The Online Library of Liberty

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• Volume III: Oath - Zollverein
• O
• Oath
• Oath of Allegiance
• Occupation
• Oceanica
• Ochlocracy.
• O'conor, Charles
• Office-holders, Danger of an Aristocracy of
• Ohio
• Oligarchy
• Olmstead Case. (see Pennsylvania.)
• Omnibus Bill. (see Parliamentary Law.)
• Opinion. (see Public Opinion.)
• Opposition
• Order of the Day. (see Parliamentary Law.)
• Orders In Council. (see Embargo, In U. S. History.)
• Orders, Religious . (see Congregations.)
• Ordinance of 1787
• Oregon
• Oriental Question
• Ostend Manifesto
• Outlawry
• Outlet
• Over-production
• P
• Pacific Railroad. (see Internal Improvements, Railroads.)
• Paper Money.
• Paraguay (republic Of).
• Parasites, Social
• Pardon.
• Paris Monetary Conference
• Parley.
• Parliament, the British
• Parliamentary Law.
• Participation In Profits.
• Parties, Political
• Party Government In the United States.
• Party Names In U. S. History. (see American Party, Anti-federal Party, Anti-masonic Party)
• Patent Office
• Patents, and the Patent System.
• Patronage
• Patrons of Husbandry. (see Grangers.)
• Pauperism
• Peace.
• Peace Congress. (see Conference, Peace.)
• Pendleton, George H.
• Penitentiary Systems. (see Prisons and Prison Discipline.)
• Pennsylvania
• Penny Banks. (see Banks, History and Management of Savings.)
• Pensions. (see United States Pension Laws, and the Pension Laws of Other Countries.)
• Persia.
• Personal Liberty Laws
• Personal Union
• Peru
• Petition
• Petition, Right of
• Philosophy of Law
• Physiocrates.
• Pickering, Timothy
• Pierce, Franklin
• Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth
• Pinckney, Thomas
• Piracy
• Plenty and Dearth.
• Poland
• Police
• Police Power of a State
• Political Arithmetic. (see Arithmetic, Political.)
• Political Assessments. (see Assessments, Political.)
• Political Economy.
• Political Economy, History of
• Political Science
• Politics, Nature and Character of
• Polk, James Knox
• Poll Tax
• Popular Sovereignty
• Population.
• Portugal.
• Postoffice
• Postoffice Department
• Postoffice Savings Banks. (see Banks, History and Management of Savings.)
• Powers of Congress. (see Congress, Powers Of.)
• President. (see Executive.)
• President Pro Tem. (see Parliamentary Law.)
• Press, the Newspaper and Periodical
• Previous Question. (see Parliamentary Law.)
• Prices
• Primary Elections.
• Priority of Debts Due to the United States and to the States
• Prisoners of War
• Prisons and Prison Discipline
• Private Bills. (see Parliamentary Law.)
• Private Calendar. (see Parliamentary Law.)
• Privateering
• Privilege. (see Parliamentary Law.)
• Prizes, Maritime
• Production of Wealth
• Products On Paper
• Profits
• Prohibition
• Promotion
• Property
• Property, Landed . (see Rent.)
• Property, Literary
• Proportional Representation
• Protection. Restrictions Upon Freedom of Exchange
• Protection In the United States.
• Protestantism. (see Churches, Protestant.)
• Prussia
• Public Debts. (see Debts, National, State and Local.)
• Public Lands of the United States
• Public Lands, Office of
• Public Opinion
• Public Policy
• Public Revenues. (see Revenues, Public.)
• Q
• Quarantine
• Quids
• R
• Races of Mankind
• Radicalism
• Railways, History and Political Economy of
• Railways, Legislation Concerning, and Management Of, In the United States
• Railway Clearing House. (see Clearing, and Clearing Houses.)
• Randolph, John
• Rebellion
• Rebellion, the (in U. S. History)
• Reciprocity
• Recognition
• Reconstruction
• Refuge, Right of . (see Asylum.)
• Refunding of the Public Debt of the United States
• Reichsrath
• Reichstag
• Removal of Deposits. (see Deposits, Removal Of.)
• Removals From Office
• Rent
• Representation
• Representative Democracy. (see Democracy, Representative.)
• Republic.
• Republican Party
• Repudiation.
• Resignation.
• Restrictive System. (see Embargo, In U. S. History.)
• Returning Boards
• Revenue
• Revolution.
• Revolution, the
• Rhode Island
• Ricardo, David
• Riders
• Right of Inheritance. (see Inheritance.)
• Right of Petition. (see Petition, Right Of.)
• Riu Kiu.
• River and Harbor Bills. (see Internal Improvements.)
• Roads. (see Transportation, Means Of.)
• Roads and Canals. (see Internal Improvements.)
• Rohmer's Doctrine of Parties. (see Parties, Political.)
• Roman Catholic Church.
• Rotation In Office. (see Civil Service Reform.)
• Rules. (see Parliamentary Law.)
• Rush, Richard
• Russia
• S
• Saint-simonism. (see Socialism.)
• Salary Grab
• San Domingo
• Sandwich Islands
• Sanitary System
• Savings
• Savings Banks. (see Banks, History and Management of Savings.)
• Saxony
• Schools. (see Education and the State)
• Schurz, Carl
• Science. (see Social Science.)
• Scotland
• Scott, Winfield
• Scratching
• Search, Right of
• Secession
• Sedition Laws. (see Alien and Sedition Laws.)
• Seminole War. (see Slavery, II.)
• Senate
• Sergeant-at-arms. (see Parliamentary Law.)
• Sergeant, John
• Servia, Principality of
• Sessions of Congress. (see Congress, Sessions Of.)
• Seward, William H.
• Seymour, Horatio
• Shay's Rebellion. (see Confederation, Articles Of.)
• Sherman, John
• ShimonosÉki Indemnity
• Shinto
• Siam
• Silver
• Silver Bill. (see Hayes, R. B.)
• Sinking Fund
• Sintooism. (see Shinto)
• Slavery
• Smith, Adam
• Smuggling
• Socialism and Socialists
• Social Contract
• Social Science
• Society
• South Carolina
• Southern Confederacy. (see Confederate States.)
• Sovereignty
• Sovereignty (in U. S. History). (see Popular Sovereignty.)
• Spain
• Speaker. (see Parliamentary Law.)
• Speakers. (see Congress, Sessions Of.)
• Speculation
• Spoils System
• Squatter Sovereignty. (see Popular Sovereignty)
• Stamp Act Congress
• Standing Armies. (see Armies.)
• Standing Orders. (see Parliamentary Law.)
• Stanton, Edwin M .
• State, Department of
• State Rights. (see State Sovereignty, II.)
• State Sovereignty
• State, the
• States, Constitutional and Legal Diversities In
• Statistics
• Stephens, Alexander H.
• Stevens,thaddeus
• Stock Exchange Clearing House. (see Clearing, and Clearing Houses.)
• Stock Jobbing. (see Agiotage.)
• Story, Joseph
• Strict Construction. (see Construction.)
• Strikes and Lockouts
• Subsidies.
• Sub-treasury. (see Independent Treasury.)
• Suffrage
• Sumner, Charles
• Sumptuary Laws. (see Laws, Sumptuary.)
• Supply. (see Parliamentary Law.)
• Supreme Court. (see Judiciary.)
• Sweden.
• Switzerland
• T
• Table. (see Parliamentary Law.)
• Tammany Hall
• Taney, Roger Brooke
• Tariffs of the United States.
• Tartar, Tartary
• Ta-tsing (great Pure)
• Tauism (tao-ism, To;, Or Doctrine of Lao-tse).
• Taxation, Principles of
• Taxation, National and Local. (see Revenue, Public; Taxation.)
• Taylor, Zachary
• Telegraph
• Tellers. (see Parliamentary Law.)
• Temperance Movement In the United States. (see Prohibition, Police.)
• Ten-hour Law
• Tennessee
• Term and Tenure of Office
• Territorial Waters
• Territories
• Texas
• Third Estate
• Tie. (see Parliamentary Law.)
• Tilden, Samuel Jones
• Times-spirit, the . (see Zeitgeist.)
• Tompkins, Daniel D.
• Ton-kin. (see Tonquin.)
• Tonquin (tong-king Or Tun-kin).
• Transportation, Means of
• Treason
• Treasury Department.
• Treaties.
• Treaties, Fishery.
• Treaties of the United States
• Trent Affair
• Tungusic Races. (see Tartar.)
• Turkey.
• Tyler, John
• U
• Union, the (in U. S. History),
• Union Party. (see Republican Party.)
• United States Notes.
• United States Notes. Legal-tender Cases—decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States.
• United States of America
• United States of Colombia. (see New Grenada.)
• United States Pension Laws and the Pension Laws of Other Countries
• United States Surplus Money
• Universal Suffrage. (see Suffrage.)
• Universities
• Usury
• Utah
• Utility
• Utopia
• V
• Value
• Van Buren, Martin
• Vermont
• Veto
• Vice-president. (see Executive, V.; Electors, Senate; Administrations.)
• Virginia
• Virginia Resolutions. (see Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions.)
• W
• Wage Fund, the
• Wages
• "waltham System,"
• Wants.
• War. (see Declaration of War, Belligerents, Exchange of Prisoners.)
• War, the Civil. (see Rebellion, The, In U. S. History.)
• War Department.
• Wars (in U. S. History).
• Washington City. (see Capital, National.)
• Washington, George
• Washington Territory
• Ways and Means. (see Parliamentary Law.)
• Wealth.
• Webster, Daniel
• Weights and Measures.
• West Virginia
• Wheeler, William A.
• Whig Party
• Whisky Insurrection
• Whisky Ring
• White, Hugh Lawson
• White League. (see Ku-klux Klan.)
• Wilmot Proviso
• Wilson, Henry
• Wirt, William
• Wisconsin
• Woman Suffrage. (see Suffrage.)
• Wright, Silas
• Wyoming
• Wyoming Territory
• X
• X Y Z Mission
• Y
• Yazoo Frauds
• Yeas and Nays. (see Parliamentary Law.)
• Z
• Zeitgeist.
• Zollverein.
• Lists of Writers
• The Following Is a List of the Subjects Treated By American Writers:

R

RACES OF MANKIND

RACES OF MANKIND. Formerly an article on races would with difficulty have found place in a political encyclopædia, for men had not then come to consider this question as anything more than one of anthropology and natural history, and did not imagine that the differences which they noticed in the different tribes of the great human family could possess as much interest for the historian and the moralist as for the naturalist or the physiologist. It is only in our own day that general ethnology has become an important branch of the historical sciences, and that men have conceived the idea of seeking, in the physical origin of peoples, for the secret of their destinies and an explanation of the results which they have accomplished, or in which they have participated. Until very recently, historians acknowledged in the history of humanity but one sole physical influence, that of climate, and, as is well known, it is to this incontestable influence alone, that Montesquieu attributed the differences of character which are found among peoples, and, as a consequence, the differences of the laws and institutions that govern them. This notion of climate, formerly so important, is to-day reckoned among the secondary causes, and plays only a secondary part, in the explanation of historical phenomena. The theory of races has taken its place completely. There are those who take alarm at this, and pretend that we have merely exchanged one materialistic theory for another more materialistic still; but such alarm is ill-founded, and true spiritualism, on the contrary, achieved an undeniable victory the day that the theory of races replaced that of the influence of climate in historical science; for it then ceased seeking in the external influences of matter alone for the secret of human destiny, and applied itself to the study of man himself for the explanation of man's moral and political life. Fatality, it is true, ever rules in the theory of races as in the theory of climate, but this fatality has at least the merit of being so intimately united to the being which it governs, that it is mingled with the very fact of his existence, and for man to rebel against it would be as if he were to rebel against himself.

—This notion of races is, moreover, moral, and, so to speak, spiritual, in its origin. In fact, it was not the progress of the natural sciences and of physiology that led the philosophers and historians of our time to adopt this theory, which holds that every tribe of the great human family carries within itself its own destiny, but rather the progress of the science of philology. From the modern science of comparative philology is drawn, among other general results, this important conclusion, that all the nations that speak languages which can be traced back to a common source, exhibit analogous faculties and aptitudes, and that, with some shades of difference, they have had the same historical development. It is not, therefore, merely physical characteristics, a yellow, black or white skin, smooth or wooly hair, oblique or horizontal eyes, that constitute race: it is language as well. Now, what is language if it be not the expression of the inner man, the instrument of the moral man? It is therefore the mind, which is thus reached through the medium of language, as well as the physical conformation of the body, that determines race. In fact, how can we understand that nations having the same physical characteristics should manifest such unequal abilities and such dissimilar instincts, and should follow such contrary ideals of civilization, if, despite their external points of resemblance, their minds were not radically different? The flesh relationship, which seemed so conclusive, was, after all, but superficial. This is especially true of the white or Caucasian race, which philologists have been obliged to divide into two great families: the Indo-Germanic and the Semitic races. Thus this historical theory of races, which has been subjected to so many accusations of materialism, has resulted from the most profound meditation upon language, the noblest of man's attributes. We have just seen, however, that it sought its principle and starting point far beyond physical man, in invisible and moral man.

—Mankind is divided, physically, into three great races, entirely distinct in appearance, color, and even in anatomical structure: the black or Ethiopian race, the yellow or Mongolian race, and the white or Caucasian race. These are the only three pure and simple types of man. All the other races, the red race, the Malayan-Polynesian races, etc., are but varieties and mixtures of these three primitive races. The particular characteristics that distinguish each of these three types are so marked that many of the learned have considered them, not as different modes, so to speak, of the same human type, but as three distinct types, as three patterns of the human form. Here naturally arises the great question of the unity of the human species. Is there but one, or are there several types of humanity? We shall not presume to analyze this question, which belongs more especially to naturalists and physiologists, but we do not hesitate to declare our belief in the unity of the species. The opinion which admits several human types seems at first sight to render a more rational account of the existence of the different races, than the opinion which admits only one; but even after a superficial examination, we perceive that, if it is difficult to explain how the different human races sprung from the same primitive source, it is still more difficult to explain the existence of three primitive types; in other words, it is easier to admit that nature performed her work after one pattern, which she modified according to climate and time, than to admit that she followed three different patterns. In fact, in order to establish the theory which recognizes several human types, we would have to admit that these types are rigorously immutable, that they were settled once and forever at the time of their origin, that they are permanent and essential, that they existed before all mixture of them, and that they will resist all such mixture. But the physics of life and nature do not recognize the scientific rigor and exclusive precision of physics of learned men. Nature is not angular; it waves and floats; and the limits of its provinces are singularly uncertain and difficult to determine. To be sure, it is very easy to distinguish the black race and the yellow race from the white race; but where does the black race end? Where does the yellow race end? These races, so clearly marked, melt at their extremes into, and are confounded with, our own, spite of the fact that they seem so entirely distinct from it. The Berber, the Abyssinian and the Nubian differ from the white race only in the color of their skin; men hesitate to rank them with the black race by the same title as the Kafirs, or the negroes of Congo. The Turks are unquestionably of Mongolian origin; must we, however, continue to class them as belonging to the yellow race, or grant them the right to be numbered among Caucasians?

—Whatever may be the solution of this difficult and perhaps insoluble question of the unity of the human species, this one thing is incontestably true, viz., that history proves the coexistence of these three races upon the earth from the earliest period, and that the oldest legends show them to us contending with one another in that part of the Asiatic continent which is regarded as the cradle of the human race. The primitive population of India, that impure and bestial people which was conquered by the noble race of the Aryas, our ancestors, was of the black race, and very probably of the same blood as the natives of Australia; and the land of Turan, the land of darkness and evil spirits, which the Persian legends oppose to Iran, or the land of light, was occupied by peoples of the Mongolian race. But the three races which we thus see in juxtaposition, so to speak, in the infancy of the world, have singularly separated each from the other, although they have frequently and in numerous cases intermingled, and thus given birth to new peoples. Each of these three races inhabits more especially some one continent, which may be considered as its legitimate country. Africa belongs to the black race; Asia, with the exception of Hindostan, of Persia, Arabia and Armenia, to the Mongolian race; and Europe, entirely to the Caucasian. Each of these continents seems so especially intended for the race which inhabits it, that the other races could not retain their purity in it. Thus, the Africans of the north have received the impress of the black race; the Caucasian peoples of Asia have undergone a greater or less admixture of Mongolian or Finnish blood; and the Caucasian race dissolved and appropriated the foreign races which established themselves upon its own continent, the Hungarians, the Turks, etc.

—But if history shows us the three great human races coexisting from the earliest antiquity, it is far from assigning them the same rank and attributing to them the same importance. All three are possessed of aptitudes for civilization, but these aptitudes, which are rudimentary and purely instinctive in the negro, and strong, but narrow and restricted, in the Mongolian, have an almost infinite power of expansion in the Caucasian. To speak correctly, history belongs to the white race, and to no other. Civilization is its true work, and all the societies, political or other, formed by the men of the other races, are but imperfect, gross or repulsive figures of those which had their origin in the white race. It is through the Caucasian race that man has taken possession of the earth; it is through it that he has broken and every day breaks the net-work of external fatalities with which nature surrounded him. All the different religions of mankind sprung up under the pressure of the force of sympathy of that race; all the literatures of the world were produced by the glow of its imagination; its power of invention seems inexhaustible, and its fertility of combination infinite. Only its labor has been blessed, for only its labor has been truly fruitful. When we take a rapid glance at all that has been accomplished by our race, we experience a feeling similar to that experienced by the traveler, who, from a mountain height, sees spread before his eyes cultivated fields and rich cities, and we feel ourselves taken hold of by veneration and respect.

