two-thirds. A weekly statement of bills on the speaker's table, with dates and proceedings thereon, must be printed by the clerk. Of each bill offered 750 copies are printed, and many more are frequently ordered. Bills which are undisposed of in either house can be resumed and acted on at the next session of the same congress: but all bills die with the congress, unless they have gone through both houses and been approved by the president. Private bills are defined to be those for the benefit of individuals, companies, etc. Friday in each week is by rule of the house set apart for their consideration; and when reported from committees they are considered in committee of the whole. In parliament there is a radical distinction between public and private bills, which does not prevail in congress. By the standing orders all private bills, whether for the interest of individuals, corporations or localities, must be brought in by petition, and taken charge of by a parliamentary agent. (See LEGISLATION, vol. ii., p. 736.) In the house of lords any peer may offer a public bill without notice; in the commons notice must be given and leave of the house obtained. Bills relating to religion, trade or money grants can not be brought in until they have first been considered in committee of the whole house. Bills passed by both houses receive the royal assent by commission under the great seal. Sometimes the queen assents in person to bills in the house of lords. In the French chambers bills are proposed by the ministry or by deputies, and are printed and referred to proper committees. Members proposing them may be heard before committees. Reports upon bills are printed, after which the chamber fixes the time for debate. No bill can become a law without two deliberations upon it with an interval of at least five days, except financial bills, bills of local interest, and bills declared urgent.

—BRIBERY. Any attempt to bribe a member is a breach of the privileges of the house. Several cases of lobbyists and others charged with bribery appear in the journals (See LOBBY. vol. ii., p. 781.) Bribery in the election of members of congress is an offense which has been made the subject of repeated investigations by committees of both houses. In parliament many controverted elections have turned upon real or alleged bribery; but such practices have ceased to be subjects of investigation in parliament since the corrupt practices act of 1868, confiding the trial of controverted elections to the court of common pleas. On proof of bribery by the agents of sitting members (even without the knowledge of the latter) their seats have been vacated; while an act of parliament disqualifies for seven years any candidate guilty of bribery, and disfranchises him as a voter for the same period.

—BUSINESS. In the lower house of congress there are four calendars of business: 1, a calendar of the whole house on the state of the Union, on which are placed all revenue and appropriation bills, 2, a house calendar, embracing all public bills not revenue or appropriation bills; 3, a calendar of the committee of the whole house, for all private bills; 4, a calendar of business on the speaker's table. Questions of the priority of business are decided by a majority without debate. The first business, after prayer by the chaplain, is the reading of the journal of the last day's sitting, then a call of states and territories (if on Monday) for bills and resolutions; and then a morning hour for reports from committees, called in order. After the morning hour devoted to reports, the unfinished business of the preceding session is in order; after unfinished business a motion to proceed to business on the speaker's table is in order, though seldom arrived at. After this, it is in order to go into committee of the whole house upon revenue or appropriation bills. Next in order is business on the house calendar. As it is always in order (after the morning hour) to go into committee for considering revenue or appropriation bills, there is small chance for other measures during most of the session, and thence comes an almost perpetual contest over the order of business. It requires a majority of two-thirds to suspend the rules apportioning the order in which business must be considered; and this majority is seldom obtained, because the rule forbids the speaker to entertain any motion to suspend the rules except on the first and third Mondays of each month, and during the last six days of a session. Special orders, however, are sometimes made in advance for given days, which take precedence of all except unfinished business and revenue and appropriation bills. The senate has a morning hour for presentation of messages from the president, the house, and other communications, petitions and memorials, reports of committees, and the introduction of bills and resolutions. During this hour no other business is in order except by unanimous consent. At its close unfinished business of the preceding session is first in order; second, any special order for the day; and third, the calendar in its order. This calendar must contain every bill and resolution reported from committees or on leave, and house bills and resolutions unreferred to committees. In parliament the public business is apportioned by reserving certain days for considering the orders of the day, and other days for original motions. The members are so numerous that the priority of those desiring to give notices on the same day is determined by ballot, the speaker drawing their names from a box; they are called out, when they rise and make their motions without debate. The right is reserved to place government orders (i.e., the measures of the ministry) at the head of the list on every order day except Wednesday. Friday's order of the day must be either bills of supply or ways and means. Wednesdays are set apart for bills promoted by members not connected with the government, except when the public business is pressing. Special orders are frequently made in advance, as in congress. The French chamber of deputies fixes the order of business for its next session before adjourning for the day; the order of the day thus fixed is posted in the hall, and published in the official journal. On the demand of any member the order of the day must have priority.

—BY-LAWS. In non-parliamentary bodies (as in societies or voluntary associations of any kind), the by-laws constitute the standing rules of the society. They usually follow the constitution, and are of great importance to the orderly transaction of business in its meetings. They should provide a rule for the suspension of them at the will of two-thirds or some other quota of the members.

—CALENDAR. (See Business.)

—CALL. Calling the roll is required at the first meeting of each session of congress. This proceeds by states in their alphabetical order, and shows by the record in the journal who are present. The ordinary roll-call is in alphabetical order of members' names, and is required on every vote that is taken by yeas and nays, the clerk calling out the name, and members answering vivá voce. This call, with the delays arising from indistinctness, absences, changes and reading of the names on both sides, occupies some forty minutes in the United States house of representatives. Various schemes for abridging the enormous waste of time by the roll-call (which sometimes occupies half the hours of a sitting) have been devised: e.g., an annunciator with electric wires, the member touching a button at his desk, and the vote being recorded yea or nay instantaneously for the whole house. The house, however, has never countenanced any substitute for vivâ voce voting. The call of committees and of members from states for bills and resolutions is treated of under Business.

—CALL OF THE HOUSE. When no quorum is present, a call of the house is in order, which proceeds thus: the names of the members are called by the clerk, and the absentees noted; the doors are then closed, and the majority present orders absentees sent for and arrested wherever found, by officers appointed by the sergeant-at-arms; when absent members are produced, the speaker calls for their excuses at the bar, and the house determines upon what condition they shall be discharged from arrest. Scenes of great disorder and merriment sometimes occur during a call of the house. No motion is in order during the call except to adjourn, or that all further proceedings in the call be dispensed with: the last motion is usually made upon the appearance of a quorum. In the senate a call of senators must be made when the question of a quorum is raised. If no quorum is present, the majority may direct the sergeant-at-arms to request or to compel the attendance of absent senators; pending which, no debate and no motion except to adjourn is in order until a quorum appears.

—CENSURE. Members of a legislative body are liable to censure for transgressing the rules in speaking or otherwise. A vote to censure a member requires the speaker of the house to pronounce that such a member (calling him by name) has incurred the censure of the house. Votes of censure have not been infrequent, mainly for unseemly conduct or transgression of the rules of debate; and instances are not wanting where the speaker has been required to pronounce the censure of the house upon members who have been guilty of grave derelictions in their capacity of representatives. In parliament the speaker of the commons has been sometimes directed to reprimand or admonish persons at the bar who have offended against the dignity of the house. In the French chamber of deputies members are subject to censure of the chamber, who have refused to heed a call to order, or have been guilty of tumultuous conduct, or of menacing or insulting any of their fellow-members. Censure, coupled with exclusion from the hall for fifteen days, is pronounced against any deputy who has been guilty of any violence, or has resisted a simple censure, or has menaced any member of the government or the president of the republic. Both censures carry with them temporary forfeiture of the salary. In case of resistance by any deputy, or of tumult in the chamber, the president at once adjourns the session, and the public prosecutor is informed that an offense has been committed in the palace of the chamber of deputies.

—CHAIRMAN. The chair is usually filled by the speaker in the house and by the vice-president in the senate. The speaker has the right to call any member to preside if he desires to leave the chair, and this member is addressed as "Mr. Chairman"; but such substitution is limited to the day when made; except that in case of his illness he may appoint a chairman, with the approval of the house, for not more than ten days. In the absence of the speaker without making such an appointment, the house elects a speaker pro tempore, who is addressed as "Mr. Speaker." When the house goes into committee of the whole the speaker never presides, but designates a member, who is addressed as "Mr. Chairman." When the committee of the whole rises, which is done by motion, the speaker resumes the chair, and the chairman formally reports to him what progress has been made upon the business in hand. In the senate the chairman, who is elected to take the place of the vice-president as presiding officer, is known as the president pro tempore. Either officer may call any senator to occupy the chair, but only for the day or a less time at his pleasure. This substitute is still addressed as "Mr. President." The chairman of a committee is the first-named member thereon, by a rule of both houses. In his absence the next-named member acts as chairman. The great amount and importance of business prepared for legislative action by the committees renders the chairmanship an influential and much desired position.

—CHILTERN HUNDREDS. (See PARLIAMENT, THE BRITISH.)

—CLERK. At the beginning of each congress the house is called to order by the clerk of the last house, who continues in office until his successor is chosen. He then calls the roll of members, and decides all questions of order until the election of a speaker, subject to appeal to the house by any member. His successor is elected immediately after the choice of a speaker, by vivâ voce vote. The clerk must note all questions of order and decisions thereon; keep the journal of the house and print it, with an index; certify to the passage of all bills and resolutions; attest, by signature and seal of the house, writs, warrants and subpœnas; make all contracts regarding supplies or labor for the house; disburse and account for the contingent fund; appoint and pay the assistants in his office, keep the stationery accounts; and have charge of certain classes of documents for distribution. He has the custody of all bills, petitions and other papers pertaining to business before all committees of the house at the close of each congress, to be preserved in the files of his office. He must make a roll of representatives elect before the first meeting of each congress, placing on it only those whose credentials show them regularly elected. All messages from the house to the senate are conveyed by the clerk or one of his assistants.

—CLȒTURE. This term, recently adopted from the French, denotes the closing of debate, answering closely to the previous question, as it prevails in American assemblies. In parliament the previous question does not have the effect to suppress all further discussion of the main question. The want of any standing order enabling the majority of the house to close debate and secure the prompt passage of the ministerial measures, led to the protracted parliamentary contest of 1881-2, and the adoption of new rules for procedure in the house of commons. As introduced by Mr. Gladstone, Feb. 20, 1882, the procedure resolutions required the closing of debate by a bare majority approving the putting of the question by the speaker; but the question under discussion was not to be decided in the affirmative unless supported by 200 members or opposed by less than 40. This radical measure was the fruit of the obstructive tactics adopted by the Irish members in the long session, Jan. 6 to Aug. 7, 1881. Taking advantage of the rules of the house, designed to promote freedom of debate, about forty members successfully thwarted the majority, and for many months prevented legislation giving the government power to enforce the laws in Ireland. Several all-night sessions of the house, and one continuous sitting of forty-one and one-half hours, with scenes of great disorder, were the fruits of these obstructive tactics on the part of the home rule members. A series of motions to adjourn the debate, to adjourn the house, etc., were continually renewed in the endeavor to weary out the majority and delay the obnoxious Irish bill by adjournment of the house; but the majority, backed by the conservative party, who made common cause with the ministerialists, kept the house together by relays, and the debate went on day and night. At length the speaker took the decisive measure of arresting debate by putting the motion for leave to bring in the bill to suppress disorders in Ireland. This was carried, the Irish members leaving the house in a body. The bill reaching a second reading, the obstructions were renewed, and Mr Parnell and other members were "named" by the speaker for disregarding the authority of the chair. Resistance to the progress of business continuing, a motion for the expulsion for the day of thirty-one of the home rule party was carried; and, after four nights' debate, the first "urgency" resolution of Mr. Gladstone was carried, 359 to 56. This secured parliamentary progress, and the Irish bill was passed through both houses within a week, and received the royal assent March 2, 1881. At the next session of parliament (1882) the adoption of the clôture as a permanent standing order was carried after months of struggle and debate. An amendment that in no case should the clôture be enforced unless with the support of two-thirds of those present, was lost. The procedure resolutions were finally passed Dec. 1, 1882, and are to the following effect: 1, provides that the speaker or chairman may stop the debate at his discretion, if supported by more than 200 members; or if opposed by less than 40, and supported by more than 100; 2, provides that motions for adjournment for the discussion of a definite matter of urgent public importance, shall be entertained if forty members support it by rising up; 3, provides for limiting such debate to the subject in hand; 4, provides for the taking of divisions; 5, 6 and 7, are technical rules for the speaker's or chairman's guidance; 8, makes it a standing order that no opposed motion shall be taken after half-past twelve at night; 9, regulates the suspension of offending members; 10, gives the speaker or chairman the power to check attempts to secure delay by abuse of the rules; 11 and 12, are minor provisions; and 13 makes the first seven and last three resolutions into standing orders. In the French chamber of deputies, by Art. 108 of the Règlement, the president is to take the sense of the chamber before pronouncing the closing of debate. If the clôture is opposed, only a single speech against it is allowed. The clôture being once pronounced, no further debate is in order, with the single exception of remarks upon the state of the question.

—COMMITTEES. A committee is an officially constituted organ of a deliberative body to facilitate its business by examining questions, canvassing their merits by discussion, testimony, etc., digesting resolutions, or preparing bills for action, and reporting their conclusions to the body of which they are members. In societies, conventions and celiberative assemblies, it is the almost invariable practice that the presiding officer appoints all committees. The mover of any special committee is usually by courtesy appointed its chairman, although the selection both of committees and of chairmen is always within the power of the assembly. Committees are most important organs of a body to forward its business by intelligent and orderly procedure. In the house of representatives the speaker has the sole power of appointing committees. There are three kinds of committees in congress, viz., standing, select and joint, besides committees of conference, which are appointed for the occasion, to reconcile differences between the houses upon matters of legislation. The standing committees of the house are forty-seven in number, appointed at the commencement of each congress. Three of these are joint committees, the senate having a similar committee to act with them. They consist of from fifteen members each down to three, the greater number having eleven members. Select committees, ordered by the house from time to time to consider special subjects, consist of various numbers and do not hold over the session, unless specially authorized, while the standing committees are for the whole congress. In 1802 the house had only five standing committees of seven members each. The call of committees for reports is daily, except on the first and third Mondays of each month. All reports of committees must be in writing. They can sit during sessions of the house only by special leave. Committee rooms are provided in the capitol for their sessions, which are private unless they choose to admit spectators. Jefferson's Manual holds that the proceedings of a committee are not to be published, as they are of no force until confirmed by the house; but in modern days the enterprise of the press is adequate to spread before the public all that is of interest in the proceedings of every congressional committee. A committee is sometimes given the special power to send for persons and papers; also to hold sessions in any part of the country where investigation is desired. A majority of the committee constitutes a quorum for business. Each committee has a clerk, appointed by the chairman with the committee's approval, and a calendar of business. Any chairman of a committee has power by statute to administer oaths to witnesses. It is common to parcel out committee work involving examination among the individual members, or to refer various topics to sub-committees for report. Some committees meet daily, others weekly, others casually upon call of the chairman, according to the amount or importance of the business referred to them. The right of a committee to report at any time carries with it the right to consider the matter when reported; but all measures involving the raising or expending of money must be first considered in committee of the whole. The only exceptions to this rule are the committees on elections, printing, and accounts. A committee report may be made by the chairman or any one of its members; and he has the right both to open and close debate on the report. Minority reports in writing are usually printed and considered with the majority report. Questions of jurisdiction over certain business often arise between various committees, and are decided by the speaker or the house: the principle governing is, that the principal subject of the bill should control its reference. In the senate the standing committees (thirty-four in number) are appointed by ballot unless otherwise ordered. For many years past the ballot has been dispensed with, and the committees are elected each session (not for the whole congress, as in the house) on motion, the members being named in a body by the party in the majority, which has previously agreed to them in caucus. Special committees are frequently appointed by the president of the senate, who also appoints committees of conference. Reports from committees are to be called for during the morning hour next after the communications to the senate, and the offering of petitions and memorials. In parliament there are no standing committees except on accounts, standing orders, selection, and railway and canal bills, and these must be reappointed every session. Select committees are appointed in the lords by ballot or on motion. In the commons select committees (usually of fifteen members) are appointed vivâ voce on motion of any member naming them, although the house sometimes elects committees by ballot. The house orders in each case what number shall be a quorum of the committee, usually five members in the commons and three in the lords. The object of select committees is usually to take evidence, and power is given them to send for persons and papers. The presence of strangers is usually permitted in house committees, rarely in those of the lords. Their exclusion may be ordered at any time, and is enforced while the committee are deliberating. Secret committees are sometimes appointed, whose inquiries are conducted with closed doors, even members of the house being excluded. All evidence is taken in shorthand, and printed. Reports and resolutions reported by committees, by a standing order are laid upon the table. By a new usage, first in operation in 1883, "grand committees" have been created, selected for the purpose of giving measures mature consideration before they are presented to parliament for debate. This object has thus far been well answered, and the working power of the parliament increased. In the French chamber of deputies the most important committee is that on the budget. This consists of thirty-three members, and is charged with all legislation relating to receipts and expenditures. The chamber may refer to any committee any other propositions for legislation. No member can belong to more than two committees. One day in each week is customarily set apart for committee work.

—COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE. A committee of the whole is constituted of all the individual members of the body, and must be formed by an act of the house itself. In the senate there is no formal resolving into committee of the whole of the body, but simply a resolution that the business then pending shall be considered "as in committee of the whole." This is styled by Mr. Jefferson a quasi committee. The house having resolved to go into committee of the whole, the speaker must leave the chair, after appointing a chairman to preside. Business is taken up in the order of the calendar, appropriation and revenue bills having precedence. The committee must rise and the speaker resume the chair if a message to the house comes in, or a bill is objected to, or any other business occasion arises requiring the immediate attention of the house; after which the house goes again into committee. The rules provide that all matters relating to taxes or appropriations of money shall first be considered in a committee of the whole. The five-minute rule prevails in committee of the whole; i.e., any member is allowed five minutes to explain any amendment he may offer; after which one member is allowed to speak five minutes in opposing it, and there must be no further debate thereon. This is practically extended. however, by permitting an amendment to an amendment, so that many five-minute speeches may be made by pro formâ motions to amend by striking out the last word, etc. When debate runs too long, in the view of those having charge of the measure, the motion is often made that the committee rise; when the house is asked to close all debate upon the pending section; if carried, this cuts off all debate, but does not preclude further amendment. The previous question can not be put in committee, nor motions to reconsider, nor can the yeas and nays be taken, nor can motions, amendments or appeals be laid on the table. The members vote by three methods: 1, vivâ voce by the sound, aye or no; 2, by rising, and standing till they are counted on each side; 3, by passing between the tellers. When the matter under consideration in committee is finished, the committee rise, and the chairman reports to the speaker, "The committee of the whole house on the state of the Union having had under consideration (such a subject) have directed me to report the same with (or without) amendments." In parliament the chair is taken in committee of the whole by the chairman of the committee of ways and means in the commons, and by the chairman of committees appointed each session in the lords. The ordinary function of committees of the whole house is deliberation. Every public bill and all matters concerning religion, trade, revenue or the grant of public money must first be considered in committee of the whole. Members may speak more than once in committee, but not in the house.

—CONCURRENT RESOLUTION. This is a resolution adopted by both houses, chiefly on the subject of adjournment of the session. Unlike a joint resolution, it does not require the signature of the president.

—CONFERENCE. To adjust differences in the form or substance of a measure which has passed both houses, though in a different shape, committees of conference are appointed by the presiding officer. They consist usually of three members from each house, two of whom are of the majority party, or favorable to the measure. In all cases of disagreement, or when either house refuses to concur with amendments to any measure made by the other, a conference is moved. Reports of committees of conference must be signed by a majority of the committee of both houses, and are always in order. They must contain an explicit statement as to what effect the committee's report will have on the measure. If the conferees fail to agree (as often happens) they report to their respective houses, and a new committee (or the same) is again appointed. Three or four conferences, with as many committees, are sometimes required. The usual form of moving a conference is that the house (or senate) insist on its disagreement and ask for a conference: the alternative motion is, that the house recede from its amendments, or from its disagreement, and agree to the amendments of the other body. The senate has a rule that the question of consideration of conference reports shall be taken at once without debate. In parliament conference committees are more formal, and may be demanded by either house concerning the privileges of parliament, the course of proceeding and the bills or amendments passed by the other house. Each house appoints managers to represent it at the conference, and both houses are thus brought into direct intercourse with each other by deputations of their own members. Business is suspended in both houses of parliament during the sitting of conference committees. In the French corps legislatif, when the senate disagrees with the chamber of deputies, a committee of conference may be moved to agree upon a new form of law. If the conference report is rejected by the deputies, it is not in order to bring in a similar bill until two months have expired, except upon the initiative of the government.

—CONSENT. In the ordinary course of business at public meetings, and in some parliamentary bodies, business may be done by unanimous consent. The presiding officer puts the question: Is it the pleasure of the assembly that such a thing should be done? If no member dissents, he announces, "The chair hears no objection," and the thing is ordered without putting the question in any other form. If a single member objects, the chairman must put the question in the usual way by a motion and second. The introduction of any bill or resolution out of the regular order requires unanimous consent. It is customary for members to ask unanimous consent to withdraw papers from the files, to be excused from the house or from voting, to print remarks not actually delivered, to have a bill or motion taken up for present consideration, to have their time extended when speaking, etc. If no objection is made, the chair announces that the request is granted.

—CONSIDERATION. To raise the question of consideration is to endeavor to defeat a measure by bringing the house to vote whether they will consider it. It is too late to raise the question of consideration on any question after its discussion is actually begun.

—CONSTITUTION. In most societies or permanent voluntary organizations it is customary to adopt a constitution and by-laws for the government of the body. The constitution commonly sets forth the name and object of the organization, the qualifications and mode of electing members and officers, and the regulations for meetings. It also contains provision for its amendment through a vote of two-thirds or some other majority, after specified previous notice at a regular meeting.

—CONTEMPT. (See Privilege.)

—CONTESTED SEAT. (See Elections.)

—CONVENTION, JOINT. A joint convention of the two houses is held only upon occasion of counting the electoral vote for president and vice-president. Formerly this assembly was regulated by a joint rule of the two houses, providing that the president of the senate should be their presiding officer, and prescribing details for counting the vote. This rule, however, was abolished in 1876, and there is now no rule upon the subject.

—DAY, LEGISLATIVE. For the purposes of legislation the congressional day begins at 12 o'clock M., or at such earlier hour as either house shall have adjourned to. It does not terminate until an adjournment is had; a recess merely to the next day does not end the legislative day then running. An adjournment does not necessarily take place at the beginning of Sunday; a majority may continue in session after that hour (as has frequently happened), but the journal bears the date of the day preceding (Saturday).

—DEADLOCK. This is a common phrase, which designates a stoppage of business in one house through obstructions by the minority; or, a deadlock in legislation may occur between the two houses, through party differences, when the majority in one is of different politics from that controlling the other. The latter are usually compromised by each house yielding something; the former sometimes lasts for days and nights, the party seeking to prevent the enactment of an obnoxious measure exhausting every parliamentary expedient by calls of the house, motions to adjourn, calling the yeas and nays, etc., on their motions, to defeat or weary out the majority.

—DEBATE. In all assemblies for the transaction of business it is essential that there should be rules to regulate and limit discussion. There are some rules which may be regarded as universal; as, 1, No debate is in order unless a motion of some kind is before the assembly. 2, Any one rising to debate must address the presiding officer, not the assembly; 3, By courtesy, the mover of any proposition is first entitled to the floor; 4, Debate must be confined to the question before the assembly. In the house of representatives a member rising must address "Mr. Speaker"; the speaker names the member who is first to speak (as "the gentleman from Maine," etc.). When several rise at once the member who first catches the speaker's eye is to be called upon. A member reporting a measure from a committee opens and closes the debate; no member can speak more than one hour without express leave of the house, or more than once to the same question unless he be the move of the matter pending, when he may speak in reply after all others choosing to do so have spoken. No debate is allowed after the previous question is ordered, except one speech from the member closing debate: it is common, however, for the member having an hour to close to yield a given amount of his time to several members. In both houses no debate is allowed on motions for adjournment or recess, or to lay any business upon the table, or to consider conference reports, to excuse from voting, or on questions of order arising after a motion for the previous question, or upon reference or priority of business. No member may call another by name in debate, or notice the views of the other house; both of these rules, however, are frequently violated. In the senate debate is without limit, unless a special order is made to curtail the length of speeches. No senator can interrupt another without his consent, or speak more than twice on the same question the same day without leave of the senate. Both houses have a rule that any member transgressing in debate the rules of the house, shall be called to order, when he must sit down, and can not proceed without leave, the exceptionable words being taken down. Senators must stand in their places when debating: but members of the house may speak from their seats, or from any part of the floor, or from the clerk's desk. In the house of lords a peer addresses the lords in general; in the commons the speaker is addressed. The reading of written speeches is not permitted in either house of parliament. A member may read extracts from documents, but must debate questions in the literal sense of that word, without reading manuscript remarks. In both houses of congress written speeches are practically rather the rule, and debate in the true sense the exception. While debating, members of the lords and commons remove their hats, resuming them upon concluding. Debate in the lords depends upon the will of the house; in the commons the speaker recognizes the member who rises first. As several members may frequently rise at once, the one that is first in his eye is called upon. Competition for the floor sometimes leads to a motion that another than the member called by the speaker be first heard. It has been sometimes charged that there was a "speaker's list," by which his recognition of members was governed, but this has never been admitted. The rule of one speech only from any member on the same question is strictly observed. No member can be called by name in either house; in the lords a member is referred to by his rank, as "the noble earl"; in the commons, by the place he represents, as "the honorable gentleman, the member for York." In the French chambers members speak from the tribune, and must first have obtained leave by addressing the president. A list of the deputies who desire to speak at any session is kept, in the order of their demand. In the discussions members speak alternately for and against a measure under consideration; a rule which does not prevail either in England or America. The ministers are to have the floor whenever they claim it, even if it interrupts the order of the regular list, but one of the opposition may always follow the speech of a minister. Disorder or clamor during a discussion is prohibited; if the chamber becomes noisy, and the president can not restore order, he puts on his hat, if the disorder continues he announces the session closed for an hour, at the end of which time the sitting is resumed; if the tumult breaks out again the president must adjourn the chamber to the next day.

—DELEGATES. (See Territories.)

—DIVISION. To call for a division is to test the sense of the assembly on the proposition before it. In the house a division is had by the members on each side of the question rising in their seats and being counted by the speaker, who announces the vote. If dissatisfied with the result, any member may call for tellers, or the yeas and nays may be called for. The division of a question, if demanded by any member, must be made before voting, if it include two or more distinct propositions. In parliament, if the vote by ayes and noes (vivâ voce) is not accepted, there is no division by rising and standing to be counted, but the house at once divides, those voting for the measure withdrawing to the lobby on the right of the house, and those opposed entering the left. Two tellers are appointed by the speaker for each party. As members the back into the house they are counted by the tellers, and their names recorded by the clerks. The result is announced from the chair, and alphabetical lists of the names are printed with the "votes and proceedings." No member can vote who was not in the house when the question was put; but a "division bell" is rung by the doorkeeper when the house is about to divide, which is heard through the neighboring rooms, and scattered members hasten to be present at the division before the doors are locked. The time allowed for this notice is two minutes, measured by a sand-glass; and when that has run out, the doors are closed, and the speaker must again put the question by ayes and noes, as by the rule no absentees on the first call could vote unless the question were again put. If the numbers on a division are equal, the speaker must give the casting vote in the commons; if there is a tie in the house of lords, the measure voted upon is lost. In the French chambers a division must be had on the call of any member. The vote is taken, 1. by rising; 2, by open ballot; 3, by secret ballot. The first method is in order upon all questions unless twenty members demand an open ballot or fifty a secret ballot; or when the rising vote, having been twice taken, is not decisive of the question; in this case any member may demand the ballot. The open ballot requires each member to be supplied with white tickets signifying a vote in the affirmative, and blue tickets the negative, on all of which his name is printed. Messengers present to each member an urn, in which he deposits his ballot: all the votes being collected, the urns are opened at the tribune; the secretaries count the ballots of each color, and the president announces the result. The secret ballot is taken by white and black balls, the white signifying the affirmative, and the black the negative. The members deposit the balls themselves in an run; the secretaries turn them out into a basket, count the black and white balls, and the result is proclaimed.

—DOORKEEPER. In some assemblies the sergeant-at-arms or his assistants discharge all the duties of a doorkeeper. In the house of representatives the office of doorkeeper is an important one, involving the care and responsibility of the chamber and apartments of the house and the public property therein, the superintendence of the document room and folding room of the house, and the appointment of many messengers, assistant doorkeepers and pages. During the sessions he announces at the door of the house all messages, furnishes members with printed documents, conveys messages, etc. He must enforce strictly the rules as to the privileges of the hall, and be responsible to the house for the conduct of his employés. In the senate the sergeant-at-arms appoints the doorkeeper and his assistants.

—ELECTIONS. In public assemblies the first business in order is always the election of officers. At any meeting which is not that of an organized body, it is usual for the assembly to be called to order by some volunteer member, who moves that Mr.——act as chairman of the meeting. The motion being seconded, the proposer calls for a vote by ayes and noes. If the voice of the former preponderates, he declares the motion carried, and calls Mr.——to the chair. The chairman, having taken his seat, announces the first business to be the election of a secretary, and calls for nominations, putting the question in the same manner for an expression of the sense of the meeting. Other officers may be elected in like manner, but a president and secretary are all which are usually necessary for a meeting. In the house of representatives the speaker, clerk, sergeant-at-arms, doorkeeper, postmaster and chaplain are elected by vivâ voce vote at the beginning of each congress. The election of members involves questions of the highest privilege, the constitution itself making each house the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members. The committee on elections in the house, and on privileges and elections in the senate, stand at the head of the list of committees. Contested elections of members, of which there are usually several in each congress, are carefully examined by these committees. The law provides that any contestant of an election of any representative must, within thirty days after the result is declared, notify the member whose seat he contests, of his intention and grounds of contest. The member must within thirty days answer the contestant in writing. Ninety days after this are allowed both sides for taking testimony. Witnesses may be examined or depositions taken at any place with due notice on both sides, the member and contestant appearing, either in person or by attorney, before any judge of a United States court, a state court of record, or a notary public, etc., who are by law competent to issue subpœnas and take record evidence in election cases. The testimony is taken in writing, and transmitted to the clerk of the house, by whose order it is usually printed. Contestants have the privilege of the floor pending a decision of their claim, and are usually heard in their own behalf before the vote is taken. Questions of the right of a member to his seat take precedence of all business. Large sums have frequently been voted to sitting members and to those contesting their seats for expenses incurred in the contest. The Revised Statutes (sec. 130) prohibit such payments to any person, but a subsequent statute of 1879 provides that thereafter no contestant or contestee for a seat in the house shall be paid more than $2,000 for such expenses, and that only upon sworn vouchers or receipts for money actually disbursed. The election of senators in each state must be made by the legislature chosen next preceding the expiration of the term of a senator. On the second Tuesday after organizing, each house must vote separately and vivâ voce for a senator. If any one has a majority in both houses he shall next day be declared duly elected senator in joint assembly of both houses. If no one has a majority the joint assembly must vote for senator (each member having one vote), and if no candidate receives a majority on the first day, the assembly must meet at 12 M. each succeeding day of the session, and take at least one vote, until a senator is elected. In parliament the practice in contested elections prevailing in this country was formerly in vogue, but the trial and determination of contests for seats by the whole house of commons grew into a great abuse through the notorious partisanism which almost invariably decided the case. This was reformed by the Grenville act of 1770, which selected by lot all committees for the trial of election petitions. This non-partisan method of selecting judges of parliamentary elections was maintained until 1868, when the jurisdiction of the house of commons in the trial of controverted elections was transferred by statute to the courts of law. Complaints of fraud in an election, or wrong returns of members, are tried by a judge within the district concerned, who certifies his determination to the speaker, which is final. If he reports that corrupt practices have prevailed at the election, a commission is sometimes appointed thereon. Corrupt constituencies have been repeatedly disfranchised by act of parliament. In France the chamber elects at each new organization a provisional president, and two vice-presidents, by ballot. The chamber is then divided by lot into eleven bureaus, who proceed to examine the election returns of all the members, by committees of five members chosen by lot. Report is then made to the chamber, which pronounces on the validity of the elections, and the president proclaims the list of regularly chosen deputies. By the French constitution each house is the sole judge of the eligibility and returns of its members. After the powers of a quorum or upward of the chamber have been verified, permanent officers are elected by ticket, viz., a president, four vice-presidents, eight secretaries and three questions (who have charge of the parliamentary expenditure), to serve during the entire session.

—ENGROSSED BILLS. An engrossed bill is a clean copy of the bill, with its amendments, put in proper form for the action of the house. When a bill has passed through all its stages, and the question is about to be taken on the third reading and passage, any member may call for the reading of the engrossed bill, and this may defeat the bill at that stage unless the motion to suspend the rules and pass the bill can be carried. An enrolled bill is a bill which has passed both houses and been enrolled on parchment, the engrossed bill being on paper.

—EXCUSE. All members must vote unless excused, and the motion for excuse must be put before roll-call and decided without debate. The excuses of absent members brought in under a call of the house may be accepted or held inadequate, at the pleasure of the house.

—EXPULSION. A member may be expelled by a vote of two-thirds in either house of congress. This is a constitutional provision, and has been several times exercised. More frequently resolutions to expel members guilty of grave misconduct have been lost, owing to lack of a two-thirds majority, or forestalled by the resignation of the offending member. The latter occurred in the case of Matteson and others whom the house was about to expel for corruption in railway land grants in 1853. (See LOBBY, vol. ii., p. 781.) In the case of B. F. Whittemore, a member from South Carolina, found guilty, on report of a committee of the house in 1870, of selling an appointment to a West Point cadetship, resolutions of expulsion were introduced, but the member resigned his seat an hour or two before the vote upon them was to be taken, and the resolutions were laid on the table. Whittemore returned to his constituents and was re-elected to the house. Thereupon a resolution was passed declining to allow Whittemore to be sworn in as a member, and returning to him his credentials. In the house of commons the power of expelling a member for grave offenses is undoubted. But though this vacates the seat of a member, it does not create disability to serve again in parliament. The famous case of John Wilkes, who was repeatedly expelled from the commons for libel, and was three times re-elected, the house each time standing on its prerogative and declaring the election void, was a disfranchisement which was palpably illegal; and the house itself, in 1782, reversed its action in the Wilkes case, ordering it expunged from the journals as "subversive of the rights of the whole body of electors of this kingdom." Many expulsions from parliament have occurred for corruption, perjury, conspiracy, fraud, libel, forgery, etc., the last instance having been that of James Sadleir for fraud in 1857. In the French chambers the penalties which are affixed to delinquencies do not go the length of expulsion, but only of censure, with temporary suspension from legislative functions.

—EXPUNGING. On various occasion the action of a former legislative body has been rescinded by the passage of a resolution to expunge from the journals a previously adopted order or resolution. The most noted instance of this kind in congress was the passage by the senate, in 1837, of a resolution to expunge from the journal a resolution adopted by the senate in 1834, censuring President Jackson as having assumed power not conferred by the constitution and laws. In parliament entries in the journal have occasionally been ordered to be expunged, the most notable case being that affirming the incapacity of John Wilkes as a member, passed in 1769, and erased in 1782 in the manuscript journal of 1769. The printed journal, however, (though reprinted since), still contains the obnoxious resolution.

—FILES. The clerk of the house and the secretary of the senate have responsible charge of all files of papers, public and private, which accumulate in the course of the business of the respective houses. No memorial or other paper presented to either house can be withdrawn from the files without its leave, except for reference to a committee.

—FILIBUSTERING. This term has long been applied in America to the obstructive tactics and dilatory motions adopted by a minority to defer action upon a measure obnoxious to them. In the house this is done chiefly by the minority insisting upon the constitutional right to take the yeas and nays on every motion; then, by oft-repeated motions to adjourn, to adjourn to a fixed day, to reconsider, to lay on the table, etc., and by relays of members to raise points of order, parliamentary inquiries, etc., hours and sometimes days are consumed in the hope of wearying out the majority, or compelling them to compromise. In the senate, where there are few or no checks upon debate, a mild form of filibustering is employed by a well-organized minority taking the floor in succession and each speaking as long as possible. Measures have been thus defeated by consuming the whole time of a closing session.

—FLOOR. To obtain the floor is to be recognized by the presiding officer as having the right to make a motion or a speech. (See Debate.)

—HOUR RULE. In the house of representatives, by a standing rule first adopted in 1847, no member can occupy more than one hour in debate on any question except the member reporting a measure from a committee, who has an additional hour to close the debate, if it extends beyond one day. No similar rule prevails in the senate or in the British parliament.

—IMPEACHMENT. This is a parliamentary power as old as the fourteenth century, and frequently exercised in early history, involving the highest judicial powers. Impeachment by the commons of high crimes beyond the reach of the law, and a trial by the house of lords, were invoked to defend the rights of Englishmen against corruption and oppression in office, whether executive or judicial. In modern times impeachment has been very rare. The direct responsibility of the highest officers to parliament, the limitations of prerogative, the settled administration of the law, and, more than all, the power of public opinion, have restrained those crimes which impeachments were devised to punish. Nevertheless, all persons, whether peers or commoners, may be impeached for high misdemeanors. The last trial of an impeachment in Great Britain, and the only one in the present century, was that of Lord Melvil in 1805. (See, for impeachments in U. S. History, vol. ii., p. 480.)

—IMPRISONMENT. (See Privilege.)

—INSTRUCTIONS. (See INSTRUCTIONS, vol. ii., p. 527.)

—JOINT COMMITTEES. (See Committees.)

—JOINT CONVENTION. (See Convention.)

—JOINT RESOLUTION. A joint resolution, like a public act or statute, is one which is passed by both houses and signed by the president. (See Resolution.)

—JOINT RULE. This is a rule adopted by both houses for the conduct of business between them. A series of fifteen joint rules was adopted as far back as 1790-94, and was in force (with occasional slight additions) until the 44th congress. The most important of these was the 22d joint rule, providing for the counting of the votes for president and vice-president in joint convention of the two houses. Jan. 20, 1876, the senate passed and sent to the house a concurrent resolution declaring that these joint rules previously in force, except the 22d, be adopted as the joint rules of the two houses for that session. The house took no action thereon, but, on Aug. 14, 1876, asked the senate to concur in a resolve suspending for the remainder of the session the 16th and 17th joint rules (forbidding the sending of bills from one house to the other in the last three days of the session, and presenting bills to the president on the last day of the session). The senate, in reply, passed a resolution, notifying the house that, as the house had not notified the senate of the adoption of the joint rules as proposed by the senate, there are no joint rules in force.

—JOURNAL. The constitution provides that each house shall keep and publish a journal of its proceedings. This is done by the clerk, through one of his assistants, known as the journal clerk, and each day's journal must be read on the meeting of the house on the succeeding legislative day. It records with great fullness the motions, votes, petitions, messages—in short, all proceedings in the house, except the debates. In reading the journal the record of petitions, names of members voting, resolutions and messages, are omitted by unanimous consent: even without these the journal often runs to great length. Errors in the journal may be corrected the next day.

—LEGISLATIVE DAY. This begins at 12 M. in congress, unless a different or earlier hour is fixed by either house for its meetings. It terminates with the adjournment, (a mere recess does not end it), but does not always coincide with the day as marked by the calendar. Thus, the legislative day which terminates the session of congress every other year is styled March 3 in the journals and proceedings, although it is actually March 4, from the hour of midnight to noon of this closing day.

—LOBBY and LOBBYING. (See LOBBY, vol. ii., p. 770.)

—LOG-ROLLING. This is a cant phrase, applied to a combination of members to aid each other's measures. The term comes from the business of securing lumber, or logging, where the loggers unite to help each other in the hard work of rolling the immense logs from the forest, where they are cut, to the water. Thus, one member of the legislative body says to others, "Vote for my bill, and I will vote for your bill," and this is called log-rolling.

—MACE. This is the traditional symbol of parliamentary power, as old as the sixteenth century. It is a large block of wood carved and gilt, and is borne before the speaker in the house of commons, when he enters or leaves the house, on the shoulder of the sergeant-at-arms. When he is in the chair, it is laid upon the table. (In the house of representatives the mace is set upright at the table of the sergeant-at-arms, at the speaker's right.) The mace now used in the house of commons is the identical one handed down from the accession of Charles II., 1660. There is no mace in the house of lords or in the senate. It is the time-honored emblem of popular sovereignty, in a legislative sense. The mace now used in the house dates from 1842 (although first introduced in 1789), and represents the Roman fasces, made of ebony sticks with silver bands, and small spears, terminating in a globe of silver, upon which is an eagle with half extended wings: the whole is about three feet in height. When the house is in committee of the whole the mace is removed.

—MAJORITY. The majority which carries any measure is held to be half the whole number of members of any assembly, plus one. Some constitutions require, to render an act valid, that it shall have been passed by a majority of those elected; but in both branches of congress a majority of the members present (if a quorum of the whole house) may pass any measure which is in order under the rules. It results that a law may be made by less than one-third of the senators and representatives elected. In fact, twenty senators and eighty-two representatives may, under the rules, pass the most important piece of legislation. The rule that a majority must be had to elect a speaker was suspended in the case of the obstinate struggle of 1855-6, when the house remained unorganized for many weeks, the division of parties being such that no one of three candidates could secure a majority. Finally, the deadlock was ended by the house adopting a resolution that a plurality of votes should elect, and Mr. Banks was chosen speaker. The rule that a majority is required to elect a senator in state legislatures is prescribed by the laws of the United States. In nearly all the states, however, the majority rule which formerly prevailed in the election of representatives in congress, and of state officers, has been supplanted by enactments that a plurality of votes shall elect.

—MEMBERS. Those are recognized as members of a parliamentary body whose credentials are regular, or who by unanimous consent are admitted as members without examination of credentials. Each house of congress is the sole judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members. The house consists of 325 members, since March 4, 1883. Members are to be elected on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November of every second year (the even years, 1884, 1886, etc.), except in any state where the constitution would have to be changed to alter its election day. In case of a vacancy in a member's seat, the governor of the state issues a writ of election to fill it. The clerk must put on the roll at the first meeting of any congress only those whose credentials show that they were regularly elected representatives. Members of the house must be twenty-five years of age, and senators must have attained the age of thirty. Members of the house can not be contractors, nor be interested in any government contract, nor be office holders, nor presidential electors, nor practitioners in the court of claims. Any subject is eligible to the house of commons who has reached the age of twenty-one, except clergymen, peers, bankrupts, contractors and certain officials. No member of parliament can be counsel before committees, nor a holder of office, except in the ministry. In France the members of the chamber of deputies may take part in the deliberations and votes before the validity of their elections is established. They wear a badge, consisting of the fasces of the republic, with a hand of justice, and a tri-colored sash.

—MEETING. A meeting of an assembly differs from a session. Thus, the house frequently takes a recess to meet at a later hour, and this terminates the meeting, or sitting, but the session is the same, and includes all the adjourned meetings.

—MESSAGE. Messages in congress imply either executive communications from the president (those from department officers are called "letters"), or from one branch of congress to the other. The president's annual message is sent in at the beginning of each session after he has been notified that the houses are organized and ready to receive any communication. Messages are usually sent in duplicate to both houses on the same day, unless in response to a call from one branch only, and are published in the journal and record. A message from one house to the other, borne by a clerk, is publicly announced at the door, and sent to the chair, the business or debate being temporarily suspended to have it announced, when it is laid on the table, and the proceedings are resumed. In parliament, messages from the crown are sent to both houses, under the royal sign-manual, by one of the ministers or an officer of the royal household, either of whom is a peer or a commoner. Such messages are always read at length by the lord chancellor or the speaker.

—MILEAGE. This allowance for traveling expenses to and from the seat of government prevails in congress, and in all the states except four or five. In congress it is twenty cents a mile each way for the session, or rather for the year. In the states, mileage varies from eight cents to twenty cents per mile.

—MONEY BILLS. (See Revenue Bills).

—MORNING HOUR. In each house of congress an hour is set apart for reports, motions and miscellaneous business. It begins, not at the opening of the session, but after the reading of the journal, and always takes precedence of unfinished business.

—MOTION. This term is applied to every proposition submitted by a member of a parliamentary body. In ordinary assemblies, motions made by any one require to be seconded by some other member, before being voted upon: but no second is required in either house of congress. Motions are here treated severally under their respective heads. Every motion must be reduced to writing on the demand of any member. If verbal, the presiding officer states it to the assembly; if in writing, it is read by the clerk. In the house, when a question is pending or under debate, no motion is in order but to adjourn, to fix a day to which the house shall adjourn, to take a recess, to lay on the table, to postpone to a day certain, to postpone indefinitely, to refer, to amend, or for the previous question. In the senate the same rule prevails, except that there is no previous question, and motions are in order to commit, or to proceed to the consideration of executive business. In both houses of parliament one day's notice of a proposed motion is required; but the notice may refer to a future day more remote than the day following. Motions must be seconded in the house of commons; but a seconder is not required in the lords. They must be carefully prepared in writing, and placed in the hands of the chair.

—OATH. Members of legislative bodies take an oath of qualification or of office. In congress all must take an oath (or affirmation, if objecting to being sworn) to support the constitution of the United States. The "ironclad oath," affirming that no aid has ever been given to rebellion against the United States, is taken by all who are not dispensed from it by sec. 1757 of the Revised Statutes. In parliament a single oath of allegiance to the crown has been substituted for oaths to maintain the Established church, etc., once required.

—OBJECTION. As no business can be considered in the house out of the regular order without unanimous consent, the right to object becomes very important, as one member can thus defeat or postpone a measure, unless two-thirds of the house can be had to suspend the rules. When in committee of the whole, if any bill or proposition is objected to, the committee must rise and report the objection to the house, which must decide without debate whether it is to be considered or laid aside.

—OFFICERS. The officers usually chosen in a public assembly are a president or chairman, clerk or secretary, and sometimes vice-presidents, and a sergeant-at-arms or doorkeeper. (See under each head.)

—OMNIBUS BILL. This term is applied in congress to a bill embracing numerous distinct objects, as in the bill "making appropriations for sundry civil expenses of the government."

—ONE-HOUR RULE. (See Hour Rule.)

—ORDER. This may be said to be the first law of a public assembly, whether legislative or otherwise. The order of business is treated under Business. The order of the day is the regular routine prescribed in the rules, in which certain classes of business are to be considered. To call for the regular order, is to demand that the body desist from what may be proposed out of due order, and proceed to the next business prescribed by the rules. A special order is a subject set in advance for a particular time, and thus to be preferred to the established order of business. In both houses of congress this motion requires a two-thirds vote for its adoption, being virtually a suspension of the rules. A special order may be postponed by a majority vote. The unfinished business of the preceding session takes precedence of a special order. To preserve order is the implicit duty of the presiding officer, and he or any member may call to order members transgressing the rules. In case of a call to order, a member must immediately sit down unless permitted to explain: and the house must at once decide the case without debate. If in his favor, he is allowed to proceed, but not otherwise. If called to order for words spoken in debate, they must be taken down in writing, and read to the house. (See Censure.) When a point of order of any kind is made, it is the duty of the chair to decide it. This he may do by sustaining the point of order, or by overruling it; and business proceeds in accordance with his decision, unless appealed from. (See Appeal.)

—ORDERS, STANDING. (See Rules.)

—PAIRS. The pairing of members in a legislative body is an agreement between two, who would vote on opposite sides of any question, to withhold their votes; such pairs leaving the result unaffected either way. One or both of the members paired may be absent. The rule in both houses of congress requires pairs to be announced after the roll-call, and the names paired published in the record. In parliament pairing prevails to a greater extent than in congress: members of opposite parties pairing with each other not only upon particular questions, but in cases of absenteeism for weeks and even months at a time. The system has never been recognized by parliamentary rules, though so long prevalent; in congress the first rule adopted which countenances pairing was in the 46th congress (1880).

—PAPERS. The reading of papers, if objected to, is determined by the house without debate. A member, however, has the right to read any paper as a part of his remarks. Papers of every description once offered can not be withdrawn from the files without special leave of the body.

—PERSONAL EXPLANATION. This is a member's request to be heard on some matter touching his personal record as a member, and requires unanimous consent. (See Privilege.)

—PETITION. Much time was once consumed by members in formally presenting petitions in open house. The rule now is, for members to deliver petitions to the clerk, indorsing their names and the specific reference (to a committee) desired. These minutes are entered upon the journal and published in the official record. In the senate they are still offered in open session during the morning hour. At the close of a congress, petitions and memorials go from committees to the permanent files, in charge of the clerk. In parliament, petitions must be written, and must have original signatures. They are presented in great numbers, and a standing order refers them without debate to the committee on public petitions. In the French chambers a brief of petitions is printed for the use of members, and they are referred to the committee on petitions, which classifies them, referring some to the minister of any department to whose business they belong, and others to the examination of the chamber. Each petitioner is advised of the disposition made. Any deputy may call for a report in public session upon any petition, and urgency may be demanded (if seconded by the chamber) for the consideration of any one. Every six months ministers distribute a printed report to the members, showing what action they have taken upon the petitions referred to them.

—POINT OF ORDER. (See Order.)

—PREAMBLE. The preamble of a bill or resolution is postponed until the other parts have been considered. When a separate vote on the preamble is not asked for, it is considered as adopted.

—PRESIDENT PRO TEM. In organizing a public assembly a temporary chairman is frequently chosen until a committee has reported officers for permanent organization. In the senate the president pro tempore is chosen to take the place of the vice-president as presiding officer; but this office is frequently left vacant for a time.

—PREVIOUS QUESTION. In congress this is a technical name for a motion that debate cease, and that the vote be taken immediately on the question under consideration. The motion for the previous question is not debatable, and can not be amended. The previous question was recognized in the first rules of the house in 1789, and could be demanded by five members. The present rules require a majority of the members present (if a quorum) to order the previous question. When a member calls for the previous question, the chair must immediately put the question, "Shall the main question be now put?" If adopted, the chair puts to vote the questions be fore the house in their order of precedence, till the main question, with all subsidiary ones, is disposed of. The previous question puts it in the power of a majority to close debate at any time. It does not prevail in the senate, where the public business is more at the mercy of individual senators. In parliament the previous question is wholly different in effect. It is an ingenious method of avoiding a vote upon any question proposed. Those who call for the previous question vote against the motion, not for it, as in the house of representatives. If the nays prevail, the speaker is prevented from putting the main question, as the majority have thus refused to allow it to be put. If the previous question is resolved in the affirmative, no further debate or amendment is allowed, and the main question must be voted on at once. In the French chambers the clóture of the debate is always in the control of a majority of the chamber. (See Clóture.)

—PRINTING. In congress all bills and joint resolutions must be printed after being offered; also reports of committees. A list of all reports required to be made to congress must be printed at the beginning of each session. The public printing of congress and the departments is regulated by the statutes in great detail.

—PRIVATE BILLS. The distinction between public and private bills is not closely defined, some bills including interests both public and private, and requiring the decision of the chair as to which class they belong. In congress, as in parliament, private bills are such as are for the interest of individuals, corporations or local bodies—as counties or cities. Bills relating to a state are held to be public bills. No private claim is in order upon any appropriation bill. Regular days are set apart to consider private bills reported favorably by committees. In parliament there is a carefully guarded system of maturing private bills, which saves a vast amount of legislative time and prevents abuses. (See LEGISLATION, vol. ii., p. 756.)

—PRIVILEGE. The privilege of a member of a legislative body rests upon the prerogative of his constituency to be always represented. The constitution itself provides that members shall not be questioned elsewhere for any speech or debate in either house, and shall be privileged from arrest during sessions, and in going and returning. Questions of privilege, by the rules of the house, have precedence of all others, except of adjournment; but the highest privilege attaches to questions affecting the rights of the house itself, maintaining its dignity, and the integrity of its proceedings. In maintaining what are known as their privileges, both house and senate have resorted to one or more of the following measures: 1, ordering the arrest of offenders; 2, directing the speaker to reprimand the party offending; 3, committing the party to the custody of the sergeant-at-arms within the capitol: 4, ordering a refractory witness or a person assaulting a member to be punished by imprisonment in the jail of the District of Columbia for three months: 5. (in the case of reporters) directing exclusion from the hall. The most frequent cases where either house seeks to protect its privilege by penalties are the refusals of witnesses to testify before its committees, and many recusant witnesses have been held in custody until the congress has expired (and with it the power to punish for contempt of its authority), or until a majority have voted to discharge the prisoner, or until he has consented to answer. When any proposition presents, in the opinion of the speaker, a question of privilege, he must entertain it in preference to other business, but it is well settled that the common plea of a question of privilege based upon a newspaper publication can not be maintained unless the member is assailed in his representative capacity. The fact that imprisonment or other punishment by vote of a legislative body contravenes the maxims of constitutional law, and asserts quasi-judicial powers, has rendered it obnoxious to public censure. The argument that the constitution confers no such power is met by the claim that it is inherent in the highest legislative body, essential to its power, dignity and proper functions, and has been repeatedly exercised, not only by both houses of congress, but by local legislatures. The supreme court of the United States, in some earlier cases, has upheld this power in congress, on the ground of right and necessity: but in the recent case of Kilbourne vs. Thompson the court held that the imprisonment of the former for refusal to divulge the private accounts of a company in a matter under investigation by the house of representatives, was illegal and unconstitutional. The plaintiff had been imprisoned forty-five days in the District jail as a recusant witness, by order of the house; and the speaker, and the sergeant-at-arms, with the members of the committee who ordered the matter to be brought before the house, were joined as defendants. In the case of the members, the court held that their constitutional privilege was a good defense to the action, as they took no part in the actual arrest and imprisonment. But it was held that the order of the house, declaring the witness guilty of contempt of its authority and ordering his imprisonment by the sergeant-at-arms, was void, and afforded the officer no protection in the suit brought by the witness. There was no power of the house to punish for contempt found in the constitution: and no authority to compel a witness to testify, where the subject-matter of the investigation was judicial, and not legislative, and was proceeding before the proper court. (103 U. S. Reports. 168.) In parliament, while many arbitrary measures have been aimed at persons held guilty of violating the privileges of that body, the right to commit for contempt has long been regarded with increasing jealousy, and has been questioned for more than two centuries, though maintained by the court of king's bench.

—QUALIFICATION. A member of congress is qualified to act in his representative capacity when his credentials have admitted him to the floor, and he has taken the oath of office. No man is disqualified from being a representative who is twenty five years of age, provided that he has been seven years a citizen of the United States, and was an inhabitant of the state in which he has been chosen. The qualifications of a senator are: 1. to have reached the age of thirty: 2, to have been nine years a citizen of the United States; 3, to have been when elected a resident of the state choosing him to represent it. A member of the house of commons need be but twenty-one years of age. (See Members)

—QUESTION Putting the question is one of the most frequent duties of a presiding officer. It is to be put in this form: "As many as are in favor, say Aye": and after the affirmative vote is heard: "As many as are opposed, say No." The chair must clearly state the question on request of any member, before calling for the vote. Members when anxious for the progress of business, or impatient of debate, frequently cry, "Question! Question'" and this, though technically a violation of the rules of order, is seldom interfered with by a judicious presiding officer. In parliament there is a special practice of propounding questions to members of the ministry, concerning public measures or events. A question may be asked as to the intentions of the government, but not as to their opinions upon general matters of policy.

—QUORUM. Unless fixed by constitutional provision or by the law of the body, the quorum of an assembly is a majority of its duly qualified members. In congress less than a quorum may adjourn from day to day, and may compel the attendance of absentees. In the house it requires the presence of at least fifteen members, to authorize a call of the house. The presence of a quorum is frequently assumed, and business proceeds in both house and senate when less than half the number of members are present; but this may be terminated by any member dividing the house, thus disclosing the want of a quorum: whereupon business must stop, and a call of the house (or senate) must be ordered. In parliament forty constitute a quorum in the commons, and three only in the lords. In the French chambers an absolute majority of the whole number of members is required to render any action valid.

—READING. The reading of papers called for may be stopped by the objection of any member, unless ordered by a vote of the house; but a member has the right to read a paper as part of his remarks within the limits of his privilege as to time.

—RECESS. This is a qualified form of adjournment; to take a recess to a definite hour usually serves the purpose of giving necessary rest and refreshment to the members of the body, without long interruption to their public duties. The motion for this is always in order, and not debatable. The term recess is also applied to the long interval between two annual sessions of congress: and powers are often granted to committees to sit during this recess.

—RECOMMITMENT. When committees report bills or resolutions digested by them, for action of the body, it is usual (unless the committee has privilege of immediate consideration) to recommit them to the committee. A rule of the house provides that no bill thus recommitted shall be brought back into the house on a motion to reconsider.

—RECONSIDERATION. In the house a motion to reconsider a vote once taken is to be made on the same day or the day after. It can be made only by a member who voted with the majority, if yeas and nays were taken; otherwise any member may move it. It takes precedence of all questions except adjournments and conference reports. The motion to reconsider is one of great importance, since if it prevails, the former action of the body is liable to be reversed. It is to prevent the possibility of this that the usage prevails for the member having charge of any measure, the moment it is passed, to move to reconsider the vote last taken, and also to move that the motion to reconsider be laid on the table; if the latter motion prevails it is deemed a finality, so far as the passage of the measure is concerned. A motion to reconsider can be applied to every question except to adjourn and to suspend the rules. It is debatable only when the question to be reconsidered was debatable, and then it opens up for discussion the entire subject. A reconsideration requires only a majority vote. In parliament a vote once taken can not be reconsidered.

—REFERENCE. This term is applied to the referring of bills, petitions, etc., to appropriate committees to be considered and reported upon.

—REGULAR ORDER. (See Order.)

—REPORT. Committees, having finished the consideration of any matter referred to them, must make a report to the body thereon, and this is usually required to be in writing. In congress most reports must be printed, though private bills or measures of pressing moment are sometimes acted upon with merely a written report or recommendation. In the senate, the committees must be called daily for reports, during the morning hour; in the house they are called daily, except on the first and third Mondays of each month. When made, they are usually printed and re-committed, or laid over. Reports from six important committees are in order at any time; others must wait their day, or a two-thirds majority, for consideration. Reports of executive departments are addressed to the speaker, or to the president of the senate, and are invariably referred and printed. Such reports on resolutions of inquiry must be made within one week. The reports of house and senate committees at each session make several bulky volumes, while the executive reports, both regular and special, make a great many more. In parliament the reports of special committees of the lords or commons are usually published with the evidence taken before them, and carefully indexed. In France committee reports are to be printed twenty-four hours at least before the bill to which they relate is considered.

—REPORTERS. The importance of full public information has led to special provision for reporters of the press in all public assemblies. Each house of congress has a corps of five official stenographers to take down the votes, proceedings and debates verbatim for publication the next day in the congressional record. Besides this, two reporters of the associated press are admitted on the floor of the house. The reporters' gallery over the chair in both houses is for the general press representatives, under regulations made by the chair. In parliament, according to ancient usage, all strangers, including reporters, might be excluded on the motion of any member, and reporters have been actually excluded as recently as in 1870 and 1878, to avoid publicity being given to debates. In the French chambers reporters are freely admitted to the galleries.

—REPRESENTATIVES. (See Members.)

—RESIGNATION. In congress the resignation of any member is always considered his right; it was never contested until the 41st congress, when the speaker decided that the member had the right to resign, and an appeal from the decision was laid upon the table, thereby affirming it. The resignation of a senator or representative is addressed to the governor of the state; at the same time, it is customary for the member to notify the presiding officer, in writing, of the action he has taken. In parliament it is a professedly settled principle that a member can not relinquish his seat; to evade this restriction, a member wishing to retire accepts office under the crown; this legally vacates his seat, and obliges the house to order a new election. (See PARLIAMENT. THE BRITISH.) In France any member has the right of resignation at any time.

—RESOLUTION. A resolution of an assembly is an expression of its opinion with respect to any matter, or a declaration of the purpose of the assembly: thus, the thanks of congress are presented by joint resolution of the two houses. A resolution of inquiry is passed by either house, requesting information from the executive. A simple resolution of one body, whether declaring opinion or otherwise, does not of course bind congress, and is not published in the statutes, but only in the journal and the record. Joint resolutions, on the contrary, have all the force of laws, and frequently contain appropriations of public money. Concurrent resolutions (chiefly providing for the printing of documents, etc.) appear in the statutes, but are not signed by the president. In the senate all resolutions, if objected to, must lie over one day. In parliament a simple resolution of either house has not the force of law. Every resolution reported by a committee may be amended, disagreed to, postponed or recommitted.

—REVENUE BILLS. All bills for raising revenue must, by the constitution, originate in the house of representatives, but the senate may amend them. In the house, bills relating to the tariff or internal revenue belong to the committee of ways and means; in the senate, to the committee on finance; and such bills may be reported at any time, the motion to consider them being always in order after morning hour. Notwithstanding the jealousy of the house of its prerogative in matters of revenue, the senate has exercised great powers in changing revenue bills; the latest and most extreme instance of this was in the tariff revision act of 1883, where the senate amended a small internal revenue reduction bill passed by the house, by adding to it a radical revision of the entire tariff system, and this, with some changes, was accepted by the house. In parliament, bills for raising revenue are called money bills, and are amendable by the lords if they do not alter the intention of the commons by increase or reduction, duration, or methods of raising the revenue.

—RIDERS. A rider to a bill implies tacking on to it, by motion, or the action of a committee, matters of legislation foreign to the subject of the bill itself. In parliament these riders are called "tacks." It has been a too common practice in congress to attach to regular appropriation bills, which must be passed under penalty of embarrassing the government, riders containing new legislation having nothing to do with the appropriations. This practice is resorted to, 1, to carry through a measure otherwise hopeless of being reached under the rules; 2, to effect the amendment or repeal of existing laws: 3, to force upon the other house, when opposed in political opinion, a measure obnoxious to it, and certain to be defeated by it as a separate bill. So far had this thrusting into appropriation bills of legislation foreign to their objects been carried, that the house adopted a rule that no provision in or amendment to any general appropriation bill shall be in order which changes existing law, except such as is germane and retrenches expenditures. Another rule prohibits the amendment of any bill or resolution by incorporating the substance of any other bill or resolution pending. Rule twenty-nine of the senate forbids amendments to be received which propose general legislation, which provide for a private claim, or which are not germane or relevant to the subject matter of the bill.

—RISE. In committee of the whole the motion that the committee rise is equivalent to the adjournment of its functions for the time being.

—ROLL. The roll of a public body is the list (in alphabetical order) of the officially qualified members. The roll-call is a clerical calling out of all the members' names, that they may answer either as present or as voting yea or nay. (See Call, Yeas and Nays.)

—RULES. These are of the first importance as agencies for preserving order in the conduct of public business. In most assemblies for a temporary purpose it is usual either to adopt the rules of the house of representatives, or to permit the chairman to decide questions of order and precedence according to his understanding of parliamentary law. In permanently organized bodies the constitution and by-laws adopted form the leading rules which control action, though at all meetings appeal to a more comprehensive code of parliamentary law is often necessary. In the house of representatives the latest thorough revision of the rules was in 1880. This revision embraces forty-five separate rules divided into sections, the last of which provides that these shall be the rules of each congress unless otherwise ordered. Thomas Jefferson has the honor of having formulated, while vice-president, the first rules of parliamentary law ever put into systematic form in this country. The rules laid down in his "Manual of Parliamentary Practice" (first published in 1801) are still declared to govern the house where they are applicable, and not inconsistent with the standing rules adopted. Each house having constitutional power to determine the rules of its proceedings, those of the senate and house differ widely. A standing committee on rules exists in each body, of which in the house, the speaker forms one. Several notable struggles over the application or the radical change of the rules have occurred, one of which, in the 47th congress, drew a decision from the speaker that, as the right of the house to determine its rules was a constitutional one, the majority had at all times the power to make or to alter rules independently of the existing ones, and that no dilatory motions to obstruct their adoption or amendment could be entertained. The suspension of the rules is moved so as to make some business in order which would not be regularly so under the rules. This requires a vote of two-thirds of those present, and must be seconded by a majority, counted by tellers if demanded. This motion is debatable for thirty minutes only. It can be made only on the first and third Mondays of each month, or during the last six days of a session. The rules of the senate, as last revised, in 1877, are seventy-eight in number. No motion to modify or suspend a rule is in order except on one day's notice in writing; but any rule except the 18th (regulating the vote by yeas and nays) may be suspended by unanimous consent of the senate. In parliament the rules are called standing orders, which continue from one parliament to another until modified. The "sessional orders" are resolutions renewed from year to year, and are few in number. In the French chamber of deputies the rules are embodied in a code of 154 articles, which the president is required to maintain. Any appeal to the rules or question of order takes precedence of whatever business is in hand, and suspends debate.

—SCRUTIN DE LISTE. This signifies a vote by ticket, and is required in the French chambers in the election of vice-presidents, secretaries and questors.

—SEATS. Technically, the seat of a member is his function of representative; literally, it is the chair, desk or bench occupied by a member. The seats of senators and representatives in congress are arm-chairs, each provided with a writing desk. In the house they are drawn by lot, at the organization, every two years; in the senate they are "spoken for" or selected in advance when vacancies occur, by individual senators. In both, members of the same party sit together in general, the democrats occupying the seats to the right of the chair, and the republicans those to the left. In parliament and in the French chambers benches are used as seats, and no desks are tolerated.

—SECRET SESSION. In the senate, sessions for the consideration of executive business (nominations to office and treaties) are held with closed doors. These executive sessions may be moved at any stage of the open or legislative session, but are more commonly held just before final adjournment for the day. The chamber is then cleared of all persons except the secretary, four clerks, and the sergeant-at-arms and such of his assistants as the president deems necessary, all of whom must be sworn to secrecy. Any senator disclosing confidential proceedings of the senate is liable to expulsion, and any officer to dismissal and punishment for contempt. But though this is the rule, the practice is widely different; and the votes and speeches in secret session become known so speedily and so generally as to lead to the conclusion that an injunction of secrecy is a dead letter. To adopt a treaty laid before the senate by the executive the concurrence of two-thirds of the senators present is necessary. Nominations made by the president in executive session are referred to committees for consideration and report. No nomination to office can be confirmed on the day it is received or reported, except by unanimous consent. No extract from the executive journal (of secret proceedings of the senate) can be furnished, except by special order of the senate. All the sessions of the senate were secret until the 6th congress (1799), when that body voted to give them the publicity ever since maintained. Rule thirty of the house provides for secret sessions to receive confidential communications from the president, or at the instance of the speaker or any member who has communications which he believes ought to be kept secret for the present; but there has been no such instance for many years. In parliament, though the presence of the public is legally ignored, there are always a limited number of spectators in each house, except when (in rare instances) a member moves that strangers be excluded because of some debate which it is deemed expedient to keep secret.

—SECRETARY. Next to the presiding officer the most important organ of a public assembly is the secretary or clerk, these two terms being interchangeable, to denote the recording officer. He is to keep the record of proceedings (minutes or journal), and it is usual to have this record read and approved at the meeting next following that which it covers. This record should embrace every motion or resolution, whether adopted, amended, rejected, or otherwise disposed of. The secretary has the custody of all papers, and should keep an order of business, list of all committees, reports, votes, etc. The secretary of the senate performs the same duties as the clerk of the house of representatives (see Clerk), and, in addition, pays the salaries of members of the senate, which is done in the house by the sergeant-at-arms.

—SENATORS. (See Elections.)

—SERGEANT-AT-ARMS. This officer represents the authority of the body to enforce its rules, and protect its dignity. In the house and senate he is an elective officer, and in the former body is charged with paying the salaries of members. He is required in both houses to attend the sittings of the body, to maintain order and decorum, to serve process and make arrests when ordered, to take absentees into custody upon a call of the house, and to make regulations to protect the capital and public property therein, including (in conjunction with the architect of the capitol) the appointment and control of the capitol police. In parliament the sergeant-at-arms of each house is appointed by the crown and for life. Besides similar duties to those defined above, he is a leading figure on state occasions.

—SESSION. This term denotes, 1, the time occupied by a sitting of the body after organizing for the day till adjournment; 2, the time spent in public business (usually several months), from the first convening of the members until their adjournment to the next session. Two annual sessions are usual in congress, although one or more extra sessions have been not infrequent, which are called "special sessions," to distinguish them from the annual. The annual sessions begin on the first Monday in December, and terminate on the fourth of March at noon every alternate year, i.e., the odd years, when the term of a congress expires. In the even years, when this limitation does not exist, the session continues from five to nine months. (See CONGRESS, SESSIONS OF, vol. i., p. 594.) Sessions of parliament usually last from February to August, besides which, special sessions occur when public emergency demands.

—SPEAKER. This is the name of the presiding officer in each house of parliament, and in the house of representatives of the American congress. Being, as his title imports, the mouthpiece or organ of the body, the speaker is to express the will of the house. In congress he is elected vivâ voce, on the convening of each new congress, and the completion of the roll-call of members elect. Upon being chosen, he is usually installed in the chair by the members who were his rival candidates for the office; the oath is administered to him by the oldest member in continuous service, after which he swears in all the other members, before entering on any other business. He receives $8,000 salary; he succeeds to the presidency, in case of the office being vacant through failure to fill it by the president, vice-president or president of the senate. It is his duty to preserve order, state all questions, decide points of order, name members to speak, appoint all standing and select committees, sign all acts, joint resolutions and processes of the house, appoint its official reporters and stenographers of committees and have control of the hall, etc. The speaker has the right to vote as a member, but is not required to vote except in case of a tie, or when the house votes by ballot. If absent without having appointed a member to perform the duties of the chair (which power is limited to ten days), the house must elect a speaker pro tempore.

—SPECIAL ORDERS. (See Orders.)

—STANDING ORDERS. (See Rules.)

—STRIKING OUT. In the house a motion to strike out part of a bill, if lost, does not preclude a motion to strike out and insert. The motion to strike out and insert can not be divided. A motion to strike out the enacting clause of a bill has the effect to reject the bill, such motion takes precedence of a motion to amend.

—SUBSTITUTE. A substitute for an amendment in the second degree is in order, but can not be voted on until the original matter is perfected. Any committee may report a substitute for any bill referred to them, when the substitute alone is considered, and is treated as an original bill.

—SUNDAY. Both houses of congress sometimes sit on Sunday, when public business is pressing. In such cases it is usual to continue the journal as of the preceding day's date. In parliament four Sunday meetings of the body are recorded as occasioned by the demise of the crown, and on several other occasions debates have been continued into Sunday morning.

—SUPPLY. This is the technical term applied in parliament to all appropriations for the public service. The right of the commons to originate bills of supply is paramount, and the lords may not amend such bills except verbally. Sometimes the commons have tacked to bills of supply measures which by themselves would have been rejected by the lords; but this has been resisted by protest, by conference, and by rejection of the bills, and there is no recent instance of attempts to force the lords by putting "riders" on bills which the lords have no right to amend. (See BUDGET, vol. i., p. 318; also Appropriations and Revenue Bills.)

—SUSPENSION OF RULES. (See Rules.)

—TABLE. In a public assembly the motion to lay any matter on the table takes precedence of all questions except those of privilege and adjournment. It is not debatable, and can not be amended. It does not imply the defeat of a measure, but simply removes it from consideration until it is voted to take it from the table. But in the house of representatives the usual purpose of the motion to lay on the table is to give a measure its death-blow, and when it prevails it is rarely taken up again during the session. If carried, the effect of the motion to table is to defer the principal question under consideration and all matters connected with it. In congress all business coming from the other house, or communications from government officers, are laid on the table unless referred to a committee or otherwise disposed of. A motion to lay upon the table is in order on the second and third reading of a bill. When a motion to reconsider is laid on the table the latter vote can not be reconsidered, and if carried, is held in both houses to be a final disposition of the motion. The business on the speaker's table implies, 1, executive communications; 2, messages from the senate, with bills passed or amended by them; 3, engrossed bills. Near the close of a session a great accumulation of bills, etc., in every stage of progress toward enactment, lies on the speaker's table, most of which usually remains undisposed of. In the senate all resolutions, reports of committees, and discharges of committees from the consideration of subjects, must lie on the table one day for consideration, unless otherwise determined by unanimous consent.

—TELLERS. By a rule of the house of representatives a vote must be taken by tellers if demanded by one-fifth of a quorum; or the speaker may appoint tellers if in doubt as to the vivâ voce or the rising vote. He must name a member from each side of the question to act as teller; these two meet in the middle aisle and shake hands; the chair requests all members voting in the affirmative to pass between the tellers, who count them, and report to the clerk's desk; those voting in the negative are next called to pass between the tellers; this count being reported, the chair declares the result. It is customary, when on a division less than half the house vote, for the speaker at once to order tellers. In parliament two tellers from each party are appointed to count the members when dividing the house. In the United States senate no vote is ever taken by tellers. (See Division, also Vote.)

—TERRITORIES. The delegates from territories have seats and salaries in the house like other members, with the right to speak and participate in business by offering motions, etc., and (latterly) to be appointed on eight of the standing committees. They have no right to vote. The territories are called every Monday, after the states, for bills, memorials, etc., for reference.

—TIE VOTE. When the votes are equal in number on each side of any question, the general parliamentary rule is that the question is lost, but in the senate the vice-president has the casting or decisive vote in case of a tie; though in his absence the president pro tem., having already voted as a senator, can not decide the result as presiding officer, and if the votes are equal the question is lost. In the house the speaker is required to vote only when his vote would be decisive if counted; and in all cases of a tie vote the question is lost. In the house of lords the speaker votes as a peer, and has no casting vote as presiding officer. In the house of commons the speaker has the casting vote in case of a tie, but does not vote as a member.

—TWO-THIRDS VOTE. A majority of two-thirds is required in the house to suspend the rules, to dispense with the morning hour for call of committees, to dispense with private business on Fridays, or to pass in either house a bill vetoed by the president. The latter majority is construed to mean two-thirds of the members present, not of the whole number of members.

—UNANIMOUS CONSENT. (See Consent.)

—VACANCY. Vacancies in the membership of assemblies can usually be filled in accordance with the vote of the majority of members. In congress senatorial vacancies are notified to the governor of the state, who, in the recess of the legislature, may fill the vacancy by appointment, pending the choice of a senator by the legislature when next convened. A vacancy in the house can be filled only by a new election by the people of the congressional district left without a representative. Vacancies in the house of commons are filled by election pursuant to a writ issued out of chancery by warrant from the speaker.

—VETO. In the congress of the United States and in most of the state legislatures any bill passed may be disapproved by the executive for reasons given. This veto may be overruled in congress by a vote of two-thirds of the members of each house present and voting. In parliament, though the crown may legally veto any measure passed, the power has not been exercised for about two centuries (See VETO.)

—VOTE. The sense of an assembly is declared by its votes. In most formal or informal meetings the chair is to put all questions to vote after inquiring if the assembly is ready for the question, in case it is a debatable one. There are various forms of taking a vote: 1, vivâ voce, by the chairman calling successively the ayes and the noes, and declaring the question carried or lost according to the preponderance of voices; 2, by a show of hands, each side in succession holding up the right hand and being counted; 3, by rising and standing until counted on either side. 4, by a count of members passing through tellers, those in favor of the measure going first, and those opposed after, the number of each side being reported by the tellers and declared by the chair; 5, by yeas and nays, where each member answers to the call of his name, and is registered in a formal record; 6, by ballot, or secret written vote—this is used chiefly in the election of officers or committees by the assembly itself. In the house a member has the right to change his vote before the result has been announced by the chair. Every member must vote on each question put, unless excused, or directly interested in the event of the question. The result of every vote, and the names voting on every roll-call, with the absentees, are published in the journal and in the congressional record. In parliament the votes and proceedings are printed and distributed daily. (For methods of voting in parliament, see Division; see also Ballot, Division, Tellers, Yeas and Nays.)

—WAYS AND MEANS. This term, borrowed from the British parliament, implies the government revenues and the methods or provisions for collection of the same. A committee of ways and means was first created in the house of representatives in 1789: it originally consisted of seven members: it became a standing committee in 1795. It has since been gradually increased to thirteen members. To it are referred all matters and proposed legislation relating to the revenue and the bonded debt of the United States. The committee of ways and means, having charge of the entire tariff system and internal revenue taxation, as well as of financial measures and the public debt, is a most important body, and its chairmanship is considered the highest office in the gift of the speaker. As the chancellor of the exchequer is the leader of the house of commons, the chairman of the committee of ways and means was formerly accounted the leader of the house of representatives; but since the withdrawal from that committee (in 1865) of all business relating to the expenditures of the government (which is assigned to the committee on appropriations), the ways and means committee has been shorn of much of its power, and its chairman of his prestige as leader. Still, these two committees engross between them the greater part of the time of congress; and in the alternate years, when the session is limited to three months, little other business has a chance of securing attention. To be a member of the committee of ways and means is regarded as a very high position, and commonly excuses those appointed to it from service on other committees. The committee of the senate having charge of the same subjects is styled the committee of finance, and was first organized in 1816. Measures reported by either of these committees are customarily privileged, i.e., to be considered before any others. In parliament the committee of ways and means is constituted directly after the annual opening, but, unlike the American usage, it is not a select or standing committee lasting through the life of the body, but a committee of the whole house; in other words, it is the house itself, presided over by a chairman instead of by the speaker. This official chairman is designated the chairman of the committee of ways and means, and also presides in the committee of supply, and over other committees of the whole house. Like the speaker, he is a salaried officer. The committee of ways and means determines in what manner the necessary funds shall be raised for the public service, as voted by the committee of supply. The most important occasion for which the committee of ways and means is required to sit, is, to receive the financial statement for the year from the chancellor of the exchequer. This is known as the budget. (See BUDGET, vol. i., p. 318.)

—WITHDRAWAL. The right to withdraw a motion or a bill is secured by the rules at any time before a decision or amendment, except after the previous question has been seconded. All incidental questions fall with the withdrawal of the main question. (For withdrawal of papers, see Papers.)

—WITNESSES. The summoning of witnesses to be examined by a committee requires an order of the house, unless the committee is first clothed with power to send for persons and papers. Witnesses are paid $2 a day, and five cents per mile of travel. Failure or refusal of a witness to appear or to testify is a breach of the privileges of the house; besides which the revised statutes make such refusal a misdemeanor punishable by fine and imprisonment. (R. S., sec. 102.) In parliament witnesses must answer on examination before committees, and are sworn at the bar of either house. Recusant witnesses are generally sent to Newgate. (See Privilege.)

—WRIT. This is a process of the house signed by the speaker, attested by the clerk under the seal of the house, and served by the sergeant-at-arms. In parliament the writs for the election of new members are issued by the speaker's warrant addressed to the clerk of the crown, and transmitted by him through the postoffice. Writs of summons for a parliament to meet are issued by the crown, under advice of the privy council. These writs must be issued at least thirty-five days before the time fixed for the convening of the new parliament.

—YEAS AND NAYS. The constitution requires that the yeas and nays of the members of either house shall be entered on the journals at the desire of one-fifth of those present; also that the vote on any bill vetoed by the president shall be recorded by yeas and nays. It is very common for members to demand a vote by yeas and nays, to make a record, or, when dissatisfied with the result of a division by other methods; but whenever less than one-fifth of the members present rise to second the call, the yeas and nays are refused. This vote can not be taken in committee of the whole house; the roll-call once begun can not be interrupted for any purpose. After the roll-call is completed, the names of members who have failed to answer must be called again; after which the full list of yeas and nays must be read, and errors or omissions announced by members corrected.

—In both houses members must answer without debate or reasons assigned for the vote. (See Vote.)

—BIBLIOGRAPHY. May (Sir T. Erskine), Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament, 8th ed., Lond., 1879; Cushing (L. S.), Lex Parliamentaria: The Law and Practice of Legislative Assemblies, Boston, 1874; McDonald (W. J.), Constitution of the United States, Rules of the Senate, etc., Washington, 1881; Standing Rules for Conducting Business in the Senate of the United States, Washington, 1882; Digest and Manual of the Rules and Practice of the House of Representatives, compiled by H. H. Smith, 6th ed., Washington, 1883; Traité pratique du Droit parlementaire, par J. Poudra et E. Pierre, Paris, 1878; Jefferson (T.), Manual of Parliamentary Practice, New York, 1876; Fish (G. T.), American Manual of Parliamentary Law, New York, 1880; Göpp (C.), Leitfaden d. parlam. Geschäfts Ordnung, New York, 1871: Robinson (W. S.), Warrington's Manual for the Information of Officers and Members of Legislatures, Conventions, Societies, etc., Boston, 1875; Wilson (O. M.), Digest of Parliamentary Law, Philadelphia, 1869; Cushing (L. S.), Rules of Proceeding in Deliberative Assemblies, Boston, 1877; Barclay (J. M.) Constitution of the United States, Jefferson's Manual, and Barclay's Digest, Washington, 1873; Ferrall (S. A.), Exposition of the Law of Parliament, London, 1837; Hatsell (J.), Precedents of Proceedings in the House of Commons, 4 vols., London, 1818; Symonds (A.), Mechanics of Law Making, London, 1835; Smith (T.), Chairman and Speaker's Guide London, 1840; Clifford 8 Stephens, Private Bill Practice in Parliament, London, 1870; Webster's Members' Procedure Book in Parliament, London. 1868; Règlement de la Chambre des Députés, Paris, 1880; Robert (H. M.), Pocket Manual of Rules of Order for Deliberative Assemblies, Chicago, 1876.

A. R. SPOFFORD.

PARTICIPATION IN PROFITS.

PARTICIPATION IN PROFITS. Among the many schemes for healing the apparent breach between labor and capital, a breach that is due in great part to the fact that these two factors of production are supplied by two distinct classes, termed capitalists and laborers, is that of allowing the laborer to share in the profits of the enterprise. "It would be of great importance," wrote Mr. Babbage in 1832, "if, in every large establishment, the mode of payment could be so arranged that every person employed should derive advantage from the success of the whole; and that the profits of each individual should advance, as the factory itself produced profit, without the necessity of making any change in the wages." And he then describes a system that had long been in use among the Cornish mines, which was somewhat like that he proposes for his "new system of manufacturing." This new system was hardly noticed at the time, but it was one of the earliest attempts to introduce participation in profits by the laborer. Strictly speaking, participation is not a form of co-operation, for in the co-operative principle the capitalist and laborer are combined, the capital necessary to the undertaking being furnished by those who also supply the labor; and as they assume all the risk, all the profit or loss is also theirs. In participation, however, the capital is, as a rule, still furnished by one class, and the labor by another; but the laborer is allowed to share in the profits received over and above a certain share which is set apart as a remuneration for the capital employed and for the supervision and management of the undertaking. If the profits are not sufficient to cover this share which belongs to capital, no distribution is made among the workmen.

—In support of participation it is urged that, by stimulating him to make his best endeavors, it increases the efficiency of the workman, this result being attained either by effecting a saving in the material used, or by increasing the absolute product of labor. It influences the moral character of the laborer by making him more industrious (as on this not only depends the total profit but also his share of the profits), more thrifty and provident, and in a measure more independent. By giving him a direct interest in the success of the undertaking it brings him into close relationship with his employer, and differences are less apt to arise between them. On the other hand, it is urged that the laborer is working for a reward that is uncertain, and affected by circumstances beyond his control; that he is likely to become discontented if the profits decrease and his supplementary wages diminish; that in many instances he is forced to become a partner in the undertaking, and his freedom of movement and of contract is to that extent restricted; that he is thus made to share all the risks attending any industrial enterprise, without being allowed any voice in the conduct of the undertaking.

—There are many forms of participation, many of them being but modifications of co-operation. Of the real industrial partnerships the following may be mentioned as typical: In 1842 a Paris tradesman, M. Leclaire, finding that high wages did not produce a corresponding increase in the zeal and diligence of his workmen, and being unable to personally supervise all the details of the work, determined to create a common interest between himself and his employés. The surest way of increasing their efficiency was to proportion their remuneration to the results obtained from their labor, and he therefore proposed to divide among such as he should select a portion of any increased profits that might accrue from their exertions. At the end of the year 5 per cent. of the net profits was to be set aside for the capital employed, and a salary for himself as superintendent; all that remained was to be divided among certain of the laborers in proportion to the wages they had received. The result of the first year was remarkable, and his system, somewhat modified in form, has continued till the present day. The first year he distributed 12,200 francs, no laborer who had worked 300 days in the year receiving less than 450 francs as a supplementary income, equal to two-fifths of his regular salary; in the second year the distributive fund exceeded 17,000 francs, and in the third year it was more than 18,000 francs. Encouraged by this success, the business was remodeled and its operations extended. As at present constituted, the net profits are divided into three parts: one-half is distributed among such workmen as M. Leclaire designates, in proportion to the wages earned by each participant; one-fourth is paid to a provident society, of which all the persons in his employment are members; and one-fourth goes to the partner (patron directeur). The workmen are divided into two classes, one of which, comprising a third of the total number, are entitled to a share in the distribution of profits, but the second class do not share in the profits, but receive a small addition to their daily pay, and are entitled to all the benefits conferred by the provident society. The minor details of the system do not concern us here.

—For many years a large railroad in France (Chemin de fer d' Orléans) set apart 15 per cent. of the surplus or net profits to be divided among certain of its employés. During the first years of the experiment the plan worked fairly well; but as the operations of the road were extended, the number of employés was largely increased, the expenses of management became larger the fund for distribution became less, and also the share of each participant, so that while in 1853 the company divided 1,966,963 francs among 3,365 persons, in 1868 it divided only 1,775,559 francs among 11,376 employés. The main object to be gained in this case was to insure as far as possible a greater care of the valuable plant on the part of the employés, and this could be better secured in no other way.

—The third type is to be found in the plan adopted by Messrs. Henry Briggs, Son 8 Company in their Yorkshire collieries. Prior to the passage of the limited liability act such an arrangement as M. Leclaire's could not have been adopted in England without making the workmen liable for the losses incurred, in that they shared in the profits of the undertaking. But this barrier being removed, Messrs. Briggs were among the first to take advantage of participation. In 1865 they formed a limited liability joint stock company, retaining two-thirds of the stock in their own hands. The remaining portion they offered to their employés in shares of £10 each, and stipulated at the same time that whenever the profits of the business should exceed 10 per cent. on the capital employed, one-half of this profit was to be divided among the employés. The plan worked with advantage for a number of years, but disputes arising through the fluctuations in the coal market, the arrangement has been annulled.

—The distribution of profits may either be made in a cash payment at the end of the year, or the share of profit may be capitalized during a certain period, the interest being drawn by the workman, and the principal, on his death, going where he may wish, or, a part may be paid in cash and a part capitalized. The manner of payment differs widely in the various establishments that have adopted the system.

—It is not believed that participation in profits will ever be widely in use, as it can be successfully applied to only a limited number of occupations. "The fund on which participation draws is the surplus profit realized in consequence of the enhanced efficiency of the work done under its stimulating influence. Such extra profit is therefore obtainable wherever workmen have it in their power to increase the quantity, improve the quality, or diminish the cost price, of their staple of production by more effective production, by increased economy in the use of tools and materials, and by a reduction in the cost of superintendence. In other words, the surplus profit realizable will depend on the influence which manual labor is capable of exerting upon production. Evidently, therefore, this influence will be greatest in branches of industry where the skill of the laborer plays the leading part, where the outlay on tools and materials bears a small ratio to the cost of production, and where individual superintendence is difficult and expensive. It will, on the contrary, be least effective in industries where mechanism is the principal agency, where the interest on capital fixed in machinery is the chief element of cost prices, and where the workmen, assembled in large factories, can be easily and effectively superintended" Another limitation lies in the fact that its application depends, in every case, on the will of the employer. "It is not to be expected," says W. T. Thornton, "that employers will often be found entering into special engagements with their laborers, in trades in which such special engagements must necessarily result in pecuniary loss to themselves; even in trades to which the bonus system is best adapted, unless employers choose to adopt it of their own accord, there are, of course, no means of compelling them. In the utmost development, therefore, of which it is susceptible, the partnership or bonus system can never affect more than a portion of the laboring population." Still another objection is named by Thorold Rogers: "that it necessitates the abandonment of that secrecy which it is believed is essential at all times, and particularly in some emergencies, to success. The value of secrecy may be overrated, probably is; but its significance is felt, and will in all likelihood be felt more and more as the principle of limited liability is adopted." It is not known that this policy has been adopted to any extent in the United States.

—AUTHORITIES. Böhmert, Die Gewinnbetheiligung, 1878; Fouger ouse, Patrons et Ouvriers de Paris, 1880; Billon, Participation des Ouvriers aux Bénéfices des Patrons, 1877; Pare's Co-operative Agriculture, 1870; Leroy-Beaulieu, La Question Ouvrière au XIXe Siècle, 1872; and Thornton, On Labor.

WORTHINGTON C. FORD.

PARTIES

PARTIES, Political. I. Idea of Parties; Government Party; Opposition. Throughout all history we find that, wherever an active life of the people and of the state has been developed, political parties have sprung into existence. An absence of political parties is observed only where there prevails a passive indifference to all public concerns, or where tyrannical oppression by the ruling powers prevents all common manifestation of opinion and aspirations by whole groups of the population. In such cases, however the power and tendency of the people to form parties exist, if they are at all capable of political life; but this power and tendency at one time lie dormant, while at another they lack the air and light necessary to their growth, and the room they require for action. At times the impulse to form political parties, when suppressed in political life, is directed into other channels; it passes into the religious or ecclesiastical domain, and makes existing scientific, artistic and social differences more marked. Between such parties and political parties there exists a certain kind of elective affinity. Thus, a reactionary party in the church will, as a rule, in matters political, sympathize with a party of absolutism, the old traditional theological school with a conservative party, and the critical theological school or party, by way of preference, with the liberal parties in politics. In this work we have to do exclusively with political parties, and we can notice non-political parties only in so far as they are attracted to or repulsed by political parties.

—The most gifted and freest nations politically are precisely those that have the most sharply defined parties; for the most important phenomena in the life of the state are conditioned by party struggles. It is only through the struggle and interaction of opposing forces that all the hidden wealth of a people's powers is made clearly manifest. This proves the necessity and utility of the formation of parties. Parties are not a serious evil to the state, as many narrow and over-anxious minds are inclined to think. It reflects no glory on a statesman to stand aloof from his party, and it is no commendable virtue in the citizen of a state to belong to no party. For parties are, in the very nature of the case, the necessary manifestations of the innermost impulses of the public heart of the nation.

—Parties, as implied by the term itself, are always only a part of the nation. A party, accordingly, can possess only the consciousness of one part of the nation, and must not identify itself with the whole, the people, the state. Hence, one party may combat other parties, but it must not ignore them, nor wish to destroy them. One party can not subsist alone; it owes its existence and development only to the opposing party.

—Precisely because the prince in a monarchical country represents in his own person the unity of the state, and hence of all persons in the state, it is exacted of him, and almost exclusively of him, that he shall not espouse the cause of any party, and that he shall tolerate and respect all parties, each according to its character and rights. He may, indeed, choose to rely on any one party, because the latter, at a given time, seems particularly fitted to determine the policy of the state, and he may also have just cause for sharply watching the doings of parties that seem to endanger the public well-being. He may also, without sacrificing that impartiality (and impartiality is always his duty), declare himself in favor of one or as opposed to another party, according to the attitude of such party to the state, and according to that party's importance to the well-being of the state. But he incurs the risk of loading himself with the ugly appearance of being partial when he does this in a manner not perfectly warranted, and when his declaration of preference can be attributed to his personal inclination toward a party or to his personal aversion to the opposing party. A premature declaration of preference will, moreover, expose him to the danger of being compelled to disavow himself if, contrary to his expectation, the party hated or dreaded by him should become so powerful that it could not be refused the exercise of a decisive influence in the government, or if the party which he had approved or recommended at the elections had been rejected by the electors, so that he would be finally compelled to drop it. It is, accordingly, a political principle with wise princes to avoid declaring for or against any party in the state without the most urgent motives.

—This, however, does not apply to the case of ministers, nor to any of the other officers of the state, and just as little does it apply to the government of a republic. Still, whenever these latter act in their official capacity, they should not act as mere party men, for the office is essentially instinct with the spirit of the whole state, and any official act is at the same time an act of the state. But public law, with its powers and duties, knows nothing of parties, the regular law of the state is the common law fixed for all, the law which imposes a limit to the agitation and struggles of parties. The judge and the administrative officer should disregard all parties, and not perform their duties with the view of helping or hindering any party. Parties play an important rôle only when the stir of fresh, new life is felt; in other words, when political life begins. But the official duty of impartiality does not exclude an official from sharing freely in political life with those who are of the same mind with himself, or from taking whatever side he prefers. Unlike the prince, he is not the personification of the whole. He is, on the one hand, as an official, an organ and a representative of the state; and on the other hand, as a private individual invested with all the political rights of a citizen, he enjoys a position as to party by virtue of which he is entitled to seek his party fellows and to league himself with them. The greatest statesmen of Rome and England were always both impartial magistrates and acknowledged party leaders. Only, as a matter of course, their political action should be limited, conditioned and moderated by the inviolability of the impartial position of the official. As it is incumbent on-the historian to be impartial, that he should truthfully describe the condition of all parties, and judge them with fairness, but not that he should be a member of no party, or be a purely passive mirror reflecting with indifference the pictures of a nation's life; so it is incumbent on the statesman and the official, and in a still higher degree, that they should be impartial, but not that they should be non-party men.

—For these reasons a so-called government party does not deserve the favor which it has frequently received from the ruling powers. Every party, when its leaders have been called into office, becomes, in a certain sense, the government party, for a time at least, and as long as its leaders remain in harmony with the principles and tendencies of the party. Yet, in such a case, the term government party implies no party principle, but only indicates that the party has actually attained to power and influence. The very same party, however, without any change of principles or aims, may become a party of opposition, when its leaders again lose the chief offices of government, or when, remaining in office, they adopt a tendency hostile to, or when they eventually assume an unsatisfactory attitude toward, the party to which they had hitherto adhered.

—But by the government party is sometimes understood a party whose principle consists in adhering at all times to the government, and in supporting the government, of whatever persons it may consist and whatever tendency it may follow; a party which adheres to the government when the latter enacts reactionary measures, and still stands by it when any reformatory change of its system happens to take place. A government party in this sense consists mostly of men whose personal interests make them dependent mainly on the good will of the government, and who support it in the hope of emolument and preferment through the favor of government, while from its disfavor they have a motive to fear for their positions or economical well-being. Under certain circumstances a party of this kind may prove useful to a government, because its votes always possess a certain weight; but woe to the government that in critical moments relies on a government party of this kind, and seeks in it its last and only support. As in such a party there is no inward strength, it can give no support, and as it receives its impulses from the existing government, it must waver when that government itself is shaken; and as, above all, it is always resolved to serve the ministers of the government, who have, it may be, only recently stepped into office, it prepares for a change when there is any prospect of a change, and deserts the banner of its old, defeated leaders, to follow the fife and drum of the new victors. Such a party, accordingly, enjoys no genuine respect, neither that of the ministers, who use it, nor that of the people, who expect nothing good from it. It scarcely deserves the name of political party at all, because it has no political convictions, and no political aspirations. It is merely an appendage to the ruling power, without moral worth or political dignity. It is generally accessible to and inclined to corruption, and usually ready to bargain away its fidelity and its services. Such a party, therefore, is unable to maintain itself in a manly nation, with a highly developed political party life; it is fated to be broken up and thrust aside by other and genuine parties. Yet, in the old monarchies of the European continent, such parties have still a certain importance, sometimes in connection with other old established court parties.

—As a contrast to what is known as the government party in this objectionable sense, we have what is known as the party of opposition; but by this term we do not mean that other no less objectionable party, whose vital principle consists in opposition to the government, and which does not combat the policy of the government because it regards that policy as unsound or its success as dangerous, but solely because it is the policy of the government. The government party may be simply submissive, and blindly devoted to the government; a party of opposition such as we have here described, on the other hand, is to an excess obstinate and odious. The former always tamely follows in the wake of government, while the latter, at every step, thwarts it by distrust and antagonism. Both, accordingly, are unhealthy phenomena in the public life of a people. At times such a party of opposition may find favor with the people, just as the government party does with the powerful. But its negative qualities have only the appearance of utility to the commonwealth or of care for the interests of the people. The moving principle in it is certainly not egotism, as in the government party, but obstinacy, defiant aggressiveness, obstruction to all political authority; in a word, anarchy. It does not deserve the favor of any nation, any more than a purely government party deserves that of the government. When, between the years 1820 and 1830, the German chambers witnessed such opposition parties at work by the side of government parties, and courting popular favor, it was only the sign of a still unripe and sickly political life, for then the belief was still widely spread among the people, that only the man who opposed the government, and only as long as he opposed it, could be a patriot, and would devote himself heart and soul to the people. From the mere possibility of so dangerous an error, we may readily infer the existing moral rottenness of those governments.

—After this brief explanation, we may define political parties as follows: They are the free, social groups within the state, held together for common action by the ties of the same or closely related fundamental political principles, ideas and aspirations.

—II. Political Parties and Factions. We distinguish parties from factions. Factions are but the caricature of parties. Parties are necessary to the life of the state, and in so far useful; factions are unnecessary and always injurious. In healthy political life parties must be developed, while factions gain in power under unhealthy conditions. Real development is promoted by parties; corruption and the decay of states show the effects of faction.

—On what does this distinction depend? Language here is not as safe and steadfast in its distinguishing powers as science would wish. We speak properly of a political party, when that party represents a political principle, or pursues a political tendency; political, that is, compatible with the existence of the state, and directed to the well-being of society. A political party may, indeed, exhibit great defects of character; it may employ wrong means, and pursue foolish aims. But it should never attack the existence of the state, or consciously pursue tendencies injurious to it. When it does this, it debases itself into a faction. Factions never serve the state; they are above all mindful of self; they pursue egotistic, and not political, aims. In the conflict between the well-being of the state and private interests, they unhesitatingly prefer the latter and sacrifice the former.

—A faction can not easily rise to the noble position of a political party, although this may not altogether be impossible; but a political party may easily degenerate into a faction. As soon as self-seeking has become its ruling passion throughout all its actions, as soon as it becomes heedless of its duties toward the country, and refuses to acknowledge its submission to the whole, it has entered the paths of faction, and we must deny it the honorable name of a political party. As every man is at the same time an individual apart, and a member of a community, of his nation, and, finally, of humanity, so also the various social groups possess this same kind of dualistic existence. They are associations with particular interests, and they are also parts of a larger whole. Political parties are animated and determined by this common spirit, although their egotistic self-love and party interest never become wholly extinct. Factions, on the contrary, are associations in which this self-seeking side has grown so powerful that it aims at subjecting to it the public well-being, and to sacrifice the state to its particular interests; although, as a matter of fact, even in factions the public well-being is seldom completely lost sight of. The contrast between a political party and a faction is, therefore, of a nature such that it manifestly suggests a certain affinity between them. They only follow opposite currents. Accordingly, as public spirit or private interest prevails in either of these groups of men, it may at one time be a political party, and at another a faction. When a party holds its meetings, chooses its leaders, comes to an agreement and passes resolutions; when it founds and supports organs to give expression to its opinions, and combats its adversaries; or when any individual member of the party, as far as is possible without violating higher duties, submits his individual opinion and inclination to his party, and follows the leaders of his party as soldiers follow their general: in all this there is nothing that can be called factious. If the party is to possess power and influence, it must organize itself, and display its activity in public life, at elections and in deliberative councils, as a closely compact body. But when party zeal and party passion preponderate to such a point as to prefer to tear the country to pieces rather than join hands for the sake of the common weal; when one party, upon gaining power, directs public affairs as a party government, using its power in the oppression and persecution of all who profess different opinions; when parties league themselves with the enemies of the state, and deliver the country over to their power: all proceedings of this kind exclude the true idea of a political party, and faction has usurped its place.

—III. Names and Kinds of Parties. Different names do not always indicate different kinds of parties, and the names as well as the objects concerning which parties contend may frequently be simply accidental. People may quarrel and divide themselves into parties about a garter, or the shape of a hat; and in the case of more than one historical party division it is difficult to tell what was the cause that divided the nation. Even a mere whim, or difference of taste, the partiality to green or red, or vice versa, has parted society into hostile groups. Yet parties, in the earnest consciousness of their differences, often select colors only as party symbols, and in such case become known by their colors, as, for instance, the green and blue parties in the old Byzantine empire, the red and white rose in mediæval England, and the red (ultra-revolutionary) and black (clerical) parties of modern times. Parties in general, and factions still more so, love to distinguish themselves from each other and from the indifferent multitude by symbolical badges. Hence, they have their banners, cockades, colored caps, ribbons, and their peculiar costumes.

—The more futile the causes that separate parties, or the less any political principles and aims determine their formation, the less also can they be called political parties in the proper sense of the term, and the more readily will such associations degenerate into factions. Political science does not concern itself with these non-political parties; and just as little can it pay any attention to purely accidental parties. Although at times they may assert their influence on practical politics, political science is unable to fix them, because they are not determined by political principles. On the other hand, the following kinds of parties deserve mention: 1. Religio-political parties. Denominational parties, as such, do not belong to these; but, when starting from different religious or ecclesiastical opinions or tendencies, they divide politically, and seek to influence the life of the state, they in a certain respect become political parties. This species of party division in the middle ages, as, for instance, that between Christians and Mohammedans, had a decided influence on public life, and this party division is even still sufficiently felt. Even in modern European parliaments we still hear of catholic and orthodox Lutheran parties, of ultramontanes and pietists. But these are spurious kinds of party, and, therefore, wherever political life is developed, they are banished from the arena of political parties to their own sphere, to wit, the domain of religious and ecclesiastical life. As the cause of the formation of this kind of parties has nothing to do with the state, and as their aims are not political, it must always be considered an abuse, when, in the modern state, they demean themselves as political parties. Religion seldom gains by such demeanor on its part, and politics is always injured by them.

—2. Parties may also, in a temporal, but not purely political sense, be divided according to nations, which, however, does not by any means constitute a normal division (such as Neo-Latins and Germans in the ancient German-Roman states, English, Scots and Irish in Great Britain, and Germans and Czecks in Bohemia; or according to tribes, as Franks, Old-Bavarians, in Bavaria; or according to the social order, as patricians, plebeians, clergy and nobility, nobility and bourgeoisie). Nations, tribes and estates, such as the third estate, possess in fact an importance which is not exclusively political, but above all civil and social. They also form firmly established wholes, and would form a too solid basis for political parties, which must never cease to feel themselves parts subordinate to the state. When, accordingly, parties are based upon nationalities, or when they are divided into tribes, there is danger that they may destroy the unity of the state. But if the unity of the state is to be preserved, the parties in the state should cross and unite the different nations, tribes and estates that exist within the political body, thus welding the parts into unity. When parties and estates are coincident this danger is not so great, for the estates know that they are only a part of the people, and that they can not form a state of themselves alone. Yet even here, party differences, allied with such mighty constituents of the state organism, differences thus powerful, lasting and bold, may by such alliance seriously threaten the internal peace of the state and public order.

—3. In the middle ages parties had still, for the most part, either a religious, national or an estate character. It is a sign of political progress when parties begin to divide according to definite constitutional principles, for then political ideas, and not merely the tradition of a race or of a particular class or calling, begin to unite those together who are of the same mind, and to separate them from their opponents. Parties of this nature are aristocrats and democrats, royalists and republicans, constitutionalists and feudalists, unionists and federalists, nationalists and particularists, etc. Sometimes these parties continue to rest in part upon a difference of estate or class: thus, the aristocratic and feudal party in Europe usually derives its main support from the nobility, the constitutional party from the third estate, and the democrats from the lower classes. But they are no longer confined within the narrow limits of an estate; the political opinion of one class or estate invades the others, and draws toward it those who are of the same way of thinking.

—Yet these are only transitory political parties, which happen to arise during constitutional struggles for the transformation of the existing constitution, and which disappear when that struggle has been brought to a close and a new constitution is introduced and generally acknowledged. The task of the constitution consists in realizing and giving effect to its principles, and there is after this no need of constitutional parties, because all views that could possibly claim any political importance are supposed to have found their expression in the organs of the constitutional system itself, as for instance, the aristocratic elements in an upper house, and the constitutional and democratic elements in a lower house. Such political parties, accordingly, work toward their own destruction, because they invariably perish after obtaining the victory; they desire to die as political parties, that they may rise again as political powers; they desire to become members of the body politic itself. Hence, their principles are not party principles, but constitutional principles.

—4. The highest and purest form of political parties is incontestably that of those which are determined by exclusively political and not religious or social contrasts or differences, and which at the same time permanently accompany the public life.

—Wachsmuth, in his Geschichte der politischen Parteiungen, 1832, advanced the opinion that, "in the history of the human race it must be accepted as a fundamental law of the universe, that, on the whole, there certainly is a progress toward the better, but it must also be admitted that the history of political parties has no share in that progress. Whether good or bad, such as they were from time out of mind, they remain to this very day." I also believe that a "progress toward the better" is perceptible in the history of political parties; although what is fundamental in human nature, on which parties depend, has remained the same, and when human passions have once been aroused, the man of to-day is as far from being exempt from the risk of relapsing into extreme brutality and barbarity as was the man of a thousand or two thousand years ago. The French nation in the eighteenth century claimed to stand at the head of European civilization, and yet this did not save it from the horrors of the reign of terror during the French revolution. Yet as in war, so also have the contentions of parties become, on the whole, less cruel and brutal. In spite of all the horrors that still disgrace our age, civilization has at least somewhat moderated the savage hatred of parties.

—Yet I regard these as most manifest symptoms of improvement: that an ever higher form of party seems to have replaced the old one, that parties by degrees have laid aside other differences belonging to the domain of nature and social culture, and that they are more and more determined by purely political principles. The contrasts and differences of liberals and conservatives, of radicals and absolutists, are purely political, pervade all classes of the population, and are in every instance determined by different fundamental political ideas. These parties, and parties of this nature, although they often bear different names, are markedly the fruit of the political culture of modern times.

—IV. Rohmer's Doctrine of Parties. Friedrich Rohmer's doctrine of parties, which was first announced theoretically and put into practice in 1842, during the party contest in Zürich, was in 1844 expounded by Rohmer in a work, the thoughtful contents and splendor of style of which were acknowledged even by its bitterest enemies. Rohmer's work has unquestionably exercised a great influence in the elucidation of political ideas; many of the thoughts which it contains have since become the common property of men of political culture throughout Europe, and many of its sentences have been plagiarized by well-known writers. Yet the effect of the book was below what might have been expected from the high merits of its principles and style of exposition. There was an obstacle in the way of the unprejudiced examination and acceptance of the new doctrine of parties, in the suspicion, entertained by a large portion of the party of progress, that the book was not the exposition of a scientific conviction, but a party document, written to divide the party of progress by an artificial and skillfully contrived confusion of ideas, to humble the radicals, and to support the power of the Swiss liberal conservatives. This suspicion was wholly unfounded; his doctrine is, on the whole, rather a necessary consequence of Rohmer's psychological views, and it is decidedly favorable to the formation of liberal states. On the other hand, it must be admitted that the circumstances under which the doctrine originated might have suggested a suspicion of this kind, and that at the first formulation of the doctrine the passionate party struggles in which the author was involved, in certain particular points, may have exerted an unfavorable influence in some places. A no smaller hindrance than this wrong suspicion lay in the as yet undeveloped condition of political party life in Germany, people being still unaccustomed there to look at the political spirit from a psychological point of view. If the book had been written in 1849 instead of in 1844, it would have been more easily intelligible to the bulk of the German nation.

—The fundamental idea of the doctrine is this: "As the state must be understood in the light of human nature and receive its explanation from the facts of human nature, so also must political parties in their natural causes be explained by the facts of human life. To understand the state as a political body, I must first understand the elements of the human mind: to understand the life of the state, I must investigate the laws of its development." (§ 17.) "This development manifests itself in the age stages of the life of man. The development of the state itself constitutes its history; but parties are the independent groupings of the different age stages of human life, by themselves and side by side with each other." (§ 217.) "As we distinguish four stages in the life of man—the boy, the young man (adolescens), the tried man (juvenis), and the old man (senex)—so may we distinguish four fundamental types of party. At the height of virile life stand the young man and the tried man. In these the active powers of mind hold the supremacy; in the former the generative and creative forces of character and mind, and in the latter the preserving and purifying forces. Liberal principles accord with the mind of the young man, and conservative principles commend themselves to the mind of the tried man. In boyhood and in old age, on the contrary, the passive forces of mind are found in the foreground, in the boy in an ascending, but in the old man in a descending, direction. The boy has a vivid intuitive power and imagination, and a sensitive heart, but creative energy is still undeveloped in him. The old man has, in common with woman, susceptibility and impressionableness of nature, dexterity in action, certainty and coolness in calculation, rapidity and clearness of comprehension. The boy is a radical; the old man, absolute.

—As in the organic course of nature every man passes through the different age stages, and experiences this change of strength and of impulse, so also does nature impress on individuals, irrespective of their age, as individuals, this diversity of the leading and determining forces of mind. There are men who as individuals are born boys, and who remain boys in mind and character through life. Others have as individuals youthful natures, others are endowed with the spirit and character of the tried man, while still others are as individuals old from childhood. Thus, Pericles was of a youthful nature, Cæsar naturally a man, Alcibiades a boy, and Augustus by nature an old man. Most men in their individual nature are not complete and well balanced, but mixed and defective. Many, for instance, are boyish or old at heart, but manly in spirit; or old in mind, but young at heart. As regards politics, mind is the decisive element. The mass of men do not individually belong to the higher stages. There are but few really liberal or truly conservative individuals. The bulk of men are by nature born old or boyish." (§ 35.) "That is, only in few men, considered as individuals, is the reason that discerns and regulates, or the creative power of speech, the prevailing power of the mind; most men have certainly a sensitive or receptive mind, are eager to learn, have rather a passive than an active mind, with the mental constitution of boys or older people. Parties, accordingly, are not to be compared with the age stages themselves. The differences of their inclinations and faculties are rather traceable to the natural difference of individual disposition, in which the difference of the age stages is permanently stamped and expressed. And because parties thus have their foundation in human nature, they also all have a natural right. Some correspond to the higher, and others to the lower, development of life; and from this correspondence their natural order and sub-order result. Their explanation is their judgment. Only the manly parties, the liberals and conservatives, are called to the government of the state, but not the two extreme parties, the radicals and absolutists. Their doctrine combats the illusion that radicalism should be considered as the only resolute and logical form of liberalism, as also the supposition that conservatism, in its highest power, becomes absolutism. Their doctrine insists, rather, on the distinction between the two parties in the ascending line of development, boyish radicalism, and youthful, manly liberalism, and between the two parties, in the descending line of development, conservatism and absolutism; and it demands the subordination of radicals to liberals, of absolutists to conservatives. Only when liberals and conservatives are at the helm does mind prevail over matter, and force of character over excitability. The struggles of parties are the following: of liberalism against conservatism, e.g., plebeians and patricians in the palmy days of Rome; of radicalism against liberalism, e.g., the English radicals against the whigs; of absolutism against conservatism, e.g., Carlists and moderantists in Spain, high tories and moderates in England; of conservatism against radicalism, e.g., the European struggle of the tories under Pitt against the French revolution; of liberalism against absolutism, e.g., Luther against the popes of his time, and O'Connell against orangemen; of radicalism against absolutism, e.g., the struggle of the French revolution against the monarchies of the last century." (§ 16.)

—The alliances of parties are also manifold. The most dangerous to the healthy life of the state is the alliance of both the extreme parties, of radicals and absolutists. The alliance of liberals and conservatives is the most favorable to its normal development. If the development of the state requires new institutions, the liberals naturally step to the front, and the alliance will be a conservative liberal one; if there be question of preserving the threatened order of things, the conservative element must needs preponderate, and the alliance assumes a liberal conservative character.

—When Rohmer's doctrine of parties first originated at Zürich in 1842, the preservation of the existing order of things seems to have been the task on hand; a liberal conservative policy was proclaimed, and the attempt was made to found a liberal conservative party. Ideas were at that time expressed with great distinctness and clearness, and these ideas had an influence that can not be denied. But the first attempt at the formation of a party was made under very unfavorable conditions, and attained only an incomplete development. The liberal elements chanced to be too weakly represented, and the young party was unable to keep pace with the stronger movement of the epoch, in which liberal and radical elements had become indissolubly mingled together. Its principle, however, was able to tide over the revolution, and thus passed to a part of its former adversaries, but the party itself, which first had recognized that principle, was dissolved. While Germany at first took but little notice of it, English and French statesmen, on the contrary, took up the principle, yet without altogether understanding the full depth of its significance; they were, moreover, affected by the same false tendency from which the Swiss liberal conservative party had suffered. Guizot attempted to found in France a liberal conservative party, but he ignored the liberal aspirations of the times, and insisted in a doctrinarian manner on preserving the untenable. In England, however, Sir Robert Peel was more fortunate in organizing a liberal conservative policy. Since that time, however, this idea has entered into the party movements of almost all continental states, and without it modern party contentions can nowhere be rightly understood. If the differences of political parties depend on the difference of natural individual disposition, the necessity of parties, and, further still, their legitimateness, follows as a consequence; for anything that has the roots of its existence in nature, has a right to have its existence respected. All laws and public measures, accordingly, that aim at the control of parties, or at the suppression of particular, even of extreme, parties, violate the natural law of creation, which has produced this multiplicity, and which, even through the conflict of differences, creates the highest phenomena of human life.

—The choice of a definite party, accordingly, is only in a secondary sense the work of personal insight, and of free will; for every individual in the first place feels the impulse and attraction of nature. The man who is by nature a radical will feel himself drawn toward the radical party. The man who is naturally old will be drawn rather toward the party of absolutists. But, as in all human things, the force of natural instinct is not endowed with an absolutely compulsory power, man possesses a power of mind and character over himself; he is able to overcome his own impulses, when he believes them to be foolish or injurious. Other motives and interests modify the differences which distinguish the natural individual disposition, and sometimes impel those who are naturally radical to submit to the direction of the conservatives, or drive them into the camp of the absolutists. Education, with the power of ideas and habits which it gives, has frequently the most decided influence on the choice of a party. Experience and study may also induce an individual to profess different principles and tendencies, and hence to adhere to a party different from that which we should have expected, from his individual nature, he would ally himself to.

—Nature herself has taken care that the dangerous one-sidedness of parties should not completely isolate men from one another, by compelling every individual man in his lifetime to pass through all the different age stages, and thus to experience in himself and in his own near kindred and acquaintances the nature of other parties than the party to which he belongs by his own individual nature. Any attentive and thinking man will hence judge more broadly and fairly of others when he has an eye to the many-sided teachings of nature. Nature has a healing remedy for the arrogance of extreme parties, and gives a warning to individuals to join rather the more manly central parties; and it directs all parties always to submit to the whole by manifesting, as in the organization of the human body, complete human nature, and all the faculties of the soul in the proper relation of order and subordination. It hardly needs to be recalled to mind, that the following characteristics of the four parties are merely typical. Real life scarcely ever expresses altogether completely and purely the typical, fundamental idea, but only approaches it more or less closely. But when science in grand outlines sketches the natural types, it in so doing elucidates and arranges the otherwise unfathomable, chaotic variety of phenomena.