—We do not experience entirely the same feeling when we survey the aggregate of the works of the Mongolian race. As far as the eye can reach, we behold only immense steppes, cut here and there by gigantic swarms of human beings. We no longer feel veneration and respect, but wonder, fear, and, to some extent, contempt. We feel as though we were in the presence of an enemy, and we fear to see these swarms scattered, broken and fall upon the rich fields which we contemplated awhile before. The Mongolian race is the great obstacle that opposes the development of real civilization. When we endeavor to discover what benefits it has conferred upon humanity, we are filled with dismay at the conviction we must come to, that it has conferred none, unless it be that it has afforded an asylum to Buddhism, when the latter was driven from India, and that it developed Buddhism within its boundaries. It developed it, but it did not create it. A truly atheistical race, devoid of all noble instincts, it was necessary for a man of the Aryan race to give it the only religion suited to its instincts, and to teach it the only truly efficacious consolation in the miseries of this life, toward which its avaricious, acrid and strong mind is incessantly turned. The part played in history by the Mongolian race has ever been merely accidental, and has always been fatal. The Mongolians have figured as conquerors and devastators, and in this quality have caused some of the greatest movements recorded in the annals of mankind. Their aptitude for civilization is real, but singularly narrow and limited. The Mongolian race believes only in force, and the sabre driven into the ground, which the hordes of Attila adored, is its real god. The most perfect, most moral and most peaceful of the political communities it has produced, the Chinese nation, forms no exception to this general rule, much as it may be believed that it does worship anything but force; it has no idea of the value of human life, of the true dignity of man, or of real law. This innate belief in force, however, gives to the peoples of the Mongolian race eminent political capacity, which renders them singularly formidable, the capacity for domination. Wherever they pass, life dries up and becomes extinct, it is true, but they establish themselves in such places, and last. The societies which they form, though old and decrepit, still maintain themselves with a strength of resistance that is truly extraordinary: but if their civilization lasts a long time, it also attains its limit very rapidly, and never renews itself. The old age of Mongolian states is infinitely longer than their youth or maturity. Their force soon reaches the limit of its expansion, and soon finds its point of equilibrium and rest, which is immobility. This is a perfect résumé of the history of the Mongolian races. They overflow like a furious torrent; but, this moment of destructive expansion once passed, they enter again into the repose of stagnation, and maintain themselves by the bare volume and weight of their population.

—The black race ranks last in the scale of races. This unfortunate race shows us man approaching almost to the brute species. Down to the present time the negro race has produced nothing, has done nothing, for humanity, either for good or evil. So far as any political society is concerned, it is made up of a collection of hostile tribes perpetually warring with one another; its religion consists of ridiculous, infamous or bloody fetichism; and when we have said this, we have told the history of the black race. It is only in our own times that a moral ray has begun to enlighten this African continent, in consequence of the expansion of the Caucasian race on the one hand, and, on the other, of the spread of Islamism, which, though stagnant everywhere else, has cast itself upon Africa, which it is about to civilize by means of the sword and the Koran. The bestial appearance of the negro, his instincts, at once childish and fierce, his ridiculous vanity and superstitious credulity, his virtues, which may be compared to those of the dog and his vices, which resemble only those of the feline species, have at all times excited the horror of the other human races, which have refused almost to allow him the name of man, and which have made the abhorrence which they feel toward him a reason for denying him all justice, and for pitilessly compelling him to serve the ends of their cupidity. Slavery seemed the natural condition of this miserable race, and servitude the only means of bringing them under the influence of civilization. The negro is not, however, without an aptitude for civilization; but this aptitude seems to be limited to only one faculty, extreme sociability. Bestial or not, the negro, if he is not, as many pretend, capable of great culture, is, however, capable of tenderness, love and devotion; if it is difficult to develop his mind, it is very easy, on the other hand, to develop his heart. His sensibility leaves nothing to be desired, and even surpasses that of the other races. If he is not the white man's equal, he can live with him: he has nothing of the haughty and taciturn manner of those savage races that fly before the face of civilization and pine a way solitary and silent in the society of men of the white race. Far from perishing, he, on the contrary, flourishes in the bosom of Caucasian civilization. This sociability of the negro is a very great moral fact, which pleads loudly in favor of his race, and refutes the opinion which holds that he is incapable of civilization. Whether he is inferior to the other races or not, it is evident that he accommodates himself perfectly to civilization, and finds in it nothing hostile to his instincts.

—The other human races, the red race (the North American Indians), the Malay-Polynesian race, the boreal race (Finlanders, Laplanders, Esquimaux, etc.), may be considered as mixtures of the three great races, or as degenerations of the three primitive types. These races have in general shown themselves singularly barren in a moral sense. They live in the savage state or in an extremely rude state of society; the Mexicans and Peruvians, however, reached a very advanced state of civilization, and different peoples of Finnish and boreal origin have mingled in the civilization of Europe, and become thoroughly amalgamated with it. The boreal race possesses a peculiar characteristic: it is a sort of physiological cross-road, and the peoples that compose it serve as a passage from one race to another. On the one hand, it is related to the Caucasian race, and on the other, to the red race of America; and it reminds us, by the traits of most of the tribes which compose it, of the Mongolian race, of which it is probably a degeneration.

—The Caucasian or white race is divided into two great branches: the Semitic race, and the Indo-European or Japhetic race. All the civilization of modern humanity has come from these two races; to the Semitic race we owe our religious and moral life, our life of conscience; to the Japhetic race we owe our intellectual, political and social life.

—The Semitic race, which is now singularly reduced in numbers, disseminated and mixed by the dispersion of the Jews over the whole surface of the globe, and by the extension of the conquests of Islamism, comprised, in olden times, the Hebrews, the Arabs, the Phœnicians; and the numerous tribes which the Bible mentions as perpetually warring against their neighbors the Israelites, such as the Canaanites, the Amalekites, etc. Despite the exclusive spirit of this race, which endeavored, more than any other, to preserve its purity, and which always considered the nation as the family enlarged, it did not escape the happy fatality of crossing and admixture, and even from the very earliest antiquity, it seems to have received a very strong infusion of Hamitic blood. The tribes of Canaan were but a mixed race, half Hamitic, half Semitic, and the Hamitic element manifests itself in an unmistakable manner in the civilization of Phœnicia. The Semitic element is also met with, in proportions which it is rather difficult to state exactly, in those first mighty attempts at civilization which ancient history presents to us under the names of Babylon and Nineveh. The Egyptians themselves were also, in all probability, but a mixture of Semitic and Hamitic peoples, and their civilization, which, even to this day, excites our wonder and admiration, was the result of the combined genius of these two great races. No matter what may be said of these admixtures, the true Shemite would not have recognized them, and would not recognize them to-day. For him, the true race of Shem was to be found in Israel, and he admitted but one brother, Ishmael, and even branded that one as a bastard. The Jews and Arabs, therefore, to-day, compose the entire Semitic family; the ancient spirit of exclusion and the ancient prejudice have triumphed, for the fatality of history has brought about the successive disappearance of all these civilizations and all these peoples which the descendants of the patriarchs rejected as impure and tainted with idolatry.

—The moral life of the Semitic race has been at once the most exalted and the simplest known to man. Born under a tent, reared in the desert, and grown up in the habits of nomadic life, it has ever ignored the complicated methods of life of other races. It knows but one sentiment, religious sentiment; but one life, the life of conscience. This simplicity of soul has engendered an extraordinary social simplicity: the ties which bind men to one another among the Semitic races are at once the closest and the freest which the mind can conceive. The Shemite does not know the meaning of the political state, he has no idea of a civil power distinct from the religious power, of a society distinct from the family, of rights and duties proceeding from any other source than God. Man has no master above him but God, and on earth he owes obedience only to those to whom he owes his life, and who are subject to the same master as himself. Religion, therefore, is everything in this Semitic society; the fatherland is the temple, the nation is the family, the king is God, the law which punishes crime is the same as that which admonishes the conscience. Theocracy is the natural form of government of such a race; and this it has never abandoned either in the most brilliant or the most perilous moments of its history. The same genius everywhere attends the Shemite, whether he be nomadic or sedentary; whether he live under a tent or in a city, whether he be a shepherd or conqueror, whether he lead a patriarchal life or be the founder of empires. The Hebrew monarchy never was a monarchy after the oriental fashion, and the kings of Israel endeavored in vain to prevail over the power of Jehovah, the ancient master of their people. The Arabian conquest and the establishment of the societies introduced by Islamism wrought no change in the simplicity of the Semitic intellect, and failed to teach it to distinguish between political power and religious power, between the citizen and the believer. The caliphate was the grand expression of this genius, powerless to conceive the idea of a state under any but a theocratic form.

—This synthetic genius of a single shoot, this inability to divide man, enabled the Semitic race to conceive and preserve their religion free from all alteration, which religion became that of the human race. All the feelings of the Semitic race concentrating into one, that one acquired extraordinary depth, elevation and power. The men of the Semitic race not serving two masters, God took entire possession of them, and while the sojourn in the desert separated them from the brilliant, voluptuous or terrible visions of nature, the vision of their sovereign master was revealed to them in all his majesty and all his grandeur. The Shemite, therefore, was able, for all these reasons, to conceive God as an infinite and all-powerful Being, immutable and eternal, one and perfect, as a pure spirit, master of the world, with which he has no affinity of nature or of substance. This idea, which some of our modern metaphysicians may even consider narrow and arid but which astonishes us by its moral elevation and its abstract grandeur and purity, when we contrast it with the imaginative conceptions and the coarse and deformed symbols of other peoples, impressed the Semitic tribes themselves, just as it has impressed the rest of the Caucasian race, which has finally adopted it as the basis of its faith, and inspired the Shemites with a pride which has always manifested itself in the exclusion of other races, and in a contempt for other religions. They exerted their every power to preserve their religion pure from all idolatry, and they found powerful auxiliaries for the accomplishment of this task in the simplicity of their social state and in their proximity to the desert.

—Nearly all the nations of modern Europe belong to the Japhetic or Indo-Germanic races. This name of Indo-Germanic has been given them by comparative philology, which has established the relationship of nearly all the European nations by the analogy of their different languages with the sacred language of India, the Sanscrit. This analogy once established, the consequence was easily drawn; since the Sanscrit was the common source of the languages of the different peoples of Europe, these peoples must evidently have sprung from a common source, and are all but branches of the race whose language the Sanscrit was. What was this race? and what country did it first inhabit? The most recent researches in ethnology and philology have established the fact that this part of the great Caucasian family from which the Indo-Germanic races have sprung, inhabited that part of Asia which extends from the Caucasus to Bactriana, and was divided into two great tribes, the Aryans and the Iranians. The Aryans are the source of the superior classes of Hindostan, which country they conquered; the Iranians have continued even to the present time almost without admixture in Persia, of which country they still form the chief population. Everything that is of any capital importance to us, in the civilizations of the ancient east, everything that interests our imagination in the history of Asia, everything of oriental origin that has contributed, either directly or indirectly, to our modern life, comes to us from these ancestors of our race. The aristocratic system of caste, Brahmanism, and later on, Buddhism, are the work of men of the Aryan race; the vast undertaking of the military and administrative monarchy of ancient Persia, and the religion of the two principles, are the work of men of the Iranian race.

—The Japhetic race, the most enterprising, the most movable and the most inventive of all the races, seems to have early felt the love of enterprise and adventure. If we would present, under a brief and poetic form, what our imagination perceives confusedly in these remote ages, we must take as symbols of the genius of our ancestors, two characters in the great tragedy of Æschylus, who knew some of the secrets of some of the origins of our race, Prometheus and Io, two victims of ambition, adventure and enterprise. Prometheus admirably symbolizes the boldness of invention of the Japhetic race; and the wild course of Io, goaded by the breeze-fly, their longing for emigration and travel; and, if the word be not too mean to use in speaking on such a subject, I would freely add, the mania for change of place which seems to have possessed our barbarous ancestors. The same love of conquest which urged on the Aryans in India, impelled, at different times, other tribes of the Japhetic race into Europe, and many successive emigrations, the dates of which are uncertain, landed them upon that continent, until at length they gained entire possession of it. The actual descendants of the peoples who effected these old migrations are divided into innumerable families, but they may be all ranked under five principal heads: the Celtic race, the Germanic race, the Slavic race, the Latin race, and the Greek race.

—None of these races is to-day free from admixture, and in some of them the primitive type and genius of the race have almost entirely disappeared before the frequency and violence of crossings with other races. Thus, the Latin race, the stock from which the Italian nation of to-day has come, has been singularly changed for the worse by the admixture of Greek, German, Ligurian and Gallic blood which it underwent in the course of its long history; in France the Celtic blood has been intermingled with Roman and German blood; in Spain the Iberian, with Gothic and Moorish blood, the Germanic tribes, especially in the extreme limits of the vast country which they inhabit, have received a strong infusion of Slavic blood; and the Slaves, subject to an influx of German and Greek blood, mingled with Mongolian and Ougro-Finnish, can scarcely be said to be any purer than the others, although they are the latest comers among the civilized nations, and their primitive type should, in consequence, be less worn out than that of their sister races, by the fatigues of history and the labor of centuries.

—The oldest in the civilization of the races of Europe, is the Greek or Ionian race, the sons of Javan (Ionians), as the Bible calls them, a race which succeeded, on Hellenic soil, to a race called Pelasgic. Next after the Semitic race, this race has rendered the greatest services to civilization. If humanity owes all its religious development to the Semitic race, it owes all its intellectual development to the Greek race. It truly deserves the name of the chosen race among the Japhetic nations, as did the Jewish people among the descendants of Shem. They are the true sons of Io and Prometheus, and when we see the mighty gifts which their imperishable works still present to our admiration, we are almost inclined to believe that their emigration carried off the cream of the entire youth of the great Japhetic family. It is to them we owe that religion of polytheism, that brilliant invention of poetic and graceful minds, which subdued and humanized the old natural religions, and which, by confounding the mysterious forces of the world with human force, produced that conception of the poetic ideal which has since become the true religion of all poets; for this conception holds the same place in literature that the dream of moral perfection does in religion. It was the Greek race that transformed the barbarous industries of primitive times, and developed the fine arts out of the useful trades, just as it had developed the literary ideal from the religion of nature. In all intellectual matters we reap to-day the benefits of Greek civilization; we are indebted to it for our knowledge of the rules of architecture and sculpture; we have received from it our philosophy; and half the literature of modern Europe is but an offshoot of the literature of Greece. Finally, when Christianity appeared in the world, it was Greece that undertook to form its dogmas for it, to construct its metaphysics, and to define its mysteries. Christianity owes the speculative part of its character to the Greek race, as it owes its political organization to the Roman race. It was the Greek race also that instilled civilization into the barbaric races, against which it defended the Byzantine empire during a thousand years, so that the civilization of the future, as well as that of the past, belongs to Greece; for the Slaves, who threaten Europe with a renewal or making over again, represent the Byzantine civilization, and consequently the Greek mind. Crushed by three centuries of oppression, invaded by barbarism which has incessantly flowed in upon it for fifteen centuries, marred by admixtures of Slavic and Turkish blood, the Greek race of to-day is not what it was; nevertheless, we still recognize in the modern Greeks the traits of the ancient type, and the qualities of the ancient genius of the race, just as we recognize the beauty of a statue, despite the mutilations which it has received, and the distinctness of a likeness, spite of the rust which covers it.

—The Latins, who are the source from which the Italian people sprang, present a most marked contrast to the Greek race, a contrast which must have been peculiarly striking in the beginning, and which is attested by the differences of the civilizations of the Greeks and the Romans. As the Greek race is lively, pliable, made for labor and intelligence, so the Latin race is strong, serious, heavy, made for conquest domination and practical interests. If the Greek race has the appearance of being made up of the youth of the Japhetic race, the Latin race has the appearance of being composed of an emigration of sedate men, who had reached the age of serious interests, and know no other sentiment than ambition, half sacerdotal and half warlike. This twofold character is found in the origin of the Latin race; through Etruria it is sacerdotal, through Rome it is warlike; but neither religion nor glory is its end; with it everything speedily takes a worldly and practical turn. It knows only force and interest; but how well it knows these! It was Rome that created the organization of force called conquest, and that organization of interests called administration. But it did not stop here. Inspired by its rugged and powerful genius, it raised its concrete notions of force and interest to the height of absolute abstractions; it created the metaphysics of force, and called it politics, and the metaphysics of interest, to which it gave the name of jurisprudence. This instinct is so strong that it does not overlook even things which seem most opposed to it, literature and religion. Sacerdotal rather than truly religious, as soon as Christianity was presented to it, it hastened to organize it, and gave to it, in the Catholic church and the papacy, its own political institutions. The essential traits of this profoundly positive genius and of this character made for domination and the enjoyment of earthly goods, are found again in the Italians of the middle ages and of modern times, but with important modifications, brought about by time, the accidents of history and the intermingling of races. The centre of the Latin race was changed during the middle ages, and transferred to Tuscany; the Italian genius gained by this change a flexibility and aptitude for ideality which it did not possess in ancient times, and because of this change, Europe is indebted to Italy more than to any other nation for the revival of arts and letters at the end of the middle ages known as the renaissance.