—1. Radicalism. Radicalism is illustrated and explained by the nature of the boy. Although the delineation is made with great skill, and is true in the main, the picture is not free from a certain exaggeration, or from polemical bitterness, which can be explained only by the time in which it was drawn. Hence its dark sides have manifestly been painted with greater relish and more nervous strokes than its bright sides. The author, Theodore Rohmer, in his later years himself admitted this.

—He introduces his description by a reference to "the spirit of contradiction, which begins to stir within every man, after the development of consciousness. This spirit, this opposition for the sake of opposition, in faith, science, church and state, is the main trait of radicalism." (§ 45.) "Radicalism is very well adapted to oppose when, from the sphere of an inferior criticism, it pursues the sins of absolutism, when it hastens the march of conservatism, and clears the road for liberalism; ever blaming, hurrying, agitating, but incapable of ruling; productive of misfortune and of terrible disturbances as soon as it seizes the reins of government. Hence, it is a frequent occurrence in parliamentary states, that the most brilliant leaders of the opposition betray a complete incapacity when they are called into power. Government and childhood exclude each other." (§§50-52.)

—"The mobility of the boy is unbounded. Quiet, rest and self-containment are impossible to him. He loves change and variety to a passionate degree, and his ardent nature is continually in search of novelty. To this must be added his unhealthy longing to become a grown man. He sees the adult people around him, and his most powerful wish is to be like them. He imitates them, and plays the man. 'Novelty and progress' are the watch-words of radicalism. But 'novelty' is not reform; it proceeds from the impulse to change, and, like the latter, it is variable in itself, and 'progress' is only the impulse toward progress. He wants to reap before he has well sown; he is given to excess, as was the French revolution, or he is compelled to give himself up, as Joseph II had to give himself up. Radicalism borrows from liberalism, and imitates it. Radicalism everywhere in Europe, through organic self-deception, regards itself as liberalism." (§ 46.)

—"If the boy were not altogether by nature incapable of ruling, and relegated to obedience, he certainly would be thus incapable and relegated to a very high degree by his complete lack of experience. Experience can not be learned, but must be acquired in the school of life. The inability to learn from experience accompanies boyish natures through life. It was precisely this inability which so deeply embittered Napoleon against the radical ideologists, and for very good reason. So destitute of meaning and experience is radicalism. When Cola Rienzi believed that he could resuscitate the power of Rome by means of the mere name of the tribunate, and the forms of ancient Rome; or when the German Burschenschaft thought to restore the spirit of the empire by restoring the title of German empire, they dreamt like inexperienced boys. If Joseph II. in Austria, Pombal in Portugal, and Struensee in Denmark, had taken counsel of experience, they would have understood that it is impossible by any number of decrees to suddenly extirpate the deeply rooted past." (§§ 53, 54.)

—"As the boy is complete neither in his mind, which is in process of development, nor in his sensitive faculties, which can be ripened only through life, it follows that he must learn. To learn is not to know, but only a preparation for knowledge. But the boy, although desirous of learning, at every step which he takes in learning from others, believes himself to be in possession of real knowledge. On the other hand, we all know how difficult it is to overcome the aversion of a boy for methodical learning. His wild disposition carries him away from it, while his instinct demands culture and schooling; between the two he remains in a wavering state. In this manner radicalism has ever displayed either barbaric ignorance or an exaggerated craving for formal culture, schooling and enlightenment. Rousseau, the father of modern radicalism, instead of culture wished to see men in the rude state of nature; our modern radicals, radical in their demand for culture, cry loudly for education and popular culture as only boys cry for schooling." (§§ 56, 57.)

—"The powers of the boy are naturally adapted to mental appropriation. His susceptibility is marvelous, his imagination indefatigable; but reason, will-power and all deeper insight are absent. The boy, in a word, is brimful of talent not of mind. Talent is the characteristic mark of radicals; but talent has no standing in any court for depth of intellect. History affords us a very powerful example of this truth. In the three parliaments of the French revolution, in the constituent assembly, in the legislative assembly and convention, there was a galaxy of men of talent, partly of the most remarkable kind, and of such variety and number combined as the world had but seldom witnessed. The names, which at that time followed one another in rapid succession on the scene, still remain the pride of the French nation. And what became of all these men of talent, when a great spirit, when Napoleon, put in his appearance? It seemed as if the one great mind alone sufficed to fill the vast field which a hundred men of talent had divided among themselves. How even the most renowned among them shrank into insignificance before Napoleon: men like Sieyès, Talleyrand, Cambaceres, and even Carnot! Yet Mirabeau maintained himself; in the midst of all these radical men of talent he was the only intellect." (§§ 59,60.)

—"The boy, like the poet, lives in a world of ideals; he knows the real world only in miniature, and even in miniature he has no thorough knowledge of it. It is perfectly natural that he should build himself a world of poetical and fantastic day-dreams, of castles in the air. Radicalism has also created a world of ideals; it, too, is clothed with a charm which has misled whole nations. A world, full of freedom, happiness and bliss; a world, in which all men embrace one another, and live together like brothers, in which everlasting peace reigns, and in which an everlasting community of all spiritual and corporeal possessions obtains: a world of this kind, such as was proclaimed by the religious visionaries of the middle ages, and by the political dreamers of the nineteenth century—how charming it always appears to the senses and to the heart, in spite of the fact that experience and reason have so often told us that it crumbles away in the presence of reality. The attempts of radical world-improvers belong as little to real politics as poetry itself belongs to politics; but for life they possess a truth similar to that of poetry. In fact, what happiness the boy dreams of as in store for him in his manhood; of the freedom that he will one day enjoy, and the pleasure of a thousand circumstances in life! If he reaches manhood, and if fate favors him, he certainly may find happiness and freedom, yet it will be a kind different from what he had dreamed of; he will then smile at the dreams of his boyhood, and instead of these he will try to enjoy the sober reality of the present." (§§ 63, 64.)

—"The boy's understanding leads him to the formal branches of knowledge. Even his imagination, when he applies it to scientific questions, guides him into the field of abstraction. All radicalism is at all times formal, mathematical and abstract, when it invades the domain of manhood. Its culture and legislation are full of formalism: its conception of life and history are abstract; the radical state is mechanical without a suspicion even of organism; it is constructed, as Aristotle expresses it, instead of for it adds, subtracts, compounds and distributes men and affairs as if they were only arithmetical quantities." (§§ 65, 66.)

—"Culture and education, as means substitutive of nature, are the one great idea which has become with modern radicals the most predominant idiosyncrasy. That idea proceeds from the boy's capacity for education. The boy sees in education a substitute for innate gifts, and even considers it the creator of individual nature. He believes that education can make fools clever, and the stupid intelligent; that it is in the power of education to make all men equally learned, equally intelligent; that through the same means of education all classes can be raised to the same height, and that the crowd can be extirpated forever. Of all radical ideas, none has been more widely spread in Germany than this, and partly for the reason that the Germans, of all nations, are endowed with great capacity for comprehensive and genuine culture, and because they love education even too much not to easily over-estimate it. Instead of adapting culture to different natures, character is indiscriminately made to adapt itself to one and the same form of education. Happy age, when all Germans shall be educated and geistreich. Stupidity, which hitherto, at times, has been modestly silent, would then reign supreme, while mediocrity has already begun to rule in consequence of that very idiosyncrasy." (§ 71.)

—"As in the case of women, the boy only knows one reason for everything. The understanding, which is not as yet developed in the boy, superordinates and subordinates intuition, which he possesses, and conceives objects, notwithstanding their variety, as a complete and undivided whole. How radicalism everywhere, both in the material and the intellectual spheres, is urged by the impulse toward 'leveling,' needs no further examples.

—The boy moves with originality on the field of speculation. Man, in childhood, indulges in a number of questions, which he is unable to answer as a man. He thinks about the origin of the world, about the reasons of being. But he does not investigate for the sake of a higher purpose, but merely because investigation is a pleasure to him. Abstraction, as abstraction merely, satisfies him. The two characteristic marks of all radical speculation are: an ideally mingling the reason of the world's existence with the world itself (pantheism), practically, the supremacy of abstraction over life." (§ 74.)

—"Radicalism, like childhood, is good and rich in blessings, and when in its right place its effects are unequaled: but it degenerates and becomes worthless when it swerves from the right path, and when placed at the helm becomes a prey to demoniacal powers. From what evils it frees us, from what abuses, from what an oppressive load it unburdens Europe, by its ever-living, stimulating power and active foresight; how much of evil it does away with, how much of what is useless it removes, and how much of what is now it has encouraged—all this is well known in recent times. If it had been able to keep within the bounds of the opposition, if it had surrendered the direction of affairs to liberalism, instead of thwarting it, its effects would surely have been a blessing. The country may be considered fortunate in which radicalism keeps up an opposition without encroaching in public affairs, but keeps its energetic action within the bounds of modesty. Woe to the country in which it rules supreme. Waste of mind and emptiness of heart, the ruin of the past and the decay in the present, are the signs that accompany it." (§ 77.)

—"The boy believes that he shows courage when he displays only impudence, and energy when he makes a manifestation of obstinacy. He indeed possesses courage to do many things which the grown man can not attain to, because to such courage belongs a barbaric recklessness toward all existing rights, relations and institutions, or an unparalleled degree of levity. Yet these are precisely the qualities by which radicalism has been able to impart an occasional bold forward movement to the wheels of history, which in certain cases it would have been beyond the power of even the most advanced liberalism to impart. They are also the qualities of which Providence frequently avails itself for the attainment of its designs. Radicalism not only vents itself against old institutions, when they have become rotten; it attacks the past and pulls down everything with relish; the radicalism of the better kind does this, because it carries within it the organic delusion that it can create a new world from the wreck of the old, and the worse kind of radicalism, because it is impelled thereto by its love of destruction. A tabula rasa is what both want." (§ 85.)

—"Although far from cruel, the boy commits many cruel acts. His anger when irritated, his revengefulness when offended, his fury when controlled, are simply barbaric. But he nevertheless combines all this with a tenderness, or rather a weakness, of feeling, which easily passes into pusillanimity and exaggeration. The source of these opposite qualities is sentimentality, which is as cruel as it is easily aroused, as easily inclined to evil as it is capable of good. This sentimentality consists in an excessive degree of sensitiveness." (§ 87)

—"By nature the boy has only an abstract sensual conception of the world. He is able to conceive only unity or multiplicity; and these opposites coexist in him as unreconciled with one another as were Judaism and Greek polytheism in the ancient world." (§ 88.)

—"Abstraction makes things equal. Thus, the boy looks upon men as equal except in as far as they do not exist outside his own sphere. Boys among themselves are democrats. Their whole mind and heart demand equality. Take a school of thirty or forty boys the moment before the teacher enters. An absolute freedom and equality prevail among them. The instant the teacher appears, all are just as equal in obedience as they were before in anarchy. Boys are fit only for a democratic or a despotic government. To the boy freedom means only following his caprice, and doing what he pleases. His idea of equality is, that nobody should be allowed to enjoy higher privileges than himself. What has been said describes, as we believe, sufficiently the main traits of radicalism, considered as the submission of the organic life of man to the unlimited power of abstraction." (§ 92.)

—2. Liberalism. Liberalism is the representation of the young man. "The youth enters into the world free. He is no longer hampered by discipline; life and fate henceforth educate him. His first act is to examine the ground on which he stands, the inner and the outer world. His criticism spares nothing; he is bold enough to doubt everything; yet not merely for the sake of doubting. He doubts, in order by his own power to attain to truth. He seeks, in order to find. Intellectual and moral criticism is a main trait of all liberalism. But there is no trace in liberalism of the opposition which is made by the man who is not free. If I were to draw an historical picture of the character of liberalism, and point out wherein it differs from radicalism, I should recall the life of Luther in the religious sphere, and Lessing's labors in the scientific world." (§§ 93, 94.)

—"The young man is man in his highest bloom. Replete with life and movement, and at the same time full of sense and consciousness; his mind developed in every direction, at the height of creative power, high-minded and energetic, still undisturbed about fate; the entire man in the fullness of all his impulses, ardently desirous of the future, and yet even now master of the present, unhindered by obstacles, inventive of plans, full of sense in the choice of means, and of genius in execution; a constitution of this kind, or none, is adapted to reform, or rather, born to create and organize, just as the boy is fitted for revolution." (§ 95.)

—"Because it alone unites activity with genuine strength, liberalism is the formative principle of all existence, in science and in faith, in the church and in the state; and only that which contains within itself creative germs with a positive core, deserves the name of liberal. Everywhere, under all conditions, and even where it carries destruction before it, liberalism acts as an organizing power, and where it does not directly distribute blessing it is infusive of new life. In German history we have a refreshing picture of an organizing liberal in King Henry I." (§ 96.)

—"The opinions of the young man are full of ardor, his assertions are full of acuteness, but he is naturally too modest and too humane not to honor all outside aspirations if nobly harbored. Where the boy is exclusive in his opinions the young man investigates, and where the former is narrow-minded the latter preserves his intellectual sight free and undimmed. He is free from prejudice, and takes things as they are; and this freedom is the mother of the highest kind of toleration, a toleration, however, which never ignobly vacillates between what is good and what is evil, or which meanly wavers between opposite tendencies, but honors what is worthy of honor, even in its bitterest enemy, and from its own steady point of view judges, with impartiality, the points of view of others." (§ 97.)

—"As independence is the nerve of manhood, it follows that the man can never find the reasons of his actions in authority; he can find them only in the truth which authority can lay before him. A liberal government will never pay homage to public opinion as such, nor to the spirit of the age, the Zeitgeist as such; yet it will always respect the spirit of the age, combat its falsities, and take its truths to heart. A liberal opposition will never despise the authority of the throne, nor accept any proposal merely because it comes from the throne, nor, like the radicals, reject it only because it emanates from the throne." (§ 109.)

—"The age period of the young man is the highest expression of man. The mightiest ideas and passions, the highest power of his intellect, the richest fullness of his sensitive faculties, and his most perfect bodily development, belong to this age. In this age stage man becomes man complete. In this sense liberalism is humane, it and humanity become one. The greatest and only perfect liberal known to history is Christ. And through what did Christ exert his most powerful influence, and so powerfully that no one among us who knows anything of his individuality can well help loving and revering him? Why has his image been stamped so deeply on the heart of humanity? Not because of the sublimity of his mind, or simply because of the miracles of his life alone; not because of the supernatural in his nature, but because of his humanity." (§ 100)

—"If it be true that liberalism expresses human nature in that which is most peculiar to it, then of the four parties referred to above, supremacy belongs to it; for only man should rule over men. But as nature tarries long and in a thousand ways in its lower phases; and as it only seldom, and but for a short time, gives us glimpses of its summits; thus also liberalism, in all nations, has ruled only during their most flourishing epochs, and only for a short period." (§ 102.)

—"The education of the young man is the school of life. His teaching goes to the root of things. His culture is the development of pure humanity in its widest sense. Where radicalism only looks at schooling, liberalism looks at the nature of man; the one has an eye only to what has been learned, the other to what is inborn; the former gives us only state-servants, the latter statesmen. To liberalism also the teaching of the people is sacred. It desires that every one should be brought up a man. But, instead of applying the standard of the highest stages to the lower ones, it aims at an organization of public instruction that may afford the possibility of the highest culture to any one capable of receiving it, even those of the lowest classes, yet without over-educating them." (§§ 102, 103.)

—"The direct, fresh-springing creative power that distinguishes the young man, as compared with the talent of the boy, and the calculating wisdom of advanced age, is called genius. Genius knows, where talent only learns; it creates, where talent plays; and thinks where the latter dreams. The true man knows himself, and carries his measure within him. To know himself is the fundamental condition, and to measure accurately the highest quality of genius. The boy overrates his own powers, and allows them to disport themselves without control; the man knows them, and uses them with circumspection. Radicalism, in its policy and in the administration of the state, herein acts like the boy, liberalism, like the man. When liberalism is at the helm, all the parts of the state are called into activity proportionately to their importance, but none are overrated, none overstrained. Ancient Rome and England are still patterns in regard to the knowledge of state measures, and in the observation of the proper measure. Liberalism does not perfect anything before maturity, or before the times command it. But then it acts quickly, thoroughly and with energy. Of this nature was the regeneration of Prussia at the time of French supremacy. Even under the administration of Stein decree followed decree; but the national spirit advanced step by step with these decrees. While Stein was laying the foundations of civil freedom, and Scharnhorst those of public defense, the intelligence and heart of the German people had been raised to the level of this freedom, and its active energy had begun to long for the armament of the nation." (§§ 104-110.)

—"Clearness of understanding, grandeur and abundance of ideas, logical penetration, perfection of language and power of speech, characterize the period of bloom of the human mind. His entire organization impels the young man into the fields of intellect, in search of organic knowledge, to the study of philosophy and psychology, of the sciences of the state, and of politics. The philosophy of the schools, or mere scholasticism, call it as we may, formulas and technical terms, may suit the boy, but the philosophy of truth and of life belong to the man. Liberalism, above all, thinks with the natural understanding. Its human character tells it that true philosophy, like true religion, must be universally human, and therefore intelligible. Greek philosophy was liberal, so far as its results affected the education, the constitution and the politics of the Greeks; the practical philosophy of the English was also liberal, although only to a limited extent, and the philosophy of the great German thinkers, of Leibnitz, Lessing, Herder, Muller and Frederick the Great, was liberal in a still higher degree. But the German systematic philosophy as such, is not liberal, because the manner and method according to which it seeks truth are formal, and the tendency which it keeps in view is not that of life, but of thought as a business. But, to liberalism, thought and action, theory and practice, are one and the same thing." (§§ 112, 113.)

—"The boy applies to the world an abstract, speculative or mathematical, and the young man a psychological, measure. The one seeks and acts according to formulas, the other according to organic laws; the one sets up categories, the other principles. The young man is full of ideals, but his ideals are rooted in ideas. A policy, if it be grand and human, must pursue an ideal; and it only ceases to be a manly policy, when, instead of pursuing this end with a cool, considerate sense of the practical, it pursues it in an idealistic manner. In the highest stage of liberalism the ideal and real become one. Every liberal ideal, even when a failure in the present, leaves seeds behind it in history, from which subsequently either its corporeal form springs, or some other blessing is harvested." (§§ 115-117.)

—"The eye of the young man is turned mainly forward into the present and the future. His relation to history is not an immediate one, and yet it is none the less a deep and sacred one. Life leads him into history. Every institution which history has sanctified, is sacred to him, not because that which was or that which is of long duration compels his respect, but because he understands its foundation in human nature, its effects on the head and heart, in a word, its psychological character. The liberal knows that no power in history can be destroyed unless the psychical roots which it has shot out are destroyed, or unless a greater power can be put in motion against it. In other words, no historical institution should be tampered with unless there be substituted for its hitherto psychical efficacy a psychical efficacy equally great." (§ 118.)

—"There is a distinctive trait which infallibly distinguishes the character of the young man from that of the boy. The boy is vain, the man has only a quiet pride. Let us compare Lafayette with Washington. Although the two were near enough to each other in views and circumstances, the simple and quiet demeanor of Washington contrasts widely enough with Lafayette's vanity, to warrant us in characterizing the latter as a radical, and Washington as a liberal." (§§ 121, 122.)

—"The young man as quickly subordinates himself to another whom he recognizes as his superior, as he classes himself above those whom he feels to be his inferiors. While the boy says: There is no higher right than mine,' all the man wishes is that 'every one should have what belongs to him.' The main trait of the young man's character is hatred of all oppression and want of equity and uprightness of mind. When this side of his character is touched, he forthwith reveals all the full life of his soul, and the indomitable energy of his mind. But, as he constantly keeps in view the moral natural law, and sees the contradiction of positive material law with the essential order of things to be more frequent as he grows older, he is liable to abandon or neglect, in disgust, traditional forms, and thus to afford his adversary a weapon, by the skillful handling of which, many a liberal has succumbed in the fight against hypocritical legality the legality of the scribes and pharisees. In his Götz von Berlichingen. Goethe has described a character of this kind." (§ 124.)

—"The position of liberalism toward religion may be described by recalling Bacon's well-known principle, that true philosophy should doubt everything; but that through doubt it should return to God. Liberalism, at the start, is always criticism; its end is the taking of a position. The religion of liberalism is free and cheerful, and even its doubts are calm and respectful." (§§ 129-131.)

—"The young man sees everywhere the law of superordination and subordination, an immense gradation of forces succeeding one another, not side by side with one another; a gradation of forces different in kind and essence; and he soon perceives that the machinery of creation rests on this diversity. Liberalism knows no measure of primordial rights except that which nature has implanted in each individual; that is, the gradation of freedom or independence is to him the same as the gradation of God-given power. By divine decree all have equal rights, but not the sum of rights. Humanity is, he says, by virtue of its organization, that is, by virtue of divine right, a great aggregate individual, endowed with supremacy over the earth. Every member of this aggregate has a share in its rights. This share is greater the more it gives expression to the character of the whole, and smaller the further it is removed from it. Not an equal share for all, but to each one his own, is here also the great principle of liberalism. To liberalism it seems to be the highest problem of science, the foremost task of statesmanship, the fundamental condition of all human well-being, to assign to every capacity its proper sphere, to every virtue its corresponding field of activity, to every individuality its right place." (§§ 132-136.)

—"But when, from these principles, that seem so simple, and as it were deduced from nature itself, the young man turns his glance toward the positive condition of things, he beholds another world. He finds that the external hierarchy of the classes of society is not true to its origin, and only too often the reverse of the inward dignity which those classes should express. He finds the crowd in the higher, and nobility in the lower, orders; he discovers stupidity ruling, wealth governing, the weak influential, the bad honored, mind the prey of misery and neglect, force sacrificed to inaction, highmindedness to hatred and intrigue. In nature itself he sees causes provocative of contradiction and difficulty. Not only can he find no way by which to determine dignity of character and the value of men's deserts; he finds an organic confusion in the dualism of the measure itself. The worth of the individual is not determined exclusively by his individual organization, but by another standard, by race. Race is not limited to nationality, but extends its spirit to the province, to the tribe and to the family. It is inseparable from the person; it is a matter preliminary to passing judgment on men; it is the cover in which his real nature is enwrapped, it is the canvas from which the characteristic peculiarity of the individual stands out in relief. As it affords the liberal a second measure of human valuation, his task is to place both measures in their right relation to each other, to consider the race as the substratum, and the individual as the quality, so that the latter may prevail, but with due consideration for the former." (§ 139.)

—"From the view of the world above described, it follows that the man considers the state as a direct necessary product of human nature, as the crown of human organization. The man recognizes no public or constitutional law with its origin in contract. Neither does he admit a state of which God, in a mechanical sense, is the originator and governor, except in so far as God has endowed human nature with the instinct to form states, and as he forever remains in close union with man, his creature. The man knows only an organically operating God, a God acting through human freedom. In himself, in his body and in his soul, the man finds the fundamental principles of the organism of the state. Liberalism conceives the state as a body, of which no member is without a connection with the whole, and of which no member is without a share in the whole. But in this organism it conceives each state power in its place freely acting within its sphere, no power so separated from another as to disturb the living connection between them, no one opposed to another, but one all-embracing power at the head of all. The law he considers as the aggregate product of the national will. Hence it wishes that not the head exclusively, but the members also, should share, in due proportion, in the legislative power. It considers every state as the embodiment of a nation, and every nation as a particular individual with indestructible features. The state of the party of liberalism is a state which respects the rights of the mind, as the highest criterion of class, so that the poorest peasant may rise to the highest order of nobility, and the scion of nobility sink to the lowest condition, as complete worth or worthlessness characterizes them: a constitution which in everything prefers man to external circumstances, nature to culture, insight to acquired learning, and which affords to mind and virtue the best opportunity to assert their power." (§§ 141-147.)

—If, accordingly, we are asked to define the fundamental character of liberalism, as contrasted with radicalism, we must say that the real distinction between them consists in the supremacy of abstraction in the latter, and the supremacy of the individual in the former.

—3. Conservatism. Conservatism is explained by the nature of the "older man." The term "older man" is evidently inappropriately applied to the age of man from thirty-two to forty-eight, as Rohmer applied it, because it suggests a still more advanced age. Even the term "tried man" is generally applied to men in the forties, not to those in the thirties. In the absence of an expression corresponding to the Latin juvenis, we prefer to use the term "complete," "mature," or simply "the man," because he has reached life's zenith, toward which the young man, striving upward, is still pressing.

—"The perfect man has already reached the vantage ground which the young man is still struggling to attain. His affairs are regulated, his home is established, and he has found a field for action. His concern is not coveting anything new, but holding fast to what he has; not acquisition, but increase; not the conquering of an unknown world, but the regulation of the world he knows. He is self-reliant and free, like the young man; to a much higher degree, in so far as the ripeness of age lifts him above the necessity of assistance, but to a lesser degree, in so far as the circumstances of life fetter him. He is fettered by circumstances, surroundings, duties, and a number of considerations of which the young man, generally single, has no idea. His wife and children, his position and property, equally impose on him the duty of preservation; instinct and consciousness impel him to it. Nature has summed up the conditions of all life in two fundamental laws, the law of generation and the law of preservation. Thus, also, the two fundamental tendencies of humanity are characterized by these laws, liberalism by the former, and conservatism by the latter, law." (§ 153.)

—"The mature man, of all men, has alone an 'unconditional' claim to govern. The young man, through the earlier half of his career, combines skill and force, but he lacks experience. When we say that liberalism usually guides the world, that conservatism rules it, while radicalism opposes and absolutism intrigues, we briefly characterize the relations of parties to one another as the condition of mankind generally creates them." (§ 154.)

—"The man has formed his opinions. His views are fixed, his faith is a definite one. The young man had to acquire truth through doubt; he must through investigation preserve and elevate the truth. The young man criticises in order to acquire; the man, to increase what has been acquired. An inclination to preserve, and skill in improving: such are the man's preponderating traits. Being the master of a household, and settled in all his relations, he avoids all disturbance, and changes nothing, when a pressing need does not render the change necessary. But it is equally natural to him to give an ever firmer foundation to his home and family, and to perfect his condition more and more. His position not only does not prevent him from making, but it impels him to make, all such improvements in his situation on the largest possible scale, and by all means in his power.

—In this he is just as indefatigable and active as the young man in his endeavor to acquire a fortune. Without being indifferent or narrow minded, he takes the world as it is, with its perfections and defects; and his way of making it more endurable consists rather in developing the good elements that are in it, and in preserving them, than in building new creations from them, creations the success of which he does not feel certain of. As the young man not only feels himself impelled to positive, new creations, but at the same time to the removal of abuses, and of that which has been outlived, so also the conservative man, besides increasing present stores, feels always inclined to the restoration of those institutions which a thankless or a narrow-minded age had unjustly allowed to decay. From the first of these dispositions reform proceeds; from the latter, restoration." (§ 158.)

—"The supremacy of the mature man depends on the esteem which he commands, on the confidence which he inspires, and on the firmness of his whole nature. His education, in point of genuine solidity, comprehensiveness of knowledge and command of details, is as superior to the education of the young man as it is inferior to it in ideal human nature. The ideal force of liberalism may prove wholesome in opposition to the state: the life experience of conservatism belongs directly to affairs" (§ 161.)

—"We have summed up the intellectual constitution of the perfect man in the term wisdom. Wisdom can not vie with genius in productiveness, but it is equal to the latter in wealth of conception, and superior to it in elaboration. Wisdom is inferior to genius in penetration, but surpasses it in circumspection; wisdom, by its fullness of knowledge, makes up for the advantage genius has over it in keenness of perception, and it supplies, by its comprehension of details, the ease with which genius grasps the whole; experience imparts to wisdom a solidity and knowledge of men which for substance may well compete with splendor of ideas. If genius carries measure within it because it watches over itself, the having such measure within one's self is to wisdom a second nature: to keep within measure and to be wise are one. The young man is genius in motion, the mature man is genius at rest. The former may be called active, the latter passive, genius. If, in poetry, we compare Shakespeare and Goethe, we have an approximate picture of this latter difference." (§ 162.)

—"Wisdom investigates and forecasts: it tracks out what is hidden, it understands the past, and preserves the germs of the future; sagacity and power of memory are inborn in the perfect man. As we regard language as the highest power of the young man, so we may consider intellectual discernment as the faculty most peculiar to the mature man. In these, language and intellectual discernment the highest faculties of man, lies the difference between liberal and conservative politics, when once intelligence rules. The science of mind here becomes the science of the conditions into which the mind has settled, the law of nature becomes historic right, and psychology becomes history. Hence, what conservatism produces is not essentially new; it is only the same truth, the same creation that liberalism already had created, only in another light." (§ 163.)

—"Liberalism struggles for principles, and it only is able to give birth to the highest principle. Yet if it lights on a false principle, it falls into errors, which the mature man can never share, because he never opposes principles to positive life, but always moderates them through law and history. He also desires that external law should be a mirror of the inner law, but he never sacrifices it for the sake of the latter, because experience makes him recoil from the danger of such attempts. The inviolability of property, and of private rights in general, is hence one of the principal features of conservatism." (§ 165.)

—"The power of resistance preserves man externally, and inwardly he is guided by the principle of fidelity. This fidelity has given rise to the German proverb: Ein wort, ein mann; the keeping of one's word is so peculiarly the mark of conservative minds." (§ 167.)

—"Practical life is the natural field of the mature man. The government of the family, marriage, the relation of master and servant, are best understood and managed by the mature man. The young, as well as the mature, man, founds marriage on the divine sanction, that is, on the divine natural law, which has willed the duality of the sexes, and therewith the organic union of two individuals fitted for each other; but while the young man founds the mutual supplementing of the two sexes on the psychical similarity of their natures, the latter measures it by similarity of their situation in actual life, and of the conditions necessary to the secure existence of a family. Both views, however, are misused, the former by radicalism, the latter by absolutism. In the former, the inner inclination degenerates into a weakly, fickle feeling, and we have modern marriage, which has rightly been called sentimental marriage. Absolutism, on the other hand, makes marriage merely a matter of convenience, inasmuch as, without any regard to nature, it pays attention only to the external circumstances, such as birth, money, etc." (§ 168.)

—"In the case of the mature man the government of a family is closely connected with the direction of his household and the management of his property. To possess is a craving of his nature. From being thus bound to property and family, it follows that conservatism, as a party, is more difficult to organize and direct than other parties. The conservative party is usually inactive and phlegmatic; everybody attends to his own business; matters are allowed to go, and men are aroused only when there is actual danger; in England, for instance, it is not the party of moderation, but the high tories, who keep alive the violent agitation of parties." (§ 169.)

—"Experience, and the wants that necessarily accompany it, lead the mature man more directly to religion than does criticism the young man. If the mature man is preponderantly religious, he may be severe, and to a certain degree anxious; but never unfree or unfriendly disposed toward manly criticism. He will accordingly treat the church with sincere regard and love. But he is the most pronounced enemy of any falling off in the discipline of the church, of worldliness in the members of the church, of abuse of its sacred character." (§§ 171-173.)

—"As in mature age, there is substituted a sense of obligation for the extreme freedom in which youth delighted, so the sense of order is found in the man, side by side with the notion of liberty; and it governs. Freedom desires that every one should attain the highest of which he is capable; order, that no one should aspire higher than becomes him.

—Race, to which youth only pays secondary consideration, has for the father of a family an entirely new importance. An unintentional, irrepressible instinct impels the mature man to attribute to it a higher importance, and only to give it up when the individual is completely useless. Liberalism and conservatism value the organic powers of man; liberalism with a preponderating appreciation of the organically peculiar, and conservatism of the organically inherited. The "peculiar" powers build up society; the "hereditary" preserve it. In the former lies the prototype, without which nothing can come into existence; in the latter, tradition, without which nothing can endure. As greatness of individuality, combined with a corresponding exterior, confers precedence on the person who is possessed of both, a precedence which men are wont unconsciously, and by virtue of an original instinct, to acknowledge, so also a superior race, in combination with wealth of material and intellectual possessions, commands a consideration which nobody thinks of withholding from it. Heredity is accordingly immediately founded in conservatism, while liberalism knows it only in as far as it respects race as the foil, so to speak. But there is not only a congenital transmission, in which race consists, there is also an acquired one, a second, more spiritual transmission, which has the former for a foundation. The first is the inheritance of blood, which man receives at his entrance into the world; the second, the inheritance of all that which in the course of his life has to such a degree become naturally assimilated with his character that it becomes his second nature, the sum total of all the impressions which circumstances and intercourse with men and fortune have left upon him, permanently and with determining power." (§§ 174-177.)

—"In the liberal state, persons with their substratum of lineage, rule; in the conservative state, lineage, brought out into relief by persons, rules. In the former, ideas prevail, in connection with the existing state of things; in the latter, tradition, with the continuing influence of ideas. 'In the liberal state,' as Montesquieu expresses it, 'virtue' rules, and 'moderation' in the conservative state. In the former, public law is more developed; in the latter, private. In the former, political freedom prevails, on the basis of personal freedom; in the latter, personal freedom, with the corresponding addition of political freedom. Liberalism considers the object of the state to be preponderantly active, and that it consists in the highest development of man as man; conservatism looks upon it as preponderantly passive, and that it consists in securing to the furthest extent the existing legal order of things." (§ 180.)

—4. Absolutism. In order correctly to understand the comparison of absolutism with the "old man," we must again call to mind that the age stages of human life seem fixed in parties, that is, that the different energies of the soul, which alternately appear and disappear in the life of the individual man, determine in a permanent manner the nature of parties. The individual who is by nature liberal or conservative, will continue liberal or conservative in his advanced years; the individual who is by nature old inclines even in boyhood toward absolutism. Not the qualities that have been developed at an early age, and which have attained to complete maturity, but only the qualities which appear for the first time in later years, and which nobody, not even the old man himself, considers better than the instincts and powers of youth and ripe manhood, determine the spirit of absolutism. The absolutist party, therefore, is compared to a man who is only old, and who is not, at the same time, a man in the sense of liberalism or conservatism.

—"The old man has left the greater part of his years behind him. He enjoys the past in reminiscences; the future, in his children; the present no longer belongs to him. The sum of his experiences is fixed. The convictions which he has derived from them are unchangeable. This result, bought with the toil and labor of a life, with its roots in his head and heart, a result to which the sweat of his brow and the blood of his hand still cling—this result, and this only, must be the true one. In old age we have no conditional, no relative views (?); near to the end we crave the absolute. The age stage, which has had more experience than the others, has no peer among the other stages. It withdraws into itself, and the world goes on, while old age believes it is overlooking it. This isolation, this inclination toward the absolute, combined with the weakness of nature, deprives old age of the ruling position to which by its very nature it seemed to be called preferably to all others. Age possesses a great fund of experience, but its experience is at an end. For only the man who without prejudice comes in contact with the world learns anything from the world. The organic position of absolutism, that in which the state (as nature requires) makes use of the experience of age, without sacrificing itself to its exclusiveness, is the consultative one." (§ 182.)

—"The old man hates novelty in the same degree as the boy loves it. Old age fetters his elasticity; his whole being revolts against it; for with every innovation a new portion of the edifice that it had reared with such immense toil is shattered. The world is changing about him; other opinions, other institutions, other customs, arise. Every day, so to speak, declares war against him. He is overcome with grief and disgust. Self-love, man's foremost quality, manifests reaction. The old man has passed through all the stages of life; he can understand them all, he exacts obedience from all. But while he lifts himself above them, while he makes his own phase of life the last product of all the others, and considers it the only true one, without, however, taking any part in the process of life either in the way of production or transformation, life slips from his grasp at the moment he believes he has finally grasped it. He is beset, on the one hand, by the indestructible instinct of old age to assert its importance, and on the other, by the impossibility of harmonizing with other men. Reaction is unavoidable. It lies in the innermost nature of absolutism." (§ 183.)

—"Intolerance and despotism are the natural consequences of this position. The principle of absolutism is the principle outside the adhesion to which there is no salvation. With it doubt is a sin, and resistance a crime. The narrowness of absolutism is less a lack of understanding than an instinctive unwillingness to understand anything in nature. It is this which imparts to the despotism of absolutism a much harsher, more injurious, character than to radical despotism. Absolutism frequently understands the demands of the peoples whom it maltreats; but it will not yield to these demands. When want comes, it knows how to appeal to higher ideas; it then accommodates itself to the times, it yields, capitulates—a clear proof that it can understand—yet only to go back to its old ways as soon as possible." (§ 184.)

—"As the boy plays the young man, so does the old man assume the demeanor of the mature man: in other words, as the radical takes upon himself the ways of the liberal, so does the absolutist desire to pass for a conservative. Radicalism rides heedlessly over old established rights, when they are an obstruction to innovation; reaction, regardless of consequences, destroys all the hardearned results of a grand present, that it may rule again. Both are equally ignorant of the laws of intellectual, and of the limits of historical, rights; both equally trample history and private rights under foot; both believe themselves able, by their 'fiat' of omnipotence, and by decrees on paper, to establish institutions in conflict with the spirit of the times, of nations and of the soil; both are equally destructive. 'The world is growing worse, the world was better in the past,' has, since Nestor's time, been the motto of the old man; as radicalism by its optimistic dreams, and the old man by his passiveness, undermine the quietude of nations." (§ 185.)

—"Reaction is naturally fixed in its retrogression, just as naturally as revolution raises its progress into law, and repels all contradiction. Reaction goes back only to a certain stage of the past but not as the restoration goes back to the past, as an intellectual development. This constitutes the essential difference between reaction and restoration. * *"—"The boy approaches the world with intuition and imagination, but the old man with reflection and combination. * * The one abounds in whims and ideals, the other with aperçus and rules; and at last the old man reaches the point the child had reached—at abstraction on the one hand, and at sensuous perception on the other. The deductive rules on which the old man relies without intellectually mastering them, inspire him with that infallible confidence, that strange self-deception, by which absolutism runs toward ruin, without perceiving the abyss, until the ground begins to quake under its feet. In this manner age collapses into a spiritless empiricism, which ignores all higher points of view, and at last degenerates into a materialism, which drags what is highest and holiest down into the dust." (§ 192.)

—"Where combination is so preponderantly developed as in the old man, the principle of numbers very naturally asserts itself. Mathematics and the entire series of the exact sciences are the field on which the mind of the old man finds its highest satisfaction. The boy applies himself to mathematics because its abstract generality satisfies his mind and sharpens his faculties, and the old man seeks refuge in it because it alone affords him that absolute yet sensibly real certainty in which his mind finds rest. But it seems rather strange that this empirical certainty should tempt him into shallows, from which even ideal contemplation remains exempt. In its train follow cabala, alchemy, magic and necromancy. The sober clearness of mathematical laws seems irreconcilable with the enigmatical plays of the cabala; and so does it seem incredible to reflecting reason, that dry rationalism, for which everything is too high which can not be made as plainly evident as that twice two makes four, should still pair itself with the nebulous mysticism of the theurgic and magic arts; and yet both are to be found united in absolutism." (§ 193.)

—"Old age is thus formal in history. If the boy is formal because he is unable to see through form, the old man resolves essence into form to shape it as he wants. Right sinks into a treaty. Loyalty becomes a narrow legalism, and the more the idea of right contracts, the more obstinately does the old man cling to separate provisions. The most sacred interests are sacrificed to the letter of an agreement, and the application of the law, under the veil of the summum jus, becomes a permanent exercise of the summa injuria. From the point of view of such legalism the condemnation of Christ was not judicial murder, but an act of justice. In legislation, also, absolutism applies this mechanical, arithmetical measure. History, with free-thinking absolutists, becomes a collection of maxims, aperçus, remarks and analogies, as it was with the men of the world trained in the French school of the last century; to the absolutists of a positive opinion, history is but the treasure house of his own opinions. The 'historical basis,' the 'deep ideas of the past,' the 'organic articulation of the state,' the 'good old law': absolutism frequently employs all these conservative phrases, just as its counterpart (radicalism) uses the words freedom and equality, and ignores them with the same ease." (§ 194.)

—"The heart of man feels the effect of years as heavily as his mind. Old age is as far removed from the equanimity of mature age. Its rest is but the quietism of exhaustion. The great passions have subsided; only the little ones remain. The old man is irritable in the highest degree, his moods are whimsical and changeable. His passive sensibility sometimes causes his mind to accept indiscriminately all impressions, and sometimes to display that dull indifference (laisser aller) which characterizes the staid man (philister), that inferior embodiment of absolutism." (§ 195.)

—"The boy, to become powerful, must remain under training; old age, on the contrary, must have pupils, and wishes to be surrounded by persons who obey. The old man may be mild, gentle, and careful of his pupils; but he wants no free man around him. An absolute government may be well meaning and paternal, but the air of freedom, the highest good of life, is never breathed under it." (§ 197.)

—"The weakness of old age reveals itself in a remarkable manner in this, that its virtue, like that of the boy, needs support from without. In the case of the boy this support is the law; in the case of the old man it is tradition, convention, maxims, reflective virtue, the morals of principles. If we wish to get a notion of the conventional morality of absolutism, we should read Kotzebue's plays. It was this morality that prevailed in the upper classes in the past century. Here there are no maxims of law and custom, but social considerations." (§ 198.)

—"If we reflect on the above it is obvious that there must enter into the efforts of old age, to attain moral perfection, an artificial element. As what is noble does not spring spontaneously from nature, incapacity calls forth a violent effort, and this again betrays 'the power of weakness.' Hence comes the demand for 'unconditional obedience' in absolute states. When the weakness of nature breaks through the bounds of principle, the vices of old age develop into unnatural tyranny, of which history affords so many instances. Philip II. is the most striking instance of wicked old age: another illustration is the hideous Tiberius, who, more than any other ruler, combined in his nature womanly weakness and diabolical strength, weakness of character and baseness. It is the custom to consider all the Roman emperors as absolutists; but Caligula, Nero and Commodus were only depraved boys; genuine tyrants are found only in old age.

—Modern Machiavelism walks about in a stately garb, gentle, pleasant and winning. It understands the art of appearance, and under paternal mildness conceals machination. It shakes hands with the proletarian, and surrounds itself with the severity of majesty, according to the times. Cruel when cruelty, kind when kindness, leads to its end, it ignores everything but its own aims, and the arithmetical weighing of the means. Such a man was Augustus, a man endowed with the greatest intellectual gifts, and who might well say of himself, that he had cleverly played his part." (§ 200.)

—"Old age is also characterized by weakness in private life, chiefly in the management of its household. As woman, both in childhood and old age, is superior to man, the interference of women in radical and absolute homes or states is almost unavoidable. If the times are favorable, woman becomes permanently preponderant. The government of mistresses in the eighteenth century is well known." (§ 201.)

—"Old age in matters of faith knows either only mechanical obedience or complete dissolution of beliefs, literal orthodoxy or atheism. Voltaire, La Mettrie and Shaftesbury were far from radical; they were profound, logical absolutists." (§ 201.)

—"When a reasoning absolutist wishes to understand the origin of the state, he is, by his very nature, forced to seek refuge in the idea of formal covenant, of an artificial contract. This famous theory, which is nothing but a distortion peculiar to old age, of natural right into arbitrary convention, owes its origin to the absolutist period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The radicals have adopted it because it is in keeping with their intellectual constitution; but to the provisions of the social contract, following their bent, they have added the doctrine of equality. According to virile notions, public authority has the right in itself, and subjects their rights in themselves. But only the free man can understand this, the man who is not free is compelled to seek the source of his condition, the title to his rights, outside himself. The man who is not free subjects himself to another, because, as the theory itself puts it, he alienates his rights to another, and the latter commands because the former has alienated his rights to him; or, according to orthodox ideas, because God has given the latter command over him." (§ 204.)

—"There is no right in absolute monarchy except that which emanates from the ruler; he alone is what he is by the grace of God; all the others are what they are only through the grace of the absolute monarch. The most perfect embodiment of this system is the constitution of the order of Jesuits, and the Roman caria, according to the Jesuitic conception of it. The company of Jesus subjects body, soul, actions and thoughts to the omnipotence of the general of the society, in whose hands the members are but unconscious tools. According to the curia, the whole church rests in the papal chair." (§ 205.)

—"Old age, however, besides despotism, has also its democratic features. Absolute power may be attributed to the people as well as to the ruler. Europe has witnessed not only a great radical, but also an absolutist, revolution, the English. That revolution was the embodiment of fanatical belief, as the French revolution was of fanatical abstraction. When the radical proletarian rises, he wishes to be put on an equal footing with others; when the lazzarone is aroused, he remains what he is, in order, as a lazzarone, to avenge himself on others." (§ 206.)

—"Because age carries the germ of dissolution in itself, it can only be kept together through the most rigid observance of forms. This is the essence of legitimist monarchy. Its characteristic trait is, that instead of striving to do the state service, it makes such service itself its purpose. In other words, it does not administer except for the sake of administering. Birth, not merit; money, not mind; routine and mannerism, are the conditions of appointment to place. Form becomes essence; essence, form. The external policy of absolutism knows only combinations, not ideas. Without any regard for the inborn tendencies of peoples, but simply to round out the national boundaries, it huddles provinces together at hap-hazard, as they have been acquired through conquest or marriage. Instead of natural equilibrium, it seeks an artificial balance, which may be disturbed by the merest breath; instead of treaties, it is satisfied with agreements for the moment; instead of a proper diplomacy, it pursues a diplomacy of intrigue, with a gorgeous representation, but without statesmanlike substance. Its foreign policy is either strictly orthodox (legitimist), or materialistic. Form everywhere rules.

—5. Mutual Relations of Parties. Liberalism and conservatism, the two virile parties, may combat each other, for although one in aim, their methods are different, but in spite of their differences they should never forget their close relationship. They are indeed nearer to each other than either of them is to any other party, and than the other parties are to each other. They may be opponents, but only opponents who respect each other." (§ 209.)

—"Between liberalism and absolutism, as also between conservatism and radicalism, there is no point of contact. They are even as different in what they do as in how they do it. On the other hand, liberalism and radicalism have a common line of action, while conservatism and absolutism have the feature of preservation in common; but in spirit and character, liberalism and conservatism are superior to the extreme parties. Radicalism and absolutism, finally, have many resemblances in their bearing. Sometimes they act together friendly; more frequently they combat each other, very much as boys refuse to longer submit to the rule of the older. The true relation of parties is found when the extreme parties share in the national struggles only mediately, and are led by their corresponding manly parties. Politics is ruined when the extreme parties obtain supremacy." (§§ 210-212.)

—6. Psychological Contrasts in Polities in General. Since Rohmer's doctrine of parties psychologically determines and describes the fundamental types of parties in accordance with the age stages of man, and thus discovers four types, peculiar both in spirit and character, it goes beyond the task of explaining political parties themselves, and thus, from being a theory of political character and mind in their natural chief kinds and forms, it becomes a new psychological science of politics in general. This theory throws new light on political facts and individual character. Even where there are no political parties, there are still to be found radical, liberal, conservative, absolutist, individuals whose way of thinking and acting finds its explanation in that theory, just as much as if such individuals had formed themselves into a party, and as such, tried to influence public life. Those fundamental types may also more clearly and easily be illustrated in individuals than in parties, for on the formation of parties many things exercise an influence besides the natural disposition of the individuals who unite to form a party. It not unfrequently happens that the leaders of the parties individually belong to another type than the party itself. The liberal Mirabeau was the head of a radical party; the liberal Pitt was the leader of the absolutist conservative tories; in the revolution of the Netherlands, the conservative William the Silent led the radical-liberal party. In Switzerland the absolutist parties, in Germany the ultramontane parties, are often led by radicals; and so, on the other hand, the radical-revolutionary parties confide their cause to the expert skill of absolutist generals.

—Above parties stand the people. But in nations also we often perceive the same chief tendencies that distinguish individuals and parties. In the French national character the absolutist character, and in the French spirit the radical trait, is very prominent; and this explains the violent changes in French political history. On the contrary, in the Russian nation the absolutist spirit seems to be combined with a radical disposition. The English are manifestly liberal in character and conservative in spirit; the ideal of the Germans is a liberal government, maintained and supported by the conservative people.

—From the four fundamental tendencies of humanity, Rohmer derives four general characters of political constitutions, as distinguished from forms of the state. "Radicalism, as the supremacy of abstraction, engenders the idol state; liberalism, as the supremacy of individual personality, the individual state; conservatism, which pays homage above all things to the power of history and the rights of races, the race state; and finally, absolutism, the form state." (§§ 220-226.)

—The history of nations, and, on the whole, in its grand outlines, the history of humanity, follows these changing impulses in their different periods. The period of childhood is devoted to the service of abstraction; in old age, traditional forms obtain a decisive authority. At the height of life the manly tendencies prevail. Humanity has not as yet reached its climax, but it is manifestly approaching it. Its development on the whole is, therefore, liberal; the modern era is intellectually freer and more self-conscious than any previous one. But, within modern times, history, in different ages and phases of development, has already repeatedly made the circuit of the age stages of man, and of their respective tendencies. On this necessary movement rests, in part, the divine education of nations; on this also rests their highest expression, the changing phases of the spirit of the times, the breath of which every one feels, but the correct understanding of which constitutes the art of the statesman.

J. C. BLUNTSCHLI.

PARTY GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED STATES.

PARTY GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED STATES. The first recorded party contest in New York state, in 1789, ended in a total poll of 12,453; the total vote in 1880 was 1,102,945, and the number of voters over 1,200,000. This advance in the voting and the possible votes of nearly one hundred fold, or six times larger than the growth of population, aptly measures at once the needs, the conditions and the development of party government in the United States. Meetings at "Martling's" in New York, and the "Long Room" in Boston, were sufficient for the conduct of party affairs, while the voters of one city numbered less than 3,000, and the poll list of the other fell short of this number by one-half; but the enormous increase of the voting voter, due, first, to the spread of political privileges by law, second, to the growth of political interests by party contests, and third, to the increase of population—has rendered the earlier methods obsolete, and developed an intricate system of party government, the product of the last sixty years, whose working is most vigorously attacked by those least aware of the tremendous difficulties presented by the quadrennial mobilization of 9,000,000 voters. The development of party government has, therefore, been along the inevitable lines of increasing organization and delegated powers, whose development in the state is the familiar story of representative government. Burke's definition, "Party is a body of men united in promoting by their joint endeavors the national interest upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed," was accurately applicable to the small and coherent body of electors which be represented. While remaining true in spirit, it has ceased to apply in detail to the two great political camps into which the United States has been substantially divided for thirty years. In these two parties a bare fraction of voters, not a tenth at most, carrying on the active work of party government, constitute the standing army of political life, which in periodical struggles exhausts its efforts in the endeavor "to poll the last man"; in a word, to mobilize the great mass of inert voters with constantly increasing success. Beginning in 1820 with a polled vote in New York state (where the records are most complete), with one voter in five (12,453 in 1789, out of 57,606 voters in 1790), the proportion steadily rose to 31.12 per cent. in 1826, increased rapidly during the next six years, in which the foundations of party government were laid, to an average of 60 per cent., or very nearly the average now obtaining in Great Britain, rising in the ten years ending in 1865 to 77, reaching in the presidential year 1876 to 88 per cent., and in 1880 to 90 per cent. How largely keen political interest and high intelligence are needed to increase this per cent. is made best apparent by the fact that the highest percentage of voting voters in those states has been for years in the counties whose percentage of American-born population is largest. This growth in the percentage of voters exercising the right of voters, no less than the widening of suffrage, has increased the complexity of party management during the last century upon a scale rather one of kind than of degree.

—At the organization of the federal government the number of voters in each political division was still small enough to permit the management of parties by the simple and rudimentary methods long in use among English-speaking peoples. These were, self-nomination for the candidate, the caucus or meeting to express the desire of the voter, and in addition, as a dormant political power in the state, there existed the convention, which the traditions rather than the usage of the English constitution made the form in which the general body politic took original and initiatory action. Except in the southern states, which retain many archaic forms in their political life, self-nomination has disappeared in this country, the public meeting has become the caucus or primary, and is treated elsewhere (see CAUCUS); while the convention, developing along two distinct and independent lines, has become in its constitutional form the body to which is committed the composition of organic law, while in its political form it has come to be the body which in county, district, state and national affairs acts under a loosely defined body of usage and party regulation for the party as an organic whole, in theory drawing its power from the primaries, in practice acting independently, regulating their action and determining their constitution.

—These two widely divergent forms of the convention originated in the same stem; but while one attained full development and power in the constitution-making period of the revolution, the other only reached its development in the party-making period, which began in 1820, and ended in 1840, with the party organization now (1883) in existence in full operation, although the development of its details is still in progress. The convention, as a primal political force in the body politic, appeared early in American history. "They had no doubt," says Hutchinson of the action of the Massachusetts colonists when the old council had taken possession of the government from which a mob had driven Gov. Andross, "received advice of the convention called by the prince of Orange, and, in imitation of it, they recommended (May 2, 1689) to the several towns of the colony to meet and depute persons," who assembled, and assumed the right to decide what constituted the government of the colony, as the convention parliament of 1688, assembled without a writ, had decided upon the constituent powers of the English government. The whig lawyers who managed the revolution in the thirteen colonies, itself essentially a political struggle, were mindful of the organic character which precedent attached to a convention, and termed the meeting of commissioners from the colonies a congress. Meanwhile, the radical changes in progress through the colonies were conducted by conventions, the work being at length completed by a federal constitutional convention, while the political government of the day was carried on by meetings in the large cities, supplemented by the collective action taken by the members of colonial assemblies. The latter, as well as the former, bridged over the period between their sessions and their assembly through the appointment of committees of correspondence, a body which is the lineal predecessor of the "state central committee" of the present day, and which remained for over fifty years after the revolution the stated political authority in deciding upon the executive conduct of campaigns. These public meetings and committees of correspondence, in the post-revolutionary period, conducted normal political action; the convention was employed when extraordinary steps were proposed. Shay's rebellion was preceded by one which met at Springfield, and embraced delegates from the counties about; the alarm created by the Hartford convention was in part due to the selection of this term in summoning it, and, without much regard to whether the body was made up of delegates, any mass meeting of more than usual importance was termed a convention; e.g., the New York meeting nominating George Clinton in 1811, the mass meeting led by Daniel Webster in New Hampshire in 1812, or even the early "conventions" in Maryland and Pennsylvania which nominated Jackson and Harrison.

—The initiative in local and state party government, which rested at the opening of the revolutionary war with city meetings, societies and their committees of correspondence, was transferred in the period succeeding this struggle to state and federal legislatures, by whom it continued to be exercised until 1830 in all parts of the country, and in some southern states until 1860. The change in New York state, a closely divided political body, whose politics early reached, and has since maintained, a high degree of organization, which makes its development typical, was distinct and definite in this direction. George Clinton had been the chief executive of the state through the war of independence, by unopposed election. The first serious step toward the organization of an opposition was by a meeting of Clinton's opponents Feb. 11, 1789, which nominated Robert Yates, and appointed a committee of correspondence to promote his election, while a letter soliciting his candidacy was addressed to him from Albany. Three years later the nomination of John Jay was made by a called meeting of his special supporters, and confirmed by a larger body held later; Clinton, representing the more popular organization, received his nomination from a general meeting "composed, as was alleged, of gentlemen from various parts of the state," followed by meetings in each county. Here was the early germ of the convention, as now known; but it withered from the practical difficulty and the vast expense of travel, which made it impossible to bring political delegates together, except as they were already assembled in state legislatures. It is highly significant that each step in the higher organization of our parties has been at a time when internal transportation was developed. The state convention reached its development in New York state in the decade which saw the Erie canal opened; the national convention first became complete in the period of railroad expansion from 1850 to 1860, and the management of a national campaign from a single party centre only became possible from 1870 to 1880, when the telegraph system of the United States was first extended over our territory. These are the real conditions which have made possible the development, and determined the character, of party government. Tocqueville early pointed out the extraordinary freedom of political association enjoyed in this country, but this would have continued dependent on cliques and caucuses at state capitals and at the seat of federal power, if it had not been supplemented by a freedom and facility in travel and communication inconceivable when he wrote. By 1795 an unprecedented advance in population had extended the base of political action in New York state beyond the scope of any meeting, large or select, on Manhattan island, and John Jay was nominated by a quasi legislative caucus held at Albany, which was, for a quarter of a century after, the centre of political action. To the close of the century, the action of the Albany caucus was still shared by citizens of the state capital; but the tendency was to recognize only legislators as its members, and in 1804 Aaron Burr and Morgan Lewis were nominated by fully organized legislative caucuses. Even then the Burrite ticket was completed by a public meeting at Albany, which nominated Oliver Phelps as lieutenant governor; but for Burrites and "Quids" the Albany caucus of legislators was the controlling body, its "address" the party platform, and its "committee of correspondence" the governing body of the campaign. A "regular" party organization now first appeared in New York politics, which has never since been without a political organization claiming "regularity" by virtue of its unbroken political succession from the body which in 1805 nominated D. D. Tompkins. For twenty years afterward the business of carrying on party government was conducted at Albany, and the struggle against the "Albany regency" was in fact the struggle of the counties and their political action against power which out of the necessity of the post road had gravitated to Albany. The same development of party government was in progress at all the state capitals, at least as far south as Virginia and as far north as Massachusetts. In New Hampshire the "Rockingham convention," Aug. 5, 1812, a mass meeting of 1,500 voters, adopted a platform, nominated a full ticket, state, electoral and congressional, and joined in a vigorous address to President Madison. In Vermont "conventions of free men" and the legislative caucus acted indiscriminately, sometimes reaching the same nominations. The public meeting preserved its place as the origin of political action much later at the south, and the extent of the states west and south of Virginia left a political initiative to the county, which has long survived, although the legislatures were in all these states centres of political action. Inevitably, however, the condition of society on the frontier rendered impossible methodical political action. Nominations in Kentucky, in 1799, for a constitutional convention and state legislature, were "agreed upon" in many counties by "committees of two from each religious society and from each militia company"; a combination of religious and secular affairs in political organization which had its analogue in Philadelphia at a recent period in the cant political question, "Are you a presbyterian or democrat?" whose answer opened more than one election fight.

—In Virginia a periodical Richmond caucus early in the century decided on state nominations, and appointed a committee of correspondence, which acted with like committees in the counties. The action of this legislative caucus was so strictly a matter of state party government that in a presidential year, as in 1812, it did not go beyond the nomination of electors, and passed no resolutions expressing a preference as to a candidate for president, or enunciating a national platform, the "only test laid down" in the selection of electors being "Will he vote for Mr. Madison?" In Pennsylvania nominations were made at this time in the same way, and party management vested in members of the legislature. In Massachusetts, even as late as 1826, the Jackson "corresponding committee," appointed by a meeting in Boston, deferred meeting "until the legislature met, and a state convention could be assembled," steps in this direction still hinging on the legislature. To party management the members of the legislature naturally added the declaration of party policy and party principles. The sphere which has been occupied during the half century closing in 1880-90 by the party platforms and the letters of candidates, was earlier filled by addresses from state legislatures on federal and state topics, taking a range and appearing with a frequency since unknown. For nearly fifty years after the revolutionary war these addresses summed up the opposing political doctrines of the day, and the members who signed them managed the party organizations. Nor, in comparisons between the personal character of state legislatures at an earlier and later date, is it fair to forget that membership in these bodies fifty years ago gave the political control of party nominations and party policy which has since become vested in the party convention and its "central committee." (Ability will always gravitate where real power is exerted) This is exercised to-day upon the floor of conventions, whose members are quite as often hindered in their influence as aided in their authority by a seat at Washington or in a state capital. The control exercised by the legislative caucus found its natural analogue in a like control over federal affairs in the congressional caucus at Washington, whose power was first challenged, not by the national convention which succeeded it, but by the state legislative caucus, which envied both the power of the body at Washington and the preponderating influence enjoyed in the councils of the meeting at Washington by the Richmond caucus. Aaron Burr's nomination as vice-president was the first formal action taken by a caucus at Washington—Jefferson's selection being a foregone conclusion—and Burr was nominated at the suggestion of an Albany conference. By 1808 seventeen members of the "republican" caucus at Washington bolted its action on another suggestion from Albany. State legislatures had begun, each on its own account, to make presidential nominations, but holding their action subordinate to final determination at Washington, precisely as in the convention period state conventions present their "favorite sons" to national conventions. The objection to the congressional caucus as the manager of national politics had become so serious in 1812 that the call that year laid stress upon the regular character of the assembly, while the resolutions passed disclaimed any power in its members to act except in a personal capacity. Albany was, as usual, the first to break ground in a new direction, and the republican legislative caucus at Albany nominated De Witt Clinton ten days (May 29, 1812) after Madison's nomination at Washington. "One nomination," said "Niles' Register," in commenting upon their action, "is just as legitimate as the other." The convention which met at New York in September of the same year, with a representation from eleven states included in its membership, and which is sometimes cited as the first nominating convention, was in fact a mass meeting held to approve, or, in modern phrase, "indorse," the nomination made at Albany. Four years earlier a like assemblage held at "Martling's" styled itself a "general meeting," and, while approving by name state nominations, in the address which it instructed its committee of correspondence to "forward to republicans of the United States," exhorted them to "support such candidates for offices in the general government as are regularly selected and recommended by a republican majority of the Union"; meaning, of course, the congressional caucus.

—Party government had now reached a stage in which the congressional caucus, whose power, though questioned, was supreme, carried on the loose national organization of the day through its standing committee of correspondence; state legislatures did the same for state contests; while an inchoate representative political body did the like in the cities. The "general meeting" had already become too cumbrous to carry on party affairs in cities like New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore; Boston was still a town whose inhabitants enjoyed right of pasturage on the common for thirty years later. Secret societies had been an earlier substitute for the mass meeting, of which "Tammany, a society of the Columbian order," is the last lingering representative. The "democratic society," organized in Philadelphia during Washington's second term, had its affiliated branches over Pennsylvania and the neighboring states, extending to the outer bounds of the Kentucky wilderness. Federal politics in western Massachusetts and the region about were for nearly a generation at this period powerfully influenced, if not controlled, by a secret society which had affiliated branches in New England and the middle states, and more transient organizations existed elsewhere; all circumstances which played an important part in giving edge to the anti-masonic movement. None of these societies offered a basis for popular action during a time when the number of voters was yearly augmenting, quintupling in New York state in thirty years; 57,606 in 1790, 259,387 in 1821. The committee of correspondence, which each "general meeting" left to continue political action until another met, was gradually supplanted by ward organizations, first temporary, then permanent. The great "general meeting" which met, 12,000 strong, to approve Madison's nomination and the prosecution of the war, in Philadelphia, May, 1812, called ward caucuses to appoint five delegates to a "general committee," which sat apparently for no other purpose than a more formal and weighty declaration than was possible in a tumultuous mass meeting. A similar appeal to the primary was taken in Baltimore; but the usual course with these large city meetings—of which a number were held in these stormy war times—was to approve existing nominations made by state legislatures, and to appoint the customary committee of correspondence. From cities, counties and single districts representative party government spread rapidly to the state, while the term convention began to be employed for any "general meeting" which included members of more than one place. The last nomination of the congressional caucus in 1824 made plain the disappearance of its political power, which had received a fatal blow eight years before. Eight years later the Albany caucus, which had dealt this blow, alarmed at the growth of a new political engine in the convention, called for a revival of the congressional caucus as an escape from the dangers of separate state nominations for the presidency. The committee of correspondence of the congressional caucus has survived in unbroken succession as the "congressional campaign committee" of to-day, appointed biennially in the joint caucuses of the senators and representatives of each political party. The influence of this body varies greatly with the strength of the national committee and the ability of its secretary and members. In a presidential year the congressional campaign committee can do little but distribute documents, the party in power in either wing of the capitol using its facilities, folding rooms, employés and what not, for this purpose. In the intercalary congressional election the powers of this committee are considerable. It makes, or has made, the assessment on officers, organizes the congressional campaign where the party is weak, sometimes assumes to decide between conflicting claimants for a regular nomination, and furnishes doubtful districts with their speakers and supplies; but in the practical work of politics all this proves of less advantage to party success than in furthering conflicting intrigues within the party for the places in its gift, in particular those which depend upon the action of the party caucus in the house when deciding upon its candidates for speaker and other officers in the organization of the lower chamber of the federal legislature.

—The state legislative caucus remained in full away upon the disappearance of its Washington rival; but it was near its end. Presidential nominations by state legislatures as a formal official act were becoming more frequent, and paved the way for a broader representation than a party legislative caucus, in which the voters of the party living in districts where it was in a minority had no representation. The "convention" of the day was steadily widening its base and increasing its influence, and what was of nearly equal importance, ceased to be regarded as a dangerous or revolutionary political tool. It is a familiar fact that the legislature of Pennsylvania early lost the high relative importance attached to state legislatures and service in them in the post-revolutionary period, and it was in this state that the nominating convention first appeared in full action. A fruitless proposal for a national convention to make an anti-slavery nomination against Monroe was made in Philadelphia in 1820; in the previous four years the nomination of state officers through a convention consisting of delegates chosen by public meetings had become familiar. In the decade opening in 1820 this became the practice in Pennsylvania, beginning five years before the like innovation in New York state, ten years before it was rooted in Massachusetts, and fifteen years before the legislative caucus had disappeared in Virginia, while in some western and south western states it survived the first highly organized national campaign of our history in 1840. A convention held in Carlisle, Pa., in February, 1821, made up of county delegates, which nominated Heister in opposition to Gov. Findlay, was one of the first state conventions on the modern plan, if not the earliest. Six years earlier, Feb. 27, 1815, when a "meeting of citizens from every part of the state" was "holden at Boston," it confined itself to an address to the independent electors of Massachusetts, and only "confirmed" the nomination of Caleb Strong and William Phillips, already reached by a legislative caucus.

—In general terms, it may be said that, up to the slack-water politics of Monroe's second election, the general meeting in the centres of population, while it bad been widened by the presence of voters from other parts of the state, assumed no strict representative capacity, and left the initiative in politics to the legislative caucus; but in the decade beginning with 1820 two changes took place: state conventions, embracing representatives from most of the counties of the state, began to make state and national nominations, and conventions for a special purpose, embracing quasi delegates from many states, began to formulate opinion on questions of national politics, and out of these separate threads was spun the national convention. So slowly did this take place that, reckoning from the earliest state convention of a representative character, it was fifteen years before all the counties of a large state were represented in a convention, and forty-eight years before all the states were represented by national conventions. These early bodies were, as was natural, most loosely organized. The Hartford convention, in spite of its official character, received from New Hampshire delegates elected by county meetings, and carelessness of form or credential was still more characteristic of the bodies which met at a later period to represent some particular form of national opinion. Early as these bodies assumed a representative character, their systematic organization came more slowly, and important political gatherings which exerted a serious influence upon current party policy were in fact nothing but voluntary assemblages of men chosen by no formal constituency. This was the case even with the protection convention which met at Harrisburg, upon the call of the Pennsylvania legislature, July 30, 1827, delegates to which were elected by counties in Pennsylvania. The address of the free trade convention which met in Philadelphia Sept. 30, 1831, was accepted by Mr. Justice Story, in his Commentaries, as an authoritative exposition of the political views of the party denying congress the right to levy protective duties; but the convention itself met pursuant to a call issued at the suggestion of the "New York Evening Post"; the delegates, who voted singly and with equal powers, represented states, cities, counties, mass meetings and themselves; Mississippi being "represented" by a single delegate, Mr. Pinckney, a member of congress, and the proceedings throughout point to a loose structure only possible while the functions and methods of a political convention were still unformed. The like was true of the protectionist convention which met in the same year in New York, of the convention of the friends of American industry held in Harrisburg in 1824, and of most interstate conventions of the day. In the first of the long series of conventions dealing with the needs of the Mississippi valley, which met at Memphis, Nov. 12, 1845, upon a call issued by the Tennessee state legislature, with John C. Calhoun as its presiding officer, delegates from eleven states, one territory, Texas, an independent power, St. Louis, and a number of counties, all met and voted on a common basis. In fact, the many interstate conventions which met for a quarter of a century after the Hartford convention, bore the same relation to the strictly organized national conventions of the post-rebellion period, that early parliaments sustain to the completely organized body now at St. Stephens.

—In most states the convention had reached a complete organization long before its representative capacity was recognized. In 1820 the "republican" legislative caucus at Albany, whose address put Tompkins and Mooers in nomination in accordance with the "settled and approved ways" of the party, was met by a bolting caucus, whose address dealt freely in the current charges of fraud against Gov. Tompkins. In the ensuing four years the constitution of 1821 added largely to the voters of the state, and the popular convention sprang into being under the control of the young leaders in the central counties "by the lakes," who were beginning, first as anti-masons, and later as whigs, their struggle against the control of politics from Albany. In ten years, the new and facile instrument of political action had driven the legislative caucus out of existence. The first conspicuous, but by no means the earliest, convention of the new order was an anti-masonic body, which met in 1826, with Thurlow Weed as its influential manager. It still took longer to go from New York to Buffalo than in 1883 to go from New York to San Francisco; and, in the loose practice of the day, any man with interest enough to take a week's journey to a political convention was accepted as a representative, with little scrutiny of his credentials, if any were required. Progress, however, toward a different procedure, was rapid. Originating in a local call in local newspapers to the "young men's republican clubs" through the state, the "republican young men's convention," which met at Utica Aug. 12, 1828, and chose W. H. Seward as its presiding officer, was a full-fledged political convention, whose neat and rapid working shows how early the hand of Thurlow Weed learned its cunning. Its record presents delegates elected and ranged by counties, a temporary and permanent organization, committees on credentials, organization and resolutions, appointed on the instant by the chairman by congressional districts, and its close presents a complete working machine. Central corresponding committees of three were named from each county, and these were instructed to complete the county organization by a committee of five in each town, while the general conduct of affairs was intrusted to a "state central corresponding committee" of twelve "to be taken from the town of Utica and vicinity," a necessary concession to the practical difficulty of bringing together a committee including members scattered over a wider area. This convention adopted a modern platform, tacking on a tariff plank as an afterthought; but it made no nominations; approving those already made of Smith Thompson and Francis Granger on the state, and Adams and Rush on the federal ticket. Resolutions were passed, but they did not as yet constitute a comprehensive platform, and action upon nominations was reached through the adoption of a resolution—a practice which still survives in many states in the apparently useless form of adding to the platform an additional resolution giving the names of the candidates who have been put in nomination by the vivâ voce choice of the convention between several candidates. The new form of party rule was already in full operation in Pennsylvania, where by 1823 the nomination of J. Andrew Shulye was reached in a convention (March 4, 1823) only after five ballots; but so loose was party organization that the state committee appointed by the convention was at this period in the habit of meeting only to call another convention, interconvention political control vesting, as it had for so many years in "committees of correspondence" appointed by general meetings in the larger cities. In Massachusetts, at the same period (Jan. 23, 1823), the first step was taken toward a convention by adding to the "mass meeting of republican members of both branches," delegates from "republican towns not represented in the legislature." Five years later the Jackson republicans in the state had fully organized on the convention plan, and both parties in 1832. In Virginia, where, as in New York, the opposition seized on the convention in 1828, the ruling legislative caucus extended its numbers in the same method by adding representatives of counties where the party being in a minority had no representatives in the legislature. Without entering into unnecessary detail, like changes took place elsewhere, and by 1840 the legislative caucus was everywhere confined to legislative issues. "Conventions appointed by the people," said "Niles' Register," in 1827, of the coming change, "appointed by the people for a specific purpose, are not liable to the objections which apply to legislative caucuses." The result has not justified the hope.

—The national convention grew by the same slow degrees. The disappearance of the congressional caucus was not felt in the eight apathetic years of Monroe's administration. The nominations of state legislative caucuses, by dividing the electoral vote, led to the serious and dangerous struggle of 1824, in which national politics sank to its lowest personal plane. A remedy was plainly necessary. A congressional caucus had been considered a "republican tenet," and the powerful caucus at Albany in 1823, as in 1831, urged that one be held, while the Massachusetts caucus convention, which put forward John Quincy Adams, deprecated the necessity of "nominating a candidate for the presidency by assemblies in the states." By 1827-8 it became plain that no other course was open, and the combined action of legislative caucuses and state conventions, held in general on Jan. 8, 1828, placed Jackson in the field, usually but not always, with J. C. Calhoun as candidate for vice-president. In Virginia this was done by a convention made up of fourteen senators, 157 members of the house of delegates, and twenty-three special deputies, representing in all ninety-six counties out of 109. In North Carolina and New Jersey the counties elected delegates to a nominating convention, as did the anti-Jackson men in Virginia; in Pennsylvania and New York a legislative caucus acted, and in the former a convention filled out the electoral ticket; in Vermont a "convention of freemen" made a presidential nomination, and "certain citizens of Batavia, New York," did the same. The preliminary party struggle presented, in short, every form of party action. Four years later it was clear that the concerted action between the states which had given Jackson's canvass such momentum could best be reached by a national convention. A congressional caucus better suited the Albany regency, and they pleaded for one without effect. All parties adopted the convention; but Jackson's friends in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina, endeavored, in the last instance fruitlessly, to secure a nomination from a legislative caucus, while Clay's friends obtained like action in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Louisiana, Kentucky and Maryland. The convention was at this period the favorite device of the opponents of the administration, and their national convention was the best organized, although the selection of its delegates was made by loose methods which early disappeared. The whig convention, which met in Baltimore, Dec. 12, 1831, was called by a caucus of the Maryland legislature. This call proposed a representation for each state equal to that enjoyed in the electoral college, and suggested, but did not require, the election of delegates by congressional districts. In Maine and Pennsylvania this was done; in New Hampshire a legislative caucus chose delegates; in Massachusetts "a convention of 200 members" acted for the state in expressing a presidential choice, besides making state nominations; in Connecticut harmonious action was taken by a legislative caucus and a state convention, the districts, in addition, choosing their own delegates; in New York a state convention chose the entire state delegation of two at large and one for each congressional district; while Maryland and most of the southern states acted through conventions. These irregular elections were order itself compared with the loose election of delegates to the democratic convention which nominated Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, at Baltimore, May 23, 1832, where the vote of Pennsylvania was cast by a group of self-appointed delegates. At these early national conventions each delegate cast one vote, except as a vote by states was required, when the electoral apportionment came into play, and the rule requiring a two-thirds majority in making a nomination was adopted by the democratic convention of 1832. This rule was re-enacted by the democratic convention which met at Baltimore, May 20, 1835, and has become the common law of the party in its national conventions and in many state and county democratic conventions in the south. At the same time the unit rule, giving each state delegation the right to cast its entire state vote as a majority of its members should direct, was also adopted, and, like the other, has gained the sanction of unbroken democratic usage. In whig and republican conventions neither of these rules has obtained, although an effort to enforce the last led to a long and bitter struggle in the republican national convention at Chicago, in June, 1880.

—As late as 1852 the call for a democratic national convention treated a congressional caucus of democratic congressmen as one basis for the summons; and the action of the whig Washington caucus, met to nominate a speaker in 1851, was expected to furnish the common grounds on which northern and southern whigs could meet in a "nationalized convention." These were the last traces of congressional influence in the highly organized body which has now, in the practical selection of a president, taken the place of the electoral college, the conventions of the two parties naming the two candidates to whom voters are of necessity restricted. It was forty years, 1831 to 1872, from the first national convention until one met in which all the states and territories were represented; but the work of organization is now completed, and the only change in party organization lies in the direction of greater safeguards about the caucus or primary in which the first delegates are selected, who in successive stages choose delegates to the conventions above. As it is no intention of this article to give a history of American politics, a further account of the working of the convention is unnecessary. It will be sufficient to describe the general working of party government.

—Precedent, custom, and the slow, unwritten development of representative party government, render it impossible to make any general exposition of the present system which will not be subject to many exceptions. On the one hand, in the loosely settled south and extreme west, selfnomination is still in use for all subordinate and local offices without the interposition of a convention, and the canvass is conducted by the personal solicitation of candidates, the work of the hustings being unchanged, but spread over wearisome square leagues of territory, instead of being concentrated around a polling booth. State officers are now nominated in all states by conventions, but where a system of permanent local nominating bodies does not exist, the state convention still partakes largely of the character of a legislative caucus, and the county convention is a meeting of the narrow group which carries on the government of each county at its court house; political action being largely confined to state and county office holders. On the other hand, in nearly all cities of over 100,000 in population, and in some, like Albany, still smaller, local political action and representation in state conventions are decided by a continuous political organization which in each party holds annual primaries, not to send delegates to a convention, but to choose the members of its governing body, ordinarily known as a "general committee." This body is self-elective under the thinly disguised forms of popular selection in primaries. Highly organized state conventions, like those in New York, find themselves unable, after years of effort, to break through this organization of office-holders and tax-eaters to reach the voters on whom party action should rest. In addition, while the theory of American party government contemplates the convention as coming fresh from the spontaneous initiative of the people, in fact it has become in many states, and is tending to become in all, a body which receives its initiative from the standing state central committee. This body, in New York and several of the larger states, has a member to each congressional district, the delegates to the state convention from these districts meeting apart in groups to select the committeeman from the district. In Pennsylvania and a number of other states the districts electing to the upper state chamber are the basis of membership. As the apportionment of conventions is in general by the party vote, and these districts are laid out by population, in the republican party the allotment of members of the state central committee by these districts gives the centres of population a preponderance in the permanent committee which they do not possess in the convention, and do not contribute in elections to the voting strength of the party. The one exception is in Pennsylvania, where the city vote is republican. The state committee organizes, immediately after its appointment, by the selection of a chairman and secretary, with whom are associated from three to five members as an executive committee. Unless some extraordinary exigency arises, like the resignation of a nominee, vacancies on the ticket being usually filled by the committee, the state committee does not meet until it issues the call for the next convention. The executive committee of five or seven is through the campaign the real centre of party management, and the actual work of party direction devolves on the chairman and secretary. The first is nearly always a man of wealth, with a taste for politics and skill in intrigue; the second attends to the manifold details of the campaign, and is assisted by a corps of clerks in the work of issuing assessments to the office-holders of the party, distributing documents, and conducting the wide and varied correspondence of a political headquarters. The chairman, the secretary and the executive committee constitute, therefore, a quasi party ministry, selected by the party parliament or convention. The delicate work of raising and distributing funds, of making engagements for speakers, of arranging local disputes, of watching over the interests of the state nominees, of arranging the "trades" and "deals" by which great masses of votes are secured in the large cities, or smaller schemes of corruption prepared in the rural districts, is all in the hands of these managers, to whom, if they are fit for their work, run all the threads of political intrigue. In a large state, where hundreds of local officers are chosen, besides state officers and the legislature, the candidates in the field will be between 1,500 and 2,000, and it is the first business of the officers of a state committee to know the strength, the motives, the support and the character of each of these candidates. Aside from a laborious canvass of the voters, school district by school district, which even in large states often accounts for all but 5 or 6 per cent. of the vote, minute information is gleaned in great central states as to the precise political condition of each polling district over a territory a quarter as large as France. Supplemental to the regular party machinery of a state committee, congressional, district, county, city, town and ward committees, an astute manager, like Mr. Tilden, will have from three to five correspondents in each election district of a state, making, in a state like New York, from 12,000 to 15,000 persons whose addresses are registered, and whose standing is known. To the general observer, an American political contest is a seething battle, in which the noise of the captains and their shouting, charges and counter-charges, the din of speakers and the clatter of newspapers, work their way to an unexpected result. To the few managers who attain success in the conduct of a campaign, even a great state like Ohio, New York, Indiana or Pennsylvania lies clearly mapped to its uttermost bounds, and a host of signs indicate from day to day the drift of public feeling and the intentions of voters, the plans of candidates and the purposes of the opposition.

—The minute personal acquaintance which makes this knowledge forcible, constitutes the real strength of the "machine" in American politics, which, like all organization that produces real results, is not a venal accident, but the fruit of the patient, continuous work of years. The men who make up the party ministry, intrusted with its direction, are not speakers, for speaking would be wasted on their work; nor political thinkers, for their object is not to carry out a policy, but to win an election. They are generally almost unknown to the public, and they have all the contempt of the professional expert for amateurs in their chosen field. Beginning with the careful management of a ward, they have risen by the rude natural selection of political strife; and conventions, while they often make mistakes in candidates, rarely blunder in their selection of managers. Inevitably, by the time the members of an executive committee, and still more the chairman and secretary, have "run" a campaign, particularly a successful campaign, their influence is felt and their personality known throughout the party organization. The next summer, when the state committee meets, and issues a call for the next convention, which will select its successor, the managers are in a vastly better position to touch the springs of party action and secure a convention to their liking than any one else. Nor does this control of the convention end with the election of delegates. In theory, each convention is still a public meeting which organizes itself; in practice, by unwritten law now almost invariably followed, the chairman of the state committee, acting as its representative, calls the convention to order, and proposes the "temporary" chairman. This chairman, whose election is so much a matter of course that in New York state, for instance, the selection of another chairman has occurred only once in both parties for twenty-five years, appoints the crucial committees on a permanent organization and on credentials; the one decides the officers of the convention, and the other its roll. While formally made by the "temporary" chairman, these committees are actually selected by the state committee, each of its members naming one for his congressional or state senatorial district. To personal influence with the party organization in the selection of delegates, the state committee, and particularly its executive committee, add, therefore, a profound influence in directing the action and determining the character of the convention, while it is still an inchoate body. If state and other conventions sat, as legislatures do, for a term of months, the discovery of debate would disclose other leaders; but conventions very rarely sit over two days, and usually only one. The practical result is, that acquaintance and knowledge of men, acquired beforehand, is everything in the swift canvass and rapid combinations of twenty-four hours. In all this, the campaign manager has an overpowering advantage. He accomplishes his results in the brief and wakeful night, while his amateur opponent is marshaling his forces and ascertaining on whom he can depend. The wonder is, not that the machine wins, but that it is ever beaten.

—A comprehensive union of the scattered members of party organization has never yet been successfully attempted. It was proposed in 1880 by the national democratic committee, that in future the chairmen of state committees should be elected to membership in its ranks, that the members of state committees should preside over district committees, and so on down; but this artificial plan collapsed at the start through the natural jealousy of state managers. In both parties each series of committees acts independently in its own sphere. In the presidential election the national executive committee overshadows all the rest, but its immediate efforts are confined to doubtful states; the state executive committee in like manner is most active and exerts the widest influence where party success is most doubtful; and, while least is heard of them by the general public, and least known except by politicians, the little local committees which "run" a ward or township are the most vital and permanent of all. An organization, adopted in 1882 by the democratic party in Pennsylvania, has carried party evolution in a state to its last form in the United States by linking the state committee to these local bodies through a provision that each county organization, with an apportionment based on state senatorial districts, shall elect a member to the state committee. This body has, therefore, become permanent and independent of the state convention, the party having provided itself, by a curious and unconscious imitation of the federal government, with a permanent executive. Add to this the progress made in some rural Pennsylvania counties in bringing 90 to 95 per cent. of the registered party voters to the polls in choosing the county organization, and it will be seen that this state, as in 1820-30, has probably anticipated the inevitable path of party development elsewhere.

—I. The National Convention. The call for a national convention in all organized parties is issued by the national committee, a body consisting, in the democratic party, of a member from each state, and, in the republican party, of a member from each state, and territory. In both cases this member has been selected by the delegation from each state or territory at the preceding national convention. The organization of the committee takes place immediately after the convention, its choice of a chairman and executive committee is usually greatly influenced by the wishes of the presidential candidate, and to this select body is generally committed the immediate conduct of a presidential campaign. After the campaign is over, the committee rarely meets until it assembles to call the next convention. Its membership is generally, not always, made up of men both of wealth and political influence, as a campaign assessment is expected from each member, and a large sum from the chairman; in the two campaigns, 1876 and 1880, $25,000 or more in each party. The call names the time, place and apportionment of the convention. In a republican convention the call provides for a body twice the size of the electoral college, with two delegates from each territory. In a democratic national convention, down to 1880, the number of delegates was an indifferent matter, each state delegation casting a vote equal to its electoral vote; but as the delegates are in general twice this number, and are not always required to act as a unit, half-votes result, being the choice of single delegates. In 1880 each state was directed to send twice its electoral representation. The republican national convention in 1880 directed its national committee to prepare before the next national convention a plan for the apportionment of representation in future conventions by district representation and upon the party vote. Twice in a republican convention the candidate has been decided by the vote of territorial delegates, whose votes carried R. B. Hayes in 1876, and J. A. Garfield in 1880, across the majority line. The national committee, in whose meetings written proxies are by usage allowed, besides issuing the call, decides the provisional roll of the convention pending organization, and passes in this way upon contests, provides the temporary organization, and has charge of the approaches to the convention—three most important prerogatives. In republican conventions the adoption of a platform precedes the choice of a candidate; in democratic conventions it succeeds the nomination. In both, while the term "ballot" is used, the voting for candidates is vivâ voce, the "chairman" of each delegation announcing the numerical vote of his state. If this is questioned in a republican convention, the roll of the convention can be called by the secretary of the convention. In democratic conventions it is the rule, not without exceptions, to treat the action of a delegation as final; and a majority of one, if the delegation be instructed to vote as a unit, is permitted to direct the entire vote of the largest state. The theory of the republican convention is, that the delegates standing for congressional districts are chosen by those districts, either directly by conventions in them or by the delegates from those districts to the state convention, acting as a separate group; the state convention merely certifying this result, the selection and control of the state convention being limited to the four delegates-at-large apportioned by each state. This theory was questioned by the supporters of ex-President Grant's nomination in 1880; but the convention established district representation as the common law of the party. The democratic national convention is, on the other hand, organized upon the theory that the entire state delegation is appointed and controlled by the state convention, which acts for the party in the state as a whole. Its instructions are therefore mandatory, and are so recognized by the party convention. In both parties the call for the national convention is followed by a call issued by each state committee for a state convention, to choose delegates. In New England, and in some of the western states, each district chooses its pair of delegates, and the state convention chooses the state delegates-at-large; but in a majority of states the work is done at a single convention, the delegates from each district presenting their choice, and the convention passing on the entire list. Inflexible usage requires residence, within a state or district, of their delegates, who are in general a picked body of most able men, averaging above the level of congressmen. The importance of the issue, the size and character of the assemblage, the immense throng of spectators, and the rapidity of its decisions, make a national convention the most imposing and interesting body in American politics.

—II. The State Convention. State conventions have been held since the war by each party before every general election, for the nomination of state candidates and the adoption of a platform, and, as above stated, once in four years, to choose delegates to a national convention. The call is in all cases issued by the state central committee, originating with the previous convention. The powers of a state committee over the preliminaries of a state convention are like those described above in national affairs. In addition, in New York state, the state committee names the committee which reports a permanent organization. The guard of a state committee over the hall in which a regular convention sits is sometimes insufficient to prevent its forcible capture, as in the New York democratic convention in 1859, and the Massachusetts democratic convention in 1878. The control of a state committee will not convert a minority in a convention into a majority; but it is invaluable in enabling a small and brittle majority to carry out the wishes of skillful leaders by giving it a definite course to pursue. The apportionment of delegates to a state convention is still, in a majority of the states, upon the basis of the lower branch of the state legislature; but in many states, as in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio, Illinois, etc., in both parties, and in New York and most other states, in the republican party, an apportionment is based upon the last party vote. The size of state conventions varies from 1,200 to 1,400 in New Jersey to small bodies of between 100 and 200; the average being between 300 and 500. Substitutes are always permitted; and as late as 1883 the state democratic convention in Ohio contained county delegations on the "mass system," a large number of voters coming en masse from a county and casting its apportioned vote in the convention.

—III. Local Party Government. The county convention in rural districts consists of delegates from the towns, and is, in its county committee and general working, a miniature of the state party machinery, and needs no special description. Conventions and committees exist, likewise, for congressional districts, and while conventions meet for every possible nomination, a standing committee is infrequently appointed by these bodies. A sketch of local party machinery in New York city is given in the article on CAUCUS. Primaries for the purpose of providing permanent party machinery, aside from those held to select delegates to nominating conventions, are also held by the republican party in Philadelphia, and by the democratic party in Jersey City, N. J., and in Albany, N. Y., in each case leading to the corrupt control of party machinery, while a party democratic registry exists in South Carolina. In addition to the network of districts thrown over an American city, Philadelphia and New York are, for instance, divided into congressional, state, senatorial and representative, aldermanic and judicial districts, besides electing county and city officers. Taking both parties together, from fifty to sixty conventions are held in each of these cities on the eve of an important election. None but professional politicians are able either to understand or follow this complicated mill for grinding out candidates, and a permanent local organization relieves the busy citizen of all concern in the matter by providing him with a choice between two equally bad nominations.

—As a result, the final evolution of party government in the United States has been the appearance in city politics of self-appointed committees, of which the Philadelphia "committee of 100" is a most conspicuous instance, made up of leading merchants who have assumed political control, "indorsing" party nominations, furnishing tickets and workers at the polls, prosecuting repeaters, conducting long investigations into city offices, and securing the passage of needed legislation. The downfall of Tweed was in great measure due to such a committee, the "committee of 70," and the appearance in American politics of such committees has so far uniformly been for good. They are in general accepted as more closely expressing the popular will than city conventions, and in time such committees are likely to play a wider part. Simple as American party government appears in this outline, it must be remembered that it places the voter at many removes from the exercise of power. In dealing with a presidential nomination, the voter, for instance, shares in choosing delegates to a ward convention, which chooses delegates to a city or county convention, which sends delegates to a state convention, which names the delegates who name the candidate. The surprise is, that the popular will is felt at all through these removes, no one of which has the guarantee of law save the first in some states, and the action of nominating conventions in Ohio, where bribery in such conventions is made a crime.

TALCOTT WILLIAMS.

PARTY NAMES IN U. S. HISTORY

PARTY NAMES IN U. S. HISTORY. (See AMERICAN PARTY, ANTI-FEDERAL PARTY, ANTI-MASONIC PARTY, CONSTITUTIONAL UNION PARTY, DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICAN PARTY, FEDERAL PARTY, GREENBACK-LABOR PARTY, LIBERAL-REPUBLICAN PARTY, REPUBLICAN PARTY, WHIG PARTY.)

PATENT OFFICE

PATENT OFFICE. Although the issue of American patents is nearly coeval with the government of the United States, the first creation of the patent office, with a commissioner of patents, dates from the year 1836. Prior to that date patents were issued directly by the department of state. By act of July 4, 1836, an office denominated the patent office was created, to be attached to the department of state, and a fire-proof building for its use was provided for. The chief officer, styled the commissioner of patents, was required to perform all acts touching the granting of patents for new and useful inventions, with a salary of $3,000, and seven clerks. Patents were to be signed by the secretary of state, and countersigned by the commissioner. The number of patents issued in the earlier years was very small, varying, from 1837 to 1847, from about 400 to 600 per annum; but since 1865 the business has enormously increased, until now the number of patents annually issued is about 16,000, with fees (averaging $35 for each patent) amounting to about $800,000 per annum. The patent office is not only self-supporting, the fees paying all running expenses, with the salaries of some 350 clerks, but it actually pays into the treasury of the United States an annual surplus of about $200,000. It has been urged with some force, that the inventors of the country should not be taxed beyond the actual cost of administering the business connected with the registry of patents, and that a large reduction of patent fees ought in equity to be made.

—By the act of 1836 patents were granted for fourteen years, with the right of extension for seven years longer, at the discretion of the commissioner of patents. In 1861 the law now in force was enacted, making the term of original patents seventeen years; and no extension for patents granted since March 2, 1861, is allowed except by special act of congress. A very few patents have been thus renewed, and many more have been asked for, upon the plea of insufficient remuneration to their owners. The last patents extendable by the patent office expired in 1875.

—The commissioner of patents is appointed by the president and senate for no definite term of office, with a salary of $4,500. He is aided by an assistant commissioner (salary, $3,000) three examiners-in-chief (salary, $3,000 each), one examiner of interferences (salary, $2,500) and twenty-five examiners (salary, $2,400 each), each of the twenty-five having charge of one of the following distinct classes of inventions: 1, agriculture; 2, agricultural products; 3, metallurgy, brewing and gas; 4, civil engineering; 5, fine arts; 6, chemistry; 7, harvesters; 8, household; 9, hydraulics and pneumatics; 10, carriages, wagons and cars; 11, leather-working machinery and products; 12, mechanical engineering; 13, metal-working, class A; 14, metal-working, class B; 15, plastics; 16, philosophical; 17, printing and paper manufacturing; 18, steam engineering; 19, calorifics, stoves and lamps; 20, builders' hardware, locks and surgery; 21, fabrics and textile machinery; 22, fire-arms, navigation, signals and wood-working; 23, trade marks and labels; 24, designs and sewing machines; 25, milling. Besides these, there are about 300 assistant examiners, clerks, messengers, etc., the annual salaries of the office reaching $537,000 per annum.

—The commissioner of patents is required to make an annual report of the business of the office, with a list of patents issued during the year. This valuable series of reports began with 1837, and for a series of years included a report upon arts and manufactures and upon agriculture in one annual volume. With the year 1849 began the issue of the agricultural report in a separate volume, which was continued until 1861, after which the commissioner of patents no longer issued an agricultural report, the department of agriculture having been created in 1862. The series of patent office reports, issued annually with specifications and [sometimes] drawings, was continued until 1871 (the set, 1837-71, numbering sixty-five volumes on Arts and Manufactures, and thirteen volumes on Agriculture), after which the method of publication of patents was radically changed, the annual reports being succeeded by the following publications: 1. Specifications and Drawings of Patents issued from the United States Patent Office, May 30, 1871, to December, 1883. Of these, 196 volumes in quarto (weekly for the first year, monthly from July, 1872,) have been issued. 2. Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office (weekly) January, 1872, to December, 1883, 24 vols. 8vo. This contains the full list of patents, decisions in patent cases, etc., with drawings in reduced size. 3. Annual Report of the Commissioner of Patents. These contain, since 1872, a bare list or index of patents annually issued, without specifications or drawings, but with references to the Official Gazette and monthly volumes of specifications, and a statement of the aggregate business of the office for the calendar year. Besides these, the office has issued a "Subject-matter Index of Patents for Inventions issued by the U. S. Patent Office from 1790 to 1873," 3 vols., Washington, 1873. There should also be noted as covering the comparatively small record of inventive art from 1790 to 1837, "A List of Patents granted by the U. S. from April 10, 1790, to Dec. 31, 1836, with Appendix of Reports of the Patent Office in 1823, 1830 and 1831," 8vo., Washington, 1872. Pamphlets containing the patent laws, the rules of practice in the patent office, etc., are furnished to all applicants.

—The patent office building was burned in December, 1836, with the models accumulated, many of which were replaced by act of congress. Again, in 1877, a part of the office, with several thousand models, was destroyed by fire, but the loss was largely repaired by the manufacture of new models.

—On the creation of the department of the interior in 1849, the patent office was transferred to that department, where it now remains, all patents being signed by the secretary of the interior, and countersigned by the commissioner of patents. The patent office, with its vast accumulation of 275,000 models, occupies the larger portion of the great marble building known as the interior department. The arrangement and display of models of patents in its long halls is extensive and interesting, and the heavy additions of each year will soon require much more space than is now at command.

—The following is a list of commissioners of patents, with the commencement of the term of service of each:

A. R. SPOFFORD.

PATENTS, AND THE PATENT SYSTEM.

PATENTS, AND THE PATENT SYSTEM. The patent system has assumed during the nineteenth century an important office in the economy of modern industrial communities. Its development is closely interwoven with the phenomenal material progress and the immense extension of applied science which distinguish that period. Especially has this system been identified with the extraordinary development of the physical resources of the United States. The patent laws have been extended and improved to meet or anticipate the wants of the growing nation, and now, in its more modern form, the patent system may almost be said to be a peculiarly American institution. It is estimated that at present more than two-fifths of the world's important inventions originate in the United States. The records of our patent office are sought for and studied by the inventors and the scientists of every nation, and the wisdom of our advanced patent policy is almost universally admitted. Sir William Thomson said, in 1876: "If Europe does not amend its patent laws * * America will speedily become the nursery of important inventions for the world." No feature of our federal system has been proven of greater economic importance than the patent system. It will be treated, as fully as the limits of this article will permit, under the following heads: I. History of the System in England and America; II. The Existing American Patent Law, and the Procedure under it; III. The General Policy of a System of Patent Laws; IV. Changes in the Existing Law which would be desirable; V. Foreign Patent Laws.

—1. HISTORY. 1. In England. The origin of the patent system has been remotely traced to the guild monopolies which were a dominant feature of the urban industries of mediæval Europe. In its modern aspect and theory, however, the system bears no resemblance to the exclusive and grasping trades customs which brought the guilds into reproach; and it is generally conceded that the existing practice of letters patent for inventions is distinctively English in its origin. The form of the grant of a patent of invention can be directly traced to the exercise of the ancient prerogative of the English crown in its grants of exclusive privileges. The arbitrary and indiscriminate exercise of this prerogative resulted in the oppressive and galling monopolies which were abolished in the constitutional struggles of the seventeenth century. The grant of monopolies for inventions, on the other hand, seems always to have been regarded as just and constitutional. These were excepted from the sweeping prohibitions of the great statute of monopolies, enacted in 1624; and upon the provisos of that act there has been reared the modern English patent system, which in its essential features has been extended into nearly every civilized state.

—The earliest recorded exercise of the prerogative of the English crown, in a manner analogous to the grant of a patent, was the grant by Edward III. to two aldermen of a patent of privilege that they and their assigns should have the sole making of the philosopher's stone. Privileges of this nature, although rare at this early period, seem not to have been considered anomalous, for it is stated in a case reported in the Year Book, part iv., 40, Edw. III., fol. 17, 18, that arts and sciences which are for the public good are greatly favored in the law, and the king, as chief guardian of the common weal, has power and authority by his prerogative to grant many privileges, although prima facie they appear to be clearly against common right. On the other hand, the early popular and judicial disapproval of mere monopolies is shown by the fact, that about the end of the reign of Edward III., John Peechie, of London, was severely punished for procuring a license under the great seal for the exclusive sale of sweet wines in London. (3 Inst., 181.) Two centuries later, grants of patents, as well as of mere monopolies, had become less unusual. The reports of cases decided in the reign of Elizabeth contain dicta from which it appears, that, by the beginning of the seventeenth century, the English lawyers and judges had attained to something approaching the modern conception of patents. In the ninth year of Elizabeth a patent was granted to a Mr. Hastinges of the sole trade for several years of making frisadoes, in consideration that he had brought the method of making them from Amsterdam. This patent was considered valid until it was shown that some clothiers had, before its date, made baize of a similar material. (Noy Rep., 182.) In another case decided in this reign, a patent having been granted for the sole and only use of a sieve, or instrument for melting lead, it was said in the court of exchequer chamber, that the question was, whether it was newly invented by the grantee, whereby he might have the privilege of exclusive power over it, or else used before, in which case they were of opinion that he should not have the sole use of it. (Noy Rep., 183.) But the strongest of these early cases is Darcy vs. Allein, decided 44 Elizabeth, which contains the following: "Where any man by his own charge or industry, or by his own wit or invention, brings any new trade into the realm, or any engine tending to the furtherance of a trade, that never was used before; and that for the good of the realm; in such cases the king may grant to him a monopoly patent for some reasonable time, until the subjects may learn the same, in consideration of the good that he doth bring, by his invention, to the commonwealth; otherwise not."

—These cases contain the common law germs of our existing systems of patent law. In the next reign was passed (1624) the statute of monopolies, which seems to be the first statutory recognition of patents for inventions, as it is also the final parliamentary denunciation of mere monopolies. The proviso of this statute, which is still the foundation of English patent law, is as follows: "Provided also, and be it enacted, that any declaration before mentioned shall not extend to any letters patent and grants of privileges for the term of fourteen years or under, hereafter to be made, of the sole working and making of any manner of new manufacture within the realm, to the true and first inventor or inventors of such manufacture, which others at the time of making such letters patent shall not use, so as also they be not contrary to law, or hurtful of trade, or generally inconvenient." This statute is regarded as merely declaratory of the common law, and the following essentials of a valid patent are enumerated by Sir Edward Coke in his "Institutes": "First, it must be for the term of fourteen years or under. Secondly, it must be granted to the first and true inventor. Thirdly, it must be of such manufactures, which any other at the making of such letters patents did not use; for albeit it were newly invented, yet if any other did use it at the making of the letters patents, or grant of the priviledge, it is declared and enacted to be void by this act. Fourthly, the priviledge must not be contrary to law: such a priviledge as is consonant to law, must be substantially and essentially newly invented; but if the substance was in esse before, and a new addition thereunto, though that addition make the former more profitable, yet is it not a new manufacture in law; and so it was resolved in the exchequer chamber, Pasch, 15 Eliz., in Bircot's case for a priviledge concerning the preparing and melting, etc., of lead ore; for there it was said, that that was to put but a new button to an old coat; and it is much easier to adde then to invent. And there it was also resolved, that if the new manufacture be substantially invented according to law, yet no old manufacture in use can be prohibited. Fifthly, nor mischievous to the state by raising of prices of commodities at home. In every such new manufacture that deserves a priviledge, there must be urgens necessitas, and evidens utilitas. Sixthly, nor to the hurt of trade. This is very material and evident. Seventhly, nor generally inconvenient. There was a new invention found out heretofore that bonnets and caps might be thickened in a filling mill, by which means more might be thickened and filled in one day then by the labours of fourscore men, who got their livings by it. It was ordained that bonnets and caps should be thickened and fulled by the strength of men, and not in a fulling mill, for it was holden inconvenient to turn so many labouring men to idlenesse. If any of these seven qualities fail, the priviledge is declared and enacted to be void by this act, * * and yet this act maketh them no better then they should have been, if this act had never been made, but only except and exempt them out of the purvieu and penalty of this law." (Coke, 3 Inst., 184.)

—In spite of its crude economic notions, this commentary is an interesting and instructive epitome of the early English patent law. It throws light upon the origin of not a few of the legal doctrines which are the foundation of the patent laws of more modern times. Moreover it may be regarded as embodying nearly all of what continued to be the learning in this branch of jurisprudence for more than a century and a half after Coke's time. The system continued in a comparatively rudimentary condition until near the end of the last century. One or two incidents in its history should, however, be noticed. In 1639 a proclamation was issued, abolishing "all patents for new inventions not put in practice from the date of their respective grants." A still more important change was effected during Queen Anne's reign. Prior to this time the only recorded description of the invention or discovery protected by patent, was contained in a few words, giving merely the name of the process or the purpose of the invention. But about this time the practice was introduced, appearing first in Hill's patent granted in 1713, of requiring a patentee to cause a specification or complete description of his invention "to be inrolled in Her Majestie's High Court of Chancery" within a certain time, generally two or three months, of the date of the patent. This practice ultimately became general; and the theory then arose that the grant of a patent constituted a sort of contract between the patentee and the state, whereby the patentee was protected in the exclusive practice of his invention in consideration of his furnishing in the specification a complete description of his invention for the public benefit after the expiration of his patent. The specifications of some of the earlier patents throw a curious light upon the economic notions of the people. Weisenthal's specification (1755) was for "Working Fine Thread in Needlework, after the Manner of Dresden Needlework, and for erecting a Manufacture of that Sort in this Kingdom so as to be of Public Utility, and enable Poor Girls of Eight Years Old to maintain themselves without being burthensome to the Parish to which they belong." Other patents were granted for the few crude scientific discoveries and inventions of the time. No material progress was made, however, in the further development of the patent system until, at the end of the last century, a series of important discoveries was made which heralded the beginning of a new era in the physical sciences. These inventions were patented, and the patents became the subjects of contests which ended in a series of adjudications, beginning with Arkwright's case in 1785, in the course of which there were discussed and settled many of the fundamental principles of patent law. The inventions of Watt, and Hargreave, and Crompton, and Cartwright, soon directed attention upon the patent laws. Stimulated by the example of these men and by the hope of reward, men began to devote their energies to devising improvements upon the crude methods then employed in the industrial arts. The number of inventions rapidly increased; and while in 1750 the number of English patents granted was only seven, in 1800, ninety-six were issued; in 1825, two hundred and fifty; and the British patent office now issues annually between three and four thousand patents. The last steps in the development of the English system were the passage of the act 5 and 6 Wm. IV., c. 83, in 1835, and the patent law amendment act in 1852, which brought the system into its present condition; and finally, during the present year (1883), there has been passed an "Act to amend and consolidate the law relating to patents for inventions, registration of designs and trademarks.' This act makes certain changes in the present law which are to go into effect Jan. 1, 1884.

—2. In America. A few of the earlier British patents, as Cumberland's patent (1720), were granted for "Our said Kingdom of Great Britain, called England, our Dominion of Wales, and Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed; our Kingdom of Ireland, and our Colonies and Plantacions in America." Letters patent for inventions appear also to have been granted by the different colonies before the revolution. In 1641, Samuel Winslow, of Massachusetts, obtained from the general court of that colony a patent for his process of making salt; and in 1656 a son of Gov. Winthrop obtained a patent for another salt making process. Patents were similarly granted in Connecticut during the colonial period; but no organized patent system existed here until after the establishment of the federal government. The basis of the American patent system is the clause in the United States constitution which confers upon congress power "To Promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Patents thus became the subject of federal legislation, and in pursuance of the power so delegated, congress has passed a series of patent laws, commencing with the act of 1790. Under this act letters patent were granted upon "any useful art, manufacture, engine, machine or device, or any improvement therein, not before known or used," for "any term not exceeding fourteen years." The application for a patent was made to the secretary of war, the secretary of state and the attorney general, and it required the concurrent action of two of those officials to issue the patent. The specification or description of the invention was certified by the attorney general, and the patent on its issue was sealed with the great seal and signed by the president. No distinction was made in this act between foreigners and citizens, and there was no examination of the novelty or patentability of inventions. In 1793 a second act was passed superseding the former one, and making changes in the system. Patents were issued only to citizens of the United States, and applicants were required, before United States patents could issue to them, to surrender any patents that might have been granted to them by the different states before the federal government was established. This statute also provided that the application should be made to the secretary of state, and that interferences between applications should be decided by a board of three arbitrators. A government fee of $30 was established, and a penalty of triple damages imposed on infringers. Supplemental acts were passed in 1794 and 1800, the latter of which extended patent privileges to aliens who at the time of making application had been for two years resident in the United States, and required all applications made pursuant to that act to be accompanied by an oath to the effect that, to the best of the applicant's knowledge and belief, the invention "had not been known or used in this or any foreign country." A few years later the constitutional question arose whether a state still had power to grant patents, notwithstanding the provision of the constitution giving power of legislation on patents to congress. In 1798 an act had been passed by the New York legislature granting to Robert R. Livingston "the sole and exclusive right and privilege of constructing, making, using, employing and navigating all and every species or kinds of boats or watercraft, which might be urged or impelled through the water, by the force of fire or steam, in all creeks, rivers, bays and waters whatsoever, within the territory and jurisdiction of this state," for the term of twenty years from the passage of the act, provided that he should, within twelve months, construct a boat of at least twenty tons capacity to be propelled by steam, the mean progress of which, against the current or tide of the Hudson river, should be not less than four miles an hour. Livingston having failed to accomplish this, the same provisions were re-enacted in 1803, and again in 1808, securing like privileges to Livingston and Robert Fulton. Steam navigation having now become an accomplished fact through the efforts of these men, others undertook, without license from them, to use the same motive power in navigating the Hudson. Livingston and Fulton then applied to the state courts for an injunction, which was at first denied on the ground that the act of the New York legislature was contrary to the clause of the United States constitution giving congress power to legislate upon letters patent. But upon appeal, Thompson and Kent, JJ., held that the act was constitutional, on the ground that federal jurisdiction over patents was not exclusive, and the injunction was granted (Livingston vs. Van Ingen, 9 Johns, 506.) Similar privileges were then granted in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Tennessee, to citizens of those States. The question of the constitutionality of this legislation was subsequently raised in the United States supreme court, in Gibbons vs. Ogden, 9 Wheat., 1. The precise point was not decided, however, the New York act being held to be unconstitutional, because in contravention of the laws of the United States regulating commerce. Since that time, however, notwithstanding the eminent dissenting authority of Chancellor Kent and Judge Tucker, the opinion has prevailed that federal jurisdiction over patents is exclusive, and the question must now be regarded as so settled.

—In 1819 a law was enacted by congress, giving the United States circuit courts original jurisdiction of all actions arising under the patent or copyright laws of the United States. The first provision for the "reissue" of defective patents was made in the act of 1832, which also provided for the annual publication of the lists of expired patents, and established a system of renewing or extending patents about to expire upon application to congress. Another statute, passed in 1832, extended patent privileges still further by permitting every resident alien who had duly made a preliminary declaration of his intention to become a citizen, to obtain patents on condition of introducing the inventions into public use in the United States within a year of the date of the patents.

—Such was the earlier legislation of congress upon patents; and although many important inventions and discoveries were protected under these laws, the patent system as a whole remained as yet in a comparatively undeveloped state. It is stated that from 1790 till 1803 the whole business of issuing patents was practically done by one of the clerks in the department of state. In 1803 Dr. Thornton was appointed by Jefferson superintendent of this branch, and held the office until 1827. The whole number of patents issued from 1790 to 1836, a period of forty-six years, was only 10,020. The patent office now issues more than that number every year. During this period, however, the elementary principles of law governing patent rights were settled in the courts, and the foundation was laid in the decisions of Marshall and Story for the subsequent development of that branch of jurisprudence.

—The year 1836 marks an era in the development of the American system. In that year an act was passed which superseded the earlier legislation, and in an elaborate series of provisions, brought the patent system into something like its present condition The patent office was established as a branch of the department of state, and a staff of officials created, with the commissioner of patents at the head. The most important feature of the law was the provision requiring a preliminary examination to be made into the novelty and patentability of each invention before issuing the patent. This was a radical innovation, but it has proved a beneficent one. This law also made provision for the decision of interfering applications, and enabled aliens, after a year's residence in the United States, and under the conditions of the former act, to take out patents. The government fee for citizens and resident aliens was fixed at $30, while for subjects of Great Britain it was $500, and for other aliens $300. The reissue practice was confirmed and extended, and provision was made for the filing of caveats on incompleted inventions. The recovery in suits for infringement was restricted to the actual damage proven, except in cases where exemplary damages were proper, when triple damages were allowed. Exclusive jurisdiction in patent causes was conferred upon the United States circuit courts, and a board, consisting of the commissioner of patents, the secretary of state and the solicitor of the treasury, was constituted for the purpose of hearing and passing upon applications for the extension of patents. In certain cases extensions of seven years were allowed. Provision was also made in this law for the record of assignments of patents, for the establishment of the patent office library, and for the exhibition of the models which had accumulated since the beginning of the system. In that same year (1836), however, the burning of the patent office destroyed the interesting collection of models, as well as many valuable records, of the earlier patent system. A statute passed in the following year established a method of restoring or replacing the more important of the destroyed models and records, and also introduced the practice of filing disclaimers in cases where the original patents were void through inadvertently excessive claims. The act of 1839 provided that the existence of a foreign patent more than six months prior to application here, should not be a bar to obtaining a United States patent, except in cases where the invention had been introduced into common and public use in this country; but the United States patent was made to terminate fourteen years from the date of the foreign patent. A further provision of this act was that "no patent shall be held to be invalid by reason of purchase, sale or use prior to the application for a patent, except on proof of abandonment of such invention to the public, or that such purchase, sale or prior use has been for more than two years prior to such application for a patent." In 1842 provision was made for patenting designs for the term of seven years, and patented articles were required to be stamped "Patented," with the date of patenting, for the neglect of which a penalty was imposed. The system was further extended by the acts of 1848 and 1849, which latter act made the patent office a branch of the department of the interior. Minor changes were made in the succeeding years, and in 1861 an important act was passed empowering the commissioner to establish rules governing procedure in the patent office. The term of patents for inventions was extended to its present length of seventeen years, and the former laws discriminating between citizens and aliens were repealed. A uniform scale of fees was adopted, like that now in force; and in interference cases witnesses were compelled to attend and testify as before a court. A board of examiners in chief was constituted, intermediate between the examiners and the commissioner, to hear appeals from the former. Finally, by the act of 1870, the former legislation was revised and consolidated, and the system brought into its present condition. The provisions of this patent code are contained in some seventy sections, the effect of which will be considered under the statement of existing law. Meanwhile, the number of inventions has enormously increased. In 1837, 435 patents were issued; in 1860, 4,819; and in 1882, 18,467. These figures adequately represent the rate of the growth of the system and its present extent.

—II. EXISTING LAW AND PROCEDURE. Under the present act of congress "any person who has invented or discovered any new and useful art, machine, manufacture or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, not known or used by others in this country, and not patented or described in any printed publication in this or any foreign country, before his invention or discovery thereof, and not in public use or on sale for more than two years prior to his application, unless the same is proved to have been abandoned, may, upon payment of the duty required by law and other due proceedings had, obtain a patent therefor."

—1. Subject Matter. It will be observed that provision is made in the statute for patenting four classes of inventions or discoveries: arts, machines, manufactures, and compositions of matter.

—The statute term "art" is intended and construed to cover cases in which the essence of the invention consists in the mode, process or art of doing a thing or accomplishing a result, and not the particular machinery, apparatus or device employed. A mere abstract principle can not be the subject of a patent, nor is the function or abstract effect of a machine patentable. But the statutory expression covers and protects a comprehensive class of inventions which are combinations of arrangements and processes to work out new and useful results, and which are thus patentable irrespective of the particular forms of the instrumentalities used.

—Inventions included within the term "machine" are obviously those which consist of a particular mechanism or device, or a combination of mechanical devices or parts, as distinguished from a tool or instrument. To sustain a patent for a machine it is only necessary that the combination to produce certain effects be new, whether the separate devices or elements be new or old, provided that the combination is of such a nature that the inventive faculty was exercised in devising it; and, generally speaking, "a machine is rightfully the subject of a patent whenever a new or an old effect is produced by mechanism new in its combinations, arrangements or mode of operation." (Curtis' Law of Patents, 20.)

—The term "manufacture" is construed in the sense in which it is popularly used, to mean the product or fabric of a machine or of human art or industry. To be properly the subject of a patent as a manufacture, the product must itself be essentially new. Thus, an article in common use can not be patented as a new manufacture merely because it is fabricated by the use of new and improved machinery; nor is a product patentable under this head merely because a machine makes it more perfectly than it can be made without a machine.

—The term "composition of matter" includes "patent medicines" and all compounds or mixtures of substances, as articles of food, etc. The resultant article or "composition" must, of course, be new, to be the subject of a patent, but the question is not, whether the ingredients or components are new, but whether there is novelty in the combination, and the novelty may consist in combining, in new proportions, ingredients which have already been in extensive and common use for the purpose of producing a similar composition.

—Besides the foregoing classes of the subject matter of patentable inventions, the statute provides for patenting "improvements," and the larger number of patents are issued for improvements. It was early decided that a patent for the improvement of a machine is the same thing as a patent for an improved machine, but of course the patent can only be taken for the new combination. It should be noticed that the patent office does not undertake to determine whether the improvement will infringe an existing patent. But if the improvement is novel, the patent is issued and the question of infringement left to the courts. The test of the validity of a patent for an improvement of an existing machine, is to ascertain whether there has been actual and substantial change, or merely formal alteration requiring no invention. If no substantially new element has been added to the old machine, the patent can not be sustained; but if some really new feature has been introduced into the old mechanism, which causes it to operate differently or produces a new or better effect, then such addition will properly be the subject of a patent as an improvement. Two classes of questions therefore arise in passing upon the validity of a patent for an improvement of a machine. First, where the effects produced are the same, the inquiry is, whether the modus operandi of the improved machine is substantially the same as that of the old machine, or whether the difference in operation is sufficient to sustain a patent; second, where the effects produced by the improved and by the old machine are different, then the nature and quality of the effect will be the criterion of the validity of the patent. It should be added, that there is no distinction between an improvement on a patented machine and on one that is not patented.

—2. Qualities of Patentable Inventions. The essential qualities of a patentable invention are very broadly indicated in the statute. The terms employed in the act are "invented or discovered," "new and useful art, machine," etc., and the question, what constitutes a patentable invention, is therefore to be answered by referring to the adjudications of English and American courts, which constitute the common law of the patent system. It should be noted first, that "invented" and "discovered" are synonymous in the patent law; "novelty" and "utility," required by our statute, have always been held vitally essential qualities of patentable inventions; and the degree of novelty and utility—the "sufficiency of invention"—necessary to support a patent, has been determined by the courts in the numerous cases which have presented these questions for adjudication. The degree of absolute utility required in an invention is, however, slight. It is only necessary that the invention shall not be positively trivial, nor, on the other hand, noxious to public health or morals. The principal inquiry in patent law is therefore into the novelty of the invention, for the whole theory upon which the patent system rests, is that the patentee offers the world something new in consideration for his exclusive patent privilege. The novelty required by the American law is universal novelty, with the one exception that mere prior knowledge or use abroad will not defeat the rights of a native inventor, if the foreign invention has not been patented or described in any printed publication before the date of the American invention. The general principles governing the essential degree of novelty may be briefly summarized as follows: It is established in the early cases that a new use of an old thing—technically called a "double use"—is not patentable. Merely mechanical changes, or colorable variations, requiring no exercise of the inventive faculty; and, in general, alterations in the form or proportions of an existing device, can not be the subject of a patent. And while the invention itself, and not the mental process by which it was devised, is the real test of its patentability, it must still be observed that to support a patent the law requires it to appear that the invention is of such a nature as not to exclude the possibility of exercise of the inventive faculty in devising it. The terms "invented" and "discovered" mean that the subject of a patent must be a true invention or discovery, and not a mere mechanical improvement or substitution of a known "equivalent" involving mechanical skill or superior workmanship. But if the result, if the invention itself, is properly patentable, the law does not regard the mode of invention or discovery; and an accidental discovery or invention is, in the law, just as meritorious as one which is the result of laborious investigation and experiment. To satisfy the statute requirement of novelty, therefore, an invention must be substantially different from anything that has previously existed; and the criterion of the "sufficiency of invention" is the character of the invention itself, and not the degree of ingenuity or skill employed in devising it.

—3. Qualifications of Patentees. The existing law provides for the issue of the patent in every instance to "the original and first inventor." A radical difference between English and American law exists on this point. In England the first importer of an invention is treated as an inventor, and may obtain a patent; but under our system the patent issues only to the inventor. The only discrimination in our law in favor of citizens of the United States, is the provision that mere prior knowledge in a foreign country shall not debar a native inventor from obtaining a patent for an invention devised independently here, if at the time of making his application he really believes himself to be the first inventor. The foreign invention must have been patented or described in some printed publication prior to the date of invention in this country in order to deprive the native inventor of his patent.

—4. Designs. Section 4929 of the Revised Statutes provides that "any person who by his own industry, genius, efforts and expense has invented and produced any new and original design for a manufacture, bust, statue, alto-relievo, or bas-relief; any new and original design for the printing of woolen, silk, cotton or other fabrics; any new and original impression, ornament, pattern, print or picture to be printed, painted, cast, or otherwise placed on or worked into any article of manufacture; or any new, useful and original shape or configuration of any article of manufacture, the same not having been known or used by others before his invention or production thereof, or patented or described in any printed publication, may, upon payment of the fees prescribed, and other due proceedings had, the same as in cases of inventions or discoveries, obtain a patent therefor." The term for which these patents are issued is either three and a half, seven or fourteen years, and the fees are, respectively, ten, fifteen and thirty dollars.

—5. Procedure in the Patent Office. Since 1836 the whole business of issuing patents has been conducted by the patent office at Washington. Applications for patents are made to the commissioner of patents in accordance with a prescribed form, which consists of a petition for the allowance of the patent, and an oath that the applicant believes himself to be the first inventor, and that he does not know or believe that the invention was ever before known or used. These forms accompany the specification or description of the invention, which is by far the most important part of the application. The statute provides that the specification shall describe the invention in such "full, clear, concise and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art or science to which it appertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make, construct, compound and use the same." The object of this provision is to secure to the public the benefit of the invention after the expiration of the patent, which, as we have seen, is part of the compact between the patentee and the state. The specification concludes with the "claims," in which the inventor is required to "particularly point out and distinctly claim the part, improvement or combination which he claims as his invention or discovery." Drawings accompany the specification in all cases which admit of them, and the commissioner may require the applicant to furnish the patent office with a model or specimen, although these are now not often required.

—The application, on being filed in the office, is referred to the examiner or officer in charge of the department in which the invention is classed. The examiner teen proceeds to make an examination of the invention, and of the patent office records, to ascertain whether it possesses novelty and utility. An examination of the records of foreign patent bureaus and of scientific works is also necessary, to ascertain whether the invention has been anticipated abroad, or whether it has been described in any printed publication. If from any of these sources anything is found which shows the invention claimed, or any feature of it, to be wanting in novelty, the applicant is notified by the examiner, and a report is sent him rejecting the application, stating specifically in what features novelty is lacking, and giving references to such prior patents or records as anticipate the invention. The applicant thus has an opportunity to amend his application so as to make it conform to the state of the art, and to eliminate the features that are not new. If the objection raised by the examiner is deemed groundless, the applicant may attempt, by argument or explanation, to remove it. In case of adverse decision, an appeal will lie from the decision of the primary examiner to an intermediate board, consisting of three examiners-in-chief; and if the applicant is still dissatisfied, he can bring his case before the commissioner of patents. If no objection is raised by the primary examiner, or if all objection is removed by amendment or overcome by argument, the application is allowed. The fee upon filing an application is $15; and upon the issue of the patent, $20. The final fee is required to be paid within six months after the allowance of the patent, and the specification is then printed, and the patent issued for the term of seventeen years from the date of its issue.

—6. Reissue and Disclaimer. A further proceeding, of which the patent office has jurisdiction after the issue of the patent, is the "reissue" of patents which are defective on their first issue, "if the error has arisen by inadvertence, accident or mistake." Where the patent is invalid by reason of a defective or insufficient specification, it is surrendered and sent to the patent office with a corrected specification; and in a proper case, on payment of the duty, a new or reissued patent, in accordance with the amended specification, is granted for the unexpired term of the original patent. These reissues were formerly issued with great laxity. But since the decision of the supreme court in Miller vs. Brass Co., 104 U S., 350, the provisions of the statute have been observed, and the practice of repeatedly expanding patents by reissuing them is no longer possible. It should be added, that in cases where the inventor has inadvertently claimed in his original patent more than he is entitled to, the patent may be amended by filing a "disclaimer" of what is excessive, and the patent will then be valid for the residue.

—7. Interferences. Where an application is filed which "interferes" with a pending application, or with a patent granted within two years previous to the filing of the application, an "interference" is declared. The parties to the interference are then required to file statements giving briefly the dates of conception of the invention and of its completion, and the question of priority of invention is then tried by a somewhat cumbersome procedure. Evidence substantiating the allegations of the preliminary statement is taken on behalf of the respective parties, and the matter is then brought on for a hearing before the examiner of interferences. The patent is awarded to the party who successfully establishes priority of invention, and at the same time shows reasonable diligence in reducing the invention to practice.

—8. Careats. Protection is afforded to inventors who have not completed or perfected their inventions, by the practice of filing caveats in the patent office. The caveat is an instrument which recites that the inventor has conceived, but not yet perfected, his invention, and which sets forth in general terms the salient points and characteristics of the invention as far as completed. The caveator then prays protection until he shall have matured the invention. This instrument is filed in the secret archives of the patent office, and protects the caveator for a year, by entitling him to notice in case, within that time, any application is filed in the office which would interfere with the invention indicated in the caveat. In case such notice is given, he has three months' time in which to prepare and file a complete application for a patent. The caveat may be renewed for a year at a time, with the same effect.

—9. Assignments and Licenses. The transfer of a patent, or interest in a patent, is by assignment. The transfer may be either an assignment, 1, of the whole patent, 2, of an undivided interest in the patent, or 3, of an exclusive interest in the patent within any specified territory of the United States. The Revised Statutes require the assignment to be in writing, and provide that it "shall be void as against any subsequent purchaser or mortgagee for a valuable consideration without notice unless it is recorded in the patent office within three months from the date thereof." A license is a contract which confers upon the licensee the mere right to use or practice the invention, and is distinguished from an assignment in that it conveys no interest in the patent itself. This contract is not required to be recorded, nor need it be in writing, but may be oral or implied. Part owners of a patent are tenants in common, and are not bound to account to each other for receipts from licenses, and these latter may be granted by any of the co-owners without joining the others. An application for a patent pending in the patent office may be assigned in the same manner as a patent; and the patent will issue to the assignee. So also an agreement to assign a patent for an invention when issued will be effective, and specific performance of it will be enforced in equity. It has recently been held, however, that an assignment of an application, or an agreement to assign a patent for an invention when issued, must describe the application or invention with sufficient distinctness to enable the court to identify it.

—10. Patent Office Fees. The patent office fees, other than those already given, are as follows: On filing every caveat, $10; on filing a disclaimer, $10; on filing every application for a reissue, $30; on filing every application for a division of a reissue, $30; on filing every application for an extension, $30; on the grant of every extension, $50; on filing an appeal from a primary examiner to the examiners-in-chief, $10; on filing an appeal to the commissioner from the examiners-in-chief, $20; for certified copies of patents or other instruments, except copies of printed patents sold by the office, for every 100 words, 10 cents; for certified copies of printed patents sold by the office, 10 cents for every 100 words, less the price actually paid for such copies without certification; for certified copies of drawings, the reasonable cost of making them; for recording an assignment of 300 words or less, $1; for recording an assignment of more than 300 and not more than 1,000 words, $2; for recording every assignment of more than 1,000 words, $3; for uncertified copies of the specifications and accompanying drawings of all patents which are in print, single copies 25 cents, and for twenty copies or more, whether of one or several patents, per copy, 10 cents; for uncertified copies of the specifications and drawings of patents not in print, the reasonable cost of making the same; for copies of matter in any foreign language, per 100 words, 20 cents; for translations, per 100 words, 50 cents; for assistance to attorneys in examination of records, one hour or less, 50 cents; each additional hour, 50 cents; for assistance to attorneys in examination of patents and other works in the scientific library, one hour or less, $1, and for each additional hour, $1.

—11. Procedure in the Courts. By the Revised Statutes the United States circuit courts have original jurisdiction "of all actions, suits, controversies and cases arising under the patent laws of the United States." All proceedings, therefore, for the protection or enforcement of patent rights, except actions for the breach of contract relating to patents, which are cognizable in the state courts, are brought in the circuit courts or in a district court having circuit court jurisdiction. Under the act of 1870 the remedy of the patentee, where his patent is infringed, is either by action at law, in which the actual damage suffered from the infringement will be recovered, or by suit in equity, in which the complainant may obtain a perpetual injunction restraining further infringement if he establishes his case, and also recover the damages sustained from the infringement, as well as the profits realized by the defendant from the use of the infringement. Where the complainant, at the commencement of the suit, is able to present a strong prima facie case, he may also, upon notice, obtain a preliminary injunction restraining infringement pendente lite. The equitable remedy is usually adopted as being the most efficacious; but some of the archaic common law procedure is retained in the circuit courts, and the suits are as protracted and slow as the old English chancery litigation. Suits for infringement are brought in the name of the owners of the patent right for the district where the infringement is committed. The evidence is taken on behalf of the respective parties, supporting the allegations of the bill and answer in respect to the naked question of infringement, or the validity of the complainant's patent, where that is in issue. The cause is then brought on for a hearing before a single judge, who passes upon the issues raised by the pleadings. If his decision sustains the complainant's patent, and holds that it has been infringed by the defendant, an interlocutory decree is entered to that effect, and the cause is sent before a master to take an account of the defendant's profits from the use of the infringement. Upon the master's report the cause is again brought before the circuit judge, and the final decree settled, determining the amount that the complainant is entitled to recover. If the court decides adversely to the complainant, a decree is entered dismissing the bill. From the judgments and final decrees of the circuit court in these causes, a writ of error or appeal will lie to the supreme court of the United States.

—12. Infringements. The question, what constitutes infringement, is one of the most difficult questions presented to a court for adjudication; and the legal principles which govern its determination can only be roughly indicated in this article. A patent confers upon the patentee the exclusive right of making, using, and vending to others to be used, the invention protected by patent. The patent is infringed, therefore, whenever the invention so protected is appropriated in either of those ways without the license of the patentee, or whenever a colorable imitation of it, not involving new invention, is so employed. A patent for a machine is infringed whenever the same means or devices are employed, substantially as in the patented machine, to produce the same result; and it has been held, per Taney, C. J., in Browne vs. Duchesne (19 How., 183), that the mere making of a patented machine is an infringement.

—It is evident that a patent for an art is infringed when that art is used or practiced by another without license of the patentee, and that it is an infringement of a patent for a manufacture, or composition of matter, to either make, use or sell the article claimed in the patent. But the whole difficulty in questions of infringement consists in determining "what degree of resemblance constitutes the identity which the patent law designates as an infringement, and what kind and what degree of difference will relieve from this charge." It is well settled that the substitution of known "equivalents" for the means described in the patent is not sufficient variation to avoid infringement; and "by equivalents in machinery is usually meant the substitution of merely one mechanical power for another, or one obvious and customary mode for another, of effecting a like result." (Smith vs Downing, 1 Fish Pat. Cases, 87.) But the difficulty of applying these principles presents itself anew in every case, and it can best be solved by referring to the great mass of precedents in English and American law. It will be sufficient, therefore, to add, that substantial identity is the test of infringement, and that substantial identity exists wherever the difference between the patented invention and the alleged infringement is mere colorable alteration, and does not involve invention. In the words of Nelson, J., in Blanchard vs. Beers (2 Blatch., 418), "There must be mind and inventive genius involved in it (the alteration), and not the mere skill of the workman." But it should be observed, finally, that even if the variation involve sufficient invention to entitle its deviser to a patent, it will not necessarily relieve him from infringement if he still employs substantially the device covered by a prior patent.

—13. Defenses. In addition to joining issue on the question of infringement, the statute provides that the defendant may plead the general issue; and, upon notice, may prove on the trial the following matters: first, fraudulently defective or excessive specification of complainant's patent; second, that complainant's patent was surreptitiously obtained; third, earlier patent or publication of the invention claimed; fourth, that the patentee was not the first inventor of any substantial feature claimed; fifth, abandonment or public use two years prior to the patentee's application. In an action at law, the dates and circumstances must be appended to the notice; and in an equity suit, any of the above matters may be pleaded, and like notice may be given in the answer. The defendant is thus enabled to call in question the validity of the complainant's patent; and if he succeeds in impeaching it, the question of infringement is at an end.

—III. THE GENERAL POLICY OF A PATENT SYSTEM. Associated in their origin with the oppressions of the Tudors and the Stuarts, patents for inventions have since that time not infrequently been denounced as monopolies. In the earlier cases in which patents were brought before English tribunals for adjudication, the judges were reluctant to recognize the rights of patentees. Lord Kenyon is reported to have said, in the great case of Hornblower vs. Boulton (8 T. R., 99), "I confess I am not one of those who greatly favor patents," and Lord Erskine stated that "the ideas of the learned judges had been very different as to the advantages to the public since the statute giving those monopolies." Nor has the criticism of the patent system been confined to expressions of judicial disfavor of a century ago. It is still asserted by a certain school of economists that a patent is a true monopoly which robs the public, and that all systems of patent law are radically and essentially vicious. Within the last fifty years the system has been repeatedly assailed in the English parliament, and in this country the question of its abolition has been broached at Washington. In 1829, in 1851, in 1863, and again in 1871, the policy of the British system was inquired into by committees from the upper and lower houses of parliament in consequence of the violent attacks made upon the patent laws. At almost every session of the house of commons for the past few years, a bill has been introduced having for its object the unconditional abolition of the present patent system; and the supporters of this measure, led by Sir Roundell Palmer, constituted a faction known as "Abolitionists." Recently the farmers of some of our western states, in consequence of the extortions of the owners of certain important patents, notably the "wire fence" and "driven well" patents, have demanded the repeal of the American patent laws. M. Chevalier, the French economist, writing in 1878, denounced in toto all systems of patent law. In 1868, as secretary of the confederation, Bismarck recommended to the North German parliament the abolition of patents, and in Holland a law was enacted in 1869, discontinuing the system in that country from and after Jan. 1, 1870. From this résumé of the opposition to patents it will be seen that the question of the policy of patent laws is by no means settled. A discussion of that question involves an examination of the economic and legal principles upon which the system rests.

—The motive which originally inserted in the statute of monopolies the proviso from which later systems of patent law have been derived and developed, was, as its recital shows, to stimulate and encourage inventive genius in England, and thereby foster and develop the young industries of that country. There has since arisen the theory that an inventor has a property, or at least a quasi property, in his ideas, which it is both just and expedient to protect by patent laws. The claims of the patent system are thus rested upon the two-fold consideration of, first, a sense of justice to the inventor, and, second, a belief in the sound policy of stimulating inventive genius by holding out to an inventor a material recompense proportionate to his contribution to society.

—The soundness of these propositions is controverted by opponents of patent laws. It is urged that there is no right of property in the ideas of inventors which society is bound to recognize, and also that the evils and inconveniences of the patent system are not compensated for by its benefits. The first of these propositions is obviously theoretical. The assertion that there is a right of property in inventions is controverted by the assertion that there can be no property in thought, which is of the essence of all inventions, because it has not the attributes and qualities of material property. The former position is vigorously supported by John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer, while the latter is maintained by M. Chevalier and the British "abolitionists." Without pausing to decide this economic controversy, it may be remembered, first, that inventions are the product of most valuable and indirectly wealth-producing labor, and second, that the state can, as observed by Lord Brougham in Jefferys vs. Boosey, make inventions "a quasi property, or give the author the same kind of right and the same remedies which he would have if the produce of his labor could have been regarded as property." In this practical aspect of the question the theoretical inquiry becomes unimportant, since the legislature can and does endow inventors' rights with all the attributes of other property, just as it sometimes invests with such attributes its own franchises; and it is important to be added, this practice seems to be ethically justifiable. The whole question, therefore, resolves itself into one of expediency and policy.

—The most considerable objection urged against the policy of granting patents for inventions is, that they interfere with the principle of "freedom of industry" (la liberté du travail). This is the argument of M. Chevalier and the "abolitionists." It is by no means clear, however, as may be gathered from the following considerations, that the practical effect of patent laws is to interfere with freedom of industry in any degree whatever.

—Under a well administered code of patent laws it is obvious that nothing can be claimed and protected in a valid patent which is not new, which is not a true invention. The industrial world is not, therefore, deprived by patent of what it previously enjoyed, for by the hypothesis the invention is the discovery of some hitherto unknown agency or appliance. The fallacy of the assertion that freedom of industry is interfered with by patents lies in the assumption either that old devices are allowed to be covered by patent, or that new inventions would come into being in the absence of patent laws. But the first half of this assumption is negatived by the hypothesis that the invention is new, i.e., hitherto unknown. Passing, then, to the consideration of the proposition that new inventions protected by patent would be made without the stimulus of patent laws, we find that it is no less fallacious. A necessity, say the abolitionists, is itself a sufficient incentive to excite invention, and as soon as a want is felt, a hundred minds will be devoted to devising a means of filling it. But the history of industrial communities does not bear out this assertion. Not only is there a tendency among the classes actually engaged in manufacturing and agricultural pursuits to remain apathetically content in the use of already existing appliances, but there has even been evinced, and notably in England, a positive hostility on the part of operatives to the introduction of new, and especially of labor-saving inventions. A hundred years ago mobs destroyed the improved machinery of Arkwright and Hargreaves. Thirty years later, occurred the Luddite riots in consequence of the introduction of power looms. Competition will, of course, in time develop improvements; but the antagonism now existing between capital which most feels the spur of competition, and labor which possesses the skill to create the improvements, renders this agency ineffective to produce the best results. So long as the capitalist is to reap the entire benefit of an improvement, the inventor will be slow to devise it. There must be some way of appealing directly to inventive genius to obtain its best fruits. This was realized by Edward Bally, one of the Swiss commissioners to the Philadelphia centennial exposition. On his return to Switzerland, which has no patent system, he wrote: "We must introduce the patent system. All our production is more or less a simple copy. The inventor has no profit to expect from his invention, however useful it may be. It is evident that this absolute want of protection will never awaken in a people the spirit of invention * *." And yet the Swiss are reputed as ingenious as any other people.

—Still another consideration may be adduced to refute the claims of the "abolitionists," that freedom of industry is interfered with by patents. If the inventor keeps his invention in secrecy and allows his secret to die with him—which was the only protection an inventor had before patent laws became effective—it can not be said that the normal movement of industries is interfered with. In this case, however, he entirely deprives the world of the benefit of his discovery. But by taking out a patent he simply makes a contract with society, whereby his secret is surrendered in return for a certain fraction of the benefit conferred by it for a term of years. If the invention is valuable, the inventor's reward is proportionately rich; if it is of no importance, it can have no effect on industries. An inventor's patent excludes the industrial world from nothing it enjoyed before; it simply offers a novelty as a substitute for older methods. Undoubtedly, the system, because imperfectly administered, has had the effect, in many instances, of depriving the world by patent of old and well-known appliances; and then, as in England and France, the burden is thrown on the community of proving that the patent is robbing it of what it previously enjoyed. But obviously the cause of this is the imperfect administration of an imperfect code of laws. A patent for a true invention can never clog the wheels of an industry, since, if it be a true invention, it leaves the industry free to enjoy all the agencies and appliances known before the new invention was devised. If, however, this latter cheapens or improves an existing process, the inventor asks to share in the enhanced cheapness or improvement, which by the hypothesis his genius is the means of creating.

—Similar views have been expressed by so keen an observer as Mr. Herbert Spencer. "They fall into a serious error," he wrote in his "Social Statics," "who suppose that the exclusive right assumed by a discoverer is something taken from the public. He who in any way increases the powers of production, is seen by all, save a few insane Luddites, to be a general benefactor who gives rather than takes. The successful inventor makes a further conquest over nature. By him the laws of matter are rendered still more subservient to the wants of mankind. He economizes labor; helps to emancipate men from their slavery to the needs of the body; harnesses a new power to the car of human happiness. He can not, if he would, prevent society from largely participating in his good fortune. Before he can realize any benefit from his new process or apparatus, he must first confer a benefit on his fellow-men; must either offer them a better article at the price usually charged, or the same article at a less price. If he fails to do this, his invention is a dead letter; if he does it, he makes society a partner in the new mine of wealth he has opened. For all the exertion he has had in subjugating a previously unknown region of nature, he simply asks an extra proportion of the fruits. The rest of mankind unavoidably come in for the main advantage; will in a short time have the whole. Meanwhile, they can not without injustice disregard his claims."

—But the cause of patent laws does not require to be established in a negative, defensive manner. In the United States, at least, the beneficence of the system is so obvious, the claims of inventors are so meritorious, that argument is hardly necessary to make them apparent.

—Patents give support to a class of ingenious and talented men whose profession it is to devise improvements and make discoveries, and whose life and training render them especially qualified for such service. It is estimated that there are from five to six thousand professional inventors in the United States. But it is obvious that without a patent code it would hardly be possible to follow invention as a business. Experts might find employment with great manufacturers, but they could not feel the same personal incentive to make inventions which the patent system affords them. So that the first effect of patent laws is to keep these thousands of minds constantly engaged in solving the problems of science and mechanics.

—Patents, moreover, facilitate the introduction of inventions. They enable the inventor to give the capitalist something substantial upon which to embark his money; without which there would not be the same inducement to him to engage in the enterprise of introducing novelties if the results of his experiments and ventures could be at once appropriated by others.

—Patents give also to the inventor a reward proportioned to the value of the invention. The incentive is thus given to devise labor-saving and cheapening inventions. An inventor realizes that however ingenious his device, it can have no existence commercially unless it either cheapens or improves something for which there is a demand, or unless the invention itself creates and satisfies a new want. Bessemer's invention reduced the cost of cast steel from $200 per ton to about $55; and with all this reduction the royalty was only $10 per ton, or about 7 per cent. of the reduction. It has been estimated that inventions increase the value of human labor in this country 2 per cent, annually.

—These benefits will perhaps be still more obvious and impressive if we consider the practical effect of patent laws through inventions upon the industrial system of a community. The real beginning of the patent system was, as we have seen, coeval with the great scientific and inventive movement in the latter half of the eighteenth century. It is not claimed that patent laws originated this movement, but that they at least made it possible and accelerated it. A review of the history of the iron and cotton industries in Great Britain shows this clearly. In the year 1740 the total produce of iron in Great Britain was 17,350 tons. In that year Dudley's invention for using coal in smelting in lieu of timber began to be used, and in less than 50 years (1788) the annual production had increased to 68,300 tons. In 1788 Watt's steam engine was introduced for blowing furnaces, and for the year 1806, the production amounted to 258,206 tons. In 1830 Neilson's hot blast was adopted, and by 1839 the yearly produce of iron had reached 1,248,781 tons, and the annual production now averages more than 6,000,000 tons, of a value of more than £16,000,000. In less than a century and a half the production of iron has increased nearly a thousand fold, and it is the inventions of Dudley, Watt and Neilson which have at least made this increase possible.

—Quite as remarkable has been the effect of inventions upon the English cotton industry. At the middle of the eighteenth century the total annual imports of raw cotton into Great Britain were less than 3,000,000 pounds. In 1769 and 1770 were patented Arkwright's and Hargreaves' inventions for spinning, and by 1776 the annual imports of cotton wool amounted to nearly 7,000,000 pounds. In 1779 Crompton's spinning mule was invented, and in 1785 and 1787 Cartwright's loom patents were issued; by 1790 the yearly imports of cotton had reached 31,447,605 pounds. In 1880 the imports of cotton amounted to 1,628,664,576 pounds, and the British cotton factories now employ nearly half a million operatives. The amount of cotton manufactured in Great Britain has thus increased more than five hundred fold, and an industry has been created which gives employment to about one-seventieth of the total population.

—The growth of the iron and cotton industries may be regarded as typical of the general industrial progress of Great Britain during the last hundred years. More recent general advance is shown by the fact that the total exports of British produce have increased from £52,000,000 in 1848, to £223,060,446 in 1880; and in the same period the population has increased about 25 per cent.: from about 27,500,000 in 1850, to 34,505,000 in 1880. A comparison of the ratio of production to population at the former period with the similar ratio at the later one, will indicate the degree of increase in productive capacity. It is, therefore, confidently asserted that the most important agency in increasing the productive power of a nation is the invention and introduction of labor-saving devices, and that the invention of such devices alone renders such an increase possible, as is shown in a consideration of the above statistics of the iron and cotton industries.

—The history of these inventions, however, indicates that without the protection of patent laws they would not have been developed and introduced. In the case of the steam engine, for example, it was only after spending all his own means, after thirteen years of ceaseless experiment, and after obtaining from parliament the grant of a special patent for twenty-four years, that Watt succeeded in inducing Matthew Bolton to embark his capital in the development and introduction of the invention. It is estimated that £40,000 were expended by Watt and Bolton in developing this invention; and such was the hostility shown to its introduction that the patent had nearly expired before these men began to receive a return for their expenditure of time and money. A recent life of Watt states that the steam power of Great Britain is now equivalent to the power of 400,000,000 men—more than ten times the entire population and it is primarily Watt's invention and the countless devices of subsequent inventors which utilize the magnificent power he discovered, that have made England's industrial and commercial progress possible.

—The history of the steam engine is the history of nearly all great labor-saving discoveries. They have all originated in patent protected communities; and where the patent laws have not directly incited the inventor to make his discovery, they have still facilitated its introduction and development by enabling the inventor to enlist the aid of capital. The manner in which inventors are affected by patent laws is instructively shown by the following evidence of Sir Henry Bessemer before the committee of the house of commons in 1871: "My experience during the whole of this time (the years that he was experimenting) has shown me clearly that if I had had no patent law to fall back upon, I, as an engineer, could never have first spent two and a half years of my time and £4,000 in mere experiments, which if they had failed would have been an entire loss to me. Altogether I made an outlay of about £20,000, but of course I had a large stake to play for. I knew that steel was selling at £50 to £60 per ton, and I knew that if it could be made by my plan, it could with profit be sold at £20 per ton. But had it not been for the law, securing my right in my invention by a patent, I could never have hoped as a simple manufacturer to have recouped myself." Such has been the effect of the British patent system in two conspicuous instances, and such instances might be almost indefinitely multiplied.

—Turning now to the industrial history of the United States, the results are no less impressive. Perhaps no one industry has been more closely identified with the national life and growth of the country than cotton raising. It is stated in Smithers' History of Liverpool (p. 124), that in 1784 an American vessel arrived at Liverpool, having on board eight bags of cotton, which were seized by the custom house officers under an impression that cotton was not the produce of the United States. In 1798 Eli Whitney, of Westborough, Mass., invented and patented his saw gin for separating cotton from the seeds. Before this invention cotton could be cleansed only by hand, or with some rude hand mill. The utmost daily capacity of one of these mills was about sixty-five pounds, and by hand a man could prepare from one to four pounds per diem. With Whitney's cotton gin a single person could prepare in a day about 300 pounds—five times as much as by any prior method; and the daily capacity of modern gins is said to be about 4,000 pounds. The effect of this invention upon cotton raising was marvelous. In 1792 the exports of raw cotton from the United States were 138,328 pounds. By 1794, the year after the introduction of the cotton gin, the exports had increased to 1,601,700 pounds; in 1800 they had reached 17,789,803 pounds—more than one hundred fold in eight years; in 1820 they amounted to 127,860,152 pounds, of a value of $20,000,000, showing an increase in twenty-seven years of nearly a thousand fold.

—The story of Whitney's invention and of his almost unsuccessful efforts to obtain recognition of his rights as an inventor, is matter of history. The unscrupulous infringement of his patent brought discredit upon his contemporaries. But the record of the life of this man shows that he labored upon his invention in the hope of obtaining under a patent a share of the wealth it was to create; and had it not been for this hope, rendered possible by our patent laws, he could not have devoted his time and energies to the successful achievement of his great work.

—So the effect of our patent laws upon the general agricultural methods of this country is something almost incalculable. Nearly all the inventions which have made western farming possible on its present magnificent scale have originated and been perfected under our patent system; and the history of the development of our agriculture might almost be written from the patent office records of the annual achievements of American inventive genius. A single instance will call to mind the manner in which agriculture has been revolutionized by American inventions.

—Down to the beginning of the present century, the only great improvement that had been made upon the harvesting methods of the ancients was the invention of the cradle in 1794, by a Scotchman. In 1834 the first patent was issued in this country upon the McCormick reaper. It took McCormick about twenty years after 1834 to develop and perfect his machine, and it was between 1835 and 1858 that it was practically introduced. Their effect can be estimated by comparing in the following table (from the census of 1870), the agricultural population of the country with the amount of produce in which these machines are used, at the different periods before and after their introduction:

Allowance must, of course, be made for the innumerable other inventions employed in the culture of these products; but the general increase of per capita production can be roughly estimated from these figures; and while the farming population increased about 100 per cent. between 1850 and 1870, the produce of grain increased nearly 200 per cent.

—But the inventions to which this increase is due, could not have been devised or perfected without the stimulus and protection of our patent laws. More than 5,000 patents have been issued in this country upon reapers and mowers alone, and the latest machines embody the results of the life work of a hundred inventors whose only hope of recouping themselves for their expenditure of time and fortune was in our patent system, and who could not have labored without it. It is stated that the McCormick company alone has spent more than $1,000,000 in experiments, and it is also stated that this machine saves the country annually the sum of $10,000,000.

—Similar effects are to be noticed in our textile industries. In 1860 the number of hands engaged in woolen, cotton and other similar factories, was 181,550; the wages paid amounted to $37,301,710; and the value of the product was $196,416,400. In 1870 the number of operatives had increased to 233,328, about 40 per cent. The wages amounted to $79,401,367, more than 100 per cent. increase, and the product was valued at $395,158,565, more than 100 per cent. advance.

—It will be found in nearly every instance that the chief agency in effecting this increased production is the labor-economizing machinery devised by countless inventors, and patented among the myriad American patents. One more table will indicate the rate of increase in our general manufactures:

—But enough has been written to indicate the practical tendency of patent laws; and it may, perhaps, be safe to conclude that the opposition to patents, although directed at the system and demanding its abolition, has in fact been occasioned by the imperfect administration of still more imperfect patent codes. Especially is this true of the British abolitionists. The enormous expense of patent litigation in England, its "glorious uncertainty," and the practice of throwing on the public the burden of impeaching the patent without first officially investigating its validity, have opened the way in that country for great abuses, and have undoubtedly made the system unnecessarily burdensome to British manufacturers. In many instances under the English law, the manufacturer finds it cheaper to acquiesce in the claims of an impostor than to contest the validity of his patent in court. The remedy for these evils, however, and for the evils of the American system, is in reform of the law and its administration, not abolition of the system; and the fact that enormous benefits can still be traced to these patent laws, however imperfectly administered, furnishes a cogent reason for continuing and extending the benefits by continuing and improving the laws.

—IV. CHANGES IN THE LAW. The American patent system is regarded, both here and abroad, as the most progressive and complete existent institution of its kind. Many of the reforms and improvements in patent laws have originated at Washington, and have then been adopted by European governments. The most radical improvement in the system was made in 1836, when the patent office was established, and the practice of making preliminary examinations of inventions instituted. This latter feature is recommended by all economists familiar with the working of patent laws, as a desideratum of every system, and has been incorporated into the law of several other countries. Since 1836 there have been made minor changes and extensions of the American law, which have preserved and developed the general symmetry of the system; but with this development there have appeared certain defects and abuses which call for still further reform of the system, the character of which can here be only briefly indicated.

—The most impressive feature of the American system is its extraordinary magnitude. There have now (1883) been issued in this country since 1790, about 285,000 patents. During the year 1882 there were acted upon in the patent office 31,522 applications relating to patents, and in the same time 18,267 patents were issued or reissued. In that year only 6,099 patents expired; so that it appears that the number of patents is now increasing at the rate of 12,000 a year, and the records of the patent office are becoming enormously complicated. Patented inventions are there classified in 167 classes and more than 3,000 sub-classes. To preserve the system in its integrity, it is obviously necessary, first, that a patent should issue only for a new invention, and secondly, that it should be clear in its claims of all prior patents. A thorough preliminary examination of an application for a patent involves a search not only through our patent office records, but also through the records of the various foreign patent bureaus. A still more difficult task is to adjust the claims of a new application so as not to conflict with innumerable prior patents. It is vitally important both to the applicant and to the public that this investigation should be thorough and complete. This is every day becoming more difficult; and it is stated that not a week passes without the allowance of one or more patents at Washington for old inventions. Nor is this strange when we consider the number and complexity of the records to be searched, and the number of patents annually taken out upon certain subjects of invention. During the year 1882, ninety-nine patents were issued at Washington for cultivators and cultivator appliances alone. To remedy the acknowledged defects in the administration of our present system, several reforms have been suggested, the merits of which are obvious. These are: first, the requirement of a higher standard of invention to sustain a patent, rejecting the host of applications for merely obvious and mechanical improvements now indiscriminately allowed, which would relieve the records of the patent office and at the same time secure to the community and the inventor the benefits of all true inventions; second, the establishment of periodical fees as in the European countries, for the non-payment of which the patent should become void. This again would relieve the records by weeding out unsuccessful inventions from the patented list, and at the same time would work no hardship on the inventor, who, of course, derives no benefit from a patented failure.

—Another defect in our patent system is the procedure in the patent office through which the question of priority of invention between two or more applications for the same invention is determined. Without the constitution and without the judicial training and experience of a court of law, the examiners of interferences are called upon to decide, after a quasi trial, the most difficult questions of fact, in connection with which difficult questions of evidence often arise. And after the question has been litigated and settled in the patent office, it is not regarded as res adjudicata, but may have to be tried anew when the question of priority is afterward raised in court. The hardship of this can be realized when it is stated that these interference proceedings often take one, two or even three years before a final decision is reached, and involve the same outlay of money as do similarly protracted legal proceedings. But after all this, the successful party has not an adjudicated patent right, but an ordinary patent, which may be called in question in court. The successful litigant, as the outcome of his long litigation, has merely won a presumption. Moreover, there is no provision under the present system for mulcting the unsuccessful party in the costs of the proceeding; and the way is thus thrown open to any unscrupulous practitioner to debar and hinder an inventor, from obtaining his patent, by merely filing a conflicting application, with an oath that he is the inventor, and thus, without exposing himself to any liability beyond prosecution for perjury, he may involve the inventor in long and expensive litigation. So also there is no provision for the application of the doctrine of estoppel. The most obvious remedy for this defect is either to allow the rival inventors to litigate the question in court in the first instance, and issue the patent to the prevailing party; or else to restrict the function of the patent office to the investigation of the question of novelty, to issue the patent to the first applicant, and grant to subsequent applicants certificates of invention which would enable them, if they chose, to call in question in court the rights of the patentee. Unquestionably, however, inventors should be relieved from the possibility of being obliged to litigate the same questions twice, as is the case under the present practice.

—The decision of the supreme court in Miller vs. Brass Company (104 U. S., 350), and the later decisions following this case, have had the effect of reforming a great abuse which existed in the practice of indiscriminately reissuing patents. The statute made provision for reissue where the original patent was defective through inadvertence or mistake of the inventor; but in the patent office the practice had grown up of expanding patents by reissue so as to include more than the inventors originally claimed or invented. This practice was denounced as vicious in the above cited case, and is now no longer possible.

—A change in the statute law, which has been suggested to congress by commissioners for several years past, is the repeal of the provision which limits the term of a patent, where the invention has first been patented in a foreign country, to the life of the foreign patent having the shortest term to run. The motive which inserted this clause in our patent code was, to secure the patenting of important inventions in this country first, and perhaps also to obviate the supposed difficulty of continuing the American patent after the foreign one had expired, and thereby placing domestic industries at a disadvantage in the competition with foreign trade. In fact, however, this provision operates harshly upon the native inventor, who, if he first takes out his American patent, loses his right to patents in several European countries. The advantages of this law are by no means sufficient to compensate for the inconvenience it causes, and the provision should certainly be expunged from the statute book.

—It has also been suggested, that in certain cases there should be established some means of compelling patentees to grant licenses, as has just been done in England by the bill which received the royal assent in August, 1883; but the policy of this measure is at least doubtful. A more politic change would be the insertion in our patent code of a statute of limitations covering claims for infringement. Infringement is in the nature of a tort, and the claim should, therefore, after the analogy of other torts, be barred after a short term of years.

—Other and more radical reforms that have been suggested are, the creation of special tribunals to adjudicate the questions of patent law, whose judges should possess the necessary technical and scientific, as well as legal, attainments; and also the establishment of some means of securing to the court the opinions of absolutely unbiased experts upon the problems of science and mechanics which arise in the trial of patent causes. The present use—or, more properly, abuse—of expert testimony in patent litigation, is hopelessly confusing to the court, and renders its decisions uncertain and unreliable, as the conclusions of the court are often based upon the premises established by expert evidence. There should be some way, therefore, of enabling the court to call in the assistance of eminent scientists whose opinions would be uncolored by retainers from either of the litigants.

—Finally, it should be mentioned that, upon several occasions, the adoption of an international patent code has been recommended, especially by the patent congress at Vienna in 1873. There are at present no indications that such a universal system will be established, but it may yet be safe to conclude that this will be the final step in the development of the patent system, and that the time is perhaps not very remote when that step will be taken.

—V. FOREIGN PATENT LAWS. Taking its origin in England, the patent system has now been extended into more than forty states, provinces and principalities. Switzerland and Holland are the only considerable civilized powers at present without a system of patent laws, and in both countries strenuous efforts are being made to have a patent code enacted. Roughly speaking, the foreign patent systems, with one or two exceptions, differ from the American in not requiring an exhaustive preliminary examination of the invention as to novelty and utility before issuing the patent. Other differences may be observed from the following summary of patent laws.

—Great Britain. Patents are issued for the term of fourteen years from the date of the application, subject, however, to the payment of a tax of £50 at the end of the third year, and £100 at the end of the seventh year. The statute of monopolies provided for the patenting of "new manufactures," but by judicial construction this term had been made to cover the four classes of inventions enumerated in the American act, and the act of 1852 substituted the term "inventions." The patent is issued either to the first inventor or to the "first importer," who is generally the agent of the foreign inventor. The usual procedure in taking out a patent is first to obtain "provisional protection" for six months, after obtaining which "notice to proceed" is given and advertised in the "Commissioners of Patents Journal," with a notification that opposition to the application must be made within twenty-one days from the date of the notice. Three weeks before the expiration of the "provisional protection," application for the law officers' warrant and great seal is made. The final specification is then lodged, and the patent issues for fourteen years from the date of the application. To sustain a patent it is only necessary that the invention should be new within the United Kingdom; and an invention patented elsewhere can be patented in Great Britain at any time during the life of the foreign patent unless a specification or complete description of it exists in the kingdom before the British application is made. The validity of a patent is, however, generally left to be adjudicated by the courts; and it is practically the mere grant of a right to sue for infringement so long as the validity of the patent is unimpeached. Important changes in this law, which were made by parliament during the present year (1883), and are to go into effect Jan. 1, 1884, may be summarized as follows: the cost of patents has been greatly reduced; power has been given the board of trade to grant compulsory licenses in certain cases; and the provision that the British patent lapsed with the expiry of any foreign patent of anterior date has not been re-enacted.

—Canada has a patent system resembling that of the United States, and the various Australian colonies and provinces have systems differing somewhat in detail, but substantially like the English in outline and theory.

—France. Patents are issued upon substantially the same classes of inventions as in England and the United States, and extend for a term of fifteen years, subject to an annual tax of 100 francs. No preliminary examination of the invention is made, and the applicant is considered to be the first inventor until the contrary is proved. The question of the validity of the patent is thus entirely left to the courts, and in all patent litigation the burden of proof rests upon those who would oppose or impeach the patent. The novelty required is novelty over the entire world, and an invention must therefore be patented in France, at least as early as in any other country, as otherwise the foreign publication of the specification before the issue of the French patent, would invalidate the latter. The specification must give as full a description as is required by the American law, and the invention must be worked in France within two years of the date of the patent, to preserve its validity.

—Germany. The present patent system dates from July, 1877. Patents are granted for the term of fifteen years upon all new inventions, with some exceptions, such as foods and medicines, and are subject to an annual tax, which increases fifty marks each year of the life of the patent. The patent is issued to the first applicant, except where the application is shown to be made fraudulently. The patent office is situated at Berlin, and an examination of the inventions submitted is made by examiners somewhat as in the United States. Before issuing the patent the specification is published, and opportunity given, for eight weeks, to oppose the grant of the patent on various grounds, as fraud or want of novelty. At the end of that time, if there is no opposition, the patent is granted. As in France, the invention must be worked within the limits of the empire within three years from the grant of the patent, to preserve its validity; and in certain cases the owners of patents are required to grant licenses at reasonable royalties. Willful infringement is, under some circumstances, a crime, punishable by fine, and all infringement may be restrained by civil proceedings.

—Belgium. All applications for patents are granted without examination as to novelty, if they conform to the prescribed form, and all new inventions, except medical appliances and medicines, can be protected by patent. Patents are of three classes: of invention, of addition, and of importation. A patent of invention issues for the term of twenty years, subject to a tax, which increases ten francs each year of the life of the patent. The patent is void if the invention is not new within Belgium, or if any description has been published or foreign patent taken out upon it before the date of the Belgian application. A patent of addition is taken for an improvement of an invention already patented, and expires with the original patent. A patent of importation issues for the unexpired term of any foreign patent, if the invention has not been commercially worked within Belgium for more than a year prior to the application. The specification must be full and exact, as in the United States, and the remedies for infringement are substantially the same as in other countries.

—Italy. Patents are granted for the term of fifteen years, or for a shorter term, upon all new inventions except medicines. A peculiarity of the Italian law is the provision that if the invention be patented elsewhere, the Italian patent continues with the foreign patent of the longest term, if within fifteen years. The invention is required to be worked in Italy within two years, and the patent is subject to annual taxes.

—Russia. Patents are granted for a maximum term of ten years upon all new and useful inventions. An examination of the invention, both as to novelty and utility, is made, and apparently a high standard as to both qualities is required. Patents upon inventions previously patented elsewhere are granted for only six years, or less if any foreign patent expires within that time.

—Sweden. The duration of patents is fifteen years, or less if any prior foreign patent expires within that time, and the duration is fixed in each case by the chamber of commerce. The patent issues only to the inventor. The patent can not be impeached after it has been issued eight months, but the invention must be worked in Sweden within from one to four years from the date of the patent, to preserve its validity, and yearly proof of such working must be given during the life of the patent.

—Spain. Four kinds of patents are granted in Spain. A patent of invention is granted for twenty years, and a patent of importation for ten years if the foreign patent is not more than two years old; a third species of patent is granted for five years to any person who will work an invention hitherto unpracticed in Spain, although known there theoretically; finally, patents of addition are granted for improvements, which expire with the patent for the main invention. Each Spanish patent covers Spain, the Balearic Isles, Cuba. Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands. All new inventions, except medicines, may be patented, and the invention must be worked within the Spanish dominions within two years from the date of the patent.

—BIBLIOGRAPHY. Coke, 3 Inst., 184; Collier, Essay on the Law of Patents for New Inventions, London, 1803; Hands, The Law and Practice of Patents for Inventions, London, 1808; Godson, A Practical Treatise on the Law of Patents for Inventions and of Copyright; Rankin, An Analysis of the Law of Patents, London, 1824; Fessenden, Essay on the Law of Patents for New Inventions, Boston, 1822; Benouard, Traité des Brevets d'Invention, Paris, 1825; Regnault, De la Legislation et de la Jurisprudence des Brevets d'Invention, Paris, 1825; Carpmael, Law of Patents for Inventions, London, 1836; Edwards, On Letters Patent for Inventions, London, 1865; Aston, A Paper on the Patent Laws; Dircks, The Policy of a Patent Law; Brown, Popular Treatise on Patent Laws, London, 1874; Macfie, Abolition of Patents: Recent Discussions in the United Kingdom and on the Continent, London, 1869; Macfie, Copyright and Patents for Inventions, London, 1883; Chevalier, Patents for Inventions Examined in their Relations to the Principle of Freedom of Industry; Thompson, Handbook of Patent Law, London, 1882; Curtis, Law of Patents, 4th ed., Boston, 1873; Simonds, Summary of the Law of Patents, New York, 1883, Kleinschrod, Die Internationale Patentgesetzgebung nach ihren Prinzipien, 1855; Loosey, Collection of the Laws of Patent Privileges, Vienna, 1849; Gareis, Patentgesetzgebung, Berlin, 1879: Phillips, Law of Patents for Inventions, N. Y., 1837; Whitman, Patent Laws and Practice of Obtaining Letters Patent for Inventions, 2d ed., Washington, 1875; Hindmarch, A Treatise on the Law relating to Patent Privileges, Lond., 1846; Webster, Law and Practice of Letters Patent for Inventions, Lond., 1841: Johnson, Patentee's Manual, 3d ed., Lond., 1866: Walker on Patents, N. Y., 1883; Merwin, Patentability of Inventions, Boston, 1883.

F. W. WHITRIDGE.

PATRONAGE

PATRONAGE, in the sense in which it comes especially within the scope of this work, is the control of appointments and employments for positions of a public nature. Broadly considered, it extends to all selections of persons for service in corporations, churches, schools and other positions not within the private business of the person to whom the patronage belongs. It may also be regarded as including honors, decorations and pensions, under aristocratic institutions. In law the power of appointment and employment usually, but not always, includes the power of promotion, removal and dismissal. It will be convenient, however, to treat these powers separately. (See PROMOTIONS, REMOVALS FROM OFFICE, SPOILS SYSTEM.)

—Patronage of a character more or less peculiar arises out of civil, military and naval administration, respectively. Wherever there is a state church or an ecclesiastical establishment, there is, as a consequence, a kind of patronage unknown under the government of the United States. If we had space for pursuing the subject from the public departments down through the management of landed estates, factories, mines, ships, railroads, banks, insurance companies, and manifold other corporations in which the selection and dismissal of many subordinates is an important part of the duties of superior officials, as well as a prolific source of favoritism, corruption and extravagance, we should find the subject full of interest and importance. We can hardly go beyond its more public relations, and shall especially consider its responsibilities and abuses.

—In its primary sense, in politics and the church, patronage was a friendly care exercised by a superior over those who had in some way come under his protection, calling for generosity and disinterestedness on the part of him who possessed it. Works of charity, beneficences and patriotism were said to be placed under the patronage of the great and the good; thus inviting sacrifice and support as a duty. In Rome patronage marked a peculiar social relation between the highest class and that next in order, based upon the reciprocal relation of protection and loyalty. While the more honorable application of the word is not unknown in our day, patronage is now generally accepted as implying a selfish if not a venal relation, or use of authority and influence. The patronage we are most familiar with is that which is used, more or less unscrupulously or corruptly, to aid a party, a church, a faction, a chieftain, or perhaps the official himself who exercises it, his relatives and his favorites. Yet the legal control of selections for office and public employments, when wisely and conscientiously exercised, is patronage in the worthy sense. In refusing any political connection between the government and the organizations and officials of religion, the framers of our system avoided a large amount of the most pernicious patronage by which both the churches and the civil administration of the older nations have been complicated and corrupted. So patronage under our system was still further limited by our rejection of class distinctions, social orders, titles, and a complicated system of discretionary pensions in civil life. It hardly need be pointed out that under despotic and monarchical governments this additional patronage of the crown, in the form of a power to create political distinctions of rank, to fill the high places in the church, to confer decorations, pensions and social precedence, has been no small part of the effective force and coherence of the government, as it has been of the sources of corruption. "Patronage-mongering" is a kind of criminal offense in Great Britain, against which criminal laws contain provisions. It was a maxim of Napoleon that "religion and honors are the two things by which mankind may be governed"; and even in this decade, Arthur Helps, in his "Thoughts on Government," says the conferring of honors is an important function of government. And this is not all; for that form of government which creates a landed aristocracy and a church hierarchy lays the foundation of a vast social patronage on the part of nobles and great officials, while it does not diminish the patronage incident to the ordinary civil, military and naval administration. Hardly more than this latter patronage can exist under our institutions. But it is plain that, as wealth and population increase, making government, business and society alike more complicated, the amount and power of patronage, becoming more and more social and mercenary, must greatly increase.

—The civil administration of the federal government was carried on the first year with a revenue of two million dollars, and with probably less than a thousand officials: it has now a hundred thousand. The federal postal service in the beginning required only seventy-five postmasters. Under Jackson's administration it required 8,000. Now there are more than 45,000 postmasters. The increase of state and municipal officials has been in much the same ratio. In New York city alone there are more than 2,500 civil officials under the federal government. About 10,000 officials serve there in the employment of the state and the city; the latter earning annual salaries amounting to about $10,000,000. To all these, army and navy officers and the great number of federal, state and municipal employés must be added. In order to gain some definite conception of the stupendous potency of patronage in this country, even as a mere political force, we must consider the whole body of its officials and employés, federal, state and municipal, perhaps half a million in all; the vast sums paid to them; the manifold bargains, beggings intrigues and contentions for these places; the formidable and ever active power of removal and promotion; to say nothing of the constant and vast authority for discipline, regulation and favors on the part of those by whom patronage is wielded. There is not a state, county, city, ward, town or village, if even there be a school district or hamlet, in which patronage is not a constant political and social influence that is courted or feared. In each nomination and election, from those of the president and the governors down to those of trustees, justices and constables, the element of patronage enters as a suspected and efficient element, whether it be the patronage of existing officials who intermeddle, or the patronage—hoped for or feared—of the officer about to be created. In the eyes of political managers patronage is one of the most sure and potent of forces, never lost sight of in campaigns, and almost never recognized as under moral obligations. Candidates are regarded by the politician class as available in the ratio of their adroitness in promising and their unscrupulousness in using patronage to bribe voters, to reward electioneerers, to buy the press, and to conciliate opponents and rivals. Appearing as an element in large measure extraneous to the merits of the candidate and the interests of the voters, the influence of patronage very naturally and easily tends to demoralize and corrupt. This result is helped by the fact that no other great and venal influence in politics is with so much facility exercised in 'secrecy, or is so readily kept beyond fear of responsibility. Bribery by the use of money may leave some traces in aid of detection, but how can it be proved in court that a hint or hope of a place or of an official favor secured a nomination, a vote, or a supporter? How can it be proved in a court that the fear of removal makes a large proportion of our officials servile henchmen of patronage-mongers, or that hundreds voted for a member of congress, a mayor or a governor, upon some assurance—not of course in a formal promise—that the patronage of the new official would be used for the advantage of venal voters? Unworthy relatives, favorites, henchmen and dependents are appointed or hired in superfluous numbers for the public service by patronage-mongering officials; but how is it possible, except in extreme cases, to prove any wrong beyond the unwise exercise of a large and but loosely defined official discretion? There is, perhaps, no form of abuse in public affairs so easily practiced as that form of patronage prostitution which can secretly take place between a corrupt officer and a venal office seeker. One of the great evils of political life, under all forms of government, has been the abuse of official discretion in the use of patronage corruptly or selfishly. And it hardly need be said that, under the republican system in the United States—greatly as the sphere of patronage has been curtailed—it is yet one of the most potent elements of corruption and extravagance in our politics, the portentous effects of which are arousing the patriotic classes to a great effort for their removal. (See CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.) The pressure for patronage became very strong before any president yielded to it. It was great under Jefferson, and greater still under the last Adams. In 1825-6 the senate, on motion of Mr. Macon, appointed a committee to devise means for its reduction, which made an able report. The committee's report speaks of the "political machine," and urges the necessity of arresting the growing power and corruption of patronage. Five years before, Mr. Crawford, a secretary of the treasury and a candidate for the presidency, had procured the passage of a bill creating a four-years term for collectors, as Mr. Adams says, for the purpose of increasing his patronage.

—It should not be overlooked that a part of the power and corruption of patronage grows out of the ability of political managers and the patronage-mongering class to tax the salaries of office holders for the payment of party and election expenses. (See POLITICAL ASSESSMENTS.) The patronage system has yet another great element of strength—the ability of party managers and the lords of patronage to compel those to whom they give offices and employment to work, vote and be obedient to their orders in all political matters. In that feature of the system, which impairs the proper self-respect and independence of the public servant, is the great source alike of the servility of our subordinate officials and of the arrogance and potency of chieftains and party managers. No element adds more than this to the fierceness of these contests for patronage in which victory gives them a following of feudal dependents. (See SPOILS SYSTEM.) The abuse of patronage has not been confined to those upon whom the law confers it, but members of legislatures, of congress and of city councils, have usurped the appointing power of the executive, for the purpose of taking to themselves the patronage for their own advantage. Nothing is more essential to good administration than a real separation, in practice, of the executive from the legislative department, which is so carefully provided in our constitution and in that of every other enlightened nation. Indeed, the stability and perpetuity of the government depend on the preservation of the counterpoise of these departments. The officers at the head of the administration can be made to feel responsible for its good management directly—discipline can be preserved therein—only when they are able to control the selection and removal of all those below them. When presidents, governors or mayors are disposed to treat the power of selection and removal of their subordinates as so much patronage to be used selfishly in their own interest or that of their party, we know that great evils threaten the public interests. Still, when the authority and duty of selection and removal are, as they should be, left solely in the executive branch, the sense of undivided responsibility to the people is a salutary restraint. But no such sense of responsibility is felt when that power has been usurped by the members of the legislative department. The people do not regard the executive officer, nor does he feel himself responsible for good administration. The two departments secretly unite in foisting their electioneering agents, their favorites and dependents, upon the pay rolls of the treasury. Neither feels responsible for what he helped to do.

—Looked at from another point of view, we see it to be most dangerous to allow legislators—who fix salaries and the number to be employed in the executive service, and whose special duty it is to expose and arrest all abuses therein—to acquire a selfish and partisan interest in the increase of the numbers and salaries of these subordinates. They have no longer the courage or independence needed for that duty. The first salary to be reduced may be that of the relative or favorite of a member; the first person that should be dismissed, his electioneering agent. Yet members of congress—and of legislatures only in less degree—have become the greatest patronage-mongers of the country; usurping control over such subordinates in order to gain the patronage of places to be pledged for votes and other support in their elections; thus becoming directly interested, for themselves and their party, in the increase of the members and compensation of such subordinates. In that way, congressmen, in duty bound to aid the high executive officers in the practice of economy, have, through their appeals and solicitations for more patronage, become a cause of extravagance and corruption alike. They go through the departments and besiege secretaries and heads of bureaus for places. Congressional patronage—usurped congressional patronage, for, legally and properly, congressmen have no patronage whatever—has become one of the most corrupting and dangerous influences in our national affairs. In no way perhaps does it appear more threatening than in connection with the power of confirmation by the senate. (See CONFIRMATION.) This congressional usurpation of patronage has not been confined to civil offices, but extends to appointments in the military and naval service likewise. It has also taken from the executive almost exclusive control of the selections of cadets for the military and naval schools at West Point and Annapolis. Many members have unquestionably exercised this usurped control patriotically and honestly. Public opinion has so overawed others that they have, with great advantage to those schools, allowed the cadetships included in their patronage to be freely competed for and to be bestowed upon the most worthy, as shown by the competitive examinations. But in a great majority of cases, the patronage of these cadet selections has been simply added by congressmen to the mass of their civil patronage, which is one of the great forces that determine congressional nominations and elections. Vague hints in various quarters, that support may gain an appointment to one of these schools, may be made to secure many votes. To gain control of as much patronage as possible before the elections, and after the elections to find places for those to whom they have promised appointments and employment as a reward for electioneering, votes and puffing, during elections, absorb no small portion of the time and thoughts of all the more unscrupulous and partisan candidates and members of congress.

—The late President Garfield spoke emphatically on these points. In a speech at Williams college, he said: "Congressmen have become the dispensers, sometimes the brokers, of patronage. One-third of the working hours of senators and representatives is hardly sufficient to meet the demands made upon them in reference to appointments for office." In an article in the "Atlantic Monthly," for July, 1877, he says: "The present system invades the independence of the executive, and makes him less responsible for the character of his appointments; it impairs the efficiency of the legislator, by diverting him from his proper sphere of duty and involving him in the intrigues of the aspirants for office." In a speech in congress, in 1870, he made it clear that congressional pressure for patronage is as willful on the part of members as it is disastrous to the country. This is his language: "We press such appointments upon the departments; we crowd the doors; senators and representatives throng the bureaus and offices until the public business is obstructed; the patience of officers is worn out, and sometimes for fear of losing their places by our influence, they at last give way and appoint men, not because they are fit for the position, but because we ask it." As a further example of the consequences of the abuse of patronage, it may be stated, upon what seems reliable authority, that at least one-third of the time of President Garfield (before his injury) was absorbed by applicants for office, and that more than six-sevenths of the calls made upon one of his secretaries during a period of three months were for office seeking. Such are the effects in the higher departments of the government of converting the appointing power into patronage for selfish and partisan purposes. We have no space for tracing the consequences of a similar prostitution of patronage in state legislatures, city councils, or in the various grades of office throughout the country. (For a general statement of the abuses with which this prostitution is connected, see SPOILS SYSTEM.)

—So vast and familiar have the evils of patronage become, that some of the American people almost despair of their removal, while many more have come to regard them as original and inevitable under our institutions. It will not, therefore, be unprofitable to refer to the same evils and the manner of their removal in Great Britain, to whose administrative system ours is most analogous. (See Eaton's "Civil Service in Great Britain.")

—Wherever government purely despotic exists, offices and places are bestowed absolutely in the discretion of the ruler. Patronage, in its usual sense, can only exist where some degree of obligation to use it for the common benefit is recognized by the appointing power, and that power is, in some measure, held by great officers of state. Under the lowest forms of patronage we find offices and places salable, that is, treated as perquisites and merchandise, with but the faintest recognition of a moral obligation in the matter. We have only to go back a century or two in the history of the leading nations of Europe, to come upon a period when every grade of office and public employment and the patronage of the same were bought and sold, either openly or secretly, by kings, by princes, by nobles and bishops, by generals and admirals, by lords and those of every grade in the social and official scale influential enough to purchase or control a bit of patronage. Even within this century the English government has provided by law for the purchase, by itself, of patronage and offices (for the purpose of making them really public again), which had been for many generations private property, mere merchandise in the hands of patronage-mongers. In the British army the buying and selling of offices and the patronage of the same were openly carried on and were recognized as legal by the government, under the name of "purchase," up to 1871. English army officers generally obtained their commissions by purchasing them at the market price. The patronage of these offices had formerly been in a considerable measure a part of the perquisites of members of parliament. And when, in 1870, the attempt was made to suppress that patronage-merchandise, there were members of parliament who contended that such a system of patronage and purchase was essential to good army administration in Great Britain, just as there are now many members in our congress and many intelligent politicians who contend that civil patronage is essential to the life of parties and the management of our politics. So strongly was that theory supported in Great Britain that the bill for the suppression of patronage and purchase in the army was thrown out in the house of lords in 1871; but the abuse was in the same year suppressed by a royal warrant which superseded the old regulation on which purchase had rested. It was, however only done on the basis of an allowance by the government to the army patronage-vendees, as having a vested property in what they had purchased. An open competition of merit, determined by examinations, took the place of patronage and purchase for gaining office in the army, and cadetships in the military and naval schools. And promotions have been generally placed on the same basis (with a certain regard for seniority), to the credit and advantage of those parts of the public service.

—Almost from the organization of the state church of England, there has been a complicated system of merchantable patronage in its official life, nor is it by any means yet suppressed. Greatly as the public opinion of this country is blinded and blunted by long familiarity with the evils of patronage in our political administration, it can hardly contemplate without a shock the prostitution of patronage which long existed in that church, or even look without surprise upon the part of it which still survives there after patronage has ceased in her civil administration. Many of our party managers, who regard our vicious political patronage as original here, if not as quite defensible, affect astonishment at its counterpart in the church of England; they are too blinded or too ignorant to comprehend the fact that the same form of patronage we tolerate long existed in Great Britain, but has been suppressed there by methods which might be made equally salutary here.

—The appointment of archbishops and bishops, until the present century, was there as venal, mercenary and regardless of the public interests as the creation of noblemen, the gift of pensions and the bestowal of franchises, all of which were in large measure bestowed as bribes or as rewards for subserviency to the crown or the aristocracy. George III. made his infant son a bishop. It was the custom for an archbishop on the consecration of a bishop, to name a favorite of his own, whom the bishop was to "take care of," that is, to provide with a place and a salary. The bishop imitated that example in dealing with the rector; and thus through every grade a system of vicious patronage extended, down to the beadle and the chorister. This patronage was protected by law, as in the nature of property; that of the archbishop being known as his "option." Simony and nepotism were but designations of a particular phase of patronage. The right, or privilege, of officiating in a church (as a minister, according to our phraseology) was called a "benefice," or, in popular language, a "living," a name which marks the mercenary view taken of it. The right to hold this benefice, or living, was an "advowson," which was, in other words, the patronage of the rectorship or church. That patronage of a church, the advowson, including the titles and income, was sometimes regularly bought and sold long after the edifice had gone to decay, and the worshipers had died or scattered. The advowson (or right of filling the benefice) might be bought and many times transferred while an occupying rector was still officiating. The owner of the advowson was the patron of the benefice. This advowson, or patronage, was emphatically property, and was as fully protected by law and as regularly and openly bought and sold as cattle or grain; and with considerable limitations favorable to capacity, character and publicity, advowsons in the church of England are still generally bought and sold. The person presented by the purchaser, or the purchaser himself if he wishes to officiate, must be approved by the bishop before he can enter upon the enjoyment of his living; but the worshipers have no power to keep him out or to put one of their choice in, not even so much power of that kind as have our citizens to secure a good appointment in a city department against the will of the "boss" or the party managers. Many advowsons are at all times in the market for sale. The following is a specimen advertisement (of a very usual form) cut from the "London Times," of September, 1870: "Advowson for Sale (a Rectory), situated close to a good town in an eastern county. Situation most healthy and pleasant. Good society. Income, about £250 a year; and there is a prospect of a very early possession; excellent vicarage house, grounds, etc. Address J. B. Hill, 51 Hollywood Road, West Brompton."

—What scandalous consequences followed such a patronage system in more despotic and corrupt times, Mr. Froude tells us (History, vol. v., pp. 255-257) in this language: "In the country the patron of the benefice no longer made distinction between a clergyman and a layman. * * He presented his huntsman, his steward or his game keeper. * * The cathedrals and churches of London became the chosen scenes of riot and profanity, St. Paul's was the stock exchange of the day, where the merchants met for business and the lounge; where gallants gambled and fought, and killed each other." It was the natural result of such a system of church patronage, that he who had bought the office or place in the church was regarded as the owner of it, and under the common law of England even parish clerks and sextons have freeholds in their offices.

—Patronage in the church of Scotland was hardly less mercenary and disastrous. It was known as "lay patronage." John Knox in vain attempted to arrest it. It secured recognition by law, and led to scandalous acts of violence. For generations it was a prolific source of venality, favoritism and corruption, not only in the Scotch church, but in the whole civil administration of Scotland. It finally became so intolerable to the better sentiment of the Scotch church that in the first quarter of this century it caused a disruption of the church itself. Dr. Chalmers, leading the party which made a stand against patronage, secured a majority in the general assembly in 1834. A long litigation followed, in which the Scotch church patronage-mongers had the hearty sympathy of the English patronage-mongers. The courts affirmed a right of private property in church patronage. Thereupon Dr. Chalmers left the state church, and carried with him more than one-third of all the clergy of the church of Scotland. "Their once crowded churches were surrendered to others, while they went forth to preach on the hillsides, and in tents, barns and stables." (2 May's Constitutional History, p. 442.) In eighteen years more than $26,000,000 were contributed for the purposes of the new organization, now known as the "Free Church of Scotland."

—Supported by such elements of venality and corruption outside of party politics, it is hardly necessary to say that patronage in the civil administration of Great Britain was far worse than any we have yet developed, or that its removal was made far more difficult by reason of the patronage-mongers of the army, of the church and of the civil administration making common cause together. Whatever reform directly threatened one, indirectly threatened all. In her civil administration every grade of office and place centuries ago became patronage in the control of somebody—of the crown, of the princes, of nobles, of bishops, of great landlords, of cabinet officers, of members of parliament, of parties and of party managers. More grossly and boldly than ever with us, unworthy men were given places, and needless numbers were foisted upon the public pay rolls, in order to increase the amount of patronage. As with us, the public officials and employés neglected their duties in order to serve their patrons; and the most intolerable incompetency, inefficiency and corruption existed in the municipal administration. In the greed for increasing patronage, and for making it valuable to patronage-mongers and parties, the paramount tests for appointments were not fitness, but opinions, and the promise and prospect of work for the party and the patrons.

—Until about the beginning of this century parliament had not become so potent in the state as to enable its members to usurp any great share of patronage. But as their influence increased, they used it to increase their patronage. George III. was the last king who was able by direct authority to put limits to that parliamentary usurpation. He used the vast patronage of the crown as relentlessly as Jackson used that of the executive for partisan ends. He also used public money, equally with patronage, to corrupt opponents, to reward supporters, to make presents to favorites, and to bribe members of parliament. Under his immediate successors, members of parliament took to themselves the largest part of all civil patronage, and they continued to hold and to use it in aid of their own elections, their party and their favorites, until the triumph of the reform policy by which it has been suppressed. (See CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.) The patronage of members of parliament finally became the greatest and the most persistent obstacle in the way of reform, just as the patronage of our members of congress is now such an obstacle; in each country alike blinding the eyes, debauching the conscience and corrupting the morals of the members of the legislature; though such patronage here has by no means yet reached the shameless aggravation which it attained in Great Britain during the first half of this century. But with us it has one pernicious element not known, at least in this century, in Great Britain—that of political assessments, through which the patronage-mongering members of congress are able to coerce the public servants to pay ready money as well as do servile work for carrying congressional elections. In Great Britain the sale of offices in early times prevented the growth of the abuse of assessments; for who would pay a full price for an office, if, like ours, it was subject to an annual rent in the form of an assessment to be fixed at the discretion of members of parliament and party chieftains? Members of parliament were so suspicious of each other, and scrambled so intolerably among themselves for more and more patronage and a greater share of what there was, that, in mere self-protection, an officer was provided, known as the "patronage secretary," who arranged and supervised an equitable apportionment of the spoils; keeping books in which each member was credited with his share, and debited from time to time with the doles of the patronage he received. We have only reached the stage of patronage evolution at which much the same thing is done secretly and in a scramble by our members of congress, with frequent scruples and many protestations of disgust. It only requires time, however, to reach the full stage of the flaunting, shameless British development of fifty years ago.

—The experience of Great Britain is especially interesting, not only as showing the results which our evolution is soon likely to reach if not arrested, but as showing how such an evil, buttressed by many elements of strength with which we are not confronted, may be overcome. For patronage, in any other sense than the mere exercise of the appointing power in the public interest alone, has, in the civil administration of Great Britain, been, with very slight exceptions, suppressed. Members of parliament have lost their usurped control over appointments, and are therefore without patronage of any kind.

—After the creation of a sounder public opinion, the principal means there used for the suppression of civil patronage was the enforcement of rigid competitive examinations of fitness before appointments, by which the qualifications were tested which were required for holding the places sought. (See CIVIL SERVICE REFORM, ante, and "Civil Service in Great Britain," by D. B. Eaton.) Such examinations and conditions are obviously fatal to all partisan and mercenary enjoyment of patronage, and for that reason were opposed by patronage-mongering members of parliament, as they are now opposed by our patronage-mongering members of congress.

—The work of patronage suppression in Great Britain was also aided by more effective laws against bribery (known as office brokerage laws) than any in force in this country. (See work last cited, pp. 132 to 139.) Our statutes make bribery to consist in giving or promising "money or something of value" for the doing of the act, as voting, appointing, etc., and they do not extend to the promising of nominations or confirmations, or to influence for procuring them. The English statutes go much further; making it a penal offense to enter into contract for, on to engage in the business of, procuring offices or places for a consideration of a corrupt nature, whether valuable or not. The promise of official influence for votes or appointments is such a consideration. Some of the most comprehensive of our decisions against bribery and the corrupt use of patronage are based solely on English precedents—facts which plainly illustrate the potency of the patronage interest in our legislation.

—In the last few years there has been a rapid growth of public opinion, which sternly condemns our patronage system. Never has the levying of political assessments been so vigorously arraigned as during the present year (1883). More and more our statesmen are becoming convinced that the enforcement of that system does not even give strength to a party. Sober reflection and a more careful observance of facts are convincing them that fidelity to principles, the selection of worthy men for office, and honest, efficient administration, and not a venal and proscriptive use of patronage, are the true and sufficient sources of vigor, vitality and power in a party. British experience on the subject is securing the attention of our thinkers in politics. The enforcement of competitive examinations at the postoffice and custom house at New York city, through which the patronage there has been suppressed, by enabling the most worthy to win the places, in utter disregard and defeat of the practices and interests of the old patronage-mongers and chieftains of New York politics, has done much to convince the public that only a practicable and becoming effort is needed to achieve a suppression of patronage in our civil administration, as complete and salutary as that which has been accomplished in that of Great Britain.

—In that broad sense in which patronage may be held to include the legal and faithful exercise of the appointing power, it must always exist, and must become greater with the increase of our population and commerce. What is needed is a public opinion which shall be wise, virtuous and patriotic enough to enforce such exercise of that power, when aided by the better practical methods that are available for our use. It is necessary that every official should be educated to accept, and compelled by law and public opinion to act upon, the theory that there can be no proper and legal public patronage in which any officers or citizens can have a pecuniary interest, or, in other words, that there is no more moral or legal right to use the appointing power than there is to use the public money for the private advantage of any citizen, officer or party. We must have a public opinion which treats one of these offenses as being equally reprehensible with the other. For the legal principles applicable to this part of the subject, see REMOVALS.

DORMAN B. EATON.

PATRONS OF HUSBANDRY

PATRONS OF HUSBANDRY. (See GRANGERS.)

PAUPERISM

PAUPERISM. It is not to be supposed that the essence of pauperism is anything else in America than it is now in Europe, or than it was in the states of antiquity. But, just as the conditions of poverty among the Romans, the Greeks, and the Hebrews, were widely different from those of England and France in the eighteenth century, so now the conditions of poverty in a new and advancing industrial republic like the United States, must be very unlike those which have prevailed among the Latin, the Sclavonic, the Teutonic or the Celtic races of Europe; settled as they are under ancient and fixed institutions, where the distinctions of wealth and poverty are comparatively immutable. Where class distinctions have hardened into caste, pauperism must be a different thing from that degree of poverty which prevails among a people of permanent equality, or of ever-changing inequality. The modern city and the manufacturing towns are strong examples of this fluctuating inequality, where the working man of to-day may be the industrial chieftain ten years hence; and where vast fortunes, swiftly accumulated, are suddenly dispersed and scattered throughout a multitude. On the other hand, the villages and rural districts of America, and of some European countries, offer examples of permanent equality, which, of all conditions, is least favorable to pauperism.

—M. Baudrillart, in an article published in Block's Dictionnaire de la Politique, asserts that it is less than a century since the sphinx of pauperism began to put her destructive questions to the industrial nations of Europe. But this "riddle of the painful earth" is no modern one, though its form may have changed with the last century. The agglomeration of poverty in great manufacturing centres, like Manchester, Lyons, and the vast capital cities of London, Paris, Vienna, etc., undoubtedly accentuates and renders more perceptible the pauperism of the last half century. But is it not also true, as M. Baudrillart says, that great cities have always been sad nurseries of poverty? In Rome, from the earliest period of its urban greatness until it had been twice sacked by the barbarians in the time of St. Augustine, a period of at least five centuries, the relief of the poor was one of the chief functions of the state, and a very embarrassing one. The "corn laws" of Caius Gracchus (B. C. 128) were poor-laws; but the distribution of food under this questionable legislation was not wholly gratuitous, until Clodius the demagogue made it so, in the time of Cæsar's Gallic war. Returning from his victory over Pompey, Cæsar found 820,000 persons (the chronicles say) receiving this kind of out-door relief, in and about Rome; more than a fifth part of the whole population, if the figures were reasonably exact. He reduced them to 150,000, which was still, perhaps, one in eight of the population. The civil wars that brought Augustus to the throne raised this number to 300,000, which Augustus, in turn, reduced to 200,000; but when he gave his subjects an extraordinary donative, says Merivale, "the numbers who partook of his bounty swelled again to 320,000." (History of the Romans under the Empire, chap. xxxiv.) This careful English author supposes that the 200,000 occasional paupers mentioned by Augustus represented the whole poorer sort of citizens; while the 320,000 included those below the senatorial and equestrian rank. In any case, these enormous figures, though swollen by duplications, like the pauper statistics of modern times, show what a cancer pauperism had become in imperial Rome, which devoted a large share of its annual budget to the various methods of relief. Under the Antonines, when philanthropy and population had both increased, the number on the poor-rates of Rome is stated at 500,000. No modern city, except possibly Paris in the famine years of the revolution, or during the siege of 1871, could show so large a proportion of paupers to population. For this the simple reason seems to have been, that the familiar saying of Franklin, "If every man and woman would work four hours each day in something useful, that labor would produce sufficient to procure all the necessaries and comforts of life," was far less descriptive of ancient Rome than of great cities in recent times.

—In this view, and looking back over 2,000 years, it can hardly be said, as M. Baudrillart maintains, that "the concentration of pauperism has increased with the progress of industry," except in the restricted sense that the concentration of inhabitants, which industrial progress has produced, is necessarily accompanied by a like concentration of poverty. Indeed, the same writer goes on to say that this very progress of industry has lessened the sufferings of the poor, and increased the number of those who live in comfort. This is certainly the general result, though the crowding of artisans and operatives into manufacturing centres does often produce the sanitary, moral and economic evils which we all recognize from M. Baudrillart's description. In too many cities of manufacturing industry, rents rise and wages fall; the dark and narrow street, the promiscuous lodging house, the damp cellar, become the abode of laborious poverty, as well as of lurking crime; the father of a family drinks, the wife deserts the cheerless home, the son becomes a "loafer," and the daughter a prostitute. This happens often in France, Belgium and England, and is not unknown in America; to which the operatives throng by thousands from those very cities of Europe in which the evils mentioned are most rife. It must not be forgotten, however, that the sharper contrast which cities afford of the extremes of wealth and poverty, and the attractive force exercised by accumulated wealth in drawing together a corresponding accumulation of poverty, account in part for the startling picture of misery and degradation which manufacturing towns so often furnish. The same crime and misery scattered through a thousand rural neighborhoods would affect the public sensibility less than when it is found concentrated in Birmingham, Mulhausen or the manufacturing regions along the Rhine and its tributaries.

—It is further to be noted that, while the ancient cities were capitals of conquest and of commerce, the modern capitals are much more centres of manufacture and of public resort. The present age is migratory, both for the rich and the poor, and even the classes between travel for business or pleasure much more than the rich formerly could. Rome is no longer the seat of empire, but a caravansary for virtuosos and tourists; Paris is the home of pleasure, but also, and still more, the workshop of useful industry; so, too, each in its degree, are Vienna and New York. Migration, on the large scale in which it now takes place in central and western Europe and in America, is both a source of pauperism and a check upon its growth. It is to the immigrants and their children that we look for most of the public poverty that is now seen in the United States; yet the emigration of these very persons, or their fathers, from Europe, has checked the growth of pauperism in the countries they came from. With these preliminary remarks we may come at once to the subject in hand.

—In a restricted sense, pauperism is that degree of poverty for which public relief is provided; in a broader definition, it is that condition of body, or temper of mind, in large numbers of people, which makes them easy applicants for public or private relief. In the former sense, the word is a mere definition; in the latter, it points to a distinct and formidable social evil, always to be deplored though not to be wholly avoided. In neither sense is it new to the world's history, in the earlier chapters of which we find traces that pauperism was known and felt as an evil. But as a recognized and preventable evil, as a social solecism and a public nuisance, it has never attracted so much attention as now, in all parts of the world. In early times slavery replaced pauperism, and prevented its lesser mischiefs from receiving due notice; in the Christian dispensation, until recently, the relief of the poor has been viewed as a religious duty, and these mischiefs of pauperism have sometimes been fostered in the name of religion. For a century past, the saying of Burke, that "the age of sophisters and economists has come," is certainly true as applied to this subject. The religious motive for dispensing charity has been kept in the background, while its economical demerits have been increasingly insisted on. Were human nature other than it is, the religious and philanthropic side of charity might be expected to vanish from consideration, while logic and utility should rule. But the social and spiritual affections of mankind are such that pity will always give are charity begins, even for objects unworthy, and charity will keep on giving until good sense says "You are creating the evil you mean to cure." It has been a view of this consequence of public charity that, in recent times, has led to so many efforts for the prevention of pauperism, and so much censure on the practice of alms-giving, even for needful relief. Dr. Lieber, writing more than fifty years ago, when the founders of the English school of political economy were still living, and more influential than they are ever likely to be again, said: "In England, where wages are low, compared with the expense of living, an ordinary laborer often can not save anything against the time of decrepitude or sickness; and the children of suffering parents must suffer with them. By what means shall their present distress be relieved? The economists of the new school" (this was in 1831), "namely, that of Mr. Malthus, Mr. Ricardo, Mr. M'Culloch, and others, say that they are to be abandoned to starvation. But, says Lieber, "a doctrine so abhorrent to our nature is only a hideous theory, which can not enter into the law or habits of any people, until human nature shall be sunk into brutal hardheartedness. The dictates of religion, conscience and compassion enjoin upon us to give relief." Here is the whole question stated; and its solution must depend upon the wisdom and the daily details of administering those measures by which relief is now given, and in the future is anticipated or prevented.

—Among the latter measures M. Baudrillart, with excellent sense, but perhaps in a manner too vague and general, specifies primary and professional instruction, combined with moral education; a better system of housing the poor, too often crowded into unwholesome lodgings, so that better sanitary conditions may permit a better moral atmosphere; the dispersing of manufactories throughout rural districts; and finally, the general progress of civilization and industry, so that increased productive power may enlarge production. In solving the problem of pauperism, he says: "To increase production is the first step; to assist equitable and humane distribution of the products, is the second, which would be useless without the first; for nothing else could insure that, where there is but little, each person should be above want." Another French writer, M. Baron, who in 1881 took the Pereira prize for an elaborate work on French pauperism, entitled Le Paupérisme, Ses Causes et ses Remèdès, par A. Baron (Sandoz 8 Thuillier, Editeurs, Paris, 1882), goes into minute details concerning these general preventives of pauperism, laying stress particularly on the means of inducing the work people of his country to deposit in savings banks, insure their lives, and by other approved economical precautions, raise themselves above the dangerous level of their present poverty, from which it is but a step, in illness, old age or vice, to the abyss of pauperism. No recent work has treated more fully or ably of these subjects, and there is a degree of practical wisdom (not always found in economical writers) in almost all M. Baron's observations. I may except some petulant remarks which he makes concerning the "People's Banks" of the late Herr Schulze-Delitzsch, a German economist, whose services have been perhaps overrated, but who does not deserve all the scorn which M. Baron pours out upon him.

—M. Baron's book is clear in its definitions, and recent in its statistics, and I shall make much use of it in what follows concerning European pauperism. His definition of pauperism in the individual (which the French call misère—a word carefully to be distinguished from our English word "misery," by which it is often translated) is striking, and may be quoted. He says: "Poverty, then, is not pauperism; the former is relative, the latter absolute. At Rome, when everybody was poor, there were no paupers; it was the growing luxury of some which disclosed the poverty of others. But pauperism (misère) is the minus side of material existence, the foot of the human ladder (le fond de l'objection humaine); the pauper is confronted by this dilemma, to eat the bread of another or to die. A sad choice! either beggary or robbery or death; the degradation of alms, the dishonor of a thief, or death by starvation."

—This may describe pauperism in Europe, but with us no such fatal alternative is ordinarily presented. There have been deaths from starvation in America, but they were generally suicides, or the result of mental decay; there have been many thefts for which poverty was the excuse, and there has been much beggary in some of our great cities, but neither starvation, mendicancy nor theft have naturally occurred in our new country because of extreme poverty.

—The principles of prevention systematically developed by recent authors on the subject may be found concisely stated in Defoe, Adam Smith, and other early writers. That great pupil of Adam Smith, the younger Pitt, in a speech to the house of commons in February, 1796, while discussing a new poor law, said: "These great points of granting relief according to the number of children, preventing removals at the caprice of the parish officer, and making them subscribe to friendly societies, would tend in a very great degree to remove every ground of complaint. * * All this, however, I will confess is not enough, if we do not engraft upon the law resolutions to discourage relief where it is not wanted. * * The extension of schools of industry is also an object of material importance. The suggestion of these schools was originally drawn from Lord Hale and Mr. Locke, and upon such authority I have no hesitation in recommending the plan to the encouragement of the legislature. * * Such a plan would convert the relief granted to the poor into an encouragement for industry, instead of being, as it is by the present poor laws, a premium for idleness and a school for sloth. There are also a number of subordinate circumstances to which it is necessary to attend. The law which prohibits giving relief where any visible property remains, should be abolished. That degrading condition should be withdrawn. No temporary occasion should force a British subject to part with the last shilling of his little capital, and to descend to a state of wretchedness from which he could never recover, merely that he might be entitled to a casual supply." These remarks are all wise, and most of them are practical; but the new poor law proposed by Pitt in 1796 (which may be found printed at length in a valuable but little known work, Sir F. M. Eden's "State of the Poor," London, 1797), was burlesqued by Bentham, and did not find acceptance with parliament. In supporting it Pitt said he conceived, that, to promote the free circulation of labor, and remove the obstacles by which industry is prohibited from availing itself of its own resources, would go far to diminish the necessity of relief from the poor rates. He also recommended that "an annual report should be made to parliament, which should take on itself the duty of tracing the effects of its own system from year to year, till it should be fully matured; that, in short, there should be a yearly poor-law budget, by which the legislature would show that they had a watchful eye upon the interests of the poorest and most neglected part of the community." This suggestion has since been adopted, not only in England, but in many other countries, and in the separate states of our own country, as I shall show presently.

—Of the English poor laws in general, Mr. Senior once said that they had their origin, during the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II., "in an attempt substantially to restore the expiring system of slavery." This is a remark profoundly true; and it may further be said that the subsequent legislation, even down to a very recent period, in England, was quite as much in the line of preserving class distinctions as of alleviating the distress of the poor. In this respect the pauper system of England—indeed, of all Europe—and that of the United States, differ radically. Certain unavoidable distinctions do appear in our legislation, notably those arising from immigration in the north, and from the difference of race in the southern states; but the general spirit of the American poor laws has been friendly to the advancement of the poor man. In England and France, on the contrary, the effort for centuries was to keep the poor man "in his place," that is, to keep him still poor, and use him as a prop for the comfort and luxury of the privileged classes above him. An English pamphleteer, of no great fame, but of much good sense (Charles Lamport), made these remarks in 1870 concerning the traditional treatment of the English poor, under the laws of his country: "The poor-law theory is, that all occupiers of houses and lands shall contribute to a general fund, localized for better administration, to make provision against the wants and claims of the destitute. Its practice is, that no destitute person, however meritorious, can benefit by this organization without having to pass under something very like the old Roman yoke. On the one side of the Caudine forks, a man stands erect, self-respecting and respected, and with name unstained; on the other side he crouches, a changed and degraded being. He has become a social pariah, hopes destroyed, spirit crushed, reputation gone. Society, before it yields what it dare not refuse, so embitters the morsel by contempt that neither giver nor receiver is blessed in the act. The terms 'pauper,' 'parish,' 'poor relief,' all savor of social reproach. The poor are taught that it is virtuous to shrink from everything appertaining to the whole system. A beggar, even, will unblushingly ask for alms 'to keep himself off the parish'! On the other hand, the rich avoid the whole system as something tainted by social leprosy, and equally shrink from all but enforced contact. From father to son, through many a generation, the unconscious legacy of contempt and hard dealing has descended to us. Nothing testifies so clearly to the prevalent feeling of the upper classes as the persistent rigor of all legislation affecting the poor for 800 years. From Saxon serfdom down to modern pauperism the old key-note of contempt and isolation vibrates unchanged."

—Of late years the harshness of the English system has been softened considerably. Mr. Goschen, when president of the old poor-law board in 1870, said: "It can not be denied that the more humane views which have prevailed during the last few years, as to the treatment of the sick poor, have added most materially to poor-law expenditures. Workhouses, originally designed mainly as a test for the able bodied, have, especially in the large towns, been of necessity gradually transferred into infirmaries for the sick; and the higher standard for hospital accommodations has had a material effect upon the expenditures." The process here mentioned by Mr. Goschen has been going on rapidly in Great Britain and Ireland, and, indeed, in almost every European country, since 1870. In America the same thing has happened, and even to a greater extent. Whatever success has followed the attempts to regulate pauperism, either in America or Europe, has been gained by reversing the English practice of suspicion, contempt and abasement; by classifying the poor according to their real character and needs, and treating the money for their relief as an insurance fund, to which they or their representatives had contributed their full share. The poor rate is, properly, an insurance premium; the poor-law system of any country should be what Mr. Lamport desires to make that of England, a "National Friendly Society." That the plague of pauperism has never spread widely in America is due mainly to our institutions, and the opportunity which is offered to the poor man; that it has been controlled and diminished, where a dense population and the varied competitions of industry had given it a foothold, must be ascribed, in part at least, to measures such as Mr. Pitt recommended, enforced in a country where external circumstances have made it easier than it ever has been in England. It was certainly one of the strangest vagaries of the reasoning faculty which led Englishmen, in the early half of the present century, to deny that public charity was a duty, or even an admissible interference with individual duties and the laws of political economy; yet so common was this view, fifty years ago, that Edward Livingston, in the introduction to his "Penal Code for Louisiana," felt called upon to stop and refute it. He pointed out, what everybody admits in practice, that every community owes a social duty to the individuals that compose it, and is bound to guarantee them their lives and property, that the obligation to protect life is greater than any other, since all the rest depends upon it; and that the prevention of death by poverty is as much a public duty as the repression of murder is. From this impregnable position he proceeded to develop his own ingenious and mainly correct system of the administration of public charity.

—Josiah Quincy, of Massachusetts, a contemporary of Edward Livingston, gave his attention even more directly to the question of pauperism. In a report to the Massachusetts legislature, in 1821, he recommended "placing the whole subject of the poor in the commonwealth under the regular and annual superintendence of the legislature," thus anticipating, by more than forty years, the course that has since been adopted by all the larger and more important states in the Union, and is likely to become the universal American policy. The creation of boards of charities in Massachusetts in 1863, in New York and Ohio in 1868, in Pennsylvania, Illinois and Rhode Island in 1869, and in Wisconsin and other states in more recent years is the modern interpretation of the recommendation made by Mr. Quincy to the Massachusetts legislature. The establishment of these boards has resulted in a much fuller knowledge of pauperism in America than could before be obtained. Co-operating with thousands of local officers, and with the general tendency of American ideas and institutions, they have labored to reduce pauperism to its lowest terms, to ameliorate the condition of all the dependent and defective classes, and to prevent the formation or continuance of that permanent case of the poor which is the curse of European civilizations. The experience of Massachusetts and of other states shows that this is possible to a great extent. In the midst of the activities, generous or base, and the distracting turmoil of American life, it is cheering to find that we are really making progress in this direction; that we have not only abolished slavery and the political distinctions founded thereon, but are steadily advancing toward emancipation from the most hideous forms and consequences of the pauperism that everywhere replaces slavery when first abolished. The so-called "feudalism of capital"—a vague phrase, which yet has a recognized shade of meaning—does something to perpetuate pauperism, but the material advantages which organized capital gives to the poor, are working, on the whole, against the increase of paupers. This is seen even in English manufacturing towns, and still more in those of America.

—Historically speaking, there is a certain connection, though not a very close one, between the American poor laws and the evil with which they deal, and the poor laws of England and pauperism there. Mention has been made of the earliest legislation of England, but the progressive steps of the system now existing there may be more definitely noted. It is less than three centuries since the law of England distinctly made provision for the support of the poor at the public charge. By an act of parliament in 1572 the office of overseer of the poor was established, and by the act of 1601 (43 Elizabeth) a general plan of relief for the poor was adopted and enforced throughout England. But there were laws and customs bearing more or less directly on the condition of the poor, and dating back, according to Sir George Nicholls, to the time of Athelstan, nearly a thousand years ago. It is worth noticing that most of these ancient laws are penal in their character rather than charitable, being aimed at the evils of idleness and vagrancy, and therefore particularly numerous, when, from any great social change, like the emancipation of the serfs in the time of Richard II., or the breaking up of the monasteries under Henry VIII., the tendency to vagrancy had grown stronger. Thus, the insurrection of Wat Tyler in 1381 (which was a servile war, and, like most servile wars, was occasioned by a partial emancipation of the serfs), was followed in 1388 by that off-cited statute, 12 Richard II., which is sometimes called the origin of the poor laws of England and America. Again, the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536-9 was both preceded and followed by cruel statutes against vagrancy. The statute 22 Henry VIII., cap. 12, in 1531, punished vagabonds with the lash, till they were "bloody by reason of such whipping"; and the still more cruel statute. Edward VI., cap. 3, punished them by branding and by selling into slavery. But these laws were found too extreme, and therefore ineffectual to repress beggary, and they were followed, even during Edward's brief reign, by a more humane law, which provided for the choice of collectors of alms in every parish, whose business it should be on Sundays to "gently ask and demand of every man and woman what they of their charity will give weekly toward the relief of the poor," and to "justly gather and truly distribute the same charitable alms weekly to the said poor and impotent persons." We should prefer to consider this merciful statute, rather than the barbarous enactments of an earlier day, as the origin of our American poor laws. It was continued by special acts in the reigns of Mary, of Philip and Mary, and of Elizabeth. The latter, in the fifth year of her reign (1562), decreed a compulsory tax, "if any person of his froward or willful mind shall obstinately refuse to give weekly to the relief of the poor according to his ability." After a course of gentle exhortations by the parson, the church-wardens, the bishop and the trial justices of his neighborhood, the affair ended in a commitment to jail, if "the said obstinate person" should resist all these blandishments. This is the first instance of a compulsory poor rate; and it was followed, ten years later, by an act authorizing justices, among other things, to appoint overseers of the poor, "and if a person so appointed shall refuse to act, he shall forfeit ten shillings." This stand-and-deliver kind of benevolence was carried out more completely toward beggars, whose offense was made a felony, and was visited with whippings, diversified with branding, confiscation and hanging. Sir George Nicholls observes, with simplicity, that "the act is framed with great care, and comprises all the chief points of poor-law legislation suited to the period;" adding, that these points are set forth with a clearness "which leaves no room for doubt as to the intentions of the legislature in any case." Certainly; the provisions against vagrancy were likely to carry conviction to the wayfaring man; and a person locked up in jail till he should show mercy to the poor would soon learn how sacredly charity was regarded in England.

—The act of 1601, better known as 43 Elizabeth, is the actual foundation of the English poor laws, and of those in force in the United States. It provides for the employment, either voluntary or compulsory, of poor children and able-bodied adults, and "for the necessary relief of the lame, impotent, old and blind, and such other among them being poor and notable to work." To support the expense of this, a tax was laid on every inhabitant and owner in every parish in England. About sixty years after the death of Elizabeth, when the public relief of the poor had been developed into a system, another important law was passed. This was the settlement act of 1662, giving the power of compulsory removal, from any parish, of poor persons not legally settled therein, and in a certain general way defining what constitutes a pauper settlement. On these two pillars—the 43 Elizabeth and the 14 Charles II.—rests the subsequent legislation on these subjects in England and the United States. But so materially has the course of legislation been modified in America by the great difference existing between our circumstances and those of the mother country, that it is impossible to draw a close parallel between our poor laws and those of England, either in their aim, their details or their results. These laws in England were made necessary by the presence of a great and persistent class of poor persons, many of whom were also vicious characters, needing all the restraints of the law. Hence the severity of the early statutes against vagrants, laws which were at first the germ of the whole poor law system, and have made no inconsiderable part of it. But in America no such pauper class existed at the outset, and our arrangements for relieving the poor have been such as to prevent the creation of such a class. It was, in fact, to make room for the poor cottagers of England, as well as to seek freedom for their religion, that John Winthrop and his followers colonized New England. In a paper written before he set sail for Boston in 1629, Winthrop said: "This land [of England] grows weary of her inhabitants, so as man, who is the most precious of all creatures, is here more vile and base than the earth we tread upon, and of less price among us than a horse or sheep. Many of our people perish for want of sustenance and employment; many others live miserably, and not to the honour of so bountiful a housekeeper as the Lord of heaven and earth is, through the scarcity of the fruits of the earth. All our towns complain of the burden of poor people, and strive by all means to rid any such as they have, and to keep off such as would come to them. I must tell you that our dear mother finds her family so overcharged as she hath been forced to deny harbor to her own children; witness the statutes against cottages and inmates. And thus it is come to pass that children, servants and neighbors, especially if they be poor, are counted the greatest burthen, which, if things were right, would be the chiefest earthly blessings." To make things "right" in this respect, America was colonized, and for 150 years there was little pauperism in these colonies. But the French war of 1754-63, the revolutionary war, and the disturbed state of Europe from 1788 to 1820, led to a considerable development of pauperism in the new republic of Washington, Adams and Jefferson. Since 1820, though the number of our poor has greatly increased, the proportion of paupers to population has not, on the whole, been greater than it was from 1783 to 1820, if we may trust the meagre statistics available for the earlier period. Of late years there has been much complaint that "the rich were growing richer, and the poor poorer," and, relatively speaking, this is true, as it generally is in civilized communities. But, as compared with the standard of riches and poverty a hundred years ago, in America, and from that time to 1825, the American poor man has been growing generally richer in a remarkable degree. Before 1825, great fortunes were very rare among our people; while the mass of the farmers, mechanics and laborers, north, south, east and west, were pinched and straitened to a degree that would now excite universal discontent, should those good old times return. Whoever has read the biography of Abraham Lincoln, or has learned the habits of life among the country people of Ohio, Pennsylvania or New England, eighty or ninety years ago, will understand what is meant by the common level of poverty among them. Their firewood was cheap, and their liquor was abundant; but their dwellings, their food, their garments, their means of education, travel and amusement, were very inferior to those which the same class of persons now enjoy; and in proportion to the population, pauperism was as common, if not quite so obvious, from 1778 to 1818, or it has ever been since. The researches of Quincy and others in Massachusetts indicate this; and where there has been of late years any relative increase of pauperism, it has been almost wholly in the persons of foreign parentage. That there has been an absolute decrease of native pauperism may be seen by the experience of my own town, which is not unlike that of most country villages in New England. In 1833 Concord, in Massachusetts, had about 2,000 inhabitants, of whom not more than fifty were foreigners. In 1883 it has more than 3,300 free inhabitants (besides 650 prisoners), of whom not less than 900 are either foreign-born or of foreign parentage, chiefly Irish. The number of paupers in Concord was actually greater in 1833 than it is now, when the population has gained 65 per cent.; yet more than half the present pauperism is among that class which has come into the town in the last fifty years; so that the 1,950 native-born inhabitants in 1833 must have furnished twice as many paupers as do the 2,400 native-born in 1883. In fact, two-thirds of the abundant pauperism of Massachusetts, is found among the immigrants of the last thirty years, and their descendants.

—The census tables of 1880 do not show this great excess of paupers of foreign parentage in Massachusetts, nor perhaps in any State; because these tables do not, in fact, give even an approximation to the truth concerning American pauperism. In Massachusetts, for example, the census gives the inmates of almshouses, June 1, 1880, as 4,469, and the out-door paupers as only 954; whereas, by authentic official returns, July 1, 1880, there were not less than 12,000 out-door paupers receiving aid on that day. The average number of the out-door poor in Massachusetts is never less than three times the number in poorhouses; and has sometimes, within the past ten years, risen to be more than five times as many. The census of 1880, therefore, in leaving out of view more than nine-tenths of the out-door poor, in Massachusetts and other States, vitiates its own value for any statistical purpose. Indeed, Mr. Wines says in the preface to his meagre table (Compendium of the Tenth Census, p. 1666), "It is almost, if not quite, impossible to obtain the statistics of pauperism. The in-door poor can be found and counted with comparative ease; but how are we to know when we have succeeded in finding the out-door poor? All that has been attempted in the present census, therefore, has been to give as accurate an account as possible of the almshouse population." And this he states in his table (p. 1675) as 67,067; the whole population of the country being then 50,155,783. If we could assume this proportion of almshouse or workhouse population to the whole people, as the true test of comparative pauperism, then Ireland in 1880, with 5,327,100 inhabitants, and an average of 54,946 in workhouses, would have eight times as much pauperism as the United States; while England, which in 1880, with a population of 25,323,000, had 180,817 in-door paupers, would have nearly six times as much pauperism as the United States. In fact, no combination of figures, in the present state of human knowledge, can show with much exactness what is the relative prevalence of pauperism in countries differing widely in accumulated wealth, in natural plenty or want, in commercial facilities and in political institutions; but if we are to compare the declared paupers of one country with those of another, or of one American state with another, the best standard is not the relative number of either the in-door or the out-door poor, but rather the proportion which the aggregate of both classes bears to the whole population.

—Now, the state of Massachusetts in 1880, with a population of 1,783,085, or about one-third that of Ireland, had an average of about 25,000 paupers of both classes; while Ireland had about 114,000 paupers of both classes; so that pauperism in Ireland, thus shown, was less than twice as common as in Massachusetts. In England, with a population of 25,323,000 in 1880, there were 808,030 paupers of both classes; so that pauperism in England would seem to be, to that in Ireland, as 46½ is to 31; and, to pauperism in Massachusetts, as 71 is to 31, or more than twice as common. Yet this comparison is found to be unjust; from the fact that the pauperism of England and Ireland is evidently more habitual and permanent than that of Massachusetts. So that the corrected comparison would perhaps make English pauperism six times as frequent and chronic, and Irish pauperism five times as frequent and chronic, as pauperism in Massachusetts is, although the density of population in that New England state is now about 220 to the square mile, while in England it is 436, and in Ireland 163 to the square mile. If a dense population and devotion to manufactures are, by themselves, favorable to pauperism, therefore, Ireland ought to have fewer paupers than Massachusetts, in proportion to her people.

—In truth, the political institutions of a country, the distribution of its land and its movable property, and the inbred spirit of the people, have more to do with the prevalence of pauperism than the growth of manufactures, or the method of administering relief. French pauperism (though by no means so much less than the English plague of that sort, as is commonly thought) is now less constant and pinching than it was before the revolution; because the land of France is more equally divided, and the political institutions are less favorable to caste and privilege than they were. For a like reason Swiss pauperism has never been so enormous as that of France or England; though the general atmosphere of an old civilization, like that of all Europe, is more likely to breed paupers than is the unbreathed air of a new country like the United States.

—If I were to estimate the number of paupers in our whole country, I should not set it at more than 300,000 persons at any one time, and perhaps 1,000,000 different persons during the year, who, in our population of some 55,000,000, are forced to eat the bread of others, as M. Baron says. This would be less than a fiftieth part of our people, while in Ireland the corresponding proportion would be at least a tenth, and in England not much less than a tenth. In France the proportion of the population of 36,000,000 who at some time in the year have received public aid, is perhaps between one-fifteenth and one-twentieth. The mere count of numbers and ratios, however, as I have observed, does not show the true relation, in this respect, between one country and another. A land of high civilization will generally appear to have more paupers than a country like Russia or the states of South America, where the general lack of civilization among the multitude obliterates to a great extent the line between paupers and the respectable poor. It is strictly true that the American pauper who retains his mental faculties, and many of those who do not, are better situated, in almost every respect, than the peasants of Russia, or the semi-barbarous freemen of Mexico, Peru and Brazil. The population of the Tewksbury almshouse, which has of late been industriously held up to public pity as unfortunate beyond any community in the civilized world, is, in truth, so far as wasting disease, decaying age and mental disease will permit, more comfortable than two-thirds of the self-supporting inhabitants of Ireland, and in a better material condition than a large part of the colored, or even the white, people of our southern states. And it must not be forgotten that for a great proportion of our American paupers—who are, more than in most countries, the persons wholly incapacitated, from age and bodily or mental infirmity—the same causes that have made them dependent have deadened their susceptibility to the degradation which pauperism imposes on its victims. "To eat the bread of another or to die," is not a sentence deeply felt by the congenital idiot, the demented lunatic, or the incurable invalid, who compose so large a quota of the inmates of American poorhouses. This is a fact often lost sight of by writers on the subject, who have not much practical acquaintance with the poor.

—The real stress of pauperism is in the burdens and penalties it lays on whole classes of industrious people, not so much by the tax which public relief imposes, as by the disqualification and moral discouragement it makes inevitable. "The destruction of the poor is their poverty." M. Baron shows in a striking manner, by an ingenious calculation, how unavoidably myriads of the French artisans and laborers must leave their families, or see themselves each year in the slough of pauperism. He says, with an eloquence that rises less from the language than from the pathetic fact signalized, "Sickness, casualty, old age and death are to us but phrases; but the proletary is stung to the heart by fear of them; if he escapes some, he can not avoid the others; and each one of them strikes for him incessantly the fatal hour of pauperism. Death, in particular, leaves behind it numberless deprivations, of which a simple computation will give us a glimpse. France had in 1876, 36,905,788 people; the number of the married of both sexes being 15,156,170. It is below the truth to estimate half this number as owners, occupants, employers of labor, or persons engaged in trade or the liberal professions; leaving in the second half, operatives, day laborers, artisans, small employers, and domestics, who certainly in the aggregate number more than the first half. This last enumeration, then, contains at least 7,500,000 married people. The general mortality of France ranges from 23.40 in a thousand to 23.16; but for married people it is fair to take the lower average mortality computed by the friendly societies, 15.20. Consequently, each year removes from this aggregate of 7,500,000 not less than 114,000 fathers or mothers. Let us reckon up, then, all the miseries that in a single year accumulate in these poor households, and see whether it is not strictly true to say, with the English economists, 'Death is the mother of pauperism' (mors miseriœ mater)."

—Nevertheless, as M. Baron points out, these inevitable causes of pauperism, sickness, accidents, old age and death, may be alleviated in some measure by life insurance, by deposits in savings banks, by membership in friendly societies, and by other methods of providing for the future, which are so common in America, and as yet so rare among the workingmen of Europe. He devotes half his book to a consideration of these economic safeguards against pauperism; and it is in this direction, also, that the governments of Europe, as well as philanthropic individuals, are moving at present. The renowned statesman of Prussia, Prince Bismarck, having raised his country into an empire, and secured the military preponderance of Germany in Europe by his favorite prescription of "blood and iron," long continued, is now seeking to guard the poor subjects of the German empire from pauperism by a series of compulsory and co-operative economies, for which his administrative subordinates are framing laws. These governmental measures for making the German workingman frugal and sober under legal penalty, and for compelling capital to take its share in accumulating insurance funds against pauperism, are not, as I write, fully matured; but we shall soon see what shape they will take, and how effective they are likely to be. The English, who do nothing of this sort by legal compulsion, except the exaction and administration of the poor rates, but whose aim is to encourage saving among the poor, are doing much in that direction, by their postoffice savings banks, and by the stimulation of all sorts of mutual aid societies and other forms of co-operation. A Hampshire clergyman, Rev. W. L. Blackley, has recently published a paper in the "Nineteenth Century," wherein he proposes that a large proportion of the poor rates and of pauperism be avoided by a legal obligation that every youth shall, from eighteen to twenty-one, or thereabouts, pay to the government (say through the postoffice savings bank department) the sum of £15 once for all, or 2s. per week for three years, and then be poor rate free for life. This would, on the average, fully suffice to allow a repayment, in the form of 8s. per week during sickness, at any period, and a pension of 4s. per week during the remainder of life after attaining the age of seventy, according to the calculations of Mr. Blackley; who shows that, under the present system of poor rates, the law actually compels the provident and industrious to pay a great deal more than £15 each, in a lifetime, for the lazy and the vicious. In order to prevent imposture and false claims of sickness, he would have applications for repayment, under his plan, left in each case to a local jury of persons interested in preventing imposture; as, for instance, either to a specially appointed committee of rate payers, or to the existing boards of guardians, with the aid of local medical men, who now administer the legal relief under the poor laws. There is practical good sense in these suggestions.

—Of the two modes of public aid which the English designate as in-door and out-door relief, the latter is every-where and always the more common; for there never can be almshouses, workhouses, hospitals, etc., enough to receive all the poor at any season, or half of them in seasons of special destitution. M. Baron, contrary to most English and some American authorities, favors out-door relief, or what the French more properly call "aid to the family," securs à domicile, rather than the strict application of the "workhouse test," or the multiplication of hospitals and infirmaries. I have long held the same opinion, and for the same reasons, mainly, which this French writer now advances. Out-door relief is often abused, and these abuses are most to be guarded against in democratic countries; but it is when well administered, as it easily may be, not only more humane and effective, but less costly, than in-door relief, which involves the building and keeping up of great establishments. Both methods are indispensable, and each serves to correct the abuses of the other.

—The cost of pauperism to the public treasury varies greatly in different countries. In Great Britain and Ireland the annual cost of the public poor is nearly $50,000,000 for 35,000,000 of people—say $1.50 per capita for the whole population. In France the cost does not exceed $1 per capita, and in Germany is even less. In New England and New York the annual cost is nearly $1 per capita; in the more southern and western states it ranges from seventy-five cents down to twenty-five cents, or even less, per capita. I should estimate the average per capita cost for the United States at fifty cents or less, that is, from $20,000,000 to $25,000,000 in a year for the whole country. Even in European nations this cost is not a great burden when compared with the yearly army and navy estimates; and it can hardly be said that, in America, the pecuniary burden of pauperism is seriously felt. Its social and moral evils are grievous, however; and richly will he deserve of mankind who shall show us how to check them.

F. B. SANBORN.

PEACE.

PEACE. Says de Maistre: "History unfortunately proves that war is, in a certain sense, the habitual state of mankind: that is, that human blood must be shed, here or there, without interruption on the earth; and that a state of peace is, for each nation, but a respite." Is this true? When God created the world, did he hand it over, forever, to the destroying angel? Is there no means to preserve peace among the nations? A means to prevent war, generally, would be to sanction, as an inviolable principle of public law, that each state is independent and free, and that no state has a right forcibly to meddle with the constitution or government of another state. A state is a society of men which alone can rule and dispose of itself; to meddle with its affairs, whatever they be, is to render uncertain the autonomy of all states; it means to scatter the seeds of war, which sooner or later will germinate and bear the most bitter fruit. It will be remembered, that on Aug. 10, 1791, Mirabeau being then president of the constitutional assembly, some Quakers appeared before the bar of that body and asked to be permitted to live under the protection of the laws of France, but reserving in their own favor the condition, that they should never be compelled to go to war. With admirable good sense, Mirabeau answered them, amid applause: "* * If I ever meet a Quaker I shall say to him: 'My brother, if thou hast the right to be free, thou hast the right to prevent thy being made a slave. Thou wantest peace? Well, it is weakness which invites war: a general resistance would be universal peace.'" A general resistance of all states against any intermeddling in the affairs of others would be one of the greatest guarantees of peace in the world. Thus, in some way a federation of free states would be formed, of states which desired to remain free, and which proclaimed as an unalterable rule of international law the principle of non-intervention.

—The reciprocal independence of the nations thus proclaimed and assured, we would see the burden of standing armies, which lead to that terrible, inexorable tax, the tax of blood, but nevertheless the most indispensable of all taxes, disappear. This tax does not take from the contributor simply part of his income, or his entire income, a part of his capital, or even his whole capital, but it takes liberty and life from him; it has become the indispensable condition of political societies. The liberties of nations could not but gain by the abolition of standing armies; for history teaches us, that standing armies are an eternal danger to the liberties of nations. "Regular troops (miles perpetuus)," says Kant, "being always ready to act, incessantly menace other states, and incite them to increase their number of armed men ad infinitum. Such rivalry, an inexhaustible source of expense, which makes peace more onerous than a short war, sometimes even leads a state into open hostilities with the sole view of getting rid of so painful a burden.' The suppression of standing armies would, therefore, be one of the most powerful means to preserve peace.

—One of the greatest obstacles to the maintenance of peace among nations has been the facilities to feed war which credit procures. It is war that invents those loans by means of which a warlike people finds at a given hour an immense lever, great sums of money, to transform the spades which render the soil of the country fruitful, into instruments which devastate the fields, destroy the cities, and decimate the population. It would be well to admit, as a principle of international law, that the loans effected in a state or abroad, and not destined for the economical wants of the state, should be considered as a menace to the other states, and that it would authorize the latter to form a league against the state which should allow itself to take measures involving an attempt on their security and their independence.

—Without pretending to contradict the principles which Mirabeau caused to triumph in his celebrated discussion on the right to declare war, might we not introduce a guarantee into political constitutions, by making, at least to some extent, the consent of the subjects of a state a condition to a declaration of war? Shall the sovereign have a right to dispose, at his will, of the lives and the savings of several generations, for the sake of quarrels which the people frequently do not understand? The answer is well known which a prince of Bulgaria gave to an emperor of the orient, when the latter proposed to him to settle their differences in single combat: "Would a farrier who had a pair of pincers take the red-hot iron from the furnace with his hands?" We wish means might be found to lay the following questions before the people of a country before a war is undertaken: "Who wants the war? Is it the nation? Is it the government? Does the nation want to see its ports and its workshops closed, its commerce diminished, perhaps even annihilated, its industry ruined, and its wealth pass into the hands of others? Does the nation want that now and forever new taxes and duties be added to the duties and taxes with which the nation is already overburdened? Does the nation want its children taken a way, to make them live a life of fatigue and danger, of sacrifices and resignation, to make them shed their blood in battle? Does the nation want that even those of its other children, who had paid already their tribute to the fatherland, should be taken away once more, on the day after they had again crossed the paternal thresh-old?"21

—May a system of international arbitration be relied on as a means to preserve peace among nations? We can not consider that means as effective. With the small nation of the Greeks the amphictyonic council was unable to preserve a state of peace; no modern confederation has escaped civil war; and can we hope that the confederation of the nations of Europe would be more fortunate? We forget that passion is the principal cause of war; and can we think that passion would submit to arbitration? Moreover, if arbitration has no sanction, it does not mean anything; if it have a sanction, that sanction is war.22

—Whatever may be thought of the means to preserve peace which we have just indicated, the fact remains that war exists. We need not examine whether it is just, useful or necessary, as an illustrious philosopher (Cousin) declared it to be. All are agreed that war should be terminated as quickly as possible, and the instrument of peace be signed. That instrument is called a treaty by the law of nations, and from the moment of its conclusion all hostilities should cease. Generally it is the victor who dictates the conditions of the peace; it is also a principle, that in case of difficulties all obscure and ambiguous clauses must be construed against him.

—The power to make peace, which is generally accorded to the heads of states by the constitutions of the latter, does not necessarily carry with it the right to make concessions of territory. Thus, the assembly of Cognac declared that Francis I., although he had the absolute control over peace and war, could not, by the treaty of Madrid, alienate any part of his kingdom.

—The violation of the treaty of peace by one of the parties, is not necessarily accompanied by a resumption of hostilities. According to international usage, official cognizance is taken of the rupture, and all rights are reserved for the future.

—The most celebrated treaties of peace in modern times are the treaty of Westphalia (1648), which put an end to the thirty years war; the treaty of Utrecht (1713), which closed the war of succession in Spain; the treaty of Vienna (1815), which concluded the wars of the empire; the treaty of Paris (1856), which ended the oriental war; and the treaty of Frankfort (1871), which put an end to the France-German war. All these treaties were closed only after terrible wars, which had cost streams of blood and the wealth of the people.