—The Celtic race, which formerly occupied all of Gaul and Great Britain, and a great part of the territories of Belgium and Helvetia, can not now be found anywhere in a pure state except in Armorica, or French Brittany, in Wales, in Scotland, particularly in the Highlands, in the Shetland and Hebrides islands, and finally, in Ireland. The domain of this valiant, imaginative, sensitive and adventurous race, once so extensive, is now reduced to this mere remnant of territory. The Celts are the most interesting and unfortunate of all the barbaric races. Their conquerors, exasperated by their stubborn resistance, never spared them, but always pitilessly tracked them, and exterminated them without mercy. This race owes its cruel destiny in part to its very qualities: its extreme sensitiveness often turned into harmful rage, imprudent, hasty hatred, and capricious sallies of contempt, while it on the other hand, easily engendered despair, discouragement and silent melancholy. This sensibility explains why the Celts have never been able, despite their valor, to preserve their independence, and why, after having lost it, they have never been able to cause their masters to bid them welcome, or to make their subjection the starting point of a new destiny. Conquered races have been known to govern their conquerors, like the Greeks, or to use the masters which fate had given them, like the Italians generally; but the Celts have never been capable of such miracles. The Celt does not know how to control his emotions: when victorious, he abandons himself to the proud intoxication of triumph; when vanquished, he falls into a mournful despair, or becomes the prey of a frantic rage which injures only himself and deprives him of all sympathy. To this extreme sensibility is added a fine and charming imagination, which renders him the slave of fancies and of habit, and thus forms a new source of danger. He is slow to accord his esteem or love to political or religious innovations; but once he has given it, it is given for centuries, and he will not abandon anything which he has set his heart on, even when experience has condemned it. Thus he is always behind the general progress of civilization, and figures in history as the champion of lost causes. Of all the barbaric races, the Celts were the last to submit to Christianity, and the difficulty of their conversion seems surprising when we consider the prompt submission of the Germanic races to the new religion. The papacy encountered in them its first adversaries, and, later, its most devoted defenders; the French monarchy was kept constantly at war defending itself against their revolts down to the very outbreak of the revolution of 1789; yet this revolution met with no more irreconcilable enemies than the Vendeans and Bretons; and it is a well-known fact that the obstinate resistance of the Highlanders prolonged the contest entered into in England between the monarchy of the Stuarts and the Protestant dynasty.

—The Celtic race is not the only one which preserves itself pure and unmixed only in certain provinces or portions of territory; the same is true of the Iberian race, which is the basis of the population of Spain and probably of Portugal, and which has continued in its purity only within the narrow confines of the Basque provinces. Are the Iberians an Indo-Germanic or an Ougrian or Finnish race? Opinions are divided, and the question is a doubtful one. Some ethnologists, basing their opinion on the characters of the Basque language, say that the Iberians belong to the Finnish race; others see in them a separate branch of the Celtic race. However this may be, frequent interminglings seem to have occurred at an early period between the Iberians and the Celts, and the mixed race thus produced, the Celtiberians, constitutes, to a great extent the basis of the population of Ireland. In truth, the genius of the Iberian race is very different from that of the Celts; the two races have little more than one trait in common, a fierce valor; but this valor manifested itself among the Iberians from the earliest ages with a gloomy energy and a firmness of resistance entirely unknown to the adventurous and brilliant courage of the Celtic race.

—The mixture of the Latin race with the Celtic and Iberian races produced the nations of central Europe, which are without distinction called Latin nations, notwithstanding the well-defined differences of their inhabitants. France, Spain, Portugal and Italy constitute this class. The basis of the population of Spain has remained Iberian, and that of the population of France, Gallic; the admixture of Roman or Germanic blood has not so changed the characteristics of the two nations as to render them unrecognizable, and it is easy to observe in the soldiers of modern France the descendants of those Galatians who raised their swords aloft when it thundered to hold up the heavens if they should fall, as it is also easy to recognize the descendants of the defenders of Numantia in the defenders of Saragossa. The action of the Latin race upon the two nations has been more moral than physical; it has rendered them capable of discipline, initiated them into a higher civilization, and neutralized and even destroyed the fatality of blood and the obstacles of instinct. Thanks to this initiation, the Celtic genius especially, crushed or impotent everywhere else, developed in France, and gave to the world all that it contained. At once adventurous and fond of routine, utopist and retrograde, violently revolutionary, and conservative to the extreme, the enemy of tradition and the slave of habit, idealistic and skeptical, quick to undertake and easily discouraged, the French clearly manifest all the principal characteristics of the Celtic race. But what a marvelous transformation these characteristics have undergone! The lively sensibility of the Celt has been changed into a spirit of humanity and justice; his love of habit has become a sentiment of patriotism; his lively, pure, moral, elevated imagination, the most moral, most elevated and most truly religious of all the barbaric races, has translated itself into a literature of a noble, moral, abstract, refined and idealistic character, disdaining the pleasures of the flesh and of the blood, and loving the pleasures of the mind, to such a point as to forget their reality. Thus the least carnal of the barbaric races has produced, under the influence of Latin discipline, the most idealistic nation in the world. France is the champion par excellence of absolute causes and of moral interests. She has successively given to the world the ideal of all the institutions and the moral theory of all the governments which have appeared, one after another, during the past fifteen hundred years. She has been the champion par excellence of the papacy, that moral ideal of the Catholic church; she drew from the feudal system the ideal of chivalry, she conceived the ideal of monarchy, she produced in Calvinism the most absolute and most metaphysical form of reformed Christianity; finally, she conceived, by the French revolution, the ideal of the government of human societies based upon absolute right and abstract reason, and not upon the fatality of circumstances and the contingency of human events. After Greece and Rome, no country has done more for humanity than France.

—The Germanic race is the most powerful, materially, of all the races. It not only occupies all the vast territory known in Europe as Germany, but it embraces also, under the name of the Scandinavian race, Denmark and Sweden and under the name of the Anglo-Saxon race, England, and the United States of North America. It has ever been a remarkable peculiarity of this race, that it has manifested more life at its extremities than at its centre, and, to use the language of its metaphysicians, realized itself outside itself. This peculiarity is an essentially distinctive mark of its political, if not of its intellectual and moral, history. If any one desires an expression of the political genius of the Germanic race, he should seek it, not in Germany, but in the nations which have sprung from it, in the branches which its great trunk has put forth, England and the United States, for instance. The idea of individual liberty, of self-government and the sentiment of self-reliance, which are the most valuable contributions the Germanic race has made to the world, have found their full and entire realization in England and the United States. The material conquest of the globe belongs more to this race than to any other: in the barbaric ages they were the most intrepid conquerors, the best founders of kingdoms, and displayed faculties which distinguished them as rulers and governors; in modern times they make the most active merchants, the most adventurous colonizers the most energetic explorers and pioneers. Moral civilization owes more to other races; material civilization owes as much to none; for no other has done so much in the way of discovery, in the conquest and transformation of our globe. Its profound genius seems to be in contradiction with this political destiny; but upon close consideration, the contradiction disappears. This genius seems to be unreal and mystic; at bottom, it studies only man and nature, and, profoundly practical even in metaphysical revery and speculation, it seeks only to penetrate into hidden realities, to separate real from apparent truth, and to comprehend the inner structure of objects. The end of Germanic speculation is to penetrate the soil of thought to its very tufa in order to explain the brilliant vegetation that appears at its surface. Thus it is that Germany, of all nations, has best explained man to man, has best demonstrated how he thinks, what instinctive methods he employs, what are the unconscious processes of his logic, by what concatenation his visions become facts, his ideas civilizations, his phantoms doctrines; how the conditions of his existence force him to imagine the truth, and, as a consequence, to express himself by symbols. The practice of self-government, the conquest of the material world and the revelation of the internal structure of the moral man: such is the magnificent part of the Germanic race in general civilization.

—The Slavic race is the most widely diffused race of modern Europe. It comprises nearly all the peoples subject to the dominion of Austria, with the exception of the Magyars, who belong to the Ougrian race, and of a few Wallachians scattered here and there, especially in Transylvania, who belong to the Danubian principalities, and are the descendants of Latin colonies of the empire established in Dacia; the Dalmatians, the Illyrians, the Serbians, the Croatians, the Czechs, etc.; the peoples of the Turkish empire, known as Greco-Slaves, of Poland and Russia. Although the youngest of the European races, it has not escaped intermixture any more than the others; in Russia there has been an influx of Mongolian and Finnish blood; in Poland, of Sarmatian blood; and in other parts, of Turkish, Greek and Germanic blood. Some peoples, the Cossacks for example, are a mixture of several races. The Slavic race has penetrated very far, and in the middle ages was the warlike and invading race par excellence. It required all the strength of Germany to check its inroads; and the history of the German empire for several centuries is merely a history of the resistance of the west to this permanent inundation of the Slaves, who, at the same time that they threatened the young civilization of Latin Europe, overran and destroyed the old civilization of eastern Europe. Prussia, for example, is the product of an inundation of Slaves restrained by Germanic barriers, and the German empire became powerful only after the two great Slavic monarchies of the middle ages, Bohemia and Poland, were conquered or enfeebled. The Slaves are the last comers into history, which they ardently aspire to take full possession of, in order to inscribe their name on its pages with the names of their elder brothers in civilization. Each of the nations of modern Europe has aspired to political preponderance, and has obtained it for a greater or less length of time. This is now the ambition of the Slaves, who have begun, in Russia, the realization of their mighty dream. The Slavic genius is remarkably mild, social, subtle, imaginative, mystical, and entirely distinct from the genius of the other European races. It is impossible to tell for what benefits civilization will be indebted to this latent genius in posse, but we may, however, foresee, that, if the idea of fraternity is to be transformed into institutions and introduced into the political life of nations as those of equality and liberty have been already introduced, humanity will owe this result to the Slavic race, which understands this sentiment more profoundly than any of the other races, just as the Celtic and Latin races best understand equality, and the Saxon race liberty.

—We have now reached the end of this long description of the various races of the human family. What conclusions shall we draw from what we have stated? Shall we admit that these families, irremediably separated by their genius, are condemned by the fatality of their instincts to continue to the end of time in a state of aggression, or that they are destined to be melted into a closer and a closer union? History, which we have just consulted, teaches us that the mixture of the races is a law of humanity, that they do not preserve their purity but in the barbarous state and for a very short time, and that, on the other hand, the moral barriers of their different genius are not more difficult to break through than the physical barriers of blood. The races understand one another, when crossed one with another, and thus discover that the differences which constitute race are but secondary, and that men have the same souls just as they have the same bodies. What difference does it make that the Shemite was the only one that conceived the idea of one God? If all the rest were capable of understanding that great idea, we must conclude that their instincts very closely resemble those of the Shemite. Buddhism clearly bears the impress of the Hindoo mind, and the Mongolian genius is certainly earthly and hard; but we must admit that this genius possessed at least some predisposition that destined it to understand the religion of Buddha; in what, therefore, is the Mongolian race irremediably separated from the race which conceived the religion which it adopted? Christianity is of Hebrew origin, and still the nations of Indo Germanic origin have found it conformable to their nature, since they have embraced it. Chivalry is undoubtedly conformable to the instincts of all nations, since all nations recognized it in the middle ages. Self-government is of Germanic origin; still, we see that to-day all nations have an equal inclination to adopt, practice and love it. There are differences, however, but if we examine them closely, we will find that they exist more especially in the secondary faculties or inferior part of the genius of nations; after all, men are separated only by the evil instincts and vices of their natures. They are all united and understand one another by the superior part of their souls. Thus, this great question of race is reduced to a question of morals; the differences in the genius of different nations are reduced to mere shades; and history proclaims the moral unity of the human race with still greater certainty than science proclaims its unity of flesh and blood.

RADICALISM

RADICALISM. One may be radical, that is to say, absolute, in all opinions, in the monarchical as well as in the republican party; but, as a general thing, the words radicalism and radicals are applied to democratic doctrines more or less advanced, and to their adherents. It has long been said that extremes meet: consequently, they are equally false; the truth lies in the middle. Hence those who claim the designation of radicals are to be boldly condemned. They wish to go to the very end, being aware or ignorant (either supposition is equally unfavorable to them) that the end is an abyss. We are less severe toward those who are called radicals by their opponents. In that case the question is often only one of degree, of relation; according to the point of view at which one is placed, it will be as correct to consider the latter very backward, as the former very advanced. We should never stop at party names, but seek to penetrate to the foundation of things.

—Radicalism is characterized less by its principles than by the manner of their application. Its political doctrine is that of democracy, and as a general thing liberal men will approve of it. Who would raise the slightest objection against liberty, equality, fraternity, against national sovereignty, the responsibility of power, universal suffrage even? But what are we to understand by liberty? Should it be the universal leveling of all social enjoyments to the level of the lowest classes? Should fraternity encourage idleness and vice? Should national sovereignty or the responsibility of power constitute a permanent insurrection, and take away the right of decision from peaceable majorities to confer it on ambitious, turbulent, audacious minorities? Does universal suffrage admit of absolutely no limit? Thus political formulas lend themselves to more than one interpretation, and radicalism has its own; but it is, above all, the manner of its application which characterizes it. It knows only one method of procedure, which is to make a tabula rasa, to clear away the ground in order to raise on it a new structure complete in all its parts. Is it not as unreasonable to wish to break the chain of the ages, as to condemn all the accused in a lump, to declare all diseases incurable, to claim to know, to foresee everything, and even, which has actually happened, to wish to change the nature of things?

—Nature never makes a tabula rasa. She does not proceed by fits and starts, but by slow and continuous development, and society itself is a product of nature. Can any one deny it? Will any one question that society is composed of men endowed with reason, and often swayed by passion? Does any one think that this reason can be curbed, these passions silenced, by a decree, however solemn the deliberation and promulgation of it may have been? Nothing lasting is established by sudden or extreme measures. First, because such measures clash with received opinions, established interests, opinions and interests which have often their raison d'etre, and which have a right to demand consideration. But the principal obstacle to the success of radical measures lies mainly in the complex nature of man. He has necessities, aspirations, multiple duties, often contradictory; you can not fully satisfy some without, to a greater or less extent, injuring others.

—Radicalism is generally wedded to a few principles, sometimes to a single one, to which it refers everything, and which it would wish to adapt to everything. Now, the infinite variety of social facts are neither caused nor explained solely by the principles inscribed upon the banner of a radical party; these facts overflow in every direction, and force alone can compel them to return within their bounds. But radicalism does not draw back before violence. It is as absolute in its doctrines as the despot the most thoroughly imbued with the rights conferred on him by his hereditary power.

—It is by this absolutism, which is always found united to narrowness of views, that radicalism is distinguished from liberalism (which see), with which it has, however, some principles in common. Absolutism prevents all progress, and narrowness of view renders a lasting foundation impossible, for it does not permit all the important circumstances to be taken into account, and produces a certain social blindness, which makes those afflicted by it incapable of serving as guides. Thus, even should the radicals have principles identical with those of the liberals, they would differ from them by their tendency to abstraction, to idealization, they would see the mathematical line, surface or body, where, with the liberals, the real line, surface or body should be seen, with all the qualities and defects given them by nature.

—It is perhaps for all these reasons that Rohmer (see PARTIES, POLITICAL) attributes to radicalism the character of the boy; it has the same capacity as well as the same defects. It is enthusiastic, imaginative, to a certain extent generous, lives in an ideal world, pursuing a single idea, and pursuing it frantically, without regard to the evils caused by the efforts to realize it. Happily, the idea pursued is often a good one, the realization of which, even if somewhat dearly bought, compensates more or less for the ills which it has caused. Only one thing remains to be desired, namely, that the end be not attained with such violence as to go beyond it and give rise to a reaction which shall call everything into question again.

RAILWAYS

RAILWAYS, History and Political Economy of. Of all the factors that have contributed, during this century, to the growth of wealth, to the increase of material comfort, and to the diffusion of information and knowledge, the railway plays the most prominent part. It has widened the field for the division of employments; it has cheapened production; it has promoted exchange, and has facilitated intercommunication. In its aggregate it represents a larger investment of capital than any other branch of human activity; and the service that it renders and has rendered to society is, both from industrial and commercial points of view, greater than is rendered by any other single service to which men devote their activities.

—Down to a very recent period in his history, man was remitted to water routes mainly for the transportation of goods. Migration of hunters and shepherds could and did take place over land from zone to zone even without roads; but the transportation of heavy goods, such as form the bulk of the consumption of mankind, after the agricultural period had fairly set in, was necessarily committed to the water ways. The lands bordering rivers and shores were therefore the first to be populated by agricultural tribes, which, by establishing communication with other tribes by means of the waterways, started an exchange of products. Primitive commerce thus took its origin along the lines of rivers and the lagoons of coasts, occupied by tribes which were the forerunners of civilization in its developed form.

—History gives us accounts of Assyrian and Persian roads that were at best not more than 200 miles in length, which were built for military purposes mainly. The Greeks made no contribution to the world's great highways; the roads to Olympia and Delphos comparing unfavorably with the roads subsequently built by the Romans. Rome was the first nation that appreciated the advantages of highways; and its great conquests of Gaul, Alemanin and of Britain, were due quite as much to the genius of the Romans for road building as to their prowess and skill in arms. The road made the forest insecure to the barbarian. From the fight in the ambush the road compelled the fight in the open, and gave to the higher civilization an immense advantage over the more primitive arms and the absence of tactical knowledge of less civilized man. The road, therefore, was the means of conquest of the Roman civilization over barbarism in the pre-Christian era.

—In the shape of the railway, the road has become the principal lever in man's conquest over want, distress from the accidents of birth in locality, and the disadvantages arising therefrom. It has diffused civilization, and has distributed the commodities of any one part of the civilized world over every other part, so that wants and satisfactions become substantially equalized throughout the industrial world. Famine and great general distress become impossible; by means of the railway a large degree of well-being has, with but slight modifications, mainly due to man's mistaken legislation, been diffused all over the world.

—The story of the mechanical means by which, in times within the memory of men of middle age, this great revolution was wrought, has been so often told, that it seems almost superfluous to repeat it here; and yet the requirements of the title of this article make it necessary that it should be briefly recounted once more.