EUGÈNE PAIGNON.

PEACE CONGRESS.

PEACE CONGRESS. (See CONFERENCE, PEACE.)

PENDLETON

PENDLETON, George H., was born at Cincinnati, O., July 25, 1825, was admitted to the bar, was a member of the state senate in 1854-5, and a democratic congressman 1857-65. In 1864 he was the democratic candidate for vice-president, and was defeated. (See DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICAN PARTY, VI.; ELECTORAL VOTES, XX.) In 1868 he was strongly, but unsuccessfully, supported in the democratic national convention as a candidate for the presidency. He then became interested in railroads, and abandoned politics for the time. In 1879 he became United States senator from Ohio for six years. (See CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.)

A. J.

PENITENTIARY SYSTEMS.

PENITENTIARY SYSTEMS. (See PRISONS AND PRISON DISCIPLINE.)

PENNSYLVANIA

PENNSYLVANIA, one of the original states of the American Union. The English claim to the territory of which it is composed rested on the same grounds as in the case of New York and New Jersey, discovery by the Cabots and conquest from the Dutch. (See those states, and UNITED STATES, I.) The capture of New Amsterdam was held to carry with it the right to Pennsylvania and Delaware, the latter of which had been originally colonized by Swedes and conquered by the Dutch. (See DELAWARE.)

—William Penn, an English Quaker, possessed a very considerable influence with Charles I., partly because of the services of his father, Admiral Sir William Penn, and still more because of the favor in which he was held by Charles' brother, the Duke of York, afterward James I. This alliance of the Quaker and the Roman Catholic, both dissenters from the church of England, non-jurors, and harassed by penal laws, was not at all uncommon at the time. Penn had been trustee for one of the Quaker proprietors of New Jersey, and thus seems to have conceived the idea of a distinct Quaker colony in North America. March 4, 1681, he obtained from the king a patent for "all that tract or parte of land in America," bounded on the east by the Delaware river, from "twelve miles distance northwards of New Castle towne," and, if the Delaware river should not reach latitude 43° north, then by a due north line from the head of the river to the northern boundary; on the north by latitude 43° north; on the west by a north and south line five degrees west of "the said eastern bounde"; and on the south by latitude 40° north, to its intersection with a circle of twelve miles radius drawn around New Castle. The province was to be called Pennsylvania; and the payment therefor was to be two beaver skins annually.

—As laid down in the charter, the northern boundary would have run across the middle of the present state of New York, and the southern boundary would have lain north of the capital city, Philadelphia. Necessity produced the ingenious idea that "to the beginning" of any degree of latitude was only to the end of the next preceding degree; and Penn and his descendants, accepting latitude 42° as the northern boundary, claimed latitude 89° as the southern boundary, thus taking in the two noble bays of Chesapeake and Delaware. Lord Baltimore struggled to restrict Penn to latitude 40°, and the dispute was not finally compromised until 1762, when the Penns, by giving up part of their southern claims, succeeded in securing their capital and a free access to Delaware bay. In 1780 the western boundary, five degrees west of the eastern, was run by commissioners from Pennsylvania and Virginia. By resolution of Sept. 4, 1788, the congress of the confederation relinquished to Pennsylvania the jurisdiction over the triangular strip of land in the northwest, north of latitude 42°, and west of New York, which gives the state access to Lake Erie; and Jan. 3, 1792, the new congress authorized the president to issue letters patent, conveying the territory named, to Pennsylvania. (See also WYOMING).

—Penn having acquired the three counties on the Delaware from the duke of York (see DELAWARE), these were kept in close relation to Pennsylvania until the outbreak of the revolution, when Delaware became a distinct state. Penn gave his new province four various schemes of government, in 1681, 1682, 1683, and 1696; and Oct. 28, 1701, he gave it the final charter of privileges, under which it lived until 1776. Under this the governor was appointed by the proprietor; the assembly, of one house, was to be chosen annually by the people; and sheriffs and coroners were to be appointed by the governor out of a double number of candidates selected by popular vote. In spite of many conflicts between governor and assembly, the charter, on the whole, worked well during its existence. One of its evil features was the reservation of quit-rents to the proprietors on land sold; and these were abolished in 1779, the assembly voting £130,000 to the proprietors in compensation for them.

—CONSTITUTIONS. June 14, 1776, the last charter assembly adjourned until Aug. 26. In the meantime a state convention at Philadelphia, July 15 - Sept. 28, called by the revolutionary committees, framed a state constitution, which went into force without a popular vote. It provided for an assembly of one house, chosen annually by the freemen over twenty-one who were tax payers; for a council of twelve persons; for a president [governor] chosen annually by joint ballot of the council and assembly; and for a "council of censors," of two from each city and county, to be chosen by popular vote every seventh year, and to inquire into the conduct of state officers and into violations of the constitution.

—A new constitution was framed by a convention at Philadelphia, Nov. 24, 1789 - Feb. 26, 1790, Aug. 9 - Sept. 2, 1790, and approved by popular vote. It divided the assembly into a senate chosen for four years by counties, according to tax-paying inhabitants, not less than fifteen nor more than thirty-four in number, and a house of representatives chosen annually in the same manner as the senate, not less than sixty nor more than 100 in number; it provided for a governor, to be chosen by popular vote and to serve three years; it made judges removable by the governor on the address of two-thirds of each house: and it abolished the council of censors.

—A third constitution was framed by a convention at Harrisburgh and Philadelphia, May 2, 1837 - Feb. 22, 1838, and was ratified by a close vote, 113,971 to 112,759. It changed the term of senators to three years, and that of the judiciary from good behavior to fifteen years for the supreme court, ten years for presiding judges of lower courts, and five years for their associates; it greatly diminished the governor's patronage; and it provided for amendments by their passage in two successive legislatures and their ratification by popular vote. In 1850 the judiciary was thus made elective. In 1857 the number of the house of representatives was fixed at 100, the senate was to be chosen by districts, and the legislature was forbidden to loan the credit of the state. In 1864 the right of suffrage was secured to qualified electors in the volunteer service.

—The present constitution was framed by a convention at Harrisburgh and Philadelphia, Nov. 13, 1872 - Nov. 3, 1873, and was ratified Dec. 16, 1873, by a popular vote of 293,564 to 109,198. It fixes the number of the senate at fifty, to serve four years, and of the house at 200, to serve two years, both to be elected by districts; forbids the legislature to pass special laws on a number of subjects, nor in any case without thirty days' publication; and makes the governor's term of office four years, and that of the supreme court twenty-one years. It is notable that it provides for the trial of contested elections of electors of president and vice-president by the state; in this point Pennsylvania was probably the only state in the Union in 1874 which enforced exactly the simple idea of the electoral system. (See ELECTORS.)

—GOVERNORS. Thomas Wharton, 1777-9; Joseph Reed. 1778-81; Wm. Moore, 1781-2; John Dickinson, 1782-5; Benjamin Franklin, 1785-8; Thos. Mifflin, 1788-99; Thos. McKean, 1799-1808; Simon Snyder, 1808-17; William Findlay, 1817-20; Joseph Heister, 1820-23; John A. Schulze, 1823-9; George Wolf, 1829-35; Joseph Ritner, 1835-8; David R. Porter, 1838-44; Francis R. Shunk, 1844-8; Wm. F. Johnston, 1848-51; Wm. Bigler, 1851-4; James Pollock, 1854-7; Wm. F. Packer, 1857-61; Andrew J. Curtin, 1861-7; John W. Geary, 1867-73; John F. Hartranft, 1873-9; Henry M. Hoyt, 1879-83; Robert E. Pattison, 1883-7;—POLITICAL HISTORY. The citizens of Pennsylvania have, from the beginning of her existence as a state, claimed for her the appellation of the "key-stone state." This significant name is sufficient alone to show that the sections north and south are no recent development, but original political factors, for it was the two sections which Pennsylvania was to clamp together like a key-stone. Popular doggerel of 1790, after specifying the alternate admissions of the new states, Kentucky and Vermont, thus concludes:

"Still Pennsylvania holds the scales,
And neither south nor north prevails."

In time the appellation was sometimes used in a little different sense: since the reorganization of parties in 1825, Pennsylvania's electoral votes have never been cast for the unsuccessful presidential candidate; and a vague idea has grown up that Pennsylvania's support or opposition is decisive upon parties as well as sections.

—At first the state was internally divided. Its population was variously Quaker, Episcopalian, Presbyterian (Scotch-Irish), and Lutheran (German); and as the first two classes generally sympathized with Great Britain during the revolution, political and religious feeling were both active. Furthermore, the state was divided by the Alleghanies into a western and an eastern section, whose people had opposite interests and politics, the former being naturally democrats, while the latter were federalists. (See ANTI-FEDERAL PARTY.) At first the eastern section was strong enough to retain the state in the federal party, but the strength of their opponents was gradually increased by the flow of immigration, mostly Irish and anti-British, to the western section, by the united and even forcible opposition of that section to the excise (see WHISKY INSURRECTION), and by the claims of New England federalists to a large tract of land in the eastern section. (See WYOMING.) All these influences were potent enough to give fourteen of the state's fifteen electoral votes to Jefferson in 1796, and thirteen to Burr, and to make the state very doubtful for the future. In 1799 the eastern section was alarmed and reunited by the so-called "Fries insurrection," an armed resistance to a federal law imposing a direct tax on houses. Nevertheless, the democrats, in December, 1799, were for the first time able to elect their candidate for governor, McKean; and he at once removed all Mifflin's federalist appointees to office. In the legislature the house was democratic; and the senate federalist. As the state's electors were to be chosen by the legislature, it was with great difficulty, and only just before the time fixed for the electors to vote, that the senate forced the house to be content with eight democratic electors, leaving the remaining seven to the opposition. The democratic control of the state grew rapidly stronger, and in 1803-4 there were but five federalists in the house, and one in the senate. Indeed, the dominant party almost immediately split into two factions, the moderate democrats, or "constitutionalists," headed by Gov. McKean, and the radicals, or "friends of the people," headed by William Duane and Michael Leib. The latter were principally bent on obtaining a new state constitution, on impeaching and removing the then state judges, and on limiting the tenure of office of the judiciary for the future. In 1805 both factions nominated candidates for governor, McKean and Simon Snyder, and the former was elected by the aid of federalist votes. In 1808, however, the "conventionalists," as the "friends of the people" now called themselves, elected Snyder governor, and secured a long control of the state; but they made no further effort to obtain a new state constitution.

—Immediately after Snyder's accession to office a collision between the state and the United States was threatened in the once celebrated "Olmstead case." This was a prize case, dating from the revolutionary war. The state courts had decided it one way, and the continental congress, and afterward the federal courts, to the contrary. In 1809 the matter was brought to a head by a mandamus from the federal supreme court to the district marshal to execute a writ, and an order from the governor to the state militia to resist it by force. In the end the legislature appropriated a sum of money to pay the claim; the state chief justice decided for the federal court's view; and the militia were sentenced to a trivial punishment, which was remitted by the president.

—Pennsylvania remained overwhelmingly democratic during and after the war of 1812, and her legislature sustained the war vigorously throughout. In 1817 Heister was nominated as an independent democratic candidate for governor against the regular candidate, Findlay, by the Duane party, and was defeated; but in 1820 he was successful. It was not until 1824 that any danger was developed to the democratic control of the state; and that was indirect, the appointment of a board of commissioners for internal improvements, excited by New York's success in the Erie canal. In 1827 annual appropriations for that object began, and continued until 1836. Still more important, in its prospective antagonism to the cardinal principles of the original democratic party, was the vast wealth of the state in anthracite coal and iron. Both had been known before the beginning of the century; but it was not until June, 1839, that the anthracite was successfully applied in Pennsylvania to the manufacture of iron. From that time protection for iron by means of the tariff has been a governing object of all parties in the state.

—At first the revolt against the dominant party showed itself, as in New York, under the name of the anti-masonic party, but with more success than in New York. (See ANTI-MASONRY, I.; NEW YORK.) In 1835 the anti-masons elected Ritner governor, and thus the state, which had been one of the first to pronounce for Jackson, had given him over three-fourths of her popular vote in 1824, and had been steadily democratic ever since, became exceedingly doubtful. The anti-masonic movement came to nothing further than a few attempts at repressive legislation against the free-masons; and the party very soon fell into the whig organization. In 1836 Van Buren electors were chosen by the close vote of 91,475 to 87,111, and the democrats were able to elect Porter governor in 1838 and 1841. In 1840 the electoral votes of the state were for the first time cast for the whig candidates, the election being the closest in its history, as follows: Harrison, 144,021; Van Buren, 143,676; Birney, 343; Harrison's majority, 2 votes out of 288,040. (See also BUCKSHOT WAR.)

—In 1844 the political struggle was still more animated, for the election of the governor fell in the same year with the presidential election. The democratic managers adopted the plan of claiming the semi-protective tariff of 1842 as their own. Polk wrote, June 19, 1844, a letter to John K. Kane, of Philadelphia, in which he diplomatically declared that he was not in favor of "a tariff for protection merely"; but that he was in favor of a revenue tariff which should incidentally afford judicious protection; and that he had voted for several specified tariff acts of this nature. Under the rallying cry of "Polk, Dallas, Shunk, and the tariff of 1842," the democrats succeeded in October in electing Shunk by a majority of 4,397 in a total vote of 317,321, and in November they secured the state's electoral vote by a majority of 6,332, and twelve of the twenty-four congressmen. The democratic congress in 1846 changed the tariff of 1842 into a revenue tariff; nevertheless, Shunk's popularity obtained for him a re-election in 1847 by a majority of 17,933. He resigned the next year, and in October, 1848, the whigs elected his successor, Johnston, by the close vote of 168,523 to 168,221. This, again, was a premonition of the result in November, when Taylor electors were chosen by a majority of 3,074 over both Cass and Van Buren.

—As the slavery question rose to national importance after 1848, Pennsylvania was governed at first by the ancient feeling that her function was that of a balance wheel between the two sections. As democratic success seemed most likely to maintain national harmony, Pennsylvania was democratic until 1860 in her elections for governor, presidential electors and legislatures, with the exceptions of 1854, when the anti-Nebraska excitement carried into office Gov. Pollock and a majority of the lower house of the legislature, and 1858, when the republicans obtained a majority in the lower house. In 1860 a governor was to be elected, and the success of the republicans in electing Curtin by the unusual majority, for Pennsylvania, of 32,164 over Henry D. Foster, who was heartily supported by a fusion of all the other three parties, seemed almost decisive of the presidential election in November. The majority of the Lincoln electors over the fusion electors was increased to 59,618 in a total vote of 476,442. Both houses of the legislature were republican, and twenty-one of the twenty-five congressmen.

—Since the accession of the republican party to power, Pennsylvania has remained a steadily republican state. In congressional elections the democrats have usually obtained a fair share, and occasionally a majority, of the representatives; but in elections for governor or presidential electors, the republicans have invariably been successful. In 1878, for governor, Hoyt could only claim a plurality (22,353) over the democratic candidate, owing to 81,758 "greenback" votes for Mason; in other years the majority has been complete. In presidential elections the republican majority, though steady, has not been over 30,000, except in 1872, when Grant's majority over Greeley was 135,918 in 563,260 votes. In 1880 the vote for electors stood as follows: Garfield, 444,704; Hancock, 407,428; Weaver, 20,668; scattering, 1,988. In 1882 the legislature stands as follows: senate, thirty-two republicans, sixteen democrats, three national; house, one hundred and twenty-one republicans, seventy-eight democrats, one national.

—No single man has ever undisputedly controlled a party in the state, with the exception of Simon Cameron. At first a democrat, he was an influential leader in the state, and United States senator 1845-9. With the formation of the republican party in 1855-6 he almost immediately obtained complete control of its machinery. In 1857 he again became United States senator; in 1861 he became secretary of war under Lincoln, but resigned in 1862; and in 1867 he was returned to the senate. In March, 1877, being then seventy-eight years old, and having control of the legislature which was to elect his successor, he resigned, and his son, James Donald Cameron, was elected in his place. The son, however, had little of the suppleness which had often enabled the father to manage even hostile majorities. The party machinery, which in every state is very frequently used to evade the will of the party, was now recklessly or ostentatiously exposed to public view. In 1880 (see NOMINATING CONVENTIONS) the state vote in the republican national convention was thus instructed for Grant, though the majority of the republicans of the state, and almost a majority of the state convention, were against him. In 1881, though defeated finally in the national convention, he still held undisputed control of the state convention which nominated the candidate for state treasurer. Thereupon Charles G. Wolfe took the first step in the road which may possibly prove a release from the all controlling convention system, by nominating himself for treasurer, and stumping the state in his own behalf. In the end the vote stood for Bailey, republican, 265,295; for Noble, democrat, 258,471; and for Wolfe, 49,984. In the following year, 1882, Wolfe's movement developed into an organized revolt against the Cameron leadership. The dissentients rejected the idea of "reform within the party," for the very plausible reason that "you can not get within the organization to reform it"; were unmoved by the possibility of the success of the democrats in the state; and at a separate state convention, May 24, nominated a state ticket of their own, headed by the name of John Stewart for governor. Cameron's political existence depended on the election, at which was to be chosen not only the governor, the state officers and the congressmen-at-large, but the legislature which was to pass upon his own return to the senate in 1885. Nevertheless, his state convention, May 10, attempted no accommodation with the "independents," but nominated a full state ticket, headed by Jas. A. Beaver for governor. Meanwhile, the tide was all running with the revolt. It was recruited by John I. Mitchell, Cameron's associate in the senate, and by a great number of other influential republicans; the Cameron nominee for congressman-at-large, Marshall, refused to run; and when the state convention was resuscitated to nominate another candidate, many of the delegates denied the validity of the call and refused to attend. The result was a chaotic election, in which the following vote was cast for governor: Pattison (dem.), 355,791; Beaver (rep.), 315,589; Stewart (ind. rep.), 43,743; Armstrong (greenb.), 23,996; Pettit (prohib.), 5,196. Of the twenty-eight representatives in congress, fifteen were republicans, twelve democrats, and one greenbacker. The legislature of 1883-4 stands as follows: senate, twenty democrats, thirty republicans; house, one hundred and thirteen democrats, eighty-eight republicans; democratic majority on joint ballot, fifteen.

—Since the election the regular and independent republicans have quietly reunited, without formally abolishing the Cameron leadership. The most important action of the republican convention of 1883 was the revival of the old whig plan of distributing surplus revenue among the states. Its previous history is elsewhere given. (See DISTRIBUTION, under INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS, II.) It has not yet been adopted by the party in other states, and must as yet be considered only a Pennsylvania policy.

—Besides the Camerons, and James Buchanan, George M. Dallas, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Gallatin, W. S. Hancock, Jared Ingersoll, John Sergeant, E. M. Stanton, and Thaddeus Stevens (see their names), the following have been prominent in the state's political history: Henry Baldwin, federalist congressman 1817-22, and justice of the supreme court 1830-44; Nicholas Biddle, president of the United States bank, 1823-41; Horace Binney, whig congressman 1833-5; Jeremiah S. Black, secretary of state under Buchanan; Benj. H. Brewster, attorney general under Arthur; Charles R. Buckalew, democratic United States senator 1863-9; Hiester Clymer, democratic candidate for governor in 1866, United States senator in 1879, and congressman 1873-81; John Covode, republican congressman 1855-63; Andrew G. Curtin, governor 1861-7, and democratic congressman 1881-5; William Findlay, democratic congressman 1791-9 and 1803-17 (see WHISKY INSURRECTION); Thomas Fitzsimons, member of the convention of 1787, federalist congressman 1789-95; John W. Forney, clerk of the house of representatives 1851-6 and 1860-61; Walter Forward, congressman 1822-5, and secretary of the treasury under Tyler; Joseph Heister, democratic congressman 1797-1805 and 1815-20, and governor 1820-23; Chas. J. Ingersoll, democratic congressman, 1813-15 and 1841-9; Joseph R. Ingersoll (brother of the preceding, and son of Jared Ingersoll), whig congressman 1835-7 and 1841-9, and minister to Great Britain 1852-3; Samuel D. Ingham, democratic congressman 1813-18 and 1822-9, and secretary of the treasury under Jackson; Wm. D. Kelley, republican congressman 1861-87; Michael Leib, democratic congressman 1799-1806, and United States senator 1809-14; Edward McPherson, republican congressman 1859-63, and clerk of the house of representatives 1863-73; Wayne McVeagh, attorney general under Garfield; John I. Mitchell, republican congressman 1877-81, and United States senator 1881-7; Gouverneur Morris, minister to France 1792-4, and federalist United States senator 1800-3; Robert Morris, one of the signers of the declaration of independence, the manager of the revolutionary finances, a delegate to the convention of 1787, and United States senator 1789-95; Frederick A. Muhlenberg, democratic congressman 1789-95 (see CONGRESS, SESSIONS OF); Henry A. Muhlenberg, democratic congressman 1829-38, minister to Austria 1838-40, and democratic nominee for governor in 1844, Shunk being afterward substituted by reason of Muhlenberg's sudden death; J. P. G. Muhlenberg, priest in the episcopal church, brigadier general in the revolutionary army, democratic congressman 1789-91, 1793-5, and 1789-1801; Asa Packer, democratic congressman 1853-7; Samuel J. Randall, democratic congressman 1863-87 (see CONGRESS, SESSIONS OF); Glenni W. Schofield, republican congressman 1863-75; Arthur St. Clair, major general in the revolutionary army and delegate to the continental congress (see ORDINANCE OF 1787); Wm. A. Wallace, democratic state senator 1862-71, and United States senator 1875-81; Wm. Wilkins, democratic and anti-masonic United States senator 1831-4 and 1843-4, minister to Russia 1834-5, and secretary of war under Tyler; David Wilmot, democratic congressman 1845-51, republican candidate for governor 1857, and United States senator 1861-3 (see WILMOT PROVISO); James Wilson, delegate to the continental congress 1775-8, 1782-3 and 1785-7, member of the convention of 1787, and justice of the United States supreme court 1789-98; Geo. W. Woodward, democratic candidate for United States senator in 1844, and for governor in 1863, judge of the state supreme court 1852-67, and congressman 1867-71; and Hendrick B. Wright, democratic congressman 1853-5, 1861-3 and 1877-81.

—See 2 Poore's Federal and State Constitution; Clarkson's Memoir of Penn; 2 Wm. Penn's Works; Hazard's Annals of Pennsylvania (to 1682); Pennsylvania Archives (to 1786), and Register of Pennsylvania; Clay's Annals of the Swedes on the Delaware; authorities on Mason and Dixon's line under MARYLAND; 3 Franklin's Works, 107; Proud's History of Pennsylvania (to 1742); Gordon's History of Pennsylvania (to 1776); Fuller's Political Class Book of Pennsylvania (1853); Carpenter's History of Pennsylvania (1854); Barber's History and Antiquities of Pennsylvania (1856); Watson's Annals of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia; Sypher's School History of Pennsylvania (1868); Bates' History of Pennsylvania (1869); Cornell's History of Pennsylvania (1876); Morton's History of the Appellation Keystone State; Gibbons' Pennsylvania Dutch; Bettle's Negro Slavery in Pennsylvania; Bates' Martial Deeds of Pennsylvania; Rupp's History of Lancaster County; Harris' Biographical History of Lancaster County (to 1873); Goodwin's Pennsylvania Biography (1840); Armor's Lives of the Governors of Pennsylvania (to 1872); Biographical Encyclopœdia of Pennsylvania (to 1874); W. D. Kelley's Speeches and Addresses; and authorities under DELAWARE and WYOMING.

ALEXANDER JOHNSTON.

PENNY BANKS.

PENNY BANKS. (See BANKS, HISTORY AND MANAGEMENT OF SAVINGS.)

PENSIONS.

PENSIONS. (See UNITED STATES PENSION LAWS, AND THE PENSION LAWS OF OTHER COUNTRIES.)

PERSIA.

PERSIA. The name Persia awakens great memories. But Persia, or Iran, is no longer the flourishing empire of the sophis, and still less the vaster and more powerful empire of the great kings. Modern Persia has an area of scarcely more than 65,000 square geographical leagues (of twenty-five to a degree). It is bounded on the north by Russia, the Caspian sea and Turkestan; on the east by the kingdoms of Herat and of Cabul and the confederation of the Beloochees; on the south by the gulf of Oman and the Persian gulf; on the west by Turkey in Asia. This vast territory has scarcely nine millions of inhabitants; which is explained by the fact that the country has met with the fate of all the countries of western Asia, which, after having been in ancient times the theatre of a rich development of civilization, present to the traveler of the present day only the ruins of ancient cities and an abased people, ignorant, for the most part, of the glory of their ancestors.

—Nevertheless, the Persians are very intelligent and tolerably active. Only, their intelligence is principally exercised on metaphysical questions, while their activity is concentrated upon commerce and brokerage. The only laborious inhabitants of the country are the Turks, who conquered Persia about five hundred years ago, but their patience and spirit of order are exercised only in rudimentary agriculture.

—The name of Iran, which Persia gives herself, and which Europe allows to her, would mislead us should we persist in seeing in the modern Persians an Indo-European race. The Aryans of the ancient invasions have almost wholly disappeared in the Semitic masses of Farsistan; at the time of the Achemenidian kings, six centuries before Christ, this fusion was already far advanced. It has since only increased, and a truly Semitic people, under the name of Tadjik, now occupies all the towns of Persia and the countries of the southeast. The Aryan blood has been better preserved in the other Farsee group, the Kurds, who, to the number of about a million, inhabit the mountains of the west. An entirely different race, the Turks or Phlats, occupy the north. Neither must the name of Touran, which they give themselves, and which the Persians grant them, cause us to see in them a people exclusively Mongolian; they are Mongolians strongly Aryanized, like their ancestors, the Arsacidæan Parthians. It is they who have furnished to Persia the greater part of her dynasties. The reigning dynasty, that of the Kadjars, came from the heart of their feudal system, which comprises 700,000 to 800,000 individuals. The Turkish tribes are not subject to the king, but are merely his vassals. On the contrary, the king has for subjects all the Persians, Tadjiks or Kurds.

—The king is sovereign master of the state and of his subjects, of their lives and of their fortunes; this is, as we see, what has been called eastern despotism; a despotism which is not absolute, however, since it finds limits in religion, tradition and the privileges of the corporations and of the tribes. The crown is hereditary in the direct line; but the king, or shah, may choose his successor from among his sons. He designates him during his lifetime, in order to prevent civil war.

—There are a great number of offices in the court of the shah of Persia. There is a swordbearer, a shieldbearer, a cupbearer, etc. The functions of the grand marshal (nasaktchec bashee) consist not only in directing the service of the Persian army, but also in watching over the execution of justice. The grand master of ceremonies and the grand master of hospitality are charged with the reception of ambassadors and travelers of distinction. The highest dignity of the empire is that of the first minister (vizier-i-azem). He concentrates in his hands the whole government and administration. After him come the steward (ameen-ed-doulah), who has charge of the finances; the high chancellor of state (mounchee-il-memalik), who has charge of internal affairs; and finally, the mousteffi, or secretaries of state, among whom is found the eshker-nuvis, or secretary of state in the war department. The executor of confiscations is also an important functionary.

—The empire is divided into eleven provinces, which are administered in the following manner: In each province a governor (beglerbeg) has under his authority the commanders of the towns (kakims and zabits), the mayors of important localities (kelanter), those of the villages (ketkhodah), the lieutenants of police (darogha), the chiefs of police (mir-i-ahdas) the market commissioners (mouhtesib), and the (pakkee) or tax gatherers. The distinctive feature of the Persian administration, as in all the countries of the orient, is, that power is delegated in full; thus, the governors of provinces or towns are real kings, until the king exiles them or puts them to death. The police exercise their functions in a very remarkable manner in Persia. The towns are divided into districts. The inhabitants of each district choose their lieutenant of police from among the most honorable citizens. These functions are gratuitous, and are obtained only by a spotless reputation. In this respect, Persia possesses the germ of a fruitful principle of municipal liberty, which, carried out, would have a favorable influence upon the social condition of the country. Unlike other Mussulman (that is to say, Sunnite) countries, in which civil law and religious law are confounded, Persia distinguishes the precepts of the Koran, with the administration of which the clergy are charged, from the laical law. The urf, or customary law, comprehending the crimes or misdemeanors which disturb society, such as murder, theft, fraud, etc., is the province of a court composed of secular magistrates. The sovereign is the first of these magistrates. The governors of provinces, the commandants of cities, and the other officers of the government administer justice, in the name of the shah, each in his own jurisdiction. Another difference, of equal importance, between Persia and other Mussulman countries, is the existence of a clergy of priests, an institution contrary to the very spirit of Islamism, which admits only of jurisconsults and judges. The mollahs and the mooshtched, their chiefs, have inherited, in Mussulman Persia, some of the power of the mazdean môbeds, as well as of their unpopularity, justified, it is said, by the conduct of these priests, and which would, moreover, be abundantly explained by this fact: that Persia is Mussulman only in appearance. If we except, indeed, a certain number of Turks, strict Sunnites, like their Ottoman congeners, and as such, very hostile to a clergy of priests, Persian Islamism, or Shiism, while remaining the official religion, resolves itself into a national religion, which the Sunnites hold to be very similar to Christianity, and which in fact concentrates all veneration upon Ali; and some sects of which even make a god of him. But even this schismatic religion has but very few convinced adherents; every one makes an obligatory profession of it; but the entire bourgeoisie is made up of sufis, or free-thinkers, not that there are any atheists among them, nor, especially, any dogmatic materialists; all Persian imaginations, on the contrary, are full of the supernatural: but the sufis are absolutely freed from Islam. Lastly, the moral element, truly religious, of Persia, is to be found in the nossayris, monogamous gnostics, whom every one in Persia takes for Christians, and who, in reality, appear to have derived their doctrine from Buddhism. The nossayris comprise two-fifths of Persia. It would be unjust to forget, in this enumeration, a set of sufis, the babis, a recent sect founded by an enthusiast, prophet and martyr, who declared the religion of Mohammed abolished. His doctrine, which appears to be absolute rationalism, made great progress, and caused a riot, which was quelled only in the blood of its votaries.

—The system of finance established in Persia for the assessment and collection of taxes presents nothing analogous to the institutions which exist among the nations of Europe. The revenues of the state, or, to speak more accurately, the revenues of the sovereign, were estimated, in 1873, at about seventy-five millions of francs. This sum is the product of imposts and taxes of all kinds, which are assessed in the following manner: the land tax, or meliat, which is paid partly in kind and partly in money, and is one-fifth of the product; the tax to which domestic animals, horses, camels, sheep, goats, bees, etc., are subject, and which varies according to their different kinds; the personal tax and house tax, of which we can make no exact valuation, and which vary in the different provinces. These last taxes are not levied in the towns, except on the shops and stores of merchants, who pay in proportion to the amount of their business. Foreign goods are subject to a duty of 5 per cent., paid at the frontiers, and to an additional one of 1½ per cent., in the tollhouses, farmed out to private individuals, which pay considerable sums to the government. The tax is not always directly collected by the divan, which, on the other hand, does not always pay the functionaries directly. The latter receive an order to collect the tax of certain villages, which constitute their appanage. As the cadastre is old, the tax which the tax gatherer is authorized to collect according to his warrant, is frequently less than the two-tenths of the actual revenue, which the functionary does not fail to collect; therefore the king issued, in 1869, two edicts, one to enjoin the tax payers to pay only the quota registered at the divan; the other to order a census which was regarded as the prelude to a new cadastre.

—But we have as yet spoken only of the fixed taxes; there are variable ones, and a great number of them. There is the extraordinary tribute, which is one of the most vexatious; it is exacted to meet certain expenses of the royal family, such as the marriage of a prince of the blood, or any other solemnity; there is the sadr, designed to provide for the expenses occasioned by ambassadors of foreign courts, and to entertain high functionaries; there is the pik-ked, or present to the king, which, though called a voluntary tax, is none the less exacted. This present is made annually to the king by the governors of the provinces and the great dignitaries of the kingdom; it is necessarily the fruit of an arbitrary imposition. Public establishments are also subject to the payment of periodical dues.

—If the revenues of the crown are considerable in Persia, where the necessaries of life are much cheaper than in Europe, the functionaries are but slightly remunerated; in return, however, they are left at liberty to pay themselves, to the detriment of the people. When an important man or a dignitary of the empire sees that he can enrich himself by obtaining the government of a province, he makes his request to a sovereign, fixing in advance the sum which he pledges himself to pay annually into the treasury. The place is given to the highest bidder. It may easily be imagined what the conduct of this sort of royal farmers must be! It is true that the sovereign receives all the complaints which are made to him; but it is solely to the end of making the beglerbeg disgorge, for the benefit of the state, whenever his wealth has become too great. Thus the people and the sovereign are equally satisfied.

—The peasantry alone are subject to taxation. The merchants and workmen are legally exempt from it. The merchants transmit their business to their sons; their honesty is proverbial, and all unemployed funds are intrusted to them; they are the only bankers of the empire. It is they who lend to the state, and as all the money returns to their hands, they no longer fear the public bankruptcies which characterized the ancient governments of Persia. The workmen have their corporations, their regulations, their funds, their elected assemblies. It is the organization of St. Louis, or rather, it is the organization which St. Louis had regulated, and which came from the Roman empire, which had found it in the east. It was, in fact, after the capture of Ctesiphon that Alexander Severus organized the trade corporations. Industry has declined very much from what it was under the sophis. The ancient manufactories of silk and velvet (Kashan, Ispahan, Reschet), and the manufactories of arms (Kerman, Schiraz), are no longer in existence, but commerce is carried on in an indifferent way.

—As to the military forces of Persia, see the note hereto appended.

—The resources of Persia would be immense if it were possible to make the most of them. Gold, silver, copper, iron, jasper, white marble, sulphur, copperas, salt and saltpetre, turquoise, bitumen, naphtha and petroleum: all these abound in Iran. The soil is remarkably fertile wherever irrigation is practicable, but large areas of fertile land are uninhabited, and it is only the facility of finding fields to cultivate which compensates somewhat for the lack of work in the cities. The vast saline deserts in Persia might be brought under cultivation by supplying them with the necessary water. The products of the soil are flax, hemp, sesame, tobacco, cotton, saffron, terebinth, mastic, gums, gall nuts, and dye plants. Persia furnishes to commerce annually, 20,000 bales of silk. The opium-yielding poppy is very extensively cultivated there. Manna and rhubarb are exported. But this wealth can be sent out of the kingdom only at a very considerable cost for transportation, so imperfect are the means of communication. If Persia had roads kept in good repair, commerce there would develop immensely, the mines could be worked, and the public wealth would increase ten-fold in a very short time. Such must be, however, the foundation of all social renovation for the nations of the east, and since 1873, the year of the shah's first visit to Europe, we have been assured that measures have been taken to construct roads and to introduce into Persia several of the most important European institutions.23

—BIBLIOGRAPHY. T. S. Andersen, My Wanderings in Persia, 8vo, London, 1880; General Blaramberg, Statistical Survey of Persia, male in the years 1837-40 (in Russian), 8vo, St. Petersburg, 1853; Do. Heinrich Brugsch, Reise der K. preussischen Gesandtschaft nach Persien, 1860 und 1861, 2 vols., 8vo, Leipzig, 1864; E. B. Eastwick, Journal of a Diplomate's Three Years' Residence in Persia, 2 vols., 8vo, London, 1864; A. H. Keane and Sir R. Temple, Asia, London, 1882; Col. C. M. Macgregor, Narrative of a Journey through the Province of Khorassan and the Northwest Frontier of Afghanistan in 1875, 2 vols., London, 1879; Clements R. Markham, A General Sketch of the History of Persia, 8vo., London, 1874; Capt. Hippisley Cunliffe Marsh, A Ride through Islam: being a Journey through Persia and Afghanistan to India, 8vo., London, 1877; Chas. De Molon, De la Perse: Etudes sur la Géographie, le Commerce, la Politique, l'Industrie, l'Administration, etc., 8vo, Versailles, 1875; Augustus Mounsey, A Journey through the Caucasus and the Interior of Persia, 8vo, London, 1872; John Piggot, Persia: Ancient and Modern, 8vo, London, 1875; Do. Jak. Ed. Polak, Persien: Das Land und seine Bewohner: Ethnographische Schilderungen, 2 vols., 8vo, Leipzig, 1865; Lady Sheil, Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia, 8vo, London, 1856; E. Stack, Six Months in Persia; 2 vols., London, 1882; Baron Thielmann, Travels in the Caucasus, Persia, and Turkey in Asia, 2 vols., 8vo, London, 1876; I. Thomson, La Perse: sa population, ses revenues, son armée, son commerce, avec notes par N. de Khanikof, in "Bulletin de la Société de géographic," Juillet, 8vo, Paris, 1869; John Ussher, Journey from London to Persepolis, including Wanderings in Daghestan, Georgia, Armenia, Kurdistan, Mesopotamia and Persia, 8vo, London, 1866; Robert Grant Watson, A History of Persia, from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the year 1858, 8vo, London, 1873.

F. M.

PERSONAL LIBERTY LAWS

PERSONAL LIBERTY LAWS (IN U. S. HISTORY), statutes passed by the legislatures of various northern states, during the existence of the fugitive slave laws, for the purpose of securing to alleged fugitives the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus and the trial by jury, which those laws denied them. (See FUGITIVE SLAVE LAWS.)

—In 1840 New York passed an act securing a trial by jury to persons accused of being fugitive slaves. This was the first real "personal liberty law," other previous state statutes being ostensibly or really designed to assist in the rendition of fugitives; and even this statute soon fell into disuse and was practically forgotten. The case of Prigg vs. Pennsylvania (see FUGITIVE SLAVE LAWS) was decided in 1842, and in 1843 Massachusetts and Vermont passed laws prohibiting state officers from performing the duties exacted of them by the first fugitive slave law, and forbidding the use of the jails of the state for the detention of fugitives. In 1847 and 1848 Pennsylvania and Rhode Island passed similar laws. Other states refused to do so.

—The passage of the fugitive slave law of 1850, which avoided all employment of state officers, necessitated a change in the personal liberty laws. Accordingly, new laws were passed by Vermont, Rhode Island and Connecticut in 1854, by Maine, Massachusetts and Michigan in 1855, by Wisconsin and Kansas in 1858, by Ohio in 1859, and by Pennsylvania in 1860. These laws generally prohibited the use of the state's jails for detaining fugitives; provided state officers, under various names, throughout the state, to act as counsel for persons alleged to be fugitives; secured to all such persons the benefits of habeas corpus and trial by jury; required the identify of the fugitive to be proved by two witnesses; forbade state judges and officers to issue writs or give any assistance to the claimant; and imposed a heavy fine and imprisonment for the crime of forcibly seizing or representing as a slave any free person with intent to reduce him to slavery. New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, California and Oregon passed no full personal liberty laws; but there were only two of these states, New Jersey and California, which gave any official sanction or assistance to the rendition of fugitive slaves, though three of them, Indiana, Illinois and Oregon, did so indirectly, by prohibiting the entrance within their borders of negroes either slave or free. In the other states named above, the action of the legislative, judiciary or executive was generally so unfriendly that the South Carolina declaration of causes for secession in 1860 included Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and New Hampshire with the ten states which had passed liberty laws, in the charge of having violated their constitutional obligation to deliver fugitive slaves.

—The fugitive slave law and the personal liberty laws together show plainly that the compromise of 1850 (see COMPROMISES, V.) was far worse than labor lost. It gave the south a law to which it had no title; even Rhett, in the South Carolina secession convention, declared that he had never considered the fugitive slave law constitutional. It thus provoked the passage of the personal liberty laws in the north. Each section, ignoring the other's complaints, exhausted its own patience in calling for a redress which neither was willing to accord first. It is not meant to be understood that secession would never have occurred without the aid of the fugitive slave law and its countervailing statutes; only that secession would have had to search much more diligently for an excuse without them. Throughout the whole declaration of South Carolina in 1860 there is hardly an allegation which, in any point of view, deserves respectful consideration, with this single exception of the personal liberty laws; and these were the unconstitutional results of the unconstitutional fugitive slave law.

—The objection to the constitutionality of the fugitive slave law is, in brief, that the rendition of fugitive slaves, as well as of fugitives from justice, was an obligation imposed by the constitution upon the states; and that the federal government, which has never attempted to give the law in the latter case, had no more right to do so in the former. (See FUGITIVE SLAVE LAWS.) This opinion, however, has against it the unanimous opinion of the supreme court in the case of Ableman vs. Booth, cited below. But there is absolutely no legal excuse for the personal liberty laws. If the rendition of fugitive slaves was a federal obligation, the personal liberty laws were in flat disobedience to law; if the obligation was upon the states, they were a gross breach of good faith, for they were intended, and operated, to prevent rendition; and in either case they were in violation of the constitution, which the state legislators themselves were sworn to support. The dilemma is so inevitable that only the pressure of an intense and natural horror of surrendering to slavery a man who had escaped from it, or who had never been subject to it, can palliate the passage of the laws in question. Plainly, the people, in adopting the fugitive slave clause of the constitution, had assumed an obligation which it was not possible to fulfill.

—The writer's own belief that the obligation of rendition was upon the states alone, has prevented him from classing the personal liberty laws under nullification. If, however, the obligation was really federal, they were certainly nullifications, though not to the same degree as that of South Carolina; for the latter absolutely prohibited the execution of the tariff act, while the former only impeded the rendition of fugitive slaves. The principle, however, is the same. (See NULLIFICATION.) It is worthy of notice, however, that when the supreme court, in the case of Ableman vs. Booth, overrode the Wisconsin personal liberty law, the Wisconsin legislature passed a series of resolutions, March 19, 1859, reaffirming the Kentucky resolutions of 1799 (see KENTUCKY RESOLUTIONS), but making them read "that a positive defiance" (instead of a nullification) "is the rightful remedy."

—See Massachusetts Revised Statutes (1860), c. 125, § 20; 2 Wilson's Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, 57, 639; Joel Parker's Personal Liberty Laws (1861); B. R. Curtis' Works, 328, 345; 2 ib., 69; Tyler's Life of Taney, 398; Appleton's Annual Cyclopædia (1861), 575; 21 How., 506 (Ableman vs. Booth); 2 Webster's Works, 577; Schuckers' Life of Chase, 178.

ALEXANDER JOHNSTON.

PERSONAL UNION

PERSONAL UNION, or dynastic union, is the combination by which two different states are governed by the same prince, while their boundaries, their laws and their interests remain distinct. Thus, in modern times, the king of England was at the same time king of Hanover; the king of Saxony, grand duke of Warsaw; the king of Denmark, duke of Schleswig-Holstein; the emperor of Austria, king of Hungary; the king of Prussia, prince of Neufchâtel; the king of Sweden, king of Norway; the king of The Netherlands, grand duke of Luxemburg; the emperor of Russia, grand duke of Finland; and the king of Prussia, duke of Lauenburg.

—Personal union scarcely ever exists except between countries the populations of which belong to different nationalities, or inhabit territories distant from each other. If the territories of the two countries were contiguous and their populations of the same race, speaking the same language, and a complete fusion did not take place between them, the mistake would be so great a one that it could not but result in serious inconveniences. It seems as if in such a case the separation could not be maintained.

—According to the letter of international law, one of the countries which is united to another by personal union may be at peace, while the other is at war. Thus, it might have happened, between 1816 and 1866, that the king of The Netherlands should have furnished for Luxemburg a military contingent to a war, which the Germanic confederation might have waged against Italy, for instance, without his minister plenipotentiary leaving Turin, or that of Italy demanding his passports at The Hague. We might even Imagine cases, improbable though not impossible, in which the grand duke of Luxemburg might have been in one camp, and the king of The Netherlands in the other. The same thing would be still more improbable in Sweden or in Norway, and entirely impossible in Finland, whose personal union with Russia is only on paper, while its real union is in the facts. Moreover there can be a personal union only between constitutional states. In absolute governments it is the sovereign who declares war; he is the state; and it is of little import that one of his territories is called Kamtschatka, and another Poland; it is still the emperor of Russia who acts, and against whom defense is made.

—We do not consider personal union a very rational combination. If two states have not enough mutual interest and sympathy to unite their destinies, let them remain separated; mutual independence does not exclude an alliance, which will not delay being formed if there is any reason for it, if it has any grounds and an aim. A personal union will almost necessarily influence the politics of one of the countries united, to the exclusive advantage of the other. It sometimes results in domestic animosities, which, as is well known, are the most bitter and inveterate.

—Personal union, it seems to us, is practicable only when the two countries form a unit vis-a-vis of foreign states. But it is not sufficient that the two countries be represented by one and the same diplomatic agent; it is also necessary that their armies should be united into one, and consequently, that the two countries should have common finances; from which it follows, that the two countries united must have, besides, their respective chambers for the special affairs of each country, a common parliament authorized to deal with international questions. The history of the United Kingdom furnishes an example which other countries should follow, and the ultimate fusion, which might be the result of the functioning of a common parliament, seems to us an advantage great enough to induce a state not to neglect the means to arrive at it. We are even surprised they have not yet thought of this in Sweden and Norway, where they ought to begin to constitute a common parliament if they indeed desire to firmly establish "Scandinavism" (which is not spoken of so much as it was in 1860-65).

MAURICE BLOCK.

PERU

PERU. Traversed from north to south by the two parallel chains of the Andes, Peru extends from the equator to Chili, over a length of nearly 1,500 kilometres. It is bounded on the east by the Amazon river, and by Brazil. Its entire area is estimated at nearly 450,000 square kilometres. The most highly favored portions of this vast territory, those which are most richly endowed by nature, are situated between the eastern slope of the Andes and Brazil; they have as yet scarcely any European population, and are almost wholly un-explored. The greater part of the population is settled upon the western side, between the Andes and the sea. It is not very large. At the time of the last census, (1876), there were 2,704,998 inhabitants, besides about 350,000 uncivilized Indians.

—As in all other parts of Spanish America, the census population is far from being composed of homogeneous elements. The agricultural classes are entirely Indian. The mechanics and shop-keepers of the towns and villages are a mixture of Indians and half-breeds. The lower classes of the coast belong to what is called the Zambo element, a mixture formed by the crossing of negroes, Chinese and Indians. The higher classes are in a great degree of Spanish origin; the number of families in which the Spanish blood is entirely pure is very limited; the same is true of the Indian families which form a part of these classes. The pure Indian type, unmixed with Spanish blood, is very rare. The ratio of these races is estimated thus: 57 per cent. of Indians, 23 of mixed breeds, 12½ of whites born in Peru, 3½ of negroes, 1½ of Chinese, and 2½ of foreigners.

—Peru, while it has had a good many internal dissensions and quarrels with its neighbors and foreign powers, is nevertheless far from presenting as sad an internal and external history as do so many of the other republics of Spanish America. The comparative repose which it enjoyed [up to the time of the Chilian-Peruvian war]24 was owing, not to the free play of its constitutional institutions, the model of which was borrowed for a short time from the great republic of North America, but to the firmness and to the more or less intelligence which have been shown by the various military chiefs who filled the presidential chair in Peru.

—The constitution of 1856, modified Nov. 10, 1860, is the source of the public law of Peru. The executive power is in the hands of a president, invariably chosen from the army. The president is elected for four years by the citizens assembled in electoral colleges. He is assisted by a council of ministers. The legislative power is vested in a congress composed of two chambers, who pass the budget and the laws in the making of which the executive power has the initiative. The senate is composed of forty members, and the chamber of deputies of eighty. During the interval between one session and another, a permanent commission of seven senators and eight deputies assists the president, and performs the functions of a council of state.

—At the head of each department is a prefect, appointed by the president. The constitution of 1856 had instituted departmental juntas, but these assemblies having resulted in making government impossible, it became necessary to dissolve them. In some departments the prefect did not allow them to assemble. The municipal juntas, composed of the principal inhabitants of each locality, have given better results; for a number of years, it has been remarked that they are an excellent school of political and administrative education.

—Thanks to an unlooked-for resource, the sale of guano, which tends, however, to become exhausted, and of which the state claimed the monopoly, the financial condition of Peru was pretty good previous to the breaking out of the war with Chili. In the budget of 1872 the receipts were 58,982,851 soles (five francs), and the disbursements were 57,913,974 soles. The excess of receipts was thus 1,069,087 soles. The public debt, on Jan. 1, 1869, was 62,225,550 soles, say, 311,127,500 francs; it was distributed thus: home debt, 4,737,800 soles (23,689,000 francs); foreign debt, 41,803,750 soles (209,018,750 francs); sum due to consignees of guano, 15,684,000 soles (78,420,000 francs). The public debt in 1870 had increased to 104,855,000 soles, distributed thus: consolidated internal debt, 1,350,000; new consolidated debt, 3,000,000; loan of 1862 and various other debts, 5,905,000; English loan at 5 per cent. (1865, 35,000,000; another English loan at 6 per cent. for the construction of railroads, guaranteed by the receipts of the railroads, custom house and guano, 59,600,000 soles.

—The Catholic religion has remained the religion of the state; and unless he professes Catholicism, no one can be admitted to fill any public office. The government of the church is divided between an archbishop and six bishops, and the church derives its revenues from tithes. The congress of 1856 had some thought of introducing freedom of worship, but a city celebrated in the history of Peru for its pronunciamentos, Arequipa, threatened to secede if that freedom should be granted by the constitution. The clergy have preserved their ecclesiastical courts.

—Public instruction is almost wholly in the hands of the clergy. The state appropriates nearly half a million of dollars for the support of the universities. Justice, civil and criminal, is administered by a supreme court, which sits at Lima; by courts of appeal in each of the chief towns of the departments; and by the district courts of first resort. The administration of the mines, the forests and the military and naval services have special jurisdiction. There is scarcely any industry, but a good deal of commerce. The greater part of the foreign trade is in the hands of French, English and American merchants. As in all the rest of America, it is England which holds the first rank, as regards both imports and exports: France is only second. Her transactions amount to an average of sixty million francs per annum, that is to say, less than half those of England.

—Since the discovery of guano the merchant marine of Peru has increased to a certain extent. In 1869 it had ninety vessels, with a capacity of 9,596 tons. The exports of 1867 amounted to $18,506,851; while in 1866 they reached the sum of $40,511,291. The principal article of export is still guano, of which there was exported in 1870, 482,299 tons, of a total value of 20,195,146 silver piastres. According to statistics published in Lima in 1868, the quantity of guano exported from 1842 to 1867 amounted to 7,157,194 tons, with a total value of $218,693,625.

—The soil of Peru is suitable for the cultivation of all tropical productions. Since 1860, cotton and sugar cane have been cultivated upon a very large scale, Chinese and free blacks being employed in its cultivation. In 1860 the cotton crop was estimated at seventy millions of dollars, the profits of which were forty-seven millions.

—Peru, which has already had the good fortune to find in the sale of the guano three-quarters of its revenue, has recently met with further luck. Some explorations conducted in 1830 resulted in the discovery of vast beds of nitrate of soda. The exportation of saltpetre increased from 18,700 cwt. in 1830, to 699,406 in 1851, to 1,358,691 in 1861, and to 3,605,906 in 1871.

—Of all the wealth with which nature has endowed Peru, that least taken advantage of is its mineral treasures. There are still near Puno some very productive silver mines. From 1775 to 1824 these mines produced 1,786,000 marcs of silver, of an average value of from eight to nine dollars. Since the cessation of Spanish rule these mines have declined very much in productive value, the greater part of them having been abandoned for lack of capital and other means of working them. The great cause of the decline of the mining industry is the want of confidence which the capitalists have in each other. This distrust prevents the formation of mining associations upon a large scale, and it is only by the revival of the great companies that Peru will be able to resume, among the countries producing precious metals, the place which belongs to her.25

—BIBLIOGRAPHY. Besides the older works of Ulloa, Helm, Breckenridge, Mathison, Hall, Stevenson, Smith, Meyen and Pöppig, there are: Hill's Travels in Peru and Mexico, 2 vols., London, 1860; Grandidier, Voyage dans l'Amérique du Sud, Pérou et Bolivie; Menendez, Manual de geographia y statistica del Peru, Paris, 1861; Carrey, Le Pérou, Paris, 1875; Raimondi, El PerȒ, Lima, 1874; Desjardin, Le Pérou avant la conquête espagnole, Paris, 1858; Prescott, History of the Conquest of Peru, Boston, 1847, new edition, 1878; Pruvonena, Memorias y documentos para la historia de la independencia del PerȒ, 2 vols., Paris, 1858; Odriozola, Memorias y documentos para la historia del PerȒ, Lima, 1863-4; Paz-Soldan, Historia del PerȒ independte, Lima, 1871; Arana, Histoire de la guerre du Pacifique, 1881.

LOUIS GOTTARD.

PETITION

PETITION (IN U. S. HISTORY). The first amendment to the constitution prohibits congress from making any law to abridge "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." The right to petition congress is therefore not derived from the constitution, but secured by it. Of course the right to offer a petition implies the duty of congress to receive it, without which the petition would lack its most essential element. Nevertheless, from 1835 until 1844, this duty of congress was more or less strenuously denied by southern members in the case of petitions for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia.

—Feb. 11, 1790, a petition was offered, signed by Franklin as president of the Pennsylvania abolition society, praying for the immediate prohibition of the African slave trade. This prohibition could not constitutionally be effected until 1808; nevertheless, after debate, it was received and referred by a vote of 43 to 14. Madison and other members urged "the commitment of the petition as a matter of course," so that "no notice would be taken of it out of doors." This purpose was accomplished then and afterward; as long as petitions were received and referred, the action of the petitioners there ended.

—Very few anti-slavery petitions were offered for forty years, and those few were against slavery in general. The only exception was the petition of Warner Mifflin in 1792, which was rejected on the ground that it was not a petition, and concluded with no specific prayer. This objection would not he against the new series of petitions which were brought out by the agitation for immediate abolition (see ABOLITION, II.) which began in 1830-31. These prayed that congress, to which the constitution had given the exclusive power of legislation for the District of Columbia, would exercise it in prohibiting slavery therein. At first, in December, 1831, when they were referred to the committee on the District of Columbia, the committee reported formally that the prayer of the petitioners should not be granted. As the petitions became more numerous, the committee ceased to report, and its room became "the lion's den from which there were no foot-prints to mark their return." In February, 1835, there were some complaints of this mode of procedure, and requests for a special committee, but these were not heeded. The peace was not disturbed until the following December.

—PINCKNEY'S RESOLUTIONS. In December, 1835, the petitions began to come in again, and the house of representatives showed a new disposition toward them by laying them on the table by overwhelming votes. This, however, was not enough. Feb. 8, 1836, Henry L. Pinckney, of South Carolina, moved for and obtained a suspension of the rules to offer three resolutions: 1, that all the petitions should be referred to a select committee, 2, with instructions to report that congress could not constitutionally interfere with slavery in the states, and 3, ought not to do so in the district of Columbia. May 18 the committee reported as instructed, with an additional resolution that thereafter all petitions relating in any way to slavery or its abolition should be laid on the table without action, and without being printed or referred. May 25 the previous question, cutting off debate, was ordered by a vote of 109 to 89, and the second of Pinckney's resolutions, above mentioned, was adopted by a vote of 182 to 9. John Quincy Adams offered to prove it false in five minutes, but was silenced. On the following day the third resolution was adopted, 132 to 45, and the committee's new resolution, 117 to 68. Adams refused to vote, denouncing the resolution as a violation of the constitution, of the rules of the house, and of the rights of his constituents. The first of the "gag laws" was thus put in force. It was renewed in substance, Jan. 18, 1837.

—Adams at once became the champion of the right of petition. In the adoption of the rules at the beginning of each congress, he regularly and unsuccessfully moved to rescind the "gag rule." He became the funnel through which all the antislavery petitions of the country were poured. Within the next four years he records the offering of nearly 2,000 petitions, including petitions for the rescinding of the gag rule itself, for the recognition of Hayti, for expunging the declaration of independence from the journals, and for his own expulsion. Besides those whose number he mentions, there was an unknown number of others presented in batches. The most exciting scene of the series began Feb. 6, 1837. Adams inquired of the speaker whether it would be in order to present a petition from twenty-two slaves. The disorderly house, catching but a hazy notion of the inquiry, at once lost its head. Suggestions to expel Adams for having attempted to offer a petition from slaves, to censure him for contempt of the house, and to take the petition out and burn it, were becoming inextricably entangled, when Adams for the first time reminded the speaker that his inquiry as to the propriety of offering the petition was still pending and unanswered, and stated also that the petition was in favor of slavery. The house saw that it had been outwitted, but it disliked to yield. "What, sir," said Waddy Thompson, of South Carolina, "is it a mere trifle to hoax, to trifle with, the members from the south in this way and on this subject? Is it a light thing, for the amusement of others, to irritate almost to madness the whole delegation from the slave states? Sir, it is an aggravation." He therefore modified his resolutions into a censure of Adams for having "trifled with the house," "by creating the impression, and leaving the house under such impression, that the said petition was for the abolition of slavery, when he knew that it was not." By various amendments this was finally modified into a tame resolution that, since Adams had disclaimed any effort to present the petition, nothing should be done, and even this was rejected. But before the final vote, Feb. 9, Adams secured his coveted opportunity for defense, and his savage retaliation upon his opponents in general and in particular, interrupted by explanations and half-hearted denials from them, made up one of the few scenes in congressional history, from 1820 until 1860, when the cowing of an opposition was the result of a northern member's speech. From this time debate with Adams was the most perilous of undertakings.

—In the senate the objection to the reception of abolition petitions had been almost simultaneous. Jan. 7, 1836, Calhoun objected to the reception of two petitions from Ohio for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and four days afterward he renewed it upon a petition of Pennsylvania Quakers to the same effect. But the senate was a dangerous place for such an experiment. No "previous question" could cut off debate; senator after senator drifted off to the perilous questions involved in the institution of slavery itself; and the result was such a portentous debate as had never yet been heard in the senate. Calhoun's point was, that if the petition was couched in disrespectful language it could not be received. But in this there was a cumulative difficulty. To know the language of a petition it was necessary that it should be read, and it would always be difficult for southern senators to listen quietly to petitions in which their constituents and themselves were denounced as pirates, butchers, and dealers in human flesh. King, of Georgia, read Calhoun a bitter and well-deserved lecture on this unstatesmanlike policy of provoking debate on the petitions; and Calhoun could only answer with the reproach that King was destroying southern unity of action. Calhoun's course is one of the few evidences of his lack of sincerity in desiring the preservation of the Union. A democratic northern senator likened him to a pugnacious farmer in his state who was so anxious for peace with his neighbors that he was always willing to fight for it. In this instance Calhoun had abundant opportunity to agitate for the suppression of agitation. It was not until March 9 that the reception was agreed to by a vote of 36 to 10; and two days after, "the prayer of the petition was rejected" by a vote of 34 to 6. This halting compromise between refusing to receive, and referring to a committee, was thereafter the regular mode of procedure in the senate. It had no effect in checking the petitions, and renewed and constant debate on their reception kept the senate in turmoil. In December, 1837, Clay urged their reception and reference, on the grounds that they were evoked mainly by a feeling in the north that the right of petition had been assailed, and that it was "better that the country should be quiet than the senate"; but his advice met no more respectful attention than the warning of Buchanan at the beginning, "Let it be once understood that the sacred right of petition and the cause of the abolitionists must rise or must fall together, and the consequences may be fatal."

—THE PATTON RESOLUTION. Dec. 21, 1837, in the house, John M. Patton, of Virginia secured a suspension of the rules and the previous question, and the passage of a resolution to lay on the table, without being debated, printed, read or referred, and without further action, all petitions and papers touching the abolition of slavery, or the buying, selling or transferring of slaves in any state, district "or territory" of the United States. Adams again protested, and refused to vote, but the resolution was passed by a vote of 122 to 74.

—THE ATHERTON RESOLUTIONS. Dec. 11, 1838, in the house, Charles J. Atherton, of New Hampshire, obtained a suspension of the rules, and offered five resolutions. The first four condemned generally any attempts at the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, or in the territories, and any petitions for that object; the fifth resolved that all such petitions should be laid on the table, "without being printed, debated or referred." Again, the previous question cut off debate, and the resolutions were passed on this and the following day, the last or "gag" resolution having in its favor 126 votes to 73. The only apparent result was the immediate appearance of a new line of petitions for the repeal of the Atherton "settlement."

—TWENTY-FIRST RULE. Jan. 21, 1840, by a vote of 114 to 108, the house adopted as its twenty-first rule, that no petition, memorial, resolution, or other paper praying the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia or the territories, or of the interstate slave trade, should in future be received by the house, or entertained in any manner whatever. The decrease of the majority in favor of the repression principle in this vote was striking, and was in itself an evidence that the system could not endure very much longer. Adams had found the support which he had at first lacked, and his yearly recurring motions to omit the twenty-first from the list of rules were defeated by steadily dwindling majorities. The rule, however, only increased the strength of language of the petitions, and their number as well: 34,000 signatures had been affixed to petitions of this nature in 1835-6; 110,000 in the session after the Pinckney resolutions; over 300,000 after the Patton resolutions; and after the twenty-first rule was adopted the signatures to petitions on all the cognate subjects were practically beyond counting. Jan. 14, 1842, another exciting scene began in the house, Adams being again the centre of it. He offered a petition from citizens of Haverhill, Massachusetts, praying for a dissolution of the Union, and asked for its reference to a committee to set forth reasons for the rejection of the petition. The anger of the southern members flamed out again. Suggestions were again made to expel Adams, to censure him, or to burn the petition. Adams at first only replied by advising his leading opponents to "go to a law school, and learn a little of the rights of the citizens and of the members of this house"; but, when the house had voted, 118 to 75, to take into consideration the resolutions of censure offered by Thomas F. Marshall, of Kentucky, the spokesman of the southern caucus, the debate was adjourned until Jan. 28. From that day it continued until Feb. 7, with a virulence surpassing that of the first. Adams had his opponents at a disadvantage, for many of them were avowed disunionists, but he used also every other advantage which could be used. The character of the whole debate may be conceived from Adams' reference to Wise, of Virginia, his bitterest opponent, as having come into that hall from the Graves-Cilley duel, of which he was a promoter, "with his hands dripping with human gore, and a blotch of human blood upon his face"; and from Wise's temperate reply that "the charge was as base and black a he as the traitor was base and black who uttered it." At last Adams, worn out and almost breathless, but triumphant over every assailant, allowed a motion to "lay the whole subject on the table forever," and it was carried by a vote of 106 to 93.

—At the special session of 1841 Adams' regular motion to omit the twenty-first rule had actually been carried, by a vote of 112 to 104, on a motion to adopt the rules of the last house for ten days only; but this was afterward reconsidered and lost. Session after session the majority against Adams' motion dwindled. At last, Dec. 3, 1844, the house, by a vote of 104 to 81, refused to lay his motion on the table, and, by a vote of 108 to 80, abolished the twenty-first rule. The ten years' gripe of John Quincy Adams upon the gag system had choked it at last and forever. Thereafter petitions of every nature were quietly relegated to the limbo of such papers, the committee room.

—Dec. 12, 1853, the ancient rule requiring the presentation of petitions in the house was rescinded. Since that time petitions have been delivered to the clerk of the house, indorsed with the name of the member presenting them and of the committee to which they are to be referred. The clerk then transfers them to the proper committees, and notes their presentation on the journal.

—See 1 Benton's Debates of Congress, 201, 207; 13 ib., 24 (Pinckney resolutions), 13 ib., 266 (Adams' first trial: his speech is at page 283); 12 ib., 705 (Calhoun's motion); 13 ib., 566 (Patton resolutions), 702 (Atherton resolutions); 14 ib., 289 (twenty-first rule); Jay's Miscellaneous Writings, 349; 2 Calhoun's Works, 466; 9 Adams' Memoir of J. Q. Adams, 350; 11 ib., 109; 61 Niles' Register, 350 (Adams' second trial); 14 Democratic Review, 303 (the best argument in favor of the twenty-first rule); 2 Benton's Thirty Years' View, 150; 1 Greeley's American Conflict, 143; Giddings' History of the Rebellion, 108, 158; 2 Wilson's Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, 346; 2 von Holst's United States, 236, 470; Morse's Life of J. Q. Adams, 249, 307; 18, 22, 38 Rules of the House of Representatives. (Compare PETITION, RIGHT OF.)

ALEXANDER JOHNSTON.

PETITION, Right of

PETITION, Right of. The constitution of the United States, in its first amendment, provides that "Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." This provision is not a statement of abstract right based on theory but, like almost all other clauses in the great Anglo-Saxon charters, it had its origin in the successful struggle against actual tyranny. It is founded on English history, and to understand it, it is necessary to glance at that history.

—The right of petition seems to be recognized in magna charta, which was ratified by King John in 1215. Chapter forty contains these words: "Nulli negabimus rectum aut justitiam," and they are repeated in the charters of Henry III. (1216, chap. 29) and Edward I. (1297, chap. 29). Some petitions of this period are said to be preserved in the tower of London. In the reign of Charles I. petitions became bolder and bolder, notwithstanding the contemptuous treatment which they received from him, and the right of presenting them naturally grew to be obnoxious to the cavaliers. Consequently, soon after the restoration of Charles II., parliament passed a bill against tumultuous petitioning, which forbade the presentation of petitions for the alternation of matters established by law, to the king or either house, by more than ten persons; nor could more than twenty persons sign a petition, unless its contents were previously approved by three justices or a majority of the grand jury in the country, or by the lord mayor, aldermen and common council in London. The transgressor was liable to fine and imprisonment. (13 Car. II., st. 1, c. 5; 8 Statutes at Large, p. 6.) This statute did not have the desired result, and in 1679 so many petitions were presented protesting against the repeated prorogation of parliament, that the king issued a proclamation to put a stop to them, but still they continued to pour in. The advanced royalists presented counter-addresses expressing their abhorrence of these petitions. Hence, the two national parties became known as "Petitioners" and "abhorrers," although soon after they were called "whigs" and "tories" instead. (8 Hume's History of England, chap. 68.) It was from James II., that, nine years later, the right of petition received the severest blow in England. He had made up his mind to restore his fellow Catholics to the full rights of English subjects (and, indeed, to give them the preference), in spite of existing penal laws. To this end he found it necessary to set aside the statutes by means of what was called the "dispensing power." This prerogative of dispensing with penal laws had been assumed by the crown several centuries before, and was originally copied from the practice of the Roman church. It was an infringement of law, and had met with resistance almost from the beginning. In 1687 the king issued a declaration, under this power, announcing that none of the penal laws against non-conformists should be enforced. This proclamation, which is known as the "declaration of indulgence," produced no effect. Accordingly, in 1688, he published a second similar declaration, which was followed, a week later, by an order in council commanding the clergy to read the declaration on certain Sundays at the usual time of divine service in all the churches of England, and bidding the bishops distribute copies of it for this object throughout their dioceses. The clergy received the order with doubt and dissatisfaction. Not only was it opposed to their wishes, but it was equally repugnant to public opinion and the laws of the realm. Before the day fixed for the first reading a number of prominent divines met at Lambeth and drew up a petition, which was finally reduced to writing by Lancroft, the archbishop of Canterbury himself, and signed by him and six bishops. In their petition they denied the existence of any power in the king to dispense with acts of parliament; they expressed their willingness to obey parliament or convocation; and besought the king not to insist upon the distribution and reading of the declaration. The six suffragan bishops delivered the petition to James on their knees, but he received it in a passion. Although the declaration was not recalled, it was read in only four churches in London on the day appointed, and from these churches the congregations immediately departed in disgust. At the king's order the seven prelates were sent to the tower, and tried before the king's bench for seditious libel. James used every means to secure their conviction, but it was impossible to turn the presentation of a respectful petition into a criminal offense. The jury returned a verdict of "not guilty," and the prisoners were released. The whole nation learned the result of the trial with joy, and the king's course in the matter called down upon him the lasting enmity of the people, and did much to shake off his tottering crown. (12 Howell's State Trials, 183; 3 Modern Reports, 212.) The prince of Orange referred to the case of the seven bishops in the declaration which he published before coming to England, when he said that the offering of a petition had been held a high misdemeanor, and that this was one of the wrongs which he would redress. (2 Macaulay's History of England, 358; Bishop Burnet's History of his own Time, 775-780.) Afterward, when the two houses offered the throne to William and Mary, the offer and acceptance were made subject to the bill of rights. This important document recited the fact that James II. "did endeavor to subject and extirpate the Protestant religion and the laws and liberties of the kingdom," among other things, "by committing and prosecuting divers worthy prelates for humbly petitioning to be excused from concurring to the said assumed [dispensing] power," and it goes on to declare "that it is the right of the subjects to petition the king, and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal." ("An Act for declaring the rights and liberties of the subject and settling the succession of the Crown," 1 William and Mary, sess. 2, chap. 2; 9 Statutes at Large; p. 67,1688; 5 Cobbett's Parliamentary History, 108 et seq.) The act of 1700 which established the succession of the crown in the house of Hanover confirms all laws which secure the rights and liberties of the people (12 and 18 Wm. III., chap. 2; 10 Statutes at Large, 360), and the bill of rights, protecting the right of petition, is to-day a conspicuous part of the English constitution. In the celebrated case of Lord George Gordon (1781,) Lord Mansfield said that the statute of 13 Charles II., limiting the number of petitioners, was still in force. The petition in this instance was also directed against the Roman Catholics. Lord George Gordon, president of the protestant association, was displeased with the passage of Sir George Savile's bill removing penalties from Romanists, and presented a petition in the house of commons for its repeal. It bore thousands of signatures, and he went to the house at the head of a large mob which he had collected. His followers attacked several members and attempted to exert intimidation. The motion was, however, almost unanimously rejected, and the rabble, after rioting several days, subsided. (21 Cobbett's Parliamentary History, 654, et seq.) The ringleader was tried for high treason and acquitted, though the act of 13 Charles II. could undoubtedly have been enforced against him. (21 Howell's State Trials, 485; 24 Annual Register, 217, 238.) About this time petitions to parliament became very numerous. Many of them were directed against the slave trade, and afterward against slavery. At last, in 1839, debate was forbidden on the presentation of petitions in the house of commons, as they threatened to occupy all the time of the house. The most important English petition of the present century was the one of the chartists in 1848. These men, excited by the revolutions on the continent, sent a petition to the lower house for annual parliaments, universal suffrage, and the other reforms contemplated in their "charter." More than a million names were appended to the petition, and a mass meeting was called in London to support it. The house received it with respect, but it was soon discovered that many of the signatures were fictitious, and that their number had been greatly over-estimated. The committee on public petitions, while reporting these facts, declared its opinion that the right of petition was an important privilege. (98 Hansard's Parliamentary Debates; 74,283.) The agitation soon died out without affecting legislation. (1 McCarthy's History of Our Own Times, chap 18.)

—Practice. In olden times petitions were usually presented to the English monarch, because he was more powerful than parliament. The contrary is now the case; but petitions to the sovereign, though less frequent than those to the legislature, stand upon the same legal footing with them. The sovereign sometimes receives petitions personally, and sometimes through officers of the court. Parliament used to appoint receivers and triers of petitions, but now the house of commons refers public petitions to a committee on public petitions. (May's Law of Parliament, chap 19.)

—The amendment to the constitution of the United States referring to petitions was modeled after the clause in the English bill of rights. (See BILL OF RIGHTS.) The constitution originally contained no list of popular rights, as the general convention considered such an enumeration unnecessary. In the subsequent state conventions, on the other hand, it became evident that a considerable party desired such a "bill of rights."26 Consequently, in the first congress a series of amendments to the constitution were adopted, including the one quoted at the head of this article. The convention of Virginia had submitted a proposed section on the right of petition, which also asserted the right of constituents "to instruct their representatives." In the lower house, while the amendments were under consideration, Mr. Tucker, of South Carolina, moved that these words be added. Mr. Madison opposed the motion, and it was lost. (Towle's Analysis of the Constitution, 230, 231.) There have been no petitions of very great historical interest in this country except those which sought the abolition of slavery. (See, e.g., 2 Benson's Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, 57 et seq., 182 et seq., 209, 436-444; 12 ib., 660-666, 676-679, 705-711, 713-720, 722-743; 13 ib., 5-14, 24-29.) These petitions were very numerous, and always drew forth most bitter debates. Finally, in 1836, a resolution was adopted in the house of representatives, which directed that all petitions relating in any way to slavery should be laid upon the table without being printed or referred and that no further action should be taken on them. (13 ib., 24).27 In 1838 another rule of the same tenor was adopted. (13 ib., 702-707; Congressional Globe, Dec. 17 and 24, 1838, vol. 7, nos. 2 and 3, pp. 23-25, 27, 28, 33-38.) The former resolution was based, according to its recitals, on the want of power in congress over the states, the undesirability of any exercise of power in the District of Columbia, and the necessity of stopping agitation and restoring tranquillity. The latter resolution affirmed that all attempts to abolish slavery in the territories or District of Columbia were virtually aimed at the southern states, and therefore unconstitutional in their tendencies. Fortunately, such rules are no longer needed.

—The national constitution has been followed, as far as the right of petition is concerned, in almost all of the state constitutions. Only three states ignore the right in their fundamental law: Minnesota, Virginia and West Virginia. Eleven include the right of "petition, address and remonstrance" in their "bills of rights": Alabama, Connecticut, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Texas and Vermont. Four recognize the right to "apply for the redress of grievances": Illinois, Indiana, North Carolina and Oregon. Two confirm the right of "petition or remonstrance": Maine and Missouri; while all the rest copy the general constitution more closely, and protect the right of "petition" simply. (2 Hough's American Constitutions, 571.)

—The supreme court of the United States has recently passed upon the right of petition as affected by the constitution of the United States. (United States vs. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. Reports, 542.) Chief Justice Waite, in stating the opinion of the court, says that the right to assemble for lawful purposes existed long before the adoption of the constitution. It is an attribute of free government, springing from laws universally recognized by civilized man. The constitution did not establish it, but found it in existence. Up to that time the individual states were bound to protect it, and as the amendment granted no direct power over it to congress, the right of petition remains subject to the jurisdiction of the states. The amendment recognizes an existing privilege of the people, and guards it against congressional interference only. For their protection in its enjoyment the people must look to the states. The court, however, holds that the right of petition appertains to national citizenship, and that on this account it is guaranteed by the national government. It is implied in the very idea of a republican form of government. (Ib., 551, 552.) As petitions are legal, it follows that a petitioner is not guilty of libel in his petition unless express malice be proved. Therefore a petition to the legislature, requesting that body to direct the attorney general to do his duty, was decided not to be actionable. The court held that a man can petition the legislature for the redress of a grievance which does not exist, if he thinks that it exists. (Reid vs. Delorme, 1806, 2 Brevard's Reports, South Carolina, 76.) So it was held in New York that a petition for the removal of a district attorney on account of malversation in office, directed to the council of removal, and followed by his removal, could not give rise to a cause of action, unless it was presented maliciously, even if it contained false statements. (Thorn vs. Blanchard, 1809, 5 Johnson's Reports, 508, and see cases cited by counsel; see also Gray vs. Pentland, 1815, 2 Sergeant 8 Rawle's Reports, Pennsylvania, 23, and the very full opinion of the court in Harris vs. Huntington, 1802, 2 Tyler's Reports, Vermont, 129.)

—In the United States each legislative body has its own rules, which prescribe the manner of offering petitions and the disposition of them. We will give a short résumé of the rules of the house of representatives on this subject for an example. Members having petitions to present may deliver them to the clerk, after indorsing on them their names and the reference or disposition to be made of them. These petitions, except such as in the speaker's judgment are obscene or insulting, are entered in the journal and published in the congressional record. Petitions excluded by the speaker are returned to the member who presented them. If a petition has been inappropriately referred, it may be properly referred by direction of the committee having possession of it. (Rule 22; see Smith's Rules and Practice of the House of Representatives, latest edition.) No petition can be withdrawn without the leave of the house, but if an act pass for the settlement of a claim, the clerk can send all the papers to the officer charged with the settlement. (Rule 39.) Every petition reported by a committee must be accompanied by a written report, which report is thereupon printed. (Rule 18, § 2.) After the final adjournment of congress the clerks of committees are obliged to deliver all petitions, not reported, and the evidence taken upon them, to the clerk of the house. (Rule 38.) A petition can only be printed by unanimous consent or suspension of the rules. (Smith; supra, 5th ed., 314; this does not refer to printing in the record.) A committee can not receive a petition except through the house. (9 Grey, 412; Jefferson's Manual, § 8; Smith, supra, 105, 234.) All petitions for the satisfaction of private claims against the government of the United States are transmitted to the court of claims, unless the house in which they are introduced otherwise orders. (U. S. Revised Statutes, § 1060.) Petitions must, of course, be presented to the appropriate department of the government. (Paschal's Annotated Constitution, 256, § 248.)28

—The right of petition seems to be so just, so harmless, and so unquestionable, that its formal recognition in our constitution may appear needless. Its justice, however, has not always been admitted. In the case of the seven bishops we have seen that James II. attempted to override it. In ancient Persia we learn that petitions were discouraged, for "whosoever, whether man or woman, shall come unto the king into the inner court, who is not called, there is one law of his to put him to death, except such to whom the king shall hold out the golden sceptre that he may live." (Esther, chap. 4, verse 11.) We have the authority of Perry for the statement that Peter the Great made a decree that no petition should be presented to him until it had been offered to his ministers, and by them rejected. If the petition should then be presented to the czar, and fail to secure his approval, the petitioner was to suffer death. The result was, that no more petitions were presented. (Etat de la Grande Russie, 173.) From this account Montesquieu draws the conclusion that "in a monarchy the prince should be accessible." (Esprit des Lois, 12, 26.) It may readily be seen that such instances prove the value of the constitutional recognition of the right of petition, not only in monarchies but also in republics. The right is most useful as a safety-valve for the people, and such a safety-valve is especially necessary where the people govern. The chartist petition did much to quiet the petitioners and those who sympathized with them. Public petitions awaken the attention of men, keep ideas alive, countenance those who wish to act, and show public opinion. (Lieber on Civil Liberty and Self-Government, 3d ed., chap. 12, p. 121 et seq.) In these ways they have a positive power. In the debate on the extension of the time of the income tax in 1853, Lord Brougham told the house of lords how the old income tax law was repealed. "How did the opponents of the tax conduct the campaign in 1816? By means of petitions." He proceeds to show that for five or six weeks, from four o'clock in the afternoon till two or three o'clock in the morning, petition after petition was presented and debated. (128 Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, 798.) In England petitions brought about the abolition of slavery, the emancipation of the Roman Catholics, and the repeal of the corn law. Of course the right of petition may be abused. The legislature should be free, and threatening crowds of petitioners destroy this freedom, as was frequently the case during the French Revolution. Again, petitions should be respectful. The Kentish petitioners in 1701 were imprisoned on the ground that their petition was insolent and seditious. (5 Cobbett's Parliamentary History, 1250 et seq.) Stockdale's petition was rejected by the house of commons in 1840, because it was insulting. The abuses to which the right of petition is liable are by no means enough to affect its value seriously. The statute of Charles II. was designed to prevent the disorders which petitions produced, and it is now unnecessary to enforce it. Such disorders are discountenanced by the constitution of the United States, which recognizes only the right "peaceably to assemble and to petition." (Rawle on the Constitution, 124.) The first amendment has been solemnly criticised because it "savors of the style of condescension, in which favors are supposed to be granted." (1 Tucker's Blackstone, Appendix, 299.) This criticism may account for the word "remonstrance" in many of the state constitutions (supra), but it can have but little weight with those who regard substance rather than language.

—In France the constitution of 1791 included the right of petition among natural rights, specifying it as la liberté d'adresser aux autorités constitués des petitions signées individuellement. Although this section required every petition to be signed by the actual name of the signer, yet the assembly and convention often considered petitions signed by assumed titles, such as "the people," etc. The constitution of 1793 again preserved this right, pointing out the tribunat as the most appropriate recipient of petitions, and in 1799 the same privilege was reaffirmed. (Constitution of 1799, art. 83.) Under the first empire and the constitutions of 1815 and 1830 we find the right of petition protected. Many petitions were presented to the constituent assembly of 1848. During the second empire they could be addressed to the senate only. The constitution of 1870 allowed petitions to be presented to the corps législatif. (2 Block's Dictionnaire de la Politique, 555, tit. Pétition.)

—In Prussia, Frederick the Great was accustomed to receive petitions himself. In the early part of this century a decree was published forbidding the thrusting of petitions personally upon the king. The Prussian constitution of 1850 recognizes the right of petition (articles 23 and 32); and in fact all Germany, as well as the other constitutional countries of Europe, admits its existence. (8 Bluntschli 8 Brater's Deutsches Staats-Wörterbuch, 67, tit. Petitionsrecht; 3 Holtzendorff's Rechtslexicon, 40, same tit. See, for example, Constitution of Belgium, 1831, article 21, and Constitution of Switzerland, 1848, article 47.) Even in Russia the emperor Nicholas was often addressed personally by petitioners. (Lieber, supra.) Hue states that the right prevails in China. He records a case in which the inhabitants of a Chinese town secured the removal of an obnoxious prefect by means of a popular meeting and a petition to the viceroy. He adds that such incidents are not infrequent in that empire. (2 Travels through China, chap. 3, pp. 77-80)

ERNEST HOWARD CROSBY.

PHILOSOPHY OF LAW

PHILOSOPHY OF LAW. 1. What the Philosophy of Law means; its Task. The mind of the jurist and the mind of the philosopher demand a philosophical consideration of the law. Both to the jurist and the philosopher the inquiries with which the philosophy of law concerns itself are altogether indispensable, if they would deeply and exhaustively understand their respective sciences. The student of law can not avoid the task of rendering account to himself of some of the highest principles of his science, of their foundation and connections, which his own science is unable to explain. Not only the statesman, the legislator and the teacher of law, but also the judge and the lawyer, in their respective spheres, find innumerable occasions for testing either whole institutes or single points of positive law, in their legitimacy and the essential reason of their validity; occasions for seeking to interpret them, and according to the result of that interpretation to endeavor either to retain or to alter them. The jurist is thus frequently compelled to seek for principles of law; but to search after principles, is to philosophize.

—On the other hand, the philosopher is compelled to test his general, theoretical principles by the materials of existing law. Among all enlightened nations he finds the state the grandest reflex of the human mind in history. In all human communities he meets with the idea of law, as an essentially human idea, in various stages of development, from its most refined down to its most simple and only half-conscious beginnings. In his system, therefore, the philosopher must take this important phenomenon into careful consideration. The philosophy of law is, accordingly, the systematic science of the principles of law. From the philosophical point of view, it assumes the task of inquiring into the necessary origin of the idea of law in the human mind, and into its relation to other forces and creations in the life of man. The philosophy of law is called upon to assign to law its true position in the cosmos of intellect. From the legal point of view the philosophy of law should endeavor to apply the highest principles concerning the nature of law and the state, obtained through philosophical reflection and historical investigation, and seek to incorporate them into the existing materials of all legislation.

—2. Outlines of the History of the Development of the Philosophy of Law. As a matter of course, there can be a philosophy of law only where the principles of law, as such, have at least begun to detach themselves from the precepts of religion and from the dictates of morals. Hence, in the present sketch of the process of development of that philosophy, we may regard as a preliminary stage (and therefore completely overlook) all that which, in ancient history, appears as religious revelation, legend, custom and poetry; although such traditions otherwise constitute important material for the investigation of national character, and of the chief outlines of the primitive human conceptions of law.

—We meet with a true philosophy of law first among the Hellenes, for they at least began to detach law from ethics and religion, although they were far from completing the task of that separation. In this, however, as in many other things, they form the transition from, or connecting link between, the east and the west. In judging the organization of the Grecian state, and the Greek doctrine of the state, we must not forget this middle position of the Hellenes. Compared with theocratic and patriarchal despotism, they had made notable progress; but the Greeks must be said to have lived in very close bondage, when we compare them with the Roman civis, not to say with the citizens of modern states. For the Hellenic state was absolute, and all excellence, all, was excellent only in so far as it was subservient to the state, and became a. It was not so much that the state interfered in almost everything, but rather that everything was absorbed in the state. Religion was the state's religion, and any one who announced new gods had to drain the fatal cup. The family was only a means to the ends of the state. The state might prevent trade and traffic with foreign countries, and fetter the free activity of the economy of individuals; it acknowledged no society but itself. That state was only the logical consequence of the same political idea which prescribed to music its melodies, to instruments their tunes, and even ventured to forbid the Hellenes to read Homer. This political idea was not only oppressive to, but it actually destroyed, the family, by authorizing the community of women and children, and the selection of the parties to be united as man and wife by the public magistrates.

—This entire conception of the state was possible only because of the very limited territorial extent of the Hellenic states themselves. The Hellenic state was the city. The whole government easily assumed a narrow, police character, interfering in almost everything. Even Aristotle, although he expressly warned the Greeks against the danger of their petty state system, entertained, in this respect, so narrow a view, that he actually required that all the citizens of the state should be personally acquainted with one another. But, even in small "city-states" of this kind, the absolute absorption of the individual by the state was possible only so long as the old Hellenic spirit maintained itself; when the subject, without thought, submitted himself to the substantial embodiment of the national spirit, as traditionally expressed and represented in religion, customs and the state, and thus submitted himself with a feeling that things could not be otherwise.

—Yet this old Hellenic spirit began very early to die out. After the first Persian war the dissolution of the old relation of absorption of the individual by the state accompanied the enlargement of the horizon of the popular mind and the increase of national culture. This was a natural, necessary, and in many respects a wholesome, movement. The transition to reflection in this instance was, as it is always and everywhere, the condition precedent of a higher mental development; and if the Athenians had never abandoned the point of view of the "Marathonites," the highest which they attained in science, in art and in the state, would have remained unachieved. But it can not be denied that the negative, dissolving and disintegrating effects that accompany all thought, or rather reflection, soon became very prominently, very sharply and very one-sidedly perceptible among the Greeks. To overcome effects of this kind requires at all times the most intense and continuous effort of all human energies. It accordingly can not be denied, that the Hellenic national character did not bear its emancipation from the old strict observance of faith and custom without rapid demoralization: a fact which is connected with the exceedingly rapid course of the whole history of Greece from its earliest beginning until its final decay.

—The period of the sophists is, properly speaking, the time when awakened thought presumed to question, to investigate, to doubt, and even to pull down everything that was customary in religion or morals, in law or in the organization of the state. To the Hellenes this epoch had nearly the same meaning that the "period of enlightenment" of the past century had to France and Germany. In many things it was injurious; in some, useful; but in all, necessary. At this period Hellenic thought, in spite of all its traditions, was not satisfied with the belief that things could not be otherwise than they were. The Greek philosophers asked themselves whether right and wrong were settled for all time by nature; or, whether they were only provisions changeable at the caprice of men. They inquired whether those ideas were or, and ever afterward this controversy ran through the entire Hellenic-Roman philosophy. But it is a characteristic fact, that the Hellenes, face to face with this first problem, should have thrown together ethics and law. The right, the good, the law) —concerning which they inquired whether it existed or—was with them not only the law of legal right, but also the law of morality. The conservatives maintained the eternal inviolability of the law of legal right and of the law of morality, as an ordinance of the gods and of nature; but the sophists, armed with the subtlety and culture of the more modern time, pointed to the fact that the law of morality and the law of legal right are by no means always the same, but may be very contradictory in time and space.

—The sophists, however, did not understand that the idea of legal right or law exists with all nations; that the creation of forms of law or legal right is rooted in the nature of man, and that only the forms in which this idea appears, may be different and even contradictory, according to national character, and to natural conditions and the conditions of the time. The sophists, because they saw uncertain, changeable forms of law, rejected the whole idea of legal right and of the good. They maintained that every nation, every epoch, as well as every individual, from motives of caprice or interest, might prescribe to itself or himself what it or he should consider lawful or unlawful, and might act accordingly. In this manner subjectivity finally passed all bounds. Although at the beginning the more moderate among the sophists (Prodikos, Protagoras) erected fresh barriers; subsequently the majority (like Gorgias, Hippias) both theoretically and practically followed out to the last consequences this anarchical doctrine. It has been justly observed that even Socrates, as the representative of the right of free investigation into all traditional institutions, stood on entirely the same ground as the sophists. But he differed from the latter, in that he subordinated the freedom of the individual to the purposes of the good, and wished that thought should not be employed for the purpose of demolition, but for the attainment of the knowledge and the voluntary observance of the law of morality.

—In judging the philosophy of the state of both the great pupils of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, we must take into account the influence of the Greek political situation, and of the general condition of Greek civilization at the time. That process of disintegration, the dissolution of the old system of ethics, through unrestrained skeptical thought, was making alarmingly rapid progress. In a political respect this degeneracy manifested itself in an unbridled ochlocracy, as in Athens; or in a malevolent tyranny, as in Sicily and the other islands. All earnest, thinking men, in all the Hellenic cities, had long since turned away with loathing from the turbulent democracy, and sought support and assistance in the strict Doric political and moral system, with its aristocratic ideals. We must keep in view this partiality for the Doric political ideal, which had been partly realized in the state of Lycurgus, in order to understand how Plato could reach the otherwise unintelligible extremes of his philosophy of the state. In the second place, we must take into account the peculiar tendency to abstract theoretical construction that characterized the whole Hellenic national character, and most materially all Hellenic speculation. This explains why Plato could admit, as the principle of his doctrine of the state and of law, the same idea which forms the basis of his psychology and of his analysis of the individual man. Hence, the well-known simile by which he illustrated his own psychology: As the charioteer guides his two-in-hand, the reason must control, and keep in harmony the two halves of the human soul, the masculine, courageous, and the feminine, appetitive halves. And what is true of the individual man, is true of men as a whole, as they appear in the state. This whole only represents man on a larger scale, as one animated organic being, endowed with but one body and one soul. In other words, the three parts of the human mind, the feminine soul, the masculine soul and reason, reveal themselves in the state as three classes or estates—the class of tradesmen, that of the warriors, and that of the wise men. The best form of government, to wit, aristocracy, consists in the supremacy of the wise men, the passive obedience of tradesmen, and the active obedience of the warrior class. Every individual should belong completely to one of these orders, and be entirely absorbed in it. All private interests are destroyed by the state's distributing wives, children and goods among the citizens. The state controls the whole education of the people, even in the smallest details, and continues to educate even adult individuals. It prescribes the tunes of the lyre, forbids the songs of Homer, as being too passionate, and interdicts all imitative arts, such as painting, sculpture and the drama. The most gifted among the warriors after a long training may rise to the class of the wise men; but the caste of tradesmen, after ministering to the wants of the higher orders, as the adamant foundation of the state, must remain imbedded in the ground. The slaves, so indispensable to the ancient state, and all bodily defective children, must be degraded into that caste. In his later work, the twelve books on the laws, having seen the impracticability of his ideal state, Plato modified his extreme notions concerning the community of women and goods, and proposed a constitution, half way between oligarchy and democracy, in which the laws themselves should rule, instead of his ideal rulers, the order of wise men.

—In Aristotle we find a marked progress both in the methods and the contents of the doctrine of the state. This philosopher gave his doctrine of the state a broad historico-juristic basis, by collecting data relating to the constitutions of no fewer than 158 different states, and critically sifting the materials in a work that has unfortunately been lost. As regards the substance of his doctrine, his greatest merit seems to lie in his conception of man, as a, a political animal, a being by nature necessarily impelled to form states. It is not with Aristotle as with Plato, and most of the other Greek, Roman and Christian philosophers, purely external urgency and helplessness that impel man to form the state, but his very nature. The ideal basis of the state, side by side with the real, was first proved by Aristotle; yet without his distorting that ideal in either a theocratic or transcendental sense.

—The collapse of all intellectual life in Greece, and principally of the life of the state, was soon reflected in the prevailing philosophical systems, and in the neglect of political life, with which the Greeks had formerly been so closely identified. The sensualist-material tendency of the Cyrenian school was continued in the Epicurean sect, which neglected the state. The rising school of the stoics, also, which in many respects bore a resemblance to the earlier school of cynics, no longer regarded the state from the point of view of the national state, which had represented the healthy point of view peculiar to the life of antiquity. The pantheism of this doctrine accorded a marked prominence to the subject, and led to the hypothesis of a grand whole, which embraced all individuals in a community of the cosmos. Men must live conformably to the law of nature (naturœ convenienter vivere—a maxim on which was subsequently based the so-called jus naturœ, or law of nature, which accordingly had a physico-ethical, not juridical, starting-point). Nature is supposed to impel all men, even all beings, that have any share in the cosmic soul, consequently the gods, into one great community; and any one who, in regard to this whole, conducts himself properly, is just. The justice of men among themselves is moral-politico-juridical; that of men toward the gods consists in piety. As in the cosmos, the world-soul, so in the state the "state-soul," moves, contains and controls everything; but this soul of the state is the law.

—As is known, the teachings of the stoics became, later, the favorite doctrine of Rome, when it had gained the empire of the world; and precisely as the Roman empire finally dissolved all nationalities, even its own, into one universal state, so also the political doctrines of the stoic philosophy were cosmopolitan, and no longer national-political.

—These stoical conceptions, mingled with Christian elements, exerted their influence far into the middle ages. The "Civitas Dei" of St. Augustine, who himself had received a stoical training, has many traits of the stoical.

—There was once a lively controversy as to whether, and how far, the stoical school had exercised an influence on Roman law; but in our present state of knowledge, and with our deeper historical insight into both the stoical philosophy and Roman law, such a question can no longer be raised. A school of French jurists (Cujacius), with the laudable intent of entering into the whole mental life of the Romans, was the first to seek an explanation of their law in its relation to the stoical school; and, strange to say, these jurists supposed they discovered a material influence of that philosophical system on the Roman law. But we now know that that law was only the outcome and development of the peculiar popular life, and of the peculiar talent, of the Romans. Its chief excellence consisted precisely in its repugnance to all the doctrinarian wisdom of the schools and in its thoroughly practical wisdom. It would never have occurred to a Roman jurist to allow any kind of philosophy to exercise any influence on the matter of his real juridical ideas. There certainly are to be found many stoical elements in the corpus juris, but only in its general definitions, in its erudition, in its ethical maxims. But those philosophical opinions remained completely without influence on the life and development of the institutes of the Roman law. In the same manner as the Romans, in a purely outward manner, appropriated to themselves all Greek culture, so, too, they introduced into Italy, Greek philosophy and political theories, yet without any real appropriation of them, and without any further development of any one of them, just as they erected the pillaged statues of the temple on the capitol, often bringing them, without much discernment, into an enforced contact with their own national institutions, heedless whether they harmonized well or badly with the latter. Now, the stoic dennitions were very poorly adapted to the matter of Roman law, and we may confidently assert that what in the corpus juris is juridical is not stoic, and what is stoic is not juridical.

—The Romans, accordingly, had no philosophy of law, in the proper sense of the term. Their so-called philosophers, particularly Cicero, learned philosophy from the Greeks, as one learns a foreign language, without changing it, or working it into the elements of Roman law. And yet, as it were, an unconscious philosophy of law, such as never afterward was attained to, seems to pervade the labors of the Roman jurisprudents. The eminent talent of the Roman mind for law is not only displayed in the acute formulation of juridical ideas, in the subtle distinctions of these ideas, or in the admirable conclusions it draws from them, in their algebra of juridical ideas, but the instinct for the deepest intelligence of the essence of law is still more luminously revealed throughout the whole development of it by the Romans, in the prætorial edict and in the jurisprudentes. The characteristic traits that make the Romans emphatically the juridical nation of history, were the above, and the gradual, slow transformation of the old, obsolete forms of law, according to the wants and the social progress of the time, as well as their efforts to do justice to all that was new, but with the utmost leniency toward the old. The incessant mental labor of the Roman jurisprudents for centuries, by degrees smoothed down the rigid, specifically Roman, harshness of their law, and in connection with the growing universal culture of their empire, changed it into a jus gentium in the highest sense of the term, that is, into a law that in many things has promulgated lasting juridical truths, particularly in the law on obligations, or contracts, and in the general theory of the law. But it must not be forgotten, that, to effect this, that specific juridical talent, which itself was incontestably Roman, was required. Only the Romans were able to develop their Roman law into universal law. Their law, like Christianity, conquered the world, and together with the whole culture of antiquity, and as a fragment of that culture, it legitimately passed into mediæval and modern culture; yet legitimately only in as far as even that fragment of ancient culture could be assimilated with propriety to our life. We shall return below to this subject.

—To the Hellenic philosophy and the Roman law were now added, as influential elements in the history of ethical, political and juridical ideas, the ideas of Christianity. The influence of these on the philosophy of law was decidedly unfavorable in the beginning. It enhanced the fundamental vice of that philosophy in the extreme: the amalgamation of law and morality, the preponderance of the internal and the moral over the external and really juridical. We have called attention above to the fact, that, as a matter of course, there can be, in principle, no opposition or contradiction between ethics and law, both being forms of one same force; but we have also called attention to the fact, that, spite of their close connection, there is a very decided difference between law and ethics, the obliteration of which operates unfavorably in the highest degree on both. When the domain of inner freedom and of morality is occupied by the law, when religious and moral precepts are understood or conceived in a juridical sense, then religious and moral truth perishes, and untrue and un-free formal holiness and apparent morality take its place. This history has demonstrated in all those cases in which the state or other external power has sought to command and enforce faith, religiousness or morality by coercive measures. In this domain of the free, inner life of the soul, only forms, formulas and appearance can be commanded. When, on the other hand, law is confounded with ethics, when religion and morality seek to rule the state and dictate codes of law, we see come into existence those abortive systems which would paralyze man's highest activity, his participation in the life of the state, and substitute fanaticism and hypocrisy for healthy action and open force. Unmanly, untrue and unhealthy organization is to be found wherever it is attempted to replace the state and the law by religion and morals. Here, too, the only healthy and normal course is to separate what is different.

—The history of the philosophy of law, however, shows that it was only late that men learned to keep morality separate from law. Among the Hellenes we find the clearest contradiction between their theory and practice; both their theory and practice confounded ethics and law; but while in its practical life the state absorbed morality, prescribed ethico-religious rules or laws, and scarcely endured any free individual life, the science of the law and of the state was entirely ethical. It has been rightly remarked that the Hellenic vocabulary has no word for law in the sense of the Roman jus, but couples ethico-religious notions with the words, etc.; and we have seen how, from Pythagoras to Aristotle, the pedagogical preponderated in the state, and the moral in the idea of the law. Among the Romans the life of the law was free and richly developed, but they had no philosophy of law. Their jurists avoided general definitions even in positive law.

—Christian ideas at the outset evinced a strong disinclination toward the state, which was still heathen and corrupt. The kingdom of the Christian was not of this world. The true home of the Christian was not this earth, corrupted through the fall of man, but in the world beyond. Above all, he had to save his soul, by piety and faith, and only to concern himself with the state when it was unavoidable. As is known, the Christians of the first centuries expected the speedy end of the world, and carefully avoided, as far as possible, any contact with the heathen and sinful life of the state. Religious morality, with them, overruling every other motive, stepped into the foreground, while the state was but a secondary concern, or was considered only as a necessary evil. If human nature had not been corrupted through the fall, there would have been neither murder nor homicide, nor quarrels concerning mine and thine, and consequently no need of the state or of the law. Sin was introduced by the devil; along with, or at least on account of, sin, the state and the law had also entered into this world; in paradise there was neither king nor judge. With this sinful world, with the devil, the state and the law were to disappear, for they will not be required in heaven. The lex temporalis contains, of just and legal, only what it borrowed from the lex œterna.

—Such was the teaching of St. Augustine, and his doctrine was only logical. The ancient wisdom of the Stagirite had taught, that man by his ideal nature was drawn toward the state; that the latter was not a necessary evil, but a necessary good; but now Christianity had reached the very opposite conclusion. This world-shunning view, neglectful of the state and of the law, governed the entire Christian philosophy. The scholastic philosophy confused law and ethics in this, that, according to the former, the just man (the of the Bible) was only the person who, through the redemption, had been rescued from sin. Scholasticism over and again called to mind how man, so long as his nature had not been corrupted by the devil, neither knew nor needed the law or the state: and further, that all law ought to be reduced to religious morality and the ten commandments. The different philosophers and their parties only diverged from one another in this, that some among them ascribed man's knowledge of these principles to divine revelation, while others ascribed it rather to the natural reason of man. Scholasticism further made frequent attempts to distinguish the lex divina (the moral and religious law of the Mosaic-Christian revelation) from the lex naturalis (the voice of moral, juridical commands, dwelling even in the heart of the heathen: thus particularly the tolerant and liberal Abelard). But this whole intellectual tendency, which attained its latest expression in Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), has in common a disregarding of the state and of the law, and the coloring of both by religious morals.

—Considering the historical conditions of the middle ages, this idea naturally led to the complete supremacy of the church over the state, in its quality of representative of religious morals. But the opposition to this idea was preparing, during the time that the state, with increasing success, began to struggle for its emancipation from the church, by the aid of science, no longer exclusively confined to the clergy, but pursued by laymen as well, and particularly by the aid of the revival of ancient culture and the knowledge of Roman law. The struggles of the Hohenstaufens against the papacy may apparently have ended in the subjugation of the secular power; but in many individuals it had at least aroused a doubt concerning the legitimateness of ecclesiastical supremacy. The increasing power of the opposition against the religious-moral absorption of the state and the law, was not the work of philosophers, nor the outcome of theoretical reasons, but was owing to the efforts of statesmen and party writers, and to the practical wants and aspirations of the period. These men at first opposed these principles on account of their practical consequences. Dante and Occam, the brave political adherents of the emperors Henry of Luxemburg and Louis of Bavaria, were the men who first successfully, for practico-political reasons, attacked the supremacy of the pope over the secular powers, and the whole theory on which that supremacy was based; but, as a matter of course, they did this in complete conformity with the dogmas of the church. Two hundred years later, Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) submitted, with reckless knavery, morality to political ends. In his ardent wish to see Italy freed from the numerous small despots and their feuds, he called for an absolute dictatorship, which by any, even by immoral means, as violence and fraud, might carry out the political behests of the times. Yet all this is sufficiently explained by the historical conditions, by the times of the Borgias and the Medicis, as also by that peculiar talent of the Neo-Latin nations, particularly of the Italians, which prompts them to follow up the suggestions of any ardent passion to the end. At the same time it was an equally extreme reaction against the subjugation of the state and of the law by the religious morals of the church. The emancipation of the state was carried to the point of ignoring all ethical laws, and of sacrificing morality to purely political ends; yet the motives here again were practico-political: the wounds of torn Italy and the necessity of healing them. Machiavelli belonged to the period of the reformation, that amidst violent convulsions completed the movement which began at the close of the thirteenth and continued through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; the movement which, in principle and forever, did away with the scholastic idea of the state and of the law, and of their relations to morality and the church.

—And here, again, the men who achieved these results were not philosophers of the schools, armed with theories; on the contrary, these results were the necessary outcome of the gigantic strife of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which in Germany, England, Switzerland and France led to radical changes in the organization of church and state. Once more the practico-political movements of history created the necessity of not abiding by old, traditional ideas, but of seeking a different solution of a number of important problems, touching the relations of church and state, of law and religion, of the freedom of private life, the rights of public life, and the rights of citizens in relation to their governments. Men insisted on examining for themselves into these problems, in order possibly to attain higher results. Such were the great questions of the period, which aroused so many powerful minds in Germany and in the Low Countries, in England, in France, and even in Italy and Spain. In this manner the 150 years that followed the first efforts of the reformers, until the last vanishing traces of the thirty years' war, displayed an extraordinary wealth of political and juridico philosophical literature, both in the form of long-winded systems and of short polemical writings and pamphlets.

—The reformers themselves, even Luther and Melancthon, knew hardly anything of the philosophy of law, in the proper sense of the term. In ethics, also, they still maintained the traditional ideas concerning the lex divina, naturalis and positiva. There, nevertheless, were a few of the friends and pupils of the reformers, who, both in theory and in their practical deductions, boldly broke away from their teachers, and followed the spirit of the times. Such was Hubert Languet (1518-81), who in the interest of freedom of conscience openly advocated popular sovereignty. The same was also done by his contemporaries, Hotomanus in France, and George Buchanan in Scotland. Melancthon's pupil, Hemming, more deliberately than his teacher, severed all connection with the doctrine of the middle ages. Yet, along with all this, there were many stationary men among the adherents of the reformation, who, in the field of juridical philosophy, retained unchanged the old views, as did Oldndorp. The revival, and at that time flourishing condition, of Græco-Roman philology caused the students and patrons of it to show a decided inclination for the political ideas of antiquity. The Frenchmen Hotomanus, Bodinus, Charron (1541-1603), Gassendi (1592-1655); the Englishmen More and Sidney; the Italian Piccolomini (1604), and others, with but few Christian modifications, renewed the doctrines of the old Hellenic and Roman philosophy. It would be unfair to maintain that in all this there was nothing more than the harmless whims of unpractical scholars. It must not be forgotten that More and Sidney died for their convictions. Their theories concerning the importance and dignity of the state contrasted strikingly with the mediæval theocratic ideas; and in this respect they certainly represented the spirit of modern times. But the old point of view was at the same time vehemently defended by the school of the Jesuits. The conversion of heretics was their main task. Dominicus de Soto, Fernando Vasquez, Bellarmine, Molina, Suarez and Mariana are the most prominent names connected with the tendency of this school. They frequently displayed great learning and intelligence. They skillfully employed the theories of the principle of sociality and of the sovereignty of the people, which were in favor at the time. In other words, they defended the old, desperate cause with the arms of their adversaries, and in so doing scorned no means that proved serviceable for their holy purpose. They even considered the murder of an heretical prince a duty. The church herself was finally compelled to disacknowledge these ultra-apostles of hers; yet long before that not only governments had had their books burned by the hands of the public executioner, but deeply religious men, like Pascal, had directed their combined power of heart and intellect against this deplorable misuse of religion.

—We next come to a long line of conspicuous British philosophers who wrote concerning the state. Most of them had for point of departure the problems that were agitating their own insular kingdom in particular, but which, nevertheless, justly claim a certain universal importance, because the convulsions that shook the state and church in England were closely connected with the general religious-political movement of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Among these men, also, there were harmless philological dreamers, who regarded the revival of antiquity as the standard suited to their own time. This not only applies to More and Sidney, but even to the highly realistic Bacon of Verulam, who, with genuine, practical English common sense, looked upon utility as the principle of the state. He, nevertheless, to a certain degree, leaned on Plato, basing the state on ethics, while Plato based it on psychology. In the great struggle for the respective rights of the crown and of the people, absolutism found an intelligent champion in Hobbes, who in a logical manner attributed absolute inviolability to all government, while others, like Salmasius and Filmer, demonstrated the autocratic power of the monarch from the Scriptures: the latter, in his notorious Patriarch (1665), maintained the identity of the royal and paternal power, and showed that God had instituted absolute monarchy with Adam, in Paradise. Milton, with his wonted enthusiasm for truth, morality and freedom, successfully attacked Salmasius, while the penetrating intellect of Locke completely overthrew Filmer's patriarchal doctrine. At the same time the principle of sociality, as it had been accepted by the German and Dutch writers on the philosophy of law, was established psychologically by Richard Cumberland, with whose name the school of so-called English moralists is associated: Shaftesbury, Wollaston, Clarke, Hutcheson, Home, Ferguson and Adam Smith.

—David Hume also went in this same direction, although in many respects he conflicted with its tendencies. His austere skepticism rejected the traditional "myths" of a state of nature and of a social contract. General utility is his principle of the state, of law and of justice; for peace and good faith will in the end prove more profitable than violence and cunning. In this manner he sought both to modify and support the optimism of the moralists. This utilitarianism, which among English philosophers began with Bacon, frequently after reappeared in England, under ever-varying forms, as a characteristic trait; and in our own century it attained its most marked expression in the system of Bentham.

—Yet the main branch of the intellectual current at that time flowed through Germany and the Low Countries. Here the doctrine of the law of nature emanated from Hugo Grotius, inasmuch as he, with greater decision and consciousness than his predecessors, reduced all positive law of whatever kind to the common basis of a constantly uniform law of nature. It was also very characteristic of the practical starting point of all this movement, that even Grotius begins with the simple question: "Is it ever just to wage war?" To investigate this question, the terrible wars, of which he had been a witness during his own lifetime (1583-1648), furnished, indeed, sufficient cause. He answers the question in the affirmative, in the case of just defense or demand for satisfaction; and he only occasionally comes to the investigation of the legal principle itself. It is, besides, very remarkable that Grotius, as well as all the following teachers of the law of nature, gradually distinguished more sharply between law and the morals of religion, although they regarded God, or his revealed will, as the common basis of both. As to the particular institutes of public law, Grotius seeks to prove that they do not necessarily, or altogether certainly, emanate from the reason, yet he contends that they do not absolutely contradict it. This problem might, indeed, have led to a fruitful analysis of the matter of the law, if the whole law of nature had not started from a false conception of humanity and of history. Another fiction of this doctrine is the supposition of a state of nature (status naturalis), corresponding to the law of nature, that is, a condition of humanity before the beginnings of society and of the state; and this condition of nature, with the theological philosophers, frequently meant the supposed state in Paradise before the fall of man (status integritatis), but with others, a condition of wretchedness and helpless want after the fall.

—It was possible, from these general premises, to draw the most opposite conclusions in questions of detail. Thus Hobbes, from the political contract, which unconditionally bestows sovereignty on the monarch, infers extreme absolutism; while Rousseau, from his contrat social, reaches permanent revolution, the sovereign people having made every office revokable, and thus at any time being able to depose the king. Between both these extremes there exist various kinds of modified doctrines. It is remarkable that Spinoza here also sustained the superiority of his genius; and although not entirely exempt from the influences and errors of the scholarship of his time, he on certain main points decidedly opposed them. Thus, he combats the hypothesis that men by the political contract ever renounced their freedom. On the contrary, he maintains that only in the state do they acquire freedom; that before the state there existed only arbitrary power; and that only in the state is it possible to put an end to irrational and unlimited unrestraint, unworthy of man, to attain to an existence in accordance with reason.

—Samuel Pufendorf agrees with Spinoza in combating the theological view of the state. The remarkable juridical talent of the former placed him on many points in direct conflict with the traditional tendency to fill up the whole domain of law with moral-religious ideas, and involved him in numerous polemical conflicts with the advocates of the latter school. Although he also draws no clear distinction in principle, between law and morality, in most matters of detail his sound juridical sense correctly distinguished between them and connected them. With Spinoza, he lays stress on the fact that the "state of nature" of man before the social contract is the most wretched hypothesis conceivable, and that man did not enter into a state of society by contract, but was impelled thereto by a fundamental law of his nature. The commands that are indispensable to the preservation of society or the community, Pufendorf holds may be enforced, and are jus perfectum; those, on the contrary, that only serve to render human association more pleasant or agreeable, are not coercible, and constitute jura imperfecta. Pufendorf further distinguishes between the duties of man toward himself, and his duties toward others; and among the latter he distinguishes the absolute and the hypothetical, that arise from special agreements (adventitiœ obligationis), such as the rights of property, the rights of the family, and the state, into which men entered, and that by contract, to prevent the war of all against all. Here Pufendorf pays homage to the errors of his time; but he decidedly opposes them in his conception of the church, which, as a corpus mysticum, should wield no immediate, and particularly no political, supremacy in the state. The church may appoint teachers of its own faith; but it is subject to the state, like any private society, and in things not spiritual it should be deprived of all coercive power.

—Nevertheless, other ardent champions of the old theory soon appeared, to oppose these innovations, at the close of the seventeenth, and beginning of the eighteenth, century, in Seckendorf and Alberti, and the two Cocceji, as well as in the works of their pupils, who directly based both law and morals on the will of God, as revealed in the ten commandments. Christian Thomasius (1655-1728) was a real standard-bearer on the field of progress, just as he was the devoted adversary of the trials for witchcraft, and the first who lectured on the law of nature in the German language. At his first appearance, while he still adhered to Grotius and Pufendorf, he was goaded, like Luther, by the polemical writings of his numerous and violent adversaries, into much more extreme views. His point of departure is a strict separation of religious-moral doctrine from natural law. The former, he claims, has its origin in divine revelation, the latter in human reason, and the more reverently we grant the precedence to the former, within its own sphere, the more marked will be the independence of the whole sphere of law.

—Leibnitz (1646-1716) was not so important an element in promoting the development of the philosophy of law as was Thomasius, who, both in a positive and negative manner, imparted a powerful impulse to that development; but Leibnitz was a most powerful force, by the general spread of his ideas, broadly developed by Wolff (1679-1754); ideas which ruled the literature and the whole world of enlightened German thought, in the period of its aufklärung (enlightenment). To Leibnitz, justice is the virtue which preserves the normal condition of man's social life. The pre-established harmony which keeps the universe together, reveals itself, in the community of men, as law, hedging in the institutions of marriage, of paternity, the relation of master and servant, the commune and the state. In this sense, to obey God and to obey reason are one and the same thing; and the conviction of the binding force of the law does not come through the state contract or political contract or social contract, but is given with the idea of law itself.

—Still, it was not these deep views themselves, but rather the theistic-rationalistic ideas of an ethico-pedagogical kind, that governed the German aufklärung (enlightenment), through the broad interpretation and amplification of Wolffian dogmatism.

—But even this harmless system of German rationalism, on many points, calls to mind the dangerous theories which, during the same period, abounded in the French éclaircissement (enlightenment), the attempted realization of which was destined to shake and startle the world in the French revolution.

—In France the thoroughly corrupt moral-political and politico-economical state of things, toward the close of the sixteenth century, had, in a Montaigne, engendered absolute skepticism as to the power of the moral law; and the fermenting putrescence of that state of affairs finally found a natural outlet in the French revolution.

—In fact, toward the middle of the eighteenth century, the culture of the time placed itself in open and avowed opposition to the prevailing conditions in the state, the church and society, from which that culture itself had sprung. The rationalism of the encyclopædists, influenced both by the English moralists and the materialistic tendencies of the natural sciences, the study of which was renewed, proclaimed interest (l'intérêt) the principle of all action, even of all noble action, the latter also, it was claimed, being due to an enlightened self-love. In order to protect the practical results of this view, men formed society, and created the state (D'Alembert, Didérot); society and the state being but the outcome of the nobles passions of men, such as ambition, pride and love of glory. Thus Voltaire; but this author here drew an illegitimate conclusion, because from the above starting point, the state would manifestly owe its origin to the abject passion of fear. Nevertheless, Voltaire's practical efforts to effect an improvement in the cruel penal code of his time, possess a higher value than his theory. To effect that improvement, he worked in connection with the philanthropic club Il Café of Milan, particularly with Beccaria, who, in his book Dei delitti e delle pene, opposed with all his might both torture and capital punishment. Yet this he did from the point of view of the theory of contract, and by the use of arguments which would altogether deprive the state of the right of punishment. The circle that gathered round Baron Holbach, and the writings that emanated from it, revealed the materialistic tendencies of this period of "enlightenment." Rousseau, however, was the real harbinger of the revolution. His whole frame of mind, his absolute rupture with history, his leveling of all existing institutions, his heedless neglect of all experience, his bold construction of systems on entirely new ground, were destined soon to pass from theory into the practice of the French people. Rousseau expressly declares, that it is impossible to examine whether there ever existed a primitive state of man; but that, in reality, man's primitive condition consisted in the equality of all in a state of barbarism. In that state there was neither right nor wrong nor property. The first appropriation of things produced inequality, and thus kindled envy and ambition. The social contract was concluded, in order to control the outbreak of these passions. Each individual entered into this contract with each other individual; and thus in every act of the state every individual should be consulted; and so the English are really free only at the moment of the elections to parliament! Sovereignty is only bestowed conditionally and revocably; and when authority becomes despotic, that is, when it acts arbitrarily, it thereby cancels the social contract, and re-establishes the state of nature; in other words, it is not the people, but the government, that is in revolution. Despotism is by its very nature a revolution, and the uprising of the citizens is only the result of that revolution. The political consequences of these doctrines afterward appeared in the statesmen of the revolution, in Sieyes, to whom, as to Mirabeau, the third estate, which hitherto had been nothing, was everything. Thomas Paine proclaimed the most advanced tenets of this revolutionary philosophy. For him, even the Jacobins were not sufficiently advanced in their ideas; he regarded all government as an evil, and called monarchy and the papacy the inventions of the devil. His work on the rights of man was directed against the great English statesman Burke, who, with a rare abundance of superior political wisdom, combated the abstract theories of Rousseau and the revolution. The effect of this whole school was doubtless a destructive one. Still, in one man at least, who otherwise completely belonged to it, Montesquieu, negation is found connected with the work of construction, not so much as regards what he has to say on the philosophy of law, in which he was rather insignificant, as in his method, and in one main result of that method. While Rousseau intentionally turned his back upon history, Montesquieu sought to base his philosophical reflections on the state, and its constitution on historical experience. The wholesome result of this sound method was, that while Rousseau arrived at only abstract systems, devoid of real political vitality, Montesquieu, by his historical investigations, was led to the English constitution, and thus earned for himself the lasting merit of having transplanted the main traits of English constitutional monarchy to the continent of Europe, of having made it familiarly known there, and of having endeared it to the nations of the continent.

—At the same time there arose in Germany a kindred historical tendency. Justus Henning Böhmer had energetically combated the traditional doctrines of the law of nature concerning the political or state contract, as well as the theological doctrine in reference to the immediately divine origin of kingly authority. These doctrines, he maintained, were contrary to all history. The historia juris proved manifestly, that the foundations of states and the organization of law were human institutions gradually developed, and which God had only permitted as he had all other things.

—About the middle of the eighteenth century an enlarged intellectual activity in all the exact sciences appeared throughout Germany, chiefly in connection with the youthful vigor of the university of Göttingen (founded 1734). To this activity was added the careful editing and criticism of long-neglected juridical materials, side by side with the Roman law, which hitherto had alone been taken into consideration in the law of nature: we mean German law. The activity of the elder Germanists who were at work upon the history of the German empire and German law, and on the antiquities and amenities of the German law, recall the life which then stirred in this field, and which prepared the way for the new historical school. At the time, this tendency had certainly no direct influence on the philosophy of law. The latter still dragged along the road of the old Wolffian law of nature in a series of numberless compendiums, copied one from another; and when the mighty blow followed—the criticism of Kant, which overthrew all such dogmatism—it did not proceed from the positive science of law, or from historical science, but from the philosophy of the school. The consequence was, that the effects which followed were also limited to the philosophy of the school.

—Abstract philosophy, through pure construction, had, in the science of law also, been carried to absurdity. The great systems of subjective idealism, that followed the criticism of Kant, notwithstanding many subtle aperçus in detail to be found in Hegel, Fichte and Schelling, finally turned out to be only ingenuous mental aberrations. On the contrary, the new historical school, from the very outset, was far from seeking the creation of a philosophy of law. Hugo, Savigny, Puchta, Niebuhr, W. von Humboldt, Eichborn and Grimm, by an exhaustive investigation into the nature of history, language, myths, and the history of law, obtained a far deeper knowledge of the principles, nature, development and life of the law. After the fall of the great a priori systems, the results of this historical school, although not as yet clothed in the language of a genuine philosophy of law, stepped; as it were, ipso jure, into the place of all those exploded theories. In fact, the results of this historical school, and particularly its methods, have become the necessary starting point of all future philosophy of law. The immediate task of that philosophy will still long consist in appropriating, and shaping into the form and language of philosophy, the results that have been obtained by this historical school.

—As regards Kant, it should be remembered that he refuses to reach the absolute by the "theoretic reason," or by the cognitive faculty; but, in the field of practical reason, he assumes God as a postulate, through which he and all his followers derived religion from ethics in the same way that ethics were in the middle ages derived from religion. After the manner, and partly in the very language, of his predecessors, from Thomasius to Wolff, Kant finds the distinction between legal and moral duties in the external coercive power of the law. This constitutes the epitome of all the norms, under the presupposition of which, the freedom of all individuals is compatible with a common law for all. Kant is certainly profound in basing the rightfulness of legal coercion on the reason of the law; and every one, who himself is endowed with reason, may inwardly, and on that very account also outwardly, be compelled to submit to the coercion of the law.

—We need not here enumerate the multitude of dependent disciples of Kant, who for a length of time concerned themselves with the law of nature. It must be borne in mind, however, that a juridical mind like Feuerbach's was at the beginning captivated by Kant's ideas, which ruled the entire culture of the epoch. Soon, however, he strove to sever law from its identification with the moral law. He maintained the existence of a distinct juridical faculty in man, side by side with the moral faculty; and the idea of freedom, which plays such an important part in the system of Kant's science of law, he deliberately banishes from law into the moral domain, so that he wrongly bases his whole system of penal law on a refined theory of psychological coercion, and punishes crimes above all things according to the measure of their danger.

—In Fichte, on the contrary, the preponderance of the practical reason transforms all philosophy, and particularly the theory of law, into ethics. Not only religion and morals are identified, but, in the later stage of his philosophy, law becomes a means to the ends of morality. In the compulsory state there prevails only the lower freedom of the law, but in his reason-state the higher freedom of culture. This reason-state, which, as a moral institution, has to realize the virtue of justice, according to Fichte, is practically the hermetically closed commercial state, in which, however, as in Plato's ideal republic, all freedom of individual life is lost. In the Hegelian system, by the side of monstrous distortions of juridical or legal ideas, there are to be found several clever ideas, as, for instance, in the penal law. It is well known that in this system the double-edged principle, "All that is, is rational," has been misused to support the extremest revolutionary doctrines, and to defend the most corrupt political systems. We must also lay stress on the fact, that all this ingenuous philosophy succumbed to the error of its methods; the a priori construction of all reality from "pure" ideas, with the apparent neglect of all experience, and of the sciences based on experience. At the very time that the Hegelian philosophy of law, religion and history, and Schelling's philosophy of nature, marked the failure of these bold a priori constructions, the above-named founders of the historical school had obtained important results, through more diligent and thoughtful detailed investigations in the field of law, tradition, religion, language and all the intellectual sciences. These results have since become lasting achievements, not only of the historical and positive, but also of the philosophical, treatment of these sciences.

—Before we pass to the exposition of the principles of the historical school, and try to apply them to philosophy, we must at least mention certain groups, that are equally distant from the great idealistic systems, and from the historical tendency, but still in many respects related to both, though more closely connected with the current of political and social thought. The spirit of restoration and reaction in the state and the church, which, after the over-throw of the French revolution, ruled, in Napoleon, the whole European continent, called forth in Germany a series of phenomena, which collectively may be described as the romanticism of the philosophy of law. These phenomena are closely connected with the romantic tendency in art and culture, and borrowed many of their weapons from the conservative side of the idealistic systems, as well as from the historical school.

—In this manner Karl L. von Haller, with stubborn logical methods, would restore the whole mediæval idea of the state; that is, he denies that the idea of constitutional law is different from that of private law. The state is, according to him, nothing but a great landed domain; the king is the proprietor of this domain; the citizens are his servants or tenants; the taxes are rents; and war is but the private feud of the lord of the land. In this patrimonial state there naturally exist no rights belonging to the citizen. With Fr. Schlegel and Adam Müller this state romanticism inclined toward the church. In Steffens and Baader this same tendency was closely connected with the ideal mysticism of Schelling.

—This school closes its preliminary stage of development with the philosophy of law of Julius Stahl. This philosophy appeared with greater pretensions, and displayed more correct dialectics and subtler methods of demonstration. By leaning toward the historical school, it somewhat disguises its real purpose, but like Haller's restoration, it was really nothing but a return to the middle age, a relapse into the theological doctrine of the state taught by Pufendorf and Thomasius; his doctrine of the state begins as orthodox theology.

—Socialism forms an extreme contrast to this German romanticism of the state. At a much earlier period it had been acclimatized in France; but it grew most luxuriantly during the period of the restoration.

—Even before the time of the encyclopædists, Morelli had called private property the source of all evil. According to him, the earth, given undivided to man, should remain undivided. Labor should be distributed among men according to their strength and capacity, and the product of that labor according to the wants of each, the surplus sold, and what was obtained for it divided equally among all.

—But to maintain this state of things, legislation was, as a matter of course, needed; a legislation which, as in the case of Lycurgus, Plato and Fichte, would destroy all liberty. The right to labor was then recognized by the views which at that time prevailed, and ruled in all France, the views of the physiocrates, Mirabeau, Quesnay, Gournay, and even of the moderate Turgot. During and after the revolution, these ideas reappeared, with stormy energy, in Babeuf, Darthé, Marechal, Buonarotti, Saint Simon, Bazard, Fourier, Cabet, and Proudhon. In Le Maistre and Lammenais they were associated with the ecclesiastical, religious romanticism of the state. The former regarded the papacy as the highest international tribunal, while the latter, with a generous but very unstatesmanlike enthusiasm, dreamt of the reestablishment of the state on the basis of the early Christian community. We may also mention briefly other chief tendencies of the doctrines of the state in France, which yet are not originally French. The old liberals and old constitutionalists (Constant, Guizot, etc.,) as Montesquieu had once done, inclined toward the English constitution. Others yet sought to introduce and naturalize in France the methods and results of German philosophy, particularly of the great idealistic systems (as Cousin), partly in order to combat materialism, which, together with the eager pursuit of the natural sciences, seems to preponderate in modern French culture.

—We are not as yet able to pass judgment, from an historical point of view, on the multitudinous tendencies of the German philosophy of law since Hegel's time, tendencies which are still in full course of growth, and greatly at variance among themselves. Nevertheless, any philosophy of law that wishes to raise itself to the actual level of the science of law, can not henceforth afford to ignore the methods or the fundamental principles of the historical school referred to above.

—3. Chief Features of the System. The main result of the above-mentioned development, as it is represented in the new historical school of legal science on the continent of Europe, and of philosophy, relates, in the first place, to the methods, and then to a few of the chief features, of the matter of the philosophy of law. As in all the departments of philosophy, so also in this, it has become evident that "pure speculation," which pretended to construct phenomena a priori, without the aid of historical experience, never existed. The task of the philosophy of law is not to evolve the phenomena of the idea of law, as it were, prophetically out of that philosophy, but, by the aid of the inseparable forms of synthetic and analytic thought, to investigate the principles of law, after a careful historical and experimental study of the matter of law itself. A correct knowledge of law, especially of the history of the law of different nations and the comparative history of law, must henceforth be the basis of all philosophy of law; but that knowledge certainly will not supplant the law, as is supposed by the one-sided adherents of positivism and of the historical school.

—We find the realization of the idea of law in all its multitudinous forms of manifestation, by way of experience, in history. The first task of the philosophy of law is to investigate the cause of this phenomenon, and to ask: What is properly the fundamental idea that distinguishes this from other kindred phenomena? and how is it connected with these latter phenomena? We must further inquire: Since, wherever men live in society, at least some traces of a juridical organization are to be found; since law, no less so than language, religion, morals or art, seems to be a necessary attribute of human nature: wherein lies the necessity of the idea of justice for mankind?

—Let us start with an approximative description of law, which does not pretend to be a definition. We may describe law provisionally as the sum total of general regulations, under which particular cases may be subsumed with a certain degree of necessity.

—This at once reminds us of the fundamental quality of all human thought in itself. All our thinking, as it moves within the logical forms of judgment, notion and deduction, and in deduction in the form of major premise, minor premise and conclusion, is really but the subsumption of particulars under the head of a higher generality. Human speech, with which our thinking is indissolubly connected, and which is the essential form of our thinking, has its essence in the construction of unities from multitudinous phenomena of the same kind. All speaking and thinking is, accordingly, a seeking for generalities, for unity instead of multiplicity. The deduction, the syllogism, is, even more manifestly than the judgment, a subsuming of a particular under a general.

—And all our research, within the domain of mind and of nature, is nothing but a seeking for unity, generality, necessity, in place of the apparent multiplicity, particularity or accidentality of the phenomena. In the domain of nature we are not satisfied with the sight of the innumerable particular phenomena presented by falling bodies; we seek for unity, generality, necessity, in all these instances; that is, we seek for their "law," and speak of the law of gravity. In the department of mind, we are not satisfied with the impressions made by certain natural phenomena or human works upon our imagination. We try to discover why all these like phenomena produce the like impression that we call "beauty"; that is, we seek for the law of beauty. All human research is, therefore, a search for laws; that is, a search for a generality which has the character of unity, and under which particular phenomena are necessarily subsumed. When we have discovered a law in this sense, our thinking is at once satisfied, but not before. For the law of our thinking itself (the general, uniform, necessary essence of all our thoughts) consists precisely in seeking for laws, or for a necessary generality. Thus, the natural sciences seek for "laws of nature," and the mental sciences for "laws of mind." Man has divided the multitude of phenomena into two large hemispheres, according to the standard of their immediate, sensuous perceptibility, mind and nature. But the human mind not only wishes a law for each of these halves, it not only aspires after one law of nature appearing in all the laws of mind; but it also asks for unity above and within this duality. As the human mind embraces all that is conceivable, the world of nature and that of mind, in the idea of the universe, it rises to the idea of and the demand for an absolute law, a world-law of unity and necessity in the universe.

—In this manner, having recognized that law also is general regulation, under which particulars may be subsumed with necessity, we can understand the inner connection of the idea of law with the whole intellectual life of man, and its inner ideal necessity for man. To prove this and bring it out into relief, is an important task of the philosophy of law. We have seen how, since the days of Plato, through the age of scholasticism, and of the teachers of the law of nature, down to our modern socialists, law and the state have almost always been conceived, as the result of external compulsion, as a mutual assurance of life and property against murderers and robbers. It can not be denied, that this external compulsion exists; but it does not exist alone. Men are led not only by external motives to law and the state; an ideal necessity impels them to regulate their social life, its manifold relations and phenomena, according to a uniform, general rule, necessarily demanded by reason; that is, according to a law.

—The natural and intellectual constitution of man teaches us that he is intended for society, for living together with his equals. Natural instinct compels the two sexes of the human species to come together, not temporarily, like other creatures. The helplessness of man during infancy necessitates a permanent association of father and mother, and the human family is specifically different from that of other animals, just as human speech, which also presupposes a lasting community among men, is different from the inarticulate sounds of other animals. Man can not even exist, still less develop his native faculties, without utilizing in his service a number of natural objects, things and goods, to a far greater extent than all other animals. He needs not only food and shelter; clothing, weapons and tools of every kind are indispensable to his existence. But, since he lives and must live, in common, in marriage, in the family, the clan, the commune, etc., and as each man has an equal need of everything, conflicts concerning the outward relations of individuals to things or goods are unavoidable. There can be no doubt that it was the external necessity of preventing or quickly terminating conflicts of this kind, which constituted the real external compulsion that urged man to create law and the state; but it is a radical error to derive these institutions exclusively from that external compulsion. Human society demands a peace institution or peace order, but it is not satisfied with one that merely insures order. It requires a rational order of the peace. In this lies the ideal, intrinsic root of the law. Man does not wish the law, as external compulsion, as a purely arbitrary, compulsory ordinance or order. In this, as in every other domain man possesses the faculty, and feels the want, of seeking and finding the one general and uniform order which presides over the variety of phenomena, and which appears to him rationally necessary. The law of every people is the effort of a human community to find a rational peace order. Such laws embrace the cardinal principles, which, according to the ideas of each people, should regulate the acquisition of wealth, its exchange, the loss of goods or claims, the punishments for the unlawful violation of these same laws, and the proofs of such violation; or, in other words, everything which conditions social life, based on common interests. If this order of peace is violated, the offended person feels, that not only his individual interest has been violated, but also the general reason, under the protection of which his right is placed. And, since those who are entitled to the same rights regard the violation of the right of an individual as a violation of the order of peace or of the peace regulation, which, in the common conviction of all, is alone able to render life in society possible in a rational way, all feel, as does the offended individual himself, the necessity of restitution, and, according to circumstances, of satisfaction. As a result of these considerations we have the following definition: Law is the rational ordering of the peace of a human community in what concerns the external relations of the members thereof to one another and to things.

—Law is the rational ordering of a human community. This characterizes it as a work of the human reason, and precludes its derivation from supernatural revelation. We say law is the ordering of a human community, but not of the human community; in other words, there is no law of nature, no abstract, model law, equally applicable to all times and to all peoples. The idea of law is certainly common to all nations and to all humanity. But, just as there is no abstract universal art, there is no abstract absolute law. The universal human idea of law appears only in the totality and in the succession of the laws of separate nations, in the same way that humanity is not a dead abstraction, above those communities of men called nations, but appears in the totality of nations. The difference of national characters appears in the difference of the laws, precisely as it does in the difference of the arts, languages and religions of the different nations. The law of every nation is the outcome of its natural and historical antecedents, and of those antecedents which accorded with its national character. It should be in harmony with the national character and the actual condition of the civilization of the country. It grows, at first, unconsciously, spontaneously, necessarily, as a custom. Originally, a nation no more made its laws than its language.

—It has been objected to this conception of law of the historical school, that it leads to complete quietism. For it is said, if the law of a nation necessarily grows out of its aggregate character, individuals can do nothing but let it grow, and there can be no such thing as progress or learning. But the objection does not hold. So far as it applies at all, it is no objection; and so far as it is an objection, it does not apply. At all events, even in immediate stages of culture, the law, on the whole, is changed rather unconsciously than with a conscious intention. But if in a nation thought advances with culture and the complexity of its life, it naturally, also, affects the matter of the nation's law; it then consciously seeks to change and to improve that law, as it seeks change and improvement in every other sphere. As the law is always the mirror of the condition of a nation, if a nation far advanced in culture did not reflect upon its law, it would be as unnatural as if the "thing" men of the primitive forests of Germany had come to their judgments and decrees by means of the philosophy of law.

—This also disposes of the objection that, according to the historical conception of law, the learning of nations from each other, and their progress, are impossible. There have been dreamers, who, without any very profound knowledge of history or of human nature, have gratuitously supposed that the history of the world would constantly progress in a straight line; that, at some distant day, a universal law of humanity would supplant all the special laws of the different nations; and that this is to be the ultimate end of the world's history. But this will never happen. It is as impossible as the existence at any time in the future of an abstract humanity without national differences, or as that there should exist a universal language of humanity. That comfortless condition of absolute uniformity is excluded by differences in race, climate, soil, etc., which can never be entirely effaced by any degree of civilization. But our historical conception of law does not exclude the idea, that, in proportion as the civilization, interests and the common views of nations grow more like one another, their ideas of law will also grow more similar. But even then the similarity of the laws of the different nations would only be the mirror of their altered social conditions. This similarity of laws will probably be reached at a not very distant day, in those departments of law which by their nature belong more to the community of nations than to their separate life. Thus, there already exists an international law extending over the whole of Europe, and even beyond its boundaries; and it is not improbable that the most civilized nations will shortly agree in their views in regard to the laws relating to commerce, bills of exchange, copyright, the post, railways, etc. Yet this can scarcely happen as to laws relating to the family, and to real property, to say nothing of the fact that among many nations (as mountain and seacoast peoples) many departments of law will either necessarily exist, or necessarily be wanting. And so nations may learn law as well as art from one another. In so far as wherever men live together there are certain legal relations (those created by contract, for instance), which must be judged by a logic inherent in these relations, a less developed nation, possessing a younger civilization, may very well adopt the truths which have been discovered by another nation with a more ancient civilization. The most important instance of this phenomenon is the acceptance of the Roman law in Germany. As the Germans had received the whole of Græco-Roman culture, it was very natural that they should also adopt the Roman law—that most important of all the elements of Roman culture; and thus far that acceptance has proved wholesome and instructive. But it was unnatural that that bit of ancient civilization should be received by Germany in a way different from the rest, or absolutely; that is, not transferred into German views because capable of being assimilated with those views, but simply because and as it was written in the corpus juris. This unnatural process was only possible under the influence of the idea that the German empire was but a continuation of imperial Rome. This intrusion of Roman law met with obstinate popular resistance, and we are convinced that all the elements of Roman law which have not been assimilated will speedily again be rejected.

—As our definition excludes the law of nature, and an illusory universal human law in the future, it also determines the warmly contested relation of law to the state. It is self-evident that the human community, the peace of which the law orders or regulates in a rational manner, according to the views of such community, is uniformly the state. The real, normal boundaries within which the developed life of the law regularly moves, is the circle of the state. But although the perfect life of the law is developed only in the state, attempts and primitive creations of the legal instinct, in laws relating to things, the family, contracts and punishments, are to be found, even before the state, in the clan, etc., out of which the state historically and gradually grows. The peoples of many states may, for definite particular purposes, permanently or temporarily enter into association, and conclude commercial treaties, alliances, international treaties of every kind, and reach a kind of ordering of the peace between several kingdoms. But it only shows how clearly the individual state is the normal circle of the community of law, that communities which are smaller or larger than the limits of an individual state, frequently lack the foremost requisite of the life of the law; a judge, and coercive power to enforce the sentence. The patriarchal head of the ante-state clan only too often substitutes his own peremptory decree for the sentence of the law; and the lack of a tribunal, as a constantly reliable executive power, constitutes the weak side of the law as soon as it extends its circle over several states. International law has hitherto in vain sought for a tribunal, which, in case of a violation of the law, might, in a reliable manner, enforce the fulfillment of treaties.

—Since the law regulates only the external relations of men to each other, and not the internal relations of men to God or to their fellow-men, it follows that the law should not invade the domain of religion or morals; but it follows, also, that religion and morals should not encroach on the domain of the law and of the state. Law and the state are their own proper ends, just as religion and morals are. They are independent realizations of ideas which are as essential to human reason as religion and morals. For this reason, since they all are but different phenomena and tendencies of one sole power, there exists in principle no opposition or contradiction between them, but only complete harmony. Only in appearance can conflicts arise between them, as when either the state chooses to dictate articles of faith, which is necessarily free, or when the church prescribes a definite form of faith as a condition precedent to the enjoyment of civil rights. In all these domains of the free inner life of man, in religion, science and art, the state has only a right to command or prohibit, when religion, science, etc., by some external manifestation, effect a disturbance of the peaceful order of the state; when, for instance, a sect refuses military service, or excites its members to the extermination of the adherents of creeds other than its own. Whenever these invisible forces produce visible phenomena, they at once enter the domain of law, and give the law occasion, in their own interest even, to create new forms and promulgate regulations. Thus, even the most spiritual things, as the thought of the artist or author, as soon as they enter the circle of outward interests, require legal regulation (copyright). The whole law as regards religion may be summed up thus: the state by no means assumes an indifferent attitude toward religion, but should allow complete religious freedom, in the sense that the state should not interfere with the existence of any religion not dangerous to morals or to the state; but, on the other hand, the state should not concede an influence on civil rights to any religious creed.

—In like manner, morals and law are neither hostile nor indifferent to each other, but they are independent each of the other. When the law draws within its domain certain duties, the performance of which should be dictated entirely by the heart, as, for instance, gratitude, as did the Athenian law of old, it becomes guilty of an unwarrantable trespass, which can be productive of no good either from a legal or moral point of view. When, on the other hand, the canon law and mediæval secular law punished purely moral transgressions with external and even political penalties, they were guilty of a similar offense.

—Although in principle there does not exist any opposition between morals and law, still, as history teaches, such an opposition may easily exist in appearance. When, mainly because of a diseased condition, a nation obstinately desires to retain and keep up forms and regulations perfectly suited to a past epoch, but which no longer answer to the needs of advanced progress, or to the new conditions of the nation; which are kept up, perhaps, because a fraction of the nation by so doing satisfies a selfish interest, although the national life requires a change of the old forms: in all such instances there occurs a conflict between formal but antiquated law, and living, moral forces, which have not yet become law. Instances of this, well known to all, were the conflicts between the patricians and plebeians in Rome, of the noble families and the guilds in the cities of the middle ages, during the French revolution, etc. In the greater number of such cases the champions of formal law believe themselves to be morally justified in their opinions. Not only selfish interests, but bona fide convictions, are frequently brought face to face with each other. The obduracy of the one and the heedless passion of the other reach a climax, when the strain becomes unendurable, and a violent change follows. In such a case the right of revolution, the jus revolutionis, in a juridical sense, has been appealed to. But this is not admissible; for no state can admit a juridical right to a violent breach of formal law, without self-abrogation. Here we must carefully distinguish between law and morals. No careful student of law and history will deny to a people the moral right of self-defense against the pressure of obsolete formal law which has become unendurable. The law should be a rational regulation or ordering of the peace. If it is an irrational ordering or regulation, if its pressure becomes unendurable, and if a redress in a legal way becomes impossible, it would be the height of folly to demand that the people should perish, in order to keep merely formal law in existence. On the contrary, in such case the people have authority morally to resort even to forcible self-defense, and the champions of obsolete law would here act immorally, or, at least, irrationally. But, in truth, every revolution is and must remain a breach of formal law, although morally we may regard it as entirely justified. A breach of the law under all circumstances is a catastrophe, threatening to the existence of the state, or temporarily even suspending its existence; for we must guard against the dangerous principle, that exclusively formal law is juridically law no longer. That principle conflicts with the essence of all law, and makes the existence of the state dependent on the whims of any discontented party. The moral justification of revolution also is a dangerous theory; but, at the same time, it is the incontestable teaching of philosophy and of history. That teaching presupposes that, objectively, there exists a case in which self-help is unavoidable, that the pressure of formal law has become unbearable, and that a peaceful settlement has become impossible. If these conditions be assumed inconsiderately to exist, then not with the correct theory, but with the incorrect application of the theory in practice, must the moral-political responsibility rest.

—We shall now briefly touch on one of the most important questions regarding the nature and character of the state. It was in keeping with the entire Kantian conception of morals, law and the state, that it considered the latter merely as a great institution for the enforcement of the law. The state, according to that conception, established courts, and, if necessary, carried out their judgments by force. This mere Rechtsstaat (constitutional state), by the political movements in Germany, which began under the influence of the critical philosophy, was used as a party shibboleth in a two-fold sense, in that country. The Rechtsstaat in Germany was the modern state, as it, in connection with the English and still more with the French revolution, contrasted with the mediæval feudal and patrimonial state. The modern state, with its ideas of citizenship, the separation of the powers, checks and balances, popular representation, political rights of freedom, security of the person and of property, freedom of conscience and of the press; with its independence of the courts of law—this modern state was emphatically called the Rechtsstaat, and formed a contrast to the negation or diminution of these ideas in the state. But, in the second place, as a contrast to Polizeistaat (police state) German radicalism required also a pure Rechtsstaat in another sense. It maintained that the undue tutelage and excessive supervision which the bureaucratic state introduced into all human concerns, was really no part of the task of the state; and Kant's authority was appealed to to prove that the state was but an institution in the nature of a court of justice. Hitherto, in fact, the interference of the state in the activity of society, of economy, trade, industry and culture, had been disastrous instead of profitable. And so all right of interference of the state in these several departments was denied.

—It need not be said that the philosophy of law looks upon the modern state as a Rechtsstaat only in the first of these senses, and as opposed to the feudal state. In the second sense of the term, however, the philosophy of law can not sanction the mere Rechtsstaat. It assigns to the state other tasks besides dealing out justice in civil and criminal cases. The abuses of the administration should not lead to the rejection of all administration. The task of the state is to realize the idea of legal right, the idea of law; but law is the regulation or ordering of the peace in all that concerns all the external relations of men to each other, and to things. But this ordering of the peace is in no manner confined to the field of civil and criminal law, or the law relating to private and public rights. Wherever men enter into external relations to each other, and to things, a rational ordering or regulation is needed, which must aim not only at the preservation of the actual state of things, but progress and constant improvement. An ordering which aims only at preserving and protecting, and not at developing and improving, can not be called a rational ordering.

—Law is an idea essential to the human mind. It can not be supplanted by another any more than religion can be by art. That idea necessarily requires an external manifestation and a power in which to embody itself. That power is the state.

—LITERATURE. The old founders and teachers of the law of nature contain comparisons of older views and of contemporaneous polemical writings; in other words, they afford us the first materials for a history of the philosophy of law. Thus, we have the Prolegomena of Hugo Grotius, and the Specimen Controversiarum of Pufendorf. At the close of the seventeenth century we meet with special works on the history of the law of nature, historiœ juris naturœ, by Buddeus, 1695; Ludovici, 1701, 1714; Thomasius, 1719. We may mention: Schmauss, Neues System des Rechts der Natur, Göttingen, 1754; Ompteda. Literatur des natürlichen und positiven Völkerrechts, 1785; Henrici, Ideen zur wissenschaftlichen Begründung der Rechtslehre, Hanover, 1810; Welcker, Die lstzten Gründe von Recht, Staat und Strafe, Giessen, 1813; Fr. von Raumer, Geschichtliche Entwickelung der Begrifpe von Recht, Staat und Politik, Leipzig, 1826, 1832; Stahl, Rechtsphilosophie, Heidelberg, 1829, 1847; Warnkönig, Rechtsphilosophie, Freiburg, 1839, 1854; Schmitthenner, Zwölf Bücher vom Staat, Giessen, 1839; Rossbach, Die Perioden der Rechtsphilosophie, Regensburg, 1842; Die Grundrichtungen in der Geschichte der Staatswissenschaft, Erlangen, 1848; Lentz, Entwurf einer Geschichte der Rechtsphilosophie, Danzig, 1846; Ahrens, Philosophie des Rechts und Staats, 4th ed., Vienna, 1850, 1852; Hinrichs, Politische Vorlesungen, 1842, Geschichte der Rechts und Staatsprincipien seit dem Zeitalter der Reformation, Leipzig, 1849, 1852; Bluntschli, Allgemeines Staatsrecht, geschichtlich begrundet, 3d ed., Munich, 1863; Dahlmann, Die Politik auf den Grund und das Mass der gegebenen Verhältnisse zurückgeführt, 2d ed., Leipzig, 1847; Schilling, Lehrbuch des Naturrechts, oder die philosophische Rechtswissenschaft, Leipzig, 1858; Hildebrand, Geschichte und System der Rechts-und Staatswissenschaft, 1 vol., Das classische Alterthum, Leipzig, 1860; Röder, Grundzüge des Naturrechts, 2d ed., Leipzig, 1860; La Salle, Das System der erworbenen Rechte, Eine Versohnung des positiven Rechts und der Rechtsphilosophie, Leipzig, 1860; Thilo, Die Theologisirende Rechts- und Staatslehre, Leipzig, 1851; Trendelenburg, Naturrecht auf dem Grunde der Ethik, Leipzig, 1860. Compare POLITICS, NATURE AND CHARACTER OF, and POLITICS, SCIENCE OF.

FELIX DAHN.

PHYSIOCRATES.

PHYSIOCRATES. 1. Physiocrates and Economists. Those French economists who rallied to the defense and advocacy of the doctrine of Quesnay, and who constituted one of the most brilliant groups of thinkers in the eighteenth century, are now called physiocrates, a word derived from physiocratie, the general title given, in 1768, to the first volume of Quesnay's collected works, published by his disciple, Dupont de Nemours. Quesnay and his friends understood by physiocracy (from nature, and, to rule), the natural constitution, the natural order, of human society.

—Dupont thought (correctly in some respects) that Quesnay had pointed out this nature of things, and he called the aggregate of his views physiocracy. The expression, however, was not generally adopted. The term physiocrates, derived from it, is of comparatively recent use. J. B. Say first employed it in his Cours Complet, published in 1829, and it appears to have been popularized by the illustrious Rossi, and the editors of the Collection des Principaux Economistes, who have grouped together the most remarkable writings published by this celebrated school in the second volume of their collection, under the title "Physiocrates." In 1847, one year later, the French "Academy of Moral Sciences" used the term in the programme for a prize essay, formulated as follows, in accordance with Rossi's proposition, "to investigate what the influence of the school of physiocrates has been on the advance and development of economic science, as well as on the administration of states in the matter of finance, manufactures and commerce."

—Until the expression physiocrates was adopted, the disciples of Quesnay were designated by periphrases, or by the term economists, which was always underlined in manuscript, or printed in italics, so as not to confound the economists, disciples of the doctor, with other writers or publicists occupied with economic questions; and we can not do better here than to reproduce a few lines from a production which we published in vol. xxxiii. of the Journal des Economistes: "Smith said (in speaking of the disciples of Quesnay, book iv., chap. ix.), 'A few years ago they formed [Smith published his book in 1776] a considerable sect, distinguished in the republic of letters in France by the name economists.' J. B. Say continued to designate them 'the sect of economists' in the second edition of his Traité, published in 1814, which greatly displeased Dupont de Nemours, who, in a letter dated April 22, 1815, wrote him as follows: 'You do not speak of the economists without applying to them the odious name of sect, which supposes a mixture of stupidity, folly and stubbornness. This insult from a Grimm would not be offensive; but the expressions of a Say have a different weight.' In a preceding letter, full of animation and good nature, the aged disciple of Quesnay said to the continuer and future emulator of Adam Smith, 'You are an economist, my dear Say; I shall take good care not to excommunicate you. On your part,' etc."

—J. B. Say, we thus see, although the author of a treatise on political economy, still at that period qualified the physiocrates as economists. The same observation may be made in reading the first work of Sismondi, who, in entitling his book, De la richesse commerciale, ou Noureaux principes d'économie politique, underlined the word economists, and applied it only to the disciples of Quesnay. He said (vol. i., p. 5), "Dr. Quesnay and Turgot founded the sect of economists about 1760." (This is not altogether accurate, as we shall see.) This repulsion for the name, which Sismondi and J. B. Say exhibited in their first writings, was, till a comparatively recent date, the feeling of those who concerned themselves with political economy, for they called themselves political economists (see Say's Cours Complet), or they even avoided giving themselves a name, since, on the one hand, the qualification political annoyed them, by causing mistakes and inspiring distrust, and because they feared that the name economists alone would cause them to be confounded with the adherents of Quesnay. Nevertheless, the disciples of Fourier and Saint Simon popularized this expression by using it to designate the partisans of economic or liberal ideas, and Fourier had even invented the word economism, the better to express his contempt for this science of the civilized (civilisés)! On the other hand, the publication in France of the Journal des Economistes, and of the Collection des Principaux Economistes, and in England of the weekly journal "The Economist," have made the expression familiar, which is no longer the special designation of the adherents of the sect of Quesnay or the partisans of an exclusive system, but the general designation of all who concern themselves scientifically with economic questions. The fifth edition of the dictionary of the French academy, 1814, does not contain the word économiste. It is only the sixth edition, published in 1835, which gave it final sanction with its true meaning, saying: "Economist, one specially occupied with political economy."

—It is a remarkable fact that economists received this appellation before their science was named, and that this word was taken, not from political economy, but from the adjective economic, itself derived from economy, which often dropped from the pens of writers during the middle of the last century, in consequence of an intellectual movement which led men to philosophic questions of this order—a movement that called forth a large number of writings, and caused the establishment, in 1754, of a chair of mechanics and commerce at the university of Naples, for the celebrated abbé Genovesi, who was professor in that institution of what he soon called civil economy and a chair of cameralistic sciences at the Palatine school of Milan, where the no less illustrious Beccaria was professor of public economy. As early as the second quarter of the same century, from 1729 to 1747, Hutcheson, the father of Scotch philosophy, inserted in his course of moral philosophy some lectures on economics. "These lectures," as Cousin observes, in his Cours de l'histoire de la philosophie moderne, "were of no great value in themselves; but it is to this part of Hutcheson's course, perhaps, that Europe is indebted for Adam Smith, the greatest economist of the eighteenth century."

—II. Composition of the School. Dupont de Nemours speaks as follows of the origin of this school, in a note to his edition of the works of Turgot. "The French economists, who founded the modern science of political economy, had as forerunners the duke of Sully, who said, 'Tillage and pasturage are the breasts of the state'; the marquis d'Argenson, author of the excellent maxim, 'Do not govern too much'; and the elder Trudaine, who in practice opposed courageously the prejudices of ministers and the preconceived opinions of his colleagues, the other counselors of state, with that useful maxim. The English and the Dutch had a glimpse of a few truths, which were only faint glimmerings in a night of gloom. The spirit of monopoly arrested the advance of their enlightenment. In other countries, if we except the three notable men whom we have just named, no one had even imagined that governments should pay attention to agriculture in any way, or to commerce except to impose on it arbitrary regulations suggested by the moment, or to subject its operations to taxes, duties and tolls. The science of public administration, pertaining to these interesting labors, did not yet exist. It was not even suspected that they could be the object of a science. The great Montesquieu had looked at them so superficially that in his immortal work there is a chapter entitled: 'To what nations it is disadvantageous to engage in commerce.'

—Toward 1750 two men of genius, profound and acute observers, led on by the force of a long sustained attention and severe logic, animated by a noble love of country and humanity, Quesnay and de Gournay, labored persistently to ascertain whether the nature of things did not point to a science of political economy, and what were the principles of this science; they approached it from different sides, arrived at the same results, and, meeting, congratulated each other, applauded each other, when they saw with what exactness their different but equally true principles led to consequences absolutely similar; a phenomenon always repeated when men are not in error; for there is but one nature which embraces all things, and no one truth can contradict another. While they lived they continued to be, and their disciples have never ceased to be, entirely at one as to the means of advancing agriculture, commerce and finances, of increasing the happiness, the population, the wealth, and the political importance of nations."

—De Gournay, son of a merchant, many years a merchant himself, had recognized that manufactures and commerce can only flourish through freedom and competition, which destroy the taste for haphazard undertakings, and lead to reasonable speculation; which prevent monopolies, and limit the private gains of merchants to the good of commerce; which quicken industry, simplify machinery, decrease oppressive rates for transportation and storage and which lower the rate of interest. From this he concludes that commerce should never be taxed or regulated. From this he drew the following axiom: Laissez faire, laissez passer. Quesnay, born on a farm, the son of a landowner who was a skillful agriculturist, and of a mother whose great intellectual powers aided her husband's administration to perfection, turned his attention more especially to agriculture; and seeking to find the source of the wealth of nations, he discovered that wealth is the offspring of those labors in which nature and the divine power second the efforts of man to bring forth or collect new products; so that we can expect the increase of this wealth only from agriculture, fisheries (he held the chase of small account in civilized societies), and the working of mines and quarries.

—"The two aspects under which Quesnay and de Gournay had considered the principles of public administration, and from which they inferred precisely the same theory, formed, if we may say so, two schools, fraternal none the less, which have had for each other no feeling of jealousy, and which have reciprocally enlightened each other. From the school of de Gournay came de Malesherbes, the abbé Morellet, Herbert, Trudaine de Montigny, d'Invan, Cardinal de Boisgelin, de Cicé, archbishop of Aix, d'Angeul, Dr. Price, Dean Tucker, and some others. The principal members of the school of Quesnay were Mirabeau, author of l' Ami des hommes, Abeille, de Fourqueux, Bertin, Dupont de Nemours, Count Chreptowicz, chancellor of Lithuania, the abbé Roubaud, Le Trosne, Saint-Péravy, de Vauvilliers; and, of a higher rank, the margrave, afterward grand duke of Baden, and the archduke Leopold, since emperor, who governed Tuscany so long and so successfully, le Mercier de La Rivière, and the abbé Baudeau. The two latter constituted a separate branch of de Quesnay's school. Thinking that it would be easier to persuade a prince than a nation, that freedom of trade and labor as well as the true principles of taxation would be introduced sooner by the authority of sovereigns than by the progress of reason, they perhaps favored absolute power too much. They thought that this power would be sufficiently regulated and counterbalanced by general enlightenment. To this branch belonged the emperor Joseph II. Between both of these schools, profiting from both, but avoiding carefully the appearance of adhering to either of them, there appeared certain eclectic philosophers, at the head of whom we must place Turgot and the celebrated Adam Smith, and among whom are deserving of very honorable mention the French translator of Adam Smith, Germain Garnier; and in England, Lord Lansdowne; in Paris, Say; at Geneva, Simonde."

—This extract from Dupont de Nemours makes some observations necessary. To begin with, as Dupont wrote in 1808, in commencing the publication of the works of Turgot, it is plain that the other celebrated economists of that century are not mentioned. J. B. Say was not yet a professor; he had only published the first edition of his Traité (1803), and his fame was not then great. Sismondi, also, was only at the beginning of his career and reputation; Malthus, Ricardo, Mill, etc., had not written, and the men who were to bear the greatest names in contemporary political economy were still either in their childhood or youth. It is also to be remarked that Dupont does not assign his real place to Adam Smith, who, whatever be the idea formed of the aid which he may have received from the school of the physiocrates, is assuredly something very different from an eclectic writer utilizing the ideas of de Gournay and Quesnay.

—As to the two schools founded by these two eminent men, we must not take literally what Dupont de Nemours writes. Vincent de Gournay died early, about the middle of 1759, at the age of 47, when Quesnay had scarcely (about the end of 1758) published his doctrines in a precise manner, in the celebrated Tableau Economique, printed in the castle of Versailles under the very eyes of the king. Except the translation, with the assistance of Butel Dumont (1754) of the treatise of Josiah Child on commerce and the interest on money, he had written nothing but memoirs addressed to ministers, and which remained unpublished. It is only from a notice drawn up shortly after his death, by Turgot, for Marmontel, with notes by Dupont, that we know the ideas of de Gournay, and if what Turgot has said of them makes us think that there might have been disagreements between the two philosophers, still we are not authorized to declare, since the proofs are wanting, that de Gournay had a system of doctrines, that is to say, the elements, the raw material, for a school. Still, Turgot, in delineating with some detail de Gournay's opinions relative to the nature and production of value, says, "de Gournay thought that a workman who had manufactured a piece of cloth had added real wealth to the aggregate wealth of the state." Dupont adds, in a note: "This is one of the points in which the doctrine of de Gournay differed from that of Quesnay," and he gives the reasons for this statement.

—Although Dupont does not specify the other points in which de Gournay differed from Quesnay, it follows from this passage that the two philosophers did not always agree. Another important remark is, that the analyses of modern economists have shown that de Gournay was right as to the phenomenon of production. De Gournay had a clearer insight of the truth, and if he had demonstrated it and deduced the consequences which flow from it, he would, on certain fundamental points, have surely held a different doctrine from that of Quesnay, and carried off the honor which later came to Adam Smith, of rectifying the school of physiocrates; but we all know that in a question of scientific ideas there is a great difference between the correct feeling of the truth and the introduction of this truth into the domain of a science or simply a philosophic system. To judge from our personal impressions, it appears to us doubtful whether de Gournay followed the celebrated doctor in his exclusive theory of agriculture. But it is evident that these two illustrious men met on the fundamental question of the freedom of labor, and it is probable that they had the same philosophic point of departure. Be this as it may, Dupont is not altogether exact or correctly informed when he seems to say that de Gournay was the first to recognize the legitimateness and fruitfulness of the principle of competition and of the liberty of commerce. Vauban and Boisguillebert, whose writings were published even before de Gournay was born, give proof of their remarkable efforts in favor of this principle. It was from the pen of Boisguillebert, as Eugene Daire rightly says, that the first pleas appeared in France for the free circulation of corn, and he even pointed out scientifically, previous to the physiocrates, the excellence of agriculture, which is the pivot on which Quesnay's ideas turn. He also wrote on the nature, production and distribution of wealth, as well as upon the function of money, pages which permit us to think that the school of Quesnay has made great use of his labors.

—Dupont de Nemours is too exclusive in not having mentioned other writers on economy, as having made contributions to the edifice of the science, such as Josiah Child, who in 1668 published his "Brief Observations concerning Trade and the Interest of Money"; Locke, who in 1691 wrote some curious "Considerations on Money"; Dudley North, who proclaimed that same year the principle of free trade; Forbonnais, whose Eléments de Commerce dates as far back as 1734; Melon, whose Essai politique sur le commerce belongs to the same year; Dutot, whose Réflexions politiques sur le commerce et les finances was published in 1738, etc.; and other writers who labored to elucidate economic doctrines contemporaneously with physiocrates such as Hume, whose "Essays" on various economic subjects appeared in 1752, earlier than the writings of Quesnay, and who knew how to free himself from the prejudices of the balance of trade; men like the no less celebrated Genovesi, who, beginning with 1754, delivered a scientific course on questions relative to wealth; Verri, who wrote on these matters in 1763; James Stewart, who published at London, in 1767, four volumes, with the remarkable title "An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy"; Beccaria, who began at Milan, in 1769, lectures on the same subject, entitled Course of Commercial Sciences"; and other writers, Italian and German, whom it would be too tedious to mention; finally, Adam Smith, who before publishing his book in 1776, had come to Paris in 1764 to have a discussion with philosophic economists, after he had lectured on moral philosophy for fourteen years in the university of Glasgow, part of his labors being devoted to the subjects developed in his "Essay on the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations." On the other hand, we must say that not all the persons whom Dupont de Nemours enrolls under the banner of Quesnay followed the doctrine of the master in every point; some held themselves somewhat aloof from the school. Among these was Morellet. On this point we believe it useful to reproduce certain passages concerning the quarrel of the latter with Linguet, so noted for his literary eccentricities, and his declamations against bread, which he treated as poison. Linguet having advanced several monstrosities, such as the following: that despotic governments are the only ones which render nations happy; that society lives by the destruction of its liberties, as carnivorous animals live on the timid ones, etc.

—Morellet answered him sharply, in a pamphlet, entitled Théorie du paradoxe. Linguet replied by Théorie du libelle, where we read the following details, connected with our subject: "This illustrious pander of science, this invincible champion of the net product, this venerable archimandrite of the order of brothers of the economic doctrine, has risen above all eulogy by forcing his heart to outrage a prostrate man, and raising his foot to give him the last kick. If it be asked what the order in question is, we may answer, in order to spare commentators in ages to come a disagreeable task, that it is a new order, founded about 1760, under the name of the Economists Brothers, by Father Ques..., who had a spiritual son, brother Mirab..., who begat brother Baud..., who begat the A. M., which brought forth the Théorie des Paradoxes. The name Economists was given to them about the year 1770; they took the place of the Encyclopœdists, who had succeeded the * * *, who had ousted the * * *, who had come after the Calvinists, and so on, going back farther and farther. * * * This order, beginning with 1775, had already produced many great men, such as brother Dup..., brother Baud..., brother Roub..., brother Mor..., etc., all mighty in works and words. Hence, they have filled the universe with the noise of their names and their pamphlets or libels, which are synonymous in their language * * *." Morellet answered: "The author of the Théorie des Paradoxes is not an economist. Surely, if the A. M. had been begotten to political economy by the late M. Q., or by some one of the disciples of this estimable man, he would not have denied his origin. The economists are honorable citizens, whose intentions were always upright and their zeal as pure as it was active; men who were the first to teach or render popular many useful truths. They have been reproached with a zeal which has sometimes carried them beyond their object; but it is much better, doubtless, to yield to this impulse, which, after all, can arise in them only from a love of the public good, than to continue in the cowardly indifference to the happiness of their fellow-men which is exhibited by so many persons, or to decry those who are interested in it; but be this as it may with the economists, the A. M. is obliged to confess that he never received any lessons from Dr. Q., nor from M. de M.; and that he busied himself with political economy before Dr. Q. had begotten anybody; that he was never present at any assembly of the disciples; and lastly, since it must be told, that he never understood the economic tableau, nor pretended to make anybody else understand it; a clear profession of faith, and one which puts the author of the Théorie des Paradoxes beyond the reach of all blows which L. aims at the economists, blows from which they can defend themselves, if they think it worth the while."

—Later, the first consul, in conversation with Morellet, said to him: "You are an economist, are you not? You are in favor of the impôt unique, are you not? You are also in favor of the freedom of the corn trade, are you not?" "I answered him," says Morellet (in his Mémoires, chap. xxvii.), "that I was not among the purest of them; and that I added certain modifications to their doctrines." Morellet had, indeed, early fought for freedom of labor, and freedom of commerce; but he does not seem to have shared the enthusiasm of some authors for the agricultural theory of their master.

—III. Economic Philosophy of the Physiocrates. The doctrine of the physiocrates may be considered in relation to philosophy, political economy and politics. The philosophic ideas of the school are scattered through the different works of the chief and his principal disciples; but they are to be found especially in the short treatise of Quesnay on natural law, and summed up in his fragments published under the title of Maximes. In endeavoring to condense them into a few words, we may imagine Quesnay as saying: The world is governed by immutable physical and moral laws. It is for man, an intelligent and free being, to discover them, and to obey them or to violate them, for his own good or evil. The end assigned to the exercise of his intellectual and physical powers, is the appropriation of matter for the satisfaction of his wants, and the improvement of his condition. But he should accomplish this task conformably to the idea of the just, which is the correlative of the idea of the useful. Man forms an idea of justice and utility, both individual and social, through the notions of duty and right which his nature reveals to him, and which teach him that it is contrary to his good and the general welfare to seek his own advantage in the damage done to others. These ideas enter the minds of individuals and peoples in proportion to the increase of enlightenment, and the advance of civilization: they naturally produce feelings of fraternity among men, and peace among peoples.

—The chief manifestations of justice are liberty and property, that is to say, the right of each one to do that which in no way hurts the general interest, and to use at his pleasure the goods which he possesses, the acquirement of which is conformable to the nature of things and to the general utility, since, without liberty and property, there would have been no civilization, and a very much smaller amount of goods at the disposition of men. Liberty and property spring, then, from the nature of man, and are rights so essential that laws or agreements among men should be limited to recognizing them, to formulating them, to sanctioning them. Governments have no mission but to guard these two rights, which, with a correct understanding of things, embrace all the material and moral wants of society. To say that liberty and property are essential rights, is to say that they are in harmony with the general interest of the species; it is to say that with them the land is more fertile, the industry of man in all its manifestations more productive, and the development of all his moral, intellectual, scientific and artistic aptitudes swifter and surer, in the path of the good, the beautiful, the just and the useful; it is to say, further, that man best gathers the fruit of his own efforts, and that he is not at least a victim of the arbitrary laws of his fellow-men.

—"Before Quesnay," says Eugene Daire, "nothing was vaguer than the idea of the just and the unjust; and the determination of the natural and indefeasible rights of man had not been touched by any philosopher. It was tacitly agreed that the ideas of justice, applicable only to individual relations, should remain foreign to civil, public, and especially to international law. Morality, since the principles from which it must be deduced were only dimly perceived, seemed fit only to govern private relations, but not those of the state to its members, or those of one people to another, which, it was supposed, should be necessarily subjected solely to the law of force and cunning. Religion did not understand the economy of society, because it concerned itself only with the future life; and politics did not understand it any better, because it did not suspect the intimate connection of the moral with the physical order of the world. Setting out to govern men from the principle of the incompatibility of the useful with the just, it was impossible for the ministers of the one or the other to avoid the most disastrous results even if they had never been guided by any but the purest intentions. Struck with this fact, Quesnay became persuaded that the truth lay in the opposite principle, and interrogating the nature of man and the nature of things, he discovered in them the proof that the three great classes of every civilized society, that is to say, landed proprietors, capitalists and workmen, as well as the various nations into which the human race is divided, have only to lose by violating justice, mutually oppressing and annoying one another. This was to establish social morality, the absence of which produces a false notion of right and wrong in every mind, even in things touching individual relations. It was to free from the clouds of mysticism the great principle of peace and fraternity among men, and set it on the bases most fitted to insure its triumph."

—As Passy remarks in his report on the memoir which we have just cited, these maxims were not all equally new; and the most general of them were to be met with already in the works of certain writers; the Gospel itself contained many of them. But up to that time they had never been presented in the form of a broad system, never had there been deduced from them so clearly consequences of social application; which warrants us in saying, with Eugene Daire, that Quesnay was really the first thinker of the eighteenth century who made the organization of society the subject of his meditations; the man who gave to the world the newest doctrine, and at the same time the fittest to exercise a happy influence on the welfare of nations. Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau were great minds, beyond a doubt; but Quesnay served the human race most, in having shown that the happiness of the majority depends much less on the mechanism of governmental forms than on the development of human industry, and that it is impossible to discuss politics rationally without having previously acquired a knowledge of the economy of society. "Of course wealth had not altogether escaped the attention of thinkers and governments previous to this philosophy," remarks Eugene Daire again, "but there is this difference, that, while among the first some only saw, so to speak, a necessary evil, it suggested to others nothing beyond systems of artificial distribution, and to governments merely fiscal inventions to plunder their subjects. Quesnay understood that the whole science of social organization may be summed up in that of the regular production and distribution of the goods of this world, that is to say, production and distribution effected according to the unchangeable laws established for the preservation, the indefinite increase, the happiness and the improvement of our species. To investigate these laws, by questioning our own nature and its necessary relations with the external world, such is the work which the chief of the school of physiocrates undertakes to accomplish. Instead of following the example of most philosophers, by declaiming against wealth, on which all the affairs of this world turn, he fathomed the laws of wealth, as well as those of human labor. To sum up, Quesnay and the school of physiocrates made a scientific study of the useful, considered men living in society as producers and consumers first of all, and drew the conclusion that the ideas of right, of peace and fraternity among men, do not rest exclusively on the mysterious dogma of a future life, but on the observance of natural laws, which may be obeyed with profit, and are not violated with impunity in this world."

—IV. Political Economy of the Physiocrates. The philosophy of the physiocrates is, therefore, an economic philosophy; and while endeavoring to sum it up here we have given in part the general data of their political economy. It only remains for us to add a few technical indications of those of their ideas which belong more especially to the economic order. In doing this we shall limit ourselves to setting forth these ideas, because it would be impossible, in the limits granted us, to explain with even partial completeness, in what these ideas may appear to us correct or incorrect, and in what points it has been possible for them to be accepted or opposed by the chief economists. The history of the filiation of economic doctrines, moreover, has not yet been written.

—The physiocrates set out with the principle that materiality is the fundamental character of wealth, and from this concluded to measure the value and utility of labor by the quantity alone of the raw material which it was able to produce. The first effect of this theory was to exclude from the domain of political economy an innumerable multitude of services which men render each other. They formed, therefore, an incomplete idea of the value of things, which prevented them from seeing into the phenomenon of production clearly, estimating correctly the position of land, labor and capital, and rendering an exact account of the relative and absolute utility of all the branches of human industry; agricultural industry manufacturing industry, transportation, commercial industry, and the numerous professions in which men furnish or exchange physical or intellectual labor, that is to say, services. In this way they were led to accord the character of productiveness to agricultural industry only, and to treat as sterile the other industries, while they, at the same time, asserted that manufacturing industry, commerce and the liberal professions are essentially useful. Their theory, by being squint-eyed at the first, if we may so express ourselves, led them to consequences which they found it difficult to admit in the discussion of questions and application of principles, according as they started from the point of view of the sterility of industries other than agriculture, to which they were obliged to give, both in theory and practice, an exceptional and false position. By virtue of their system, the economists really admitted, as a natural and social necessity, the pre-eminence of landed proprietors over all other classes of citizens. Now, this idea of pre-eminence, agreeing with the prejudices of the nobles, has left more than one trace in economic and political laws.

—Their error is explicable at the beginning of the science. It was not given to the physiocrates alone to make all analyses, and to grasp with precision all the differences and resemblances of the various modes of production. On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that they combated the mercantile theory, which made wealth to consist only in the precious metals, and which exaggerated the advantages of foreign commerce; that they combated also the infatuation for the manufacturing system; that they allowed themselves to react too forcibly against these exclusive prejudices, and in turn to become exclusive by their favor for an industry too much ignored, whose excellence they were deeply desirous of demonstrating.

—Of Quesnay's works the Tableau Economique attracted most attention. Quesnay's object was to describe synoptically the facts relative to the production, distribution, consumption and transformation of values. It is difficult to explain the success of this publication, which is itself not very intelligible. Made up of figures strangely disposed, this tableau contributed to throw discredit rather than light on the theory. The explanations of the Marquis Mirabeau rendered it still more cabalistic and mysterious; those of the abbé Baudeau and of Le Trosne, though much clearer, were still not clear enough. We have just read the declaration of Morellet on the subject. In reality, the chiefs of the school wished to prove that society had no other revenue than the net product of the soil, all expenses deducted, including the maintenance of its cultivators; that consequently it had no greater interests than the increase of this revenue; that the power of the state and the progress of civilization depended on it; that this revenue alone should be taxed; that we must not see in the capital in agriculture, industry and commerce, anything but the sacred endowment of labor, without which there would be neither wealth nor landed proprietors; that the expenses of industry and commerce are merely an outlay which should be reduced to the lowest figure by free competition.

—On the subject of territorial revenue and net product, the question arises: what did the school mean exactly by these expressions? and in what were their ideas on these these subjects like or unlike those on rent held by Adam Smith, J. B. Say, Ricardo, Malthus, Rossi, M'Culloch, etc.? This is still a question which does not appear to us to have been clearly settled by those who occupied themselves with the subject. We shall state merely that it was through the impossibility of analyzing the economic phenomena connected with the subject, that Necker and many others cast ridicule on the ideas which the physiocrates advanced. For our own part, we can not give an opinion on the subject without entering into a long discussion, and we therefore refer to the writings of the authors whom we have just cited, and to the explanations given by Eugene Daire in his memoir, and by Passy in his report on this memoir. (See RENT.)

—Although the physiocrates did not form an exact idea of the phenomena of production, and consequently of the real nature of value and of exchange of wealth, they had correct notions on the subject of money: to them is due the beginning of the ruin of the mercantile system, and, after Boisguillebert and before Adam Smith, they contributed much to elucidate the principle of the freedom of exchanges. First, they demonstrated that every obstacle to this freedom is a violation of the fundamental rights of labor and of property, and, secondly, that every hindrance to exportation and importation causes an artificial change in the value of products, and the revenue of lands, sometimes at the expense of producers, sometimes at the expense of consumers, by reducing finally public wealth and taxable property. In the question of finances they deduced from the productiveness of agricultural industry (which they considered the only productive one), and the hypothesis admitted by themselves, that taxation always falls on the landed proprietors, whatever be the mode of its collection, the rule directly to tax land rents or net product, that is to say, to establish a single land tax to the exclusion of all personal contributions and all taxes on consumption, which they called, and which we still call, indirect taxes.

—These are the principal points of the physiocratic theory. Modern science has rectified the idea of wealth and of the productiveness of the different branches of industry; it has accepted the explanation of money and the demonstration of the principle of commercial freedom in opposition to the doctrine of the balance of trade, definitively overthrown. It has not yet pronounced clearly on the theory of net product, although it pays little attention to the famous economic tableau. It hesitates also on the important question of taxation.

—But it is just to recognize, in entering into the details of the economic investigations to which the disciples of Quesnay devoted themselves, that we see that they threw a clear light on all parts of the science, even if they started from a false principle or got lost in a false theory; that, for example, of the materiality of wealth, and that of the productiveness of agriculture alone, which did not hinder them from finding, or which perhaps caused them to find, luminous views on different points. It is, however, a common fact in the history of science, that a false theory, elaborated by superior minds, advances them in the path of truth, which it is afterward easier for their successors to follow, and to whom is reserved the honor of finding a sounder and more unimpeachable theory.

—If we wish to understand the ideas of the physiocrates, we must begin with the writings of their master, and then take up in succession the works of his principal disciples: Mirabeau, Mercier, Baudeau, Le Trosne and Turgot. To the elder Mirabeau, belongs the honor of having been the first who was aroused to enthusiasm by the lofty reason of Quesnay, of having written, developed and commentated on his principles, and of having introduced them into practical politics and administration. The first exposition of the economic system is found in his Philosophie Rurale, published in 1763. It is one of the least unintelligible books of the marquis. Its perusal is of little value except to those who wish to know how the school began; but it must be acknowledged that, in spite of his eccentricities of style and mistiness of thought, this economist philosopher had the talent of causing himself to be read, and of calling public attention to the study of questions which others knew how to explain better than he. Each man has his mission in this world. After the Philosophie Rurale, appeared the book of Mercier-La Rivière, who had met Quesnay, at the same time as Gournay and the Marquis de Mirabeau; and who afterward left France to take the place of intendant at Martinique for a time; on returning, he renewed his former intimacy with Quesnay, and labored to disseminate his doctrine. Mercier-La Rivière's book is entitled l'Ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés politiques; it appeared in 1767, four years after Mirabeau's work. The title of this book promises a methodical treatise on social economy, a promise it does not fulfill. The first part is a series of rather confused dissertations on the moral order, the politics and the material interests of society. But the author becomes more positive and more interesting in the second part, where he makes a close analysis, according to Quesnay's system, of all the questions of the material economy of society, referring to the peculiar or distinct effects of agriculture, industry and commerce, to the reciprocal relations of different nations, and to the nature and object of public revenue. This work, in spite of its imperfections and an obscure and sometimes ridiculous form, had much success with the philosophic part of the public, whose attention had been attracted to these matters by the sententious and abstract writings of Quesnay and by the dissertations of l'Ami des hommes, which were at once tedious and obscure. It was the first time, too, that the doctrine assumed a form intelligible to the common mind; Dupont de Nemours made an analysis of it, a year later, under the title, Origine et progrès d'une science nouvelle (1768). By publishing it, Mercier-La Rivière helped spread the ideas of his master; but at the same time he added to it a dangerous theory which was afterward very injurious to the popularity of the economists. We mean his theory of despotism, to which we shall return a little further on.

—Five years after Mercier's book, there appeared another important work, so far as it was a general exposition of physiocratic ideas, that of the abbé Baudeau, a celebrated publicist of the time, who was converted to the doctrine of Quesnay while trying to refute, in his Ephémérides, the letters of Le Trosne, barrister of the king in the bailiwick of Orleans, and who wielded at an early day a vigorous pen in the phalanx of the economists. Baudeau published in 1771, l'Introduction à la Philosophie économique. It is not only one of the most remarkable of his writings; but in it he surpassed Mercier, and a fortiori Mirabeau, in his method, clearness and style. The year before he had published in the Ephémérides, and printed separately (but only a small number of copies of it) his l'Explication du tableau économique. About the same time there appeared in the Ephémérides, whose management Baudeau had intrusted to Dupont de Nemours, two short catechisms of the doctrine, one by Turgot, without his signature, and the other under the name of the margrave of Baden. Turgot's short Traité on the formation and distribution of wealth, is remarkable in every way. It is a résumé of the ideas of Quesnay and Gournay, as explained by their most eminent disciple. It would be approximately a résumé of the general principles of the science laid down by Smith, if Turgot had not stopped at the physiocratic theory, on a fundamental point, that of the productiveness of the different kinds of labor, in consequence of which he was led to make the agricultural class the productive class par excellence, and the rest of mankind the salaried class, excepting, however, landowners, whom he calls the disposable class, disposable for the general wants of society, such as war, the administration of justice, etc. Turgot's book, written in 1766, appeared for the first time in vols. 11 and 12 of the Ephémérides, toward the end of 1769 and the commencement of 1770.29 The brief compendium of the margrave of Baden, published in 1772, in the Ephémérides du citoyen, which has also been attributed to Dupont de Nemours, and is perhaps the work of the two disciples, is not of equal importance, but is remarkable in many regards. It contains the principles of the physiocratic school, more abridged than in Turgot's work, condensed into formulæ synoptically arranged, and, as Dupont de Nemours says, in the form of a genealogical tree. The title is a very curious one for the time, and leads us to suppose that the school and its master, who was still living, had abandoned the word physiocracy for the title political economy, not in the sense of administration as a synonym of public economy, the oiconomia of Aristotle, which is to society what domestic economy is to the family (in which sense it was employed by Rousseau in 1755, in the article Economie Politique of the Encyclopédie), but in a scientific sense, to designate the science of the phenomena relating to wealth and human labor; a sense in which it had been used by James Stewart after 1767, who entitled his treatise on these subjects "An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy," and, some years before, by Count Verri, in a work published in 1763, and entitled, Memorie storiche sulla Economia publica dello state di Milano (Historical memoirs relative to the political economy of the state of Milan). Verri and Stewart seem to have been the first to adopt the name most generally given to the science in our time, a name which Turgot did not employ, which was scarcely ever used by Adam Smith, and which appeared only in the dictionary of the French academy in 1814, although it appeared in a book at the commencement of the sixteenth century, which, however, does not answer to its title, the Traité de l'Œconomie politique, by Antoyne de Montchrétien.

—After these various authoritative publications of the physiocratic school we cite, in conclusion, the principal work of Le Trosne; which appeared in 1777, under the title, De l'ordre social, followed by an elementary treatise on value, circulation, industry, and home and foreign commerce. This work contains two very distinct parts: the first, consisting of a series of lectures, is a dogmatic exposition of the principles of the school. In the second part, which bears the special title De l'Intérêt social, Le Trosne treats of value, circulation, industry, home and foreign commerce, with a remarkable understanding of these different subjects.

—This was the last general manifesto of the pure physiocratic school, properly so called. When it appeared, Quesnay was dead; Turgot was a minister, and had anticipated great reforms in the constitution of labor, which were to be effected by the constituent assembly, and Adam Smith had published his book after ten years of retirement, and of meditation on this great work.

—V. Political Ideas of the Physiocrates. Having reached this point in our historical deduction concerning the physiocrates, we must direct the attention of the reader for an instant to the political ideas held by this phalanx of philosophers, or which were attributed to them. Mercier-La Rivière, discussing the purely political question of the form of government, decided in favor of the power of one man. Dupont explains to us the principal motive which, according to him, Mercier-La Rivière and the abbé Baudeau had in accepting such a doctrine, "thinking," he says, "that it would be easier to persuade a prince than a nation," and that one man would be quicker to put in practice the teachings of science. We do not wish to stop and ask ourselves whether Mercier and Baudeau were right or wrong, or what are the dangers of despotism and the drawbacks of mixed or representative governments. We wish to say simply that Mercier-La Rivière was careful to distinguish between arbitrary despotism, or despotism proper, which he rejects, and legal despotism, which he favors, and a counterpoise for which he finds in the authority of the magistracy; the form and invariable proportion of the taxes, "the evidence" of the truths of natural law made familiar to the mass of citizens by national education, and the interest of sovereigns, to be just in a system such as he conceived it. It is not difficult to see, in reading this philosopher, that he was of a liberal mind. It must also be remembered that he wrote a hundred years ago, when the theory and practice of free government were still in their infancy. However this may be, it is to be regretted that he was led to construct a political theory not necessarily connected with his subject, which was an explanation of the general principles of law and justice, common to all societies, independent of the form and mechanism of their governments; it is especially to be regretted that to designate the power of a single man, he used a word to which usage has given a bad meaning, which does not express his thought, and which has served as a pretext to many of his adversaries, who, in order to divert attention from his economic ideas and the reforms which they demanded, accused those ideas of being and professing to be the upholders of despotism.

—The question has been raised whether Mercier-La Rivière was under the influence of Quesnay, or whether he expresses his personal ideas and those of Baudeau. It is difficult to say what was precisely the idea of the master on this subject; but it is certainly true that if Quesnay and the marquis de Mirabeau inclined to the executive and legislative power of one man, all their writings show that in their minds and hearts there never could be a question of sacrificing to a family or to an aristocracy the interests of the masses, who were the object which preoccupied their noble thoughts. We can not appeal, on this point, to the practice of their lives. Quesnay died in 1774; the marquis de Mirabeau, on the eve of the revolution, in 1788; Baudeau and Mercier-La Rivière lived on, the one till 1792, the other till 1794, it is said; but they were not of the age to mix in the questions of the time. Moreover, if we admit, which is far from being proved, that any physiocrates went astray, on this point, in theory—the political life of Malesherbes and Turgot; the administrative acts of the latter, of the Gonrnays and Trudaines; the parliamentary career of Dupont de Nemours; the manly and impartial writings against feudal abuses; monopoly of the finances and other monopolies, as well as the biographical details which have been preserved concerning the public conduct of all those who have been put on the witness stand, prove that true political progress would have had warm friends in each one of these zealous promoters of economic progress (whatever might have been the party with which they were connected), the more useful to the cause of humanity for being better informed on the real wants of men living in society, and imbued with the principles of a sounder philosophy based on the better natural foundation of human affairs. Just here we would make a general observation, to wit: that one of the results of economic studies is to lessen the importance of one form of government or another in the minds of men devoted to these studies. But is not this a benefit? The day when the governing and the governed shall understand better what they owe each other; the day when governments shall know how to restrict their action to their natural sphere, the maintenance of security and the guarantee of justice, property and liberty; the day when the governed will no longer believe in fantastic promises, and no longer demand the fulfillment of impracticable programmes; on that day civilization will have made a great step in the way of progress.

—VI. The Physiocrates as the Founders of Economic Science, and their Influence on the Economic Progress attained. It is always difficult to tell precisely how far the influence of a philosophic and scientific school reaches, because in such a subject causes and effects often escape the mind of the observer. After what we have said, however, a sufficient estimate can be made of the importance of the labors of the physiocratic school in philosophy and in morals, and of the services which it rendered in the ranks of the philosophic school, by its studies and its knowledge of society. As to political economy proper, the details into which we have entered show that if the physiocrates were not the first and only founders of the science, as has been frequently asserted, they deserve to figure in the front rank of its founders, and here we recoil from a task which remains yet to be accomplished, and which consists in investigating and describing the reciprocal influence which Adam Smith may have had upon the physiocrates during his visit to Paris, and which the physiocrates may have had upon him by their conversation and writings. We are unable here to settle the question of priority between the Scotch philosopher and the French philosophers; but we may state, with Cousin, that it is difficult to answer it in favor of them rather than of him while we believe it our duty to acknowledge that the physiocrates and Adam Smith are under great obligations to certain writers who preceded them in their career, Boisguillebert, David Hume, etc., whom we have cited above. Be this as it may, account must be taken of this important fact, that while writing his book, Smith was able to take advantage of the principal works of the school, especially those of Quesnay, and that its most important utterances were published earlier than the appearance of the "Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations."

—The question raised as to the sequence of facts, that is to say, the legislative traces which the physiocratic school has left after it, its action and its propagandism, might also be made the subject of very interesting research which has not, we think, been made. We can, however, give a satisfactory account, in résumé, of this influence. In a general way the physiocratic school contributed greatly to overthrow the spirit of administrative routine which progress always encounters in its path; to overthrow the spirit of regulation and prohibition which had thrown a deadening net of hindrances over every branch of human activity; it contributed greatly to effect the suppression of provincial customs duties, and to help the freedom of internal commerce; it aided the fall of the system of corporations, and the freedom of labor; it abolished the corvée; and finally, it contributed to all the liberal and progressive measures of the constituent assembly. The majority of that assembly voted under the influence of the economic ideas which several members had gained by meeting and reading the works of the physiocratic philosophers, while they incriminated, and allowed others to incriminate, the economists, as Dupont de Nemours says, just as has often happened since in other assemblies. During the twenty years which preceded the revolution, it was in their writings and their ideas that many influential men, princes, ministers, governors, intendants of provinces, inspectors of manufactures, etc., found inspiration, both to establish the financial system and to improve the internal administration and the management of foreign affairs; it was they who won the freedom of the corn trade, on which the school published a score of books. It was not, therefore, their fault (Droz has shown this well in his Histoire de Louis XVI.) that the economic, financial, and even political reforms were not accomplished in season, in peace and without revolution. Every one has read of the brilliant efforts of Turgot.

—The physiocratic school has exercised its influence not in France alone, but in all Europe. This influence may be traced in Italy, and especially in Tuscany, which owes its prosperity to the principles of industrial and commercial freedom, put in practice by the grand duke Leopold, assisted by intelligent ministers, such as Gianni and Fabroni; in several states of the north and Germany, particularly in Austria, where the administration of the emperor Joseph II., as well as that of this same Leopold, have left such regrettable souvenirs. Gustavus III., king of Sweden, Stanislaus Augustus, king of Poland, the margrave of Baden, and the dauphin son of Louis XV., were inclined to the ideas of the economists. We know that Catherine of Russia desired to consult Mercier-La Rivière, and although the meeting of the philosopher and the empress came to a rather grotesque conclusion, she testified to the credit of the school. This influence was also felt in international relations and treaties. After the conclusion of the treaty of 1786 between France and England, on liberal and rational bases, whatever may have been systematically said of it in a private and ill-advised interest, Lord Lansdowne, prime minister of Great Britain, who, up to that time, was opposed to the peace, declared that he had been converted to better political and economic opinions by the reasoning and influence of the abbé Morellet, whom he had known at Paris, and whose principles, as we have said, were no other than those of Gournay and Quesnay.

—The labors of the physiocratic school have also given indirectly a vigorous impulse to statistics. It was in answer to l'Ami des hommes that La Michodière and Messence undertook the investigations which are among the first monuments of modern statistics.

—VII. Adversaries and Partisans of the Physiocrates. The economists, with their enthusiasm for their master, and intolerance, born of the spirit of sect and the inflexibility of principles, so naturally consequent on a fixed conviction and conscientious studies, drew on themselves many attacks, either from the circle of philosophers of which they themselves formed a part, from men of letters, or from all those whose ideas, prejudices or interests they opposed. Specimens of the polemics of the time are found in the writings of Grimm, Mallet-Dupan, Linguet and others, an example of which we produced above. Voltaire directed against them the satire of l'Homme aux quarante écus, more witty than solid; the aged philosopher, however, felt dominated by the genius of Turgot and we know that he took up his pen to aid him against the numerous and unjust attacks of which he was the object on account of his measures to secure the free circulation of corn.

—Among the most prominent we must cite les Doutes proposés aux philosophes économistes, by Mably, 1768; a book by Graslin, in 1767; the famous "Dialogues" of the abbé Galiani concerning legislation on corn (1770), and a work on the same subject, by Necker, 1770. The first two, though more serious, have no great value. Necker's work, which Turgot's enemies praised to the skies, was a political maneuvre which does no honor to the celebrated minister, for it is full of communistic sophisms. Galiani's book, much lauded for its style and wit, has no scientific value, and does not even reach a conclusion on the special point of the exportation of corn, a crime of the economists, which he did not entirely disapprove.

—Some modern economists have taken sides with the physiocrates in their theory of the nature of wealth and agriculture: we mention Dutens, in France, who published a new explanation of the doctrines of Quesnay, under the title of Philosophie d'Economie politique, 1835; and Schmalz in Germany, who undertook the same task, ten years earlier.

—Malthus, in his "Principles of Political Economy," started out with the materiality of value, and dwelt much on rent; and Eugene Daire, who has left remarkable notices and notes on the physiocrates, Turgot and Adam Smith, in the Collection des Principaux Economistes, also maintains the materiality of value, and undertakes to show not only the truth of these principles, but also that of the agricultural theory of Quesnay, as well as the analogy between Smith's ideas and those of Turgot and Quesnay. We shall not enter into this long and delicate discussion: we shall only say that Smith has not pronounced very positively in favor of the materiality of value, although there is on this point a want of clearness as to his opinion; that he has only tried to show the productiveness of all industries, and has devoted several chapters to opposing the physiocratic doctrine of land. Whether he has succeeded, as the majority of economists pretend, or nearly failed, as others pretend, is a question which can be answered only in a course on political economy, and for that there is no place here.

—The reader will find the subject which we have just treated further developed in the lives of the men we have named. We can refer also to a chapter, too brief, unfortunately, in Blanqui's "History of Political Economy" [translated by Miss Emily J. Leonard]; to the lectures in which Rossi treats of land; to the notices by Eugene Daire, in the Collection des Principaux Economistes; to his memoir in answer to the questions offered for competition, crowned in 1847 by the academy of moral and political science, a statement from which, inserted in the Journal des Economistes, we have reproduced above; to the report of Passy on this memoir, published in the same collection; and to a paper on the philosophy of the physiocrates, published in the same collection, by H. Baudrillart.

JOSEPH GARNIER.

PICKERING

PICKERING, Timothy, was born at Salem, Mass., July 17, 1745, and died there, Jan. 29, 1829. He was graduated at Harvard in 1763, was admitted to the bar, entered the revolutionary army, and became adjutant general and quarter-master general. (See also ORDINANCE OF 1787.) Under the administrations of Washington and John Adams he was successively postmaster general, secretary of war, and secretary of state. (See ADMINISTRATIONS, I.

—III.) After a brief retirement to a farm in Pennsylvania, he returned to Massachusetts in 1802, and served as United States senator (federalist) 1803-11, and congressman 1813-17. He then retired permanently from politics.

—From 1798 until his death. Pickering's political life was a perennial conflict with the Adams family. He had been dismissed from John Adams' cabinet for endeavoring to force the president into the Hamilton policy. (See ADAMS, JOHN; X Y Z MISSION.) As senator, he and his colleague, John Quincy Adams, quarreled over the latter's support of the embargo. Thereafter he was engaged in frequent newspaper and pamphlet wars with both of his old opponents. The particulars may be found in the "Correspondence between John Adams and William Cunningham," published in 1823, and Pickering's "Observations" upon it, in 1824. Pickering is the New England federalist most strongly suspected of favoring secession in 1805-9. (See SECESSION, I.)

—See Upham and Pickering's Life of Pickering; North American Review, July, 1874; 9 John Adams' Works, 55. A personal description of Pickering is in 1 Schouler's United States, 191, 302.

ALEXANDER JOHNSTON.

PIERCE

PIERCE, Franklin, president of the United States 1853-7, was born at Hillsborough, N. H., Nov. 23, 1804, and died at Concord, N. H., Oct. 8, 1869. He was graduated at Bowdoin in 1824, was admitted to the bar in 1827, and immediately entered politics as a democrat, serving in the lower house of the state legislature 1829-33, as congressman 1833-7, and as United States senator 1837-42. In the Mexican war he became brigadier general. In 1852 he was elected president. (See DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICAN PARTY, V.; ELECTORAL VOTES, XVII.) For the leading events of his term, see KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL; KANSAS; FILIBUSTERING; OSTEND MANIFESTO; UNITED STATES, III. After the close of his term he remained in retirement until his death, except for certain letters and addresses during the rebellion, passionately denouncing the coercion of the seceding states and the general conduct of the war.

—See Bartlett's Life of Pierce (1852); Hawthorne's Life of Pierce (1852); 3 Statesman's Manual, 1993.

ALEXANDER JOHNSTON.

PINCKNEY

PINCKNEY, Charles Cotesworth, son of chief justice Pinckney, of South Carolina, was born at Charleston, S. C.,———, 1746, and died there Aug. 16, 1825. He was educated at Westminster and Oxford, studied law at the Temple, and began practice in South Carolina in 1769. He distinguished himself in the revolutionary war, being thereafter known as Gen. Pinckney; and was a member of the convention of 1787. Under the new government he declined successively the positions of supreme court justice in 1789; secretary of war in 1795, and secretary of state in the same year. In 1797-8 he was minister and commissioner to France (see X Y Z MISSION), and while there is said to have given the reply to French demands for money: "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute." In 1800 he was the alternate federalist candidate for the presidency. The democrats in the South Carolina legislature offered to unite with the federalists in casting the electoral vote of the state for Jefferson and Pinckney, which would have made the latter vice-president, but Pinckney refused the offer, and was defeated with Adams. In 1804 and 1808 the federalist votes were given for him as candidate for president. (See FEDERAL PARTY, II.)

—See Allen's Biographical Dictionary.

ALEXANDER JOHNSTON.

PINCKNEY, Thomas

PINCKNEY, Thomas, brother of the preceding, was born at Charleston, S. C., Oct. 23, 1750, and died there Nov. 2, 1828. He was graduated at Oxford, studied law at the Temple in London, returned to South Carolina, and began practice there in 1773. He was governor of his state 1787-9, minister to Great Britain 1792-6, and minister to Spain 1794-5. In 1796 he was the federalist candidate, alternate to John Adams, for the presidency (see CAUCUS, CONGRESSIONAL; ELECTORAL VOTES); and he was a federalist congressman 1797-1801. During the war of 1812 he was major general in command of the southern military division.

—See Allen's Biographical Dictionary.

ALEXANDER JOHNSTON.

PIRACY

PIRACY is robbery committed by force of arms at sea. It was formerly much more frequent than it is now. It still exists, however, and it is likely that so long as there shall be highwaymen, there will be pirates; although it is much more difficult to equip a vessel to scour the ocean than to lie in ambush at the edge of a road or at the corner of the deserted streets of a large town, to rob a passer-by. Even in comparatively late years the Chinese seas were infested with pirates. This sort of robbery can be practiced only by an association of criminals; it has, too, this peculiarity, that entire hordes have been known to take to it, notably in the Barbary states before the conquest of Algeria, and even now from time to time on the Morocco coasts. Thus, it is always liable to happen, at the very time when Christian nations believe that safety reigns over all the seas, that buccaneers will dash from some unsuspected lair, and before repression can be organized, will have had time to plunder a large number of peaceable merchants. Within a few centuries, doubtless, when European civilization, enlightening even the remotest lands, shall have civilized the entire world, no barbarous tribe will be longer able to escape the action of a regular government, and piracy will lose many of its chances of success; but it may also, by an excess of audacity, organize in the midst of a civilized nation; and consequently, notwithstanding the gradual disappearance of this scourge, it can not be asserted that we shall ever attain to an absolute riddance of it.

—The early Greeks were nearly all pirates. M. Cauchy remarks (Droit Maritime International, 1862, vol. i., p. 180) that in ancient times the slave trade was one of the most powerful incentives to piracy, both public and private. Neither the Grecian states, when they had become civilized, nor Rome, appears to have had a naval force intended to protect their commerce against sea robbers. Piracy flourished also in the Mediterranean; it attained an extraordinary development during the civil wars of the Roman republic. These robbers formed at this period an immense confederation, the headquarters of which were on the hilly shores of Cilicia. They came very near starving Rome by intercepting the convoys of corn, and Pompey had to be charged with the destruction of their power. In order to prevent the recurrence of so disastrous a state of affairs, the Roman emperors maintained public fleets (M. Cauchy, loc. cit., p. 115), as all modern nations have done since. If we should cease to plow the seas with ships of war, it is probable that piracy would be revived in many parts of the world. Privateering gave rise, at the end of the seventeenth century, to an association of buccaneers, in parts of the Antilles, whose ravages rivaled the robberies of the ancient pirates of Cilicia. The difference between the corsair and the buccaneer is not sufficiently obvious in respect to these bold adventurers; for if the former carries his sovereign's flag, while the latter is outside of international law, both fight for booty. The abolition of privateering, proclaimed by the declaration of April 16, 1856, will thus aid in causing piracy to disappear more and more.

—The repression of piracy concerns international law as well as the public law of each nation. It generally happens, indeed, that the pirate and the captor are not subjects of the same sovereign, and that the crime has been committed on the vast expanse of sea which has no master and where no jurisdiction exists. The principal laws of the ancien régime in France, against piracy, are the decree of March, 1584, the declaration of Feb. 1, 1650, and the naval ordonnance of 1681; since the French revolution the matter has been regulated by the order of the second of prairial, year XI., and the law of April 10, 1825, entitled, "Law for the safety of navigation and maritime commerce." The ordonnance of 1681 and the law of 1825 have solved the difficulty which we have just indicated, by putting pirates outside of international law; they are considered as public enemies, and are amenable to the tribunals of their captor. Any vessel taking to piracy without letters of marque from any prince, or with letters of marque from two princes, is liable to seizure as a pirate. And further, the vessel which commits hostilities under any other flag than that under which it is commissioned, is to be regarded as a pirate. The laws respecting piracy are made by each nation in the interest of all the others. It matters little that the captor has not been attacked. The pirate may be justly seized for having attacked any vessel whatsoever, even foreign to the nationality of the captor. This is the remarkable feature in the legislation on piracy. The law appears to us unjust which punishes as a pirate a vessel to which nothing could be imputed but the lack of papers. It must be observed, however, that there is in such a case only a presumption, which must yield to proof of the contrary, but this is already too much, and here, as in all penal law, guilt is not to be assumed, and it is for the accuser, not the accused, to furnish the proof.

—Grotius thinks (book ii., chap. xx., § 40) that a government has the right not only to avenge its wrongs, but even the offenses which violate international law, whomsoever they may concern. "And it is even," says he, "as much more praise-worthy to avenge the wrongs of others rather than one's own, as it is to be feared, in those which affect us, that the resentment which we feel might make us pass beyond the limits of a just vengeance." We adopt fully this principle of the illustrious publicist, proclaimed before him by St. Augustine in the "City of God," which appears to us one of the foundations of international law. A nation has the right to declare war against a government which violates international justice, even when such violation does not directly harm it. Thus, any nation may lawfully make war on a piratical people, even if its commerce has not suffered from their depredations.30

—BIBLIOGRAPHY. Broglie, Sur la piraterie (Eorits, vol. iii., p. 335); Phillimore, International Law, vol. i., pp. 394-406; Wildman, International Law, vol. ii., p. 150; Wheaton, International Law, § 124; Heffter, Völkerrecht, § 104; Esperson, Diritto diplomatico, vol. ii. pp. 2, 12; Gareis, Das heutige Volkerrecht under Menschenhandel, 1879.

F. A. HELIE.

PLENTY AND DEARTH.

PLENTY AND DEARTH. Political economy, in so far as it is an exposition of principles and facts, is a vast and noble science, searching into the affairs of the social mechanism and the functions of each of the parts composing those animate and marvelous organizations called human societies. It studies the general laws in accordance with which the human race increases in numbers, wealth, intelligence and morality; and yet, recognizing a social as well as a personal freedom of will, it shows how the laws of Providence may be misunderstood and set at naught, what a terrible responsibility there is on those who tamper with them, and how, as the result of so doing, civilization may be checked, impeded, driven back, and stifled for a long time.

—Incredible as it may seem, this science, so vast and lofty as an exposition of principles and facts, is, when controverted and compelled to become polemical, nearly reduced to the ungrateful task of demonstrating the proposition, almost childish in its simplicity, that "Plenty is better than dearth": because, looked at closely, it will be seen that the greater number of the objections to, and doubts concerning, political economy, involve the principle that dearth or scarcity is preferable to plenty, which is the real meaning to be deduced from the phrases, once and in part still so popular, such as "Production is excessive," "We are being destroyed by plethora," "All the markets are overstocked, and every business and profession is overcrowded." "The capacity to consume can no longer keep pace with the power to produce," etc.

—These ideas, too, are not confined to any class. One man opposes the use of machines on the ground that those triumphs of human ingenuity multiply indefinitely the power of production. What does he fear? Abundance. A second favors protection, lamenting the liberality of nature's gifts to other lands, dreading that through the influence of free trade his own should share it, and thinking that were it to do so it would be afflicted by the scourge of the invasion and inundation of foreign products. What does he fear? Abundance. Statesmen, even, are not free from the hallucination, though they fear abundance for a different reason. Their dread is, that the masses, as the result of being too well off, will become revolutionary and seditious, and as a means of repressing them, they look to heavy taxation, vast armies, a lavish expenditure, and a powerful aristocracy charged with the task of remedying by its pomp and profusion the intrusive abundance of human industry. What do such statesmen fear? Abundance. Finally, we have logicians who, disdaining all by-paths, go straight to the point, and advise periodical destruction of large cities by fire or otherwise, that labor may have the opportunity to rebuild them. What do they fear? Abundance.

—It seems impossible that such ideas should come into the minds of men, and sometimes even prevail, not in the personal practice of men, but in their theories and in their legislation. For, if there be anything evidently true, it is this, that, so far at least as useful articles are concerned, it is better to have than to be without them; and if it is incontestable that plenty is an evil when it exists in things that are mischievous, destructive and troublesome, such as grasshoppers, caterpillars, vermin, vices and malarial vapors, it must be equally true that it is a blessing as regards things which meet wants and satisfy desires; things which man seeks, strives for, with the sweat of his brow; things which he is willing to buy by work or exchange, and which possess a real value, such as food, clothing, shelter, works of art, means of locomotion, of communication, of instruction, and of amusement; in a word, all that political economy busies itself with.

—If it be desired to compare the civilization of two peoples, or of two ages, statistics are appealed to, to inform us which had, in proportion to its population, most means of subsistence, the greatest returns in agricultural products, in industries or art, most roads, most canals, most libraries and museums; and the question is settled in accordance with the comparative activity of consumption, that is to say, by plenty or abundance.

—It may, perhaps, be said that it is not sufficient for products to be abundant; that it is further necessary that they be equitably distributed. There is nothing truer than this, but questions must not be confounded. When we defend abundance, and our opponents decry it, we both take as understood the words cœteris paribus, all else being equal; that is, equity of distribution is presupposed.

—Further, it must be observed, that abundance is in itself the cause of proper distribution. The more abundant anything is, the less value it possesses; the less its value, the more it is within the reach of every one, the more men are on an equality with regard to it. We are all equal in respect to the air, because it exists relatively to our needs and wants in in-exhaustible abundance; we are a little less equal in regard to water, because being less plentiful, it possesses a certain value; still less so with regard to wheat, delicate fruits, early vegetables, rarities, their benefit becoming confined to fewer, in an inverse ratio to their abundance.

—It may be added, to satisfy the sentimental scruples of our times, that plenty is not a merely material good. Wants arise among men in regular order; they are not all equally pressing, and it may be said that their order of priority is not the order of dignity. The coarser wants must first be appeased, because their satisfaction involves our existence, and because, as rhetoricians say, "Before living worthily, we must live somehow." Primo vivere, deinde philosophari.

—Hence it follows, that it is the abundance of the things necessary for the supply of the commonest wants which permits man more and more to spiritualize his enjoyments, and to raise himself into the region of the true and the beautiful. He can only devote to the perfecting of form, to the cultivation of art, or to the investigations of thought, the time and the energies which, as a consequence of progress are no longer absorbed by the demands of his animal existence. Abundance, the result of long labor and patient economy, can not be universal at the first formation of society, nor can it, at the same time, exist as to all possible products, but it follows a regular order, commencing with the material wants, and ending with the spiritual. Unhappy the nations when external forces, such as governments, violently invert this natural sequence, substitute for desires—coarse, it is true, but imperious—others of a loftier nature, prematurely awakened, change the natural direction of labor, and disturb the equilibrium between wants and the means of satisfying them, an equilibrium which is the cause of all social stability.

—Moreover, were abundance a scourge, it would be as strange as unfortunate, for easy as the remedy is (what is easier than to abstain from producing, or to destroy?) no one is willing to adopt it. It is in vain that people inveigh against plenty, superabundance, plethora; it is in vain that they enunciate the theory of restricted supply, that they obtain for it the support of the law, that they proscribe machinery, that they disturb, interfere with and impede commerce; all this keeps no one from working to acquire abundance. On all the earth not a man is to be met with whose practice is not a perpetual protest against these vain theories; not one is to be found whose sole endeavor is not to make the most of his powers, to foster them, to husband them, and to increase their productive capability by the co-operation of natural forces; not one who decries freedom in trade, but who acts on this principle (however eager he may be to deny others the same privilege): to buy in cheapest market, and to sell in the dearest; so much so, that the theory of a restricted supply, which is so common in books, in the newspapers, in conversation, in parliament, and by the way in laws, is negatived and stultified by the actions of every individual without exception, composing the human race, which is the most incontrovertible refutation the mind can well imagine.

—But if abundance is better than scarcity, how does it happen that men, after having virtually decided in favor of abundance by their action, by their labor, and their commerce, constitute themselves theoretically the champions of restriction, to such an extent that they bring popular opinion to that view, and are the originators of all sorts of restrictive and illiberal laws? This it remains for us to explain. At bottom, what we are all aiming at is, that each of our efforts should realize for us the greatest possible amount of benefit. If we were not by nature sociable, if we lived in individual isolation, we could know one rule only for attaining this object, to work more and better, which implies progressive abundance. But, by means of exchange and its consequence, the division of labor, it is not directly to ourselves but to others that we consecrate our labor, our efforts, our productions and our services. Hence it follows, that without losing sight of the rule, produce more, we have another always present to our minds, produce more value; for on that depends the amount of remuneration which we shall receive for our services. Now, to produce more, and to produce more value, are by no means one and the same thing. It is manifest that if by force or stratagem we succeed in making greatly scarcer the special service or product which constitutes our occupation, we would grow richer without adding to our labor either in quantity or quality. Suppose, for example, a shoemaker could, by a mere effort of will, cause the sudden annihilation of all the shoes in the world, excepting only those in his own shop; or strike with paralysis every one who knew how to use the shoemaker's tools, he would become a Crœsus; his lot would be improved, not together with the general lot of mankind, but in an inverse ratio to the prosperity of all. This is the whole secret of the theory of a scarcity as it shows itself in restrictions, monopolies and privileges. It only veils, by the use of scientific language, that selfish sentiment which finds a place deep in the hearts of all: competitors annoy me.

—When any product is brought to market, there are two circumstances which tend equally to enhance its value: first, that there is in the market a great abundance of articles for which it may be exchanged, that is, a great abundance of everything; and second, a great scarcity of articles of the same product. Now, neither of ourselves nor through the intervention of laws and public power, are we able to influence in the least the first of these circumstances. Unfortunately universal plenty can not be produced by act of parliament; it must be obtained in some other way; legislators, customs officials and restriction can do nothing toward it. If, then, we wish artificially to raise the value of any article, we must bring our energies to bear on the other element in its value. Here individual effort is not quite so powerless. With laws ad hoc, an arbitrary use of power, bayonets, chains and fetters, punishment and persecution, it is not impossible to drive out competition, and to create that scarcity and artificial increase in value which is desired. This being the condition of things, it is easy to understand what not only can but must happen in an age of ignorance, of barbarism, and of unrestrained greed. Every one turns to the legislature and through its intervention to public force, demanding of it the artificial creation, by all the means at its disposal, of a scarcity in the article he produces. The farmer demands scarcity of corn, the cattle raiser of cattle, the iron master of iron, the colonist of sugar, the cloth manufacturer of cloth, etc., etc. Each one gives the same reasons for his demand, and the result is a body of doctrine which may be called, the theory of scarcity, and public force employs fire and sword to secure its triumph.

—But, leaving the masses thus forced to undergo the regimen of universal dearth, it is easy to comprehend what a labyrinth the inventors of this scheme get involved in, and what a terrible retribution awaits their unscrupulous rapacity. It has been shown that as regards each special production there are two elements of value: first, the scarcity of similar articles; and, second, the abundance of all which are not similar. Now, we call special attention to this: by the very fact that the government, the slave of individual selfishness, endeavors to realize the first of these elements of value, it destroys the second. It has satisfied in succession the wishes of the farmer, the cattle raiser, the iron master, the manufacturer, the colonist, by artificially producing a scarcity of corn, or meat, of iron, of cloth, or of sugar, but what is that but destroying that general abundance which is the second condition of value in each separate product. Thus, after having submitted the community to actual privation, which scarcity implies, it is discovered that it has not succeeded in catching this shadow, in laying this spectre, in raising this nominal value, because by just so much as the scarcity of the article in question operates in its favor, in the same way the scarcity of others neutralizes it. Is it, then, so hard to understand that the shoemaker, of whom we spoke above, should he succeed in destroying, by a simple wish, all the shoes in existence except those made by himself, would find himself no better off, even from the ridiculous point of view of nominal value, if at the same time, every other thing against which shoes can be exchanged became proportionately scarce? The only change would be, that every man, our shoemaker included, would be worse shod, worse clothed, worse fed, and worse lodged, even if products maintained toward each other the same relative value.

—It is necessarily so. What would become of society, if injustice, oppression, egotism, greed and ignorance brought no punishment with them? Luckily, it is not possible for a few men, without its recoiling on themselves, to turn public force and the apparatus of government to the profit of prohibitive legislation, and to check the universal impulse of humanity toward abundance.

FRÉDÉRIC BASTIAT.

POLAND

POLAND. I. Historical. Poland is a vast plain, the centre of which is at Warsaw, on the Vistula, and which forms the northwestern region of a plateau two-thirds larger, bounded by the Baltic sea, the Oder, the Carpathian mountains, the Black Sea, the Borysthenes and the Dwina. The boundaries of the state of Poland have changed, in a thousand years, from the belt formed by the tributary rivers of the Vistula to the circumference of the whole plain. But the country occupied by the Polish nation has never extended beyond the Carpathian mountains at the south and east. No mountains traverse Poland, only sandy hills. In the east there are marshes; the centre is covered with forests. The soil contains mineral wealth, copper, silver, and the largest mines of rock salt in Europe. The climate is cold in the north, and temperate in the south; the soil is everywhere fertile, but nothing but wheat is produced.

—The Polish population had its origin (independently of the Finnish or Turanian elements of pre-historic Europe) in the Slavic tribe of the Lecks, established on the banks of the Vistula at the beginning of the middle ages: they are called the Slaves of the plain. They annexed to themselves, in course of time, other Slavic nations, the principal of which are the Lithuanians, who occupy to the northeast of Poland a region of almost equal extent; and the lesser Russians, established at the east and south, in the countries called later Podolia and Galicia. The aggregate of these nations constituted, without any considerable variation, the Polish nationality; but the power of this state extended in the west over states almost wholly Germanic; and in the southeast over nations of Turkish or Tartar origin, such as the Cossacks of the Ukrania. The time of the greatest territorial extent of Poland was the year 1772. It was then composed of four states: Great Poland, comprising Greater Poland proper, Cujavia, Mazovia and Western Prussia; Little Poland comprising Little Poland proper, Podlaquia, Red Russia, and the Ukraine; Lithuania, comprising Lithuania proper, White Russia, the Black Russia of Lithuania, Iamogitia; and finally the feudatory countries, that is to say, the duchy of Courland and the Pomeranian districts of Butow and Lauenburg, fiefs in the hands of the king of Prussia. And it was precisely this year 1772 which saw the first dismemberment of Poland accomplished, and the political ruin of the nation precipitated. The causes which led to the dissolution of the most flourishing state of eastern Europe are now well known. They may be summed up in the insufficiency of public authority at the time when Poland was surrounded by three military states subject to a rigorous centralization.

—The origin of this anarchy lay primarily in the elective character of the king. The last Piast, a king of the first dynasty, was able to secure the throne to his nephew only by allowing the nobility to force a stipulation upon him by which they arrogated to themselves several prerogatives, such as exemption from taxation. From that time on, the nobility asserted their right of election, and, after the extinction of the Jagellons, enforced it. They swore their kings to the pacta conventa, the basis of that Polish constitution by which, to use Voltaire's expression, the nobility and the clergy defended their liberty against their king, and took liberty away from the rest of the nation: "There the peasant sows not for himself, but for lords, to whom he and his land and all the labor of his hands belong, and who can sell him or slay him with the beasts of the field. All who are of gentle blood depend only on themselves. To try them in a criminal matter, a general assembly of the nation is necessary; and they can be arrested only after having been condemned. Besides, they are scarcely ever punished. Many of the gentry are poor, and accept service with those who are wealthy; they receive a salary from them, perform the lowest offices, and prefer to serve their equals to enriching themselves by trade." Another peculiarity of this constitution was the famous right of veto granted to the deputies or nuncios in the diets. "Each deputy enjoys the right which the tribunes of the people had at Rome, of opposing the laws of the senate. A single gentleman who says, I protest, invalidates by this one word the unanimous resolutions of the rest, and if he departs from the place where the diet is being held, it must then dissolve. The remedy provided for the disorders which arise from this law is more dangerous still. Poland is seldom without two factions. Unanimity in the diets being thus impossible, each party forms a confederation, in which they decide by a plurality of votes, without any regard to the protests of the minority. These assemblies, illegal, according to the laws, but authorized by the laws, are held in the king's name, although often without his consent, and against his interests. When the dissensions are over, it belongs to the general diets to confirm or to annul the acts of these confederations." (Voltaire.) Such a system offered only too easy pretexts and opportunities for the intervention of neighboring states. From the beginning of the elective kingship the discord was such that a foreign prince was generally elected king, and when, at the end of the eighteenth century, the throne was given to a Pole, the choice was dictated by foreign influence. Russia ruled for nearly a century in the Polish councils. Her last intervention had for its chief motive to bring forward the situation of Russians of the Greek church, subjects of Poland in the eastern provinces, whose religious liberty was restricted or disregarded. It was Russia which took the principal part in the military operations against Poland, although the first idea of the division appears to have been expressed by Frederick II., king of Prussia.

—The first dismemberment took place in 1772. Austria and Prussia signed treaties with Poland which restored to Russia, Livonia, Polotsk, Witebsk, Meislaw and Minsk; to Prussia, a part of Posnania, Pomerania and Warnia; and to Austria, Galicia and Lodomiria. Poland, reduced to these limits, abolished her ancient government, and adopted, by a constitution copied from that which France had just voted (1791), hereditary royalty, national representation, with two houses, the re-establishment of urban franchise, and the abolition of serfdom. But this constitution having been taxed with illegality by the confederation of Tarjowice, assembled by the advice of Catherine II., and at which the old sovereignty of the equestrian order was reclaimed, the disturbances which followed this transformation led to the interference of the Russian armies, and the second partition of Poland (1791), which took from her half of Lithuania, Posnania, Thorn, and Dantzic. Poland rose in arms the following year, and took part in the European war, but her defeat was followed by the third partition (1794).

—A nation can not be all at once suppressed, especially in modern times, without the conquest giving rise to the protests of the states which have not shared in the spoliation, and which then exert themselves for the re-establishment of the dismembered nation. Poland was the subject of two of these at least partial restorations. The first was the work of Napoleon I., who constituted, by the treaty of Tilsit (1807), as an independent state, at most the ancient country of the Lecks, the basin of the Vistula, under the title of grand duchy of Warsaw. This territory was taken almost entire from Prussia, defeated at Friedland. The grand duke was the king of Saxony. The constitution of 1792 was preserved, in form, at all events. This creation of the grand duchy of Warsaw was dated at Tilsit, 1807; Prussia had nothing of Poland, but Russia kept all the east, and Austria all the south. The war with Austria having been renewed, the Poles reconquered Galicia; but they were obliged in 1809 to cede a part of it to Russia, by a treaty approved of by France. The second restoration of Poland was the work of Europe, assembled at the congress of Vienna.

—The treaties of 1815, while keeping Posnania for Prussia, and Galicia for Austria, gave an independent existence to the greater portion of Poland, which, under the name of kingdom of Poland, was governed by the emperor of Russia on the principle of personal union. This kingdom received a constitution, Nov. 15-27, 1815, by virtue of which the senate and the chamber of nuncios of the nobility and of deputies of the commons shared in the legislation. The chambers had a certain initiative, and suffrage was established on a much broader basis than in the French chartres. The Roman Catholic religion, professed by the greater part of the inhabitants of the kingdom of Poland, was to be the object of the peculiar care of the government, without detracting in any way from the liberty of other forms of religion, all of which, without exception, might be practiced freely and publicly, and enjoy the protection of the government. Difference in the forms of worship made no difference as to the enjoyment of civil and political rights. The senate of the kingdom of Poland was to have as many bishops of the Roman Catholic church as the law should establish palatinates; a bishop of the Greek church had a seat in it also. All public administrative affairs, judicial and military, without exception, were to be conducted in the Polish language. Public places, both civil and military, could be filled only by Poles. Cracow, with its suburbs, was also constituted a republic. The direction of its affairs was conducted by a senate, and the legislative power by an assembly of representatives. (Constitution of May 3, 1815.) But a commission appointed by the three joint powers decided everything.

—The system established by the constitution of 1815, upon a more liberal basis than the charters of that period, and the application of which would not have been without difficulty under a national dynasty, was naturally still more precarious in a country lately conquered, and the dependence of which was but slightly disguised by the so-called system of personal union. From this time on, Poland saw the possibility of liberty only in complete separation, and sought it in four insurrections, the failure of which each time aggravated the situation of the country. The first took place in 1830, and was crushed the year following in the battle of Ostrolenka and the capture of Warsaw. The Russian government adopted a series of measures to efface the Polish nationality, the principal of which were the abolition of judicial power in Lithuania and Ruthenia, the suppression of Catholic churches, forced conversions, the education of the children in the Russian religion (in Poland as well as in Lithuania), the substitution of the Russian language for the Polish in public documents and in the schools, the transportation to St. Petersburg of the library of Warsaw, the forced enrollment of Poles in the Russian army, their transportation to the Caucasus, the confiscation of their goods, the inquisition of officials in families, and the transportation and forced enrollment of children. A large number of Poles emigrated, either to other European countries, principally France and England, or to the republic of Cracow, on the faith of its constitution. The Austro - Prusso - Russian commission, which had held the town since 1815, and which had the letter of the treaties in its favor, exacted their expulsion from the senate, and, as the senate refused to obey, took their expulsion upon itself. The accumulation of resentment burst out in a revolution some years afterward (1846). Associations covering all Poland, delegated authority to a dictatorship of five, who proclaimed, at Cracow, on the 22d of February, the national government of the Polish republic. The movement extended everywhere, and was everywhere crushed out in blood; it was then that the massacre of the Poles in Galicia took place, by peasants of Russian origin, whom the Austrian government was accused of having excited to the deed, and which it at all events did not restrain. The republic of Cracow was suppressed, and Austria, Prussia and Russia signed, on the 6th of November, a treaty which incorporated Cracow with Austria. France and England entered a protest, for form's sake. A third insurrection took place in 1848, and was quelled the same year.

—In 1861 the Russian government seemed to wish to adopt free institutions in Poland. A council of state or of administration, and councils of districts and of municipalities, were instituted; the use of the Polish language in official documents was permitted, and the right of petition recognized. It is certain that the national agronomical society carried its labors beyond the object for which it was established; it was dissolved, as well as the urban delegations. The fourth insurrection was thenceforth fully resolved upon; it lasted until 1863 and 1864, and was, like the previous ones, reduced by force. France and England interposed by diplomatic notes, to the legality and conclusions of which the Russian government took exceptions; the intervening powers did not push any further the measure which had encouraged the Poles without giving them any real support; the character of belligerents, which was accorded to the confederate states of America, was not granted to them. After the suppression of this last insurrection, Poland lost even the nominal existence which had been conceded to her by virtue of the treaties of 1815; she was incorporated into the Russian empire, and in 1867 the very name of Poland disappeared; there remain, administratively at least, only the ten western governments of the empire. J. DE B.

—II. General Considerations. The Polish question is at once easy to state, and difficult to solve. We have to do with a nation whose territory and independence have been taken away, which has fought with heroism and perseverance to recover those inestimable possessions, which has been conquered, and has suffered martyrdom rather than abjure its rights. This is the statement of the question; what will be the solution of it? Russia, Austria, Prussia, will never restore the provinces which they have taken; that appears to us certain. Let any one ask no matter what country to cede a part of its territory without "previous and just indemnity," and the answer would be the same. Only a war can bring about the re-establishment of Poland; but unless extraordinary circumstances should arise to aid its liberators, success would be too doubtful for any one willingly to run the risks of an aggression.

—Many persons believe that there is an interest, if not European, at least French and German, in the reconstruction of Poland on the banks of the Vistula. But as this Poland would be intended as a barrier against Russia, the latter would spend her last rouble and her last man rather than permit its establishment, and in this emergency the government would find the Russian nation ready for any sacrifice. The interest of Prussia and of Austria is open to discussion: but, however threatening Russia may appear to them, these two powers will always think that the portions of Poland which they have annexed will be more useful to them as provinces than as allies. In view of these difficulties, we will not venture any prophecy as to the future of Poland. It is, however, self-evident that the efforts of a handful of brave men will not suffice to vanquish the numerous and well-disciplined battalions of Russia. Enthusiasm will not supply the place of numbers, and neither Poland nor civilization has anything to gain from a rising, the result of which must seem like suicide.

—We can not leave this subject without drawing from the history of Poland the political lesson which it contains. And firstly, the elective system, applied to royalty, has borne such sad fruit on the banks of the Vistula, that it would forever be condemned if men profited by the lessons of history. Besides, it is known that Germany herself has not had too much reason to be satisfied with her "elective empire," although it was during several centuries elective only in form. Republics will continue to replace their chief magistrates periodically, and at short intervals, but monarchies will remain hereditary. It is true that Poland called herself a republic.— Then, the liberum veto, the unanimity required for the choice of a king and in other cases, rendered all regular decision impossible. This requirement could not be in any way justified. At the present day, sovereign powers alone maintain such a requirement, which may be sustained to a certain extent by states coming freely together in conference, but has its inconveniences even in a confederacy; it is necessary that in the greater number of cases the majority should prevail. A small number of persons, filled with the desire of coming to an understanding, succeed at last in agreeing by a series of compromises. States assembled in conference are rarely numerous, while Poland had 40,000 nobles with the right to vote; how could they agree? It is easily understood that with this multitude of petty sovereigns anarchy should have found its way into the country and excited the covetousness of its neighbors. We have no intention of extenuating what is odious in the act of partition, by saying that the Poles provoked it by the unintelligent organization of their government. The thief can not be declared innocent because the owner neglected to shut his door, but the owner has none the less himself to blame.

—But if these mistakes have had such terrible results to the victims of them, the states which took part in the spoliation have felt the consequences of their unjust act; and it is not impossible that they may yet suffer further from it, for moral evil is nearly always followed by a series of troubles. (See NATIONALITIES, LAW OF; RUSSIA.)

MAURICE BLOCK.

POLICE

POLICE. By the term police, we here mean the coercive power of the state in the domain of home administration. Morality, on the other hand, is the rule, the dictate of duty in the conscience of the individual, over his will, and the free action of that will. This rule or supremacy can be founded only on the freedom of the individual. It is a fact of psychic life which can not be produced by outward coercion, but, at the same time, which can not be prevented. Since power, in the sense in which the term is used in this article, can exercise only external compulsion, it follows that it has not the means of directly influencing the morality of individuals. It may prevent individuals from doing certain definite acts, and by threats of penalty compel the individual to perform certain public duties; but it is unable to create or transform the sentiment from which the supremacy of the dictates of duty over the will of man springs. For moral freedom is a domain inaccessible to the police power. This cardinal truth has made its way to full recognition, only slowly. Only in modern times has the state refused to make its subjects moral by means of public ordinances and prohibitions, and by the enforcement of compulsory police measures. In the ancient world, and chiefly among the Greeks, the conviction prevailed, that the state should assume the task of educating the individual in morality, and that the individual could only become moral in the state and through the state. Plato and Aristotle, different as their doctrines of the state are in other points, agreed with the then prevailing opinion, that the state should regulate both the inner and the outward life of its citizens, in order to guide them toward the highest good, to morality. In the legislation of the ancients the law, as a consequence, encroached on the domain of morality, and the codes of law which subjected individuals most to guardianship in this matter, in order to educate them in morality, were those that enjoyed the highest reputation. (Cf. Hermann Lehrbuch der Griech Privatalter-thümer, 2d ed., 1870, p. 473, etc.; Schömann, Griech Alterthümer, 3d ed., 1871, vol. i., p. 113, etc.; Fustel de Coulanges, La cité antique, p. 281, etc.)

—The Roman law was the first to assume an independent attitude in relation to morality, and to frame itself in accordance with its own laws. But the Roman state not only demanded of the citizen that he should live according to law, and perform all his legal duties, it also expected the citizen, by his moral private life, and a well-regulated private household, to contribute to the well-being of the community. Any one, who through immoral conduct injured his own worth as a citizen, and, as a member of the commonwealth, injured the community, did not, therefore, violate the law, but he exposed himself to reproof by the state, and forfeited his political honor, because he had failed to fulfill his moral obligations toward the state. In the public census, that occurred every fifth year, the censors were required not only to examine into the rights of the citizens, their capacity for taxation, and bearing arms; they were also required to subject the moral conduct of individuals to a thorough investigation, and, without any legal restraint, they might inflict the nota of infamy on any citizen who had done anything "contrary to public morality, and contrary to the interests of the community." The delinquent, according to his rank, was then either expelled from the tribus, or, if eques, condemned to lose his horse, or to be deprived of his seat in the senate. The censorial nota, which had to be ratified by both censors, remained valid only until the expiration of the lustrum, that is, until the period of the next census. (Cf Mommsen Römisches Staatsrecht, 2d ed., 1877, vol. ii., p. 363, etc.) This remarkable institution of moral censorship may not have been able to render the Romans more moral, but it certainly contributed to strengthen the sense of civil honor, and, for a limited time at least, it was able to oppose a barrier to the outward decay of morality. The censorship perished under the empire, and the imperial penal laws against immorality and luxury proved inadequate substitutes for the censure, which, "by the magnitude of its power, boundlessness of its arbitrariness, its lofty moral nobleness, and local patriotic egotism, was a genuine expression of the Roman republic." (Mommsen, vol. ii., p. 327.)

—During the middle ages the prevailing theory of the church assigned to the state the task of employing its political power in the execution of ecclesiastical decrees, and of compelling the observance of the moral precepts sanctioned by the church. But, at that time, by reason of the inconsiderable part taken by the state in legislation and in internal administration, it was only in isolated cases and unsystematically that the state could undertake the task assigned it by the church. Not till the close of the middle ages did the public authorities, in an unsystematic manner, it is true, begin extensively to oppose immorality by threats of punishment, and to remove certain immoral excrescences in isolated cases. Laws were enacted against luxury, cursing and swearing, excessive drinking, against beggary, and the keeping of concubines. In Germany the imperial police regulations of the sixteenth century present a long and varied series of police regulations and prohibitions, which were afterward kept up, and still further extended in the other German states by legislation. When, later, in the eighteenth century, enlightened despotism had attained to power, governments, by a close supervision of the subjects of the state, and by the legislative regulation of their private life, did their best to lead them, if not to morality, at least to temporal well-being. Without recognizing the moral freedom of the individual, active police legislation sought to subject the whole life and endeavors of individuals to regulations. Only since the close of the past and the beginning of this century has a more correct understanding of the true nature of morality and of moral freedom begun to exert its influence on the legislation and administration of the state. By degrees the police laws, which interfered with the private life of the subject, not with a view of preventing violations of the law, or to protect the community from danger, but solely to compel the individual to greater morality or economical foresight, were expressly abrogated, or fell into complete oblivion for want of enforcement. The state at last came to understand that it must refuse to endeavor to educate its citizens morally by the employment of coercive means, and that it should promote their moral education by aiding the whole economic and intellectual culture of the people in so far as that culture requires the aid of the state. The state has further understood, that in itself immorality is not punishable, because the state can pass judgment only on external acts and behavior, not on things which belong to the inner psychic life of man. An act in itself is neither moral nor immoral; it is moral or immoral only in so far as the disposition or intention, whose outward expression it is, is moral or immoral. The state is justified in opposing, and obliged to oppose, and, when possible, to prevent, immoral acts, only in so far as such acts are an injury to the goods of individuals or of the community protected by the state, or when there is danger that immoral acts may cause such injury. In such cases the state interferes, not because the intention, from which the acts proceed, is immoral, but because such acts either injure, or threaten to injure, the goods, which are under the legal protection of the state. It is only external acts, therefore, which belong to the police supervision of the state, and not morality or immorality of intention.