—To England the world owes the railway. In the coal districts of the north of England, rails of wood were laid during the last century for the purpose of reducing the friction caused by pulling the coal cart from the workings to the mouth of the pit. About 1767 cast-iron rails were introduced. Stone props, instead of timber, were used by Outram for supporting the ends of the rails; hence the term, still used in England, of tram roads. Between 1784 and 1820, Murdock, Trevethick and Gray made experiments in steam engines. The modern railway, however, both by common consent and as the verdict of engineering specialists, owes its origin, as a success in transportation, to George Stephenson, who built engine No. 1 for the Stockton 8 Darlington railway, which was originally organized as a horse railroad, but which was authorized in 1823 to use steam as a motive force. Stephenson himself acted as the engineer on the opening of the steam railroad line in the autumn of the year 1825. Following this, came the opening of the Manchester 8 Liverpool railway in 1830, the first engine of which was also built by Stephenson, and which from the outset not only proved the success of the railway in the transporting of persons and goods, but also showed it to be a financial success to its promoters and stockholders in their investment of capital. Within the first year after the opening of the Manchester 8 Liverpool line, upward of 500,000 passengers were carried.

—That the railway was not introduced without much opposition would almost go without saying. The large interest in the stage coaches had either to be conciliated, bought off, or fought. The canal proprietors, who had just gotten well under way with their canal projects, and were making considerable sums of money out of them, when this formidable rival appeared upon the field, were opposed to the competition of the railway. In the third place, the rich landed proprietor regarded the railway as a devouring monster, which would not only destroy the value of his fields, but which threatened to destroy his game preserves and his beautiful lawns and flower beds, and, with but few exceptions, the rich landed proprietor opposed the railway. But stronger than all these special interests in opposition to the railway, was the conservative spirit of the English people, which found expression in the "British Quarterly Review," in the words, "We should as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of Congreve's ricochet rockets, as to trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine going at such a rate."

—London was first connected by rail with the interior of England in 1833, when the through line to Birmingham was completed. From that time forth English railways rapidly developed, so that at the close of 1881 the railway system of the United Kingdom consisted of 18,180 miles in a country of 120,000 square miles in area; representing a total capitalization of £746,000,000, and carrying annually 623,000,000 passengers, with yearly receipts of £64,000,000.

—The success of the Stockton 8 Darlington experiment produced in the United States a greater effect than it did in England. Before the Liverpool 8 Manchester line was built, in 1830, many lines of rail were already projected in the United States, and as early as 1825 what is now the New York Central system was begun to be built under the charter of the Mohawk 8 Hudson railroad. In 1827 Massachusetts authorized the appointment of a board of commissioners, and caused surveys to be made of the most practicable routes for a railroad from Boston to the Hudson river at or near Albany. Two reports were made by these commissioners in the winter of 1829, giving a survey of the road, accompanied with the recommendation to make the commencement of the railroad on both the routes at the charge of the commonwealth. In 1830 and 1831 the Boston 8 Worcester railroad and the Boston 8 Providence railroad companies were chartered, and in 1832 work was already under way to connect Boston with New York. Pennsylvania started its railway system in 1827, and Maryland and South Carolina in 1828. The Baltimore 8 Ohio railroad system was commenced in 1828. In 1830, almost simultaneously with the opening of the first railroad line in England, railways were being opened in the United States in every direction.

—The growth of the railway system in the United States is best indicated by the facts, that in 1828 there were three miles of railway; in 1830, forty-one miles; in 1840, 2,200; in 1850, 7,500; in 1860, 29,000; in 1870, 49,000; in 1880, 93,671; and at the close of 1881, 104,813 miles. In 1882 the increase was about 13,000 miles, making a grand total mileage in the United States at the beginning of the year 1883, of about 115,000 miles of rail.

—The capital account at the close of 1881 shows a total of $6,815,000,000. Adding, for 1882, $40,000 a mile for about 13,000 miles, increases the total capitalization $520,000,000, making a grand total of about $7,335,000,000.

—The gross earnings of the railways of the United States in 1881 amounted to $725,000,000, $552,000,000 of which was from freight earnings, and $173,000,000 from passengers; resulting in the payment of a dividend, over and above fixed charges, of $93,344,200 interest on the bonds absorbed, of net earnings of $276,654,119, the sum total of $128,587,302, in addition to what went into other sources. In 1881 the tonnage transported was not less than 315,000,000.

—France was much slower than England and America in adopting the railway system. Independent of the fact that the Latin race is not so alert in adopting labor-saving contrivances as the Anglo-Saxon, there was a cause for the slower adoption of the railway in that country, as it was better supplied with highways than England, and transportation charges in the early half of this century were comparatively much cheaper in France than in England. With the exception of some few small lines, there was no development of the railway system in France until about 1842, when nine great lines were established, which subsequently were amalgamated into six. These at the present day divide and occupy between them substantially the whole French territory. Besides these, however, there are a few state lines and branch roads of insignificant importance. The names of these six great lines are Chemin de fer du Nord, De l'Ouest de l'est d'Orleans, Paris-Lyons, Mediterranée and du-Midi. The extension of the railway system in France has not been so great as it has been in England or the United States, owing to circumstances which will be referred to in the latter part of this article.

—The railway system of Belgium is 2,000 miles in extent, in a country embracing an area of 11,373 square miles. Two-thirds of the whole of the railway mileage in Belgium is composed of lines worked by the state, and one-third by private companies.

—In the Netherlands, with an area of 13,000 square miles, there are 1,230 miles of road, of which the state owns 630 miles, and private companies 600.

—Germany, Austria and Russia were somewhat behind the western nations of Europe in their railway development, but within the last decade an enormous extension in their development has taken place, for the purpose of competing with France for the eastern trade, as well as for the purpose of military operations of an offensive and defensive character. In the Franco-Prussian war the seizure and management of the railroads by the state, for the purpose of aiding strategical movements, formed so important an element in the military operations of Prussia against France, that throughout central Europe a large number of lines have since been built, to secure strategical advantages.

—The following table, taken from "Spofford's American Almanac" for 1883, gives the statistics of the railways of the world to Jan. 1, 1881:

—In England, by reason of the high price of land which the railways must occupy and acquire, and a rigid application of the rule requiring the railway corporation to pay for consequential and indirect damages, its railways represent the maximum of capitalization. Taking this extreme of capitalization of the English railways, of $200,000 a mile, as a maximum, and the capitalization of the cheapest American railways, of $25,000 a mile, including equipment, as a minimum capitalization, it is fair to say that the average capitalization of railways the world over is not less than $50,000 per mile. Upon that basis the 264,000 miles of railway in the world would represent a total valuation, in the way of capital invested in these vehicles and means of intercommunication, of $13,200,000,000.

—Compared with all the debts of all the nations of the earth, amounting, in round numbers to $27,000,000,000, it appears that, within the period of the last fifty years, the industrial world has invested a capital in means of intercommunication alone, of about one-half the sum that has been raised by way of loans for the purpose of carrying on, during the last few hundred years, all the wars, and constructing all the internal improvements, of all the nations of the earth.

—So great a manifestation of a social power, representing, as it does, a growth unprecedentedly rapid, must and does exhibit many peculiar phases of social and politico-economical problems, and must bring with it evils incident to its own existence which demand some form of intelligent treatment and cure. It would, indeed, be remarkable and without parallel, that any human instrumentality, however beneficial, could grow to such enormous proportions without having some shadow side in the way of defects, evils and even crimes attendant and concomitant to the immense good it brings forth. The first effect of the development of the railway system on the intercommunication of men, has been to give a great impetus to the transmission of intelligence and personal intercourse. One need but read the letters of Madame de Sevigny to see what an arduous task it was to travel during the middle of the seventeenth century. When she proposed to set out to visit her daughter, 200 miles distant, she prepared her will, and set about the journey with a solemnity of mind somewhat akin to that felt by a person at the present time who is about to investigate the sources of the Nile, or make a voyage to the north pole. But one need not go back so far for examples of the dangers, both anticipated and real, that down to within this century beset the traveler. The Newgate calendar is part of the history of the stage-coach, almost to the very time when railways were introduced. Highwaymen scoured the country round, within a radius of ten miles from London. Hounslow Heath, Black Heath, Epping Forest, Clapham Commons, all embraced post routes, and were the scenes of the exploits of many a man who, within this century, came to his end at Tyburn and at Newgate. The time occupied in moving from great centres to the capital is indicated by an advertisement of the York and London stage coach in 1706, in which the advertisers promise to be in London on the fifth day out from York, and to run from London to York in four days. It is said by Francis, in his "History of the Railways," that the abdication of James II. was not heard of in the Orkneys until three months after his flight. He says: "In the seventeenth century the charge for conveyance amounted, in many instances, to a prohibition. Heavy goods cost, from London to Birmingham, £7 a ton; from London to Exeter, £12 were paid. Coal was rarely seen, save in the neighborhood of the district which produced it. Pack horses, strong, enduring animals, the breed of which is now extinct, were employed to carry the produce of the weaver's patient skill, the pottery of Staffordshire, and even the coals of Newcastle, laboring along heavy roads, toiling beneath a burning sun, wending their way through bare, bleak moors, down steep descents, by dangerous rivers, on narrow tongues of land, between masses of mire and mud so deep as to be dangerous if they entered—a leading horse bearing bells to intimate the approach of the party he heralded. The group formed a most picturesque accompaniment to the wild, weird scenes it enlivened. * * The private carriage, if such, indeed, should chance to approach, left the track at the risk of never returning to it, while more numerous parties either resisted the cavalcade, or moved, like the solitary passenger, out of the way, as their weakness or strength might dictate. With such difficulties before them, few persons left their homes but those who were called by some most special reason."

—Macaulay says that the inhabitants of London, in the seventeenth century, were farther removed from Edinburgh than they are now from Vienna; and, indeed, it might be said, farther removed from Edinburgh than they are now from St. Petersburgh or New York. The reason why, to this very day, parliament sits in summer, is because the roads in England were so bad, and the difficulty and danger of getting to the capital so great, that it was impossible in the midwinter months to convene a parliament with any expectation of having the members attend from the north, from the extreme west of the kingdom, from Scotland, or from Ireland.

—In the early part of the nineteenth century the difficulty of moving bulky articles was somewhat overcome by MacAdam's invention for improving highways, and by the introduction of canals. Part of the politico-economical results in the way of cheapening and distributing products was already under way by the creation of artificial waterways, which were introduced into England, France and Spain in imitation of the Netherlands.

—In fixing the price for the sale of every commodity, the element of cost of transportation must be considered, with but the very slight exception of articles that are consumed on the spot where created, like the food raised by the farmer for his own family. As the great bulk of commodities consumed in this world is transported from one point to another, it is obvious at a glance how important is the rôle that transportation plays in the work of production as well as of consumption. Indeed, transportation is a factor which enters into both the consumption and production of commodities as largely as money does into the exchange of commodities, and it plays even a more important rôle than money does in determining the price of commodities.

—The certainty, diminished cost and rapidity with which commodities could be transported from place to place by the introduction of the railway, not only increased the exchangeability of commodities, but also made it possible to forward to distant places, theretofore unsupplied with such commodities, products which formerly were consumed only at the spot where created, and the increased facility of transportation created values which could not have existed at all but for such improved methods of transportation. A familiar illustration of this fact is the great industry which had been created in Brittany and Normandy in producing eggs and butter for the London market; and vegetables even for Edinburgh's daily consumption. Before the existence of the railway, the rich dairies of Normandy could give to Normandy alone the enjoyment of fine butter, and there was no possibility for the Londoner or the Scotchman to enjoy a French egg or a pat of French butter at his breakfast table without going personally to France. For 600 or 1,000 miles the railway now carries the Frenchman's dairy and farm-yard products as easily as to the neighboring town. The prices of those commodities have gone up in France, because a market has been found for them. But, what is of greater importance, their enjoyment is possible to a greater number of people. Waste, that great destroyer of human efforts, is eliminated, and unsatisfied wants in the particulars above mentioned, can no longer exist. Through the instrumentality of the railway, the law of competition gets its widest possible extension, restrained and hampered only by limitations put by human law, in the way of tariffs, on the full enjoyment of the results of such competition. With the extension of the lines of commerce, within which a given commodity can find its market, comes an increased demand, which not only again reacts to produce an increased supply, but equalizes prices, so that the element of chance is eliminated as much as possible from human affairs. French history gives us the fact, that during a period of 300 years, there were about 100 years of famine in one or another part of France, while absolute abundance contemporaneously prevailed in other districts. Such a condition of things, even long before the railway, has not only become impossible for France by the development of means of intercommunication, but is now made impossible the world over by reason of the railway, connected with rapid steam communication by sea. That periods of famine and distress arise in India, in an abnormally situated community living upon one vegetable product alone, and prevented by superstition from varying their food, does not diminish the force of the fact that such things are impossible in any community which has emerged from a semi-barbaric condition, Also, in India, the periods of distress are rapidly diminishing, and are becoming considerably less in intensity when they occur. An exaggerated picture of the evils incident to the present civilization is given by the colors in which the sensational modern press paints the distress and crimes of the day; and the inquisitorial and searching character of the correspondence produces a vividness which makes the superficial observer imagine that both crime and suffering have increased, whereas, in point of fact, they are constantly decreasing. What has increased, is the power and opportunity for observation and giving detailed results of such observation to the public eye and ear.

—That the several results of the introduction of the railway have become a common heritage of the great mass of mankind, and that its introduction benefits the laborer more than it does the millionaire, is indicated by the fact that the cost of transportation, which bears a greater and greater relation to commodities which are bulky and coarse and of general consumption, and forms a less and less ratio or element of expense in commodities which are easy of transportation, and not bulky in form, has been considerably lessened by the railway. Even during the middle ages the laces of Mechlin and of Brussels, and the tapestries of the Netherlands and of France, could be transported the world over. At the courts of Europe specimens of the art handicraft of the then known world could be found. Gems, laces and velvet could be transported on horseback without difficulty; but no food or clothes produced for common use or wear could be brought from a distance, the cost of transportation, added to the original cost of the article, increasing the price to such an extent as to make it beyond the means of the common man. Hence the individual born to a particular spot of earth, thus became the inheritor of all the evils and all the disadvantages incident to that spot. What the average man could not there produce, was not for him to enjoy. What his neighbor could not produce for him, he could not obtain in exchange for his own products. The cost of transportation served as an impassable barrier to placing himself in more comfortable condition, either by removal to lands more favorably situated as a market for his labor, or by bringing within his reach such more favorable condition in the shape of the importation of commodities.

—But even in India, the famine of 1873-4 was counteracted, the distress overcome, and the consequences removed, with a rapidity never before known in Indian history. Theretofore, the distress occasioned by a famine ordinarily lasted upward of ten years. In the following year (1875), when the actual season of dearth ended in India, and some favorable results in the way of weather and crops were produced, the consequences of the famine were quite removed. Neumann is authority for the statement that in consequence of the development of the railway system, upward of 21,000,000 hundred weight of rice was distributed within eleven months by the English government during the prevalence of the famine. Even in the decade 1860-70, before the railway system was developed in India, several years of dearth and of famine occurred in the same district, and it is estimated that from two and a half to three and a half million people died during that period. The drought and failure of crops in 1873 and 1874 were greater than before, and authentic accounts show us that there were not at the utmost more than 20,000 persons whose death can directly be attributed to insufficient food. The accessibility of the newspaper correspondent, by means of the railway, enabled the world at large more thoroughly to realize the distress that occurred during 1873 and 1874, but the actual death rate, as compared with that from 1860 to 1870, from famine, was not 1 per cent.

—As the difficulty of transportation is an element of cost in the exchange of commodities, a saving in the cost of transportation, producing an increased market, results also in the additional effect that the capital which otherwise would be expended upon transportation is available for other purposes. It is true that the medium of transportation in itself is a costly contrivance, and that it has swollen, as we have seen, to $13,000,000,000 for railway purposes alone; but as the great majority of these enterprises pay a return to those who have invested their moneys, the capital is productively employed, profitably expended, and constantly being reproduced by the return. The railway, therefore, in its general effects upon mankind and the investors, has been a blessing.

—The general result of railway construction has been an enormous increase of production and productive power on the part of mankind, and has also resulted in an enormous development in the character of productions, particularly in the direction of producing, for general and popular consumption, commodities which, until the railway was introduced, were in many cases impossible of transportation, except along the lines of waterway.

—One of the most interesting illustrations of the condition of life before the railway, is given by the philosophical agriculturist, Von Thünen, and quoted by Sax, in which, assuming as a central point, a city, he places around it, within a radius of fifty miles, an agricultural district, composed of six zones, for products which the farmer may raise with profit for the consumption of the city. In the first zone, lying closest to the city, he places the production of garden vegetables, fruit and milk; in the second zone he places the production of commodities which cost more to transport, such as potatoes, carrots, etc. In the third zone the production of wood is placed. In the next three zones, in certain proportions entered into too minutely for citation here, cereal productions and animals are put.

—The vast benefit conferred by freedom to cultivate land with alternate crops and with whatever suits the land best, has become possible only by the increase of means of transportation. Doubtless the rules laid down by Von Thünen were practically adopted in consequence of difficulties of transportation, which, once wiped out, now not only makes the farm fifty miles remote as profitable and valuable as the one close to the city, but enables the latter in compensation to produce whatever the land is best fitted to produce, instead of simply that which proximity to the market compels. In other words, the natural advantages of production have, by the wiping out of the element of transportation, or rather, reducing it to a minimum, been permitted to come into full play. The producer was conditioned, by proximity or remoteness to the market, as to the proper use of his instrument, the soil. He now produces that which his soil is best capable of producing: all the markets have become near, by the railway. No better illustration can be found of this than in the development of the fresh fruit industry of the world within recent times. With the exception of those that ripen on the stem when detached from the tree, as oranges and bananas, but a very few years ago the consumption of fruit other than at the place where it was grown was almost impossible. To-day, however, the fruit of California can in lusciousness and perfection be better found on the tables of the inhabitants of New York and London than in San Francisco. Thus the trade in products which require to be consumed fresh has, by the increase of means of communication introduced by the railway, been added to the commerce of the world; and a vast addition to the world's wealth has been made by the exchangeability of natural products which either would not have been produced at all, or which, being produced in excess of the local demand, would have rotted upon their stems or upon the ground.

—A like addition has been made to the commerce of the world in the power of transporting cereals and bulky productions, such as grain, iron, wood, etc. The time is not far behind us when the locomotives of Illinois burned corn for fuel, in consequence of the high price of fuel, and the low price of corn, and the high price of the one and the low price of the other arose from the insufficient means of transportation of both to the localities where they could best be used.

—The diminishing of the cost and the increasing of the facilities for transportation introduced by the railway, have likewise substantially added to the world's mineral products. In parts of this country where the railway has not yet penetrated, it does not pay to open mines of silver-bearing ore yielding less than sixty dollars to the ton. The moment that a railway is opened to the point, bringing fuel thither and taking away either ore or base metal, the mine that was valueless before, becomes a valuable property if it yields forty or even twenty dollars per ton, and thus its treasury is added to the world's wealth.

—The rapidity of transportation has another effect. It diminishes the risk of capital, and increases its fertility, by securing a speedy return for money invested; and inasmuch as the return of the capital comes back more speedily, it lessens the rates of profits, thereby securing lower prices to the consumer. The effect which the production of our Kansas, Nebraska and Dakota wheat fields has had upon the English farmers, is a result, only on a wider field, analogous to that which has been had on the narrower field of Von Thünen's concentric lines.

—The influence of the railway upon manufacturing industries has been almost as great as it has been upon agriculture. In ante-railway days the furnace and the smelting works were of necessity compelled to be close to the ore. It may now be situated close to where the capital, which contributes to establishing the works, is located. Although such industries suffer somewhat from the higher price of labor incident to the denser centres of population, yet the better supervision and more intelligent workmanship that is contributed to the manufacturing process by reason of the capitalist being able to superintend the operations of his factory, enable such works to find, by the securing of a larger application of capital, compensation, and even profit, notwithstanding their distance from the mine, owing to the absence of waste due to personal supervision. We therefore find the great manufacturing industries, though being at some distance from the actual output of raw material, gradually establishing themselves in the large cities, which are the centres of capital. Denver, in Colorado, is rapidly becoming the centre of the smelting operations of the state, for ores bearing precious metals. St. Louis is an important ore-reducing point, and successful reductions of precious ore are carried on in Philadelphia and in the city of New York, thousands of miles away from where the raw material is obtained. Equally true as to textile fabrics is this condition of things. Whether in the shape of wool coming from the cape of Good Hope, cotton from India, South America or from our own cotton states, hemp from the far west or from Hungary, the raw products are all used up at the same manufacturing establishment, at Manchester or at Paisley, at Cohoes or at Lowell, and but for the tariff the cost of distribution of the raw material would form but a small item compared with the advantages obtained from water power, proximity to ships and to coal, and, more especially, facilities for the obtaining and the supervision of the capital employed. By delocalizing the working up of the raw material into its finished product, and giving to capital the advantage of immediate personal supervision, a tendency has been produced which has been a puzzle to many economists—the centralization of industrial employment and the driving of the smaller handicraftsmen from successful competition by compelling them to become a part of vast industrial establishments. The controlling of millions of dollars of capital gives to such capital great advantage over the individual more favorably located as to territory, but less favorably located in the employment of the more expensive labor-saving machinery, and facilities for carrying on large enterprises at the lowest possible rates of interest. The result of this tendency is not an unmixed good. It causes cities to become overcrowded; it takes away the independence of the individual workingman; it makes the handicraftsman part of a huge machine, and compels the workman to give his time more and more to smaller and smaller parts of the whole operation necessary to produce a given result. The smith of the middle ages would produce an armor, and would even ornament it with devices. He would also shoe horses. To work in iron and steel in all its departments was his occupation, and he was probably a larger man in his development than the smith of to-day. But society is called upon to pay a penalty for the enormous counter-advantages of the division of employments in the decreased development of the workman. The division of employments of course increases considerably the output of each workingman, and as the sum total of output is thus enormously increased, the sum total of exchangeable products is enormously increased. A given amount of labor will at the present period produce to the smith of to-day an exchange of products many times greater than could be obtained in the middle ages, by the smith of that time, notwithstanding the superior general skill and workmanship of the latter.

—Frederick List, in urging upon Germany the necessity for developing the railway system in 1841, sums up in the following order the advantages to be derived from the development of the railway system: "1. As a means of national defense, it facilitates the concentration, distribution and direction of the army. 2. It is a means to the improvement of the culture of the nation, as it facilitates the distribution and promotes the rapidity of distribution of all literary products, and the results of the arts and sciences. It brings talent, knowledge and skill of every kind readily to market, and increases the means of education and instruction of each individual and of each class and age. 3. It secures the community against dearth and famine, and against excessive fluctuation in the prices of the necessaries of life. 4. It promotes the hygienic condition of the community, as it destroys distances between the sufferer and his means of cure. 5. It promotes social intercourse, and brings friend to friend, and relative to relative. 6. It promotes the spirit of the nation, as it has a tendency to destroy the Philistine spirit arising from isolation and provincial prejudice and vanity. It binds nations by ligaments, and promotes an interchange of food and of commodities, thus making it feel to be a unit. The iron rails become a nerve system, which, on the one hand, strengthens public opinion, and, on the other hand, strengthens the power of the state for police and governmental purposes."

—One of the first pathological symptoms that this great, beneficent growth has produced, was the speculative spirit that it promoted and fed. The era of speculation, however, does not begin with the development of the railway. Great speculative manias, destructive in their consequences, and of as far reaching and disastrous results, form part of the history of trade and commerce of the past two hundred years. The Mississippi bubble, under law, the tulip mania in Amsterdam, and the South Sea bubble in England, were eras of as wild speculation as the railway mania in England, and were much more disastrous in their consequences. When the shares of Law's bank declined, and the South Sea bubble burst, all money values represented in those elements of speculation were destroyed beyond repair. Wild as was the speculation of 1844 and 1845 in England, and culminating as it did in a great financial crisis in the winter of 1845 and 1846, the railway, the subject-matter of the speculation, still remained; and although shares were frightfully depressed during the crisis, they ultimately rose to something approaching their true value, the excessive premiums paid by individuals being all that was wasted. Every country which has allowed the railway to be built by private enterprise, has had its share of speculative ventures and speculative prices. Railway building has certainly fostered a class of unscrupulous operators as well as tricky and reckless railway officials, who found larger profits in the share market, and more rapid means of achieving great fortunes, than in finding capital for railway construction, or honestly and efficiently administering the railway properties and trusts in their hands. Absence of governmental supervision as to stock capital of railways, has caused the placing on the money markets of the world of a vast quantity of fictitious values, not representing actual construction in money value, but possible value to result from the development of traffic and anticipated dividends.

—In many instances the seemingly excessive profits made in the United States by railway building were but a fair and natural return for the great risks incurred. In the event of success the men who had the foresight and boldness to invest their capital in building lines like the Transcontinental Pacific through the territory of hostile tribes of Indians, across plains and over deserts, at the risk of life and fortune, deserved considerable remuneration for their boldness and their enterprise. Differences of opinion may honestly be entertained whether they have not been overpaid, and whether the methods adopted through the instrumentality of political chicanery were in the least justifiable. These matters apart, however, it must be conceded, that but for the inducement held out of very large profits through the instrumentality of fictitious capitalization and subsidies of land or money, many of the newer territories of the United States would have been unsupplied by railways.

—What is here said is not meant to be a justification for fictitious capitalization, which is an evil of such great and wide-bearing consequence that it were better if railway building were somewhat delayed than to allow it to come into existence under such conditions. The writer simply desires to draw attention to the fact, that the absence of governmental supervision over capitalization leaves individuals or corporations free to devise whatever scheme they may think best to enhance profits in conducting doubtful enterprises, and results inevitably in railway management regarding no interest except that of the promoters and capitalists who respectively lay out the scheme and find the money, and in such a case the public will be wofully left out of sight. At the very outset of railway development, Stephenson, who was, from all we can learn of his career, as wise a statesman as he was an engineer, insisted that railways should be taken in hand and operated by the government, claiming, that, from its nature and character, it was a highway which would in time become more important than the ordinary road, and which also possessed the peculiarity that the owner of the road would, in time, do the business of transportation thereon. In terse language he expressed, before a committee of parliament, his opinion that competition would not be the means of producing in this case, as it does in others, the cheapest and best results for the community, because, said he, "where combination is possible, competition is excluded."

—Railway development took its origin in England and in this country contemporaneously with the growth of the democratic spirit, and with the dissemination of politico-economical ideas. The democratic spirit was jealous of governmental power, and aimed at its reduction and decentralization. The politico-economical doctrines taught, as an axiomatic truth, that the government performed its operations at greater expense than the individual, and that whatever could be left to individual enterprise should be excluded from the domain of government. Political economy at the same time asserted as an axiomatic truth the proposition that competition was productive of unmixed good; that it was universally applicable; that governmental regulation and interference tended to diminish or destroy competition; and that it would subserve the best interests of mankind if government would let things in commercial and industrial enterprise work out their own salvation.

—In England and America, therefore, railways were placed in the hands of corporations, which had power, on paying its value, to condemn property. In England, maximum rates of charges were in every case prescribed by the charter constituting the corporation, but these maximum charges were generally made so high that they practically did not interfere with the railway corporations; within the limitation of these maximum charges the railways were free to make such discriminations or modifications as they deemed necessary to meet particular exigencies. For every addition to its public powers and for every extension of its line, the railway was compelled to go to parliament for powers. The opposition of the landowner and canal proprietor once overcome, however, the great benefits conferred from the very outset by the establishment of railway communication became so apparent, that parliament was but too willing to grant additional powers without inquiring very closely as to what use would be made of them.

—Both in England and America the legislatures of the period from 1825 to 1835 made the mistake of supposing that the railway bore an analogy to the canal, and traces of this mistake appear in almost all of the early charters. It was supposed, that, like the canal, the railway would be built by one class of capitalists, but that also, in the same manner as over the canals, the traffic over the railway would be carried on by another class of individuals or corporations, of forwarders and common carriers, who, under regulations and charges for toll established by the railroad company, would do the transportation business over the line. It was supposed that the railway was merely an improved highway, the carriages of which would run within certain grooves from which they could not depart, and that in all other respects the railway corporations would be one function and the business of transportation over it would be in the hands of others.

—The charter of the Ithaca 8 Owego railroad contains the following language: "Sec. 12. All persons paying the toll aforesaid may, with suitable and proper carriages, use and travel upon the said railroad, subject to such rules and regulations as the said corporators are authorized to make by the 9th section of this act." (Laws of N. Y., 1827, p. 17.)

—Certain members of parliament foresaw, that, as a means of protection of the public, the limitation upon excessive profits imposed in these undertakings by fixing a maximum rate of charges was insufficient. Pre-eminent among those members of parliament was Mr. James Morrison, who, in a speech delivered in the house of commons May 17, 1836, said: "The limitation of the rates of charge is in a progressive country good for little or nothing. The increase of population and trade has been so very great that a toll that would have yielded an ample profit on a railway constructed a dozen or twenty years ago, might now perhaps yield an equal amount of profit were the rates reduced a half. Nothing in fact can be more improvident or more absurd than that parliament should once for all fix the rate of toll when an undertaking is entered upon, and divest itself, unless by violating the right of property, of the power to reduce that rate in all time to come, how greatly soever it may exceed what would be a liberal return for the capital invested in the undertaking. I need not add that it is of the greatest importance to the interests of the public, that the cost of internal communication should be reduced as low as possible. The limitation of the dividend is a practice found to be as ineffectual as the fixing a maximum on the rate of charge. The public has no check on the system of management, nor can it explore the thousand channels in which profits may be distributed, under other names, among the subscribers, nor has it any means of preventing the wanton and extravagant outlay of money on the works, etc. To make the provision for limiting the dividends good for anything, it would be necessary that all the proceedings of a company so limited should be controlled by commissioners appointed by the government." He therefore insisted that in every case a clause should be inserted in parliamentary concessions to railway corporations, by which parliament reserves to itself the right to revise the rates of toll every decade, or oftener. Mr. Morrison also deprecated the idea that competition would prevent excessive charges, and even at that early day he foresaw that a vast amount of capital would be expended unnecessarily in making duplicate lines, whereby the public would not be benefited by the securing of lower rates of charges, but the existing traffic would be divided in combination by the new lines and the prior existing lines, even though the roadbed of the latter was by no means taxed to its maximum capacity in doing the traffic on the line. He urged upon parliament the necessity of preventing such a waste of capital, claiming that by a reckless chartering of new lines competition was not secured, and that the new lines when built would by combination with existing lines prevent the public from securing the benefits to be derived from the chartering of the new lines.

—In a speech delivered in 1845, nine years after the former speech, Mr. Morrison, after showing the gradual reduction in the cost of and charge for transportation, and the enormous benefits which the railway system had conferred upon England, as well as the great social changes which were taking place in consequence of the existence of the railway system, continued: "These various circumstances prove that the question now is no longer one of private consideration, but one of great public policy, a matter not to be left to the control of inferior boards or private companies, but one which ought to be subject to the interference of parliament, and guided by the wisdom of the government. A great social change is in the act of taking place, and it is to this great subject that I invite the attention of the house, of the government, and more particularly of the right honorable baronet (Sir Robert Peel) at the head of the administration, and I entreat him to look at this question as one great whole, and not to regard it in detached, isolated details and fragments. If he will view it in all its many and important ramifications, if he will estimate the combined effects of all sorts that are certain to follow from this extraordinary combination of influences, he will, I think, agree with me in believing the subject to be one of the greatest moment, one fraught with unspeakable benefits if properly directed, but, if neglected or mismanaged, threatening us with evils of portentous magnitude."

—He then entered upon the question of tolls. He said: "I may here be asked the principle upon which I would regard the rates of toll. My answer is, that I would determine the rate of toll in every case by the sum at which the particular line of railway could now be constructed. The public are not bound to inquire what the line really has cost, but merely to ascertain the sum for which it could at the present time be constructed, and the railway proprietors ought to be compelled to carry the public and their goods for such fare as would yield a fair profit upon such outlay." "So little, indeed," he concludes, "was the subject of railways understood in its commencement that the original rates were fixed upon the supposition that the railway proprietor would be the proprietor of the road only, and that the persons using it would pay merely for the means of transit, as upon the canals. It is well known that such has not been the case. Railway proprietors are almost universally not only the owners of the line, but the carriers upon it. Still, strange as it will seem, the legislatures have continued, in every railway bill down to the last bill of the last session, to repeat these lists of tolls, although in no single instance, I believe, has it been found practicable to carry them into effect. These rates of tolls are practically a mere delusion. In truth, parliament might just as well have ordered the several companies to exhibit in their stations a set of old sheet almanacs. They were a mere useless incumbrance."

—These were the utterances of a member of parliament of extraordinary intelligence, of a man who had worked his way up from a clerkship to the position of being the richest merchant in England, where he occupied a position somewhat akin to that held at a subsequent day by A. T. Stewart in the United States. To him England, and indeed the commercial world, owes the system of charging in retail transactions one uniform and undeviating price, without cheapening or bargain, a system which has since his time been adopted as the sound commercial rule in England, in America, and in the leading cities of France and of Germany.

—In this country, a few of the early charters, copied somewhat from the English parliamentary acts, contained maximum rates of toll in a schedule of rates. In some of these early charters the state reserved the right to purchase within twenty years the railway thereby authorized to be constructed. No general act then existed indiscriminately granting the right of way and the right to condemn property to any persons who saw fit to organize a railway corporation, but in every instance an application had to be made to the respective legislatures for the various powers to be exercised by the corporation. Some little safeguard was therefore left in the hands of government against too great an abuse of public power.

—In 1846, owing to the spread of the politico-economical doctrines before referred to, and to the corruption incident to the railway lobby in the legislative halls, the new constitution of the state of New York required its legislature to pass general laws under which corporations may be formed (Art. viii., § 1), and, acting in the spirit of this requirement, the legislature of 1848 did pass a general railroad act substantially like the one reenacted in 1850, except that the legislature, by the act of 1848, did, in each particular case, reserve the power to grant by special act the right of eminent domain, and give to corporations about to build and operate railways a means only, under the general law, of organization and of powers. In 1850 that safeguard was surrendered by the passage of a general railway act omitting such reservation. Thereafter twenty-five persons could, by the mere filing of articles of incorporation in the office of the secretary of state, become a railway corporation, endowed with power to take property in invitum, and to run lines wherever and in whatever form they saw fit, subject only to certain restrictions as to rights in cities, and to condemn property for such purposes. This placed railway corporations upon the footing of any private enterprise in the hands of corporate management, and, except as to passenger traffic, was a complete surrender of every attempt on the part of the government to supervise, regulate or control the railway corporations of the state, or to subject them to any conditions securing, without discrimination and injustice, fair and proper rates to the public. This general railway law did away with the railway lobby; and the immediate benefits in the way of extensions of the railway systems, and the freedom from public corruption resulting from this railroad law, caused other states to follow in the wake of the state of New York, and state after state passed general railway acts in imitation or modification of the one enacted by the state of New York in 1850. This introduced the era of what was supposed to be competition, with results which we shall presently examine in detail.

—Now let us look at the course that the railway question took in other countries.