—Acts proceeding from an immoral character or intention, followed by injury to goods protected by the law, draw after them legal consequences, which are determined by the different parts of the law, particularly by the criminal or penal law. The object of police regulations for the public security is the prevention of these violations of the law. Police regulations in the interest of morality, on the contrary, concern themselves only with those acts which of themselves are not an injury to interests recognized by the law, to property, etc.; which do not even always expose such interests to injury; but which, by the spread and encouragement of an immoral character in the community, are apt to cause injury or expose to danger the goods of individuals or of the community. Police regulations in the interests of morality, therefore, are not aimed at the immoral intention itself, but at the spread and encouragement of the immoral character; and even in this case only when such spread and encouragement threatens injury to legally protected interests. It hence results, that the sphere of such regulations in the modern state is a very narrow one, and that it is confined to a limited number of external immoral acts. And, as these regulations do not oppose immorality because immoral, but because it is the cause of injury to the community, it follows that the legal provisions of states in the matter of public morality will be different in different states, according as the prevalence of such injury is greater or less. The diversity of the stages of culture, of the character, of the customs and economic conditions in different nations, produces a diversity in the police regulations relating to morality. The objects with which police regulations in the interests of morality are chiefly concerned, are drunkenness, gambling and sexual profligacy. In recent times these regulations have rightly been extended so as to make them cover cruelty to animals.

—I. Drunkenness. The indulgence in intoxicating beverages, which is to be found among almost all nations of the past and of the present, is not in itself immoral, but becomes immoral when, through excess, it begins to exert an injurious effect on the body and on the mind. Man then undermines his bodily and his mental powers, in order to afford a momentary gratification to the senses. But in so far as the individual, by excessive indulgence in intoxicating beverages, injures only himself, it is not the duty of the state to interfere with him. The state is not bound to relieve its adult subjects of their moral responsibility, nor to protect them against the consequences of their own individual immorality. But when drunkenness no longer appears as an isolated phenomenon; when, over the whole people, or over any single class of the population, it asserts its lamentable power, its injurious effects are not limited to the individual who is its slave, but are felt by the family, by society, and by the state, and it imperils the very foundations of the family, and the life of the state. Recent investigations have proved that excessive indulgence in intoxicants not only acts injuriously on the organism, that it not only increases the liability to sickness, and increases the mortality of drinkers, but also, that through the influence of alcoholism, many symptoms of degeneracy are transmitted to offspring. Although the statistical data are here somewhat defective, it is an incontestable fact, that the drunkenness of parents transmits to their progeny the tendency to a number of serious diseases, under which the latter sooner or later succumb. The destruction of family life, caused by alcoholism, and the effects of habitual parental drunkenness on the children, can not be shown statistically, but these effects are so manifest that statistics are superfluous. The consequences of intemperance extend far beyond the family circle, when it has become a vice of the nation, or of any class of society. There is no doubt whatever that intemperance is a fruitful source of the increase of crime and of criminals. "Poverty, ignorance, sensuality, irreligion and immorality are greatly favored by alcoholism, and proportionately diminished by the temperate habits of the people." In this sense alcoholism very perceptibly influences the increase of crime. We are convinced that drunkenness and alcoholism render man inclined to commit unlawful acts, which differ according to time, place and circumstances; because under their influence he is unable to control any transient impulse of the will, and can not subject it, as when he is sober, to the control of the judgment. It is a truth that, with the increase of intemperance and of drunkards—which is not altogether identical with the increase of the consumption of alcohol in general—the number of crimes and of criminals also increases. And in this opinion all those agree who are best acquainted with the lives of criminals, to wit, the judges and magistrates of all countries.31 We certainly must not here overlook the fact, that a number of crimes, committed by drunkards or in a state of drunkenness, would probably have been committed, even if the perpetrators had not been addicted to drink; still, it is certain that intemperance and drunkenness in very many instances are the element but for the presence of which these crimes would not have been committed.

—As to the number of drunkards among prisoners, and the number of crimes committed under the influence of alcohol, we possess statistical proof showing the influence of intemperance in producing crime. On the other hand, we lack sufficient data to show the precise influence of intemperance on the number of those who claim public assistance. In spite of this absence of statistical proof, we may safely assume that in numerous cases pauperism has its source in the intemperance of the assisted individual, or of his parents. The cause of pauperism lies in the disturbance of domestic economic conditions. The loss of bodily and intellectual power renders it impossible, or at least extremely difficult, for the person impoverished by intemperance to rehabilitate himself.

—In this way intemperance exercises highly injurious effects on family and national life, as well as on the state. We must accordingly regard it as the duty of the state to protect itself against the dangers by which it is threatened from intemperance. In several countries the efforts of society, unsupported by the state, have been able, for a time at least, to stop the progress of intemperance. Thus, the temperance and total abstinence societies in the United States and Great Britain have exercised a beneficent influence. In the year 1808 a temperance society was founded at Moreau, in the state of New York, but it failed of any marked success. But a temperance society, which was finally established in 1827, and whose members pledged themselves to total abstinence from all alcoholic beverages, rapidly gained a vast number of adherents. In 1828 there had been formed 280 temperance societies, with 30,000 members: in 1835 the number of the societies had increased to 8,000, with 1,500,000 members. More than 4,000 whisky distilleries were closed, and more than 8,000 merchants had given up the traffic in spirits. In recent times, however, these temperance societies have decreased. In England, the first temperance society was established in 1829. In that country, above all, the teetotal temperance society, established in 1835, had a large membership, while in 1840, and subsequently, Father Mathew, both in Ireland and in England, gained honorable distinction in his warfare against intemperance. At present there exist in Great Britain many large societies, with abundant means at their command, among which the national temperance league seems to be the most important. In Germany, beginning with the year 1838, and chiefly in Prussia, Hanover, Oldenburg, etc., several temperance societies were formed, which, in spite of violent opposition, gained a large number of adherents. Nevertheless, after 1846, the activity of these societies daily diminished; most of them ultimately dissolved, and the few that have survived until the present, have dragged out a sickly existence. The history of these associations in Germany proves that the action of society does not suffice for the suppression of intemperance. Hence, even the successful societies in England and the United States have felt the necessity of invoking the aid of the state, of the police and of the legislature. The state can not refuse to grant this aid. Still, in granting it, the legislator should bear in mind that it is not the task of the state to make individuals moral. It should only seek, as far as possible, to protect society from the damage, and prevent the injury, caused by intemperance. To this end, the state may put obstacles in the way of temptation to intemperance, and, by the imposition of suitable penalties, oppose the spread of intemperance.

—The most important means at the command of the state, to oppose the temptation to intemperance, is the limitation and surveillance of drinking places, and of the retail trade in spirits.32

—The adoption of the so-called "police hour" (closing time) has also proved a means to prevent the spread of intemperance, by restricting the sale of intoxicants to certain hours. The legislatures of several states of the Union have resorted to still more effective measures. Through the influence of the temperance societies in the state of Maine, a law was passed, which forbids the sale of all intoxicating drinks, with the exception of cider and native wine. In the years following, Maine's example was imitated by many other states, which subsequently revoked the prohibition. Experience has shown that the state is unable to enforce a law of this kind, and that the real good which it may effect is more than counterbalanced by the hypocrisy and demoralization which it causes. In other states of the Union an effort has been made to turn the saloon keepers themselves into instruments to oppose intemperance, by rendering them liable for all the consequences of intemperance. It is provided, that any one who by the sale of intoxicants shall have caused the drunkenness of another, shall be responsible for the injury which the drunkard, his family, etc., may have suffered in their property, means of subsistence, or in their persons. In England (Law of 1872, art. 3), in France (Law of Jan. 23, 1878, art. 4), in Sweden (Law of 1869, § 29). and in The Netherlands (Law of June, 1881, art. 17), it is forbidden to publicans to sell intoxicants to individuals already drunk, or to minors under the age of sixteen.

—Finally, the state may threaten the excesses of intemperance with punishment. In Germany, the penal law of the empire punishes by imprisonment all persons who abandon themselves to drink to such a degree that they fall into a condition such that they must appeal to the authorities for their own support, or for the sustenance of those whom they naturally are obliged to support. By virtue of this law the police authorities may also obtain the power to place the sentenced person, at the expiration of his punishment, for two years in a workhouse, or to employ him in works of public utility. But even these provisions may not prove sufficient. Under these laws the interposition of the state does not take place before the drunkard has reached such a degree of moral depravity that his cure is impossible. The sojourn in a workhouse, moreover, is but seldom favorable to the improvement of the habitual drunkard, and the threat of punishment can scarcely produce any deterrent effect on him. The penal police laws in several German states, as well as the legislation of Sweden (Penal Code of Feb. 16, 1864, § 15), of England (Law of 1872, art. 12), of France (Law of Jan. 23, 1873), of Austria (Law of July 19, 1879, valid only in Galicia and Bukowina), of The Netherlands (Law of 1881, art. 22, 23), go still further, and threaten with punishment all who are found in taverns, in the street, or in other public places, in a condition of evident or scandalous intoxication.

—The state can also, in an indirect way, effect a diminution of the use of intoxicants, by raising the price of whisky, etc., the most injurious of all, by taxation. Still, in the warfare against intemperance, this expedient does not deserve to have the importance attached to it which it has enjoyed. Experience has thus far shown that the taxation of whisky, etc., which exceeds a certain limit, has only ruinous consequences, because it leads to fraud, and efforts to evade the law; it favors the secret consumption of whisky, and causes a diminution in the revenues of the state. All these measures owe their origin to the opinion that intemperance is a vice when public, and that it must be combated by the state, by reason of its dangers to the community. Careful observations and investigations, however, have demonstrated that intemperance, when it reaches a certain degree, becomes a real disease, which destroys the empire of reason over the will to such an extent that its victim becomes unable to resist his passion for strong drink. But experience has shown that in many cases a cure of the disease can be effected by skillful professional treatment, and through a complete denial to the patient of all alcoholic drinks.33

—II. Gambling. The economic and moral evils produced by a love for gambling among a people are so evident that they require no proof. The state does not assume the task of freeing the individual from the passion or vice of gambling, but it is its duty to oppose open temptations to gambling, and, above all, not to induce its citizens to engage in games of hazard. In states also which from financial motives do not believe themselves able to abolish the state lotteries, as in Italy, Austria and in several German states, there is no doubt as to the injury done by such institutions. In the German empire the legislature has, by the following provisions, sought to prevent open temptations to gambling. 1. Public gambling houses shall neither be licensed nor tolerated. On Dec. 31, 1872, the last houses of the kind that existed in Germany were closed under the law of July 1, 1868. 2. Public lotteries and public raffling of movable or immovable goods can take place only with the permission of the authorities (Penal Code of the Empire, § 286); the law also forbids the sale or offer of tickets in foreign lotteries, unless allowed by the government of the country. 3. Only the authorities can permit games of hazard on the high road (street, square), or in a public place or inn. Inn keepers who permit games of hazard in their places, or connive at such games played secretly, are also liable to punishment. 4. The business of games of hazard for purposes of gain is forbidden, and may be severely punished. Persons violating these laws are punished by imprisonment for a term of two years; besides which a pecuniary fine of from 300 to 6,000 marks, with the loss of certain civil rights, may also be inflicted on them. If the person sentenced is a foreigner the police authorities may expel him from the federal territory.

—Provided the above regulations are respected, games, and even games of hazard, are not forbidden in the German empire. As in the case of the drunkard, the gambler is threatened with punishment by the penal code of the empire when his case is analogous to the drunkard's. When sentenced to imprisonment, the police authorities may be empowered to send him, at the expiration of his term of punishment, to a workhouse for two years, or to employ him in works of common utility.

—III. Prostitution. Changed ideas in reference to the attitude of the state toward immorality are nowhere so evident as in the legal treatment of sexual profligacy. While from the seventeenth century until the middle of the eighteenth the state declared all sexual immorality punishable, and threatened it with heavy punishments,34 since that time, chiefly owing to the influence of Beccaria, the opinion has prevailed that sexual immorality should be treated as a crime only when it is accompanied by the violation of a legally protected right; but that the state should not punish immorality as such. The police of public morality should, according to this view, oppose only seduction, and the public scandal caused by immorality.35 Modern penal codes in the main adopt this view, as does also the penal code of the German empire. There are, however, certain exceptional crimes against chastity which involve no violation of a legally protected right, but which are punished, even when there can be no question of public scandal. To these exceptions belong the unnatural crimes of sodomy, etc. Leaving these exceptions out of consideration, the state proceeds against sexual incontinence, which does not violate a legally protected right, such as the freedom and honor of the person, the family, etc., only from motives of order. But moral police reasons are not here the only controlling ones. It is well known that syphilis, which preys on the very marrow of nations, has been propagated chiefly by sexual profligacy. Even if it be no concern of the state to protect individuals against the injurious consequences of immorality, it must be remembered that syphilis does not confine its ravages to those who have brought it upon themselves by their profligacy. It may be transmitted in various other ways (particularly through wet-nurses to infants) and by inheritance it bequeaths destruction to future generations. Here, public moral police must go hand in hand with sanitary police.

—The state should see to it, that the moral sense of the people, and public decorum, are not outraged by indecent public exhibitions. The following, therefore, should be punished: 1, persons who cause public scandal by indecent acts; 2, persons selling indecent writings, pictures or drawings, who distribute them, or who exhibit or affix them in places frequented by the public; 3, fornication, when it causes a public scandal. The state should punish, not only treacherous inducements to incontinence or to unchastity when accompanied by the violation of particular duties, and the seduction of minors, or girls under sixteen, but also seduction when it assumes a character dangerous to the interests of the community. It is not the duty of the state to make the individual moral, or to protect her against temptations to immorality; but it should endeavor to prevent all acts of immorality calculated to poison family life and the life of the nation. The law, therefore, rightly punishes procurers or panders, that is, the intentional enticement of others to unchastity. Still, it is very questionable to what extent the state should declare panders punishable. In this matter the provisions of law in different countries are very different. In France (Code pénal, art. 334), habitual panderage is punished only when it facilitates the seduction of minors; but, according to the penal code of the German empire, those persons are punished for panderage who, habitually or from motives of gain, through their mediation, or through the affording of opportunities, promote unchastity. According to this, the keeping of loose women in brothels for purposes of prostitution is punishable. But it is questionable whether this prohibition can be reconciled with the requirements of sanitary police. Sanitary police, which must prevent the spread of syphilis, can only perform this task by subjecting to a strict control all women who carry on prostitution as a trade. This control is unquestionably facilitated when ordinary prostitution, in the larger cities at least, is confined to relatively few brothels, and when the police seek to suppress all prostitution outside of these houses. It is not proper to assume that the state acts contrary to duty when it tolerates houses of prostitution, for it has not to combat vice as such, but only to react against the spread of incontinence as a common danger.36 By the toleration of brothels the state does not lend support to vice, but it leaves the temptation to vice unpunished, only because from its suppression there would result greater disadvantages than advantages to the community.

—There is no need here of closely examining the question, whether or not sanitary police requires the toleration and strict supervision of brothels; but, if it does, there exists in principle no objection against it, from the point of view of the police of public morality.37 Simple sexual incontinence may not be forbidden by the state, but the state should oppose the trade in unchastity by loose women; for there result therefrom great dangers both to health and public morality.

—Prostitution as a trade leads easily to seduction, which is socially dangerous, and to the causing of public scandal; and, on the other hand, it favors the spread of syphilis. The penal code of the German empire therefore forbids the trade of prostitution to women who are not subject to police supervision, and punishes prostitutes under police supervision if they neglect the regulations of the police that have been made in the interest of health, of public order and public decorum.

—The task of the police regulations in the interest of public morality is, accordingly, to suppress all prostitution that seeks to escape police supervision, and, through proper police regulations and their enforcement, to bring it about that vice should not escape the obscurity which alone beseems it. The task of sanitary police, while seeking to prevent the spread of syphilis through prostitution, is more difficult. Dancing "saloons" should also be subjected to special police supervision, as they frequently lead to seduction and incontinence, and to the disturbance of public peace and order.

—IV. Cruelty to Animale. The state interferes to prevent cruelty to animals, in order to prevent the moral sense of the people being shocked by such cruelty perpetrated on animals, and to afford a protection to the animals themselves against any unnecessary, and hence immoral, cruelty of that nature. In France this protection extends only to domestic animals (animaux domestiques). The law of July 2, 1850, threatens with punishment any one who publicly unseemingly (abusivement) maltreats domestic animals. In England, as early as the year 1823, a law was passed against cruelty to animals. The laws in force there at present are those of 1850 and 1855 (12 and 13 Vict., ch. 92; 17 and 18 Vict., chap. 60): they threaten all ill treatment of domestic animals with punishment. Under the influence of an unhealthy sentimental movement, a law was also passed, in 1870, against scientific experiments on live animals (vivisection; 39 and 40 Vict., ch. 77). According to this law, any painful experiments on live animals are permitted only to persons who have received an authorization from the minister, which, however, may at any time be revoked. Vivisection can only be practiced under the conditions imposed by the law. In granting the license the minister may also add any other conditions at will. The efforts to prevent scientific investigations by a law of this kind have hitherto proved vain in Germany.

EDGAR LOENING.

POLICE POWER OF A STATE

POLICE POWER OF A STATE. The police power of the state is an authority conferred by the American constitutional system upon the individual states, through which they are enabled to establish a special department of police; adopt such regulations as tend to prevent the commission of fraud, violence, or other offenses against the state; aid in the arrest of criminals, and secure generally the comfort, health and prosperity of the state, by preserving the public order, preventing a conflict of rights in the common intercourse of the citizen, and insuring to each an uninterrupted enjoyment of all the privileges conferred upon him by the laws of his country. The organization of a state police, which shall fulfill its functions effectively, and yet leave to the individual unimpaired freedom under the liberal laws of a republican form of government, is one of the most delicate tasks ever intrusted to the lawgiver.

—Blackstone defines the system to be "the due regulation and domestic order of the kingdom, whereby the inhabitants of a state, like members of a well-governed family, are bound to conform their general behavior to the rules of propriety, good neighborhood and good manners, and to be decent, industrious and inoffensive in their respective stations." (4 Bl. Com., 162.)

—Jeremy Bentham, in his "General View of Public Offenses," defines it to be a system of precaution for the prevention of crimes or of calamities.

—With regard to its effect upon the use and enjoyment of property, the object being to exhibit the universality of its presence, and to define the limits which settled principles of constitutional law assign to its interference, Chief Justice Shaw declares it to be a settled principle (Commonwealth vs. Alger, 7 Cushing, 84), that every holder of property, however absolute may be his title, holds it under an implied liability that its use shall not be injurious to the equal rights of another in the enjoyment of his property; nor injurious to the rights of the people of a community. And the right to adopt regulations necessary to enforce this limitation by legislative enactments under the controlling power vested in them by the national constitution, differs from the right of eminent domain, which only permits a government to possess itself of private property whenever the public needs require it, on the condition of granting a reasonable compensation therefor. It is less difficult to conceive of the existence and sources of this power which permits the adoption of various laws, statutes and ordinances for the good and welfare of the community, than to define its limits and lay down the rules for its exercise.

—It is a recognized principle that the national government can not, through any of its departments, invade the reserved rights of the states, and assume the power of supervising their police regulations, when they do not conflict with the national sovereignty and the exercise of federal authority conferred by the constitution. Nevertheless, the powers of the states may be so employed as to conflict with the jurisdiction of the national government, and serious questions have arisen between the police power of the state and the authority conferred upon congress by the constitution. To prevent the state from operating within the sphere of the national government, in the exercise of this conferred power, its limits can be extended no further than a just regulation of its rights demands for the protection of the citizen of the state in the enjoyment of life, liberty, health and property. Says Cooley (Con. Lim., 574), "This subject has often been considered in its bearings upon the clause of the constitution of the United States, which forbids the states passing any laws violating the obligations of contracts; and invariably it has been held that this clause does not so far remove from state control the rights and properties which depend for their existence on enforcement of contracts, as to relieve them from the operation of such general regulations for the good government of the state and the protection of the rights of individuals as may be deemed important. All contracts and all rights, it is held, are subject to this power; and regulations which affect them may not only be established by the state, but must also be subject to change from time to time, with reference to the general well-being of the community, as circumstances change, or as experience demonstrates the necessity."

—Perhaps the most striking illustration of the principle here stated, will be found among the judicial decisions which hold that the rights insured to private corporations by their charters, and the manner of their exercise, are subject to such new regulations as from time to time may be made by the state, with a view to the public protection, health and safety and to properly guard the rights of other individuals and corporations. Although these charters are considered as contracts, and their rights held inviolable, it does not follow that they are removed from state regulation. Nevertheless, there must be a limit to the exercise of the police power of the state. The regulating ordinances must have reference to the comfort, safety or welfare of society; they must not conflict with any provisions of the charter, nor take from the corporation any of the essential rights and privileges which the charter confers. They must, in fact, be police regulations, and not amendments to the charter itself, as, where a corporation was chartered with the right to exact toll from passengers, a subsequent statute authorizing a certain class of passengers to travel free over the road was held to be void. (Pingrey vs. Washburn, 1 Aiken, 268.) The rule has been further held, that, while the corporate charter itself contained a provision empowering a legislature to alter, modify or repeal it, such a provision would not, on pretext of amendment or police regulation, have the effect to appropriate any portion of the corporate property to the public ouse. Nor would it justify an act requiring a railroad company to cause a proposed new street or highway to be taken across their track and all labor and materials necessary for the same to be furnished at their own expense. (Miller vs. New York 8 Erie R. R. Co., 21 Barb., 513.) Nor can a corporation be held liable for the obstruction of a river, by a subsequent amendment to a charter granting them the right to erect a bridge over a navigable stream, which must necessarily obstruct the said river. Nor can the police power of a state, in regulating the speed of railway carriages, extend further than the streets and public grounds of a city. But it can require all railroad corporations to fence their tracks, and hold them liable for the loss of all domestic animals killed thereon, and for the double reason of protection to domestic animals and to persons being transported in railway carriages. Under the common law rule, where a corporation has failed to obey the regulations adopted for its government, and injury has resulted therefrom, such disobedience would not make the corporation liable to the party injured, if his own negligence aided that of the corporation in producing the injury. Nevertheless, under the police power of the state, a legislature may enact such a law as shall hold the corporation liable for the animals thus destroyed, notwithstanding the negligence of the party injured. The state may likewise, under the same power, regulate the grade of railroads, and prescribe the way in which railroads shall cross each other, and apportion the expense of such crossings among the corporations owning the roads. It may also establish regulations requiring existing railroads to ring the bell and blow the whistle of their engines at all places on their roads where their approach might be dangerous to travel. And it has been held that the power may extend so far as to make such corporations liable as insurers for the safety of their passengers in the same manner they are by law liable as common carriers. (Thorpe vs. Rutland 8 Burlington R. R. Co., 27 Vt., 152.) And those statutes of the various states which grant an action to the representatives of persons killed by the neglect, default or wrongful act of another, may apply to corporations already chartered, and give a remedy for a wrong which the common law fails to supply.

—Another point where the police power of the state has by some been held to conflict with the federal constitution is, where by statute the sale of intoxicating liquors has been altogether prohibited. The weight of authority, however, determines the question thus: when these statutes merely assume to regulate and to prohibit sales by other persons than those licensed by public authority, there can be no question of a conflict with constitutional power entertained, as they are but simple police regulations of the same character as those which any state or community might adopt for the regulation of any class of trade or employment. Those which prohibit entirely the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors as a beverage, have been attacked as subversive of fundamental rights, and urged to be in violation of express provisions of the federal constitution relating to the commerce of the states. This view of the case, however, although strongly advocated, was not sustained by the supreme court of the United States in the noted license cases. The majority of the court expressed the opinion that the introduction into a state of imported liquors could not be prevented, as it would be in conflict with the act of congress regulating commerce and levying imposts; but it ceased to be an impost when broken up for retail, and at once became subject to the laws of the state, and amenable to taxation and regulation by the state, the same as other property; and further, that the power to regulate commerce between the states did not exclude regulations by the state save when they conflicted with the laws of congress.

—It would thus appear that the state laws, known as prohibitory liquor laws, are not held void, as in conflict with national authority, in the regulation of commerce between the states. The same laws have been sustained when urged to be in conflict with state constitutions, on the ground that they are police regulations established by the legislature for the prevention of intemperance, vagrancy and crime. The power to declare the sale of liquor to be a nuisance has been determined by the court, and it has been held competent to provide legal process for its destruction, and for the seizure and condemnation of the building in which it is sold, as a nuisance, provided the fundamental principle of protection which surrounds persons and dwellings relating to seizure and search shall not be invaded, and that the right of trial shall be granted before condemnation. Says Cooley (Con. Lim., p. 583): "Perhaps there is no instance in which the power of the legislature to make such regulations as may destroy the value of property without compensation to the owner, appears in a more striking light than in the cases of these statutes. The trade in alcoholic drinks being lawful, and the capital employed in it being fully protected by law, the legislature then steps in, and for general reasons of public utility annihilates the traffic, destroys altogether the employment, and reduces to a nominal value the property on hand. The sale of liquor becomes a criminal offense, and the merchant of yesterday becomes the criminal of to-day, and the very building in which he lives, and conducts the business which at that moment was lawful, becomes a nuisance, if the statute shall so declare, and liable to be proceeded against for a forfeiture. Statutes which can do this must be justified upon the highest reasons of public benefit; but whether satisfactory or not, they rest exclusively in the legislative wisdom."

—Other matters affecting commerce, in which the police power of the state may be invoked in behalf of the public interests, are quarantine regulations, and health laws in all forms. These latter may be so far extended as to embrace the destruction of private property when infected by disease, or dangerous in other particulars. Inspection laws may be adopted and duties levied to make them operative. Regulations may also be enforced regarding the time and manner of transacting business to promote trade, establish order and prevent confusion. These regulations embrace the right to control the movements and station of ships and vessels in the harbors of cities, and streams lying within the limits of cities and seaport towns, and the wharves thereof, and to remove such vessels as had discharged or received their cargoes to enable others to perform the same essential labor; and penalties may be inflicted upon all such as refuse to obey the directions of the harbor masters who are vested with the authority to determine such matters. (Vanderbilt vs. Adams, 7 Cow., 351.) Congress, however, may establish police regulations, as well as the states, relating to all subjects where control is given by the constitution, but as this power can be more satisfactorily exercised by local authority, and the jurisdiction to arrest collision is confined to the United States courts, congress has generally relegated this power to the states.

—Questions have arisen with regard to the power of a state to enact laws requiring importers of foreign goods to take out a license, and in case of refusal, to inflict penalties and forfeitures. Such acts have been held void as not partaking of the principles of mere police regulations such as might require the payment of a license fee to cover expenses of enforcing harbor regulations, but rather of the power of taxation to raise revenue for the state, and therefore in conflict with the provision of the constitution which prohibits a state from laying imposts or levying duties, and likewise with the provision that congress alone shall possess the power to regulate commerce. But the police power of a state has been sustained (City of New York vs. Miln, 11 Peters, 102), inflicting a penalty upon the master of every foreign vessel who should not report, upon arrival in port, to the mayor or recorder of the city, an account of the names, places of birth, business, etc., of his passengers; this police regulation having been adopted to prevent the city of New York from being burdened by persons shipped as paupers or criminals by foreign governments. Notwithstanding the fact that congress can adopt all laws regulating pilots and pilotage, a state regulation relating to the same has been held unobjectionable, when such power had not been exercised by that body.

—With regard to the power of a state to enact such laws as shall compel all persons to refrain from labor during the first day of the week, it has been held by the courts that such laws were not encroachments upon the religious liberty of persons who do not regard that day as sacred, nor in conflict with the constitution because acting, as a restraint upon the trade and commerce of a community, or rendering void a contract for Sunday services.

—An important part of the jurisdiction of a state is the control of its highways. These are constructed by the state, and the state has full power to adopt all police regulations for the public good controlling the actions of those who use them, and to alter and change them as the proper authorities consider best for the general interest. This power enables a state to determine the mode of travel; regulate the speed; cause parties meeting to turn each to their right; prevent a public nuisance; prohibit animals from running at large under penalty of fine and confiscation; require the owners of incorporated property to construct, and keep in repair and free from obstruction, the sidewalks in front of it and, in case of failure, to perform such work at the expense of the owner, the courts having held such acts not to be in the nature of taxation, on account of the paramount interest which the owners have in the performance of the work, and their peculiar ability to perform it promptly in accordance with the necessity of the community; and for similar reasons require the owners of adjacent lands, where the country was liable to be overflowed by a stream of considerable size, to construct levees upon their river front at their own expense, and in default thereof, to cause such work to be done under the direction of the public authorities, and to assess the expense upon the lands of such owners.

—Navigable waters are declared public highways, and as such are under the control of the states. At common law, only those streams were held to be navigable where the tide ebbed and flowed, but all streams of sufficient depth of water to render them capable of navigation for useful purposes were known as public, and became subject to the same general rules governing the public highways on land. In this country the rule has been adopted to consider all streams public whose capacity is sufficient for channels of commerce in floating the products of the soil, forests and mines of the country through which they flow, although at stated periods of the year they may become too shallow for navigable purposes, such as the floating of logs and rafts of timber. Therefore, as public highways, all such streams are under the control of the state authority, and subject to all proper police regulations, as much so as a land highway. But if a stream, in its natural condition, is not thus useful, and has been created so by the subsequent labor of the owners of the soil, it is not public property nor liable to police regulations as such; and it remains in the nature of a private way or easement, unless the owner chooses to dedicate it to public use. It has been held that a legislature may determine what streams within the boundaries of a state are navigable, and subject to police regulations as highways (Glover vs. Powell, 2 Stockt., 211); still, this proposition is combated with the rule of law that the legislature can not, by a simple declaration, appropriate private property to public use without just compensation.

—While general control and regulation of navigable streams rest with the state authorities, there are certain restrictions upon this right emanating from the constitutional power of congress over commerce with foreign nations and between the states. Wherever a river forms a highway upon which foreign commerce or that between the states is conducted, it passes under the control of congress, on account of this constitutional restriction. But, as already observed, should congress fail for any reason to exert this power, or if, having exercised it, the state law should not conflict with the national, the fact that a stream is navigable would not bar a state from adopting just regulations for its use and control.

—Under the decisions of the federal courts, a state can not grant an exclusive monopoly for the navigation of any part of the waters within its jurisdiction upon which commerce is conducted under coasting licenses by authority of congress, as such grant would conflict with the power which congress has exercised. But if the upper waters of a stream lying within its limits are wholly separated from tide water by impassable falls, and are not a continuous stream open to foreign or state commerce, a state law granting exclusive control to a party to navigate them can not be voided on the ground of conflict with the authority of congress to regulate commerce.

—It is competent for a state to exact toll from all commerce passing through its navigable waters for the benefit of any improvement by the state where it has expended money, although the stream may be one over which the regulations of commerce extend, because the state has the same right to improve a water as a land highway.

—A state may direct the construction of bridges over navigable streams for highway purposes, although they may in some degree interfere with free navigation. If congress has no control over the stream, the right can not be questioned at all on the ground of public inconvenience. If the stream is under the control of congress, it becomes necessary to determine whether or not the construction of such a bridge will conflict with its regulations. Although the bridge to some extent may prove a hindrance to commerce, it is not absolutely unlawful for a state to construct it, if the general traffic of the country be aided rather than depressed by its construction; as the navigation of a stream may be far less important than the construction of a bridge, and its obstruction be a much lighter burden upon the people than a break in the line of railroad travel by compelling the use of a ferry, with its dilatory operations, especially when draws are so constructed as to admit the passage of vessels through the bridges with but slight inconvenience and loss of time. The decision of the question, however, does not rest with the state authority as to the relative character of obstructions, but with the federal courts, which have jurisdiction to determine the same, and cause the removal of the obstruction if it be found to unnecessarily impede or destroy the traffic upon the stream.

—As ferries over navigable streams are but the creation of highways, the states may lawfully establish them, grant licenses for keeping the same, and prohibit persons from engaging in such occupations without such license, and it does not impair the right of a state to enact such laws, though a part of the waters be without the jurisdiction of the state, or a highway for interstate or foreign commerce.

—Dams may also be constructed by state authority across navigable streams; and such as involve no question of federal authority are exempt from being declared a nuisance, through legislative consent to construct them; and so long as the builder confines himself to the provisions of the legislative charter, he likewise is exempt from any liability to private action for injury to river navigation.

—A state possesses the same power to regulate the speed, mode of travel and general conduct of ships and other vessels upon its water highways that it does upon its land highways, subject, however, to the limitation that its ordinances must not conflict with the laws of congress for the regulation of foreign and domestic commerce.

—There are some extreme points to which the police power of a state may extend, where the control of property by individual owners may be interfered with and even destroyed by public authority, when the owners themselves have performed all the duties of good citizenship, and in no way violated a law or defied public authority. Such cases are to be cited, when the public exigency is so great, and the public interests so overwhelming, as to justify its seizure and destruction, on the highest grounds of public interest. Such would be the seizure and destruction of private property to prevent the spread of flames, the advance of a pestilence or an invading army, or any other great calamity where the highest interests of the public are involved. In all such cases the rights of individuals, which in times of peace and health and order are inalienable, in periods of public calamity sink out of sight, and in all things relating to the public danger private rights yield instantly to the inexorable law of public necessity.

—The police power of a state enables a community to protect itself by the establishment of precautionary measures against the destruction of life or health or property, by the enactment of ordinances defining the limits, within the denser portions of towns, cities and villages, within which buildings composed of inflammable materials can not be erected. Wharf lines may be established, although they may prevent the owners of water fronts from erecting buildings on that which constitutes private property. For the protection of a harbor, a legislative enactment may prevent the removal of stones, sand or gravel from the beach, under penalties, applicable to the owners of the soil equally with all other persons.

—Under the police power of a state, a special use of property may at times be prohibited, where, by the change of circumstances surrounding it, and without any offense or even dereliction of duty by the owner, that which was once lawful and unobjectionable becomes a public nuisance and inimical to the life and health of the community. Bridges and mill dams that occasion overflows or accrete such substances as produce miasmatic growths of vegetation, may be removed or destroyed for this cause. Cemeteries and graveyards, and bone boiling and refining establishments, whose locus in quo was once remote from the heart of a city, but which from swift urban growth have become incorporated within the limits of the same, and hence detrimental to the health of the population, are liable to be closed for such purposes. The keeping of gunpowder in large quantities, or dynamite in towns, villages or cities, may by law be prohibited; the sale of poisonous drugs, unless properly labeled or by order of a practicing physician; the keeping for sale of unwholesome provisions and all other deleterious substances; unmuzzled dogs running at large, and all such acts, are liable to be forbidden under the authority granted the state to provide for the abatement of nuisances, whether occasioned by the offense of the individual or not.

—Another matter of great public importance, over which the police power of a state has full and complete jurisdiction, is the preservation of the public morals. Under this power the legislature may, by special enactment, prohibit the keeping, sale or exhibition of indecent or immoral books or pictures, and cause the seizure and destruction of the same, wherever found; close up places of amusement where gaming is resorted to, or regulate them by license, or forbid the keeping of gaming implements for gaming purposes. It may likewise provide such regulations as will prevent the keeping and use of stallions or other breeding animals in public places. It may likewise provide for the compulsory observance of the Christian Sabbath on the first day of the week.

—Under this power, markets may be regulated, special places assigned for the venders of special articles, licenses granted, weights and measures established, and merchants and dealers compelled, under penalty, to comply with all such regulations.

—Such are some of the police powers of the society. They are of such intricacy as to pervade all conditions of business and society. Those enumerated are sufficient to illustrate the authority of the state to establish varied and far-reaching regulations as to the time, manner and circumstances under which its citizens shall maintain and enjoy their rights without conflicting with these great constitutional principles which have been finally settled for the defense of private rights and property.

JNO. W. CLAMPITT.

POLITICAL ARITHMETIC

POLITICAL ARITHMETIC. (See ARITHMETIC, POLITICAL.)

POLITICAL ASSESSMENTS

POLITICAL ASSESSMENTS. (See ASSESSMENTS, POLITICAL.)

POLITICAL ECONOMY.

POLITICAL ECONOMY. I. Preliminary Considerations. In a Cyclopædia like the present it would seem that the article "Political Economy" should form one of the central points of the whole work. It would perhaps be such, if we desired to embrace under this term the various considerations which commend the study of economic science to those whom it interests, and to set forth the many advantages which may be derived from it. It would be so likewise, if in the article "Political Economy" we attempted to touch upon all the subjects which the science embraces, either for the purpose of showing their importance or their connection. We can not enter into such detail here. We wish simply to define political economy, to give it a point of departure, a formula; to determine its character and object, and to indicate, as far as possible, its extent and limits.

—It would be mistaking the nature of such a task to suppose that it can be performed in a few lines. It is not as easy as one might think at first to give an exact definition of political economy, or at least a satisfactory one, one around which all adepts in the science might rally. Many authors, beginning with Adam Smith, have attempted it, but no one seems to have succeeded. Whatever may be the real merit of certain definitions hitherto given, it is certain that, up to the present time, not a single one has been accepted without dispute. It has even frequently happened (and this is a more serious matter) that the very ones who furnished them, subsequently contradicted or modified them in the course of their works. It would perhaps be more correct to say that there is not one of these definitions to which its author himself remained faithful in the manner in which be conceived and treated his subject. This has caused some of the later teachers of the science to say, that political economy has yet to be defined. "Even if we must blush for the science," says Rossi, "the economist must confess that the first question still to be examined is this: 'What is political economy? what is its object, its extent, its limits?'" There is no reason to blush, we think, for being still obliged to put such a question, when we consider the natural difficulties it presents; but we must agree, with Rossi, that it is still awaiting a solution. A Belgian writer, Arrivabene, has called attention to this truth in his introduction to a translation of Senior's "Lectures on Political Economy," in terms more emphatic than those used by Rossi, bitterly deploring the vagueness, the obscurity, the incoherence, and especially the insufficiency, of all the definitions hazarded by the masters of the science, and calling loudly for a more satisfactory and precise formula. To make this clear, we here reproduce some of the definitions furnished by economists generally considered to be of the highest authority.

—Adam Smith was usually very sparing of definitions. He, however, gave a few here and there, and they characterized or defined, in the course of his work, the science which he treated. "Political economy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first, to supply a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or, more properly, to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign." ("Wealth of Nations," book iv., introduction.) Without discussing the relative merit of this definition, we shall simply remark that it has in view much less a science than an art, although the idea of a science is put forward in it, and although the word "science" is to be found in it. The author, in fact, appears to enunciate a series of precepts which would indeed constitute an art; but not an exposition or an explanation of certain natural phenomena, which alone can constitute a science. In substance, if not in form, Adam Smith's definition is nearly like that given by J. J. Rousseau under the term économie politique, in the Encyclopédie. We know, however, how widely Adam Smith differed from Rousseau, not only in his conclusions, but especially in his manner of treating his subject. On the other hand, his definition differs greatly, as we shall see, from that of J. B. Say, who followed in his footsteps, and looked on the science as Smith himself had done.

—J. B. Say, in the beginning of his treatise, and even as title to this treatise, gave his principal definition of political economy, the one which has since been most frequently reproduced: "A Treatise on Political Economy, or a simple exposition of the manner in which wealth is produced, distributed and consumed." Whatever may be thought of this formula, it is at least very much superior to that of Adam Smith, in this especially, that it suggests the idea of a real science, and not merely of an art, since it describes an exposition or explanation of certain phenomena presented to our observation. But is this formula really satisfactory? and will it be final? Assuredly not. Men may still disagree as to the nature of the phenomena which it presents for the study of economists, as well as to the extent of the field which it opens to their exploration. And this all the more, since on this last point especially J. B. Say has not always been consistent with himself. In the formula which we have just quoted, he seems to confine the economist to a study of the material facts relating to the production and distribution of wealth; but elsewhere, notably in his Cours, he brings into its domain all facts relating to social life. "The object of political economy," he says, "seems till now to have been restricted to a knowledge of the laws which govern the production, distribution and consumption of wealth. This is how I considered it myself in my Traité d'Economie Politique." "Still," he adds, "it may be seen, even in that work, that the science touches everything in human society, and embraces the whole social system." (Cours d'économie politique, p. 4.) We might add, that in other parts of his works J. B. Say again defines political economy in a way altogether different from that in which he defined it in his Traité and his Cours. The following, for instance, taken from manuscript notes found after his death, has sometimes been quoted: "Political economy is the science of the interests of society, and like every real science is founded on experience, the results of which, grouped and arranged methodically, are principles and general truths." But it is evident that this is less a definition than a qualification, such as every author has the right to introduce in the course of his works, in order to bring out the dignity and importance of the subject he is treating.

—According to Sismondi, "the physical well-being of man, so far as it can be the work of his government, is the object of political economy." This is very different from J. B. Say's first definition. In the first place, it takes us out of the realm of science into the realm of art; for, according to this formula, political economy must be merely a series of rules intended to instruct governments how to insure the physical well-being of man; it is therefore an art, a branch of the art of government. Very much limited, from a certain point of view, since governments alone can practice it, this art is, in other respects, without assignable limits; for what are the acts of a government that have not to do, more or less, with the physical well-being of man?

—According to Storch, "Political economy is the science of the natural laws which determine the prosperity of nations, that is to say, their wealth and their civilization." Preferable to Sismondi's, because it suggests at least the idea of a science, this definition is still very imperfect. "The natural laws which determine the prosperity of nations," present, to our thinking, too complex an idea, and, in any case, a very vague one; and as to civilization, it certainly includes, in its general expression, things with which an economist, as such, has nothing to do.

—There is nothing in Malthus or Ricardo which can be taken as a precise definition of political economy. In the case of Ricardo the reason may be, that in his "Principles of Political Economy and Taxation," being confined, as he says himself in his preface, to defining the laws regulating the distribution of revenue among the various classes of society, he did not consider the science as a whole. It may, however, be inferred from these words, that, if he had had to define science in a general manner, he would have defined it very nearly as J. B. Say had done in his Traité.

—As to Rossi, after he had discussed and rejected, one after another, all the definitions given before his time, he, absolutely speaking, gave nothing in their stead. He contents himself with saying that there are phenomena of a certain order relating to wealth which are not confounded with those of any other order, and that these are just what economic science should study. Political economy is, therefore, in his eyes, as he says elsewhere, purely and simply the "science of wealth." Hence, he thinks, that, setting aside the strangeness of the words, one might call economists chrysologists, chrematisticians or divitiaries, without giving them cause of complaint.

—We may here close our review of the definitions of political economy. What we have stated suffices to show how far the definition of economic science, or the general formula which covers it, is from being finally fixed.

—Now, should we be ashamed of this uncertainty, as Rossi seemed to think? Must we lament it, with Arrivabene and some other writers? We do not think so. A science does not depend on the definition given of it; it is not regulated by an arbitrary formula which may be more or less happy, more or less exact; on the contrary, it is the definition which should come after, mould itself, so to speak, to the science as it exists. So much the worse for writers who cultivate a certain branch of human knowledge, if they are unable to grasp its general data and clothe these data with a fitting expression; but this does not in any way impair the stock of truth which they have to bring to light.—"A science," says J. B. Say, "makes real progress only when its masters have succeeded in determining the territory over which they may extend their researches, and what should be the object of their research." (Traité, Discours Préliminaire.) There is doubtless some truth in this statement. It is well, perhaps even necessary, that the object of a science and the field it covers should be properly determined; but it is not absolutely necessary that this determination should result from definitions hazarded by authors: it is enough if it results from the very nature of their labors. Now, it may well happen that the nature of these labors may be essentially the same for all, while the definitions are different; each author having been led by a kind of instinct to confine himself to a certain order of phenomena, without afterward being able to render an account to himself of the precise object of his researches, or to measure exactly the field he has gone over. And this is really what takes place. We have just seen how much the authors cited differ in regard to the definition of the science, and still the sum and substance of their works are always the same. Who does not know that this is the case with Adam Smith and J. B. Say? It is the case, too, with all the others, in spite of a few slight differences as to the greater or less extent of the ground they embrace.

—It is one thing to feel or express, and another to conceive or define. It is sometimes very difficult to clothe a single thought in a just expression or a fitting formula; the difficulty is much greater when there is question of including a great number of ideas and facts in a single formula. It is not to be wondered at that many writers have failed in this task, in this sense, that the definitions which they give are nothing but more or less unfaithful translations of their own conceptions. J. B. Say acknowledges that this is true in his own case, since he recognizes that his Traité went everywhere beyond the limits, if the expression be allowed, marked out by his definition. And still he is, perhaps, of all economists, the one who has remained the most faithful to the formula which he had adopted. There is much more to be reprehended in Adam Smith and Sismondi in this regard. If we look, for example, at the manner in which the latter defines the science, we might think he was going to confine himself, as J. J. Rousseau had done, to laying down the rules which governments should observe in regard to the material interests of the people; and still, like all other economists since Quesnay, Turgot and Adam Smith, he has discussed the questions of exchange, division of labor, accumulation, savings, the production and distribution of wealth, the laws regulating the value of things, those determining the rate of wages, profits, etc., etc.: things in which governments have almost nothing to do. So true is it that his definition is simply an error, and an error of no consequence, an ill-chosen but empty formula, which in no way influences the real character of his labors.

—It would be very desirable, however, to find for political economy a more satisfactory definition than those hitherto given, a formula at once more comprehensive and more precise, in which the whole science might, so to speak, be reflected in a few words. Will this formula be found? Perhaps. Without flattering ourselves with having found it, we shall try to point out the road to its formulation by determining, as far as possible, the real object which the science proposes to itself, and the extent of its domain.

—The first question to be solved is, whether political economy belongs to the category of science, or merely to the category of art. We have already seen, from what precedes, that the question is not an idle one, especially not idle since the distinction to be made between science and art does not appear to be generally understood.

—II. To what order does Political Economy belong? Is it a Science or an Art? "An art," says Destutt de Tracy, "is a collection of maxims or practical precepts, the observance of which leads to success in doing a thing, no matter what it may be; a science consists in the truths resulting from the examination of any subject whatever. Art consists, therefore, in a series of precepts or rules to be followed; science, in the knowledge of certain phenomena or certain observed and revealed relations." We are not concerned here with examining which of the two is superior to the other, art or science; both may have equal merits, each in its place; it is solely a question of showing in what they differ as to their object and methods of procedure. Art counsels, prescribes, directs; science observes, exposes, explains. When an astronomer observes and describes the course of the stars, he cultivates science; but when, his observations made, he deduces from them rules to be applied in navigation, he is engaged in art. He may be equally right in the two cases; but his object is different, as well as his method of working. Hence, observing and describing real phenomena is science; dictating precepts, laying down rules, is art.

—Art and science often have close connections, in this sense especially, that the precepts of art must be derived as far as possible from the observations of science, but they are none the less different from it on that account. Notwithstanding this, they are confounded every day. A man striving to build up an art gives it emphatically the name of science, believing that by doing so he gives a high idea of the correctness of its precepts. It is notoriously the weak side of physicians to call medicine a science. They are mistaken in the use of the word. If medicine were as certain in its prescriptions as it is uncertain, it would still be no more than an art,38 the art of healing, since it consists in a collection of rules applicable to the cure of human diseases. But anatomy is a science; physiology is a science; because anatomy and physiology both have as their object a knowledge of the human body, which they study, the one in its structure, the other in the play of its organs.

—Rossi grasped this distinction between science and art well, though he abused it by improperly confounding it with the distinction which is made frequently enough between theory and practice.39 "Properly speaking," he says, "science has no object. The moment we try to discover what use can be made of it, what profit may be drawn from it, we leave science and come to art. Science is in all cases nothing more or less than the possession of truth, the well-considered knowledge of relations inherent in the nature of things." Here we have, under another form, the same thought so accurately expressed by Destutt de Tracy.

—This distinction being well drawn between science and art, we may now ask, to which of the two orders of ideas does political economy belong? Is it a collection of precepts, a theory of action, or only an assemblage of truths borrowed from the observation of actual phenomena? Does it show us how to do something? or does it explain what takes place? In other words, is it a science, or an art? We need not hesitate to answer that, in its present condition, political economy is both the one and the other; that is to say, in the direction of economic labors and studies a common name is still given to things which might and should be kept distinct. It is evident, in fact, that in the general treatises on political economy, composed since Adam Smith's time, a great number of really scientific observations are met with, that is to say, observations whose sole object is to tell us what takes place, or what exists. One might even say that observations of this kind predominate. But the directions, precepts, rules to be followed, are also met with in such treatises very frequently. Art is therefore constantly mixed up with science. But it is very different with a multitude of special treatises, or those particular dissertations whose object is to solve certain questions relating to industry, commerce or the economic administration of states: questions of taxation, credit, finance, foreign commerce, etc. Here it is always art that predominates. Counsels, precepts, rules to be followed, all things that pertain by their nature to the domain of art, follow each other in quick succession, while really scientific observations scarcely appear at long intervals. And still all this, without distinction, bears the name of political economy. So true is it that the name still belongs to two orders of labor, and of very different kinds.

—We are far from complaining or finding it strange that from scientific truth once clearly established men should endeavor to draw rules applicable to the conduct of human affairs. It is not well that scientific truths should remain fruitless, and the only way of utilizing them is to base art upon them. There are close ties of relationship, as we have already said, between science and art. Science lends its lights to art, corrects its processes, enlightens and directs its course. Without the aid of science, art would have to feel its way, stumbling at every step. On the other hand, art gives a value to the truths which science has discovered, and science without art would be barren. Art is almost always the principal motor in the labors of science. Man rarely studies for the sole pleasure of knowledge; in general, his research and labor have generally a useful end in view, and it is through art alone that he finds that end.

—In view of all this, who can fail to see how different art is from science? The distance is great between a truth discovered by observation, and a rule deduced from that truth with the intent of giving it an application; the one belongs to nature, to God; man only discovers and states it; the other is the act of man, and it always retains something of him. Everything is absolute in scientific data; they are either false or true, there is no half way; this simply means that the student of science has observed either well or ill, has seen correctly or incorrectly what he communicates. There are, it is true, incomplete data, exact on one side, inexact on the other; but, even then, the true side is true, the false side is false. On the contrary, everything is relative in the rules and the methods of art. As something human is always involved in them, they can not pretend to infallibility, they are always susceptible of more or less variation between the two extreme limits of radical vice and absolute perfection. Finally, scientific truths are immutable as the laws of nature whose revelation they are; while rules of art are changeable, either by reason of the wants they have in view or by reason of the changing views of the men who apply them.

—There is so much the more reason to insist on the distinction which we have just established, viz., that if science and art have frequently many points of contact, their radii and their circumferences are far from being identical. The data furnished by a science may sometimes be utilized in many different arts. Thus, geometry, or the science of the relations of extension, enlightens and directs the work of the surveyor, the engineer, the artillery officer, the navigator, the shipbuilder, the architect, etc., etc. Chemistry comes to the aid of the druggist as well as the dyer, and to a great number of the industrial professions. Who can tell how many different arts make use of the general data of physics? And, so, an art may gain information from the data furnished by many sciences; and it is in this way, to cite but one example, that medicine, or the art of healing, simultaneously consults anatomy, physiology, chemistry, physics, botany, etc.

—It is necessary, therefore, in every respect to distinguish art from science, and to indicate clearly the line separating them. This has been carefully done in certain branches of human knowledge. Mathematicians, for example, distinguish carefully pure mathematics, or science properly speaking, from its various applications. So do physicists and chemists. And the distinction exists not in books alone, it is transferred even to instruction, where the study of science and that of the arts depending on it have different chairs. It is thus that a polytechnic school is, if we be permitted to say so, the sanctuary of pure science. It is only after graduating from it that the students, each in his specialty, study the art to which they are to apply the scientific knowledge acquired.

—We could wish that what has been so well done in so many other divisions of study might also be done in the order of economic studies and labors. But, it must be confessed, it has not been done up to the present. The labors of art and the studies of science continue to be, if not altogether mingled, at least embraced, under a common denomination. Sometimes it has been attempted to separate them by giving certain labors, which belong especially to art, the name of public economy, to distinguish them from others. But these attempts, ill directed, and made, in the majority of cases, without a clear view of the results to be obtained, have not succeeded thus far, so that at present, in the order of economic studies, art and science are still mingled and confounded. Whence comes this confusion? It comes, first of all, from the immaturity of the science, which has not yet had time to disengage itself from the art or arts connected with it. It results also, in a certain measure, from the pressing and ever present interest of the subjects than economic science embraces, an interest which has not allowed those who study it to devote themselves entirely to the contemplation of scientific truths, neglecting, for the moment, the artistical deductions, that is to say, the practical maxims, which they might draw from it.

—Political economy was an art before it became a science, and even the etymology of its name shows this; furthermore, before it was an art, that is to say, before it was formulated in general maxims and precepts, it was blind practice in the hands of governments. Such is, however, the course of human things. In the logical order, science precedes art, which should be only a deduction from science; and art precedes practice, which should be only a more or less exact application of the general rules of art. This is the ordinary course followed in our schools, in which the logical order is followed. But in their historic sequence, things take another course: they are generally found there in an inverse order. There practice precedes art, and art science. This is true of almost all the branches of knowledge, and particularly of that which interests us most. Hurried to act, because he must act, man goes straight to action, to practice, without studying deeply that which he undertakes, and with no other guide than his instinct. It is only later, that, by rectifying and correcting the errors of this practice, with the aid of a little acquired experience, he forms rules or general maxims which he erects into an art; and it is later still that the idea comes to him of correcting the errors of this art itself, by the aid of a scientific study of the subject which he has in view. There were physicians before there was an art of healing; men acted at hazard, inspired most frequently by blind superstition, and the art of healing, based at first on a certain acquired experience, existed much earlier than anatomy, physiology, therapeutics, that is to say, earlier than a scientific knowledge of the subject on which it was desired to operate, and of the remedies employed for his cure. Huts were built before the art of building was reduced to rules, and the art of building was subjected to rules, if not written, at least transmitted from mouth to mouth, before it received the mathematical and physical sciences as a foundation. Political economy advanced in the same way. The most ancient governments, as Blanqui very justly says in his history, treated political economy after their own fashion, long before they knew what they did, or were able to give an account of the result of their measures. Later, it was attempted to give an account of these results by the aid of acquired experience, and with the data of these experiences, well or ill understood, an art was created. Sully and Colbert had reached this stage. It was only in the last resort that men undertook to study scientifically this subject, that is to say, general industry, on which they were to operate.

—Now, this liberation of economic science is quite recent; it scarcely dates from the middle of the last century. It was the school of Quesnay which first endeavored to construct in this order of ideas a real science; up to his time there were merely scattered observations, and even final success in building up the science belongs only to Adam Smith. It is not very surprising, therefore, that the science of political economy has not yet been able to free itself entirely from the restrictions of the art from which it sprung.

—It was our wish and duty to state, as we have done, that under the general name of political economy two things are at present understood, things very different in their nature, though tending in many respects to the same end. It has seemed to us all the more important to note this confusion of ideas, since, to our thinking, it is the real cause of the incoherence in the definitions of the science, of the deviations to which it is subject in its course, and the species of discord which reigns almost always in its beginnings. Shall we attempt, on that account, henceforth to make a clearer division between the science and the art, by giving them different names? We confine ourselves to drawing the distinction clearly, time and a better knowledge of the subject will do the rest.

—III. First Idea or General Conception of Economic Science. Do the Facts of Human Industry afford Material for the formation of a real Science? It will doubtless be asked, with some astonishment, how economic science was born so late, how political economy in action could exist so long without a systematic, scientific study of the subject itself on which men had to operate. This astonishment will cease, perhaps, if we consider for a moment the internal nature of a science, and the point of view at which men place themselves on all subjects before the light of science appears.

—A science does not consist merely in a knowledge of certain external facts isolated from each other, for it is an abuse of words to give the name science to a simple collection of facts. Science consists rather in the knowledge of the relations which connect these facts with one another, and of the laws which govern them. A tie, a connection, is necessary, a linking of the phenomena which it takes up and observes, and it is the knowledge of this connection which is its principal study. An incoherent collection of facts without connection may constitute the baggage of a man of erudition, but can never constitute a science. Astronomy would not merit the name if it merely limited itself to noting and naming, one by one, the stars which wander in the deserts of space; it is worthy of the name only because it renders an account of the movements of the stars and the constancy of their evolution. Similarly, in all the other branches of human knowledge, a collection of facts does not constitute a science; we must, further, be able to tell the constant relations which connect, and the general laws which govern, them.

—But the first condition of the study of the laws governing certain phenomena is to suspect their existence; to believe that these phenomena are not governed by chance, and that certain constant relations exist between them. Now, on all subjects, the first impression of men who have not yet submitted facts to continuous observation or patient analysis, is to see in them merely the play of blind chance. It is only much later that they come to suspect that these facts may be subject to a certain order; and it is then only that the idea is gained of studying the laws that govern them. Let us take the ignorant and rude man of primitive ages. All the phenomena of nature are to him disordered and capricious. Wherever he looks, he sees merely accidents without cause, facts without connection or relation. If he looks at the heavens, he sees the stars scattered at hazard, as he thinks, like thistles in a field. In all things that strike him he sees nothing but the play of blind chance, unless, indeed, he supposes the mysterious influence of some occult power. Later, as he gains in knowledge, natural phenomena, at least those of a certain order, range themselves before his eyes; he sees that they are subject to certain rules, he observes the constancy of their relations; here he recognizes law. But always, even in the course of time, and ages of enlightenment, the first impression of men is the same in relation to facts which they have not yet observed. If they come, therefore, so late to study the natural laws which govern phenomena, it is because they had not previously even suspected that there were natural laws to be studied.

—A remarkable example of this is to be found in the case of geological facts. Why did geology, a science so interesting and beautiful, appear so late in the world? Was it impossible to discover and study it sooner? Were the ancients less capable of pursuing that study than the moderns? They were not: geological facts are not of the nature of those which hide themselves from attentive examination, or which demand a distant search. The ancients were as well able to discover and analyze them as we, and they had, besides, almost an equal interest in doing so. This analysis supposes, it is true, certain other preliminary studies, but these studies they could either have pursued themselves or made up for without too much labor. Why did they not do so? Only, as it seems to us, because they did not even suspect that there were in the bowels of the earth which we inhabit natural laws to be studied. During many centuries men had lived in the idea that the earth, whose surface they occupied, was in its composition merely a formless and confused mass, rudis indigestaque moles, whose materials were piled up pell-mell, without order and without law. They did not suspect that there was any order there to be found, any scientific study to be made of the earth; and this is the reason they did not even think of attempting that study. The same thing has taken place with regard to industry, concerning which similar ideas were for a long time held. It was not suspected in ancient times, nor even in the middle ages, that there was any order in the industrial world, the centre of economic facts, the focus of labor, at that time relegated to so low a place. At first view, everything there seemed to be surrendered to the struggle of individual and opposing wills. Only a disordered combination of heterogeneous elements was perceived, a sort of confused conflict, a rudis indigestaque moles; and how could any one conceive the idea of searching there for rules, principles, laws, the ordinary outfit of a real science? In all subjects, we repeat, the first step toward building up a science is to gain the idea that the elements of that science exist, and this idea had not yet suggested itself. It was born only much later, when, by dint of occupation, from the governmental point of view, with industry whose importance men began to understand, they remarked, almost involuntarily, sometimes in one direction and sometimes in another, the regularity of its movements and the constancy of its relations.

—And why should we be astonished that this was the case in the past, when even to-day, after the labors of Quesnay, Adam Smith and his successors, we see that many people misunderstand this industrial order, to which science has already borne witness. Not infrequently we hear at the present time men of some weight, and fairly well informed on other points, assert that industry is a prey to disorder and anarchy. Such, in general, is the rallying cry of the schools called socialistic. They all declare that the industrial world is given up to the struggle of individual wills, conflicting with and crossing each other in terrible confusion, with no trace of organization and order. All rule is absent from the circle in which industry works, and chance alone controls everything. On this account all the socialistic sects conclude, naturally enough, that the industrial world needs some organization imposed by a power above it. Thus, they vie with each other in drawing up and proposing plans of social reconstruction.

—If the premises of this reasoning were correct, if it were true that industry, in its present condition, were given up to anarchy, having no trace of organization and order, political economy, considered as a science, would indeed have little to do; it would not even have a raison d'être. This would not suffice to make us adopt or even discuss seriously any one of these plans of organization proposed to us, persuaded, as we shall always be, that it is not in the power of human intelligence to regulate, even in a tolerable manner, so many interests, and labors so varied; but it would suffice to make us conclude, at least, that science, properly speaking, had no place in such a field. The rôle of the economist, if he had still a rôle to fill, would be limited, in this case, to a barren registration of disconnected facts, without his being able to deduce any principle from them. In vain would he seek to ascend from effects to causes, where chance alone governed everything. Vainly would he endeavor to establish relations between observed phenomena, and discover the laws that ruled them; for how could he find constant relations in disorder, or law in chaos? Happily, we already know our position with reference to these assertions thrown out a priori by men still unenlightened by science. We know that for them all is confusion and disorder. To the man who knows not the discoveries of geology, even from hearsay, the earth is still that confused mass which the ancients called rudis indigestaque moles. To the savage, who has never observed the course of the stars, anarchy reigns in the vault of heaven.

—After all, it must be confessed that the illusion is a natural one. When we cast our eyes at hazard on the moving picture of the industrial world, it is difficult indeed to perceive, at first sight, anything but a confused struggle. A consideration, plausible enough, seems even to justify this first view; it is thus that in industry everything seems abandoned to the arbitrary and capricious impulses of individual wills, without any common principle governing and uniting these wills. And how, it is asked, can anything but disorder and chaos result from the shock of so many divergent, if not opposing, wills? When we see so many millions of stars moving in the deserts of space with perfect harmony and unchangeable constancy, nothing prevents our admitting that a single and sovereign will presides over their movements, and imposes on them its laws. But where is the principle which forces so many free beings to move in unison, each one of whom feels the motive of his action in himself? This is a strong consideration, it must be confessed; it would force economists themselves to doubt the reality of industrial order, if this order were not for them already established and demonstrated.

—And still, even without the aid of science, if we look at industry with a more serious and attentive eye, it is difficult not to recognize in it at once, under the cover of apparent disorder, certain characteristics of harmony and order. Phenomena appear, whose regularity strikes and astonishes us. We gradually catch glimpses, vague at first and then more definite, of constant relations, of invariable movements. As the stars fail not to subordinate themselves to each other in their evolutions, though they seem to wander at chance, and to hasten on without order, so we see that the myriads of individuals moving in the field of industry also connect, arrange and subordinate their labors to each other, in such a way that, in spite of their apparent confusion, they all concur, each in his own way, to produce certain given results. Little by little, chaos is seen not to exist; order appears; laws are recognized.

—Even if economic science had not for a long time noted the existence of certain regulating laws in the industrial world, it would seem that the appearance alone of the results offered would cause us at least to suspect their existence. An immense multitude of human beings, some scattered here and there over the surface of the earth, others grouped in irregular masses in towns, wait every day for general industry to bring them what is necessary for the infinite variety of their wants; and every day industry, active and watchful, answers without fail to all the wants which call upon it: millions of kinds of labor, all different from one another, call on every side, and at all the sources of production, for workmen, and nowhere are the hands of workmen wanting for the kind of labor which calls them; all these different kinds of labor cross each other; more than that, they are corrected and held in union; they complete each other; they form together an immense chain, not a single link of which can be broken without injury to the whole; but nowhere does the chain break or stop; it seems that a mysterious power watches unceasingly to keep in repair its invisible links. Then, by virtue of the principle of exchange, an infinite variety of products circulates continually in every direction over the surface of the earth, and all these products go direct, without loss of time, and without sensible deviation, through countless hands, to the consumers waiting for them. All this takes place under our eyes and is renewed every day, and it is in presence of such a spectacle that men are unaware of the regularity of industrial movements subject to law. In presence of this daily miracle of regularity and order, men talk about industrial anarchy and disorder! What, then, are harmony, and order? Even if certain partial disorders, the causes of which are almost always easily assigned, happen here and there to disturb this beautiful mechanism, would that be sufficient to warrant us to deny the harmony of the whole? Would it not suffice to justify us in concluding triumphantly, that, after all, industry taken as a whole accomplishes with regularity the complex task with which it is charged?

—There is really little philosophy in denying, even a priori, the existence of industrial order. Remember how many surprises nature reserves for man, who is always too ready to appeal to chance. The empire of chance is narrower than is supposed; every day its boundaries become smaller in proportion as our knowledge extends; those boundaries will become still narrower in the future. But, it is asked, is there anything in industry but divergent individual wills? and what is that but confusion or chance? We answer, that individual wills, no matter how free they may appear in the domain of language, or in the domain of industry, are bound to conform to a certain order. In the work of forming languages the initiative and invention may belong to individuals; but supreme control belongs to the masses. Individuals invent words, particular forms or expressions; each one brings his contribution to the language; hence the inexhaustible wealth and the admirable variety of form which are the property of human language. But the mass controls, purifies, corrects; it rejects, with that sure instinct which controls it, everything not conformable to certain analogies or certain laws, and every one is bound to submit to its decisions under pain of not being understood. Hence, the regularity and harmony impressed on all human languages. In like manner the initiative belongs to individuals in industry, but control to the masses. Every one is at liberty to work after his own fashion, but on condition, first, of fitting the result of his labors, which is the first condition of order, to his surroundings; then, to adjust his labors to those of other men, without whose aid he can do nothing; and lastly, on condition of submitting to the whole, and yielding in all things to the decisions of the sovereign public. From the initiative of the individual and the sovereign control of the masses, arises, on the one hand, the infinity of detail, and, on the other, the harmony of the whole, which constitute the two essential characteristics of human industry. If, by supposing the impossible, confusion should be established in language, no two men would be able any longer to understand each other. An assembly of men would then be but a repetition of the confusion of the tower of Babel. If, in like manner, this anarchy should come upon industry, for merely a few days, the irregularity of production would put the very existence of men in peril. No one being able to count upon another for the satisfaction of his wants, each would work for himself and refuse to take part in the division of labor and exchange, and humanity would quickly return to the barbarism of primitive times.

—But the existence of laws governing the industrial world is no longer a mystery. Industrial science has for a long time noted and verified a great number of them. We have ourselves tried to show in the article COMPETITION, the general principle from which they spring. If among those which men have tried to explain, there are some which may still be a matter of discussion or misunderstood, there are others which no one, not even those who deny in principle the regularity of industrial movements, would dare to call in question. We can therefore conclude boldly that the field of the science of political economy is open, and that the elements of that science exist.

—Since, then, human industry is subject to laws; since it discloses to us constant relations, a regular movement, in a word, order, it is this order, these relations, these laws, which we must study. This is the peculiar field of political economy as a science. To explain how industry is organized in its whole and in its parts; to describe the order of its evolutions and its progress; to refer its movements to their principle, and deduce from it their immediate consequences: such is the object which economic science, carefully distinguished from art, should always propose to itself. What, in this order of ideas, should be the extent of its investigations, and what their limits? We shall examine this directly. But we must first justify the preceding definition, if it is one, in so far as it does not conform to those most frequently given of political economy.

—IV. Is Wealth the Object of Economic Science, or Industry the Source of Wealth? In defining or characterizing economic science as we have above, we have spoken of industry and the general laws which govern it. It is evident that in this we have departed, if not in essence, at least in form, from the definitions generally received, and which relate, more or less, not to industry, but to the wealth which industry produces. Which of the two formulæ is the more truthful? We think that wealth is continually put forward as the subject of political economy, without reason. Wealth is merely a result; and in reality it is labor, human industry, the source of wealth, which is the true subject of investigation in political economy. It must be understood, however, that in saying this we have no idea of changing the basis of the science, which we accept as it exists.

—We have already seen that J. B. Say defines political economy, even in the title of his work, as "a simple exposition of the manner in which wealth is produced, distributed and consumed." Still, he draws a distinction from the very beginning of his book, which we must note. There are, he says, two kinds of wealth: one natural, that is to say, that which man receives from nature itself, without his being obliged to produce it, and which does not appear in the market, because nature gives it to all; the other is industrial or social wealth; and he declares that this last is the only one which economic science should consider. Why this distinction, if the definition is correct? If it is really wealth with which we are concerned, what do we care from whence it comes? Is what nature gives us for nothing, and gives to all, less real, of less value, than other wealth? Why should we not take account of it too? The distinction established by J. B. Say is nevertheless correct, whatever Rossi may say of it. Why? Because it is not true that political economy studies wealth as its subject; because it has only industry in view, and consequently it should not touch upon wealth, except in so far as it is a product of industry, in so far as it is either produced or distributed by industry. All this portion of J. B. Say's work is very painful, because his starting point is not correct. Still, the author displays a wonderful sagacity in coming back, by force of attention and correctness of judgment, to the real subject from which he departed in his definition. But the subtle distinctions to which he has been obliged to have recourse could not fail to lead to controversy, as the sequel has shown.

—What is true of J. B. Say is equally true of all those economists, and their number is great, who have expressly admitted with him that political economy has only to do with exchangeable value. It is different with Adam Smith, who did not commence his work, like most of his successors, by a dissertation on the nature of wealth and value. He prefers in the beginning to speak of industry, of man; in which, as it appears to us, he was very happy, although he too thinks, and says frequently, that wealth is the chief subject of his studies. In the course of his work he states nowhere, in an absolute manner, that the only wealth with which he is concerned is that which is convertible into exchangeable value; but when, at the end of chapter iv. of book i., he remarks that the word "value" has a double meaning, or that there are two kinds of values, and calls one "value in use," and the other "salable or exchangeable value," without declaring expressly that the latter is the only one which it is his mission to study, he contents himself with saying that he will examine "the principles which regulate the exchangeable values of merchandise," and as to its value in use he is silent. He has followed, in this, the same path that J. B. Say, his successor, traced out afterward in a more systematic manner.

—Some economists, however, at whose head we must place Rossi, have protested loudly against this view. They contend that the utility of things, or what they call their value in use, is in itself too considerable, too important a fact, to allow an economist to omit taking account of it. Let us remark just here, that no one has said, no one can say, that the real utility of things can be despised. It is, first of all, the original basis of exchangeable value; it is, besides, the principal motive or the final object of the labors of man; for men labor only to procure what is of use to them, that is to say, what contributes to the satisfaction of their wants. It has only been said, which is true, that utility alone, when not transformed into exchangeable value, no matter how interesting it may be in other regards, is not an economic fact, and only becomes such in so far as it gives things a value, a price. But it is precisely against this conclusion that Rossi protests. The opinion of such a man has too much weight not to delay us a moment in order to examine its motives.—"There are many authors," he says, "for whom value in exchange is the only economic fact; they regard the notion of value in use as a pure generality, to which, at most, the honor of mentioning it may be given in passing without paying any attention to it afterward. For them, political economy is more the science of exchange than the science of wealth." We have underlined these last words, because they correspond exactly to what we have said above. It is very true, that, to the authors of whom Rossi speaks, as well as to us, and we shall add directly to Rossi himself, political economy is not the science of wealth, although the word "wealth" is inscribed in large letters on their banners. We have defined it, provisionally, as the science of the laws of the industrial world. One may say, however, if he wishes, shortening the expression a little, that it is the science of exchanges; for exchanges are, in the industrial system, the primordial fact which engenders all the others; but the expression which we have used seems to us at once more noble, more comprehensive, and more exact.

—But to return to Rossi's argument.

—First of all, it is not correct to say that the authors of whom he speaks merely mention the utility of things in passing. On the contrary, they maintain that the utility of things is the first if not the only condition of value in exchange; that things not useful in any respect would be neither asked for nor accepted by any one; and in consequence they would have no value, no price. But they add also that this utility, necessary everywhere, does not become an economic fact until, combining with other conditions, it is changed into exchangeable value. This is precisely what Rossi does not admit. "It is an error," he says, "which attacks the science in its very bases, which mutilates it, and destroys its nature." Why? This is his answer: "Value in use," he continues, "is the expression of a relation which belongs to all times and all places. Value in exchange is in its nature eventual. Not only it can not exist unless the wants of men cease, in a certain measure at least, to be satisfied, but it will disappear completely when the wants of all find unlimited means of satisfaction. No one will then have recourse to exchange." We shall soon find this last argument under another form. Rossi considers it very conclusive in his favor, and consequently reproduces it again. We shall see directly how conclusive it is against him. Now, let us continue our quotation. "I say, that in the system of those who pretend to occupy themselves only with value in exchange, science is mutilated: a great number of economic facts remain without explanation. Why are certain markets glutted with articles which never meet a demand for them? Only because the producers have not studied sufficiently what could be, in a given country, the value in use of such or such kinds of merchandise. The man who sent a cargo of skates to Brazil had forgotten that their value in use, arising from the pleasure which is felt in gliding over an icy surface, is nothing in a country where there is no ice. When publishers prepared immense shiploads of books for South America, they should have remembered that the want of books is only felt by those who know how to read. It is in the absence of value in use that these economic facts find their explanation." Without doubt, it is in the absence of value in use, or of utility, that these facts find their explanation. But how can this embarrass the authors whom Rossi is combating? What difficulty is there in accounting for such facts according to their system? None. They have said, and repeated, that the utility of things is the first condition of their exchangeable value; this condition had been omitted in the cases mentioned above, and consequently the products could not be exchanged. What more simple? The authors in question account for these facts quite as well as Rossi. Only they add that the condition of utility, though primary and essential, is not the only one which gives objects an exchangeable value; that, in addition, a certain degree of scarcity is required; that things found in profusion in nature, such as air, will have no exchangeable value, no matter how useful they may be; and that in this case economists need not busy themselves with them.

—Among the arguments which Rossi heaps up at pleasure against this last conclusion, with very remarkable dialectic power, there are many which square exactly with the one which we have just noted. They merely reproduce the same thought under other forms. We may therefore omit them. But here is one which seems to differ from the others. "The study of value in use, is the study of the wants of men in their relations to economic facts." The study of value in use is the study of the wants of men; this we admit: but is the study of the wants of men the object of political economy? It is not. In the eyes of the economist every man is the judge of his own wants, which he expresses in his own way by the demand which he makes for certain products. It is the sole fact of this demand that the economist meets by following it in its consequences. He sees, on one side, men expressing their wants; on the other, workers studying to divine these wants, and to satisfy them by supplying such articles as they produce; and he studies the very extensive and complex relations arising from this demand and supply. The study of the demand, considered in itself, in its nature and principle, is perhaps the affair of the moralist; but the economist, as an economist, has nothing to do with it.

—If, in the course of his laborious argument, Rossi triumphs in places, it is when he lays stress on the meaning and the use of the word "wealth." He has the advantage, we admit, when he reproaches those with whom he argues, with abusing the term. "Wealth," he rightly says, "is a generic word, which includes all objects in which this relation can be verified. If an object is capable of satisfying our desires, there is a value in it. The object itself is wealth." Rossi is certainly right here; he is right again when he adds, further on: "Ask any sensible man if, in such or such circumstances, such a man or such a country is rich or not, if it is less rich than a certain other country; ask him if the soil of the kingdom of Naples is more or less rich than the soil of Lapland; all will give you the same answer. Economists also, when they do not use the language of their particular systems, call the country rich in which natural goods abound, and in which natural agents are most active. They extend the word wealth to something more than what they call wealth when they give us their systematic definitions." All this is quite correct; but what does it all prove? Only one thing: that the word "wealth" has been very inaptly employed to designate the object of economic science. Let us say what is true, that economic science studies industry, or the relations which industry produces, and all these difficulties will disappear.

—What, in fact, is wealth? A result, and nothing more. It is a fruit of the liberality of nature, or of the labor of man; a fruit which has only to be enjoyed, and which affords no aliment to observation. What is there to be studied in such a fact? Nothing. But the means that men employ to acquire that wealth, when nature does not give it in sufficient quantity, are another matter entirely. This is a great, an important fact, worthy of all the attention of the philosopher, and it is the only one the study of which political economy can dwell upon.

—If a decisive proof of this is required, we shall find it in this last argument of Rossi's, of which we have already spoken. After having laid down this principle, that general wealth is increased by the low price of merchandise and all kinds of products, he adds: "If the price falls to zero, evidently the general wealth will be infinite; there will be no more exchanges; each having all that he can desire, exchange becomes impossible. How, then, could wealth be an exchangeable value, since it would be infinite, if there were no value in exchange?" This, we believe, is decisive against those economists who do not wish to consider wealth as anything else than exchangeable value.40 But does it prove in the same way that political economy should occupy itself with value in use, devoid of exchangeable value? Let us suppose Rossi's somewhat forced hypothesis realized, the prices of everything at zero, and general wealth infinite. What would happen? It is true there would be no exchangeable value, but neither would there be any political economy. Value in exchange, as Rossi correctly says, would disappear completely as soon as the wants of each one found unlimited means of satisfaction. No one would then have recourse to exchange. Nothing is truer; no one would have recourse to exchange, nor even to labor; but neither would any one think of studying political economy, because political economy itself would not have anything to study. The entire earth would present the picture of the Elysian fields described by Fenelon, in his "Adventures of Telemachus." All the wants of men would be satisfied. There would be no wants to express, and consequently no efforts to be made to provide for them. But what would the economist have to do in such an environment? Nothing, but to survey at his ease a picture of universal happiness, and thank God for his goodness. Political economy would disappear with exchangeable value and the realization of universal wealth: so true is it that it is not wealth that it studies, but exchange, with the division of labor and all the important phenomena that accompany it.

—Rossi himself, as we have said, has not studied anything else. And, in reality, once out of these discussions on wealth and value, which embarrass him in the commencement of his work, he goes through the same route already passed over by his predecessors. He follows, in their developments, the phenomena of exchange, the division of labor, the combination and subordination of the different kinds of labor, as well as the complex relations which these phenomena engender. He investigates the laws which determine the exchangeable value of things: those which regulate the rate of wages, the rate of profits, and revenues of every sort. He does not stop a moment, whatever he may have stated at the outset, to consider the absolute and inherent utility of things, or what he calls their value in use, independent of the relative value which they acquire in the great market of labor. Neither does he stop to consider the reason of our wants, admitting, with all economists, that individuals are the only judges of their respective wants, and that they express them sufficiently by the demand which they make for certain products.

—We can, then, say of Rossi what we have said of all the other economists, that it is the industrial movement which he studies, with all its developments and all its consequences, and by no means the simple result, wealth, which would offer no material to his observations. When he frees himself for a moment from the too great anxiety which the word "wealth" causes him, he defines the subject as we ourselves have done. For example, after explaining the series of economic phenomena, he adds: "They appear in all this continued action of men on the material world; they are all embraced in this incessant rotation of labor, of consumption, of reproduction and of exchange." Yes, it is in the continual action of men on the material world that all economic phenomena are included, and it is precisely on this account that the wealth which is not derived from this action of man, or which has not felt that action, that is to say, which does not enter into the current of exchanges, is not an economic fact.

—We should have dwelt less upon this error if it related only to words; but it has had its consequences. It has not precisely changed the basis of economic studies, since, after all, economists have generally continued unfaithful to the definition which they have adopted; but it has given an ambiguous character to the science, which has produced distrust in the minds of those who only half understood it, and it has given too much advantage to the adversaries of political economy. It has, besides, overloaded, especially in the outset, the science with subtle distinctions and vain abstractions, which have become, for economists themselves, an inexhaustible source of barren debates. We shall soon return to these consequences, but it is proper to go first to the source itself of the error which we have just pointed out.

—V. Why Wealth rather than Human Industry has been assigned to Political Economy as a Study. Consequences of this Error. We have already seen that political economy, before it became a science, was, for a long time, an art. It was a branch of the art of governing, an art which concerned especially the material interests of nations. Hence its name, which evidently designates an art. Hence, also, the formula which serves to designate the special object of its labors. Things have changed, the art has given birth to a science; it has been transformed itself, changing in character and object; but the name and formula have been preserved. This is why political economy bears to-day names so inappropriate to its real character.

—The chief tendency of this ancient art, which preceded the science, was, whenever it had not the regulation of taxes and the finances of the state as its sole object, to act directly on the public wealth; to create wealth, if it is permitted to say so, by means of governmental measures or by the mechanism of legislation. All writers who pretended to be economists, therefore, thought themselves called on to furnish methods or receipes calculated to enrich the nation for whose benefit they wrote. We find a curious and sad example of this in the system so unfortunately applied, in France, by the Scotchman, John Law, and which had been preceded, in England, Spain and France, by many other systems, which, if not similar, were at least conceived in the same spirit. Some wished to enrich their country by specially favoring agriculture, considering the direct products of the soil as more abundant and reliable than all the wealth procured by manufacturing industry or commerce; others, generally infected by the idea that people become rich only at the expense of others, placed all the hope of a nation, either in the forced extension of foreign markets or in the exclusion of foreign products; and these last turned their attention mainly toward manufacturing industry and commerce. In other respects they differed from each other, in the nature of the means proposed; some only thought of acting on foreign commerce through the tariff, while others were occupied with the internal management, the organization itself, of industry; but whatever might have been the difference in their principles or their methods, they invariably tended toward the same end, the immediate increase of public wealth. They would have considered that they had done nothing if they had not invented some sovereign recipe, some speedy and marvelous method. Thus, in 1664, one of the most celebrated economists of the seventeenth century, Thomas Mun, published in England a work under the following title, which indicates clearly enough its object and tendency: "England's Treasure by Foreign Trade; or, the balance of our foreign trade is the rule of our treasure." Another writer, Davenant, published in 1699 a book under the no less significant title of "An Essay on the probable method of making the people gainers in the balance of trade." In another style, but guided by the same spirit, W. Potter published, in London, in 1659, a work entitled "The Tradesman's Jewel; or, a safe, easy, speedy and effectual means for the incredible advancement of trade and multiplication of riches, etc., by making bills become current instead of money." The seventeenth century, and even the commencement of the eighteenth, abounded in similar writings, in France, as well as in England and Spain. Projects of this kind are not rare, even in our day; but they are at present merely eccentricities, while then they formed the only basis of economic works. Thus, wealth was the direct object of these works, to such a degree that all writings on political economy which date from that period might be summed up in this general formula: "How must we proceed to enrich a people?" It is true, then, that political economy had wealth as its direct object, and so many economists did not deceive themselves as to the real tendency of their studies when they inscribed the word "wealth" on their banners.

—It was from these unfortunate attempts that the real science came. By force of studying industry and commerce in order to subject them to adventurous plans and govern them according to their views, publicists became accustomed by degrees to observe industry and commerce. They remarked their most striking peculiarities and their most ordinary characteristics. Struck by the regularity of some of the phenomena which took place in this then new world, they caught a glimpse of the existence of certain laws, which they half noted. In this way scientific observations slipped insensibly into these artificial combinations, the unfortunate fruits of the imagination of their authors, and these observations increasing by degrees, in proportion as attention was directed to the subject, ended by impregnating, so to speak, with rather a strong dose of science, the very works composed in view of an art. This infusion of science into art is very evident in some of the writings which date from the end of the seventeenth century and the commencement of the eighteenth. If precepts still abound in them, to the point of predominating everywhere, scientific observations, and observations sometimes very correct, are not rare in them. In this way the science began. But, as the invention of an art was always the fixed idea of writers, and as this art had always the increase of wealth in view, the preconceived notion that the direct object of political economy was wealth, remained.

—It was then that the school of Quesnay arose. It was the first to renounce the discovery of this deceptive and false art, which had been so vainly sought for up to that time. By proclaiming the great principle, Laissez faire, laissez passer, it boldly announced, from the very start, that it did not appear in order to give people special rules to increase their fortune, but to set forth the scientific explanation of that imposing mechanism which human industry presents for the reflection of philosophers. This formula, too little understood, had, in their mouths, a profound significance, which it is well to recall. It was not pure science, as Rossi has wrongly stated; it was art since it was still a precept. But it was a precept which carried with it the negation of all others in this, that it rejected all the artificial combinations which had been imagined up to that time; it was the revelation of science, and was itself the first fruit of this revelation. It might be translated thus: "You have believed up to the present time that the industrial world was a kind of body without soul, an irregular assemblage of incoherent forces, without a principle of conduct, without cohesion, without a bond. You have believed that this world floated about at hazard, and that it needed the hand of an organizer to regulate and conduct it. You have outrivaled each other in striving to propose for it, or impose on it, your artificial combinations and your preconceived systems. Undeceive yourself: this industrial world does not move at hazard; under the apparent disorder of its course is hidden a profound order; it is governed by natural laws, admirable laws, in some regards inflexible laws, which it is necessary to know and respect. Avoid disturbing, by your arbitrary combinations, these natural laws which are superior to man. Respect this providential order; let the work of God alone."

—This did not mean that governments had nothing to do but fold their arms; for governments have their rôle marked out for them in the natural order of society, such as it was understood by the physiocrates; but it did mean that governments should limit themselves to accomplishing their real task without undertaking to substitute an arbitrary system for the natural order of society. Thus understood, this maxim, Laissez faire, laissez passer, is one of the most beautiful, most profoundly philosophical, and at the same time one of the most correct, which had ever been enunciated. It brought with it, we say, the revelation of a science, and asserted the existence of these natural laws, whose study is the mission of science, and without whose existence our science would be without any object to study. It was at the same time the first fruit of this revelation; for, although men may differ yet as to the extension which should be given to governmental action, the maxim, Laissez faire, laissez passer, must always be accepted, in its general expression, by every one who even admits that there is a science of economy. Either the natural order of industry exists, or it does not exist. If it does not exist, you can fill the void by your arbitrary combinations; you can fashion and direct the industrial world according to your pleasure; you may even imagine for it an artificial organization of labor; but in such case speak no more of science. If, on the contrary, you admit that this order exists, your first duty is to respect it.

—Nevertheless, this announcement of science, in which the school of Quesnay had the initiative and the chief glory, by changing at once the tendency and direction of economic study, necessarily involved a change of ancient formulæ and definitions. There was no longer a question, as there was formerly, of inventing an art which would have as its immediate result the creation of wealth by means of legislative enactments. The school of Quesnay admitted, on the contrary, that the true source of wealth is in the industry of man, in the spontaneous activity of individuals, and that the best thing to be done is to let that activity have the greatest possible freedom. It was no longer a question of considering wealth directly, but rather to study the activity of individuals in its natural relations and in its laws. Not that the school of Quesnay absolutely renounced the formulation of an art: it could not renounce it, under pain of leaving science itself barren. But this new art, more rational than the old, in this, above all, that it was deduced from truths observed by science, instead of tending as formerly to the immediate creation of wealth, was forced to have as its sole object the restriction of governmental action within its natural limits, and to regulate it within these limits in conformity with the natural laws of industry. Thenceforth, wealth was no longer the direct object either of science or art. Thenceforth, these changed studies needed new names and new definitions.

—Quesnay's school understood the exigencies of this transformation, and the very titles of the principal works which are due to it attest this fact: physiocracy, natural order of societies; two different titles, but which have nearly the same sense or the same bearing, in that they both announce the scientific statement of certain natural laws, and no longer the invention of an art; more scientific titles surely, and more satisfactory in this regard, than those afterward imagined. Unfortunately, the school of Quesnay committed two capital errors in the erection of its system, which caused its attempts at renewal to fail, and weakened its decisions. The first of these errors consisted in the exaggerated importance which it attributed to the net product of the soil, what we now call the rent of land, which it put forward as the only or main source of the real revenue of a people; the second, in the unnatural mingling of economic phenomena and political facts, between which it was unable to establish the necessary line of demarcation.

—When Adam Smith, who first placed the science on its true foundation, appeared, he returned, unfortunately, in so far as formulæ and titles were concerned, to the old errors. While he exposed the grave mistakes into which the school of physiocrates had fallen, Adam Smith permitted himself to react perhaps too strongly against that school. He repudiated even the spirit of the new formulæ which it had adopted. These formulæ, as we have seen, were generally too ambitious, too broad, in that they seemed always to embrace at once the economic and the political order. It was proper, it was even necessary, to narrow them in a certain sense; but it was neither necessary nor proper to change their spirit, which was perfectly in harmony with the new tendency of economic studies. Instead of saying, as the physiocrates had done, "natural order of societies," and interpreting this formula as they had done, he might have said, "the natural order of industry," or used any other equivalent phrase, which would have preserved to economic studies the scientific character which they had received. Instead of this, in his desire to repudiate what there was excessive, from the point of view at which the physiocrates had placed themselves, Adam Smith returned purely and simply to the errors of his predecessors. The old prejudice remained—the prejudice that the economist is charged with furnishing recipes, the methods necessary to build up the fortune of nations—and Adam Smith himself was not able to guard against it. What was expected of him was the exposition of an art, tending to the creation of wealth, and he believed himself obliged to satisfy this expectation! The man who had left the business, the care of enriching nations altogether to private industry or the spontaneous activity of individuals, and who believed firmly, as his work proves, that it does not belong to governments to add anything to it from their own resources, still believed it incumbent on him to construct a system intended to create national wealth, and to announce it formally, not only in the title of his work, but also, as we have seen, in his definition. It is true that his system is different from those which preceded it; it is the same as that of the physiocrates, Laissez faire, laissez passer, which is the device of every one who understands and practices the science: a system so different from others, and so peculiar in this regard, that those who in our day still take the old point of view ask, with a naïve astonishment, what is the meaning of a system which involves a negation of all systems? But Adam Smith at last proposes, like all the other economists, his method, his means of enriching nations, and this means consists in employing none. It is in this way that, from a point of view altogether new, he preserves the old forms. A man of science, he adopted the formulæ of his predecessors who only wished to invent an art. Devoted to the study of certain natural phenomena, he gives us lessons and precepts at every moment, and in truth gives a great number of them, though these lessons and these precepts only tend in general to show the vanity of those given before him, and that they are merely a negation. In substance the work of Adam Smith is a work of science, since he explains the industrial order in its natural and spontaneous formation; but his work, in form, is almost always a work of art, where all the old formulæ are reproduced. Since the publication of Adam Smith's great work, which founded, and was worthy of founding, a school, these annoying traditions have been maintained. Political economy, though rejuvenated and transformed, has preserved in many respects its old dress.

—Appearing after Adam Smith, and when the science was already freeing itself from the obscurity in which it had been involved, J. B. Say understood, better than his predecessor, the nature of his labors and their real object. He felt very clearly that it was not a means of fortune which he taught to nations, and he was very careful not to say it was; he declared, on the contrary, repeatedly, and under various forms, that it was a simple exposition which he wished to make. "Political economy," be says expressly, "teaches what happens and what is." In this he had a clearer understanding than Adam Smith of the tendencies of the new economic era, and freed himself, more than Adam Smith had done, from old prejudices. Carried away, however, by the same considerations as Adam Smith; wishing, like Adam Smith, to free himself from the physiocrates, who had given the field of the science limits altogether too extensive; and believing that he was thereby merely reducing the science within its limits, he also inscribed the word "wealth" on his banner. Since that time it seems admitted as an article of faith among economists that wealth is the special object of their studies. There is no longer any appeal from this decision. In spite of some isolated and barren protests, here and there, all the labors of economists are supposed to be concerned with wealth.

—We have just seen what were the causes of this deviation. We shall now see what its consequences are. And, first of all, if we suppose that political economy has to do exclusively or primarily with wealth, it is utterly impossible to give it even a partially satisfactory definition; and we are obliged to say, with Rossi, that it is the science of wealth. But what is the science of wealth? Is there, can there be, a science of wealth? Strictly speaking, we can understand an art of producing wealth; but can we conceive a science connected with the analysis or study of such a fact? What is it to study wealth? is it the fact itself, the result, or the means employed to produce it? If it is the fact itself, it will be necessary to limit ourselves to analyzing the elements of which wealth is composed; and what is the object, what the utility, of such a labor? To study wealth in the means employed to produce it, is quite another thing: here there may be material for a vast series of observation; but, then, it is not properly wealth which is studied, for we must not confound the means with the end: it is either human industry, if there be question of wealth produced by the labor of man; or it is the operation of nature, if there be question of the benefits which we receive from nature without labor.

—It is useless for Rossi, in order to give a sort of consistency to his definition, to say that there are phenomena of a certain order, which are distinct from all other phenomena and relate to wealth, and that it is these which political economy should study, All these explanations, in which the embarrassment of the writer is betrayed at every word, in spite of his undoubted talent, only thicken the cloud with which he surrounds us. What are these phenomena of which you speak? They relate to wealth, you say, but apparently they are not wealth itself. Well, describe them, analyze them, indicate at least their character or nature; sum them up, if it is possible, in some definition or formula; perhaps then these phenomena will of themselves form an object worthy of our scientific investigation; but do not tell us that the object of these investigations is wealth, for evidently it is not.

—In his definition, which we have already quoted, J. B. Say was more precise without being happier. In saying that political economy describes how wealth "is produced, distributed and consumed," he escaped the vagueness into which Rossi has fallen, and he has given some body to his formula, but he has not succeeded for all that in being more correct. It will be noted, first of all, that this formula is more than a definition, it is, besides, a classification of materials; to divide one's subject in this way, is to draw a plan, not to define it. And what is the use of it all? The divisions of a subject, the classifications of materials, whatever they may be, belong always to the writer, and depend more or less upon the point of view he assumes; it is, therefore, an error to present them, though the best possible, as being so essential to the subject as to form a part of its definition. Why did J. B. Say commit this error? Only, as it appears to us, because in binding himself to the word "wealth" as the basis of his definition, he had no other means of rendering his thought sensibly clear; he had then either to say too much, as he has done, or to be content with the vague formula of Rossi, which tells us nothing at all. What is this wealth which is produced, distributed and consumed?. Is wealth, perchance, self-producing and self-distributing? Apparently not; save, perhaps, that which nature produces and dispenses without the aid of man, as the air, the light, the heat of the sun, etc. J. B. Say carefully excludes these from his domain. Wealth is not produced by itself; we say, it results from human effort, or from several such efforts combined. Why, then, instead of the result, do you not much rather first take up, as the object of the science, the combination of human efforts that produce it? Why not openly, clearly announce in your formula that it is this combination of the different kinds of human labor which forms the object of your studies, since, after all, this is the only thing that can constitute the object of serious studies? To read the definitions in which wealth is made the subject of which political economy treats, we would suppose that matter acted and moved of itself, and that man counted for nothing. This, it is true, is only appearance; but this appearance is annoying, giving rise to many mistakes; it has often caused it to be said, by men who are strangers to the science, that the economist is devoted exclusively to the worship of matter, while in reality it is man, and man alone, that is the constant object of his labors.

—These formulæ, besides being vicious, have become the source of endless discussions, as tiresome as they are barren in results. Starting from the principle that the object of political economy is the study of wealth, the conclusion is drawn, with a certain appearance of reason, that its first care should be to define and characterize wealth; for how can we reason about wealth if we do not know what it is? and taking this specious reasoning as basis, each economist has made it a duty to place an interminable dissertation on this subject at the beginning of his work. They vie with each other, losing themselves in endless discussions and distinctions on utility, the first attribute of wealth, on value which is its complement, the nature of this value, the conditions of its creation, its existence, its extent, etc. Thus the science is made to bristle with abstractions; a terror to those who do not know it, and an object of disgust even for those who have cultivated it for a long time. The worst of all is, that, after so many long dissertations, these writers have not been able to agree whether it is value in use or value in exchange which constitutes wealth.

—What must men who are strangers to political economy, or who are only half acquainted with it, think of these endless discussions? They must think, and in reality do think, that there is nothing fixed or constant in a science in which its very point of departure, that which is or appears to be the foundation of all the rest, is a matter of dispute.

—Suppose that, instead of taking wealth as the subject or text of political economy, human industry had been taken, as is required by the nature and logic of things, it appears to us that things would have taken another course. The substance of the science would have remained the same, but the formulæ would have changed, and thenceforth the difficulties which we have just noticed would have disappeared of themselves. It would have become very easy to give a satisfactory definition of the science, not vague and incomprehensible, like that of Rossi, or complicated, detailed, and, after all, unsatisfactory, like that of J. B. Say, but which would be at once general and simple, comprehensive and clear. It would have been sufficient to say that political economy is the science of the general laws of the industrial world; or that it had as its object the study of labor, not in its technical methods, but in the relations which it produces and the laws which govern it. These formulæ, or equivalent ones, would have been sufficient to indicate the object of the science and its tendencies. Then, fully to define its meaning and bearing, it would have sufficed to prove, by a clear and precise exposition, the reality of the laws which they declare. On the other hand, by starting with such formulæ, the long dissertations on wealth, which obstruct the avenues of the science and render its approaches so difficult, might have been dispensed with. And what use is there in adhering so closely to the definition and description of wealth, since it is man, man as a worker, whom the science has in view? Wealth, it is true, should be the result of the labor of man, as it is its object, and it must consequently appear sometime; but it should appear in its proper place, as the fruit of labor, and then it would not be necessary to define it, since the definition would naturally result from the explanation itself of the labors which man has performed in order to obtain it. There would then be no distinction to be made between value in use and value in exchange; or rather, that distinction, which results from the very nature of things, would appear under another aspect.

—By the labors to which he devotes himself, man tends unceasingly to convert all things to his use, both the material objects which he finds at hand, and the immaterial truths which he discovers. Value in use is, therefore, the constant object of his care. It is wealth, taking the term wealth in its broadest acceptation. But this wealth is to be divided into two parts: one which man is obliged to win from nature every day by continually renewed labor; the other, which is acquired once and forever, and which he enjoys without labor. In this last category may be ranged, not only the advantages or the goods liberally dispensed by nature to all men, such as air, light, and the heat of the sun, but also all those which man has won by previous labor, and which are acquired once and forever to the race, and enjoyed by all without labor. Such, for example, is the stock of knowledge grown common to all in civilized countries, the improvement of the climate by cultivation, the possession of an incalculable number of processes in the arts, which have become habitual and the property of all. This last part of the wealth of man is surely not the least interesting; but as it has been definitively acquired, as man enjoys it henceforth without effort or sacrifice, he need no longer concern himself with it, unless perhaps to endeavor to increase it. The economist, in like manner, need not busy himself with it, except to state its extent and its benefits. It is only the other part, that which is the object of incessant labor, that really enters into his domain, for it is only here that there are real phenomena to observe.

—We have not said all that can be said concerning the annoying results of economic formulæ. The necessity of being continually occupied with wealth, which it has made its special text, has forced political economy to construct a language of its own, an obscure, involved language, full of subtleties and abstractions. Hence, for example, the expression "immaterial products," to designate simple services rendered, or labor which is not realized in any product, and many others of the same kind: annoying expressions, to say nothing of the outrages which they commit on language in this, that they seem to transport us to an unknown world, lying outside of nature.

—To sum up, political economy, turning on an abstraction, wealth, has become, in its forms at least, an abstract science. Taking matter as its text, it has become a material rather than a moral science, in the eyes of those at least who do not see into its depths. Besides, it has borrowed from inanimate matter all the appearances of a dead science, while it could and should be full of life. It is not, moreover, in appearance alone that it experiences this; it has been grievously troubled by it even in its expositions and in the connection of the truths which it teaches. If, instead of a barren and laborious dissertation upon wealth, with which it always sets out, and from which afterward flow, with such difficulty and trouble, the solid truths which constitute its substance, political economy had taken as its point of departure, or its text, human labor, what it would have accomplished! It would have begun with a broad, animated, living picture of the industrial world as it exists; it would have exhibited the general organization of human industry as it results from exchange, from the division of labor, from the subordination of the tasks which connect the labor of some with the labor of other men, and the use of metallic money, which establishes among all the separate kinds of labor a universal connection. It would have next explained the conditions of the existence of these kinds of labor and their principal motives; then, descending by degrees into the details of the structure of industry, it would have unfolded successively all its springs and declared its laws. All the truths which constitute the substance of political economy would have found their place in this grand structure. What a difference there would be in the animation of the subject, the facility, the order, ease and clearness of the deductions! It would have been possible even to introduce, if judged necessary, those subtle distinctions, those abstractions, with which the rudiments of the science are at present actually bristling, with this difference, however, that, taking their places only after an explanation of the primary truths of which they are really but the consequences, those abstractions would have flowed from these truths as easily as corollaries flow from a geometric proposition. We leave it to be considered, if, with such a point of departure and explained in this order, the science of political economy would not wear a different appearance, and be broader, more animated, more living, and even easier than it is to-day.

—VI. Definitive Character of Economic Science: it is a branch of the Natural History of Man. Its Extent and its Limits. When economic science is defined as the science of wealth, it is very difficult to say to what genus of science it belongs. Is it a moral science? It is not; for it seems to be devoted exclusively to the study of matter. Is it a natural science? Still less; for it is concerned almost entirely with an abstraction. It may be pretended that it is the science of matter, or the science of abstractions; and it is in this way that those who judge only by formulæ speak of it. In this case one is very much embarrassed to know where to class it. But this embarrassment ceases the moment it is brought back to its real subject, the labor of man.

—Political economy has been ranged in the category of moral sciences. We accept that title for it, which contains nothing but what is very honorable, and which is correct. It studies the acts and deeds of men, and there is always a certain morality in human actions; but this title, however honorable, is not the only one due to political economy, which is, besides, a natural science, for in its essence it is but a branch of the natural history of man. The anatomist studies man in the physical constitution of his being; the physiologist, in the action of his organs; natural history, properly speaking, in his habits, his instincts, his wants, and in relation to the place which he occupies in the scale of beings; as to political economy, it observes and studies him in the combination of his labors. Is it not a part of the study of a naturalist, and one of the most interesting, to observe the labor of bees in a hive, to study their order, combinations and movements? The economist, in so far as he simply cultivates the science without troubling himself about its applications, does precisely the same thing for that intelligent bee, man: he observes the order, the movements and the combinations of his labors. The two studies are absolutely of the same nature; with this difference only, that the field occupied by the economist is incomparably broader, the combinations which he observes more subtle, more extended and more complex. The theatre of his observations is the great stage of the world. The order which he describes has, besides, a more elevated character, and, although less apparent and more difficult to understand, that order is much more wonderful also than the order of a beehive. The difference is measured by that between an insignificant insect and man.

—We have now determined the character and object of political economy, of that almost intangible science, the definition of which has caused so much embarrassment to those who cultivate it, and given such advantage to its enemies. It is simply a branch of the natural history of man, and surely not the least interesting nor the least beautiful. It only remains to us now to fix its extent and limits.

—For a long time, and during the whole period in which political economy was considered a branch of the art of government, industry itself appeared merely as a fact subordinate to the political order, occupying in each state a fixed and rather narrow place. As it was submitted to the supreme action of the political powers, which were looked upon as its guardians and natural directors, it was examined only in its relations to the state. It was looked upon then as a national fact in politics, and it is from this point of view that it was considered by all the early writers. But, in proportion as men closely observed industry, they were not slow to find that in no place did it stop at the conventional limits of states. They recognized in it an invincible tendency to extend, to spread outward, to go from one people to another, without respect even for the barriers which political power had established. It was seen to possess a sympathetic virtue which impelled it to clear away every barrier and to overturn or avoid every obstacle, to draw together nations the most different, and to rally them all into the great community of labor by a universal exchange of products and services. Such is the essential character of industry. Universal by nature, it has always been so in principle, and tends every day to become so in practice. The relations which it engenders extend from pole to pole; the species of community among men which it creates, already embraces the whole earth; and if certain feeble fractions of the human race appear still to escape its influence, it tends unceasingly and with an invincible force to draw them into its net.

—As the field which economic science explores should be as extended as that of industry itself, whose laws it studies, it can evidently have no other limits in space than the limits of the globe itself. Certain economists, however, have been deceived here. They have tried to give their studies a more real or precise character by confining them, or rather by trying to confine them, within the limits of a given country. Such a tendency is remarked among certain writers of North Germany. But, try as they might, they have not been able to remain faithful to the law which they pretended to impose on themselves. "The theory of social wealth," says Fr. Skarbek, "may comprise the whole earth if we look at it as the patrimony of the human race; from this point of view, as broad as it is elevated, its investigation would, without doubt, offer to the mind many philanthropic ideas which would be shared by all the friends of humanity; but it would not lead to any important result in the science, and would not advance us in the knowledge of the principles of the wealth of nations." (Théorie des richesses sociales, 2d part, introduction.) We beg pardon of the estimable writer, but this point of view, "as broad as it is elevated," which he sets aside through caution, is the only true one. In order that political economy, or, as Fr. Skarbek calls it, "the theory of social wealth," should comprehend the whole earth, it is not at all necessary that economists should be given up to philanthropic ideas, or form wishes more or less realizable for a general union among all nations. It is sufficient that the science be exact and true. Strictly speaking, it is sufficient that it should be occupied with the phenomena which are peculiarly within its domain. Among these phenomena the first place is occupied by exchange, the division of labor, the subordination or the connection of the various kinds of labor, the circulation of products, the use of money. These are in industry the great arterial lines, the primordial facts which engender all the others; and this is true to Fr. Skarbek himself, who, like all other economists, accords them the first rank. Now, of all these phenomena, there is not a single one which stops at the limits of any state. They do not stop even in countries which surround themselves with a triple line of custom houses, and which reject foreign products as far as they can. Everywhere, no matter what is done, exchange extends more or less beyond these artificial barriers, and the labor of each country has its branches outside. The very efforts made at the frontiers of certain states to stop the circulation of products, only show more clearly the expansive tendencies of industrial facts. As to the circulation of money, nothing stops it, and here, with the full force of the term, we have a universal fact. But if all the principal economic phenomena extend beyond the limits of individual states, how can the science itself be confined within them? Fr. Skarbek errs, therefore, in this, for want of rendering an account to himself of the nature of the facts with which he deals. Rossi was in this respect much more in the right when he said that economic science, when carefully considered, had the world for its theatre. Does this mean that political economy should take no account of nationalities? Most assuredly not. On the contrary, it makes great account of them, but it does not confine itself to them; it could not, without mutilating itself or abdicating its place. "We must," says Fr. Skarbek, "look on the human race as it is, that is to say, divided into a great number of societies different from each other in the degrees of civilization and power at which they have severally arrived." (Ibid.) Doubtless it is necessary to look at the human race as it exists, but if this human race is divided into a great number of political societies, it is not specially comprised in any one of them; to speak more clearly, it should comprehend them all. The only question is, whether the facts which political economy considers are political facts, that is to say, peculiar to one or the other of these societies, or facts of humanity, that is to say, common to all the human race. Now, the answer to this question can not be doubtful, at least as regards the science strictly speaking; it is not doubtful even in the writings of Skarbek, who could not have deceived himself on this subject if he had not reasoned on science, as unfortunately so many other economists do, with the preconceived notions of an art.

—Nevertheless, nationalities, states, and the governments which manage them, are also, from a certain point of view, economic facts, and facts of considerable importance; the more considerable since it is through them that order, security and justice, so necessary in the great workshop of labor, are enforced. They should therefore not be forgotten. But to consider the human race in its totality, with regard to the general phenomena which concern it, it is not necessary to forget, nor to lessen, the particular facts which concern each one of the great fractions of which it is composed. Here, then, we have the field of political economy marked out so far as space is concerned. Its observations should not and can not be concentrated in a particular state; they should embrace the earth. To see what takes place in this or that country, is not to study industry, but fractions of industry. Even this partial survey is impossible, since any one who examines closely what passes in his own country, will recognize without difficulty that each of the phenomena which he has observed has its prolongation elsewhere. It may be of use, doubtless, to show the local influence of the particular kinds of legislation of each state, and the manner in which they modify the action of general laws; it is even necessary, in all cases, to take account of this salutary influence which every government exercises in its sphere, by the single fact of maintaining order and security. All these particular facts have their place in the vast circle of studies which political economy embraces, but it is none the less true that the ground of all these studies is in a sum total of phenomena which includes the human race in its entirety.

—If, as to space, political economy knows no other limits than those of the earth itself, we can also say that it includes in its domain all men without distinction, to whatever class they belong or whatever their occupation. It would, indeed, be a great error to suppose that the industrial phenomena from which economic science draws its life concern only men actually engaged in industry, merchants, manufacturers, and all those commonly included under the name of workingmen; it comprehends all without exception. We are all interested in exploiting this globe of ours, and this is enough to bind us to the scene of our labor. If we are not all bound to it by our labor, we are at least so bound by our wants; and nearly all of us, it must be said, aid in this exploitation of the globe, even without knowing it, in a direct or indirect manner. This is not at all doubtful in the case of men who hold the reins of power in nations, or who govern them; it is by their ministry that order, security and justice reign in the great workshop of industry. From this point of view, functionaries, judges, officials of all kinds, assist in the common labor, by the fact alone that they defend it against acts of violence which might disturb it. This is also true in the case of scholars, who, without taking part in industrial labor properly speaking, throw light on the path of progress. If there is in the world a sufficient number of men of whom one can not say absolutely that they assist, directly or indirectly, in the common labor, they at least render certain services to their equals, and this is enough to warrant us in including them in the grand army of labor. It would, in fact, singularly lessen the scope of human industry to consider it as exclusively devoted to the material exploitation of the terrestial globe; it has a more general object, that of answering to all the wants of man of whatever nature they may be. Thus, whoever renders a service to his fellows, whatever be the occupation to which he is devoted, is connected with general industry by his labor. Who, then, are the men who are not engaged in industry in some way? Apparently only those who live at the expense of their neighbors, by theft, robbery or beggary, but even these, if they do not belong to the industrial order by their labor, are still connected with it indissolubly by their wants.

—In the stage of civilization which humanity has reached, every man, in whatever position he may be, in whatever degree of the social scale he may be placed, depends on exchange, at least so far as his wants are concerned, which he can only satisfy through it. Now, exchange is the first of the general conditions of industry, and the chief source of all the others. He is also connected with the division of labor by the functions which he performs, if he performs any, or, in default of any, by the rank alone which he occupies. There is no person who does not use money, at least in certain cases, and money is one of the principal agents of the industrial order. In fine, we are all obliged to accept the value of things which the general condition of the markets has established. In all this we are irrevocably bound to the industrial order, and we submit to its laws. If a few men escape it, they are mere savages, and the last among savages, those who, lost in some corner of a desert land, have no relations with the rest of the world; for in regard to other savages, they make, after all, some exchanges, and generally devote themselves to some special occupation adapted to their support. Thus, the industrial order not only extends over the whole earth, it embraces, besides, all men, without distinction. Thus, too, the field of political economy, considered as a science, being no other than that of industry itself, whose laws it studies, it is clear that it comprehends in its domain the totality of mankind.

—From this point of view we can say that economic science has no limits; but if it has not, so far as the extent of the circle it embraces is concerned, it has them marked out clearly enough as to the object with which it is concerned. Though connected exclusively with man, it does not take all of man into consideration; that which it studies specially is human industry, comprising under this general denomination the sum of labors which men perform, or the mutual services which they render each other for the satisfaction of their respective wants. Further, it does not consider these special services except in so far as they are rendered under the law of exchange, that is to say, in consideration of a return. Man, living in society, has his duties to fulfill to his neighbors, his duties as a son, a father, husband, citizen; he has others to fulfill to his Creator. These duties political economy considers as foreign to its domain: it leaves the care of determining them and regulating them to religion, to morality, and the law. Besides the strict duties which religion, morality and law impose on him, man has feelings of sympathy which often decide him to come to the assistance of his neighbors without any hope of repayment. This is also an order of things with which political economy has nothing to do. It examines only those positive and strictly definable relations which are established between men, when each of them, while rendering services to others, counts on a just remuneration for these services, and works in reality for himself.

—All this is easily understood, because it all results sufficiently from the single general enunciation of the object which economic science proposes to itself: the study of human industry. But what should be brought out more clearly is this, that political economy does not study even industry under all its phases; that, for example, it never considers industry in the processes which it employs in the technic or scientific means which it uses, but only in the relations which it engenders, and in the general laws by which it is governed. Thus, every industrial worker, manufacturer or merchant comes under the observation of political economy. This is not doubtful with regard to the labors which he executes. But political economy does not consider these labors in themselves and in their technical processes; it only considers them in their connection with the labors which are executed elsewhere and in regard to their relations with the whole. What is seen in an artisan is the place which he occupies in the great workshop of labor, the office which he fills there; but it does not inquire how he fills that office, or at least it only judges by results. It sees the products which he delivers to his neighbors, the condition under which he delivers them, and the remuneration which he obtains. It sees at the same time the action exercised upon him by all of his surroundings, the influences which he undergoes, and the necessities by which he is held to submit to them. But it takes no note of the processes which he uses in the branch of labor with which he is occupied.

—Political economy is in this respect, then, perfectly distinct from technology, and in general from all the arts and sciences which men apply in the particular labors to which each one devotes himself. It takes account of all these arts and sciences, it gives them a place, but always considers them only in regard to their relations with the whole, only in the function which they fulfill, in the action which they exercise, but never in themselves, and in their processes. The reason of this is easily understood. If we admit, in fact, that there is in the industrial world, as it exists, certain constant relations between workmen, invariable laws, a fixed and regular order which can be settled and defined, it is this order, these relations, these laws, which political economy should study, and nothing more; it could go no further, to observe, for example, the particular processes of the labors whose relations it studies, without losing its way. Thus, the field of economic science is limited on all sides. It halts everywhere, if it is permitted to say so, at the very portals of the sanctuary in which the arts are carried on. It touches all these sciences and all these arts, but without interfering with any, examining them only in their relations to the whole.

—This last consideration should establish a clear dividing line between political economy and politics proper. Politics is an art, the art of governing a political society or a nation, in view of certain ends; in view, notably, of establishing order, security and justice therein, of maintaining and making the rights of all respected. Political economy looks on this art, as on all others, in its relations with the total of economic facts, but in no way in its ordinary processes. It makes known, for instance, the salutary influence which a government exercises on the development of industry, when it maintains perfect security for all interests, absolute respect for all rights, and calls attention to the wrong which it inflicts on industry when it suffers these rights to be violated or when it violates them itself; but it does not discuss on what principles or what bases a government should be instituted in order to accomplish its mission in the best manner possible. This is a task which it leaves to politics as it leaves to technology that of determining the best possible methods of manufacturing in one branch of industry or another.