—Belgium. In Belgium all concessions for constructing railways are granted by the minister of the interior, subject to the ratification of the chamber of deputies and of the king. The expectant corporators deposit a plan, giving the line of the route, estimates of its revenue, and the probable expense of the undertaking, together with a tariff of tolls for passengers and freight traffic, at which they propose to carry. The project is then submitted to the department of roads and bridges, or to a special commission of engineers for report. All inquiries to verify the calculations and the statements of the projectors are made at the expense of those who deposit the plan, and for that purpose they are required from time to time to pay in to the ministry such sums as they may be called upon to contribute. Then for a period of from one to three months the whole plan is advertised in the locality to be affected by it. The local councils of the municipalities through which the road is proposed to be laid, consider the project, and report to the ministry. After these reports have been presented, a hearing is had, either before the commission on bridges and roads, or before the minister himself, at which the engineering work, the guarantees for its execution, the objections to its being undertaken, etc., are discussed, and the manner in which the government is to exercise surveillance over it is fixed. The rate of charges by the company, the time for which they may be demanded, and the time within which the work is to be commenced and finished, are also specified. After all these questions have been settled, the whole matter is then submitted to the chamber and senate and the king, either of whom can after it before it passes as a law.

—In Belgium the government itself, however, built the principal lines, or bought them up, and it now in theory allows private companies only to build extensions and developments of the main lines. In 1850, of the lines of railway in Belgium, 64 per cent. of the whole were owned by the government, and 36 per cent. by private individuals. After the construction of its main lines, however, the Belgian government retired from the work of constructing new lines, and in consequence there was, in 1860, 67 per cent. of the mileage in Belgium in the hands of private individuals, and only 33 per cent. in the hands of the state. By amalgamation, however, these small feeders in the hands of private individuals in process of time have developed into trunk lines, competing with the government lines on their own field.

—The Grand Central Belge, a private company, was formed out of seven companies, and the Societé General d'Exploitation, another private line, was formed out of nineteen companies. So long as the government owns, controls and works its main lines of railway, and keeps down the interest upon the outlay to 7 per cent., no dangerous combination, however, is to be feared. It may at any time, if any line becomes very profitable, buy it up, as, under the terms of every concession, a railway line in Belgium is subject to purchase by the state for the benefit of the commonwealth. The purchase price is the net receipts of the seven last preceding years of the company's working, from which the receipts of two most profitable years are deducted, and an annuity, equivalent to the average dividend of the five remaining years, with the addition of 15 per cent., is paid for the road.

—One of the peculiarities of the Belgian system is, that the government guarantees the line it allows to be built interest at the rate of 4 per cent. on its actual outlay; it thus has full justification for supervising the construction of the railway, and insisting upon the fullest possible reports, prescribing the method of its book-keeping, designating some of its officers, and generally regarding the railway corporation as wards of the state. This method of guarantee also prevents the undertaking of lines which do not promise to be fairly remunerative from the start. The rates of charge of both the passenger and freight traffic of all the railways of Belgium are fixed in the concessions themselves, which are limited to ninety years. The rates are, of course, maximum rates, the companies being at liberty to reduce their rates to any point below the figures set forth in the law. But when the state has guaranteed the 4 per cent. of the capital, the consent of the minister of public works is, however, necessary, before the tariff is permitted to be lowered. A very active competition was carried on in past years between the railways owned by the state, and the railways owned by individuals, wherever the lines touched the same points. This competition has resulted in the corporate railways being permitted to make special contracts in the same manner as the state railways did down to about 1864, when a law was passed forbidding the making of special contracts; and compelling both the state railways and the individual railways to carry all their freight at schedule rates.

—By this system of state guarantee of investment, the state is prevented from carrying its competition with the private lines beyond a certain point. The fact that the private companies must be permitted to earn a net revenue of 4 per cent. upon the capital invested therein or the state must make good the deficiency, serves as a check upon the competition of the state.

—This system resulted in giving to Belgium the best, and in every way the most efficient, network of railway service on the face of the globe. It had low rates of passenger traffic, and low and certain rates of freight traffic. The private companies were earning good dividends upon their capital. The state, on the one hand, prevented the private companies from becoming a dangerous monopoly; and, on the other hand, the constant competition with private enterprise compelled the state to manage its own property with frugality and intelligence, to be able to sustain the competition with private enterprise. The state reserves to itself the regulation at all times of the number of trains to be run upon the private roads; their connections with other railways, and the amount of the terminal charges, are likewise under state control. Before any contract between two different companies can be acted upon finally by the companies themselves, it must be submitted to the department of public works and the department of roads and bridges, and receive their approval.

—In every concession, clauses are introduced, requiring the companies to take the cars of other companies at certain rates, and to furnish the motive power for them to some point upon their own line, and the state can interfere authoritatively in the event of any company refusing to comply with these conditions.

—Besides the competition of the governmental railways, the private railways of Belgium are subjected to the active and constant competition of the numerous canals, which form quite a network of waterways throughout that little kingdom. From 1850 to 1860, the tendency in Belgium was toward private ownership; since 1860, the tendency has been toward governmental ownership, and this so strongly that probably in a few more years the government will be the owner of substantially all the main lines of rail. In 1870, about 400 miles of railway were bought by the government, and since that time, about 600 miles more have been purchased. Competition, however, can scarcely be said now to exist in a country where the conditions of the competition are fixed by so powerful a corporation as the state has become, and the private owner is helplessly impotent, and has no alternative but to sell out. Yet the public in Belgium is well and satisfactorily served by its railway system, and none of the disgraceful conditions of our own railway system are known there. The overpowering force of the competition of the state, of course, causes considerable criticism and dissatisfaction on the part of the investors in the shares of private railways, but this competition on the part of the state is not a new matter, as the projectors of the private lines invested their moneys and built their lines with a full knowledge of the competition to which their lines should be subjected. In 1870, the net result exhibited by the state railways was a return of 6 per cent. upon the capital invested, being, on the whole, as great a net result as any railway system in the world exhibits.

—France. To each of the great French lines, now six in number (originally nine), a distinct territory was laid out, in which it could construct its trunk line, which was supposed to be a profitable one; it was then required as a condition for having the district handed over to it, also as part of the condition on which it was to operate their main lines, to build a number of feeders and local lines, which were supposed, on the whole, not to be profitable. It was soon found, however, that these secondary lines were so unprofitable and burdensome, that, if they were to be built at all, without danger to the abandonment of the main lines, the state would have to come to the aid of the railways. The state, thereupon, did advance large sums of money to the railways, for the purpose of constructing their loop lines, and made the concessions upon the condition, that, at the end of ninety years, all the lines should become state property, and the state was to take the rolling stock at a low valuation.

—All the rates of charges, for both passenger and freight traffic, are regulated with the utmost minuteness in France. At any time before the ninety years expire, the government can purchase the whole of the road at a capitalization of an average of fifteen years' income, after disregarding the two worst years, and taking as the minimum figure of the capitalization the lowest year immediately preceding the purchase, below which figure it may not be capitalized. This is done to prevent the state from resolving upon the purchase immediately after an exceptionally good year. The rates of fare and of freight traffic are, of course, mere maximum rates, the companies being permitted to go as far below such rates as they see fit. Every tariff of charges must be submitted to the government for the purpose of receiving its sanction, and a month's notice must be given of any proposed change.

—France has a perpetual committee to supervise its railways and to arrange the tariff of charges, to settle disputes between competing lines, and between the public and the railways. This committee is composed of the following persons: A president—the minister of public works; a vice-president, who is the director general of bridges, roads and railways; three experts appointed by the minister of war; three experts appointed by the minister of finance; one expert appointed by the minister of the interior; one expert appointed by the minister of commerce; two inspectors general of bridges and roads; one inspector general of mines, the inspector general of railways, and a secretary. This commission exercises both a commercial and a technical control.

—In France, every company is bound to receive and carry forward all goods tendered to it, and to publish, one month in advance, the mileage rate at which it will carry them, and the time within which it will deliver them, varying according to the distance carried. No private arrangement of any kind is permitted to be made with any organization. The terminal charges are all prescribed. No one, interested in the stock of the railway, or in its direction, is permitted to make any contracts with the railway for supplies, and even every passenger time-table is submitted to the government for approval.

—In France two tendencies have in recent years striven for precedence; one, the extension of the ownership by the state of the railway system, and the hastening of the right of the state to purchase, in less than ninety years, the rolling stock of the railways, and to acquire the rights of way of the existing lines; the other, a tendency to postpone the acquisition by the state of the railway system of France, coupled with the attempt, on the part of the railway corporations, to make themselves intermediately less dependent on the state. M. Leon Say, a well-recognized authority in matters of finance and political economy in France, recently became minister of France. His relation to the house of Rothschild is a well-known one, and it is also known that the house of Rothschild is the largest owner of the share capital of the most important and richest line of France, the Chemin de fer du Nord. In his budgets Leon Say devoted considerable space to the financial complications which may arise in consequence of the large additional outlays that may be required by the French government to acquire the existing lines of rail, and discouraged as much as possible additional outlays by the state, for the present, either to extend the system of existing lines of state rail, or to make any further attempts to acquire such transfer by anticipating the time for the acquisition by the state of the railways. Notwithstanding his powerful influence and the ability which all France recognized in him as pre-eminently the best qualified statistician and financial administrator, the French chamber of deputies refused to give countenance to his suggestions, and he was compelled to relinquish power mainly by reason of the unpopularity of his position on the railway question.

—The railways owe the French government about 600,000,000 francs, and the French government is now in process of investing additional sums of money, not only for the purpose of building its own lines, but to enable the railway companies to build lines of intercommunication in territory which is admittedly unprofitable.

—The ablest and strongest opponent to Say's project was Allain Targé, who, in concluding the discussion in 1881, said: "You want to temporize with the financial power of the great railways. Know you, gentlemen, what this power is? It is the greatest which now exists in France, next to the state and the order of Jesuits. You are their confederates (addressing the ministry), and do not as you should stand in a perpetual condition of warfare with it. You can not deal with the railways as individual associations which are to be regarded each by itself, but you must regard them from the point of view that they have an interest in common, and that this common interest is so great as to make it a serious competitor to the state. They are indeed an imperium in imperio. They have a combined debt of 10,000,000,000 francs, and employ 280,000 officers. They stand in relation with all the trades, industries, commerce and agriculture of the community, and in their hands rests the fate of all laborers. This enemy you must fight, and the single weapon that you have in your hands is the right to acquisition and purchase. Their first word is, 'No purchase, no acquisition.' You must never surrender this weapon if you desire to hold power against them." The chamber, by an overwhelming majority, defeated Say's proposition, and France has again determined that nothing shall interfere with the ownership by the state of the railways at the time originally fixed by the concession, and that if possible that time shall be cut short, under the power of the French government, by a purchase long before the ninety years of the original concession shall expire.

—North Germany. All concessions are made by the minister of commerce, unless there is to be a guarantee of interest, or a subvention of some kind, in which event it must pass through the form of a law. Since the formation of the German empire, the separate states have agreed to concede to the empire the power of expropriation, and the new lines are to be constructed under the empire. This means under the chancellor of the empire, who thereupon, through a reichsgesetz, may authorize the construction of any line involving the interest of the state or of trade.

—Prussia. At the commencement of its system of railways, Prussia consciously renounced, as to this service, all the benefits that are supposed to flow from competition. The laws of 1838, section forty-four, enacted that no second railway running in the direction of the first one, and touching the same principal points, should be allowed to be constructed by any promoters or corporators, other than the promoters and corporators of the first railway, within a period of thirty years from the opening of such railway. The state, for a due consideration, by the very same law, however, reserved the right to purchase the property of all the railways and appurtenances organized under that law, after the lapse of thirty years. When such authority was to be exercised, the state was to pay twenty-five times the amount of the annual average dividend paid to the shareholders during the last five preceding years. It was also to pay the debts of the company in the same manner as the company would have paid them.

—A number of railways were built by governmental subvention in Prussia, and many of them have since that time become by foreclosure the property of the state. To a great many others large loans were made by the government, subjecting them to such a measure of governmental control as practically to make them state roads. As to all others, the state claims a right of a third part of the net revenue of the lines, beyond 5 per cent.

—In 1870 there were in Prussia 3,204 miles of rail which belonged to the state, and 3,595 miles of rail which belonged to private lines. All tariffs, both for freight and passenger traffic, must be submitted to the government, and receive its assent. These tariffs must be published, and can not afterward be raised without the consent of the minister of commerce. At the rates adopted, the companies are bound to convey, without distinction of persons, all goods delivered for conveyance, the transport of which is not forbidden by police regulations.

—Since the war with France, and the consequent acquisition by the empire of the Alsace and Lorraine lines of rail, by successive enabling acts, the governmental acquisition of railways proceeded with great rapidity, so that each year circumscribed the number of private lines, and now there are but very few lines to be acquired to make the whole railway system of Prussia a strictly governmental institution. Indeed, the railway directory never fully survived the decree of June, 1870, by which the minister of commerce took possession of the railways for military purposes, and held possession of them during the war with France. At the close of the war, the state claimed and exercised the right to supervise the expenditure of railways and to take part in their deliberations, also to determine the amount that they are to carry to the sinking fund, and the amount they are to pay as dividends. From that time forth the paternal and inquisitorial power of the government was so relentlessly exercised against them, that all power of resistance to state absorption was undermined, and they fell an easy prey to the will of the iron chancellor Bismarck, who had determined that the lines should become the property of the state. The directors of the private roads protested at first against this interference, claiming that under the laws creating them they were exempt from supervision of that kind. To this the minister of commerce answered, that he claimed the right of the royal commission, to take part at the meetings of the boards of the private railway companies, so as to see to it that the object of the meetings was in the interest of the public. He said that the railway administration could rest assured that the supervision of the state would make itself less and less felt in proportion as the railway administration, by a prompt, cheap and safe service, gave evidence to the public that they rightly comprehended and were endeavoring to fulfill, to the satisfaction of important public interests, the trust placed for public purposes in their hands. The minister of commerce closed his answer with the following significant admonition: "I can not, therefore, but recommend that the Prussian railway administrations press no further the opinion of the narrow limits of state supervision over private railways, as expressed in their memorial presented to the chancellor, as it is a position which certainly is not pressed in the interest of the shareholders. This much is certain, that for a long time past the commercial public has demanded the restriction of the independent power of railway administration, which went beyond the restraints hitherto enforced."

—The rapidity with which the acquisition of the private railways by the Prussian government has proceeded is indicated by the following figures: At the end of 1879 there were 3,800 miles of state railways; 2,170 miles of private lines under state control; and 6,200 miles of private lines under state supervision. At the end of 1881 there were 7,070 miles of state lines; 2,170 miles under state management; and 3,110 miles of private lines. At the end of 1882 there were 9,500 miles of state lines, 1,320 miles of private lines under state management, and 2,400 miles of private lines.

—The control of all this great system of ownership of railways in Prussia is given over to a special administration, at the head of which is the minister of public works, and under him are all the administrative officers, who respectively are located at Berlin, Bromberg, Magdeburg, Hanover, Ehrfurt, Frankfort, Elberfelt, Cologne and Breslau. These directors are appointed by the crown, and are special administrators to take the place of the private and individual administrators of the lines to which they respectively relate. These administrators have in charge the expenditure of moneys necessary for the establishment of new lines, and by the law of 1883 10,000 miles of new lines, to belong to the state and to connect with the existing lines, were devised. Mr. Von der Leyen, himself one of the most intelligent co-operators in this system of state acquisition, and holding a position of great trust under the minister of public works, in an article published in 1883, in the "Annual of Legislation, Administration and Political Economy," Berlin, says that "the first beneficial effects of the acquisition of the railways by the state in Prussia, was the uniformity of tariffs throughout the empire, and the impossibility of obtaining special rates or personal favoritism; also the extension of the through ticket system, and the cheapening of transportation for workingmen and persons of moderate means." The beneficial effects of these reforms is indicated by the increase of business. From 1879 to 1882 it rose from 12,000 car loads to 15,000 car loads. The surplus available for general state purposes, arising from the administration of the railways, over and above interest on money expended by the state on its state lines and operating expenses, was, in 1878-9, $1,660,000; in 1879-80, $3,450,000; in 1880-1, $9,575,000; in 1881-2, $7,862,500.

—Nearly all railway concessions contain clauses making it incumbent upon the board of administrators of the railway in all cases to come to proper agreements as to correspondence of time tables in the administration of railways joining each other. The time tables can only go into force upon the consent of the government. Persons and merchandise must be conveyed in the order in which the application is made. No difference is to be made between passengers and goods which come directly to the lines, and those which come to them in transit from other railways. A special tariff is also prescribed. The state, therefore, in addition to being represented on every railway board, and being in itself an administrator of railways, enters to a large degree as a member into all the councils of railway management in fixing rates and in determining through traffic.

—A writer in the "Quarterly of Political Economy," Berlin, 1876, in an argument against the maintenance of private control of railway property, says, "the example of the United States affords nothing to the point. There, the administration and construction of railways in the hands of private individuals and corporations is so bad, and so utterly irresponsible, that that country affords no argument in favor of private enterprise, and yet, notwithstanding this condition of affairs, no one seeks a remedy for the evils there existing by placing the railways in the hands of the state, because corruption has eaten so deeply into the government that its ethical regeneration is scarcely to be expected as long as it has a quadrennial rotation of office, and the state treasury is regarded as the general pocket from which each one is to abstract as much as he can." The reviewer then speaks of the system in England, in which the railway has, by amalgamation and consolidation, extended itself and become a power within the state so great as to be dangerous to the state. He refers to the speech made by the president of the chamber of commerce of Plymouth, who says that "the railways have become our great highways, and should be regarded from an entirely different point of view from any other undertaking." The writer further refers in his article to the opinion of the royal railway inspector of Canada, in which he says that the monopoly of the railway in that province has become so great that the question will very soon be debated, whether the railway should own the state, or the state the railway. From all the conditions resulting from allowing free scope in private enterprise in railway construction and management, the reviewer comes to the conclusion, that on the whole it would perhaps be better for the German states to own the railways than to allow them to continue to be private enterprises, though subject to state control.