—VII. Actual or Possible Applications of Economic Science. No science is destined to remain barren forever. Considered in itself, a science only studies what takes place and what exists, without inquiring what use may be made of the truths which it establishes. "From the moment that we busy ourselves," says Rossi, justly, "with the employment which may be made, or the profit that may be drawn, from science, we leave science and fall into art." Still, as the profit which may be derived from it is, after all, the final object proposed in studying science, it is not forbidden, even to the scholar, to examine what are or would be its possible applications. This is the more necessary here, since in this Cyclopædia economic art and science are in many regards mingled and confounded. What, then, are the useful applications which may be made of political economy in the present, or those which may be made of it in the future? The study of economic science will not lead, we may be sure, to the discovery of that chimera, that sort of philosopher's stone, so long sought for: the art of enriching nations by means of legislative combinations; on the contrary, the first fruit of this study is to make it clearly understood that the creation of such an art is impossible. Political economy shows, indeed, in the first place, that all wealth is derived from the energy of individual labor or the spontaneous activity of men; it shows, in the second place, that this spontaneous activity obeys, of itself, or by the force of things alone, certain regular laws which direct it unceasingly toward the most fruitful results, toward results the best that human industry can produce. In the presence of these two capital truths, the first that flow from the total of economic investigation, we are convinced that every artificial combination imposed on human labor is capable only of troubling its natural order, and diminishing its fruits. Neither will this study lead to the discovery of that other art so vainly sought for by certain modern sectaries, that of dividing the fruits of labor among the different classes or the different members of society according to conventional laws, to render this division more equal among men, or, as is supposed, more conformable to equity. It shows, and this is another of the capital truths which it gives to the world, that the partition or distribution of the fruits of labor effected by the natural laws of industry, is, when no artificial system intervenes to trouble the action of these natural laws, or when violence does not prevent their effect, the most equitable and the best possible. It proves that this division is continually effected according to the grand principle which men have pretended to inaugurate by other means: to each one according to his capacity, and to each capacity according to its works—a principle of rigorous justice, which does not reduce men to an impossible level, but which leaves to each one a share of enjoyment corresponding to the sum of the labors which he has furnished, or the services which he has rendered.

—In all this, then, the study of political economy leads us, and this is its first fruit, to renounce in an absolute manner the discovery of all those artificial combinations, in the search for which so many distinguished men have wasted their powers. It conducts us to this without effort, by the sole revelation of the natural order which it brings to light. After this revelation, all arbitrary combinations should vanish, because they have no longer any raison d'être, and because they can only trouble the pre-existing natural order. And this is why political economy, from the first, necessarily enunciated this great principle, Laissez faire, laissez passer, a principle which may be called a system if you will, but which has no value but this, that it is the negation of all artificial systems. Is this saying that political economy can not be applied usefully, that it can not reach any practical result? Decidedly not. On the contrary, there are many practical results, whose realization it can help to effect.

—It is, to begin with, a first and very great practical result to have caused the abandonment of all artificial systems, the unhappy fruits of the errors of men, some of which have already brought many evils on humanity, while others have sometimes menaced it with still greater evils. Political economy has shaken these systems to their foundations, beginning with that which consisted in regulating the labors of men, subjecting them to hindrances; including those which strove for nothing less than to substitute a new organization of industry sprung all armed from the head of some excited enthusiast, for that admirable natural organization which human genius has produced. This is the first service which economic science has rendered, and if it had done nothing else, it surely could not be said that it is barren of results. But it can render others still more direct and of a more positive nature.

—If from political economy we can not deduce the art of enriching nations, we can at least deduce from it another art, more rational and truer, that of governing them, in everything touching the interests of labor, in the manner most conformable to their natural tendencies. This still tends to enrich them, but by a different and much surer method, which is to desist from harassing their industry and diminishing its fruits. And if political economy, without interfering in politics, meaning by that whatever relates to the form itself of government, takes into consideration the state, or the power which directs the state in reference to the influence which it exercises and should exercise on the industrial circle which it embraces, it should also, for the same reason, say how far that influence ought to extend in order to protect the industrial order without troubling it. It is, then, its office to determine the real attributes of the state and the limits of these attributes.

—It does more. Even within the limits of these attributes it indicates the best measures to be adopted, keeping always in view the industrial order which it studies, and the spontaneous development of human activity. Among the legitimate attributes of political power, is, beyond doubt, that of levying and collecting taxes, in order to satisfy its own wants. Without examining whose province it is to levy or collect these taxes, a question which belongs to the domain of politics, political economy examines according to what principles and in what form they should be levied and collected in order to obtain the sum of contributions necessary, with the least possible damage to the people. The theory of taxation is therefore one of the first arts which spring from political economy.

—It does not stop here. Although the essential and primitive function of political power is to establish security, justice and law, there are certain other functions which can not be denied it, that, notably, of directing in each state certain interests which can not, without danger, be left to the action of individuals, and which imperatively demand the interference of public power. The state should interfere more or less, for example, in whatever concerns the management of waters, the system of roads, etc. There are still other objects which are evidently within its jurisdiction. Men may discuss, and they will often discuss, the greater or less extension which it is proper to give to these accessory attributes of political power, but no one will deny that there are some which it can not and should not abandon. In all this, it is still economic science that has to furnish the general rules by which the mode and extent of the intervention should be regulated. In all countries, general legislation is necessary to regulate the rights of individuals among themselves, and those of individuals in their relations to the public. Commonly this legislation becomes complicated in proportion as the progress of civilization has created more numerous and complex interests. It is essentially important to the happiness of the human species that in its totality and in its details this legislation should always be in perfect accord with that natural order which political economy reveals. It is true that to establish this accord it is very often sufficient to have recourse to good sense and the common principles of equity, for political economy itself does not demand anything but the triumph of equity; yet this is not sufficient in all cases. Besides the fact that it is not always easy in the complication of various interests to distinguish what is truly equitable from that which is merely specious, there are in all the legislations of the world a great number of provisions which are merely formal, and which belong to what might be called civil police provisions; and which are necessary sometimes to establish the rights of individuals, and sometimes to guarantee their enjoyment and preservation. It is especially in this part of legislation that there is a risk of going astray when one is not aided by the lights of economic science. It often happens in such cases, either that the guarantees offered are not sufficient for the preservation of the rights which it is wished to protect, or that they are superabundant, and stifle the action of these same rights under the weight of the formalities which they impose upon those rights. The legislation of civilized nations is, in our enlightened age, far from being exempt in this regard from all reproach. There is, on the contrary, not one which is not overburdened with annoying provisions and ill-conceived formalities, prejudicial to the public, and opposed to the very interests which they are intended to serve. How is legislation to be purged of these imperfections? By a more careful and general study of that natural order which political economy reveals and whose conditions it explains. Science has already rendered brilliant services in this direction. To it, above all, is due the relative merit of modern legislation, which, though very imperfect, is still far superior, on the whole, to that in force in the past. It will render still greater services here in the future, and we may hope that the world will be indebted to it, sooner or later, for a system of civil laws exactly appropriate to the real wants of human society.

—But it is not to legislators and governments alone that economic science has useful directions to give. Individuals may consult it with profit for the conduct of their private affairs, at least when these affairs extend beyond a certain limit. Individuals are forced, and more so than legislators and governments, to bend in all things to the industrial order to which they are essentially subordinate. They can scarcely, it is true, trouble it by their acts; for they have not the power to do so; at most, they are able to cause, by their errors or their faults, certain transient and altogether local disturbances in it. But the errors into which they allow themselves to be drawn, become fatal by hurrying them to their own ruin. They have, therefore, the greatest interest to avoid these errors, for on that their personal existence depends. Now, the best means of avoiding these errors is to study the industrial order in its essential constitution, in its natural tendencies and its normal development. If this study is not precisely necessary to the artisan and the retail merchant, who address themselves only to a small number of neighboring consumers, it is almost always necessary to those who work on a large scale, and especially to those who intend to embark in new enterprises. The majority of false steps taken on this road, and the disasters which they involve, when they are not purely the result of negligence or incapacity, arise from false ideas concerning the wants of society and its real tendencies.

—Political economy has often been given names different from that which it usually bears, and there is nothing very astonishing in this, for this name, as we have seen, is not very appropriate to it, and has scarcely any merit but that of having been sanctioned by long usage. Of these names we shall recall but a few. First, as to the present and ordinary name of the science: its origin is very ancient, since it is found at the head of a French treatise dated 1615, due to one Montchrestien de Watteville. The publicists of the school of Quesnay, who perhaps contributed more than others to sanction this ancient title, have nevertheless sometimes substituted another, that of physiocracy, which still serves to designate their school and their doctrine. Adam Smith, who cared more for things than for words, adopted the received titles without examination. J. B. Say, though he also accepted them, did not do so, at least in his later works and in the last editions of his Traité, without repugnance and regret. He would have preferred to be able to give another more fitting name to political economy, and he would have doubtless done so had he not feared to change the ideas of the public as to the real character of his labors. The name which he would have adopted in this case would have been social economy or social physiology, as he has himself declared several times. This last title would seem to us the most proper were it not likely to give rise to troublesome misunderstandings. The word physiology would, in every way, be very appropriate to economic science, since its object is to explain the action of the natural organs of industry. As to the word social, it would not be fitting except in so far as it should be well explained and well understood that the word relates to the great human society and that species of universal association which industrial relations create among men, and in no way to political society, which is only a fraction of that great society. Moreover, the word social has been so much abused in recent years, it has been made to serve as a cloak to so many foolish things, to so many anti-social and anti-human doctrines, that it will perhaps be necessary to avoid its employment for a long time to come.

—Fr. Skarbek has entitled his treatise, "Theory of Social Wealth," another name for political economy, less acceptable than those we have just noted, and which, after all that has preceded, we need not discuss.

—When there was created at the conservatory of arts and trades, at Paris, a chair of political economy, occupied at first by J. B. Say, and subsequently by Blanqui, it was called the chair of industrial economy. It may be that this name of industrial economy, imposed officially on a public chair, borrows from this circumstance a certain value, a certain authority. It has already served as title to a work founded on the first lectures of Blanqui, by two of his disciples.

—Some persons, strangers to the science, have also tried to impose on political economy the name of chrematistics, or other names stranger still. But these ill-sounding titles have never been seriously considered by any economist or even by the public.

—Whatever be the relative or absolute merit of some of these titles which we have passed in review, none has been able, up to the present, to prevail over that which long usage has sanctioned. After all, however incorrect this last may be, when it is considered in its etymological sense, perhaps it is better to adhere to it at least for the present. It is always dangerous, in the case of a science cultivated by so many minds, and in so many places, to alter or change received terms. And what importance has the etymological sense here? It is not the first time that a word has been deflected from its primitive sense, either by usage or by a change in the things themselves to which it refers; and we do not see that people who use it understand it the less on this account. If the future offers an opportunity to change the name which political economy still bears, it will be only when its 'general notions are more fully popularized and explained. The public mind will thus be prepared for the change of name.

CH. COQUELIN.

POLITICAL ECONOMY

POLITICAL ECONOMY, History of. The history of the science of economics falls naturally into two periods: that before, and that after, Adam Smith. The year 1776 may fairly enough be called the birth-year of economics, for in that year appeared Adam Smith's immortal work entitled, "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations." The science had passed through two stages of its development before that time: the embryonic and the formative periods. Men had thought upon economical subjects for ages in a desultory, blind sort of a way, but had produced nothing which even remotely resembled the science now called economics until within two centuries of Adam Smith. The embryo began to assume shape in the writings of those men who immediately preceded the so-called mercantilists; it appeared in a more developed shape in the formulations of the mercantile writers during the seventeenth century, and assumed a still more definite and orderly form in the theories of the economists or physiocrats of the eighteenth century. It was reserved for Adam Smith, however, to actually bring it into life and start it forth in its career of development. Adam Smith occupies a very similar position in the history of economics to that occupied by Kant in the history of philosophy. All theories and development of the preceding ages culminate in him, all lines of development in the succeeding ages start from him. His work has been before the public over one hundred years, and yet no second book has been produced that deserves to be compared with it in originality or importance. The subsequent history of the science is mainly the history of attempts to broaden and deepen the foundation laid by Adam Smith, to build the superstructure higher and render it more solid.

—Those who have attempted to find the origin of economics in antiquity have met with poor success. Even Roscher, with all his love for the historical method and his wonderful acquaintance with economical writings, has not been able to prove anything more than that ancient writers discussed some phases of various economic subjects—as how could they help doing so, if they touched upon social or political matters at all? One might as well claim that the New Testament contains a systematic treatise on political economy, because it discusses the proper method of treating the poor, and the relations between masters and servants, as to maintain that Plato and Aristotle, in their discussions of the state and its functions, elaborated an economic science, or even laid the foundations for such a science. Greek and Roman writers, it is true, discussed economic questions. So they discussed chemical, physical and geological questions, but it would hardly be claimed, even by their most enthusiastic followers, that they laid the foundations, in any real sense, of the modern sciences of chemistry, physics and geology. They considered nearly all questions which present themselves to the inquiring human mind. But many of them they did not approach from the right direction, and consequently their thought did not result in anything valuable. They reflected upon economic questions, and discussed them to some extent, but not from an economic standpoint. Economic issues were decided, not from economic considerations, but on social, political, religious or even esthetic grounds. Three things prevented the Greeks from elaborating a science of economics: 1, the abstract nature of their science; 2, their economical institutions; 3, their political and social theories. (Eisenhardt.) Greek science was abstractly philosophical. It was pre-eminently a priori. It was in such haste to reach ultimate generalizations that it was not content to make even elementary observations of actual facts. As a consequence it became mere form without content. Its theories were often directly opposed to patent facts. Such a method could not develop a science of economics, whose starting point is certainly the concrete facts of the material and moral world, whatever its subsequent logical method may be. Nor was the social and economic organization of the Grecian states any more favorable to the development of economics than their scientific method. Greece never got beyond the natural economy—that form of social organization in which the community is made up of a mere aggregate of households, each of which is largely independent of the others, since it satisfies its own want of material commodities by producing them itself, instead of depending on acquiring them by exchange. The typical Greek state was based on a landed aristocracy, whose members dwelt each in the midst of an estate, on which he employed enough slaves to work the lands and manufacture the commodities which necessity and comfort required. The economical phenomena of such a social organization could not be so striking as to attract the thoughtful attention of the thinkers and philosophers long enough to result in any valuable system of science. And finally, the Greek idea of labor barred in a most effectual way all attempts to investigate its real nature as an economic factor. Physical labor was held to be degrading. It unfitted a man for the higher and nobler duties of life, those relating to the state. It was necessary, therefore, for human society to be divided into two classes, the slaves and the masters. All physical labor must be performed by the former, so as to leave the latter leisure to live for the higher purposes of life. Plato carefully excluded artisans from his ideal state, and after calling a state organized in their interest a state of swine, he says that it is not worth the trouble to spend any time in discussing them. Aristotle recognized only one kind of physical labor as worthy occupation for free citizens, and that was agriculture. In this respect the Romans resembled Aristotle. Senators were disgraced who took part in undertakings which were not aristocratic, and agriculture was the only kind of physical labor which was allowed to be aristocratic. Of course, with such ideas of labor, there was no possibility of a science of economics, in the modern sense of the term. This bar to the rise of political economy was taken away by the triumph of Christianity, which made the servant equal to the master in the sight of God, and all kinds of labor equally honorable. But early Christian science was as antagonistic to any thoroughgoing investigation of economic problems as had been its predecessors. For, in the first place, it was as abstract and as a priori as Greek philosophy. In fact, it was a mere outgrowth of the latter, and for ages it did not get beyond it. In the second place, the ascetic influence was decidedly prominent. The doctrine of renunciation was preached. The way to get rich is to become so deeply interested in the life beyond the grave that the wealth of this world shall become of no importance. Such an idea was as inimical to the rise of political economy as the ancient idea of labor. Mediæval society also resembled that of antiquity, in that it was essentially a mere aggregate of private households, each largely independent of all the others. The system of barter still prevailed. Society was divided into two classes, lords and serfs. The latter lived for the former, and these, theoretically, for the state and the church, practically, for themselves. But toward the beginning of that period which we call modern times, things began to change, and the conditions began to be realized, one by one, which were necessary to the rise of economics. The first great step was the rise of the cities. The artisan and commercial classes began to work themselves up out of the subordinate positions they had always occupied, to an equality with the clergy and nobility. By coming together in cities they managed to develop a political strength which secured their rights and privileges. By the cheapness of their products they began to build up a trade with the country. The first germs of that vast organism which we may call the industrial economy of the world began to vegetate. Exchange by money began to take the place of exchange by barter. The trades unions insisted on the dignity of labor, and the representatives of the cities claimed equal rank with those of the courts. The growth was rapid. Kings and princes saw in the cities a means of humbling the power of the barons and of increasing the revenue at their disposal. The need of money to sustain their armies led the kings to consider the best way of getting money. The thought and attention of their ministers were directed more and more powerfully to this subject, though of course all the time more toward the practical question of how to get a large revenue, than to the theoretical one of how to establish and maintain national wealth. Works upon money are consequently the earliest writings we have on economical subjects. It might have been a long time, however, before any system of economical theories would have been elaborated, had it not been for the discovery of America. To the gold and silver mines of Mexico and Peru we are probably indebted for the mercantile theory. The revolution in prices in western Europe caused by the influx of gold and silver from America, was both intensive and extensive, and its effects are traceable even to this day. Many modern economists are never tired of belittling the theories of the mercantile school, and of expressing their surprise that men ever held such views. A glance at the conditions under which it rose will do much to explain its raison d'étre. Most modern writers on economics unito in attributing but little importance to the increase in the amount of money in a country. Mill says that if the quantity of money in the possession of every individual in a nation were suddenly doubled, the only economical effect would be a rise in prices equal to the increase in the amount of money in circulation. Now, although this might be true of the case which he supposes (which he does not by any means prove), yet it is plain that, if the same amount of money were put at the disposal of a few men, its passage into circulation might have a most powerful effect on the whole national economy. It might work out a total redistribution of wealth before it had all passed into circulation and produced its legitimate effect of raising prices. Such was the condition of things in the world market from 1500 to 1600. A large addition was made to the money of the world. This addition was in the possession of a single nation. The economical superiority of this nation in western Europe was undisputed. Its political superiority followed as a matter of course. Spain, by virtue of its immense acquisitions of gold and silver, became mistress of the wealth and lands of Europe. Prices rose rapidly, but Spain was in a condition to profit at the expense of the rest of the world. The quantity of money in the European world in 1600 was estimated to be about four times what it was in 1492. Bodin, in his discours sur l'excessive cherté, published in 1574, says that prices had risen ten to twelve fold within seventy years. Bishop Latimer, in his sermons (1575), says that he had to pay sixteen pounds rent for the estate which his father had had for three-fourths of a pound. The European world contemplated this unheard-of and universal rise in prices with dazed fear. If this thing continues, says Latimer, we shall have to pay a pound for a hog after awhile. It was, of course, natural that men should see in such a revolution a real increase in the cost of commodities. It was widely attributed to the usurious manipulations of the large banking houses. It was therefore a long step forward toward the rise of economics when Bodin declared that this whole phenomenon was a mere sinking in the value of gold and silver, and not an increase in the value of other commodities. Just as much corn, cloth, etc., is produced now as before, and at the same expense of labor and capital; the only difference is, that money has become much more plenty, and consequently has sunk in price. But while this expressed a great economic truth, it did not change the fact that while this process was going on it had produced a very different distribution of wealth among the European nations to the advantage of Spain, nor could it obscure the fact that money had been the great instrument in effecting this distribution. The phenomena attendant upon this enormous redistribution of wealth attracted the attention of eminent thinkers of all nations. They naturally attempted to account for them. The theory which they elaborated has become known as the commercial or mercantile system, and was the first attempt to systematize and arrange in scientific order the complicated phenomena of the industrial world, and, as such, deserves a somewhat careful examination. This theory arose from discussions of the money question, and was primarily a mere theory of money and of the laws controlling its creation and distribution. It included, however, the discussion of many other points, and it will be presented here as it appeared in its later form.

—The most striking peculiarity of the mercantile school, as Roscher has happily remarked, consists in a five-fold over-estimation. The mercantile writers, as a rule, over-estimated the importance of a dense population, the value of a large stock of money, the advantages of foreign trade, the importance of manufacturing industry, and the efficiency of governmental control and supervision. We have already explained how naturally they were led by the circumstances of the time to over-value the precious metals, which formed the money stock of the world. The underlying principle of the whole mercantile school was that a nation's wealth is to be measured by the amount of the precious metals which is circulating within its limits as money, and that the national economy is consequently to be organized so as to attract as much money as possible into the country, and to retain it when once obtained. They held that wherever money performs its service as a universal medium of exchange, the individual is rich in proportion as he can control money, and that what is true of the individual must be true of the nation, which is only an aggregate of individuals. Further, that although the wealth of a nation does not consist altogether of gold and silver coins, but of money and what is worth money, yet money is the most important element of wealth, because it is not consumed and destroyed like provisions, and because it forms an essential condition of a lively domestic commerce, and of a great production and consumption, and must also be regarded as an unusually important, nay, indispensable, resource, and as a powerful promoter of international commerce. Again, that the vigor, authority, efficiency and power of the government at home and abroad depend mainly on the amount of money at its disposal, and that great and successful wars can never be waged without abundance of money. Finally, that the importance of money can be seen from the fact that all those states which, by means of manufacturing industry, foreign trade or other expedients, have succeeded in obtaining the largest amount of the precious metals, and in whose territories there is the liveliest circulation of money, have distinguished themselves from other states by a great population, prosperity and power. Starting from these considerations, the value of any branch of national industry, the propriety of any course of national policy, must be tried by its probable effect on the quantity of money at the nation's disposal. Agriculture, although necessary to the existence of a people, can not increase the national wealth very much, because its products, as a rule, are rapidly consumed, and, even if shipped to foreign lands, can not bring back much money, since they are generally exchanged for manufactures. If the products of agriculture were worked over at home and sent abroad in a perfected form they would serve to support a flourishing manufacturing and commercial population, and money would flow into the country in abundance. In the opinion of the mercantilists, then, agriculture is to be fostered as the nourisher of the nation, and as the source of various kinds of raw material which manufacturing industry needs; but as compared with other branches of industry which contribute to increase the quantity of money, the nerve and sinew of national power and prosperity, it is only of secondary importance, and can by no means lay claim to special care and favor. In reference to mining, which is intimately connected with the production of raw materials, the mercantile school held, that the mining of the precious metals is an extremely important source of national wealth, for it contributes immediately to swell the quantity of gold and silver. The opening of mines, then, at home or in the colonies, must be a special care of every government which understands its true interest. Gold and silver mines should be kept open, even if they yield no profit, or indeed if they can be worked only at a loss; for the money with which the costs of mining are defrayed remains in the country, while the precious metals so obtained are a permanent gain to the national wealth.

—In opposition to agriculture the mercantile system recognizes manufacturing industry as especially important to a nation; for it alone furnishes those products and commodities which can be exchanged with foreign countries for cash, while it also prevents money from going to foreign countries in return for manufactures. It is to be regarded, therefore, as a powerful lever in acquiring money. The mercantilists hold that everything which can be produced at home should be produced there, even if the costs of production and prices should be higher than abroad; for the higher prices paid to the producers remain at home. Those branches of industry are of most importance which furnish artistic products for the foreign market, for these not only prevent money from leaving the country to purchase such things elsewhere, but they are the very things that bring in most money. In consequence of the significance, importance and necessity of such industry, it becomes one of the chief functions of the state to further everything which can promote it in any way, and especially to aim at securing low wages of labor, cheap provisions, low rates of interest, cheap raw materials, skilled laborers, large markets, cheap transportation, etc., since these are prime conditions of the expansion and progress of the technical industries. This can only be attained when the government keeps the wages at a proper minimum by police regulations, fixes the prices of the necessaries of life, hinders the export of corn, fixes the rate of interest, and renders difficult the exportation of raw materials, while offering a premium on their importation. It must at the same time attempt to persuade skilled laborers to immigrate from foreign countries, reward and promote skill and inventiveness by patents and pensions, by monopolies and privileges, improve the means of communication and transportation, and regulate domestic and exclude foreign competition. What the landowner, farmer, laborer and capitalist, and the whole class of consumers, lose by this policy, is made up to the state as a whole, for in this way the efflux of money to foreign countries is prevented, and the consequent increase in rapidity of circulation accrues to the advantage of all. In regard to domestic commerce, the mercantile school held that inasmuch as it is exclusively occupied with domestic wares and products, it is of importance, from an economical point of view, only in so far as it assists manufacturing industry by furnishing it good and cheap raw material. Very different is it with foreign commerce, which occupies a most important place in the industrial and mercantile life of nations, and must, therefore, be an object of special care to the state. First of all, care must be taken that no money leaves the land through foreign commerce, or at least that no more flows out than comes back. The "balance of trade" is taken as an indication of the movement of the money. In order to secure a favorable "balance of trade," that is, in order that more money shall be imported than is exported, the importation of foreign manufactures is to be prevented or rendered difficult by customs duties, while the importation of raw material is to be allowed, because it promotes manufacturing industry at home. The exportation of domestic manufactures, on the contrary, is to be promoted by every possible means, since they bring in money the most surely and in the largest quantities. In order that the manufactures may obtain a large market in foreign lands, especial care must be devoted to the cheapness and excellence of the wares and products so as to compete easily with foreign products. The cheapness of the goods is to be secured by the methods mentioned above, by low taxes, etc., while the quality is to be assured by a very detailed system of inspection and control on the part of the government. The latter must examine all commodities destined for foreign markets, insist upon honest and fair workmanship, and confiscate all goods of a poor quality or such as would be likely to injure the prospects of trade. It should further assist and encourage the producers by rebates and premiums on exportation, and should insure them against unavoidable accidents and misfortunes. The mercantilists claimed that premiums on exports do not injure anybody, because they are paid to inhabitants of the country, and consequently remain at home. Foreign commerce is to be encouraged by the establishment of great trading companies, by the planting of colonies, by treaties of commerce with other nations, by great fairs, etc.

—The mercantile school insisted, further, that the mere accumulation of money by mining, manufacturing and trade did no good of itself, but that if the money was to accomplish its true mission, and be of any great advantage, it must circulate rapidly from hand to hand. A large body of consumers, therefore, is necessary to any great advance in national wealth. The state should not be niggardly in its expenditure, for, since the money all remains in the land, a liberal consumption of products and wares promotes production in every line. Their theory of taxation was, that so far as the expenses of government can not be defrayed by domains, monopolies, fees, etc., they should be met by taxing the profits of the citizens. Great care must be exercised, however, not to tax infant industries too heavily, and in many cases they should be exempted from taxation. Since the power and basis of national wealth are to be found in a large and dense population, the state should devote especial attention to promoting, by every means in its power, the growth of population. Their views on population are easily accounted for. Society was in that transition state when every increase in numbers, so far from resulting in greater poverty and distress, acted merely as a stimulant to new undertakings and richer achievements.

—The above set of views, to which the name of the mercantile or commercial theory has been given, ruled the political world during the whole period of modern times down to the close of the French revolution, and still maintains a hold in some places. It is difficult, or rather impossible, to say who was the founder of the mercantile school, or in what land it had its origin. It was such a natural outgrowth of the conditions of society that it made its appearance about the same time in Italy, France and England. And although a good case may be made out for Italian and French thinkers as the earliest theorizers on this subject, yet an exact form was given to these views first by Thomas Mun in a posthumous work published in 1664, and entitled "England's Treasure by Foreign Trade; or, the Balance of our Foreign Trade is the rule of our Treasure."

—One of the practical results of such views, when adopted by statesmen, was a thoroughgoing paternal system of government. The state undertook to regulate every department of life. Free trade was as unknown as free speech or free thought. The economy of the world was forced, as it were, into a strait-jacket. Everything moved along artificial channels. Nothing was natural and free. There came a time, of course, in the progress of civilization when such a state of things was no longer tenable. Men began to grow restive under this continual restraint. They longed for a greater liberty of thought, speech and action. The period of agitation in the intellectual and religious world began in earnest with Voltaire. It was one of his contemporaries and countrymen who voiced the general dissatisfaction of the time in economical matters. Side by side with the champions of political and religious freedom, François Quesnay represented the economical phase of this great struggle. The system which he founded has been called the agricultural or physiocratic. It is a vigorous protest against the theory and practice of the mercantilistic school. Although it never acquired the importance, either theoretically or practically, of the latter, yet it marks an important stage in the development of the science of political economy, and is, therefore, worthy of our special attention.

—If the mercantile theory over-estimated the importance of the technical industries and of the towns, the physiocratic went as far the other way in its valuation of agriculture and of the country. The fundamental principles of the physiocrats were few and simple. The very name itself which was given to the school signifies its most important characteristic. Its first principle was, that all national wealth is derived from the soil; agriculture is the only productive occupation; the production of raw material is the only calling in which the value of the product exceeds the cost of production. The labor of the farmer yields not only enough to support him while engaged in the labor, but a surplus over and above this, which may be called the net product. This net product generally falls to the landlord under the form of rent, and is the fund from which all expenditures of a public nature must be defrayed. The landlords, since they live without labor, are called the classe disponible, and they may devote themselves to the service of the public. Manufacturers and artisans are unproductive. They add value, it is true, to the raw material which they work over, but only as much as is equivalent to the cost of their support while engaged in their work. If they are able to save anything from their income, they do it either by limiting their consumption within too narrow bounds, or by some favoritism of government or of chance, which secures them against competition. Although unproductive, these classes are by no means useless, since by their labor they give permanence to the utilities embodied in raw material, and by their improvements they lessen the cost at which the agricultural classes can supply themselves with the needed manufactures; and so, by diminishing the cost of living of the farmers, they render possible the increase of the ground rent, that is, of the net national revenue. Their views on money were essentially different from those of the mercantile school. While they acknowledged a nation to be rich which possessed much money, yet since money can be obtained from foreign countries only by exchanging agricultural productions, no advantage is gained by such an exchange. They looked upon commerce in the same light as manufacturing industry. It added no value to the commodities beyond the wages of the laborers engaged in transportation. Since the only surplus product of labor is this ground rent, physiocrats maintain that all taxation should fall upon this alone. Any tax upon industry, wages or commerce, tends simply to increase the price of manufactured commodities, and the cost of living of the agricultural classes, and so diminish the ground rent and the net revenue of the nation. The practical consequences of these few principles were sweeping and widespread. They demanded unlimited freedom of competition in every department of economic life, abolition of all import and export duties, the encouragement of agriculture by every possible means, simplification of taxation, and the protecting of industry and trade by leaving it the fullest liberty.

—The rapid spread of the doctrines of the physiocrats is easily accounted for when we take into consideration the economic and political conditions of the time. Not only France, but all Europe, was just emerging from the feverish and excited period of over-speculation which ended with the collapse of John Law's Mississippi bubble. Men had seen every form of property take wings and fly away; all classes in the community had speculated and lost; but the farming class had been relatively safe. Landed property in France had indeed increased somewhat in value: no wonder that men turned their attention thither in the hope of recuperating their lost and ruined fortunes. This seemed like a solid rock in the wild and fluctuating sea of speculative vocations. Quesnay's glorification of agriculture, therefore, fell into good ground and was enthusiastically received.

—The economic views of the physiocrats are intimately connected with their ethico-political ideas. They base their social laws upon natural laws, and seek to establish a harmony between the useful and the just. They were not content with studying merely one phase of national life, the economic side, but endeavored to trace this back to a greater whole, to connect it with the political and moral elements of social life. According to Quesnay's idea, the world and humanity are controlled by certain permanent physical and moral laws, which man is to seek out and use for his own ends. One of the main purposes of human and social life consists in the appropriation and control of matter for human ends, and so in improving and increasing man's prosperity. In following out this aim man must obey the demands of justice in its connection with the idea of the useful. This idea of justice manifests itself in freedom and in property, that is, in the right of every one to do what does not injure the whole, and to acquire, possess and use all commodities so far as this does not come in conflict with the laws of nature and of social organization, with the behests of morality and of political wisdom. Freedom and property, therefore, are fundamental elements of human nature and of political organization, rights of such high importance and sacredness that in every human society they are to be highly valued, and to be protected, secured and promoted, since they form the essential support and condition of the state in general; and without freedom and property, without law and justice, no economical nor intellectual nor political nor moral progress of nations is conceivable. In a word, the physiocrats demanded freedom and justice in all social relations, freedom of conscience and freedom of the press, freedom of trade and commerce, equality before the law for every man, etc., and the example of nature was to be the criterion and model of all social and political institutions.

—The theory of the physiocrats had an ardent admirer and defender in the practical statesman, Turgot who attempted the task of saving and regenerating France by reorganizing the finance and economy of the nation in accordance with physiocratic principles. With his brief and troubled career as prime minister of France, disappeared all hope of putting into practice the doctrines of the physiocrats. The school lost its hold upon the minds of men almost as rapidly as it had acquired it. Adam Smith, however, who gives an account of the school, principally to show up its errors, admits that the system, with all its imperfections, was perhaps the nearest approximation to the truth that had up to his time been published on the subject of political economy, and ascribes important practical results to its temporary but universal acceptance in the French republic of letters.

—The next system of political economy arose in England, and has been called the industrial system. It was the first fairly successful attempt to treat the phenomena of national wealth in a truly scientific manner.

—Adam Smith, the founder of our modern science of political economy, had for years made a study of economic phenomena and economic theories before he resolved to devote himself to the production of the work which has made his name immortal. He spent a year or two in Paris, where he became intimately acquainted with the most prominent French economists, especially with Quesnay, the founder of the physiocratic school, for whom he always entertained the greatest admiration. After returning to England he withdrew to the solitude of private life, and after five years of constant study he began to formulate his economic theories in a systematic treatise. Five years more of unremitting toil were devoted to the writing of the book, and in 1776 appeared his "Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations." It placed him immediately in the very front rank of economists, and marked the opening of a new era in economic science. Adam Smith's career, as Eisenhardt well says, strikingly illustrates the truth that epoch-making works are produced only at the expense of a whole life, and that even in a special department they can only be produced by men of the most comprehensive culture.

—Wealth, according to Adam Smith, consists in all material commodities which are serviceable to the attainment of human ends. It has its origin in human labor, which, in conjunction with natural agents and the results of saving, i.e., capital, effects the gradual advance of nations in prosperity and industry. Labor is most effective and fruitful when properly divided and combined in the various economic occupations, and when left free and unhindered to employ itself as it sees fit in production and exchange. Out of this division and combination and unhindered employment of labor arises such a distribution of wealth as secures to every participant in production his fair share of the product. This last holds true of nations as well as of individuals.

—These ideas pervade all Adam Smith's expositions in political economy. They should be kept in mind as we develop the subject more fully. A prominent feature in Smith's system is the importance he assigns to the psychological element in human activity, particularly in economic activity. Selflove is the ruling principle in the intercourse of human society; it is a justifiable moral force, and is the most powerful agent in the increase of national wealth. As a natural consequence of this view it follows: that nature herself has provided for the gradual increase of national wealth by giving man such a nature and putting him in such a world; that the surest, most effectual, nay, the only, way to make a nation prosperous and rich is by following the example and hints of nature, by letting every individual pursue his own advantage in the way that pleases him, so long as he does not infringe upon his neighbor's rights, and by letting him exchange the fruits of his industry with those of another's without let or hindrance. The free play of self-interest and individual activity furthers generally the common good also, so that there is rarely occasion for the interference of the state in economic matters. This principle is fundamental, and Smith recurs to it again and again. In connection with this he emphasizes the right of individual liberty and equality, and insists upon the abolition of all the restrictions and hindrances to trade and commerce which impeded them in his day. Men have a natural right to apply their property and talents in that business which will bring them the largest return, and the state has no right to interfere except to protect individuals in their natural rights from the encroachment of others. Freedom of individual activity is the animating, fructifying principle of economic life. It is the air in which the body economic lives, the light which vivifies it, the breath which pervades it, and excites everything to activity, the basis of all development and perfection, the lever of all progress, the spell by which everything bad may be exorcised, and all that is good and great and enduring may be excited. (Kautz.) Enlightened self-interest of the individual and the interest of society are one; there is, therefore, an ultimate agreement and harmony of all economic interests.

—Smith's theory has been very properly called a theory of production. It is true that he considered not only production but also exchange and distribution; but exchange he discussed only as a means of increasing production, while he disposed of distribution in such a summary and unsatisfactory way that his views on that subject have not commended themselves to any great number of subsequent economists. Wealth does not consist in land alone, nor in money alone, but in all those material things which are suitable to satisfy human wants and to increase the conveniences and amusements of life. It is produced by labor working in conjunction with natural agents and the products of previous labor, viz., capital. Of these, labor is by far the most important factor. It is rendered efficient by division and combination. (See LABOR.) It is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities. (See VALUE.) Division and combination of labor are possible on any large scale only when exchange of products is possible. Freedom of exchange, therefore, is a fundamental condition of the highest productivity of labor. Labor is distinguished as productive and unproductive. The former includes all labor which fixes and embodies itself in material objects, while the latter includes all immaterial, social and intellectual services. Commerce, manufactures and agriculture are all productive; but the last is the most productive, for it employs both human and natural agents at once. It is the most solid and enduring source of wealth, and forms the basis of national prosperity. It is the necessary presupposition of all other occupations.

—Capital is that portion of one's stock or accumulation of property which is employed productively, i.e., so as to yield a revenue to its owner. It is divided into circulating and fixed capital, the former including such as must pass out of its owner's possession before it can yield a return, the latter being that which may remain in one's possession and still yield a profit. An example of the former is a merchant's stock of goods; of the latter, investments in permanent improvements of a farm or a factory. It will be seen that Smith exaggerates the importance of labor as a factor of production; although he was the first to give us an even approximately complete and satisfactory discussion of the physical conditions of production and distribution. He was also the first to distinguish clearly the idea of capital, and to recognize its accumulative power and its significance in an industrial system. He did not realize, however, the importance of the non-capital stock in the national economy, and consequently left deficiencies in his theory which he could not supply.

—Another field in which Smith did original work was his theory of the circulation or exchange of commodities; the theory of price, of money, of market movements, etc. Money was a necessary consequence of man's tendency to exchange, and also the condition of any extensive system of exchange. Money is not identical with wealth, as many have maintained, nor is it even the most important kind of wealth. It is a simple commodity whose value and price varies like those of any other commodity. It is to be regarded as an unproductive, dead capital, because it leaves no utility fixed in a material object as it passes from hand to hand. The amount of money in a land bears a fixed, though perhaps indeterminable, ratio to the quantity of exchanges to be effected by it. Price is distinguished: 1, as real price, the quantity of necessaries or conveniences of life given for a commodity, and nominal price, or the quantity of money given for it; 2, as natural price and market price. Market price is determined by the higgling of the market, and is affected by temporary demand and supply. Natural price is such a price as is sufficient to pay the costs of production. The former tends to approximate to the latter. Natural price includes, as constituent parts, natural, i.e., ordinary, wages of labor, natural rent for ground, and natural profits of stock employed in raising, preparing and bringing to market the commodity.

—Smith was the first economist to investigate the nature of income, and the conditions and elements of its increase and distribution. He divided national income into wages of labor, ground rent and interest on capital, and developed to some extent the principles which underlie their distribution. Rent forms an essential part of the price of all agricultural products, and since all land cultivated must yield more than enough to sustain the labor employed on it, all land yields a rent. Position is as important an element as fertility in determining the rent of land. The natural reward of labor is the product of the same. But in a civilized society where the land has been appropriated and capital has been accumulated, the laborer only secures a portion of the product as his reward, and must give a portion to the landlord and another to the capitalist. The wages of labor are determined by the general laws which regulate price. We may designate that as the minimum rate of wages which will barely enable the laborer to found a family and keep himself able to work. Under favorable circumstances the laborer may secure for himself a rate far exceeding this. Wages are highest, not in the most wealthy countries, but in those which are increasing in wealth most rapidly. Combinations of workmen to raise wages can seldom accomplish any good, and generally do great injury. The rate of profits on capital varies very greatly in different states of society. It is determined by the relation of demand and supply. It tends to fall as society advances, while rent and wages tend to rise. As labor is the source of all wealth, so saving and economy are the only means of accumulating, i.e., of creating, capital.

—We have called Smith's system a theory of production, and rightly, too, as distinguished from a theory of distribution, which political economy is still waiting for; but Smith was the first to present the interests of consumers as entitled to as much consideration as those of the producers, whose interests as a class had been almost exclusively regarded by previous economists. Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production, and the interests of producers are to be considered and furthered only so far as they affect the interests of consumers. Smith's ideas of the significance of a large population were distinctly opposed to those of the mercantilists, and foreshadowed, in an indistinct manner, those of Malthus.

—Smith's chapters on taxation marked an epoch in this department also. He developed the economic basis of taxation. He discusses, first, what are the necessary expenses of the government or commonwealth; which of those expenses ought to be defrayed by the general contributions of the whole society, and which of them by that of some particular part only, or of some particular members of it; secondly, what are the different methods in which the whole society may be made to contribute toward defraying the expenses incumbent on the whole society, and what are the principal advantages and inconveniences of each of those methods; and, thirdly and lastly, what are the reasons and causes which have induced almost all modern governments to mortgage some part of this revenue, or to contract debts, and what have been the effects of those debts upon the real wealth, the annual produce of the land and labor of the society. Smith's canons of taxation have become classic, and English and American political economy has not yet got beyond them. (See FINANCE, SCIENCE OF.)—"The Wealth of Nations" stands as the dividing line between ancient and modern thought on economic subjects. It is the synthesis and conclusion of everything that had preceded; it is the starting point and basis of all subsequent development. If we were to sum up, says Kautz, the defects of the industrial (Smithian) system of political economy, we should mention, first, the overwhelming predominance of the material element, which prevented the founder of the modern science of economics from properly appreciating the intellectual and moral elements of political and economic life, and caused him to devote his attention exclusively to the purely economic elements and factors. Man appears in his expositions, not as an ethico-political being, but as a mere wheel in the sweep of a great mechanism. Nothing but the economic ability, the producing power, of the individual and of society, is considered, and consequently the higher moral and political ends and relations of the community are left out of sight. As a consequence, Smith's conception and treatment of the problems of distribution and consumption are defective, since he gives but little attention to these elements in their connection with the politico-social life of nations. He devotes his thought always and everywhere to the greatest possible sum total of production. He rarely considers, how, by what means and at what sacrifice of moral and social interests, this sum total has been produced, or in what proportion, or whether in any at all, those participate in the enjoyment of this product who have assisted in its production, or whether prosperity, enjoyment and reward stand in any relation to the sacrifices and privations of labor. He fails to attain to that deeper conception of the higher spiritual essence of the state and national life: for nations are to him nothing but aggregates of individuals controlled by merely material and economic motives, and not communities of souls who, aside from their material ends and wants, have and pursue moral, political and spiritual ends and aims. A second defect is the almost absolute glorification of self-interest, and the raising of individual advantage to the rank of a fundamental principle in economics, by which, on the one hand, his views of state interference become one-sided, and, on the other, economics becomes a mere science of private acquisition and exchange, in which the individual appears as an egoistic natural force which works always and everywhere in the same way, and thus every interference of the state on grounds of public interest becomes superfluous. It will be seen that Smith's views were intimately connected with the theory of the state which prevailed during the eighteenth century, in that both proceed from the same negative atomistic view of civil society, and regard the interests of individuals as the sole end of the community. Just as the state, in the view of political rationalism, was nothing but a legal institution to preserve the freedom of the individual, and appeared as an association based on a contract, so in the economic rationalism of Smith it is only a union of private economies, and an association based on the exchange system of individuals; and in both theories the private advantage of the individual appears as the cause and bond of association. To this defective conception of the state we must ascribe the fact that the "laissez faire, laissez passer" theory finds its extremest development and sanction in Smithianism. The rôle of the state is reduced to almost nothing, and the interference of the public in the national economy is declared to be almost unconditionally injurious and dangerous.

—Among other defects we may mention his emphasis of value in exchange and disregard of value in use, his denying to immaterial labor the quality of productiveness, his unsatisfactory treatment of the elements of nature and capital in production, his failure to appreciate the importance and range of combination and association among laborers, his superficial discussion of fundamental concepts and disregard of form and arrangement in grouping his material. Finally, we must characterize as a defect, Smith's conception of the eternal and unchangeable nature of the laws which control and regulate the economic life of nations, and of the absolutely unconditional validity and applicability of all economic principles and truths. Out of this view rose a politico-economic theory which leads to a fatalism, in which the ethical power and freedom of the human will are utterly powerless in the grasp of natural law. No attention is paid to those historic, national and natural peculiarities upon which the different form and development of the various systems of national economy depend, and by which, therefore, the concrete relative significance and truth of economic principles, institutions and systems are conditioned. The attempt was made to construct an abstract, universal science of economics valid at all times and in all places. The attempt was a failure.

—The progress of political economy since Adam Smith has consisted principally in improvements in detail and form. No independent and opposed system has been constructed, if we except socialism, which is worth noticing; but many special departments have been enriched. Among the men who have contributed to the progress of the science we may mention the following: At the beginning of the century, Malthus and Lauderdale in England, J. B. Say and Canard in France; and Sartorius and Buesch in Germany. In the second decade come Ricardo in England; Ganilh and Sismondi in France; Hufeland, Lotz, Storch and Soden in Germany; and Gioja in Italy. After these come the Englishmen, James Mill, Torrens and M'Culloch; the Frenchmen, Tracy, Droz, and Louis Say; the Germans, Rau and Nebenius; and the Italian, Fuoco. St. Chamans in France, and Adam Müller in Germany, may be mentioned as decided opponents of Smith's system. Senior, Eisdell, Scrope in England, Rossi and Chevalier in France, and Hermann, Schoen, Baumstark, Hagen and Riedel in Germany, promoted the progress of the science during the years after 1830. During the decade 1840-50 Dunoyer and Bastiat in France, Thünen, List, Schütz, Hildebrand and Bernhardi in Germany, and John Stuart Mill in England, deserve especial notice. Tooke, Macleod, Sargant, Atkinson and Cairnes in England, Baudrillart, Courcelle-Seneuil in France, Bianchini and Carballo in Italy and Spain, and Roscher, Knies, Mangoldt, Stein and Schäffle complete the list of those who up to 1860 had done very much original work in the science among European writers.

—It is worth while to mention the special topics which have been the objects of thought and attention in connection with those who have made them the subjects of special study. Whately, Senior, Mill, Chevalier, Cairnes and Knies have done valuable work in defining and determining the nature and problems of economic science. Say, Lauderdale, Hufeland, Lotz, Rau, Hermann, Bastiat, Friedländer, Bernhardi, Thomas and Knies have labored at the fundamental ideas of the science, wealth, value, etc. Dunoyer, Hermann, Gioja, Ganilh, Bernhardi and Say have investigated the theory of labor, its productivity and freedom. The theory of capital has been furthered by Say, Hermann and Dietzel; that of price by Hermann and Tooke; that of the productivity of nature by Say, Lotz, Rau, Bernhardi and Malthus; that of money by Hoffmann, Ganilh, Senior, Chevalier; and that of the movement of precious metals by Ricardo, Senior, Jacob, Tooke, Helfferich and Soetbeer. The laws of distribution have been treated at length by Say, Sismondi, Ricardo, Hermann, Thünen, M'Culloch, Rossi, Bernhardi, Nebenius, Read, Mangoldt, Jones, Bastiat and Carey, particularly in connection with the doctrines of rent, wages and profits. The theory of national consumption has been elaborated by Say, M'Culloch, Sismondi, Vorlaender, Hermann and Roscher; that of the equilibrium between consumption and production by Say, Malthus, Hermann, Sismondi and Bernhardi; that of credit by Thornton, Nebenius, Coquelin and Dietzel; that of partnership by Stein: that of banking by Buesch, Thornton, Ricardo, Tooke, Wilson, Fullarton, Coquelin, Macleod, Huebner, Thoel and Gilbert; that of transportation by List, Chevalier and Knies; that of the political economy of agriculture by Roscher, Thünen, Lavergne, Passy and Wolowski; of manufacturing industry by Sismondi, Babbage and Roscher; that of international trade by Say, Ricardo, J. Mill, J. Stuart Mill and Büsch; that of colonization by Wakefield, Torrens, List and Roscher; that of pauperism by Eden, Villeneuve, Villerme, Gerando, Vogt, Mohl, Schütz and Schmidt; that of population by Malthus, Sadler, Senior and Roscher; that of finance by Malthus, Jacob, Schön, Rau, Stein, Ricardo, M'Culloch, Molkte, Nebenius, Baumstark, Augier, Carey, Bianchini, Dietzel, and many practical men of all nations.

—The merest glance at the various tendencies which have revealed themselves in the economic literature of this century will convince one that it is a matter of the greatest difficulty to group the various writers on economics according to particular schools. It is difficult to select a set of views and opinions which any number of eminent authorities consider and acknowledge as their own. The various adherents of a given system do not often acknowledge a principle in the same decided way. The same thinker often belongs not merely to one but to several schools, according to his views on certain fundamental ideas. We may distinguish, however, the following general tendencies: 1. Those who, while they accept Smith's system in general, enlarge the idea of wealth and productivity, and extend it also to immaterial commodities, services and labor. Among these may be mentioned J. B. Say. Ganilh, Rossi, Dunoyer and Garnier, in France; Lauderdale, Wakefield, M'Culloch and Macleod, in England; Hufeland, Soden, Bulau, Storch, Hermann, List, Eiselen, Steinlein, Roscher and Dietzel, in Germany; and Gioja, Bosellini, Boccardo, Scialoja and Bianchini, in Italy. 2. Those who emphasize the idea of value in use, and claim for it an important rôle in political economy: Lauderdale, Schön, Riedel, Rau, Bernhardi, Roscher, Knies, Cherbuliez, Muller, List, Say, Gioja and Bianchini. 3. Those who have resurrected some old mercantilistic and protectionist ideas, condemn the exportation of the precious metals, and the idea of free trade, and under the modern cry of "protection to national labor," attempt to free domestic industry from foreign competition by high import duties: Ferrier, Ganilh, L. Say, Thiers, Goldenberg, St. Chamans and Lebastler, in France; Hopf, Büsch, Pfeiffer, Eisenhart, Brentano and List, in Germany; Colton, Carey and Thompson in America. 4. The school of absolute free trade, embracing most English and French and many American economists, and of the German, Prince-Smith, Hübner, Brüggemann, Hagen, Lotz, Osiender, Wirth and Bergius. The term Manchester party was applied to a wing of this school, composed mostly of practical men, who were instrumental in bringing about the great revolution in England's commercial policy, which, beginning with the abolition of the corn laws in 1846, ended with the free-trade tariff of 1860. They were opposed to any governmental interference in economic matters, and demanded unlimited competition in every department of industrial life. As a party they have opposed all legislation in favor of the laboring classes, such as factory laws, postal savings banks, etc., etc. For a time they had everything their own way, but have already lost their hold on the public mind. 5. The physiocratic tendency, represented by a few economists in France and Germany. 6. The conservative-reactionary tendency, which opposes itself to the very fundamental principles of modern political economy, and sees the only hope of happiness in a return to obsolete institutions and forms, confined to the continent, and represented mainly by theological malcontents and the ultramontanes. 7. The "social" school, which rejects the principle of absolute competition in acquisition and exchange, and seeks to reconcile individual freedom and activity, private interest and advantage, with the interest of the whole, and to bring them into harmony with the higher demands of the organic life of the community. A prominent feature in the theory of many of the adherents of this school is an emphasizing of the ethico-political element, and an acknowledgment of the relative importance and justification of governmental interference in economical matters. The representatives of this school are: in France, Blanqui, Comte, Chevalier, Fix, Baudrillart, Droz, Dunoyer and Sismondi; in Italy, Gioja, Bianchini, Cibrario and Fuoco; in America, Carey and Colton; in Germany, Soden, Baumstark, Mohl, Rossbach, Rau, Schulze, Schuütz, Roscher, Knies, and Hildebrand; in England, J. S. Mill, Chalmers, and Atkinson. 8. The so-called new English or orthodox school represented by Malthus, Ricardo, Mill, Senior, M'Culloch, Cairnes, etc., so far as they had common features. 9. The socialistic school, represented by St. Simon, Fourier, Louis Blanc, LaSalle, Marx etc., etc. 10. The historical school. The adherents of this school aim at uniting in an organic system the previous results of economic investigation, and endeavor to assign to the ethical, political and social elements their proper place in the economic system. They test the various theories of political economy by the standards of historical phenomena which are constantly changing, and are dependent on time and space and upon natural and national conditions. They acknowledge, therefore, neither a general normal national economy, nor an absolutely valid theory of national economy, which shall be applicable to all times and nations. List, Roscher, Knies, and the majority of the younger German economists, and a few French and Italian economists, with Cliffe Leslie and one or two others in England, represent this school.

—The limits of the present article forbid any detailed discussion of these various schools. Political economy is at present in a very chaotic state. The "orthodox" political economy has begun to lose its hold in England and America, and has already ceased to hold the first place in Germany, France and Italy. While in the latter three countries the historical school has become the leading one, it has not been able to secure much of a foothold in either of the two former. This last springs partly from the dense ignorance of continental political economy which prevails for the most part in England and America. In Germany, Rau, Nebenius, Hoffman, von Thünen and Hermann may be classed as strong adherents of Adam Smith, although they modified his opinions in several respects. Their modifications were most frequent in relation to administrative matters, the German economists generally giving larger scope to the action of the state. Friedrich List headed the line of German protectionists, and was eminent for his originality, his patriotism, and the excellence of many of his monographs. He proclaimed the temporary necessity of protectionism as a means of education. His system contains many points of similarity with Carey's. The historic school was founded by Roscher, Hildebrand and Knies. Hildebrand's Die Nationalökonomie der Gegenwart und Zukunft is a clear and searching criticism of the orthodox school of political economy, though his censures are exaggerated. Roscher is in many respects a sound follower of the orthodox school, though he denies the existence of general economic laws, or rather underrates their importance. Knies is no less profound than Roscher, and is his superior in legal learning. His principal works are Die politische Oekonomie rom Standpunkte der Geschichtlichen Methode, and Geld und Kredit. A different tendency is represented by the so-called liberal school, nicknamed by its enemies the Manchester school of Germany. It has devoted itself to bringing about the triumph of complete liberty in commerce and industry. Prince-Smith, Schulze-Delitzsch, Faucher, Braun, Michaelis and Wirth, the last of whom is the author of a course in political economy, which sums up the tendencies of the school, are the principal economists of this group. Rentzsch, Emminghaus and Soetbeer may be classed as moderate adherents of this general tendency.

—A very different standpoint is taken by other economists, among whom may be numbered most of the professors of economics in German universities. Following in the steps of the first writers of the historical and statistical schools, they profess little faith in universal, or as some say natural, laws. They believe only in historical or relative laws, discovered by the inductive method, and deduced from simple psychological and abstract premises. They doubt the omnipotence of the principle of liberty and individual self-government, and assign a large sphere to the modifying action of the social power. Questions concerning the distribution of wealth attract their especial attention, and they endeavor at least to help on the solution of the "social" question. They are distinguished by their ability, their numbers, their culture, and their influence on the cultivated classes. Their doctrines, tending to a reconstruction of economic science, have been published in a large number of special works and in the best economic reviews, such as the Zeitschrift für die gesammte Staatswissenschaft, published at Tubingen, and the Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie, published at Jena, and edited at present by Conrad of Halle. The not very appropriate name of professorial socialists (Katheder-Socialisten) has been given to the extreme followers of this school, because they support the principle of authority. The most important work of this school is the "Course of Political Economy," by Professor Adolph Wagner, of Berlin, consisting in a new edition of Rau's "Course," which has become somewhat out of date. Nasse has assisted in this work. Wagner's "Science of Finance" is also written from this new standpoint: "These professorial socialists, among whom von Scheel, Schmoller, Nasse, Held, Schäffle, Conrad, etc., may be mentioned had no difficulty in overcoming the arguments of certain weak economists who wished to reproduce in Germany the doctrines of Bastiat at any price. They have deceived themselves, therefore, as to the importance and originality of their discoveries. They confound economics with morals and law under pretext of better harmonizing their results. They do not distinguish theories, which are for the most part general, from applications, which are always contingent. They exaggerate the importance of induction. For the gradual and peaceful evolution of political economy they wish to substitute a revolution, which they justify by an undeservedly severe condemnation of the defects and errors of the classical economists, and especially those of England and France. They start from the false assumption that the scientific progress of other nations at the present time is almost nothing in comparison with the acquisitions of the science in Germany. It can not be denied, however, that the eminent position now occupied by Germany in the progress of economic studies demands from the economists of other countries a patient study of German works. Profound investigation, accurate historical and statistical research, the number and merit of their economic writings, their precise determination of fundamental principles, their separation of economics from the financial and administrative sciences, have gained for them this position." Works of great importance, and showing immense industry and carefulness, have been written by Mohl and Stein on administration, and by Rau, Malchus, Nebenius, Hoffmann, Stein, Hock, Wagner, Vocke and others on finance, and make German science well worth the pains necessary to work through their subtle and oftentimes pedantic controversies. The inelegance and obscurity of the literary style of most German writers on economics form a serious drawback to the general study of their works.

—The following account of the development of political economy since Adam Smith, is inserted here, although it involves some repetition, because it represents very well the views of the most numerous and influential body of German economists. It is condensed from an article by the late Professor Adolf Held, one of the ablest representatives of the Katheder-Socialisten.

—Smith's work on the "Wealth of Nations," which has been published in many editions and translations, and is accessible to every one, is the product of the deepest scientific investigation, and is at the same time written in a most simple and pleasing style. There has been a great deal of discussion as to the method of investigation employed by Adam Smith. Buckle, who divides all men into the two classes of deductive and inductive investigators, classes Adam Smith as a Scotchman with the deductive school. But the truth is, that Smith did not strictly adhere to any one method. He does not tire the reader with continuous expositions according to one definite method, but, in order to reach his results, applies first one method and then another in a pleasing and suggestive variety. We find investigations, in which, from simple premises as to the nature of man, the most far-reaching conclusions as to economical relations and their connection are evolved by deduction, but in the very midst of them occur long historical dissertations and detailed descriptions of contemporary conditions which are also employed in proving his propositions. And with it all Smith does not even adhere to any sharply defined terminology, but discusses the phenomena he investigates in the everyday language of common life. Nothing is more foreign to him than the imposing mathematical exactness of form which is characteristic of Ricardo, for instance. He does not follow out even his own views to their extreme consequences, but modifies his conclusions by new considerations where it is necessary, and where they will thus correspond more closely to the complicated relations of actual life, and so stops short of drawing the logical consequences of his own premises. When we consider this many-sidedness of his treatment of the subject, we can not be surprised that men of exactly opposite opinions appeal to him as a supporter of their views, for, as a matter of fact, the germs of both extremes are to be found in his writings. The absolute free-traders of to-day call him their great master; List, the protectionist and creator of the national political economy, derides and antagonizes him. Carey, on the contrary, who resembles List in many respects, quotes him as an authority in opposition to Malthus and Ricardo; and in very recent times a bitter discussion is going on in the press as to whether the absolute free-traders (Manchesterites) or the realistic political economists (the Katheder-Socialisten), who are most bitterly opposed to each other, are Smith's legitimate successors. The point can never be fully decided if we keep in view all Smith's statements and all his methods of investigation. But if the question be asked, what theories and what methods were the most immediate outgrowth of Smith's work, we can not deny, that, although Smith himself was far above most of the narrow and one-sided ways of regarding things which characterized his immediate successors, yet he was the father of that tendency whose last and most extreme representatives are known as the Manchester school. Two fundamental ideas may be clearly distinguished in his great work, the logical outcome of which was Manchesterism. On the one hand, he entertained the view that the state is nothing but a complement of individual life to assist in protecting private economies; a great insurance company with the least possible jurisdiction, which must be as cheap as possible, and interfere as little as possible with the individual whose rights antedate and are superior to those of the state. He does not appeal to philosophic and jural principles to establish this view, but supports it rather from the advantageous consequences which must result to the economic welfare of men from such an administration, or rather non-administration, of the state. It can not be denied, that in this point Smith was decidedly narrow, and that, influenced by the reaction of his time against the absolutism of paternal governments, he failed to get the proper conception of the state and of the infinite obligations of the individual toward society. The view that the only function of the state is to preserve the original rights of the private individual shows itself in his theory of taxation, his praise of the system of standing armies, and his views of public education. This free individual, under the control of the state only so far as is necessary to make him respect the rights of others, is conceived as endowed with an average amount of prudence and insight, and as moved in all economical actions solely by the motive of self-interest. From these premises everything is deduced. There is no mention of an overreaching of the weak and ignorant by the strong and shrewd, or of a public spirit which works against such a tendency. As has been already said, the work does not consist exclusively of deductions from these premises, but they play a very great part, and form the basis of a simple theoretical system of science. The supposition of equal economic ability, and of self-interest as the sole motive in economical life, was evidently a conscious one sidedness so far as Smith was concerned; for, as his work on the "Theory of Moral Sentiments" proves, he recognized the existence and necessity of other human motives than egoism. But these were ignored in order to be able to attain to simple scientific results by considering only the prevailing motive in economic actions. But as the logical consequences of an uncontrolled although enlightened self-interest do not give a complete picture of social or even of economic life, Smith did not pursue his theories to their extreme results, but interrupted them by historic expositions; it is no wonder, therefore, that the disciples of this great man should first develop those features of his system by which the simplest and most valuable results had been won.

—A second fundamental idea in Smith's system is, that labor, as such, is the sole creator of all value. With this great and simple thought all exaggeration of money or land or trade or agriculture was made impossible, and the basis of a really general economic science was laid. He did not fully develop this thought, however. He pushed it to extremes in one direction by making labor not only the original source, but also the standard, of all value; and by making the distinction between productive and unproductive labor, he prepared the way for an exaggerated and one-sided estimate of purely material wealth. As Smith put the value-creating power of labor at the head of his system, and acknowledged capital, regarded as "accumulated labor," to be an important factor in production based upon labor, the idea crept in that the increase of values, as such, is the ultimate or only end of human economy, nay, even of human endeavor in general, since no other side of human activity than the economic is considered. Many chapters in his work create this impression rather by what is omitted than by what is said. At a time when the expansion of production was attracting the attention of all, and the absolute increase of wealth was, as a matter of fact, the first and most necessary condition of economic prosperity, it was natural that men should pursue this end exclusively. Men did not come to feel the importance of a better distribution of wealth until the labor question of to-day forced it upon their attention. Adam Smith had no harsh feelings toward the lower classes, and if he did not preach the necessity of kindness toward them, it was because the circumstances of his time did not demand it. Nothing was further from his idea than making man directly the servant and instrument of wealth; but when labor was looked at mainly as value-creating power, as a means to the end of increasing wealth, the transition was not violent to a forgetfulness of the wants and aims of the laborers. Smith's expositions foreshadowed the theory, so bitterly attacked by List, which in the value forgets the producing power, and regards the laborer, not as a man, but as a mere instrument. However kindly Smith himself thought of the laboring classes, however humane his feelings toward them, there lies in his theory the germ of the view which values the laborer less than the labor and its result, and which reduces a political economy, which starts from the equal estimate of all labor, to one which is subservient to capital. All this is no reproach to Adam Smith, but simply an explanation how a large school which honors him as its master could arrive at the most one-sided views by simply emphasizing, as they naturally would, those thoughts of their great leader which could be most easily used in developing a simple and consistent theory of wealth. This will appear more clearly when we come to discuss his most prominent followers. Smith lived to see the great success of his work; for even before the close of the preceding century his school had become the predominant one in all civilized countries. Numerous editions and translations carried the book everywhere, while still more numerous disciples delighted to spread abroad his views in their own writings. The development of his school was somewhat different in the three chief nations of Europe, England, France and Germany, although England took the lead until very lately, when German economists began to assume an independent position.

—Of all Smith's followers in England, Ricardo indisputably stands first. Thoroughly different from Adam Smith in every particular, he was just fitted to develop a harsh and rigorous system from the fundamental principles which Smith had popularized. Originally a business man, he began his literary activity with the discussion of a practical question, that of money and banks. From this he passed to more general work, and wrote his "Principles of Political Economy and Taxation." This treatise discussed in detail some of the questions which Smith had passed over rather lightly. On account of the fundamental importance of the questions treated, and the strictly logical and consistent treatment of them, this work produced the effect of a theoretical system, and was of far greater value for the development of the science than the works of Say written about the same time. Adam Smith, a scholar by nature, and educated as a scholar, without any inclination to practical life, had maintained an unusual many-sidedness, an open eye for all points which must be considered, and had sacrificed to this habit of looking at all sides of everything the formal clearness of his reasoning, the theoretical perfection of his system. Ricardo, the practical man, on the contrary, after he once took up his pen, insisted upon the severest adherence to conclusions from abstract and incomplete premises, and is the real father of that abstract theory of political economy which, closing its eyes to all the facts of our changing and shifting life, sees the only truth and salvation in the belief in the necessity of the absolute freedom of the individual. It was Ricardo, not Adam Smith, who made the method of gaining all economical knowledge by deductions from incomplete hypotheses as to the nature of man, his fundamental principle. Ricardo made the theory that labor is not only the source but also the standard of value the foundation of his whole system, and reasoned from that to the conclusion that the instrument of labor (called the laborer) can never have more than barely enough to keep him alive, and that simple and powerful natural laws control the economical life of man, which man may ascertain by deduction, but can not change, and which, on the whole, produce ever-increasing wealth of the land-owners and capitalists, permanent poverty of the poor, and for all an ever-increasing difficulty of obtaining subsistence. We do not use Ricardo's words in this characterization, we seek to show the spirit in which he wrote, or rather, the tendency which the results of his investigation promote. He acquired an extraordinary authority by the formal precision of his expositions. It can not be denied that he did a great work for the science, if it were nothing more than showing to what conclusion one must come when one starts from such premises and uses such a method. Next to Adam Smith, Ricardo is the man whom one must study who wishes to understand the political economy of to-day. The terse precision of his exposition and the severity of his reasoning will always remain instructive. But it is carrying our admiration too far to accept the results of his investigations as infallible truths; for they are only true conditionally, and are as little adapted as the mercantile theory to explain the economical relations of all times and nations. His theory of bank notes, that their value depends upon their quantity, has been disproved by the labors of realistic political economists (Tooke). The theory that the cost of production alone determines the price of commodities whose quantity can be increased at pleasure is untenable, since we can not separate the commodities to which the theory applies from those under the control of monopoly. It was rejected by Hermann and others long ago, and has in recent times shown its weakness in a most decided way by the consequences which Marx and other socialists rightly deduced from it. His theory of rent is relatively true, but the view that land alone follows in every respect different laws from other fixed capital has been given up by later economists, who consider land like other property, and maintain that the theory has a practical value only in old lands, and then only if we accept the fiction that the present landowners are the heirs of the first occupiers of the soil. Ricardo explains the phenomena of economical life from simple causes, and the explanation is correct so long as we close our eyes to the existence of other causes, but it becomes more incomplete and untenable the stronger those causes become which he ignored. Ricardo's method of investigation, which led him to be one-sided for the sake of clearness and simplicity, and which, on the whole, was a valuable service to the theory of the science, was employed for sad purposes by his weaker successors, to oppose any influences which threatened the interests of the propertied classes as offenses against sound political economy. It follows as an absolute necessity from Ricardo's theories that all industrial progress must inure to the benefit of the propertied classes, that increase of capital must be promoted for the sake of the increase of wealth, that it is nonsense to limit calculating egoism, or to make any sacrifice to the welfare of the laborers whose lot as mere instruments of labor is irrevocably fixed. A self-satisfying theory of political economy, complete in itself, was contained in Ricardo's keen propositions. It staved off all objections from other standpoints, and demanded unconditional acknowledgment, undisturbed sway of laissez faire et passer in the interest of the increase of the wealth of the rich. It viewed all sacrifice for the state, all humane acts in social questions, as disturbing and injurious forces. Few have dared to express it, but it is a logical consequence of this self-satisfying political economy, with its natural laws, that all human endeavor which does not aim directly at the production of material wealth is indifferent. What do the natural laws of economy care about states and nations?

—Ricardo had developed what under certain conditions is, and why it is so. Many of his followers insist that they do nothing more than tell the truth: they do not make things as they are, they explain simply. That sounds very plausible. But we must consider that as soon as an explanation of that which is, appears, with the claim that it must naturally be so, and that a struggle against it is fruitless and disturbing, the explanation becomes an active principle, the exposition culminates in a postulate, the theory of immutable natural laws leads to a negative economic policy. This appears very plainly in those successors of Ricardo whose economical reasoning exhausts itself in an appeal to Ricardo's authority, and who content themselves with a comfortable preaching of the laissez faire et passer, and consider the sole function of modern science to be a holding fast to Ricardo's theories. It is impossible to write a political economy which merely discovers and arranges existing laws, like astronomy, for instance. Whoever studies human relations in which he himself moves and lives, will necessarily incorporate in his theories his own wishes, and his views of what is best for man to do.

—Ricardo, somewhat modified in form and practically applied, is what we call Manchesterism. Of course every one protests against having this name applied to him, every one professes, on being interrogated, the most kindly feeling toward the laborers, a great love for the state, and an anti-materialistic sentiment. But there are writers, particularly in other countries than Germany, whose whole circle of thought is taken from Ricardo, and in whose writings so slight traces of such sentiments can be found that they certainly can not exercise any great influence on their economic theories. There are few writers whom one can convict of a thoroughly consistent Manchesterism, but there is a mode of thought which is called Manchesterism, and which shows itself to be the prevailing one in very many writers. To the best known disciples of Ricardo in this sense belongs, in England, M'Culloch, whose services to the science can not be denied but who did not enrich it by any new ideas of fundamental importance. Senior may also fairly enough be called a Manchesterite. It is remarkable that J. S. Mill, whose sympathetic nature gave him a view of life very different from Ricardo's, and whose political and philosophical studies secured for him a wider intellectual horizon, should so often be in abject subjection to Ricardo's authority in purely economic questions. We must remember, however, that in England down to 1860 the great practical question of economic policy was, how to push through free-trade to its ultimate victory, and that in this contest the catchwords of the laissez faire et passer school were of great use. Mill, however, did not allow his theories to prevent him from supporting the establishment of postal savings banks, of a national sanitary commission, of factory legislation, all violations of laissez faire et passer; and in very recent times a marked reaction against Ricardo's theories is showing itself among English economists.

—In France, Say, in his Cours et Traité d'economie politique, made Adam Smith's theories familiar to his countrymen. Although less important and influential then Ricardo, he acquired a great reputation by the beauty of his literary style and the clearness of his expositions. A large number of French writers became adherents of his views, against whom the half socialistic theories of Sismondi made little headway until French political economy acquired a peculiar cast from the struggle with socialism and communism. A detailed discussion of socialism and communism will be found elsewhere, but we must call attention here to the fact that, although the socialists and economists in France regard each other as something absolutely different, yet since scientific socialism and communism busy themselves chiefly with economic problems, they are to a certain extent economic schools. Communism and socialism form the exact opposite of the laissez faire et passer tendency, and also a sharp contrast to the immediate fore-runner of modern economics, i.e., mercantilism. The mercantile system demanded protection of the state for trade and industry. Adam Smith and Ricardo called for freedom in the interest of the third estate; communism and socialism insist upon limitation of the individual by a higher power in the interest of the fourth estate, the laborers. The ideal of the so-called industrial system is tabula rasa for the individual forces, which, after the abolition of all hindrances, should be allowed to develop themselves and compete with one another freely. This was of great advantage compared with the old restrictions of mediæval society, such as vassalage, guild law, trade monopolies, etc. But when, under the free play of economic forces, the stronger mercilessly exploits the weaker, it is but natural to claim that new restrictions adapted to the times, must be raised on this tabula rasa which has been won. This cry for a new organization was raised by communism and socialism in France soon after the first triumphs of the revolution, and it has re-echoed ever since. Almost all of those who call themselves socialists or communists demand, it is true, something impossible and indeed criminal, yet there is a theory, a science, of socialism and communism, which can not be summarily disposed of with moral indignation, like Babœuf's assassination theory or Fourier's ideas on marriage. Real communism demands a complete and permanent community of property and equality of enjoyments, that is only possible in connection with an absolutely despotic commission which superintends this distribution; whether this directing power is to acquire its position by murder and revolution, as Babœuf wished, or by the force of persuasion, as Cabet's ideal demanded. Such a thing is impossible, such an idea is lunacy; but it contains a criticism of the premises from which the prevailing political economy proceeds, i.e., of the supposition of an enlightened self-interest ruling all men which is to bring to all men alike the greatest prosperity. And so as a criticism even real communism has its scientific significance. It is more difficult to define the demands of socialism; for there is a great contest going on as to who should be branded with the name socialist, and there is a world-wide difference in the opinions of those who are generally called by that name. Compare St. Simon, Fourier, Louis Blanc, Proudhon, Owen, Waitling, Engel, Marx, Lasalle, with one another, and all of these with the so-called professorial socialists who make it their boast that they are forging the strongest weapons against Marx and his like. We may describe the socialists as a whole by saying that they reject the complete equality of all men and community of goods, but, on the other hand, they would not permit to the individual the complete exploitation of his powers at the expense of others, but, by some new organization or other, which, as opposed to the previous condition of things, would control the individual more in the interest of the whole, they would seek to bring about a distribution of wealth which should be fairer and more favorable to the poorer classes. The plans for this new organization are very different. The great mass of those called socialists, like the communists, show dangerous and reprehensible tendencies, and it is very difficult to draw a sharp and clear line between such, and those who in a legal, praiseworthy and possible way seek to limit free competition and to subordinate the individual to the community in a somewhat greater degree than hitherto. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that scientific men with the most praiseworthy desires must be contented to be called socialists.

—The proper course to pursue in regard to communism and utopian socialism is to take their criticism to heart, correct their ideas of liberty and equality, and give up the untenable postulates of individualism. In the politico-economic field in particular it should be our task to study the working of the moral forces in man, and emphasize these, instead of constructing untenable natural laws from one-sided premises; in short, we must free the theories of the English economists from their one, sidedness, develop them, unite them with enlarged views, and seek to do justice to the wants of the present by independent observations of the facts, instead of seeking eternal truth in holding fast to theories which sprang from the spirit of times long past. French science did not do this, however. Men did not content themselves, of course, with suppressing the socialistic elements by force of arms in the battle of June, 1848, and keeping them down afterward by police measures. They attempted to use the arms of science also, but instead of giving up untenable positions and then opposing the excesses of socialism with all the more right, they opposed a sophistical optimism to the dark pictures of existing conditions, from which the socialists had drawn their right to over-throw them. They had to modify Ricardo's theory of rent, of course, and his views on wages, but they did so only in order to glorify all the more the principle of the unconditional freedom of the individual, the theory that the highest possible advantage of all proceeds from the complete sway of egoistic motives alone. This optimism, which found its chief representative in Bastiat, and a second illustrious defender in the American Carey (who is curiously enough a protectionist), ignores completely that there are antagonistic and opposing interests of men, and that a struggle for existence is going on in the economic field which does not always lead to the victory of the best elements, but may lead to the utter destruction of all. All these extreme apostles of freedom acknowledge the necessity of a civil order which shall abridge personal liberty; they acknowledge the necessity of private rights at least, and of their protection by the state; but they draw here an arbitrary line beyond which the reconciling, regulating hand of the state may not reach. They do not deny the necessity of ethics and the sublimity of virtue, but they maintain that in the economic world the free play of egoistic forces results in complete harmony with the highest morality, and forget that the working of eight-year-old children for twelve hours a day in factories is very immoral, but may be very profitable for the factory owner. Extreme and embittered socialists on the one hand, and optimistic followers of Adam Smith and Ricardo on the other, stand opposed to one another in France; and although there are not wanting economists who occupy an intermediate position, yet it is these two extremes which give tone to and control the economic literature of to day. One party emphasizes exclusively the right of man to free action, which benefits the stronger the most; the other, the right of every one, even the poorest, to deserved enjoyment. Both parties regard the state, not as the sovereign regulating representative of all interests, in which and by which every one should serve, as a matter of duty, the highest ends of humanity, but as a means to their ends. However rich and interesting the French literature of both socialists and economists may be, and however suggestive it may become, yet it does not contain the basis of a real advance in economic science.

—Smith's school developed itself in a far different manner in Germany. At first there appeared a great number of writers who adapted Smith's principles to German wants. They acquired for a time a great reputation, but they are of little importance now, as it is better to go directly to English sources. The youngest of this school, who is still of great importance, was Rau. He deserves great praise for the industry displayed in his literary studies, and collections of material, for the clearness of his systematizing, and his ability to weight impartially even the most opposite views, but on all points of fundamental importance he remained a strict adherent of Smith's school. These early Germans, however, were very far from exaggerating or even accepting the one-sided views of Ricardo. They at times accepted principles without critically examining them, it is true, which testify to their superficial conception of the state and to their dependence on foreign thinkers, but they were prevented from a consistent elaboration of one-sided principles by their strict adherence to systematic form; and since they did not convert the theory of police powers and of finance into a mere annex to theoretical political economy, but continued to discuss them in detail and independently, it became impossible to develop a system of political economy which refused to recognize the state as a powerful economic factor. At the beginning of this century, side by side with the slavish followers of Adam Smith, thinkers arose who carried forward original investigations; and at the same time an opposition to Adam Smith appeared, which, although it did not become very prominent, had a critical significance, and testifies to the independence of the German mind. Among the earlier original followers of Adam Smith, Hufeland, Hermann and von Thünen deserve especial mention. Hufeland has received less attention, and has become less influential, than the depth of his thought and the clearness of his expositions deserved. Hermann, on the contrary, exercised a wide influence, and von Thünen's writings after his death received considerable attention in economic literature. Hermann resembles Ricardo in some respects. His "Politico-Economic Investigations," published in the year 1832, do not contain any complete system of economics, but discuss various important questions pertaining to the science. These "Investigations" we may, without hesitation, characterize as the most complete intellectual product of the abstractly deductive school of Adam Smith. With a logical precision, at least equal to Ricardo's, he unites a many-sidedness of view which is foreign to the English economists. Hermann's theories of wants, prices, income, etc., will always remain models, and of fundamental importance. He belongs to the school of Adam Smith, but he develops it farther in an independent way. He breaks the way for a new tendency, far removed, however, from Manchesterism. He acknowledges public spirit as a justifiable motive side by side with egoism. He traces back the phenomenon of value and price, not to the single standard of labor, but explains prices as the result of a multitude of causes. He reforms the conception of income by opposing those definitions which regard the consumption of the laborers, not as the ultimate end of economy, but only as an incident of production. Many German writers have carried on the work in Hermann's spirit, such as Helferich and Mangoldt. Von Thunen's work, "The Isolated State in Relation to Agriculture and Political Economy," is formally far less perfect. Written at various times, and published partly after his death, it is not consistent in every respect. The various theories are also objectionable, in spite of the profundity and wealth of thought displayed. He acknowledges himself a disciple of Adam Smith, but differs from him on many points. For the sake of easier and clearer explanation of economical phenomena, he proceeds from abstractions which relate in the first place only to agriculture. But the special consideration of concrete practical relations, the frequent interpolation of calculations based on practical experience, is unavoidable, and thus a peculiarly realistic element is introduced into his investigation. In his method of deduction itself von Thunen is in so far peculiar as he converts economic concepts, wherever possible, into mathematical quantities, and then reaches his results by mathematical operations. This method is applied in his well-known investigation into the natural rate of wages, but leads in this case, as in all others, to useless conclusions, because economic phenomena, so various and many-sided, can not be forced into mathematical formulas except by violent abstractions and fictions; and although a correct calculation may be made with such formulas, yet the results do not give an even approximately correct picture of reality. The same thing is true of Canard and Cournot, both of whom tried the mathematical method. Von Thunen's warm sympathy for the laboring class, his conviction, far ahead of his time, that the dangers of the labor question could only be averted by a humane course of action on the part of the propertied classes, are of special interest to us. And so, in spite of the imperfections of his results, in spite of all formal weaknesses of the self-educated man, he forms, as a disciple of Adam Smith, an instructive and glorious opposite to Ricardo, and shows how bitterly opposed the German mind is to Manchesterism. The opposition against Adam Smith in German literature at the beginning of this century proceeded from very different tendencies from those which conditioned French communism and socialism, for which there was no chance in Germany, since the minds of the working classes had not been excited, and the relations of modern industry had hardly begun to develop. German opposition, on the contrary, sought safety in a return to older views. There were romanticists (Adam Muller) who opposed to the absolute victory of individual liberty a romantic enthusiasm for mediæval relations of dependence, and displayed great affection for the blessings of feudal simplicity, compared with the beginning development of modern industry and free commerce. There were protectionists, like F. List, who in the regulation of economic relations had an eye first of all to the advantage of their own nation, and wished to favor the development of national wealth and power. The last had powerful allies in North America, where protection against the all-powerful English industry is a natural policy. Romanticists and protectionists were both on a false road. It was an idle attempt to oppose a school which corresponded, although incompletely, to modern wants and conditions, by the resurrection of obsolete views. Neither set of economists, therefore, had many followers. But if we must allow a certain critical merit in the communists and extreme socialists of France, we must grant this in a still greater degree to the romanticists and protectionists. Both oppose the theory which seeks eternally valid natural laws in economics, and which considers the natural condition of unlimited personal freedom as the only justifiable one, without regard to the needs of special times and nations. They called our attention to the fact that we must approach the study of economic relations in an historic spirit, that the same system is not suited to all. They declaimed, further, against the exclusive consideration of the increase of material wealth, and taught us, that, for the prosperous development of even purely economic conditions, the preservation of the ideal wealth of the nation, the harmonious development of the whole man is by no means a matter of indifference. Finally, they emphasized the fact, that, in a politically regulated society, there is a difference between the ruling and the ruled, that the jural order is of the highest importance to economic development, that the state is not a necessary evil, but an independent factor, an inspiring and regulating element of the highest importance to the national economy. List's agitation for the formation of the customs union, however false his views of it in detail, and for the building of the net of German railways, shows that his fundamental ideas, in spite of their passionate one-sideness, were not unfruitful for the development of the science. Since 1850 a series of German writers have followed these earlier Germans, who without breaking with the English school, and without falling into the errors of the Romanticists and protectionists, have been constantly carrying new ideas into the old English system. At first several famous economists undertook to carry the historical method into the dogmatic system of political economy, and with a complete recognition of the relative truth in the propositions of Smith and Ricardo; yet, in the place of the one-sided, absolutely valid natural laws, to acknowledge everywhere, according to the stage of civilization of a people, a difference in the actual forces in economic life, and a difference in the need of state interference. The labors of Roscher, Hildebrand, Knies and others were epoch-making in this direction. The right of this historical school to exist, which had long before celebrated its victory in the field of jurisprudence, was recognized by all German economists. Others, who had less to do with the introduction of this historical method, have endeavored, in hearty sympathy with the spirit of the historical school, to enlarge and correct the current conception of the state, and have emphasized the interaction of economical and other social and political forces. All the more prominent of the living German economists have labored in this direction, such as Stein, Schäffle, Dietzel, Schmoller, etc. Our science received a peculiar and fruitful impulse from the science of statistics, which since Quetelet's appearance (1835) had taken a new start, and, by the extensive activity of some German statisticians, has strongly influenced the younger economists. Statistics has oddly enough created here and there the belief in a strange utopia, the thought, namely, that we may discover unassailable, universally valid laws of economic life by inductive investigation upon the basis of exact statistical observations in mass, and so arrive by a new road to a completely satisfactory mechanical explanation of social life. This thought, however, to which the exaggerated ideas of Quetelet and Buckle led, has been rather expressed than acted upon and the influence of statistics has been, as a matter of fact, a thoroughly healthy one. It consists in this, that men have been led, in all cases where the statistical material has been sufficient, to leave the basis of abstract premises in the explanation of present relations, and to take the carefully observed concrete facts as a starting-point and seek to ascertain their causal connection. On many questions, such as the bank question, we have thus arrived at highly satisfactory results, and a large number of valuable special investigations according to this method have given us a very welcome supplement to the system as elaborated by the historical school. Finally, the fact must be emphasized that the labor question has had a very great influence upon the treatment of the whole science of economics in Germany. Communistic and socialistic ideas invaded Germany as early as 1830-40. But the labor question did not acquire a great significance until after 1848, when the railroads and factories began to increase rapidly, and the way was broken for the sway of modern industry. German science did not assume the protesting position of the orthodox French economists. Hildebrand's "Political Economy of the Present and the Future," and Stein's initiative investigations into communism and socialism, gave immediate evidence of a desire to do justice to the causes of the movements of the proletary by impartial and thorough examination of all claims. The labor question has become the most important chapter of political economy, and the various tendencies which exist within the science show themselves clearly in the treatment of this question. Most of the younger economists devote their special attention to the labor question, and following the example of Hildebrand and Stein, seek to learn from socialism instead of holding themselves aristocratically aloof from it. Various principles, which are to be found among the earlier German economists, have acquired a new significance from the labor question. The pressing problem of state-help or self-help, led necessarily to a more careful study of the functions of the state in economic matters. The observation of the war of classes waged between the proletary and the propertied classes, placed the importance of public spirit in a new light. The pressing cry for a solution of the labor question directed attention from the search after natural laws ruling in economics, to the question, what ought to prevail, what should be done? As a natural consequence, in opposition to the rationalistic explanation of what is, the teaching of the moral duty of men in economic actions became more prominent. The opposition of the German science of Roscher, Hildebrand, Knies, Schäffle, Stein, etc., to Manchesterism, expresses itself in the great stress laid on the ethical element, and this has become more marked in the younger economists, from Adolph Wagner down to Brentano. Thus by various roads German political economy has advanced far beyond Adam Smith, Ricardo and J. B. Say. It has attained to new views, new methods and new results, and its advances have been far more consistent and complete than the acquisitions of even a John Stuart Mill, let alone the ideas of a Bastiat and a Carey, which are new rather in form and terms of expression than in content. German science has not, it is true, as yet evolved any entirely new system of economics, which independent in form and content, can look down on Adam Smith as obsolete, as the latter could look down on the mercantile system. The relative truth of the results of the English masters, as well as the relative justifiableness of their method, is fully recognized, because, as a matter of fact, in many economical matters the uncontrolled freedom of the individual leads to the best results for society as a whole because, as a matter of fact, particularly in the sphere of commercial activity, egoism is naturally the prevailing motive; and because our observations of concrete phenomena are still too incomplete to allow us to dispense entirely with the method of abstract deduction. The English masters have determined for us thus far the general limits of the science as a whole, and of various fundamental questions. But as German science advances with success by independent roads from the basis already laid, it forms a sharp contrast to that slavish dependence upon the English and upon Manchesterism which delights in following to their greatest extremes the weaknesses and one-sidedness of those great masters.

—Recent English political economy has been enriched by the writings of Prof. Cairnes, Hearn, Musgrave, Shadwell, Jevons, Fawcett, W. T. Thornton, H. D. Macleod, Bagehot, J. E. Thorold Rogers, Cliffe Leslie and J. K. Ingram. J. S. Mill's great work, which is still the best general treatise on economics in English, marked a turning point in English political economy. It summed up all the contributions to the science which had up to that time been made by the Smith-Ricardo school of economists. In that very work, however, Mill showed signs of disagreement with some of the fundamental tenets of the school. His views of distribution and of the limits of state interference mark a sharp contrast to those of some of his immediate predecessors. Before his death he gave signs of a still more fundamental difference in giving up the wagesfund theory, upon which he had laid such stress in his great work. He was moved to this by an able work of W. T. Thornton's on "Labor." Cliffe Leslie and Professor Ingram may be said to belong to the historical school, and have distinguished themselves by their opposition to the orthodox economists. To these latter belong Cairnes and Fawcett, the former of whom in his works on the "Logical Method of Political Economy," and "Some Leading Principles of Political Economy Newly Expounded," has made valuable additions and corrections in the science. Rogers' "History of Agriculture and Prices in England," Jevons' "Theory of Political Economy," and "Money and the Mechanism of Exchange," and Macleod's and Bagehot's writings on financial subjects, are among the most valuable contributions of English writers to economic science in the last twenty years.

—Recent (i.e., since 1850) French political economy has not received the attention it deserves from foreign writers. Several economic periodicals are maintained, and many valuable monographs have been published during the last thirty years. In 1851-3 the Dictionnaire de l'Economie, edited by Coquelin and Guillaumin, was published—a vast treasure-house of economic science. Among recent economists Michel Chevalier stands first. He wrote chiefly on financial questions, though he published also a "Course of Political Economy." Wolowski was a vigorous opponent of Chevalier, an adherent of the historical school, and a prolific writer on monetary questions. He favored a double standard. Among other economists we may mention the following: Passy, Reybaud; De Parieu, the author of an excellent treatise on taxation; Garnier, a writer on finance; Baudrillart, Cournot and Walras, the last two devoted believers in the mathematical method of investigating economic phenomena; A. Clèment, and Paul Leroy-Beaulieu. The tendencies of these writers are as various, and in general the same, as those already noticed in Germany and England. Among the recent economists in the other continental countries we may mention Prof. Ferrara, Boccardo, Mora, Bianchini, Messedaglia, Nazzani and Cossa, in Italy; Brasseur, Périn, De Molinari and De Lavelaye, in Belgium; Cherbuliez and Sismondi, in Switzerland; Estrada, Colmeiro and Santillan, in Spain; and Forjaz de Sampajo, in Portugal. Of these, Ferrara was a man of remarkable ability, and did the science great service by his acute and brilliant criticism; and by his enthusiasm for economic studies he contributed greatly to that widespread interest in such branches which is characteristic of the new Italy. Cherbuliez was an economist of great ability, and his Précis de la science économique is the ablest exposition of political economy in the French language.

—The history of political economy in America is yet to be written. American economists, even still more than their English brethren, have devoted their attention rather to practical than to theoretical questions. Most of our economical works have been written to defend one view or the other of our great political and economical problems. In general the same tendencies are observable here as in other countries. We have our irreconcilable free-traders, our bitter and bigoted protectionists, our laissez faire, laissez passer school, and our defenders of a paternal government. With the exception of Henry Carey, our economists have attracted no particular attention abroad, and exercised no considerable influence. The study of economics is becoming daily more and more widespread, and the foundation of departments of political science in connection with our colleges is becoming quite common. Few countries in the world offer as many advantages to the inductive student of economics as America. Here everything is on such a grand scale, and the machinery of society is still so simple, that extraordinary opportunities are offered to study the fundamental elements of the great national economy in their simplicity. There is but little doubt that the near future will see valuable original work done in economics by American students. Among our early writers on economics, Benjamin Franklin may fairly lay claim to having anticipated, by a full generation, Adam Smith's theory that labor is the only proper measure of value, and also Malthus' theory of population, that man tends to increase in numbers in a greater ratio than the means of subsistence. Alexander Hamilton discussed in his reports many economic questions with great ability. Daniel Raymond published his "Elements of Political Economy" in 1819. He took decided ground against Adam Smith, emphasizing the distinction between individual and national wealth, maintaining that our aim should be to increase the latter even at the expense of the former. He opposed Malthus' theory, and demanded protection for home manufactures by means of a tariff. Cooper's "Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy," published in 1826, took exactly opposite ground, and insisted on the necessity of free trade. The word "nation," he says, is an empty word. The wealth of a nation is nothing but the wealth of the individuals who compose it, etc.

—The most important, original and acute American economist was Henry C. Carey. Men oftentimes further the progress of a science quite as much by their errors as by the new truth they discover. Carey is one of those writers whose views, although they are not tenable either as a whole or in detail, have been received with attention and appreciation by the whole scientific world. He has had devoted followers in Germany, France and Italy, and although his views have not been generally accepted, yet they have exercised considerable influence in a negative way, leading those whose theories he attacked to a more careful formulation of whatever truth they contain. Carey, like Bastiat, proceeds in all his writings upon the assumption of a complete harmony between natural and social interests. In self-interest and in the innate desire of man to better his external condition, he finds the surest road to prosperity, the natural basis of the moral progress of society. He not only denies any antagonism between labor and capital, but sees in the co-operation of these two factors the most powerful means of promoting an increased production, which will surely and continually improve the condition of the laboring classes. He boldly proclaims the possibility of an endless and boundless growth. He starts with a thorough discussion of the ideas of value, labor and production. He bases value upon labor, and makes the cost of reproduction the standard of value. He then passes to the theory of distribution, and makes his harmony of interests the fundamental principle. The tendency of man to increase is surpassed by that of capital to multiply. The productivity of labor is conditioned by the density of the population. The more numerous the people, the more extensive man's control over nature, and the more rapid the increase of capital. The share of the laborer in the product becomes absolutely and relatively greater, and that of the capitalist, although relatively decreasing, is becoming absolutely larger all the while. A constant diminution in the unproductive classes follows this continued development. Cary is, as will be seen, an opponent of Malthus. He urges the possibility of emigration, the possibility of a fairer distribution of wealth and the immense tracts of unoccupied land in the world as proof of the falsity of Malthus' view. In his earlier writings Cary (in agreement with Ricardo) assumed that cultivation proceeds from the most productive to the less and less productive lands. The increasing productivity of labor, however, causes a depreciation in the value of the capital expended on lands in early times, and consequently in the value of the lands themselves. Lands rent at any given time only for such a sum as represents the interest on the capital required at that time to bring similar lands into cultivation. This sum is always far less than the sum actually expended on any piece of ground. The value of land is consequently controlled by the same laws as the value of all other kinds of property. In his later works he maintains that cultivation does not proceed from the most productive to the less productive, but in just the contrary order, from the least productive to the most productive. With the establishment of this proposition, he proposes to overthrow the whole doctrine of rent as set forth by Ricardo. Carey's writings are permeated with a feeling of bitter hostility to England, and are full of gross errors of fact. In striking contrast with his doctrine of the perfect harmony of all human interests and of the advantages of freedom, Carey is a pronounced protectionist, maintaining that English competition would ruin American industry, and that in order to insure that diversity of employments necessary to the highest civilization, the active interference of the government is necessary.

—Most American economists agree with Carey in rejecting the doctrines of Malthus and Ricardo, though on various grounds. Among recent economists the following deserve especial mention: Prof. A. L. Perry of Williams college, Prof. Francis A. Walker of the Boston technological school, Prof. Sumner of Yale college, Prof. Thompson of Philadelphia, and Prof. Henry George of California. Prof. Perry is a pronounced free trader of the Bastiat type. His text book on political economy has been perhaps more widely used than any other recent publication in America. It contains some valuable chapters on the history of the sciences, on value, and on the tariff and currency. Prof. Walker's works on "Money" and "Wages" have placed him in the front rank of American economists. His father's work on the "Science of Wealth" is one of the best economic works which has appeared in America. Prof. Thompson has published a work, written to set forth the doctrines of the Carey school in a more scientific form. Among American economists Mr. David A. Wells also occupies an exalted position. His earliest economic writing was a cogent examination of the debt and resources of the country, written during the rebellion. This tract brought him into notice as a statistician, and led to his appointment to the position of special commissioner of the revenue (1865-9), and the reports he prepared in these years are models of clear reasoning and close application of general principles to facts. While in this position he became convinced of the many inconsistencies of the protective system, and he has since become one of the leaders of a movement for a reform of the tariff, and the greater part of his writings have had reference to this subject. As one of the commissioners to revise the laws for the assessment and collection of taxes in New York state, he made two reports, the great merits of which have been widely recognized, and greatly enhanced his reputation as a writer on taxation. Mr. Wells' writings, which are scattered in many periodicals, are marked by great clearness and accuracy, and form valuable contributions to the economic literature of the country. He belongs to no particular school of economists. He has edited a volume of Bastiat's essays, and prepared, in 1881, a "History of the American Merchant Marine," a work which ad mirably illustrates his methods. Among contemporary economists in America, Prof. W. G. Sumner of Yale college occupies a very high rank. His chief published economic works are his "History of American Currency," 1874; his "History of Protection in the United States," 1877; his collection of papers on "What the social classes owe to each other," 1883. Prof. Sumner's strongest work, however, is not seen in his published books. It has been in his oral instruction. Prof. George's principal work is entitled "Progress and Poverty," and is mainly devoted to a discussion of distribution. There are many able writers on economics connected with the press of the country. But America is still waiting for the man to appear who shall make her contributions to the science as great and valuable as those of any other nation.

—LITERATURE. Die geschichtliche Entwickelung der Nationalökonomik und ihrer Literature, by Julius Kautz; Die Ge schichte der Nationalökonomik, by II. Eisenhardt; Histoire de l'Economie politique en Europe, by Ad. Blanqui; Geschichte der Nationalökonomik in Deutschland, by W. Roscher, and the Guide to the Study of Political Economy, by L. Cossa, are the works which, aside from the original authorities, have been chiefly consulted in compiling the preceding article. Some of the expositions of the doctrines held by the various schools have been taken with but little change from the above-named works. Prof. Cossa's little work, based on the larger special works in French, German and Italian, is a very convenient summary of the most valuable works on political economy in all languages.

E. J. JAMES.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

POLITICAL SCIENCE is that part of social science which treats of the foundations of the state and of the principles of government. It is closely connected with political economy, or, as it is sometimes called, the science of wealth; with law, be it natural or positive, which has principally to do with the relations of citizens to one another; with history, which furnishes it with the facts of which it has need; with philosophy, and, above all, with morality, which supply it with a part of its principles. Political science is either theoretical or applied. In theory it establishes general laws, which it draws either from experience or from reason, and which are as much the generalized expression of facts as the pure conception of an ideal more or less possible of realization. As applied science, it seeks the means of reducing to practice these general principles, taking into consideration time, place, manners, resources, in a word, circumstances. We shall speak here only of theoretical political science, and our intention is not to propound any particular doctrine, but to give a summary, following the order of time, of the principal theories which the history of the science has preserved to us.

—We may divide the history of political ideas into five periods: 1, the oriental period; 2, the Græco-Latin period; 3, the middle ages and the renaissance; 4, the modern period, which extends from the sixteenth century to the time of the French revolution; 5, the contemporaneous period.

—I. The East. We may say that the east (if we except China) was never acquainted with political science. Among most eastern nations, India, Persia, Judea, politics never succeeded in separating itself from theology. But if we discard the forms which are peculiar to oriental thought, we shall find in the religious books of the east social and political theories of the highest importance. For example, the system of caste and the theocratic system; such are the two principal ideas to which Indian politics, or, to use a better expression, Brahminical politics, may be reduced. We find, in the sacred book of the "Laws of Mann," a very striking expression of these two ideas. It is said there that the four castes, into which, from all antiquity, Indian society was divided, issued from Brahma, who produced them each from a different part of his own body; the Brahmins, or priests, from his mouth; the kshatryas, or warriors, from his arm; the vaisyas, or merchants, and laborers, from his thigh; and, finally, the sudras, or servants, from his foot. The theocratic theory appears in the same book in its most insolent form. "The Brahmin," it is said there, "is the lord of all beings; all that exists is his property; it is by the generosity of the Brahmin that other men enjoy the goods of this world." The book of Manu admits, indeed, the existence of royalty, and even, with oriental hyperbole, the monarch is called therein "a great divinity"; but this divinity is the slave of the Brahmins; he is obliged to "communicate to them all his affairs, and overwhelm them with benefactions and wealth." One sole fact describes this ignominious dependence in a very striking manner: "If the king finds a treasure," it is written, "he owes half of it to the Brahmins; if the Brahmin finds one, he keeps it for himself alone, without dividing it with the king."

—The Buddhist reformation profoundly changed this social system, not because in the beginning (as Burnouf has well shown) Buddha, or Sakyamuni, attacked the system of caste; but by proclaiming religious equality, he evidently gave it a mortal blow. "My law is a law of grace for all," he said. He called, above all, beggars and vagabonds to a religious life. These principles bore their fruits. In one of the oldest Buddhist legends, the system of caste is strongly and deeply attacked: "There is not between the Brahmin and a man of another caste the difference which exists between a stone and gold, between light and darkness. The Brahmin, in fact, did not spring from the ether or the wind; he did not rend the earth to appear in the light of day; he was born from the matrix of a woman, like the chandala (the vilest of creatures, inferior to the sudra)." By its hostility to caste, Buddhism has been able to extend everywhere in Asia, and principally in China, where the people appear never to have known this system; even where castes exist still, as in Ceylon, Buddhism has destroyed the theocratic character which the system had in India, and has changed it into a military and feudal system.

—I shall say nothing of Persia, of which we know so little, except that in the Zendavesta the system of caste appears in a singularly mild form; that the priests are there rather councilors of the king than his masters; and especially that, as this religion recommended above all agriculture as a sacred duty, there resulted a noticeable change of condition for the class of laborers; for the latter were ranked among the atharnés, that is to say, great.

—It is chiefly in China that we find something analogous to what we call in the west political science; not because Confucius, the most celebrated of Chinese sages, was much engrossed with this science; but his disciple, or rather the reformer of his doctrine, two centuries after him, Mencius, was an ingenious and liberal publicist, as the following anecdote proves. He was conversing with the king of Tsi. "What must be done," he asked him, "with a friend who has badly administered our affairs?" "Break with him," said the king. "And with a magistrate who has not well fulfilled his functions?" "Remove him," said the king. "And if the provinces are badly governed, what must be done?" The king, feigning not to understand him, glanced to the right and to the left, and spoke of something else. The political theory of Mencius consisted in a sort of conciliation between divine right and the sovereignty of the people. The emperor, according to him, does not appoint his successor, but he presents him to the acceptance of Heaven and of the people; a doctrine conformable to the traditions of the sacred books of China. We know, doubtless, what becomes, in the politics of absolute governments, of this pretended acceptance by the people; it is most generally a fiction. But what is not a fiction, is the right, recognized to exist in the people by Mencius, to rid themselves of the kings with whom they are dissatisfied; a right which the Chinese people seem to have exercised more than once, if we can judge by the number of their dynasties. Moreover, Mencius himself exercised a very bold right of censure at the courts of the different princes he frequented. He attacked tyranny under all its forms, and particularly because it was a burden upon property. He showed great sagacity in pointing out the bond which united order with property; in him there was no vestige of caste or of aristocracy. He divided society into two classes: those who work with the head, and those who work with their hands, and, which is indeed the sign of a laborious and industrial society, he endeavored chiefly to show that intelligence is itself labor, and that manual labor can not be exacted from all; a manifest proof that the latter was not despised nor sacrificed, since a wise man was obliged to apologize for the former.

—However curious and new the study of the political theories of the east may be for science, these theories have had so little influence upon our destinies, or at least an influence so indirect and so little apparent, that we must pass on to Greece, that is to say, to the cradle of western civilization.

—II. Græco-Roman Period. The little space which we have at our disposal forces us to reduce political science in antiquity to three names Plato, Aristotle and Cicero.

—Nothing is more common than to consider Plato as a political dreamer, who was deceived because he did not take experience into consideration, and because he wished to construct society on an impossible basis. An important distinction must be drawn here, one without which we can not understand Plato, nor do his genius the justice which it deserves. A distinction must be drawn between utopian politics and ideal politics. The first consists in combining artificially, and by means of the imagination, the elements of which all society is composed, and thus creating an arbitrary mechanism, which has no life, no reality, no possible application, either present or future. Such are the utopias of Sir Thomas More, of Campanella, and of some of our modern reformers. Ideal politics, on the contrary, consists in forming a true idea of the state, in conceiving it in its perfection (as much so, of course, as the limits of the human mind permit), finally, in presenting to societies a model, as morality presents one to individuals. No state will ever reach that perfection, any more than any hero or any saint has ever attained or will ever attain moral perfection. But if we do not forbid morality to propose an ideal to men, why should we forbid politics to present one to peoples and to governments? Now, there is in the politics of Plato a utopian part and an ideal part. The first is dead, and will not revive; the second is eternal. It is utopism, in Plato, to consider society as divided into four stereotyped classes, like the Indian or Egyptian castes; it is utopism to believe that the state will have more unity, more harmony, more patriotism, because you have suppressed the family and property; it is utopism to have considered woman as like to man, and as capable of the same functions as man, for instance, of bearing arms and of governing the state; it is utopism to suppress the laws in the state, and to replace them by education alone; it is utopism to make philosophers the governing class, and thus to confound speculation with practice; finally, it is utopism to exclude poetry from the republic, to reduce music and the fine arts to the servile obedience of a fixed type, protected by tyranny, jealous of its arbitrary censure. But what is not utopism in Plato, is to have conceived justice as the true end of society, and to have made justice consist in the concord and harmony of the citizens. What is not utopism, whatever the politics of Machiavellism may say to the contrary, is to have asserted that the true strength of the state is virtue, and that the true principle of virtue is education. Education can not, then, replace the laws, but it is education that gives soul and spirit to the laws. For what is the use of a law which is not observed? And what can sustain the laws, if not morals? What is not utopism, moreover, in Plato, is to have perceived, before Aristotle, that it was in a well-moderated and well-balanced constitution that the only guarantee of liberty resided; to have exacted of legislators that they should give the reasons for their laws when they promulgated them; finally, to have demanded for criminals not only punishment, but amendment and amelioration.

—Still, an important element is lacking in the Platonic ideal; it is the idea of liberty. In his "Republic," Plato gives liberty no place; and if, in his dialogue of the "Laws," much wiser, as we know, if he gives it a place, it is in a certain manner despite himself and against his real feelings. This is easy of explanation. Plato had witnessed at Athens the excesses of liberty, and he had suffered from those excesses. By a natural illusion, which we have often seen again, he considered the sovereign good to lie in the very opposite of what he had witnessed near at hand, and he idealized Sparta, Crete and even Egypt, rather than appear to consider the laws and customs of his own country right; a kind of blindness habitual with the school of Socrates, and of which Xenophon is still more culpable than Plato.

—If Plato founded ideal politics (not without an admixture of utopism), Aristotle founded experimental politics. Not that there are no facts in Plato, and that Aristotle is destitute of ideality; but we must characterize each of them by his most striking traits. What there is newer and absolutely lasting in the politics of Aristotle is, first, his method; that is, the analysis of facts, the reduction of a complex whole to its elements. For example, the state is the object of politics. Now, the state is evidently a whole composed of a very great number of elements. The analysis of this whole, of its integral parts, of its divers forms, of its successive phases, is political science. Such is the method of Aristotle; it is the most rigorous, the most scientific, that can be employed. It is that which, later, all the great publicists of the experimental school followed—Machiavelli, Bodin, Montesquieu, Locke and de Tocqueville. Aristotle took so much into account the conditions of the experimental method applied to politics, that, before writing his great work, he had collected, we are told, the constitutions of 360 republics or governments, and had analyzed them in a book unfortunately lost. In them he found the materials for his political doctrine; from them he took his examples; from them, doubtless, he drew his admirable analyses of the constitutions of Sparta, of Crete and of Carthage, models of political judgment.

—We may say, also, that it is Aristotle who has fixed the frame, the great lines, the principal divisions, the principal problems, of political philosophy. The theory of sovereignty, the division of governments, the analysis and criticism of their different kinds, the theory of execution, the theory of revolutions: such are the different matters which the "Republic" of Aristotle treats of, after an introduction devoted to some questions of natural law and to a criticism of the most celebrated constitutions, real or imaginary. It is the strong sentiment of reality and the observation of the nature of things which led Aristotle to discover all the falseness of Platonic utopias, and in particular of that vain fraternity, which made of all citizens the indistinct children of unknown fathers and mothers. "It is better," says Aristotle, wittily, "to be a cousin in the actual system, than a brother in the system of Plato." He said, further, that "the affections were lost in a community, like a few drops of honey in a vast extent of water." No modern economist has recognized better than Aristotle the emptiness of that abstract and chimerical unity which absorbs the individual in the state. "It is wishing to draw harmony," says Aristotle again, "from one single chord, to have rhythm with a single measure." He shows that the suppression of property would not suppress quarrels and trials at law. There are as many quarrels between owners of goods in common as between those who have personal goods. Besides, the greatest crimes are not occasioned by the absence of possession. "Tyranny does not usurp anything for the purpose of guaranteeing itself from the inclemencies of the air."

—It is the same lively feeling of the reality and the observation of the nature of things which caused Aristotle to discover this great truth, that man is naturally born for society, or, as has been so often said, is a political animal. Without society, man would be either a god or a beast. Society is composed of families. The family is distinguished from the state, in that the state is composed of men free and equal, while the family rests upon inequality. But it is a delicate achievement of Aristotle that he distinguished conjugal power from paternal power, the first of which is, he says, more like republican power, and the second more like royal power.

—In politics, properly so called, Aristotle admirably grasped the principle of the responsibility of power. "It is not the cook," he says "it is the guest who judges the banquet." He prefers the guaranty of the law to that which rests only in the wisdom of a prince. "To demand the absolute sovereignty of a king," he says, "is to declare sovereigns both the man and the beast." While appreciating with the utmost correctness the strength and the weakness of the different governments, he pronounces, as far as he himself is concerned, in favor of government by the middle classes. According to him, the great do not know how to obey, and the low do not know how to command. Both always wish to be tyrants. The middle classes, leaning as much to one side as to the other, hold alternately in check these two natural enemies, the nobility and the people. It is here, in fact, in the natural hostility of the rich and the poor, of the strong and the weak, of the great and the people, that Aristotle sees the principle of all revolution. The one party desires inequality everywhere, even where it is unjust; the other wishes equality everywhere, even where it is absurd and impossible; and hence all states toss about between arbitrary inequality and a violent equality. Hence, the revolts of the people in aristocracies and of the great in democracies. The advice given by Aristotle, to escape these dangers, is that no government should abuse its principle. Democracy perishes by the excess of democratic institutions. And so with monarchy and oligarchy. On the contrary, the people, in democracies, should appear occupied only with the interest of the rich; and, in oligarchies, the great should have in view only the interest of the people. Even in tyrannies, power can not exist, except on the condition of its being moderate. All these principles, so sensible, so practical, so frequently proven, are summed up in the excellent maxim of eternal application, "Authority is more lasting in proportion as it is less extended."

—But if the method of observation and of experience revealed to Aristotle so many remarkable and profound laws, it unfortunately also contributed to close his eyes to one of the greatest injustices of ancient society, to slavery. Always preoccupied with the finding of the reason of facts, and much less with weighing the justice of them, Aristotle sought to explain slavery; and in explaining it, he justified it. He was rather inclined to extend than to restrain the practice of it, for he lays it down as a principle that there are two classes of men; one made to obey, and the other to command. The former are the slaves, the latter freemen. It is not war, nor law, nor covenant, which makes slavery; it is nature. And if we ask Aristotle who are the men that nature has thus condemned to slavery, he answers that they are those who are good only for manual labor; he seems to believe that nature herself designed them to be slaves by giving them an entirely material vigor, necessary for the coarser work of society, while she reserved for freemen nobility and beauty. It often happens, however, that there are men who have only the body of the freeman, while others have only his soul. It is easy, therefore, to be deceived.

—Contempt for manual labor is the greatest prejudice we meet with in the politics of Aristotle. He even goes so far that he has attempted to confound the laborer with the slave, and in more than one place he divides society into two classes: the freemen, who have the necessary leisure to devote themselves to war, politics and philosophy; and the artisans, or slaves, who produce the means of subsistence for the former. A free society, that is to say, an imperceptible oligarchy, maintained by a slave society, that is to say, by the mass of men—such is Aristotle's ideal. Nevertheless, if we compare the politics of the latter with Plato's, it can not be denied that it is more true, more sensible and more practical than Plato's.

—Cicero is not an original publicist; and the Romans, great politicians in practice as they were, did not produce in this respect great theorizers. Still, it is in Cicero that we find best developed that great idea of a mixed government which was the hope and the desire of many sages, until it found realization in the English constitution. After having set forth and compared the advantages and inconveniences of the different forms of government, Cicero decides in favor of a mixed government, or of a supreme and royal power, united to the authority of a distinguished class, and to a certain liberty of the people, which satisfies both the demands of order and those of equality that exist together in human nature. This government would be the most stable of all, because of its moderation and temperament. It is the condition of all that is temperate to last a long time, "and extremes are readily changed to their contraries." Cicero, following the example of Polybius, believed that the Roman government was an example of a mixed and temperate government. The government at Rome was at first monarchical. Royalty, overthrown by the revolution of Brutus, reappeared, divided and diminished, under the name of the consulate. In this second period, the constitution was wholly aristocratic. A new revolution, that of Virginius, introduced the people into the government. Henceforth, the consulate, the senate, and the tribuneship of the people, accompanied by many other institutions, some aristocratic, and some popular, represented, in their union, that form of temperate government, a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy and republic, which Cicero extols as the best and most secure of all forms of government. Without contesting his opinion upon this point, we content ourselves with observing that it is only by twisting the sense of the words, that we can make the consulate pass for a monarchical institution; and that, in reality, the Roman government was never anything but an aristocratic constitution, slowly transforming itself into a democracy.

—III. The Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The period which extends from the end of antiquity to the middle of the middle ages, that is, to the thirteenth century, that period so great in the religious history of the human mind, has not the same importance in politics; it is only necessary to call attention, in its beginning, to Christian politics, by comparing it with Hebrew politics.

—The politics of the Hebrews, in the beginning, or at least from the time of Moses, was theocratic politics, although not sacerdotal. God was the only king, the only lord, the only proprietor of the land. It was with him that the people covenanted through the mediation of Moses. But the priests were not, as in India, the governing class. The tribe of Levi was excluded from a share in land, with the exception of certain cities which had been given to them. The priests were a family, not a caste. The priesthood extended through all the tribes, and was an instrument of unity. It had, moreover, considerable political influence, serving as an intermediary between God and the people. After Moses, power appears to have been patriarchal and democratic, concentrated only in critical moments in the hands of a military chief. The disorders which resulted from this state of things led the Hebrews to desire a monarchical government. It is probable that the priesthood little favored this institution; for we see Samuel strongly reproving the people upon this occasion, and threatening them, on the part of God, with the most frightful despotism. Still, in becoming monarchical, the government did not entirely lose its theocratic character. Consecration and anointment sufficiently prove this. The sacerdotal power continued to remain powerful; finally, outside of the established church, there were always immediate envoys of God, who, without any other title than divine inspiration, admonished the kings and held their ambition in check. These were the prophets, a sort of popular opposition, which was, however, as often directed against the people themselves as against the royal authority.

—Such were the sources at which, later, Christian politics drank. But in the beginning, like all great religious doctrines, Christianity was not political. It was an entirely moral kingdom that it wished to found; it was in this moral kingdom that the first were the last and the last first. Christ meant by this, not that it was necessary to change the social order, but that the social and political order was as nothing compared with the true order, the moral and religious order of things. But he did not ask to change anything here below. His kingdom was not of this world. The apostle Paul sums up the same ideas in these celebrated words: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be, are ordained of God." Christian politics was, therefore, in the earliest times, only the politics of obedience and of submission to the established powers. The only revolution of which it thought was the reform of souls.

—It is not our province to investigate here the social consequences of Christianity. We know the great influence it had in the greatest social fact of modern times, the abolition of slavery. We shall limit ourselves here to political doctrines. Now, one of the questions that Christian politics gave rise to, is that of the relations of church and state. We know how that question is solved in the Gospel: "Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's; and unto God the things that are God's." All the primitive church remained faithful to this maxim, tempered by these words of the apostle: "We ought to obey God rather than men." Later, when the state became Christian, the church showed very great power of resistance and very great ambition. We know that the whole of the middle ages was the struggle of these two powers. This struggle, which fills up history, fills up, also, all the writings of the time; on the one side the writings of the theologians, and on the other of the jurisconsults. We can scarcely give a summary of such a controversy, which has filled vast numbers of books, but we can point out the principles involved in it. It is to be remarked that in this struggle, in which were appealed to in turn the principle of the divine right of kings and the principle of the sovereignty of the people, it was chiefly the laymen or jurisconsults who appealed to the former, and the theologians to the latter. The partisans of the civil power were interested in making the origin of power flow directly from God, in order that they might not appear to hold it from the hands of the church. The church, on the contrary, was interested in demonstrating the human origin of this power, in order to rule more easily. Hinkmar, Gregory VII., Innocent III., John of Salisbury, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Giles of Rome, were the defenders of the ecclesiastical power in the middle ages. The jurisconsults Dante, Occam, and Mariel of Padua, were the principal defenders of the civil power. The thirteenth century witnessed the triumph of the theocratic school. The fourteenth century witnessed its ruin.

—But new ideas and new light are spread among the people. The reading of ancient writers, now resumed, freed the mind in every sphere. Scholasticism drooped and died; more experience, more reflection, more curiosity, gave birth to new methods and to a new language. Politics was the first of the sciences to profit by this revolution, but not without injury to morality. We have met Machiavelli.

—Machiavelli substituted in politics, for the wholly syllogistic method of the schools, the method of observation and of experience, such as we have already seen it in Aristotle. Still, there is a difference in the methods of these two great minds. In Machiavelli the method was rather empirical than really experimental. To explain: the great experimental method, as understood by Aristotle and Montesquieu, consists in gathering together, on a very large scale, the most general facts of the political order and converting them into laws. The division of governments, the division of powers, the forms and conditions of sovereignty, the laws according to which governments are formed, grow and decay—such are the objects of political science; and experience is the method which serves to discover them. Machiavelli did not seek such general results. His end was much nearer home, and was always reduced to this practical problem: How is it necessary to act under such and such circumstances? Politics, as he understood it, is less a science than an art; he gathers together tentatively certain examples, and he advises us to act after certain models, whose acts he relates. Hence, instead of general laws, founded upon the analysis of facts, he gives us precepts, founded upon examples: this is empiricism, not science.

—We know, too, what an indifference to good and evil, to justice and injustice, Machiavelli introduced into politics. Cruelty and bad faith, those weapons so familiar to the Italian politics of the fifteenth century, seemed to him most innocent, and he recommended them with the most perfect indifference. It has been said that these criminal counsels which fill the book of the "Prince" were only a feint, whose object was to render tyranny odious. But it is difficult to admit such a theory. For, in the first place, the "Prince" has by no means the character which is ascribed to it; and, besides, we find the same maxims both in the correspondence of Machiavelli and in his discourse on Titus Livius, a work infinitely superior to the "Prince" in its political bearing, and in the elevation of its ideas. Finally, Machiavellism was not only the doctrine of a man, but of a century. Machiavelli disclosed the secret of his age; and it must be avowed that there is always more or less of Machiavellism in the politics of all times. (See MACHIAVELLISM.)

—From the purely political point of view, Machiavelli seems to have two doctrines: the one popular and republican, in his "Discourse"; the other tyrannical and monarchical, in the "Prince." This contradiction is explained by the empiricism of Machiavelli, who was more occupied with studying facts and explaining ways and means, than with exposing principles. In one of these works he studies popular governments; in the other, princely governments, and particularly that of new princes. He points out what experience has taught him in regard to the means of elevating and making prosperous these two forms of government. It has been conjectured that in the book of the "Prince" he advises tyranny only in the interest of liberty: tyranny would be to him only a democratic dictatorship. It is difficult to discern this idea in the "Prince," though some passages of the "Discourse" may authorize it. Let us add that the more popular and more liberal politics of the "Discourse" appear much more conformable to the real thoughts of Machiavelli than the politics of the "Prince."

—The sixteenth century was especially a century of politics. The great religious reformation, excited by Luther, was of profit to the science of the state. When the foundations of religious belief had been submitted to examination, the time was not far off when political beliefs would have to undergo the same examination. Hence nothing is more interesting in this respect than the political writings of the sixteenth century; for the first time a bold examination was made of the foundations of the right of sovereignty; those rights of the people and of kings, which, according to Cardinal de Retz, "never accorded so well with one another as in silence," were laid bare. The Protestant schools gave the signal. Hotman in his Franco-Gallia, Hubert Languet in his Vindiciœ contra tyrannos, Buchanan in his De jure regni apud Scotos, propounded the principles of a system of politics holdly revolutionary and democratic. Hubert Languet, in particular, first brought to light the principle of contract, which was later to become so famous in the hands of another Protestant and republican, J. J. Rousseau. Before long the Catholics, drawn into the struggle, rivaled the Protestants in revolutionary ardor. They even pushed anarchical principles so far that they even authorized and defended regicide. The writings of the Jesuits, and, in particular, the celebrated De Rege of Mariana, prove this. Among all these polemical writings, which have as much excited minds as perfected science, we must single out one of the greatest monuments of political science, the République of Bodin. This book, composed almost upon the plan of Aristotle's "Politics," and which, in its vast compass, contains and sums up all the problems of politics, is remarkable for the number of its facts, of its historic examples, for its judicial and even economic knowledge, for its moral elevation and its political moderation. But we can not say that it contains truly new and original principles. What is most remarkable in it, is a very fine polemic against slavery; a polemic which was then only too timely, the discovery of America having brought about a sad increase in the evil of slavery. We must not forget to mention, finally, the eloquent appeal of L'Hospital in favor of freedom of conscience.

—IV. Modern Times. The seventeenth century scarcely produced any great publicists, save in England. For it is only where liberty exists, or at least where it is a matter of dispute, that politics acquire new light. Two names arise above all others in this strife of parties and of political schools: Hobbes, the defender of absolute power; and Locke, the heir of the doctrines of Buchanan and of Languet, and the defender of the sovereignty of the people.

—Hobbes takes as his point of departure the principle that man has the absolute right of self-preservation by all possible means; and according this same right to all men, he very logically concludes that the state of nature is a state of war of all against all. He has no difficulty in making it appear that this state is a threatening one for everybody; for the weak in the first place, who are oppressed by the strong; and then for the strong, who may be oppressed by the weak leagued against them. In this common state of disquietude the only means of guaranteeing the security of all is for each one to resign the absolute right which he has over all things, and transfer that right, with all its consequences, to a central power (prince, assembly or people), which thus becomes sovereign. The sovereign is, then, a public personage, invested, through the renunciation of their rights by the members of society, with absolute power. Hobbes is not exclusively a partisan of the power of one man. Doubtless he prefers monarchy to the other forms of government. But he admits them all; the only principle to which he holds, is the principle of absolute power, in whatever hands this power may be placed. He makes no reservation of the rights of citizens or of subjects, and he abandons them, bound hand and foot, to the absolute arbitrary power of the state.

—Such are the principles contained in the De Cive, or the "Leviathan," the most audacious pleas which have ever been written in favor of absolute power. Hobbes had witnessed the English revolution; he had taken sides with the Stuarts, and it was to defend them that he composed these vigorous but detestable works. Locke, a partisan of William of Orange, and defender of the revolution of 1688, wrote, to refute the writings of Hobbes, of Filmer, and of other apologists of absolute power, the "Essay on Civil Government," one of the best treatises on politics that we possess.

—He maintains, against Hobbes, that even in the state of nature there is a primitive, law which does not permit each to do anything, no matter what, for his self-preservation. The state of nature is nothing but the state in which men live when they have no superior to settle their differences. In this state they have none the less reciprocal rights; and if it is permitted them to use force, it is not for attack, but for defense. Among these natural rights, anterior to civil law, Locke puts in the first rank, property, which he bases upon human labor; a doctrine entirely new then, and which has since become almost hackneyed. Liberty of person and liberty of labor are also natural rights of men. Hence Locke energetically combats slavery. Finally, his conclusion is, that the civil power, far from being based upon the renunciation by the citizens of all their rights, is, on the contrary, instituted for the protection of these very rights. It has been sought to derive the civil power from the paternal power; this was the theory of Filmer, in his "Patriarcha," in which he considered all the princes of the earth as heirs of Adam. Algernon Sidney, in his "Discourse upon Government," had already refuted this strange theory. Locke shows that the paternal power itself is instituted in the interest of the children, and does not extend beyond the time when the son has become a free man at his majority. The civil power, neither resting upon force nor upon the paternal right, Locke derives from popular consent; and from this principle he draws unhesitatingly the gravest consequence which it contains, namely, the right of insurrection, which he calls the right of appeal to heaven.

—The seventeenth century was more fruitful, so far as political science was concerned, in England than in France. La politique tirée de l'Ecriture sainte, by Bossuet, is the only work of any consequence written by the pen of a Frenchman at that time. It is an apology for absolute power and for the divine right of kings. Yet, if justice is to be done to Bossuet, he must not be confounded with Hobbes. The former endeavored to distinguish arbitrary power from absolute power. He recognized certain fundamental laws, which are the natural limit of power; he excepted life and property from the absolute power which the sovereign possesses; finally, while according him all rights, he did not overlook his duties. But even with these restrictions, the politics of Bossuet is none the less among the most absolute that we know. Let us add, that he understood nothing of the freedom of conscience, and that slavery itself appeared to him to be a legitimate institution. Such were the political doctrines of France. Fenelon, indeed, was more liberal minded than Bossuet, but rather from an aristocratic than from a popular point of view.

—After Louis XIV. and after Fenelon, minds were freed little by little, and turned to the examination of religious and of political affairs. The Lettres persanes and the Lettres anglaises were the signal given by the two masters of the century, Voltaire and Montesquieu; the former submitting all things, and, in particular, penal matters, to the great freedom of his judgment, so sensible and so penetrating; the latter, after the first brilliancy of the Lettres persanes and the vigorous masterpiece, Considérations sur la grandeur et la décadence des Romains, collecting his thoughts during twenty years to raise up for political science one of its most magnificent monuments, the Esprit des lois.

—The Esprit des lois is one of the most difficult books to analyze, for it does not contain, properly speaking, any system but there is not one of its pages which is not full of sense and of profundity; we may criticise his division of governments and his theory of their principles; but what is beyond all admiration is the profound and penetrating judgment which he brings to bear upon each one of them; his analysis of monarchy, founded upon honor and upon the privileges of the intermediary bodies, is a great truth. He has perceived with genius that the suppression of the intermediary powers would lead directly to despotism or to the power of the people. Nothing can be finer than what he has written upon the corruption of governments. Finally, when he says that monarchy rests upon honor, and the republic upon virtue, he advances indeed a maxim which is subject to restriction, but the basis of which is true. What constitutes the difference between aristocratic monarchy as it existed in France in the seventeenth century, and despotism as it exists in Turkey and in the east, is, that the power which is not limited by the laws is necessarily limited by manners and customs. It will be said that in Turkey even there are manners and customs which limit the empire of the sovereign. But that only proves that nowhere, not even in Turkey, is there absolute despotism. As for the principle of virtue, it is perfectly clear that popular governments have more need of it than other governments. Read, for example, the chapters of Montesquieu upon the corruption of democracies, and you will see what difficult duties await citizens the day they wish to be free. We learn there that the love of equality becomes the ruin of equality itself, if it does not know how to confine itself within its true limits; if, not content to be equal as citizens, we wish to be so also as sons and as brothers, as young and as old, as subjects and as magistrates. We learn also how obedience to the law is necessary in a country in which the law is made by the citizens themselves. We may find that Montesquieu yields too much to ancient prejudices, in considering frugality necessary in democracies: but it must be granted him that a certain sobriety, a certain moderation in enjoyment, is one of the guarantees of liberty; and that where the disordinate love of the pleasures of the senses rules, the country and the law run the risk of being held of little account.

—Moved by the desire to oppose the temperate and circumspect politics of Montesquieu to the rash and adventurous politics of J. J. Rousseau, the conservative spirit of the former has been frequently much exaggerated, as well as the revolutionary spirit of the latter. Montesquieu said: "I have not naturally a disapproving spirit." It has been concluded from this, that he was more ready to counsel the maintenance of abuse than the overthrow of the established order. Nothing could be more incorrect than such a view. The moderation of his tone ought not to close our eyes to what is bold and impassioned in the Esprit des lois. Montesquieu wished, as much as any man of his time, for a new society, so new indeed that we can still desire a part of what he dreamed of. If we except the venality of offices, which a remnant of domestic prejudice led him to spare, and which was besides a sort, of guaranty against arbitrary power, there is not a single abuse which Montesquieu did not attack with as much force as any philosopher of his time. Before Voltaire and Beccaria, he demanded the reform of the penal code, and the proportionment of punishments to offenses. Before Rousseau and Raynal, he eloquently attacked the institution of slavery. Before the Encyclopédie, he pleaded the cause of toleration.

—But among the greatest of the new things in Montesquieu must be reckoned the principle of the separation of the powers, the checks and balances of governments. Before him it had been indeed seen that there was in society a power to make the laws, a power to declare or interpret them, and a power to execute them; in a word, three powers, the legislative, the judicial and the executive. This division had already appeared in Aristotle; and there was an analogous one, although a little different, in Locke. But no one, not even Locke, had perceived that the separation of these powers is the essential condition of liberty; that if the power which makes the laws is also the one which executes and interprets them, it is of necessity a tyrant; for nothing is opposed to its authority. The safety of the citizens is only guaranteed by the separation of the powers. Power checks power. Such is the principle which Montesquieu discussed in the constitution of England, and which has often been confounded, although it is profoundly different from it, with another principle, which does not properly belong to Montesquieu, the principle of mixed governments. These are two distinct things, for the separation of powers can take place in a simple government, for example, the American republic; and on the other hand, in a mixed constitution, the powers may be confounded, for example, in the Roman constitution. Of these two principles, the first, we may say, is eternal and universal; the second depends on circumstances. Wherever political society exists the powers should be separate; else the citizens are oppressed. But it is not absolutely necessary that monarchy or aristocracy should be united to democracy. Finally, among modern publicists, Montesquieu is one of those who have insisted most upon the greatness and importance of political liberty in the state. Locke had already done so; but it is perhaps owing to Montesquieu that the idea was promulgated throughout the world, and that it was added, as an indestructible element, to the patrimony of universal reason.

—To the politics of Montesquieu is naturally opposed the politics of J. J. Rousseau. His politics have been so often criticised, that it will be to the point, perhaps, to set forth its merits rather than its defects. This is not saying that we approve of the whole of the Contrat Social. There are in that book very dangerous and very bad opinions: in the chapter upon civil religion, an admiration beyond bounds for the very imperfect republics of antiquity, and an unintelligent aversion for the very wise principle of representation, the only means of establishing liberty in our modern societies. But, all reservations made, I find that the maxims of the Contrat Social are often interpreted in an incorrect manner, and that there is more truth in the book than it is the custom to acknowledge.

—It is constantly advanced as an argument against Rousseau that he has said that human society, in general, had its origin in an agreement, in a contract. But it has not been sufficiently remarked that in the Contrat Social Rousseau treats only of civil and political society. It is that, according to him, which has its origin in contract. He seeks, he says, with judgment and precision, "the act by which a people is a people." Now, it is this act, which, in his opinion, is a contract.

—To thoroughly appreciate the value of this principle it is necessary to be informed that Rousseau does not examine what is, in fact, the principle upon which civil society rests, but what is in law, in abstracto, the principle of any political order whatever, all particular circumstances being left out of consideration. This is a political metaphysical investigation, one which may be dangerous in its consequences without being false in itself. For the truest principle may be wrongly interpreted and wrongly applied. Besides, Rousseau seems himself to have taken precautions in advance against the abuse which might be made of his principles, by frequently repeating, in his work, that the best government is that which is most conformable to the character of the people for whom it is made, that there is not a priori a perfect and absolute form of government; that all depends upon circumstances, etc. Consequently, even although the principle of the social contract should be admitted, it would not follow that Rousseau authorized the application of it hic et nunc without restriction; the person who should rashly try to apply this principle, would only have himself to blame for the consequences, like a mechanic who rigorously applied a mathematical formula without taking into account friction and resistance.

—The truth of Rousseau's principle may be demonstrated by many incontestable facts. How, for example, can naturalization be explained, if the principle that it is of my own free will that I may form part of any political society whatever is not admitted? Without doubt, I can not free myself from human society in general (and yet what prevents me from going to live as a hermit in uninhabited places?); but I can cease to be a Frenchman, to become a Russian or a Turk, if I please, and vice versa. This is, in truth, only making use of my own individual free will. But we have seen this practice pass from individuals to nations; and, although we may contest the actual application of it, we can not contest its legitimacy. How, except by the principle of contract, can the recent acts of annexation by popular consent be otherwise explained? Was this not openly to proclaim that a people is a people only by the free consent of its members? It is by virtue of the same principle that in the United States a new state is admitted to the Union; and if the right of secession was discussed there by armed force, it is because the interpretation of conventions has not always been agreed on. Even in kingdoms, which are created by conquest or by family alliance, national unity exists only when there is a real or supposed consent of the population. There is in such a case a sort of tacit contract between the conquering and the conquered peoples. Where such a contract does not exist, the conquest is always ruinous, and the people are always ready for revolt. Is such a state legitimate? Why, to-day, do all enlightened people want a constitution? It is because they intend to fix the fundamental conditions of their association. A constitution is nothing else than an act of society. The social contract, in truth, is not an historical fact; it is not a fact of the past, it is a fact of the future. Nations can not appeal to a primitive contract; but they aspire to a sort of ideal contract, which should establish, in some sort, the conditions of the reciprocal action of men toward one another, and of the sovereign toward his subjects. What are the laws, if not the special provisions of these contracts? Why is it desired that the laws should be passed by the representatives of society, if it is not because it is only the mandatories of society who can contract for society?

—J. J. Rousseau has been reproached, not without reason, for his doctrine of the omnipotence of the people. But this doctrine is independent of the theory of the social contract. Whatever origin may be attributed to public power, whether divine right, patriarchy, conquest, or popular consent, we may always suppose it absolute. Now, the doctrine of the absolute power of the state was universal before J. J. Rousseau. He borrowed it from tradition. Only he placed the people in the place of the prince; that is all the difference. Quidquid principi placuit legis habet vigorent. Such was the doctrine of the juris-consults. Replace principi by populo, and you have the democratic thesis. Doubtless, it is no truer under this form; but if Rousseau's claim to the expansion which he gave to the right of sovereignty may be contested, that is no reason to deny this great truth, that society rests upon an express or tacit contract of all its members.

—By the side of Montesquieu and Rousseau, we should, if space allowed, show the part which the economic schools of the eighteenth century, the physiocratic school in France, and that of Adam Smith in England, had in the progress of political ideas. The economists have, above all, contributed to spread the principles of natural law; and although many among them, as Quesnay and Mercier de la Rivière, were partisans of absolute power, yet they excepted from the exercise of that power the natural rights of citizens, and, above all, the right of property. Hence, although they were not advocates of political liberty, they accustomed minds to free a certain number of objects from the frequently tyrannical protection of the government. Their principle, Laissez faire and laissez passer, which was applied only to commerce and to industry, was soon to be applied to conscience and to thought. Turgot was, together with Voltaire and Montesquieu, the most serious defender of toleration. I may add, that from Turgot and Condorcet dates one of the greatest and most powerful ideas of modern society, the idea of the perfectibility of the race and of progress. This idea, perceived by Pascal and by Bacon, in its relation to the sciences, is in some sort the last word of the eighteenth century; it is the word of the French revolution.

—During the revolution the political schools gave place to parties, theories to action, and struggles of thought to struggles in the tribune and of the scaffold. Science, without doubt, has profited by the French revolution, not while it lasted, but after it.

—V. Contemporaneous Period. The political schools of the nineteenth century may be reduced to four principal ones: 1, the aristocratic and royalist school; 2, the constitutional and liberal school; 3, the democratic school; 4, the socialist school.

—1. The royalist school defends in general the old régime as opposed to the new, monarchical and aristocratic institutions as opposed to liberal and popular institutions. But, within these limits, what a variety of opinions! What a distance, for instance, between de Bonald and Chateaubriand; between the Législation primitif and the Monarchie selon la Charte! The former will have nothing but the political society of the old régime: to him it is absolute society. The unlimited power of one alone, supported by two privileged orders, the one charged with the defense, the other with the education of society: such was his ideal of the social and political order. Chateaubriand, on the contrary, while deploring the revolution, and demanding the re-establishment of entailment, and the restitution of their property to the clergy, was, at the same time, an impassioned partisan of English institutions, a defender of the initiative of Parliament, of the liberty of the press, of the responsibility of ministers, and counseled the aristocracy of his country to make use of new institutions, to take place and rank in those institutions, instead of arming itself against them, and seeking to recover possession of its privileges under the shadow of restored despotism.

—2. From Chateaubriand to Royer-Collard, the transition appears scarcely perceptible; the one is the most liberal of royalists, the other the most royalist of liberals. Yet we enter here into a new world, into the world of the French revolution, represented at first by the constitutional school. This school is divided into many branches, the doctrinarian school, the liberal school, the economic school, bound together by common doctrines, but at the same time separated by sufficiently important shades of difference. The first of these schools was represented by Royer-Collard, the Duc de Broglie and Guizot; the second by Benjamin Constant; and the third by Comte and Dunoyer. What distinguishes the doctrinarians from the pure royalists is, that they accept without reserve the civil order resulting from the French revolution, that is to say, the equality of partition and the secularization of the state. They oppose the law of the right of primogeniture and the law of sacrilege. Besides, they are in favor of political liberty, the liberty of the press and the control of the government by assemblies. But if they accept democracy in the civil order, and if they give it a certain share in the political order, they are no less alarmed at its progress; they detest it in its violent form, the revolutionary form; they even doubt it when regulated and modified in the government of the state. To the dogma of the sovereignty of the people, which, according to them, would only substitute one tyranny for another, they opposed the doctrine of the sovereignty of reason. They thought monarchy necessary to restrain democracy and to preserve liberty itself. Above all, they wished to assure a certain preponderance to the distinguished classes, to what they called the superiorities, and to give to the government of democracy more sequence, more unity, more foresight, more of the spirit of justice, and more of the true liberal spirit; the love of liberty being incompatible with the lack of intelligence. Such were the ideas of the doctrinarian school; those of liberalism did not differ essentially from them. The liberal school admitted, with the doctrinarian school, the necessity of royalty, the division of the legislative body into two chambers, and the limitation of the electoral body. But it made the part of royalty much less; it was opposed to the hereditary character of the upper chamber, and demanded the progressive extension of the electoral right. These differences concealed a capital dissent; the doctrinarians considered the mixed government, composed of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, as the absolute ideal; they saw in such a government a definitive and good régime. The liberals on the contrary, seemed to consider that régime as a preliminary step to something else. To the former, royalty and aristocracy were necessary elements of all society; to the latter, they were only useful moderators, whose importance was decreasing every day, and whose authority it was necessary to reduce more and more. Of these two schools, the former, therefore, allied itself to the royalist and aristocratic school, and the latter to the democratic school. One of the important branches of liberalism was the school of the economists. The economists thought that the political institutions of a people have doubtless great importance; they were very much attached to a system of constitutional guarantees, but they added that institutions are means, not ends; that the principal thing is not, who shall govern, but, how be shall govern. They thought that the principal end of governments is to assure the well-being of the people. Only they thought that governments take a wrong course to assure that well-being. For governments believed it was by regulation, protection, authorization, that they could favor the progress of industry and intelligence. But this is only to substitute for the old yoke of the corporations, a new yoke, that of the state, a vast, abstract, impersonal, irresponsible unity, which has inherited all the powers of absolute monarchy. The economists are the first among the partisans of the new society, who discussed this idea of the state, and who have opposed individual right to collective right. Later, when it was necessary to combat socialism, recourse was had to their arguments. But, in the beginning, they were almost alone in battling against the prestige exercised over minds by the vague and obscure notion of the state, which was no less dear to the democrats than to the partisans of absolute power.

—3. The democratic school has had two phases. In the first, it was only the last echo of the expiring revolution: it was the school of the ideologists, represented by de Tracy and Daunou. This school was allied not to '93, but to '95, and remained faithful to the constitution of the year III. A divided executive power, suffrage of two degrees, a conservative senate (an element borrowed from the constitution of the year VIII.): such were the principal characteristics of the political system of Destutt de Tracy, in his Commentaire sur l'esprit des lois. In this book we see the democratic school freeing itself little by little from the yoke of Rousseau, and setting up in opposition to the old republics, which it was commencing to consider semi-barbarous, societies, our modern laboring, commercial and industrial societies, which have need of order and of liberty, and not of sumptuary laws. At the restoration the ideologic school was merged in the liberal school, as we may perceive by the too little known work of Daunou upon "individual guaranties," a work whose principles are entirely in accordance with those at that time maintained by Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer in the Censeur Européen. There are few things in common between the school of ideologists and the democratic school, the issue of the restoration. The first was radically hostile to the committee of public safety and to the régime of '93. The second seems to be connected by a subterranean filiation with Jacobinism. Its principal passion was to rehabilitate the men and the acts of the reign of terror and of the convention. It displayed in this respect an incredible stubbornness, without suspecting the injury it thus did to its own ideas. Yet it was not entirely subjugated by these blind and extravagant passions, and the intelligent minds who controlled it had other views. In general, it was less a school than a party. It was more given to fighting than to thinking. Armand Carrel, its most celebrated name, was a great journalist, but not a publicist. Very strong and very energetic in his polemics, he was weak in his theory. But be it said in his honor, that he never sacrificed liberty to democracy, as may be seen from his vigorous polemic against the "Tribune," an ultra revolutionary journal, edited at that time by Armand Marrast. Another eminent man, a greater writer and a more powerful-thinker than Carrel, brought to the aid of the democracy about the same time his stirring eloquence, his bitter denunciation and ardent imagination; but he did not supply democracy with an idea. It would be impossible to discover a political view of any originality in the Paroles d'un croyant, in the Livre du peuple, or in the Esclaive moderne. The only ideas which have any weight in these writings are borrowed from the socialist schools, richer in thinkers than the democratic school. But not to have the appearance of seeking to depreciate a great mind, I hasten to add that Lamennais should be studied not only in his democratic writings. There is a political question which he has touched with penetration and depth, and on which he has left his mark; I mean the relations of church and state; it is by that and by the journal L'Avenir that Lamennais has a right to an important place in the history of the political ideas of the nineteenth century.

—4. As for the socialist school, it has passed through many curious phases, difficult to describe with precision. The first period of socialism was what I shall call the industrial period. It was the time of the first writings of Saint-Simon. In this first period the socialist school was only an offshoot of the economist school. Saint-Simon appealed to the authority of Adam Smith and of J. B. Say, and gave himself out as their disciple. His idea was that the first class in the state was the industrial class, and that the government belonged to it. Some attacks had already been made on proprietors, stockholders, idlers, but not on property itself. As for capital, it was not only spared, it was glorified. The first dream of the Saint-Simonian was a plutocracy. But Saint-Simon died; his disciples developed or confused his ideas. Fourierism succeeded him. Fourierism and Icarianism were propagated. This was the second period, the utopian period. The idea which ruled in this second period was this: society was given over to anarchy, it needed to be organized. The idea of organization took hold of all minds. Each presented his plan, his dream, and demanded that the state should furnish him with the capital necessary to make social experiments, or to make them itself at its own expense. Despite these dreams the socialist school appeared harmless, because it confined itself to speculative constructions, and remained more or less aloof from political parties. But there came a time when the democratic school and the socialist school joined hands, recognized each other as sisters, and embraced. This encounter and this alliance were one of the gravest events of the century. Separated from each other, the school of social revolution and the school of political revolution offered only a mediocre danger to the partisans of a regulated liberalism. United, and associating together their passions and their hopes, they might overthrow everything. However this may be, the third period of socialism was the revolutionary and democratic period. The idea which ruled in this third period was '89 was the revolution of the bourgeoisie against the nobility; to-day it is necessary for the people to make a revolution against the bourgeoisie. This idea, so simple and so logical, which connected the cause of socialism with that of the revolution, which went straight to a precise end, and boldly attacked property and capital, is due, above all, to Louis Blanc and Proudhon. But arrived at this point, socialism took two separate, and even absolutely contrary, routes. According to some, this revolution must terminate in a new organization of society, under the empire of a popular, energetic and concentrated government. According to others, government must only serve to produce the revolution, to destroy the tyranny of capital, as Richelieu destroyed the tyranny of the nobility. But this end once accomplished, the government must disappear in its turn, as being the last of the privileged bodies. Hence democratic socialism was divided into two branches: communist socialism and anarchical socialism.

—Such are the principal political schools of the century. But by the side of and outside these schools, some free and enlightened minds, not wishing to connect themselves with any of them, cultivated political science in an abstract and general manner, and followed the traditions of the great theorizers, whose ideas we have related. Such is the rôle of de Tocqueville, whose celebrity has been gradually increasing, and whose importance has been more and more appreciated, since facts have confirmed many of his gravest predictions. What can not be doubted, is that his Démocratie en Amérique must be considered as one of the finest monuments of political philosophy.

—The point of departure of the studies of de Tocqueville seems to have been these celebrated words of de Serres: La democratie coule à pleins bords. He thought that the democratic revolution was inevitable, or rather, that it was accomplished; and instead of reasoning a priori upon the justice or injustice of this great fact, he thought that it was better to observe it; and leaving to others the task of praising or blaming it, he restricted himself to getting acquainted with and understanding it; in a word, considered democracy as an object, not of demonstration, but of observation. This was an entirely new view. Most publicists had written for and against democracy systematic and abstract books; but no one, since Aristotle, had made it the object of attentive observation. Montesquieu himself, the greatest political observer of modern times, did not understand democracy; he saw it only as it existed in antiquity, and, almost like Mably and Rousseau, he had not the least presentiment of modern democracy, as it issued from the American revolution or from the French revolution.

—What results did de Tocqueville reach? This, in a few words, is about the balance sheet which he furnishes of the good and evil in democracy: The principal advantages in the democratic system are the development of well-being, the spreading of intelligence, the progress of sociability, the sympathy for human misery, and, finally, a very great display of activity and energy. In a word, in democracies, except at certain critical moments, men are generally more enlightened and happy. But these advantages are counterbalanced by disadvantages. The principal disadvantages are the instability of the laws, the inferiority of merit in those who govern, the abuse of uniformity, the excess of the love of well-being, and finally, and above all, the tendency to tyranny. It is principally this last characteristic which de Tocqueville has developed. He is one of those who have insisted most on the tyranny of democratic majorities, he has also shown the confusion which attaches to the two fundamental ideas of democracy, equality and liberty; he has demonstrated that these two things are not always in direct proportion to each other, that the progress of equality is not always the progress of liberty. Finally, he has strongly pronounced against centralization; and he was one of the first, while he entirely recognized the necessity of society's advancing in democratic ways, to assert the rights of individual action and to call attention to the encroaching tendencies of popular sovereignties, whether they are exercised under the republican or monarchical form.

—It is principally this last problem which science has applied itself to study and to solve in recent times. The events of 1848 in France, socialism, the energetic concentration of the French government in 1852, have led minds to be seriously preoccupied with the relations of the individual to the state. We have seen that the question of the right of sovereignty is not all of the question of politics, but that it is necessary to know, besides, within what limits sovereignty should be exercised, and what are the true functions of the state. This question has given rise to very fine dissertations. Mill, in England, although a radical, was chiefly preoccupied, in his excellent work on "Representative Government," with the means of counterbalancing the omnipotence of the unenlightened classes, and of giving to the superior classes a share of influence commensurate with their intelligence. In his book on "Liberty," he has vindicated to its fullest extent the principle of free thought. At the same time, in the "Principles of Political Economy," he renounces the individualist rigorism of the economic school, and admits the principle of education by the state. In France individualism has had for an original, energetic and impassioned defender, the highly intellectual Frédéric Bastiat; and in different degrees individualism is the spirit which is manifested in the new political school, that of Jules Simon, Laboulaye, Lanfrey, Prévost-Paradol, most of the economists, etc. On the other hand, it must be acknowledged that the principle of centralization and of the state has found an eminent apologist in Dupont-White, who, faithful to the traditions of the democratic school, maintains the predominance of the state over the individual, and separates the principle of political liberty, to which he is most strongly attached, from the principle of laissez faire and laissez passer, which, from the writings of economists, has passed into those of publicists. Such are the questions which political science is discussing in our day.

PAUL JANET.

POLITICS

POLITICS, Nature and Character of. I. Politics as the Art of the State and as a Science of the State. The conscious life of the state, the guidance of the state and the influencing of the affairs of the state, that is, conscious, political practice, is what we call politics. Men who by their office or their calling take a prominent part in this practice and in the influencing of the affairs of the state, as for instance, government officials, representatives in legislative assemblies, journalists, etc., we may designate as political men. The honorable and dignified name of statesman is given only to those rare men who distinguish themselves as guides and leaders among politicians. The science of this political practice we also characterize as politics. The representatives of politics as a science, may be called political scientists and political philosophers.

—Politics as political practice, and politics as the doctrine or science of the state, stand in a natural reciprocal relation to each other. In the beginning, and in the lower stages of the development of nations, the former precedes the latter; and the latter follows in the wake of the former timidly and late. But, in proportion as the political spirit awakens in a nation, and becomes self-conscious, the importance of politics as the science of the state increases also; it begins to keep pace with the progress of the practical art of the state or political practice. At times it outruns its more powerful companion, and guides the tendencies and movements of the latter, by illuminating with its torch some new, untrodden road.

—Aristotle came only after the life of the great Hellenic republics was closed; but, as a teacher, he preceded Alexander. Cicero wrote his scientific political works at the close of the Roman republic, but before Cæsar and Augustus had appeared upon the scene. Machiavelli had the pattern of the Italian princes of the renaissance before his eyes; he wrote after the time of Louis XI. of France, but became the teacher of Louis XIV. and of Napoleon III. Rousseau was the prophet of the French revolution. Frederick the Great of Prussia and Alexander Hamilton were contemporaneously the founders of a new doctrine of the state, and of a new political practice. Montesquieu appeared after the English revolution, and after the full development of constitutional monarchy in England, which he recommended to the rest of continental Europe, and became the teacher of the people of the United States and of the French restoration.— The two things which we designate by one and the same term, politics, are radically different.

—1. Politics, as the art of the state, has certain definite external aims, which differ according to the wants of the moment. It seeks to reach a certain external result, for instance, to establish better institutions for the people or for society, to overcome an enemy, to secure or extend the power of the state, etc. Political practice manifests itself in deeds, and success is the aim and the test of the art of the state. A successful policy constitutes the fame of the statesman; and an unsuccessful policy is the sign of a defective and frequently of a bad and unfit policy. On the other hand, politics, as the science of the state, does not pursue any external aim, and is not estimated by external success. It has no aim but the knowledge of truth. Its glory consists in the destruction of an error, in the discovery of a permanent and fruitful law, in the clear exposition of a correct and opportune rule for guidance.

—2. As the aims of the art of the state and of the science of the state are different, so also are the means they employ. It is not enough for the statesman that he thinks correctly. He wishes, also, to realize his thoughts in deeds, and to this end he requires power. He must overcome or evade the obstacles that oppose him, and he requires the actual transformation of the stubborn matter which he has to give shape to. He must strain the authority of the state, which, in case of need, can enforce a following; or he must invoke the support of public opinion. According to circumstances, he must have money, or even troops, at his disposal.

—Politics as a science can dispense with all these external means of power. It does not trust in violence, but in logic. When it observes carefully and thinks correctly, it is certain of its progress, and does not need the authority of the law, nor the applause of the multitude. With all the treasures of the land at one's command, it would be as impossible to lift an error into a truth, as, with the aid of all the armed power of the state, to lower a truth into an error.

—3. Politics, as political practice, can not dispense with external struggles if it will accomplish anything. The statesman must take into account both the hostile and friendly passions. He is very frequently compelled to take some side. He can not avoid the excitement which accompanies the struggle with frequently bitter fees. He must preserve his courage in the midst of danger, his presence of mind in the hour of battle, and his will power in action. Without a manly character, there can be no genuine statesman. The political scientist, on the contrary, examines the object of his investigation in peace. He can consider that object from different points of view, without prejudice or partiality, undisturbed by the noises of war of opponents. He enjoys that perfect peace of mind which belongs to scientific thought, and draws his conclusions dispassionately.

—4. Even the statesman's way of thinking is different from that of the political scientist. The statesman is excited to action by the wants of the particular case, and when he weighs principles he does so on the supposition of their serviceableness and applicability in the case he has to deal with. Very frequently, if he wishes to attain his purpose, he is compelled to bend the straight lines of principles out of shape, and, at the sacrifice of strictness of principle, to effect compromises even with opposing principles and party tendencies. The result of his thoughts is conditioned by the success which he is striving to achieve.

—The political scientist who only labors for the acquisition of knowledge, seeks to develop principles in their pure form, and may proceed logically and undisturbed. He is not compelled to make any compromises.

—The psychology of the statesman is mainly penetration in judging and making use of actual men; that of the political philosopher is chiefly insight into the general laws of human nature.

—The men who are at the same time renowned as statesmen and political philosophers are rather few. The two greatest political philosophers of Hellenic antiquity, Aristotle and Plato, were but poorly qualified for political practice, or practical statesmanship. There are many notable diplomates, generals and ministers, who have distinguished themselves as statesmen, but who have achieved nothing for the science of the state. Nevertheless, the greatest statesmen of history were, if not political philosophers or political savants, at least political thinkers of a high order; for instance, Pericles, Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar, Charlemagne, Frederick the Great, Washington, Hamilton, and Napoleon I.

—In our own times, every practical politician is compelled more deeply to reflect on the ideas that at present enlighten and move the nations, and to render to himself a full account of the principles which determine his own action. In his practical calling, therefore, he can not dispense with scientific labor. On the other hand, the science of the state, in order to be applicable in actual life, must understand the conditions of the real life of the state, and correctly appreciate its interests. In this manner practical statesmanship and the science of the state reach each other a helping hand, and each may look to the other for support.

—There certainly is in some men a natural talent for politics, that may be developed through practice alone, without the aid of science, as there have at all times been great captains and leaders in war who never frequented a military school, but developed their talent on the field of battle. Yet, with equal natural talents, and under equal circumstances in all else, the scientifically trained politician will be greatly superior to the rude practitioner. In our times the combination of practical statesmanship and political science has become indispensable to politicians, and if not absolutely necessary, it is at least highly useful to the political scientist. The science of the state not only enlightens political practice or practical politics, but purifies and ennobles it. (Compare de Parieu, Principes de la science politique, Paris, 1870, p. 9.) But then, political practice quickens the glance of the political scientist, and protects him from a childish trifling with the imaginings of empty speculation.

—In the search after truth each of the different sciences has its own method, and frequently calls into activity different mental powers, and some one mental power more than it does the others. Thus, natural scientific thought depends chiefly on the exact observation of facts perceptible by the senses, and usually from visible effects infers the invisible cause. Its method is induction, and its proofs are mostly borrowed from analogy. The speculative philosopher denies the sensually perceptible phenomenon, and endeavors to discover or reach the infinite idea, the absolute, through the self-conscious human mind. Beginning here, he then draws his conclusions by the way of logical deduction. Legal thought is generally the subordination of a concrete fact under a general legal principle. Its method is, in the first place, judgment by means of subsumption, and the inference from the general legal principle to the consequence of its violation: restitution or compensation or punishment. Political thought is directed particularly to organic distinction, to the estimation of forces, the calculation of means, the psychological study and influencing of men, and, lastly, to the development and improvement of human affairs in conformity to nature.

—II. The Relation of Politics to Morals. Machiavelli was the first to separate politics from morals, and to proclaim political practice independent of moral prescriptions. The adaptability of the means to the ends of the state was, with Machiavelli, the only allowable measure or criterion in politics. To him it was a matter of indifference whether the statesman acted morally or immorally. Machiavelli only demanded of him that his action should be useful to the state. When a crime is of advantage to the state, he recommends crime; when noble-mindedness becomes injurious to the state, he condemns it. He expressly remarks, that the appearance of virtue is frequently more useful to the prince than real virtue, and, when it is so, he gives the former the preference over the latter. Since his time the name of Machiavellism in politics has been given to that kind of immoral, conscienceless, though certainly bold, politics, which is profitable to the state, or only to the head of the state. Frederick the Great, in his "Anti-Machiavel," when a young man, gave vent, in eloquent language, to his indignation at this doctrine. When king, however, be too distinguished between politics and morals, and made the good of the state the supreme law in all political action. But he was still full of the conviction that politics was intrinsically and indissolubly connected with the moral government of the world, and that it was exceedingly injurious to separate the one from the other.

—In the scientific distinction between politics and morals, we recognize a great and lasting progress, a distinction which alone has rendered possible an independent science of politics. To think, in a political sense, is to think from the point of view of the state; to judge morally is to consider human actions from the point of view of the moral order of the universe, conformably to the category, "good and bad." But Machiavelli, who certainly can not be denied the credit of this distinction, by his reckless exaggeration of it even to the point of complete separation of politics from morals, weakened the power of the good among men, greatly stimulated the ambition of princes, and thoroughly corrupted political practice. We accordingly hold firmly to the relative independence of political science, but we at the same time recognize that political practice must not place itself in contradiction with the laws of the moral order of the world.

—We do not speak here of the moral law, which religious revelation proclaims as the command of the Deity. Such a moral law is religion, which influences only believers in it. We here allude rather to the moral law derived from human nature, and understood by human reason, as the intrinsically well-grounded ordering of all human life. It is unthinkable that politics, as the rule of external life in common of man in the state, can be absolutely separated from, and completely independent of, the moral law, considered as the rule of proper human conduct in general. It is just as unthinkable, as in the economy of the state it is impossible, to ignore the laws of physics or mathematics. As politics, moreover, should advance the prosperity of society, and endeavor to promote the improvement of the community, the determination of these tasks can not safely be undertaken without, at the same time, paying due regard to the moral duties of human life in general, and to the destinies of humanity, pointed out by the moral law. Thus, not the complete separation of politics and morals, still less the hostile opposition of the two, but the preservation of the intimate relationship between them, is the correct view in this matter. Both in the determination of political ends and aims, and in the choice of political means, moral considerations must not be lost sight of.

—1. Ends and Aims. The ends and aims of politics may, indeed, be morally indifferent, but they should not be immoral. Many political reforms are effected from juridico-technical, or from military or politico-economical motives; thus, public monuments owe their form to the enthusiasm of the artist for the beautiful. When a new mode of procedure is introduced, or when the army is organized and exercised; when a new system of duties is adopted, or a new style of architecture employed: in all cases of this kind, moral considerations have no share, or only a very subordinate one. But, since statesmen are human beings, they should not exempt themselves from the general duties of men, and in their political calling they should not act contrary to the moral destiny of mankind; that is, they should not pursue political ends which morality condemns.

—This truth was by no means hidden from the nations of antiquity. It was emphatically proclaimed in the sacred books of the Hindoos, Jews and Chinese, and greatly strengthened by their religious reverence for the authority of God or of the gods. But ancient practice was, notwithstanding, exceedingly lax in this respect. The ambition of nations, and the selfishness of rulers helped them, for the most part, to an easy settlement with conscience. The extension of power and the exploitation of subjects were but seldom moderated or limited by moral considerations.

—In the politics of the last centuries, likewise, the moral criterion was but seldom applied. The law of morals forbids man to exploit his fellow-man, as the mere object of his pleasure and his rule, and requires every one to honor his fellow-man as a being of the same species endowed with reason. Yet how frequently has the capricious authority of rulers and their favorites been immoderately extended, and improperly used, contrary to this moral law, to indulge the evil inclinations of the human heart. But by degrees public opinion develops into a public conscience, and more clearly enunciates its admonitions and warnings, and bestows praise or blame according as it perceives a contradiction or harmony between political ends and the moral duties of life.

—The liberation of an oppressed nation from a foreign yoke, the insurance of peace, the spread and improvement of civilization, the education of citizens to freedom, the ennobling of culture, and the encouragement of humane institutions, are all, at the same time, moral and political duties of life, and honored as such. Yet sophists here find a convenient field. Only too easily do they succeed in cloaking selfish passions in the mantle of moral endeavor, by representing tyranny as order, conquest as the spread of civilization, and revolt against political authority as freedom.

—2. Means. It is much more difficult to determine the relation of moral demands to the means of politics. Moralists are inclined to apply the same rule to political means that we have here recognized as applicable to political ends. They grant that means morally indifferent may be employed in political practice, but they do not allow that morally impure means should at any time be used. Moral feeling and logical consistency seem to declare this to be wholly incontestable.

—And yet a glance at history, or into the practical political life of the present time, shows that there are great difficulties in the way of the strict application of this rule, and that, as a matter of fact, such application is scarcely possible. We can not ignore this: that it is better for the state that it should be saved from some great danger by an energetic man, led by an inordinate love of power, than weakened by a timid but personally virtuous ruler. Nor can we ignore that it is of greater advantage to national well-being when aroused vanity helps build works of common utility, than when pious humility does nothing. Many politicians have, therefore, entirely denied the applicability of the above-mentioned rule to political means, and maintained that the principle, "The end sanctifies the means," may be wrong in private morals, but can not be dispensed with as a political maxim. But a closer examination at once reveals how very dangerous this opinion is to the whole moral condition of things. When the state excuses the immorality of the political means employed, by the morality of the end to be attained, what prevents individuals from imitating the example of the state? There is a natural inclination in men, when they commit a wrong, to excuse it to themselves and to others, by the allegation that it was a means to a good end. If the maxim that "the end justifies the means" thus became general, the authority of the moral law would be completely paralyzed, and the wild chase of sinful desires after satisfaction would not be stopped by any cunning allusion to laudable aims, but continued with increased ardor. The harmony of the moral order of the world would be destroyed if the open rupture between moral ends and immoral means was recognized, and if the moral law only retained a certain authority in respect of the ends, but was entirely powerless as to the choice of the means to be employed in politics.

—It is not easy to find an exit from this labyrinth. The inconsiderate demands of moralists seem altogether impracticable, while the opinion of political sophists is ruinous to the moral order. We can gain safe ground only after we shall have more closely examined the nature of the state, and more deeply investigated the relation of evil to the moral order of the world.

—1. The state, as a man-like, composite person, produced by the union of men, is not merely a civil person, but a moral civil person. As the moral law embraces all mankind, and is valid as to all, the state can neither release itself from its moral duties to humanity, to other nations, to its subjects, to those who live under its protection, but should heed those duties and fulfill them. The duties of the state bind the representatives of the power of the state and the organs of the authority of the state, as well as the ruled and parties. Patriotism, fidelity, justice, bravery, the diligent and careful fulfillment of official duty, are especially the virtues of political life. Civilization as it advances develops this sense of moral duty, and enhances its demands.

—The moral law does not limit itself to political aims. It is binding on the whole state, in all its doings, and in all its life.

—2. But the state is the ordering of the external life of men in common. The moral demands addressed to the politician lie in a direction and have a criterion different from the moral demands that religion makes on men. The latter are addressed to the inner life of the soul, the former to the external organization of the community, of the people, using the word people in its political sense. The saint may consider suffering as the highest perfection; but the statesman's duty is action. The preponderantly religious man may seclude himself from the world, and like the hermit withdraw into his innermost soul. The political man must remain in human society, and through men influence other men. The church may give the conscience of the individual the highest commands of ideal perfection, as the duty of his life; the state must moderate its requirements with a due regard for the actual capacity and deficiencies of the many. Religion lifts its expectations even to the height of divine perfection; the state can not strain its coercive laws beyond what the average nature of the majority can bear. The priest may tell the believer how and what he should be; the statesman must take men as they are.

—In judging political conduct, therefore, we must apply only the relative standard of moral demands which corresponds with the stage of moral culture that a nation or a society has, for the time being, attained, so far as that culture is represented in its better average constituent parts. This standard is the standard of the good citizen and of the dutiful official, as both are at the time understood by the people.

—When we consult history, it affords us some satisfaction to observe that humanity, in this respect, has incontestably made notable progress. From age to age moral demands have risen, and the moral standard or criterion has become more refined. The ancient Greeks and Romans considered almost everything permissible against an enemy with which the state was engaged in war. They felt no moral repugnance to kill defenseless foes, to sell the wives and children of the conquered, as well as the conquered themselves, as slaves; to sack towns and burn villages. If a general of the present day were to treat his conquered enemy in such a brutal and cruel manner as only too often was done by even the best warriors of antiquity, as was done by the amiable Alexander the Great, and the magnanimous Julius Cæsar, such a man would be shunned as a maniac, or outlawed as a human monster from the civilized world.

—In like manner the Christian nations of the middle ages looked upon every form of cruelty to unbelievers and heretics as perfectly just and permissible. The Roman popes, whom Christendom revered as the highest moral authority, repeatedly approved the horrible maxim, that no one was bound to keep faith with unbelievers. Even the sanctity of the oath, when it came in contact with the glowing religious fanaticism of the Roman priest, disappeared in smoke. (Instances by Laurent, Etudes sur l'histoire de l'humanité, ix, 142, x., 338.) The civilized world of the present day unanimously condemns such immorality. Our manly feelings revolt at the thought that formerly the ambassadors of European powers in Stambul were obliged to throw themselves on the ground before the Turkish sultan. We consider the incense of base flattery which, at the close of the seventeenth century and beginning of the eighteenth, was offered to Louis XIV. even by the most renowned writers of that time, both contemptible and unworthy of human beings. Even in the eighteenth century, in the English parliament, corruption was so much at home, and general to such a degree, that an English minister, to obtain a majority, could not avoid bribing individual members of parliament with money and other gifts. It did no injury to the honorable name of the renowned statesman, Pitt, that he effected the dissolution of the Irish parliament and the union of Ireland with Great Britain by bribery. A minister who should do the same thing today would be lost, in the opinion of the public.

—In the diplomatic intercourse of the eighteenth century, equivocation and intentional deception were still so much in vogue that even a sincere and truthful man was occasionally compelled to wear a mask, just as a merchant, obliged to do business with rogues, can scarcely avoid dissimulation. And even now falsehood and deception are not unheard of in international intercourse. But sincerity and truthfulness dare, at least, openly engage in war against this kind of immorality.

—3. If we can not require political leaders to pursue a course above the understanding, pliancy and tractableness of the average man with whom they have to deal, we may at least require that they should not remain below the moral height of the average culture of their time and nation; but that here also they should remain the guides and leaders of the many. Precisely because they are leaders, and shine forth as models to those who stand lower than they, or follow behind them, the moral demands that are made on them are greater. A virtuous prince produces an elevating and ennobling effect on the society which looks up to him, while a vicious ruler lowers even the moral condition of his subjects.

—Humanity's moral duty is the fulfillment of its destiny. When men harmoniously develop their faculties, they advance morally. Nations and their leaders are responsible to humanity if they do not take part in this progress. They owe it to humanity to take such a part.

—4. The mere turning to account of immoral acts committed by others, by the statesman for the good of the state, is permissible to the statesman, in so far as such acts appear a happy accident for his purposes. But when the statesman himself causes or favors such acts he becomes a party to them, and, as such, a participant in the responsibility and guilt of their immorality.

—When King Philip II. of Spain delegated murderers to kill Queen Elizabeth of England, he became guilty of a crime, which can be excused neither by the plea of the good of Spain nor mitigated by the approval of Pope Pius V., given it on religious grounds. (Laurent, supra, ix., 190, x., 171.) It bears witness to the still uncertain feeling of the public opinion of that time, that it extolled the chevalier Bayard as a hero of rare virtue, because he decidedly rejected the proposal of the duke of Ferrara, to kill the pope, although the latter had conspired against his own life and that of the duke. (Laurent, supra, x., 390.) The connivance at crime, allowing it to be committed, by one in power, whose duty it is to prevent and prosecute it, should be regarded as a moral offense, even when not punishable. The mere expression of the wish to get rid of a dangerous adversary, is frequently the only thing needed to put a dagger into the hand of an assassin to kill the obnoxious person. But, as the general can not be blamed who takes advantage of the reports of a traitor concerning the weakness of the enemy's position, so neither can we blame a prince who avails himself of the murder of a pretender to the throne, which he neither provoked nor favored, for the purpose of strengthening his own authority.

—5. Private morals and state morals rest on the same basis of the moral order of the world; and are pervaded by the same spirit of man's destiny and duty in life. They therefore belong together as twin buds of the same parent tree, and of the same species. Nevertheless, the instinct of nations has, from time out of mind, ever felt that there existed a subtle difference between them. There are, indeed, cases in which the same action appears in a different light, and is differently judged, according as it is performed by a statesman with patriotic intention, or by a private individual from selfish interest. The reprobate principle of Machiavellian policy, "The advantage of the state excuses all the crimes of the statesman,"41 is only the caricatured, and therefore blameworthy, expression of a correct idea. There is in fact such a thing as a reason of state, a raison d'état, the effect of which on the public conscience and on the moral judgment is sanctioned by the history of the world. What is the reason of this difference? and how is it to be understood?

—It seems to me that this question can be answered only by first investigating the meaning of evil in the moral order of the world. Evil appears in an entirely different light, according as it is considered as the act of an individual who despises and violates the moral order of the world, or as it is examined from a higher point of view, from a point of view over-looking the aggregate life of humanity. What in the individually guilty man appears as evil, as blameworthy and reprobate, in its connection with the all, shows itself a necessary condition precedent of the good, and, to that extent, it is good. What Mephistopheles said of himself, that he was—

"Ein Theil von jener Kraft,
Die stets das Bôse will, und stets das Gute schafft,"

applies in an eminent degree to the case we are discussing. The highest virtue is attained only in the struggle with evil inclinations, whether one's own or those of others. All progress in good is conditioned by the overcoming of evil. As human error is necessary to the knowledge of the truth, so is evil in the world of men the necessary stage preliminary to moral perfection.

—Evil has no permanency in the world. It is always combated and overcome, and finally conquered. It ceases to be evil as soon as it has really been conquered. Then it becomes clear that it has served the development of good. But so far as the aggregate is concerned, everything depends on this: that evil should be made subservient to good; that evil should be conquered by good, and that it should be, as it were, the mere background of good. To this extent we may distinguish between good aims and evil means, but this distinction is allowable only when the latter stands in a subordinate relation to the former, or has been completely conquered by it, and rendered good.

—What is thus true of the moral order of the world in general, may by analogy be applied to the state. The state also is a great whole, a world in itself. In the state also it is possible that what seems evil in a particular case may become good in its relation to the whole. The guilt of the individual, which considered apart is evil, may, when brought into connection with the progressive life of the whole people, reveal itself as an advancement of the good, and hence become good, yet only in as far as the evil in the individual has really been overcome by the improvement of the whole, only when the evil has really been made subservient to the good.

—The state, as an aggregate being, can as little dispense with human passions, to promote its progress, as can the Deity in his government of the world. If it were possible to extirpate selfishness, ambition, vanity, love of glory and love of strife from the hearts of the citizens of a state, the community would lose immensely in elastic force, and a great deal less of good and of what is useful to the common weal would be performed in the world. The manly virtue of patriotism is never entirely free from admixture with passions of this kind; and as the noble metals can become a current coin only by being alloyed with a baser one, so is the admixture of patriotism with the passions necessary in practical politics.

—We therefore must not claim that the statesman should refuse the support of morally impure means. We can not reproach the ruler who, under certain circumstances, employs in the public service persons whose moral worth he may despise, but from whom he expects great results for the state. We must not blame the minister who understands how to use the moral weaknesses of a prince, or the blind zeal of a party, to carry out a measure of common utility.

—But we must at all times take heed lest the evil, which must be overcome while it is used, should grow too powerful. It should never be allowed to rule, but always be made to serve. Only when this subordination has been insured, may evil be admitted as a spur to exertion in the way of good. Yet even in this sense the principle remains a dangerous one, and may easily be misused by the sophist. Its danger, however, is greatly lessened when this subservient relation of evil in the individual to the moral progress of the whole is correctly estimated and honestly taken into consideration.

—Disproportionate means, that is, means the moral injury of which is greater than the progress of the whole, which they should serve, are always to be reprobated. For this reason the public conscience unqualifiedly condemns every open and direct breach of faith, as for instance, the breach of the conditions of capitulation by a victor, because faith in one's word of honor forms the moral cement which holds together the ordering of the world of men. The destruction of such faith would so dangerously shake the general security of the law, that the injury caused by an open breach of faith would by far outweigh the profit which the state might possibly derive from it. On the contrary, public opinion is but little shocked when it sees that a treaty injurious to the state has not been executed. Public opinion distinguishes decidedly between an illicit breach of faith, and the unsatisfactory or the hindered fulfillment of a treaty. It is likewise strongly inclined, even too much so, to excuse the deceiving of a political adversary as permissible when profitable to the state, and it expresses its indignant reproach only when the general danger of malicious deception assumes the form of fraud and imposture. Frederick the Great said of himself, that as a private individual he would keep his word under all circumstances, but that as a prince he would sacrifice even his personal honor to the state, if the existence of the state required that sacrifice.

—No crime excites both the moral and the legal sense of a people to greater horror than murder. Public opinion reprobates the excuse, often attempted, of political murder, by the plea that it was committed for the good of the state. In vain has the authority of Pope Gregory XIV., who ordered that the horrible Saint Bartholomew massacre should be commemorated by a Te Deum, been appealed to; and in vain has it been attempted to defend the September massacres of the French revolution in 1793, by showing that they secured the liberation of France from a foreign yoke, and the protection of republican freedom. The unbiased moral judgment of the modern world revolts at the recital of those horrors. The malevolent, premeditated attack on a human life seems to us such a dangerous and serious evil and injustice, that murder should never be employed as a means to a political end.

—But even this rule is not without exception. There are undoubtedly political murders in history concerning which public opinion, even in the case of sensible, thinking and moral men, begins to waver and be divided; and there are even a few murders which have been unconditionally approved by good men. It is not merely morally frivolous men who think like Brutus about the murder of Cæsar, and who excuse the murder of the Russian emperor, Paul I., as a political necessity. The act of Judith, who killed Holofernes, and that of Charlotte Corday, who killed Marat, are universally extolled. The Athenians celebrated the murder of Hipparchus in songs of praise; and the humane and noble-minded Schiller has celebrated the murder of Gessler by William Tell in a drama admired not only by the German nation, but by the whole civilized world. The very same men who, spite of the political motives which dictated them, condemn the assassination of Henry IV. of France and that of President Lincoln, defend the deeds above referred to.

—History manifestly makes a distinction here. It by no means approves the principle that the end justifies the means; for history does not palliate or excuse murder because committed from religious or political motives. History absolves the murderer only when his act has served to free his people from an intolerable tyranny, to combat which there existed no other sufficient means, when the tyranny, with its pernicious effects, is a far greater evil than the murder of an individual, and when the expression of Spinoza has become applicable, that "the tyrant should be killed like a mad dog."

—It is impossible, indeed, to deny the danger of even this limited excuse of a naturally unjust and immoral act, by its manifest subordination to a higher good which it serves. A fanatic may foolishly believe that he is doing an act agreeable to God, one necessary to humanity, and even to the state, while sound reason accuses him as an immoral criminal. The assassination of Cæsar did not save the Roman republic, and did not avert the empire; on the contrary, it shook the Roman state to its foundation, and threw the Roman people into confusion.

—The public conscience absolves the political murderer, not when the perpetrator himself is simply exempt from selfish motives or low passions, and has engaged in the struggle for the permanent security and well-being of the family, of the state, or of humanity, but when, besides, his deed must be objectively considered as necessary, in the light of all related circumstances; in other words, only when it is manifest that the evil done has, really served the furtherance of the good.

—To our modern development corresponds the strong sense of duty that pervades the entire population, and the clear consciousness of duty that teaches each of us to devote his life to the service of the whole, to the extent to which the whole, that is, the state, may need his powers. To this modern development corresponds particularly the fundamental idea which considers public right as public duty, and purifies and ennobles politics by the idea of duty to humanity to nations and to individuals.

—The duty of princes and rulers consists in serving the state and the people, and the duty of subjects and citizens consists in remaining loyal and obedient to the authority of the state, and, in case of need, in spending their blood and treasure for the fatherland.

—Duty goes beyond legal forms, and beyond the sphere of possible compulsion by the state, and its effects are felt beyond their limits. It strains all powers, strengthens the character, elevates the mind; and in this way, while suppressing selfishness, duty, by the much which it accomplishes, powerfully contributes to the general well-being,—III. The Relation of Politics to the Legal Order of Things. Public law is the sum total of the principles, admitted as necessary and enforcible, which regulate the public life of the state. It creates and shapes the organs through which the will of the state is expressed, and the forms in which social life moves. Its highest, most general and permanent expression is the constitution and the laws. Hence, necessarily, the fundamental political principle: All politics (political practice) must be constitutional, and conformable to the laws. Politics should never be unconstitutional, nor otherwise than conformable to the laws. Any disregard of this rule, on principle, would be a manifest contradiction of the life of the state with the order of the state, that is, a contradiction of the state with itself. An unconstitutional policy would attack the state at a point in which it ought to be safest, that is, in the very basis of its existence. An illegal policy would shake men's faith in the law and in the authority of the will of the state. It would weaken and paralyze the power and blessings of the law. But, thus, the progress of civilization, which consists in this, through the law to curb and control brute force and unbridled passion, would be rendered of no effect.

—A policy that, on principle, does not concern itself about the right or wrong of its actions, by so doing considers the law as a barrier only against the weak, and not against the strong as well, and thereby ignores the highest task of legal order, which is called upon to protect the weak against the maltreatment and oppression of the strong.

—When, on the contrary, politics treads the firm ground of the law, it is in turn sustained by the sacred authority of the law. It is thus made safe against attacks of various kinds, and may more readily calculate on support and following, and more readily attain a given purpose, than can an illegal policy, which provokes contradiction and resistance.

—Hence the developed consciousness of right of modern times rejects decidedly the opinion which Machiavelli proclaimed, in conformity with the custom of the rulers of his time, that expediency is the only standard of political conduct, and that law and right should be taken into account only in as far as they seem useful for the attainment of the proposed end, but that wrong merited preference when useful to the state. At the same time, the above rule has only a relative value, and not, like the laws of nature, an absolute effect. The absolute application of that rule is prevented by the unavoidable faults and deficiencies of all human provisions of law.

—1. All actual constitutional and other law has had an historical origin, and hence is subject to the changes of history. Although law has a durable character, it has no claim to be eternal. It may answer the conditions of a given age, and become useless or obsolete when the times have changed. The immunities of the clergy, and the exemption from taxes of the knights, during the middle ages, had then some sense, and good sense, but are now devoid of meaning. Hence, to ask of politics that it should esteem obsolete law and the law suited to the times equally, and look upon the former as the rule of its conduct, just as much as it looks upon the latter as such rule, would be unnatural and irrational. For politics determines the progressive life of a people who have out-grown the obsolete rules of the past.

—2. A written constitution is always an imperfect representation of the real people and the real state. In the actual people and the actual state there are latent forces, which become manifest in course of time, and demand a consideration that can find no support in the letter of the constitution, but which, on the contrary, at times seem excluded by it. In this manner, side by side with the written law, there exists an unwritten law, which completes and corrects the former. Here the chief task of politics is, to obtain recognition for law in the becoming (nascent law), and to protect the hitherto latent, law. To this end, politics should not timidly hold to that which is written, nor allow itself to be bound by the letter. We need only call to mind the history of the estates, or the difference between the acts of the English parliament and the political practice of the English king and his ministers, to find sufficient proof of this.

—3. All law must be externally perceptible, and must accordingly have a form. But, for this very reason, human law is exposed to the risk that the form may not completely answer to the spirit, so that there may be a want of harmony between the form and the spirit of the law (jus and œquitas). In such case it becomes the chief task of politics to do away with this want of harmony, and to reconcile the form and spirit of the law. If politics considered that formal law should be invariably maintained, it would ruin the state. In doubtful cases, politics should allow itself to be guided rather by the spirit than by the form of the law; yet politics can not completely escape the reproach that it must sometimes act contrary to the formal authority of the law, in order to allow the spirit of the law freely to develop itself. Under certain circumstances this may even reach the point of an open breach of the law, and yet be necessary.

—The constitution of the German confederation of 1815 was, as to its form, the preponderance of the many small German states over the few large ones. But the essence of that constitution consisted in the guidance of all the German states by the two German great powers. When the medium states presumed to assume the leadership because they were in the majority, they succumbed to the preponderance of the great powers; and when the two great powers dissolved partnership, the whole confederation lost its support and went to pieces.

—It is impossible that constitutional monarchy should exist as a form of the state when the king pushes his formal war power to an extreme, or when the national representation pushes its formal right of voting the budget to a like extreme. Constitutional monarchy can thrive only under a policy that understands how to mediate between conflicts of rights, and which is ready and inclined to effect compromises.

—4. All public law, finally, has its foundation in the state, and is intended for the state. It subsists only through the state, and for the state. An institution repugnant to the nature of the state, or a law that stands in the way of the well-being of the state, is in contradiction with the nature of the state, and with the main purpose of all public and constitutional law. Hence we can not ask of the politician, that he should regard a law repugnant to the nature of the state with the same reverence that he does a law in harmony with the nature of the state, and with the national well-being that it ministers to. The politician is, therefore, frequently compelled to fight against an injurious institution, and to limit as far as possible the application of a law, perhaps entirely to abrogate it.

—When there occurs one of these possible contradictions between the obsolete law of the past and the germs of new law, or between written and latent law, or between the unsatisfactory form and the intellectual principle of the law, or between a law repugnant to, and another in harmony with, the nature of the state: in all such cases, there is some defect in the order of law itself, which requires to be cured. It is the duty of politics to effect that cure. In such cases the law itself ordinarily needs, either still further development, a transformation, or a formation anew, so that, instead of the obsolete law, a new law, adapted to the times, may come into existence, and latent forces obtain recognition and the protection of the law; so that harmony may be restored between law and equity; that useless or injurious law may be replaced by a better; and, lastly, so that in case of need exceptional law may be provided for.

—If the constitution itself has foreseen the need of such changes and improvements, and prepared the means to undertake and carry them out, the leading politicians are in the favorable position of being able to work, by the way of reform, both as to form and matter. The advantages of such reform over violent action are so great that the disadvantages of a slow, laborious road to the end aimed at, a road perhaps beset with many petty obstacles, do not weigh very heavily against the advantages. The Romans and the English have understood this, and they frequently struggled, during years and decades, for a reform, which they at last effected in a more constitutional way, and which became firmly established because it had struck such deep roots in the legal consciousness of the people.

—But the avenues of reform are not always open. It frequently happens that a constitution has not foreseen, or has not provided for, its general or partial revision. It is even more dangerous, when the existing constitution intentionally places artificial obstacles in the way of future reform, or when the existing legal order in principle is in conflict with a transformation of the law, a transformation which perhaps has become unavoidable. In the former case, new means for the revision of the law must first be discovered; in the latter case, it is impossible to make any advance without breach of the law. Instances of the latter kind are: the definitive rupture of the Stuart dynasty with the English nation since James II.'s time; the development of new state interests and state ideas in the North American colonies as opposed to the English constitution; the German confederation of 1815, which required the unanimous vote of all the states, where such unanimity was not possible, to wit, for a fundamental change in the constitution.

—Politics can not and should not hesitate at an innovation, as soon as it appears necessary to the existence or the natural development of the state, even if the change can not be made without breach of the law. Politics can not hesitate here, because the power of the new spirit which demands the change is stronger than the authority of any constitutional provision which attempts to suppress the manifestation of life by means of a magic formula; stronger even than the power of some particular institution, which for a time undertakes to stem the current of the age, but which is itself finally over-flooded and swept away. Politics should not hesitate at the change, because its duty to protect and promote the life of the people is greater and higher than its duty to protect a mere form of law. Religion may find the highest perfection in suffering, in the endurance of injustice, and in self-sacrifice. But politics must look to action, to success, and to the development of the external life of man. A doctrinarian politician, therefore, who for legal considerations neglects this essential duty, commits as great a fault as the violent politician, who, in his fondness for innovation, heedlessly and arbitrarily trespasses the limits of the constitution.

—The genuine statesman, accordingly, admits the second rule of exception, which completes and limits the first main rule above mentioned, viz.: The authority of existing constitutional law loses its binding power in proportion as it becomes manifest that that law endangers the existence of the state instead of protecting it, or prevents the natural development of the state instead of advancing it. But the statesman will apply this second rule with great caution, and only when, after conscientious investigation, he has become convinced that adherence to the first and chief rule would be pernicious, and that a case of real necessity for the application of the second has arisen. He will also return as soon as possible to the normal path governed by the first and chief rule.

—If the transformation politics proceeds from those in power in the state, it is extolled as a policy of redemption; or else, as the policy of coups d'état it is seen in an ambiguous light. If such transformation politics breaks forth violently from below, it is, when victorious, recognized as revolution; but when defeated, it is called rebellion and insurrection. Princes in such cases appeal to the right of self-defense of the government; and the people, to the right of self-defense of the governed. Both refer us to the law of nature and of reason, which serves as a basis and limit to the law given by history. The court of history decides, whether they appeal to it with or without reason, by granting lasting success to certain deeds, thus recognizing them as necessary, and smiting others with sterility, and allowing them to perish.

—The conflict of opinion is most violent when the question at issue is the authority in the state itself. In subordinate things the change may be more easily effected. But when the dispute is as to the right to the throne itself, forces appear in the arena which claim for themselves a sovereign position, and are not willing to admit a new law as binding, to which they have not given their assent. In this connection the unfortunate politics of the legitimists appears as the antipode of revolutionary politics. It does not reflect great honor on our age, that the leading statesmen of Europe, at the beginning of the third decade of this century, should have ventured to proclaim legitimist politics as the true politics of Europe.42 This policy has every where in the world proved incapable of being executed, and unfortunate wherever it has been carried out by force. It has everywhere been in conflict with the wants of national life, and with the progress of the age. It hampered, but did not develop, the powers of the people, while it vainly squandered its means and labor to attain a goal which ever receded from it.

—History, since the year 1830, has shed a flood of light on the impotency of this legitimist policy. It had neither the courage nor the energy to protect the elder line of the Bourbons on the French throne. Neither in Italy nor in Spain was it able permanently to guard the absolutism of the restored kings against the revolution. Its authority, artificially and violently restored, collapsed everywhere as soon as external pressure was removed, and the nations began again to breathe and move freely. It loaded the states under its guardianship with debts, without giving any compensation in return, and it uselessly consumed its own energies. It did not even gain a short respite from the blows of the revolution, which it had momentarily conquered, because it could not prevent hostile tendencies and inclinations from accumulating under cover until another explosion became inevitable.

—The revolutionary shocks of the year 1848, the European wars for the emancipation and unification of Italy, and for the national organization of the German states, deprived the legitimist policy of all credit. The legitimist powers always succumbed. If the divine guidance of the world be at all visible in the history of the world, the policy of the legitimists has been condemned in the most unambiguous manner by divine decree. The form of the law, no longer suited to the conditions of the time, fell into dust, and the forces of growing national life were in every instance victorious. Only the statesmen who had cleared their heads of the crotchets of legitimist politics had great and lasting successes, while the politicians who, like modern Don Quixotes, had striven for the cause of legitimacy, everywhere met with defeat.

—IV. Ideal and Realistic Politics. All politics should be realistic. All politics should be ideal. Both principles are true when they are combined together, and mutually complete each other. Both principles are false when they exclude each other.

—By realistic politics we understand the politics which proceeds from the real, and not from the imaginary, wants of the people, which correctly estimates the forces and means at hand, carefully calculates friendly and hostile power, and only strives after attainable ends. Only with politics of this kind is success possible. In this sense, able statesmen have always been realistic politicians.

—We call ideal politics that which is determined and guided by ideas, which strives to develop and perfect the existing situation, and to realize practicable ideals, adapted to the times. The great statesmen of all nations, and of all times, were in this sense ideal politicians also.

—When, on the contrary, realistic or ideal politics is understood in a one-sided sense, such politics should be rejected. One-sided, realistic politics is brutal, inasmuch as it relies on brute force, or on the power of money; it is spiritless, because devoid of higher ideas. For such politics only material interests have a value, and selfishness is the mainspring of all its action. Hence it becomes vulgar, immoral, low, inhuman. Machiavellian politics has often been understood and practiced in this sense. But Machiavelli himself, although he complacently recommended realistic means, kept in view an ideal aim, to-wit, the liberation of Italy from a foreign yoke.

—The earlier colonial policy of the European mother countries toward their colonies beyond the sea was of this character. It was calculated chiefly to exploit the latter to the advantage of the former. For this reason it finally forfeited the supremacy it had abused.

—It is not impossible that exclusively realistic politics may be successful. It may make conquests, accumulate treasure, procure enjoyments for rulers, and, under certain circumstances, a rich, luxurious life for the governed. But it extinguishes the nobler instincts of the nation, it prevents the development of the intellectual powers, it suppresses all true freedom. It looks to the animal side of human nature, and neglects the intellectual.

—Politics of interest must not be always classed with merely realistic politics, for all politics must take general national interests into account, and seek to satisfy them. But the out-and-out politics of interest, which subordinates everything to material and selfish interests, belongs to this kind, and partakes of the faults of one-sided realistic politics.

—Onesided ideal politics is equally false, and more foolish, because attended with less success; because it does not test the ground on which it stands and moves, and hence walks in the dark and falls; it incorrectly estimates actual forces and conditions of power, and is hence defeated; it runs after impracticable and unattainable idols; or, finally, it rushes to its ruin, the victim of obscure feelings.

—Of this kind is the politics of the phantasy, which imagines conditions that do not exist, and becomes enthusiastic over phantoms. Of this kind, too, is politics of the romanticists, who fell in love with the pictures of mediæval life, and who thought, that, by the wave of some magic wand, they might revive the class differences of the middle ages, their pious clergy and knights, and fill our modern industrial world with monasteries and castles. Germany had different kinds of such romanticists, longing for an imaginary middle age: romantic kings, longing for the revival of the theocratic feudal system, and romantic students, who reveled in visions of the national black, red and gold (the German tricolore before 1866). Both failed in actual politics. But even celebrated statesmen have occasionally fallen into this same error. Thus, imagination had a large share in the Egyptian campaign of Napoleon I.; and his nephew at Strasburg and Boulogne was carried away by very childish fancies.

—The statesman, however, may legitimately work on the imagination of peoples, and hold up to their mental vision pictures of greatness, power and freedom, in order to increase their energy of action. But the statesman should never rely on the imagination; he must beware lest the latter weaken entirely, when brought into contact with stern reality.

—The politics of feeling is another kind of false ideal politics. In politics, leadership belongs to reason, wisdom and masculinity. When politics allows itself to be guided by passion or excited feeling, by love or hatred, by fear or revenge, it goes dangerously and easily astray, and is certain to be worsted.

—It is doubtful whether the politics that in the middle ages produced the crusades should be ascribed to the imagination, or to over-excited religious feeling; at all events, it was one-sided and unfortunate politics. Religious wars, with all their ruinous effects, must be ascribed entirely to the politics of feeling. Senseless race hatred, a blot on humanity, a hatred which sometimes exists between kindred nations and tribes, is calculated to mislead the best feelings of a people, and to play a ruinous part in politics. The right course, therefore, is not the separation, but the union, of real and ideal politics. The realistic side forms the basis of rational politics; the ideal side is its guiding star. The former has to do chiefly with the means; the latter, with the ends.

—It is with politics as with art. The mere naturalist, who faithfully paints stone, wood, woolen or silken stuffs, is no true artist, unless he employs his talent in the service of the beautiful. But the man who draws beautiful lines, and is unfaithful to nature, satisfies us no better. Great artists, like Michael Angelo and Raphael, were both realists and idealists. Shakespeare is the greatest of poets because, in his works, truth to nature is united with the most abundant wealth of thought, in such perfect harmony that the two are bound indissolubly together. But only in the greatest statesmen do we see the personification, so to speak, of such a combination of realistic and ideal politics; as, for instance, in Pericles and Alexander the Great, in Julius Cæsar, in Charlemagne and King Henry I., in Frederick II. of Prussia and Washington, in Lord Chatham and Pitt, in Napoleon I., in Baron von Stein and Count Cavour. In individuals and nations the realistic or the ideal, for the most part, preponderates, yet neither the ideal nor the realistic should be absent from either the nation or the individual.

—English politics is predominantly realistic, and, first of all, the politics of interest; yet English politics is not wanting in the ideal, as is proved by the immense influence English ideas of popular rights and political freedom have exercised in the world. French politics prefers the ideal, and always advances an idea as its flaming beacon. Napoleon III. boasted that, "Only the French were ready to go to war for an idea!" But, by the side of this idealism, French politics manifests strong features of realism. The French never yet scorned to get in return for their ideal enthusiasm the highest material advantages. This Europe has always been made to feel, whether France happened to be governed by legitimist kings, by revolutionary directors or presidents, or by Napoleonic emperors.

—During the last centuries the German nation did not succeed in establishing a harmonious union between realistic and ideal politics. It unfortunately vacillated hither and thither, between the realistic pressure of absolute governments, and nebulous, idealistic dreams. Prussian politics was the first to understand how to collect and intensify the bodily reality of the forces of the people, by proposing higher tasks to the nation. The greatest of these, the unification of Germany and the rise of the German empire, are due chiefly to the efforts of Prince Bismarck, whom people, by way of preference, designate as a realistic politician; who, in fact, better than any other living statesman, knows how to estimate and reckon with actual forces, but who, at the same time, is uncommonly fertile in ideal thoughts, and, on the whole, allows himself to be determined by the ideas of a national and masculinely free state organization, adapted to the nature and destinies of the German people; and who, accordingly, is an ideal politician, as well as a realistic one.

J. C. BLUNTSCHLI.

POLK

POLK, James Knox, president of the United States 1845-9, was born in Mecklenburgh county, N. C., Nov. 2, 1795, and died at Nashville, Tenn., June 15, 1849. He was graduated at the university of North Carolina in 1818, was admitted to the bar in 1820, and served as congressman (democrat) 1825-39. (See CONGRESS, SESSIONS OF.) He was governor of Tennessee 1839-43, and in 1844 was elected president. (See ELECTORAL VOTES, XV.) For the principal events of his administration see ANNEXATIONS, III.; WARS, V.; WILMOT PROVISO; FREE-SOIL PARTY; INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS; TARIFF. His personal resemblance to Jackson, their general agreement in political feeling, and their neighborhood in birth, life and death, gave him the popular sobriquet of "young hickory."

—See Hickman's Life of Polk (1844); Chase's Administration of Polk (1850); Jenkins' Administration of Polk (1851); 3 Statesman'sManual, 1537; 3 Woodbury's Works; 2 Benton's Thirty Years' View, 737.

ALEXANDER JOHNSTON.

POLL TAX

POLL TAX (Fr., taxe personnelle or capitation; Ger., kopfstener), a tax levied upon each poll or head of population. It is one of the most ancient and universal taxes, being met with in the history of almost every nation, and has survived in many countries to the present day. Although a very unequal tax, in that it takes from each payer a like sum, irrespective of his circumstances, and although it is not in its simplest form an elastic tax, the ease with which it is collected has recommended its adoption. It is a direct tax, and when imposed upon laborers forms a tax upon wages. Adam Smith (book v., chap. ii) claims that such taxes when collected upon slaves are properly taxes upon the profits of a certain species of stock employed in agriculture.

—Aristotle ("Economics") mentions one instance of a tax of two minas imposed upon those who possessed no real property, but it was exceptional, as all direct taxes, whether levied on the soil, trades or persons, were deemed tyrannical unless self-imposed. "The most ignominious imposition was the poll tax, which none but slaves paid to their tyrant, or to his deputy the satrap, or subjugated nations to their conqueror, as, for example, the inhabitants of the provinces to victorious Rome. 'As the field,' says Tertullian, 'is of less value when it is subject to a tax, so are the persons of men more despised when they pay a poll tax; for this is an indication of captivity.' He whose person was not free had assuredly to pay a tax upon his head, that it might not be taken from him." (Boeckh's "Public Economy of the Athenians.") There is some doubt as to whether the capitation or poll taxes levied at Rome were really such, or rather property taxes. An account of them as levied under the empire is to be found in Gibbon. A law of Valens and Valentinian recites that up to that time each man had himself paid a certain capitation tax, but henceforth two and even three might unite to pay this tax; an arrangement that probably resulted from the imposition of other taxes.

—Although the Romans collected this tax from the tribes subjugated by them, in France it was after a time abolished. During the reign of John the estates voted a capitation tax, to be levied upon all, without exception, from the members of the royal family to the peasant. It was not, however, until 1695 that the poll tax assumed a definite form, and it then became a graduated tax, twenty-two classes of payers being recognized, with taxes ranging from 2,000 livres to twenty sous, the basis of classification being the estate and rank of the person assessed. (See Taine L'ancien Régime, book v., chap. ii., for the injustice of such a scale.) During the revolution all internal taxes on consumption were abolished, and among new imposts established, was that of three days' labor upon the roads. This could be commuted into a payment of money, the value of the labor being determined by the local administration. This charge passed through various forms, and finally became the taxe personnelle of the present day, which is based upon the value of three days labor. But as the tariff for estimating the money value is the same that was used in the last century, although wages in the meantime have doubled and even tripled, the revenue is small, and much less than it ought to be.

—In some countries of Europe, as, for example, Russia and Hungary, the poll taxes appear to have been paid to the landlord, but in the other cases, and they form much the larger number, they have been paid to the government. In the former instances they may be regarded as a sort of rent, but in the latter they are taxes upon wages. In England a poll tax was first levied during the reign of Richard II., and its subsequent history forms quite an important episode in history. In 1377, to meet the demands of the treasury, in addition to the usual taxes and duties, a new charge of a groat a head was imposed, which was intended to reach every person in the realm. In 1379 it was renewed in a somewhat different form, being graduated according to the dignity of the payer. The duke of Lancaster was to pay ten marks, earls £4, barons and baronets £2, and so on down to the lowest ranks, in which every person above the age of sixteen was to pay one groat. The chief result of this impost was the preparation of the poll tax rolls of 1379, "one of the most important records of the state of the population of England that was ever drawn up." As a financial measure it proved miserably inadequate, producing in 1379 not more than £22,000, and was in the following year made more severe. This led to the peasant revolt of 1381. Never a popular tax, the feeling against it became stronger each year. "One of the attractions of the new mode of taxation seems to have been that the clergy, who adopted it for themselves, paid, in this way, a larger share of the burdens of the state; but the chief ground for its adoption lay, no doubt, in its bringing within the net of the tax gatherer a class which had hitherto escaped him, men such as the free laborer, the village smith, the village tiler." (Green.) The constant pressure of taxation, which by the poll tax was felt in its most irritating form in every household, goaded into revolt the oppressed peasants. "Nothing," says Stubbs, in his "Constitutional History of England," "had helped so much to maintain the national feeling against the papacy as the payment of Peter's pence, the penny from each hearth due for the Romescot. So the poll tax interpreted to the individual, far more intelligibly than any political propaganda, the misdoings of the rulers. The appointment of the chancellor and the treasurer, the misdoings of the court, the mismanagement of the war, became home questions to every one who had his groat to pay." Graduated poll taxes were imposed during the reigns of Henry VIII., Charles I. and II. and lastly in that of William III., when they were abolished.

—The federal government has the power to impose poll taxes, but only in proportion to the enumeration or census. (Constitution, art. I., § 9.) This power has never been exercised. The states have, however, assessed them until recent times, but very few do now. The capitation tax was doubtless among the first charges imposed, as the condition of the colonies would tend to show. In the early days of a community there is almost nothing besides visible and tangible property that can be taxed. And as men were more nearly equal in rank and condition, and regarded as being equally protected by the law in the enjoyment of life and property, the poll tax naturally suggested itself as the simplest and most equitable form of taxation. As an example may be mentioned the occurrences of the poll tax in Maryland, as described by a writer in the circular of the Johns Hopkins university. In 1641 a capitation tax was granted by the assembly, in testimony of its gratitude toward Lord Baltimore for his efforts to promote the welfare of the colony. In the act of 1692, establishing the Protestant religion in Maryland, every taxable person was made to pay forty pounds of tobacco yearly for the building of churches and the support of parish ministers. To hinder the growth of papacy, an act was passed in 1704 taxing all Irish servants who came into the colony. The same year a tax was imposed on all imported negroes. In 1717 the proceeds of this latter tax were appropriated toward the public school fund, and for erecting one free school in each county. In 1728 every taxable person was made to present the local authorities with three crows' heads or squirrels' scalps. Poll taxes were at various times levied for special objects, such as the building of alms-houses and the construction of highways. The last poll tax in Maryland was levied in 1774, for the purpose of constructing a new road. In fact, from 1641 down to the last year of the proprietary government (1774), a poll tax was collected in this state.

—In 1860, according to a report made to the New York state legislature, twenty-seven states and territories employed the poll tax. Some of the special features are worthy of notice. Thus, while Alabama taxed both male and female free negroes, Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia taxed slaves. In California, Mongolians not engaged in production paid a monthly special poll tax of $2.50, known as the Chinese police tax, and in the same state a special federal war tax was laid on polls. In Nebraska and Utah this impost could be commuted into so many days labor on the roads, probably on account of a scarcity of ready-money. Louisiana appropriated the proceeds exclusively for the support of her free public schools. In Connecticut and Delaware the polls were rated at a certain capital value, which varied from $300 in the former state (it was at one time only $10) to $2,700, which was the highest limit in Delaware. In South Carolina the state constitution provided, that, whenever a tax is laid upon land, a capitation tax of not less than one-fourth of the tax levied upon each hundred dollars of the assessed value of the land taxed shall be imposed upon polls, and the constitution of Virginia contained a somewhat similar provision. There were many exemptions from poll taxes mentioned in the laws, among which were persons attached to the army or navy, or who had been wounded while in the military service of the country; paupers and the insane, the deaf and dumb, the blind and infirm; ministers of the Gospel (Tennessee); persons of color (Wisconsin), and uncivilized American Indians (Nevada). In some states the payment of a poll tax was made a necessary qualification of the voter, as it is in Massachusetts to-day (1883).

—On the other hand, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Michigan levied no poll taxes; the constitutions of Ohio and Maryland declared them to be grievous and oppressive, and Rhode Island provided by law that "no poll tax could be laid for any purpose," although the constitution allowed the collection of a registry tax, which was in reality a capitation tax.

—To take from each payer an equal sum, which is the simplest form of a poll tax, does not necessarily make each man pay an equal tax. On the contrary, such a duty is very unequal in its incidence, as the condition of the payers must vary within wide limits. It would obviously be unequal to levy this tax upon every member of the family, parents and children, because the number of children in a family is no measure of comfort or of ability to pay taxes. Leroy-Beaulieu believes that only males should pay a poll tax, and that it should be joined to political rights. Every man, he says, who possesses and exercises the right of suffrage, ought to pay a direct tax, the rate to depend upon the needs of the local administrations and the existing indirect taxes. Among some of the United States, in which the payment of a poll tax is necessary to an exercise of the elective franchise, the door has been opened to abuse and frauds, as it is customary for the party managers to indirectly buy the votes of the delinquent tax payers by settling for them their poll tax dues.

—The inequality of the capitation tax has frequently been noticed, and in attempting to make it more equal the tendency is to change it into a tax upon income; if not based directly upon the income of each payer or class of payers, it may at least bear a certain relation to it. Where the existence of privileged classes permits such a graduation by rank, it has been resorted to, as in France and England. In Prussia a tax of this description is still levied, the classenstener. The population is divided somewhat arbitrarily into various classes, according to their supposed income, and a tax proportioned to this classification imposed upon each group. Thus, the tax that is paid by each member of one class or group is the same, and is to that extent a poll or capitation tax; but as the tax payers are grouped according to their supposed or determined incomes, it partakes of the character of an income tax. The one or other feature predominates according as the number of groups formed is small or large. The classenstener has proved a very productive tax, but poll taxes as a rule can never be counted upon to furnish a large revenue, and are being superseded by other and more productive taxes.

—AUTHORITIES. Leroy-Beaulieu, Science des Finances; Levi, and M'Culloch, on Taxation; Report on State Assessment Laws, N. Y., 1863; and the various Manuals of Political Economy.

WORTHINGTON C. FORD.

POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY

POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY (IN U. S. HISTORY). The acquisition of territory from Mexico (see ANNEXATIONS, IV.-VI.) brought with it a most troublesome and dangerous question, the status of slavery therein. Was the new territory to be entirely free? was it to be entirely slave? was it to be equitably divided? or was congress to refrain from interfering in any way, and allow the problem to gradually eliminate its own difficulties? The first proposition, the basis of the free-soil and republican parties successively, is elsewhere treated (see WILMOT PROVISO); the third had comparatively few advocates, for the time had passed when even a Missouri compromise line could settle the difficulty; the second and fourth represent the two opposing influences which, after twelve years of widening, finally split the democratic party in 1860.

—The second proposition above referred to is primarily untraceable, but its rounded and ultimate completion is certainly due to Calhoun. The argument for it took two directions, which may be briefly stated as follows: 1. The power given to congress by the constitution (article IV., section 3), to "dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory" of the United States, referred only to the territory then held by the United States, in which slavery had already been prohibited. (See ORDINANCE OF 1787.) This meaning was so clear at the time that a separate section was necessary to empower congress to govern the territory thereafter to be acquired for a national capital. Plainly, then, in the cases of Louisiana, Florida, and the Mexican annexations, congress was to govern them, not by virtue of this territorial section of the constitution, but by virtue of the sovereign power by which it had acquired them. But congress was itself the creature of the constitution, and could exercise in the territories no powers prohibited to it by the constitution: it could not erect a state church there; or take away freedom of speech, or trial by jury; or allow any one to be deprived of property without due process of law. If, therefore, it found slave property in any of the territories, it was constitutionally bound to legislate for the protection of this species of property, as well as of others. This was the branch of argument intended for the country in general. Historically it is very strong, as may be better seen in Taney's opinion in the Dred Scott case. Logically it is almost as strong, its radically weak point being in the definition of "property." How could congress be said to "find slave property" in the territories? State law or custom might create a property in man, but this could cover only the jurisdiction of the state: the state law or custom of Georgia could no more justify property in slaves in a territory than in the sister state of New York. Slave property could not be justified by territorial law, for the territories were under the sovereign jurisdiction of the United States; nor by that consensus of recognition by all men which justifies the holding of other animate objects as property. It could hold up absolutely no other shield than state law. Was congress to protect every man in the territories in the enjoyment of whatever he might see fit to claim as his property—air, sunlight, black men, or even other white men? But the whole argument is no stronger than its weakest part, and must stand or fall with that. 2. As the constitution was a compact between separate and sovereign states, congress, as the joint agent and representative of the states, had no right to so legislate against slave property in the territories as to prevent citizens of slave states from emigrating thither, since that would be a discrimination against such states, and would deprive them of their full and equal right in the territories. This branch is elsewhere considered. (See NATION, III.; STATE SOVEREIGNTY.) In this case it was addressed more directly to the slave states than to the country at large, and it furnishes the connecting link between the theory of state sovereignty and its practical enforcement by secession, when Calhoun's hypothetical casus belli had occurred. In this point of view, Calhoun's resolutions of Feb. 19, 1847, whose language has been used in the statement above, were the ultimatum on which the southern states originally declared war, in 1860.

—The first enunciation of the fourth proposition is generally found in the Nicholson letter of Cass, Dec. 24, 1847. In this Cass asserts that the principle of the Wilmot proviso "should be kept out of the national legislature, and left to the people of the confederacy in their respective local governments"; and that, as to the territories themselves, the people inhabiting them should be left "to regulate their internal concerns in their own way." This idea was the essence of "popular sovereignty." Its advocates generally accepted the territorial section of the constitution, above referred to, as applicable, not only to the territory possessed by the United States in 1788, but prospectively to any which might be acquired thereafter. They therefore held that congress might make any "rules and regulations" it might deem proper for the territories, including the Mexican acquisitions; but that, in making these rules and regulations, it was wiser and better for congress to allow the "inchoate state" to shape its own destiny at its own will. Properly, it will be seen, there was nothing in the dogma which could constitutionally prohibit congress from making rules for or against slavery in the territories, if it should so determine, though gradually Douglas and some of its more enthusiastic advocates grew into the belief that popular sovereignty was the constitutional right of the people of the territories, which congress could not abridge. Still, it should have been plain that, if a democratic congress might make a "regulation" empowering the people of the territories to control slavery therein, a congress of opposite views might with equal justice make a "regulation" of its own, abolishing slavery therein. This point, however, never became plain to the south until the new republican party secured control of the house of representatives in 1855-7. After that time the whole south came to repudiate popular sovereignty and the territorial section of the constitution, and rested on the Calhoun doctrine that congress and the immigrant both entered the territory with all the limitations of the constitution upon them, including its provisions for the protection of slave property as well as property of other kinds.

—At its first declaration, however, the idea proved to be a very taking one, south and north, for it promised to relieve the states from any responsibility for or consideration of the question of slavery in the territories. This was to be decided by the territorial legislature, as representing the people, and by the popular convention, upon the final formation of a state constitution. The democratic platform of 1848 did not directly refer to or indorse it, but its highly colored reference to the French revolution of that year, and to "the recent development of this grand political truth of the sovereignty of the people and their capacity and power for self-government, was at least suggestive of the Cass doctrine of popular sovereignty in the territories. The suggestion was made still plainer by the convention's action in rejecting, by a vote of 216 to 86, a resolution offered by Yancey, of Alabama, recognizing "the doctrine of non-interference with the rights of property of any portion of the people of this confederacy, be it in the states or territories, by any other than the parties interested in them [i.e., in such rights]"; the democratic convention was not willing, therefore, to sustain the right of any slaveholder to transfer his slave property into a territory against the will of its people.

—The sudden growth of population in California in 1848-50 gave Calhoun an opportunity of fastening a nickname upon the doctrine which he opposed. No territorial government had been formed in California when it applied for admission as a state. Its inhabitants, said Calhoun, were therefore trespassers on the public domain, mere squatters, who surely had no right on any theory to regulate their own government. His ridicule only made the terms "squatter sovereignty" and "popular sovereignty" interchangeable, though the former properly applied to an unorganized, and the latter to an organized, territory.

—The original discoverer of the doctrine of popular sovereignty in the territories did not perfect his claim by occupation, and Douglas almost immediately became its strongest and most persistent champion, so that his name is most entirely identified with it. Henceforward the Douglas doctrine became the shibboleth of most of the northern democrats, as a medium between the Wilmot proviso and the demand of many of the southern democrats for active congressional protection of slavery in the territories. It is significant, however, of the timorous and evasive statesmanship of 1850, that it is exceedingly difficult to say whether popular sovereignty was a feature in the compromise of that year. (See COMPROMISES, V.) Southern democrats asserted that it was not, and their claim is supported by the provisions that the legislatures of Utah and New Mexico (the only territories organized by the compromise) should have power over "all rightful subjects of legislation consistent with the constitution of the United States," and that its laws should be submitted to congress, and, if disapproved, should be null and of no effect. Douglas asserted that popular sovereignty was the basis of the bill, and the course of proceedings on it in the senate seems to confirm his assertion. He reported the bill in the senate, March 25, the powers of the legislature being as above stated. The committee of thirteen reported the same bill, May 8, adding the proviso "with the exception of African slavery." Amendments were offered by Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, to empower the territorial legislature to protect, but not to attack, slavery, and by Chase, of Ohio, of exactly the opposite purport. Both were rejected; a motion of Douglas, through another senator, to strike out the committee's exception of slavery from the powers of the legislature, was carried by a vote of 33 to 19; and the bill passed as originally framed by Douglas. Even with this explanation, the best that can be said of the whole arrangement is, that it was a provoking verbal juggle, meaning anything but what it appeared to mean on its face, and best calculated for citation as a precedent in two opposite senses, for an increasingly bitter wrangle over its meaning, and for the final disruption of the party which had passed it. (See DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICAN PARTY, V.)

—In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska bill (see that title) again purported to enforce the popular sovereignty idea in the new territories, although slavery had been prohibited in both of them by the Missouri compromise of 1820. The fourteenth and thirty-second sections of the act put the laws of the United States in force in the two territories, "except the eighth section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri into the Union, approved March 6, 1820, which, being inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by congress with slavery in the states and territories, as recognized by the legislation of 1850, commonly called the compromise measures, is hereby declared inoperative and void; it being the true intent and meaning of this act, not to legislate slavery into any territory or state, nor to exclude it there from, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the constitution of the United States." It will be noticed that the language is simple and direct until the point is reached where "popular sovereignty" was to be defined; then it becomes circumlocutory. The people were to "form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way"; did that mean that they were at liberty either to allow or to prohibit slavery? "Popular sovereignty" and common sense said, Yes; the very senate that passed the bill said, No; Chase's amendment, "under which the people of the territory, through their appropriate representatives, may, if they see fit, prohibit the existence of slavery therein," was rejected, March 2, by a vote of 36 to 10. What other meaning than that of the Chase amendment could be given to the bill, it is impossible to see, and, unless the vote above mentioned was only significant of a general dislike of Chase, the popular sovereignty part of the Kansas-Nebraska bill must be set down as another verbal juggle, intended to be read in different ways north and south—In the meantime Calhoun's original theory had been growing in favor at the south. There the leaders were rapidly growing more dissatisfied with "non-intervention by congress," with the idea that congress was of itself to do nothing for or against slavery in the territories; but was to delegate to the people of the territories the powers which it would not or could not exercise itself. A convention of delegates from nine southern states at Nashville, June 2, 1850, had declared that the federal government had no right to decide what should be held as property in the territories; that the slaveholding states would not submit to any restraints upon the removal of their citizens with their property to the territories; but that, for the sake of peace, they would consent to the equitable division of the territories by the line of 36° 30' to the Pacific. Four years afterward they assisted in carrying through the extension of popular sovereignty to all the territories, by the Kansas-Nebraska bill, partly from the desire to gratify the northern democracy, but much more from the delusive hope that all the territories would thus be opened to slavery. Within two years this hope had vanished forever. (See KANSAS.) It was plain that, without the reopening of the African slave trade, "popular sovereignty" in the territories meant their inevitable final admission as free states. From the moment that this result was apparent, there was no longer any hesitation among southern leaders. They accepted every link of the reasoning which Calhoun had forged ten years before: in the territories neither congress nor the territorial government could legislate against slavery; on the contrary, congress as the agent of the states, and the territorial governments as the agents of congress, were bound to fulfill the essence of good government by protecting those rights of property which were recognized by the states; and popular sovereignty would only come into play when the territory should itself become a state, and should decide whether it should be a free or a slave state. These were the basis of the Southern demands for a platform, on which the Charleston convention split in 1860. They had previously been accepted by the president and the official leaders of the democratic party, and by its majority in the senate. Douglas' non-concurrence led to his removal from the committee on territories in the senate, and practically placed him out of the party fold.

—Throughout all this twelve years struggle. "non-intervention by congress" meant, in the north, that congress was to do nothing for or against slavery in the territories, but was to allow the people of the territories to do as they pleased; and, in the south, that congress was to do nothing against slavery in the territories, either of itself or through the territorial legislatures. By dexterous manipulation of phrases the northern and southern democracy had united to pass the territorial bills of 1850 and 1854, neither insisting on the full expression of its demands in words. But in 1857 the supreme court, in the Dred Scott case (see that title), decided against Douglas and popular sovereignty, and for the full vigor of the Calhoun theory. Thereafter the southern leaders, as law-abiding citizens, could of course do nothing else than amplify their previous demands into consistence with the supreme court's doctrine, and, further, insist upon their expression in plain terms. In the democratic national convention of 1856 both sections had been content with a bald approval of "non-interference by congress with slavery in the territories," leaving the interpretation of this phrase undecided. In the convention of 1860 the two sections formulated their respective demands in plain terms. No manipulation of phrases could reconcile them, and the convention and the party at last divided. (See DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICAN PARTY, V.) With the election of 1860, and the outbreak of the rebellion, popular sovereignty disappeared with the evil for which it was designed to be the remedy.

—The best exposition of the doctrine of "popular sovereignty" is that published by Douglas in September, 1859, as cited below. In it he insists desperately that the Dred Scott decision had not condemned his doctrine, though he admits that, if it had so condemned it, the Seward dogma would be correct, that "there is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, which means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slave-holding nation or entirely a free labor nation." This belief of Douglas will account for the offer of his followers at Charleston "to abide by the decisions of the supreme court on questions of constitutional law." But his belief, honest as it undoubtedly was, was evidently unfounded. How can "the opinion of the court, that the act of congress which prohibited a citizen from holding and owning property of this kind [slave property] in the territory of the United States, is not warranted by the constitution, and is therefore void," be reconciled with a power in congress to authorize the people of the territories to impose the same prohibition? The court could hardly have decided against Douglas more plainly, except by naming him and his doctrine. Nevertheless, the doctrine of Douglas, that the territories are held only for the purpose of becoming states, that they are therefore really "inchoate states," that it is wise and just to allow their inhabitants the powers of self-government and "the regulation of their domestic institutions to suit themselves," is well founded, and has been the foundation of the American territorial system since 1787. (See TERRITORIES, I.) But the power of congress, nevertheless, is always latent, and may be exercised whenever congress, rightly or mistakenly, conceives it to be "for the general welfare" to do so. If the people of the territory undertake to harbor anything which seems to congress a moral evil, a lottery system, polygamy, or slavery, it is the right and duty of congress, for the welfare not only of the future state but of all the states, to intervene and destroy it. It is a little odd that the congresses of 1854-8, which were so quick to recognize this truth in the case of polygamy in Utah, were so slow to recognize it in the case of slavery in Kansas. Popular sovereignty in the territories is, and has always been, a privilege, not a right; and the privilege is to be exercised in strict conformity to the terms of the grant.

—The historical authorities for the rise and fall of the idea of "popular sovereignty" in the territories will be found under DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICAN PARTY, V.; REPUBLICAN PARTY, I. The Calhoun doctrine will be found in 4 Calhoun's Works, 339 (resolutions of Feb. 19, 1847), 535; see also Taney's opinion in DRED SCOTT CASE; 2 Stephens' War Between the States, 202; and Jefferson Davis' senate resolutions of May 24, 1860, in Greeley's Political Text Book of 1860, 194. Cass' Nicholson letter in full is in Cluskey's Political Text Book of 1860, 462. The Douglas doctrine is in Harper's Magazine, September, 1859, and in Cutts' Treatise on Party Questions, 123. The former article was answered by attorney general J. S. Black in pamphlet Observations on it; and the medium between the two is taken in Reverdy Johnson's Remarks on Popular Sovereignty. H. A. Wise's Territorial Government, 47, 148, accomplishes the difficult feat of reaching Calhoun's conclusions from Douglas' premises.

ALEXANDER JOHNSTON.

POPULATION.

POPULATION. I. POSITION OF THE QUESTION OF POPULATION.—The Principle of Population, imperfectly seen by several Economists, demonstrated by Malthus, and strangely misapprehended. The term population embraces the most extensive subject of political economy; for in treating of questions of population, even though we restrict ourselves to labor and its remuneration, we might traverse the whole field of the science and write a complete course of political economy. Population is, in fact, at once the end and the means of human industry. For it and by it production takes place. By it also consumption is effected. We shall not, therefore, here consider this vast subject under its general aspect, but will confine ourselves to the questions suggested by the number of people, the elucidation of which must precede those connected with the fundamental questions of demand and supply, competition, wages, and social conditions. This range is still, as will be seen, very extended. The questions it embraces have been frequently discussed, especially during the past century, and in our own time: but of all writers, he who has most thoroughly investigated them, he whose ideas on this subject are, so to speak, the pivot of the discussions of economists, moralists, and publicists of every class, is the celebrated Malthus. To his investigations, and, we may say, discoveries, we will first give our attention.

—It was Malthus who stated the question. He it was who first showed its supreme importance. He brought together the scientific elements of the discussion, in his celebrated "Essay on the Principle of Population," published in 1803. This had been preceded by a preliminary sketch of the subject in 1798, in his reply to some propositions by Godwin, who was, in his turn, twenty years later, to attempt to refute him, but without success. Not that before Malthus some correct ideas on population had not appeared from a few writers, among others those of the physiocratie school, and James Stewart, Adam Smith, Wallace, Hume, and Gian Maria Ortès; but to the English philosopher belongs the honor of having seen and pointed out the profundity of the problem, of having made it the subject of numerous statistical and historical researches, and obtained a great amount of information upon it. Until the beginning of this century, i.e., up to the time of Malthus, legislators, statesmen and philosophers set out with this aphorism: "Where there is population, there is power." They took no account of the conditions under which the population might be living; no one questioned the proposition, and all social institutions aimed to increase the number of the people. Colbert, Pitt, and even Napoleon, favored granting rewards to the producers of large families; and it was not until 1852 that the parliament of Sardinia repealed a law to the same effect. People had no idea, that, in order for capital and labor to produce their greatest effect, the number of men must bear some relation to the disposable capital; they supposed that if, for example, a thousand laborers produced a million dollars, it was only necessary that two thousand laborers should be born to the state, to obtain two millions. The laws of all European countries originated when that idea prevailed, and even to-day there are legislators and publicists, priests and philosophers, moralists and poets, who appeal to that doctrine. It is still a quite common belief that a good government will do everything in its power to increase population.

—Malthus pointed out the dangers to society in general from this error, and especially to the poorer classes, who are the first to suffer from violations of natural laws. We will therefore, at the outset, give an exposition of his ideas, and indicate, as we proceed, the support he has received, and the modifications which his doctrine has experienced, from other eminent economists, as well as the exaggerations which have been substituted for it, the follies for which ignorance has made it responsible, and the principal objections or criticisms of which it has been the object. But first of all, we will say a few words concerning the way in which his ideas and sentiments have been misrepresented.

—Malthus affords a curious example of popular aberrations, for which fact many publicists and some economists, who have opposed, or even approved him, are responsible. Not only is Malthus not known, not only are people ignorant of his actual ideas, but men have succeeded in creating in the minds of the public a Malthus that never existed, a chimerical Malthus, to whom the strangest propositions are attributed, and who has been the subject of harsh reproaches and violent imprecations. This strange phenomenon may be thus explained: Most of those who have spoken of Malthus, have spoken of him without having read him and without knowing him otherwise than by extracts or by mutilated, if not incorrect, quotations. They have thus created the most deplorable confusion concerning him, by attributing to him ideas which he never had; by making of a philanthropist especially interested in the condition of the poor, a theorist favoring aristocracy; by holding him responsible for sentiments and errors belonging to his adversaries; or, it may be, for absurd propositions emanating from unhealthy minds.

—It must be confessed, however, that this condition of things is in part attributable to Malthus himself. The different parts of his book are not logically put together; his scattered reasons are nowhere presented in orderly sequence, in support of the principles he lays down; his style, moreover, is not particularly engaging. The great truths which he has set forth in regard to population would, without doubt, have become much more popular had he written like Rousseau or Lamennais, or with the ardent style of a pamphleteer, that one finals in the writings of Godwin and Proudhon, his sharpest critics. Malthus, however, though immovable in his principles, was considerate and good-natured to his opponents, who had no difficulty in obtaining control of public opinion at his expense.

—II. STATEMENT OF THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION.—Doctrine of Malthus. This doctrine is stated, as we have said, in his "Essay on the Principle of Population." After having formulated, in his two celebrated propositions, the law of the development of population and that of the increase of food, this illustrious economist verifies it by means of the history and statistics of ancient and modern peoples, and shows by what checks the growth of population has been arrested. At the same time he points out the dangers, both to private families and to society in general, arising from a misconception of these laws, and shows by what means the evils may be avoided which have resulted and still result from the improvidence in which the greater part of mankind have lived and do live. These laws of the increase in the number of human beings and of the means of subsistence, and these means of obviating the evils he points out, are what he has called the "principle of population." The evils he sums up as "vice" and "misery." The remedy he proposes, and which is one of the forms of foresight, he calls "moral restraint." To show the importance of this means, Malthus was led to discuss the value of the doctrines put forth the latter part of the last century and the beginning of the present one, on population and the means of raising it to a better material and moral condition, as well as the checks to its excessive growth. He then examines the social theories which had then appeared; among others, those of Godwin and Owen, Condorcet's theory of indefinite progress, the efficacy of emigration, and the effects and dangers of charity. In treating of the latter subject, Malthus makes a profound criticism of the poor laws, and is led to an examination of the question so much agitated in our times, of the right to employment and the right to state aid.

—Statement of the two propositions. In the first pages of his book, after stating a few facts and considerations corroborated in the course of the work, Malthus says: "It may safely be pronounced, therefore, that population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical ratio." (7th ed., p. 4, London, 1872.) "It may be fairly pronounced, therefore, that, considering the present average state of the earth, the means of subsistence, under circumstances the most favorable to human industry, could not possibly increase faster than in an arithmetical ratio." (Ibid., p. 5.) Translating these two laws into figures, Malthus adds, a little further on: "The human species would increase as the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256; and subsistence as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. In two centuries the population would be, to the means of subsistence, as 256 to 9," etc. (Ibid., p. 6.)

—These propositions are true, if not literally, at least approximately. And here we will anticipate certain objections, less serious than is generally supposed, by observing that Malthus, in using a geometrical progression to express the increase of population, and an arithmetical progression to represent the increase in means of subsistence, meant nothing more than to express a tendency. Some persons did not thus understand him, but their dissertations in reference to the matter lead to false conclusions.

—The first proposition demonstrated by the increase of the population of the United States, and conformable to the laws of nature. Near the close of the last century, when Malthus began to write, Dr. Price stated, that, according to data examined by himself, in certain parts of North America, the period of doubling the population was fifteen years. ("Price's Observations," vol. i., p. 282, and vol. ii., p. 260.) He supported this statement by some extracts from a sermon by Dr. Hyles, who had found, in 1748, that the period of doubling was twenty-five years in Rhode Island, taken as a whole, and twenty and fifteen years in certain districts in the interior of that state. The period was twenty years in the county of Kent, and eighteen years in Providence county. Euler had constructed a table based on statistics taken from the registers of births and deaths, according to which the doubling had taken place in less than thirteen years. W. Petty had advanced the opinion, that, under particularly favorable circumstances, a population might double in ten years. Malthus, relying on these three authorities and the United States census, thought he was safe from exaggeration in saying, that, when population is not arrested in its growth from any cause, it goes on doubling every twenty-five years, thus increasing from period to period in geometrical progression. If the fact of doubling in twenty-five years, independently of immigration, had been once proven, science would be justified in adopting a posteriori the assertion of Malthus.

—We have now valuable statistics on this subject in the decennial census of the United States, covering nearly four times the Malthusian period of twenty-five years. In 1790 the United States were free, and organized under one general government. They have continued to live under the same government. The civil war is the only important event which has put a serious check upon the natural course of things. Moreover, the United States, not having yet attained the limits of disposable land and subsistence, have continued to obey the law indicated by the census previous to this century, and which served Malthus as a starting point. We have here one of the most remarkable facts in regard to population, a fact remarkable both for its clearness and its continuity. According to the official census statistics, the progress of population has been, in round numbers, as follows:

If from the population of 1850, we deduct that of the then newly annexed territory, including Texas, New Mexico, Utah and California (166,000 persons in all, a large part of whom, however, were immigrants from the United States), we have remaining a population of 22,990,000 for that year. If we divide the population of 1840 by that of 1790, we find that the population more than quadrupled in these fifty years. Dividing that of 1850 by that of 1800, we find the population quadrupled in the first two periods of twenty-five years in this century. Taking, in like manner, the fifty-year periods from 1810 to 1860, 1820 to 1870, and 1830 to 1880, we find the population more than quadrupled in all but the last period, and very nearly quadrupled in that. Comparing periods of ten years, we find that the population had increased—

The smaller per cent. of increase between 1860 and 1870 was a result of the civil war.

—When we examine the census of the individual states, we find several in which the increase has varied greatly from the above rates. The population of the state of New York increased more than sevenfold in the fifty years from 1790 to 1840, and has more than doubled from 1840 to 1880. The population of Ohio more than tripled from 1820 to 1850. It had previously increased more than twelve-fold from 1800 to 1820; but this was largely the result of immigration from other states. Pennsylvania quadrupled her population in the fifty years from 1790 to 1840, and has little more than doubled it from 1840 to 1880. That of Virginia did not double in the fifty years from 1790 to 1840, and (including West Virginia) has barely doubled in the sixty years from 1820 to 1880.

—The statistics previously given of the general population show, however, that the ratio given by Malthus, which he had based on the increase observed in the second half of the last century, continues to express the facts during the present century, and over a wider area of territory.

—But, aside from the results of the census, we might have conceived this ratio a priori, as many economists have shown. J. B. Say reasons on the subject as follows: "If we leave out of account all the causes which limit the increase of the human race, we find that a man and woman, married as soon as they are mature, may easily have at least a dozen children. * * Experience, indeed, shows us that about half of those who are born die before the age of twenty-six. Consequently, if each couple can not rear twelve children who will have progeny, they can rear six as capable of increase as themselves. Hence we may conclude, that, if there were no check to this increase, the population of any country would be tripled at the end of twenty-six years." Rossi accepts Malthus' ratio, and adds: "This is easily demonstrated. Whenever you have several products, each with a reproductive power equal to that of the producer, you will necessarily have a more or less rapid geometrical progression. If one produces two, and these have each the same productive power as the first, the two will produce four, the four eight, and so on. Abstractly speaking, Malthus announced an indisputable principle, as true in regard to man as it is with animals and plants. Obstacles not being taken into account, it is evident that at the end of a certain number of years, the earth would be covered with men, as it is certain that the entire soil would be soon covered with wheat, and the ocean filled with fishes, if nothing checked the reproductive power of each grain of wheat and each fish." The observations of naturalists support Rossi's statement. A single plant of Indian corn produces 2,000 seeds, a sunflower 4,000, the poppy 32,000, an elm 100,000. A carp spawns 340,000 eggs. It has been calculated that one henbane plant would cover the earth in four years, and that two herrings would fill the sea in ten years, if the ocean covered the whole earth, were there no check to their increase.

—Objections drawn from immigration and the exceptional case presented by the United States. Attacks more animated than serious have been made upon Malthus' first proposition, which is one of the principal foundations of his argument. Godwin, among others, went so far as to maintain that the exceptionally large increase of population in the United States must be attributed entirely to immigration. We will consider the untenability of this position. Up to 1783 war and various other circumstances hindered immigration, and took from the United States more persons than Europe added to the population. The immigration occasioned by the French Revolution was soon interrupted by the war of 1793; and from that time to the peace of 181

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