—Austria. This country followed the course of France, by making concessions for the period of ninety years to the railways. The government built several important trunk lines at the expense of the state, some of which are operated by private corporations, but it still owns its main trunk lines. Its system of supervision of state lines, as to the tariff of both passenger and freight traffic, is complete.

—Switzerland. No state lines exist in Switzerland. The republic has allowed private enterprise to build a net-work of railways. It has, however, and extremely effectual system of supervising the tariff of charges which must exist thereon. A perpetual commission regulates the relations of the corporations to the stockholders and the public, and provides for a thorough investigation of their affairs, and their constant publicity.

—Italy. This country owns of its lines about 1,000 miles of rail, and is in negotiation for about 4,000 miles more, so that within a very short time it will possess a large majority of the mileage of rail within its own territory.

—In all these countries, therefore, even including England, the railway has never been regarded wholly as a matter of private enterprise. In the majority the state built or assumed ownership of the trunk lines, and in all of the nations of continental Europe the proper conduct of these corporations has been regarded as so bound up with the welfare of the community that they could not safely be left wholly to private enterprise, but that the state, representing the public, should exercise continuously a more or less rigid control over their construction and administration.

—Taking up the history of the relation of the government to the railways in England, where we left it with Mr. Morrison's speech in 1839, let us look at the steps taken by the English people and government to reacquire, as to railway enterprises, the control which, notwithstanding the warnings given by men like Stephenson and Morrison, they had allowed to slip from their hands.

—In 1839 an attempt was made by royal commission to subject railway schemes to some harmonious direction as to the points from which the roads were to radiate and to which they were to go, so as to make them somewhat analogous to the French system; but the reply came that it was already too late, because so many railroads had already been constructed and projected, that it would be an unjust impairment of the rights of property to interfere with them; that the roads were already built, and could not be removed, and that others were too far under way to have their powers changed. Between 1836 and 1839 public agitation was directed mainly against excessive charges for passenger traffic; as to which, limitations were there upon fixed. The powers of the railways had already become so great that many members of parliament were directly under their influence, and many others owed their seats to the railway power. Notwithstanding this influence, however, a bill was introduced in 1840 to create a commission for the superintendence of railways, the commission to be a kind of sub-organization to the board of trade. This bill, after several amendments, was carried, mainly through the influence of Sir Robert Peel, who, although a few years before bitterly opposed to any interference with private control of the railway system, now admitted "that they were monopolies, and that it was necessary to create some tribunal as a standing investigating committee for parliament, to prevent too manifest and too great an abuse on the part of these powerful and moneyed organizations." The bill was considerably modified during its passage through the house, more especially in the second section, which, as originally reported, had provided for a uniform system of book-keeping, and for a very thorough system of reports on the part of the railways to the board of trade. This provision, however, in the bill that eventually became law, was so emasculated as to require simply reports in such manner as the railways saw fit to make them. The bill as passed embodied a clause which established a bureau of railways as a part of the board of trade.

—A glance at the 55th volume of "Hansard's Debates." p. 125, etc., will show how greatly the ablest men in parliament were, at that time, under the influence of general phrases in relation to the non-interference of government, and how completely they misunderstood the essentially monopoly character of the railway corporation, interference with which was, in this case, a duty which, if neglected, was a renunciation of one of the chief functions of government. It was assumed in the debate, by those who were opposed to the bill, that the right of the state with reference to the railways was entirely limited to securing the safety of the traveling public, and that as to the carrying of freight or goods the railway was an entirely private enterprise, like any other common carrier. The first protest of moment against this view, in addition to Mr. Morrison's efforts, was the publication of William Gault's pamphlet on "Railway Reform" in 1843. After a very thorough examination of the whole subject, and recognizing fully the fact, that, in its importance, the railway bore the same relation to the highway that the highway bore to the footpath, inasmuch as the traffic of the country was being carried, to a very considerable degree, almost wholly by rail, he came to the conclusion that the existing lines of rail should be acquired by the state, and that all further extensions of the railway system should be carried on by the state as the owner of the public roads.

—At the beginning of the session of 1844, Mr. Gladstone, then president of the board of trade, requested the house of commons to appoint a committee to report what, if any, changes should be made in relation to the consideration of railway bills; what amendments should be made in the railway concessions and franchises already granted, and what changes, if any, should be made in the standing orders as to the manner of the consideration of railway bills. Mr. Peel objected to the extent of the inquiry, claiming that it was an interference with vested rights, to consider grants already made. He expressed his conviction, at that time, that the further development of the railway system would bring about a competition which in time would do away with much of the monopoly character of those enterprises. A committee of fifteen was appointed, and testimony was taken, mainly upon the question of the absence of competition and combination between railways, the building of loop lines for subserving special interests without regard to the public needs, and the tendency to amalgamation which then had begun to make itself felt. A large proportion of the time of the committee was taken up in the examination of the question of minimum rates for passenger traffic. Mr. Glyn, the banker, who, next to Hudson, the railway king, was, at that time, the largest share proprietor in England, and who had been for many years, and was then, the president of the London 8 Birmingham railway, stated his conviction that no corporation ought to have any larger powers than were absolutely necessary for the profitable working of its line; he conceded that if the matter were an entirely new question, he had no doubt whatever but that the best way of dealing with it was for the state to own the railways, because, he said, the people as a whole had as much right to their great public highways as they had to the light of heaven. On economic grounds, however, he disapproved of the purchase of the railways by the state, saying he feared the state would be cheated in the transaction, and intimating that the roads had not cost what they were capitalized at; but he believed that thenceforth it was the duty of the state to control the railways with greater rigor and force. The report finally made by this committee contained a severe criticism upon the then existing mode of considering and passing railway bills, which the report suggested should all be submitted to the board of trade for criticism before being entertained by the proper committees of the houses of commons and of lords. Parliament took up the report for action in 1844. The suggestion was then made, that, when any new railway shall, after fifteen years, pay for three successive years, consecutively, 10 per cent dividends, it shall be in the power of the board of trade to revise its tariff, but in that event, that parliament must guarantee the 10 per cent. dividend to the railway. This suggestion was again modified by the further suggestion that the board of trade could demand a rebate of the guarantee by reason of bad management. A further limitation was made by providing, that, during the existence of the guarantee, the corporation shall not increase its capital stock, and that at the end of fifteen years the board of trade might purchase every new railway at twenty-five times the average dividends of the last preceding three years, from which, however, a deduction was to be made for insufficiency of the permanent way, and the rolling stock being out of repair.

—Against the passage of this bill the railways fought principally for time. In this they were aided by the powerful Sir Robert Peel, who suggested that a year's notice, at least, should be given before a bill of such magnitude could be passed. (Hansard's Debates, vol. i., 76, p. 482.)

—Mr. Gladstone referred to Mr. Saunders' testimony and to that of George Hudson, showing that the railways did not consider them selves free from competition and opposition by other lines of rail, and his admission was used by the opposition to show that the natural law of competition would apply to cure the evils that were complained of. Mr. Gladstone, in a speech, showed that the threat of the passage of this law did not prevent new railways from being organized; that fifty new bills, representing £20,000,000, had been filed since the report was made. He stated, that, though he knew the railway had become sufficiently powerful to send representatives into parliament instead of having them hang around the lobby, he did not believe they would become so formidable, or that parliament had sunk so low, that its members would, at the bidding of the railway interests, refrain from giving their sanction to the bill unanimously reported by their own committee.

—John Bright was the most formidable opponent to Mr. Gladstone's suggestion. He was a free trader, flushed with the great victory which had just attended his efforts in the establishment of his principles, and was ready to apply these principles to the most incongruous subjects. He was in the full vigor of his power, and had already made for himself a great reputation for honesty of purpose and for oratory. He dwelt upon the enormous benefits which railways had conferred upon society, showed that they were the benefactors of mankind, and that monopolies had always been the enemies of mankind; and therefore, he argued, it was monstrous to apply the term monopoly to them. He showed that the railways then already represented, in the way of vested capital, £60,000,000 in England; that they were carrying 25,000,000 passengers annually; and that it was extremely dangerous to interfere with so great and constantly growing an interest.

—Sir Robert Peel argued on both sides of the question, but insisted, almost in the spirit of apology, that the government had a right to provide the same sort of publicity, with reference to the railways, that it had provided with reference to the bank of England's accounts, and he concluded with asking a vote in favor of the bill. The bill obtained, on the second reading, 186 votes in its favor, against 98 in opposition. Among those who opposed it were Messrs. Bright, Cobden, Milnor Gibson, Ricardo and Macaulay. The bill was then considerably amended before it obtained its third reading, all the amendments being in favor of the railways. As modified, it was passed, but the modifications made it useless legislation. The changes that were made in it gave the railways twenty-one years instead of fifteen, before their railway tariff could be changed, notwithstanding the payment of 10 per cent. dividend. It was then provided that the guarantee of the state should run for twenty-one years after the 10 per cent. annual dividend, thus making it quite certain that the state would never interfere with the tariff. All the deductions which, in the event of purchase, were to be made, by reason of bad management and restrictions upon increase of capital, and for want of repair, of permanent way and rolling stock, were struck out. The provisions with reference to the purchase by the government were thus made extremely onerous to the state. As the provision in relation to state acquisition was further modified, so that before it could take effect it required another act of parliament to guarantee the purchase money, the act has remained ever since, to all intents and purposes, a dead letter.

—The discussion on this bill did, however, direct public attention to the question, and the "Quarterly Review" of 1844, in an article on "Railway Legislation," (pp. 224, 280), says in conclusion: "It is perfectly clear that sooner or later this great public trust can not remain in-the hands of private corporations. The railways themselves have given the best evidence of their desire and of the necessity for amalgamation, by which they admit that the individual corporation can not, in a system which requires uniformity and harmony, exercise absolute sway; and when the time shall have arrived that this amalgamation will bring the railway into the hands of the fewer corporations, or of a single corporation, which means into the hands of a few individuals, it is then but a step to the suggestion that the state, for its own safety, is compelled to take possession thereof; for a system of transportation which permeates every part of the land, which destroys and devours every other system of intercommunication, which incorporates itself into every public and private interest, which is as universal and all-present as the arterial and venous systems of the human body, sooner or later will come under the general control, for better or worse, of the state organization."

—In 1844, a special act was passed (8 and 9 Victoria, chap. 96) by which general leasing powers in private railway acts were restricted, and all powers granted by any private act of that session, to lease, were repealed.

—Pursuant to the act of 1844, a railway board, which existed just one year, was constituted as part of the board of trade, the duty of which was to report upon new railway schemes and purchases, and upon proposed extensions, amalgamations and competition. The board reported by giving its decisions without assigning reasons. It sat in secret, and published no debates. This un-English proceeding subjected it to a degree of criticism and animosity that compelled the government to recommend that the board be abolished, which was accordingly done in 1845. In that year the competition between railway corporations became so keen, and the canal companies suffered to such a degree from it, that a law was passed authorizing the canal companies to vary their tolls, and to borrow money so as to maintain the competition. The railways thereupon rapidly bought up the canals, and canal and railway amalgamations went on with great vigor. In 1846, one year thereafter, a committee of parliament reported, that within that year a large number of canals had passed practically under the control of the railway corporations, and were working under joint management. This committee recommended that all amalgamation between canal and railroad companies should be forbidden, except under the sanction of parliament. They also recommended that it was absolutely necessary that some department of the executive government should be so constituted as to command general respect and confidence, and to be charged with the supervision of railways and canals, with full power to enforce such regulations as might, from time to time, be indispensable for the accommodation and general interest of the public. They particularly recommended this in view of the fact that the private arrangements which are made between railway companies and railway and canal companies, and which may or may not be ultra vires, do not come under the supervision of parliament at all, and expressed their belief, that, with a properly constituted executive body, it would come under their supervision, and could be subjected to restriction.

—Between 1844 and 1846, came the period, already referred to, of the railway speculative mania. The influence which that had upon parliament is given by Francis, in his "History of the Railway," in these words: "Members were personally canvassed, solicitations were made to peers, influences of the most delicate nature were used, promises were given to vote for special lines before the arguments were held, advantages in all forms and phases were proposed to suit the circumstances of some and the temper of others. Letters of allotment were tempting, human nature was frail, and the premium on five hundred shares irresistible. The 'Athenæum,' about that time, said: 'It is the fashion to assume that our legislators are not now open to pecuniary bribes. It may be so, but we must leave that question to be decided by our children's children. If public rumor be no more than usually scandalous and false, there are some curious revelations yet in store for these youngsters, relating to railway bills.' The curious revelations had not to be waited for until the birth of our children's children, but they came in 1845, and in the winter of 1846, with the railway crash. A return called for by the house of commons, of the dealers in railway undertakings, formed a very remarkable blue book. The noble, who, in the pride of blood and birth, had ever held traffic in contempt, was there blazoned as a trader. The priest, who, at his desk, prayed to be delivered from the mammon of unrighteousness, was there revealed in the city to sell his scrip at a premium. There were 900 lawyers, and 364 persons connected with the banking interest, who subscribed contracts for above £2,000; one solicitor was down for £154,000. There were 157 members of parliament, of whom one signed for £290,000, one for £250,000, and one for £171,000; while the remainder were down for sums which must have influenced their feelings to a degree which might have influenced their votes." (Francis' "History of Railways." vol. ii., pp. 188-190.)

—In 1846 an act was passed constituting the railway commission, which was composed of five persons, the president of which was paid £2,000 a year, two members were paid £1,500, and two others received no pay. The main purpose of this commission was to take into consideration all schemes which were to be submitted to parliament, to make special inquiry and reports, and formally to report upon all bills before parliament on railway matters, so as to guide the parliamentary committee. But as the railway committees of the house of commons and house of lords refused to be guided by the recommendations of this commission, it was abolished, and their duties were once more transferred to the board of trade. A series of bills was passed to prevent the absorption of lines by rival companies, but the ingenuity of railway counsel was superior to the ingenuity that drafted these bills, and by the purchase of stock of other railways and appointing railway directions who were mere simulacrums, the railway corporations absorbed each other's lines without having parliamentary powers so to do.

—In 1853 another railway special committee was appointed by parliament. This committee, after taking testimony, recommended the appointment of a committee of a more permanent character than had theretofore been in existence, to consider all schemes submitted to parliament at every session, and that a railway department of the government should be created for the purpose of affording assistance and advice whenever the committee might desire it. It then pointed out that amalgamation of railways had proceeded to such a degree in England, that each particular part of England had become the centre of a system of railway management of its own, and that the great railway corporations had swallowed up all the competing and intersecting lines. It suggested the passage of a bill relating to the traffic arrangements between different companies, and submitted a plan of a measure by which the canals were to be maintained. The result of these recommendations was the passage of the canal and railway traffic act of 1854 and a prohibition of preferences in traffic contracts given by different railways. Part of the scheme of the act of 1854 was to submit grievances to the board of trade only, after the court of common pleas, sitting as a court, assisted by an engineer and barrister, had determined that an actual grievance existed. This part of the act proved inoperative. Lord Campbell foresaw and foretold that it would become inoperative, insisting that a lay tribunal should be created for the investigation of such questions, and that judges were not the proper persons to consider mattes of that kind, as they were naturally disinclined to act in an advisory manner to governmental bureaus, and that such disinclination would render resort to them well nigh useless. However, the law of 1854 contained one very useful provision, to the effect that no preferences of any kind should be given by railways for services of a like character, and forbade all discrimination between individuals as to traffic of like character.

—In 1865 a royal commission was appointed to consider the subject of railway communication. It made its report in 1867, after taking a great mass of testimony as to British and foreign railways. As regards legislation, this commission insisted upon the expediency of requiring the board of trade to assist the parliamentary committees by reports. It made many valuable suggestions as to interchange of traffic; it considered the subject of amalgamation, and the necessity of checking it; nothing was done, however, to prevent the proceeding of the amalgamation and consolidation of English railways, as is shown by the fact, that, in 1845, the London 8 North Western railway had owned but 379 miles of road, and that in 1870 it operated and owned 1,507 miles. The Great Western, which originally consisted of 118 miles, operated and owned 1,370 miles in the year 1870. The North Eastern, which in 1846 owned 274 miles, had, in 1870, extended its line so as to be the owner of 1,281 miles; and the Great Eastern, which originally had 138 miles of road, operated and owned 874 miles in 1870. Amalgamation had therefore proceeded in England to such a degree, that, in 1870, the field was practically divided between the great lines of railway, so that, somewhat like France, England had seven great systems of lines brought into existence without concessions of fields of territory by the state, but which by the natural course of development and consolidation, and the economy produced by such consolidation, divided the field of railroad enterprise in England, and created a concentrated power that presented at that time to the English government the formidable question, whether ultimately the state should control the railways, or the railways control the state.

—We now come to the most important epoch in the English railway history, one reversing the policy which, down to that period, regarded the railway as private enterprises—the appointment of a joint select committee, in 1872, of the house of lords and house of commons, to consider the subject of railways. This committee was composed of Mr. Chichester Fortescue, Lord Derby, the Marquis of Salisbury, Earl Cowper, Lord Redesdale, Lord Belpur, Mr. Hunt, Mr. Childers, Mr. Cross, Mr. Dodson, and Mr. Stephen Cave.

—After taking testimony, covering, with appendix, upward of a thousand pages of an English folio blue book, the committee recommended the organization of a new tribunal to consider railway grievances, constituted both as a court and as an advisory committee on railway legislation. The committee recommended this course in preference to fixing tariffs by statute, as the change of circumstances often makes such tariffs inapplicable or impossible. This was not only the recommendation of the committee, but followed the opinion of almost every leading railway official of England who was examined as to the proposed remedies, among whom were Mr. Allport, Sir Edward Watkin, Mr. Price, Mr. Broughton, Mr. Dawson, and others.

—The committee conceded that it was difficult to provide any fixed or self-regulating rules which would, through the medium of selfinterest or of the ordinary action of law, protect the public. They recommended that the proposed tribunal should be endowed with certain functions, among which were, to see to it that railways publish rates and fares and live up to them, and to consider and act upon such alterations as from time to time are adopted in the classifications; to examine into every case of undue preference; and to investigate complaints of unfairness between traders or between towns and districts, so far as they can be raised under the railway and canal traffic act (Lord Cardwell's act of 1854, and amendments). It having been found that the expense of going to the court of common pleas was so great as to give the wealthy companies great advantages over private traders, and that the nonpublication of rates prevented the trader from knowing whether he had a case or not, the committee recommended that exclusive jurisdiction be given to the tribunal to examine into cases of preferences, and that appeals from these decisions be limited to such cases as the special tribunal should certify involved questions of law which should be considered by the Westminster tribunals. A further function with which, according to the recommendations of the committee, the tribunal was to be clothed, was to see to it that proper facilities be given for the forwarding of passengers and goods under the provision of the railway and canal traffic act relating to that subject.

—It was conceded in the report of the committee by Mr. Broughton, Sir Edward Watkin and Mr. Price, that the courts were incompetent to deal with the subject, and that arbitration was unsatisfactory; hence the necessity for the organization of a tribunal to secure those ends.

—The committee also recommended the control of tolls on canals by the tribunal, and the enforcement of any obligation imposed on the railway companies to secure the proper maintenance of free navigation on the canals. The tribunal was to settle questions between the local authorities and the companies concerning new branch lines, and also to settle all disputes between railway and canal companies. They were also to settle all questions arising between the war and postoffice departments on the one hand, and the companies on the other.

—The additional duty to be conferred on this special body was to advise parliament in reference to railway legislation. As to the necessity for constituting this court, the committee say: "No existing institution possesses the necessary qualities. The board of trade has not the requisite judicial character or means of action, a court of law fails in practical knowledge and administrative facility, and the committees of the houses of parliament have no permanence." A new body, therefore, was, in their opinion, to be constituted for all these purposes, and to wield all these powers, to be called the railway and canal commission, and to consist of no less than three persons of high standing, one of whom should be an eminent lawyer, and another a person well acquainted with railway management, their proceedings to be as simple and inexpensive as is consistent with giving due consideration to and hearing questions openly and fairly. In conclusion, the committee state that "competition between railways exists only to a limited extent, and can not be maintained by legislation; that combinations between railway companies were increasing and likely to increase, whether by amalgamation or otherwise; that the self-interest of the companies alone was not sufficiently protective of public interests, and that their interest was only to a limited extent the interest of the public. And it therefore becomes necessary," they add, "to consider what can be done in the way of enforcing statutory obligations." As to the ineffectual character of past legislation, both in limiting dividends and creating a maximum of rate of charge, the committee were by no means mealy mouthed in the way of condemnation. They say of the railway companies. "They are monopolies who are unlimited in their charges for carriage except by the parliamentary maximum, and who are restricted by no definite limit whatever as regards terminal charges; these two charges they mix up together, and under the present system do not separate. They are practically under no restriction except that of their own interest, which may not be the same as that of the public. They claim and exercise the right to vary their charges to any extent they please within the parliamentary maximum, to favor one set of men or description of goods at the expense of another; to charge high rates for short distances, and low rates for long distances, or to charge two different rates for the same service if they think it to their interest to do so; and not only do they claim to exercise all these powers, but they refuse to tell the public how they exercise them or why they exercise them. The remedies given by the canal and traffic act of 1854 must, under such circumstances, fail for want of the requisite knowledge; and the recent act, by which companies carrying goods are bound, on application made within a week after payment, to give an account distinguishing between rates for conveyance and terminal charges, is wholly useless, because, in the first place, the trader is practically unable to enforce the law against the rich and powerful company; in the second place, he wants to know what he has to pay before paying it, and also what his neighbors and rivals are paying; and in the third place, because the companies do not themselves distinguish accurately between terminal charges and mileage, and, when an inquiry is made, can only give an approximate answer."

—Upon the question whether the interest of the public and that of the companies are identical in the same sense that they are in the case of a private trader, the committee say, "That it must not be hastily assumed that self-interest will play the same part in these large undertakings which it plays in ordinary trading concerns. There is a powerful bureaucracy of directors and officers. The real managers are far removed from the influence of the shareholders, and the latter are, to a great extent, a fluctuating and helpless body. The history of railway enterprise shows how frequently their interests have been sacrificed to the policy, the speculations or the passions of the real managers. On the other hand, the directors and principal officers of these great undertakings are often men of high standing, who feel that their position is something different from that of mere managers of a trading concern, and become in a certain sense amenable to public opinion, and especially to its expression in parliament. Thus for good as well as for evil the management of railways differs from that of an ordinary trade or manufacture, and approximates in some degree to the business of a public department." And, as a summary of the history of legislation preceding the sessions of the committee, they state "that committees and commissions carefully chosen have for the last thirty years clung to one form of competition after another, but that it has nevertheless become more and more evident that competition must fail to do for railways what it does for ordinary trade, and that no means have yet been devised by which competition can be permanently maintained."

—This report, made under a liberal government, and one which was, therefore, considerably under the influence of the very men who opposed all interference with railways, on the ground that such interference was, in one form or another, a violation of the principles of free trade, marked a complete change of the views of the leading political thinkers of England. Even Mr. Bright no longer opposed the formation of a railway commission. Experience had taught the English people that in many departments of human activity the doctrine of non-interference of government would not apply, and not only were railways rapidly being subjected to governmental supervision and control, but also factories, merchant shipping and other industrial manifestations. The report of the railway committee of 1872 resulted in the law of 1873, creating the tribunal recommended by the commission. The gentlemen appointed by the crown under this commission were Sir Frederick Peel (the second son of Sir Robert Peel), Mr. William Phillip Price, who was for many years the chairman of the Midland railway company, and Mr. Macnamara, who held the position until 1877 (the time of his death), when his place was filled by the appointment of Mr. Alexander Edward Miller. Mr. Balfour Browne became the registrar of the railway commission. A large number of cases were brought before the commission, which were promptly and ably dealt with.

—The commission was originally appointed for five years. During those five years the railroad companies tried two different methods of discrediting the commission. One method was, by carrying cases up on appeal, to show that the commission acted arbitrarily and against law; the other was, to avoid as much as possible resort to the commission by complying with all the laws, and settling cases before they could be brought to the commission's attention. By the one course they tried to prove that the commission was composed of men not well qualified for the work, and by the other, that it was superfluous. In both attempts they signally failed. The cases carried up on appeal by them were generally affirmed in favor of the commission, and the fact that the fear of the railway commission induced the railway companies to behave with proper regard for the laws which constituted them and in the interest of the public, did not prove that the rod was superfluous by reason of it not being necessary to apply it, but proved that the very existence of the commission had a wholesome effect upon the railway companies. In 1878, therefore, notwithstanding the efforts of the railway corporations, and more especially the strenuous opposition of Sir Daniel Gooch, chairman of the Great Western railway, the commission was reconstituted by an act enlarging its powers, and the same commissioners were continued in office. The railway commission is now a permanent tribunal of the English judicial and administrative system, and will in all probability be made, within a very short period, one of the branches of the supreme court of judicature, with the power of appeal limited so as to avoid the expensiveness of protracted litigation ruinous in England to a private litigant against the practically illimitable purse of a great corporation such as the London 8 North Western or London 8 Midland railway.

—With the appointment of the commission of 1873, the English railway system entered upon a new phase. A proposition of the ownership by the state of the railways of England, which twenty years ago was almost looked upon as chimerical, is now regarded as a very possible, and will very soon be regarded as a very probable, contingency. The amalgamations which have been going on have somewhat facilitated this possible acquisition by the state. Lord Derby, in a discussion at a meeting of the Society of Arts in 1873 upon that subject, stated that he had not the slightest doubt, that, if the public really wanted the railways purchased by the state, it could be done, and the question of price would not present any insuperable difficulty. The first step in that direction has already been taken in England by the purchase of the telegraph lines and adding that service to the postal department of the government.

—Mr. Joseph Parsloe, in a monograph on the railways, says upon this subject, after weighing the arguments pro and con, as to state purchase, "that an endeavor has been made to show that enormous benefits would accrue from the management of railways by the state. At the same time it should be only after the very fullest consideration of the question, in all its multitudinous bearings, that such a change in working the system should be introduced. It has been a common practice on the part of some critics to characterize as visionaries any who have urged the adoption of a scheme of state purchase; or the ability to form a correct judgment upon the matter has been questioned. For the most part such criticism has originated with those interested in keeping things as they are, and who, while questioning the usefulness of one proposal, have not been prepared with any other to put in its place. It will scarcely be questioned that our railways have in them the material from which it is possible to obtain a much larger amount of national benefit than is now derived. What remains to be done is, that the best means shall be adopted for the attainment of the greatest public good, and if any plan preferable to state management can be devised, it will doubtless be received with satisfaction." He himself seems to be doubtful as to whether any such plan can be devised.

—One of the dangers apprehended by the opponents of state interference in England was, that in the creation of a special tribunal to supervise railway administration the individual shareholder would be injured. The very opposite has been the result. Apart from the fact, that from 1873 there was considerable additional activity in the commerce of England, a great general rise in the value of railway securities has taken place since that time, not entirely attributable to the increased activity of trade and commerce, but due in great part to the fact, that in England, as in all other countries where private administrations were freed from the direct supervision of the state, the indirect and comparatively remote supervision exercised by the shareholders over the corporate managers was not sufficient to insure the most economical and wisest administration. Special interests of railway directors would interfere with the administration, would cause the building of loop lines for the purpose of benefiting special local investments by them and their friends, and even the management of English railways is not entirely free from jobbery to benefit members of the boards of direction. The supervision of the state has made this so difficult and almost impossible, that the administration of those trusts has sensibly and visibly improved. No interest has reaped a larger benefit, not even the public, than the shareholder himself, from the reversal of the policy of the English government. Greater certainty and publicity of railway charges, and the system of interchange of traffic, facilitated and enforced by the railway commission, have been of as great a benefit to the stockholder, on the one hand, as the holding of boards of direction to a rigid amenability to the public has been of benefit, on the other hand, to the people.

RAILWAYS

RAILWAYS, Legislation Concerning, and Management of, in the United States. After the passage by the state of New York, in 1850, of its general railway act (see the preceding article) there was inaugurated in the United States a deliberate withdrawal of governmental supervision from railway enterprises, on the theory that they were private businesses, to be left as unrestricted as the manufacture of boots or clothing.

—The New York law, with but slight modifications, was enacted by the various states, so as to promote railway building, and also to remove the corrupting tendency of special railway legislation. When each railway corporation was the recipient of a special grant by legislative enactment, the railways, in consequence of the large interests involved, corrupted the members of the legislature, and it was honestly supposed that by permitting everybody to build railways the principle of competition would be applicable. It was argued that there could be no such thing as monopoly in matters free to all, and that the rivalry between the respective lines for business would create, as to railway administration and railway management, the same beneficial results that rivalry and competition create in other private enterprises. The rapid development of the country from 1850 to 1857, under the low tariff, good crops and general confidence, in connection with the rapid development of the railway system, prevented, down to that period of time, any evil effects arising from this absence of control from becoming apparent. Though some few evil consequences did come to the surface, yet these were so largely counteracted by the beneficial results of railway construction, that the community regarded them as but passing vexatious incidents to a great benefit, and that time would cure the evil.

—When, in consequence of the financial crisis of 1857, many of the railways became embarrassed and mortgages were foreclosed, a new device was concocted, which at the outset appeared conservative and innocent enough, but brought in its train evil consequences of considerable magnitude in the relation of the railway to the state. These foreclosures, if carried out rigorously, threatened to destroy the value of all junior mortgages and of railway stock. The junior mortgagees and the stockholders thereupon fought desperately in the courts, to delay as much as possible the right of the holders of the bonds under the first mortgage either to take possession of the railway, or, by a sale under the hammer, to cut out all equities beyond the first mortgage, in the hope that such delay would tide the road over into better times. To bridge over these difficulties, and to prevent such delays, railway lawyers devised a scheme of reorganization committees, to represent in the reorganization of railways all the rights existing with reference to the property at the time of the insolvency, and on their behalf to repurchase the property, and, by a new capitalization, to readjust these rights. Under the reorganization the first mortgage holders received new bonds representing again a first lien, and certificates or bonds to represent accrued interest; the junior mortgages were again recognized by junior liens or preferred stock; and the stock holders generally, on condition of making some payment toward defraying the expenses of the readjustment and putting the line in proper condition, received scrip or stock to represent their former interests in the roads. Bankruptcies, therefore, did not, after this device was generally adopted, produce as to railways the same result in the way of the destruction of fictitious value that they produce by failure in other departments of business, i.e., to transfer the commodities or property, by means of such a sale or title, at bottom or conservative figures; but, on the contrary, the stock and bond capital of the corporations which had emerged from insolvency came to the surface with a larger capitalization than before default, with no construction to balance such additional capitalization account. Therefore, to enable the corporation to pay, in addition to operating expenses, interest upon its stock, the directions were under the strongest incentive, and even necessity, to oppress, at non-competitive points, the territory where the railways had a monopoly power.

—The courts lent themselves readily to this new device of reorganization, because it appeared to be conservative of vested rights of property, and prevented waste and destruction. The possible influence of these devices upon the future development of the railway system in its relations to the state and the people, was either not thought of or disregarded.

—From 1857 to 1860 many insolvent railways were reconstructed upon this plan, and, at the end of this reconstruction period these railways emerged with a considerable additional capitalization, representing simply accumulated debt. In 1861 the war broke out, severing the lines running north and south, and in consequence of the operations of the government and the increased and feverish activity of the country during the four years of the war, the trunk lines running east and west were greatly developed. It was during this period of the war that congress began, upon an extensive scale, to charter the transcontinental lines of rail so as to connect the Pacific coast with the east.

—The charter of the Union Pacific railroads was passed July 1, 1862. Under this charter the right of way, and a subsidy of land and of money, were granted. By the act of July 2, 1864, the governmental subsidy was greatly increased. Land to the amount of five alternative sections per mile on each side of the road was granted to the railways. The secretary of the treasury was required, upon a certificate in writing of the commissioners, showing the completion and equipment of forty consecutive miles of railroad and telegraph lines, to issue to the company bonds of the United States, of dollar;1,000 each, to the amount of $16,000 per mile; and as to the 150 miles westwardly from the eastern base of the Rocky mountains, and 150 miles eastwardly from the western base of the Sierra Nevada mountains, $48,000 per mile, and between the two mountain chains $32,000 per mile. The Central Pacific railroad, chartered under the laws of the state of California, was taken care of in the same manner. A like amount of land was granted to it, and a like sum of money subsidy. These were not, however, the only grants made by congress in this act. The Hannibal 8 St. Joseph railroad, the Leavenworth, Pawnee 8 Western railroad and the Kansas Pacific railroad became the recipients of sections of land and subsidies of bonds. The Burlington 8 Missouri railroad was also the recipient of a land grant.

—The act of 1862 gave to the government of the United States, in return for the subsidy, a first mortgage upon the railway property to be created by the Union and Central Pacific railroads. The act of 1864 allowed the corporation to postpone the government's lien by a first mortgage to an amount equivalent to the subsidy given by the United States, and made the lien of the United States for its money subsidy subordinate to that of the bonds of the companies issued under such first mortgage. About $65,000,000 was thus given to these corporations, in addition to their valuable land grants, and the lien of the government postponed to that of another mortgage, authorized to be issued for an equal amount. The Union Pacific railroad was thereupon constructed by an organization known as the crédit mobilier, composed, as to persons interested therein, mainly of the persons who were instrumental in procuring the passage of the act, and who were the real incorporators of the road. To this corporation all the issues of bonds and stock were made, and it also was the recipient of the subsidy of the United States after building and equipping certain parts of the road. It proved an instrumentality of distribution of profits under the cover of building the road.

—The grants of land to the Union Pacific railroad amounted to 2,000,000 acres; to the Kansas Pacific, 6,000,000 acres; to the Central Pacific, as successor of the Western Pacific, 1,100,000 acres; to the Burlington 8 Missouri River, and to the Sioux City 8 Pacific, 2,500,000 acres.

—On July 2, 1864, the Northern Pacific railroad was also incorporated, and although no money subsidy was given to that corporation, it was the recipient of the largest land grant of any of the corporations, being entitled to receive under its grant 47,000,000 acres. By the act of July 27, 1866, there was granted to the Oregon branch of the Central Pacific, 3,000,000 acres; to the Oregon 8 California railroad, 3,500,000; to the Southern Pacific, 6,000,000; and to the Southern Pacific branch line 3,500,000 acres. A considerable proportion of this acreage may be saved to the people by the failure of many of these railway companies to complete their lines within the time specified by the acts of incorporation. But these grants show with how liberal a hand the congress of the United States disposed of the public domain in favor of these corporations, to aid them in the construction of their lines.

—During the same period of time large grants of land, owned by the general government within the states, were made by congress to the states, for the purpose of enabling such states to make large land grants to the railways proposed to be built within their borders. As early as 1850, about 2,500,000 acres were granted to the state of Illinois, and by it granted to the Illinois Central railroad, mainly, to aid in its construction. In 1856 Florida received grants of land amounting to about 2,000,000 acres, and which Florida, in turn, transferred in great part to the Florida railroad and the Florida 8 Alabama railroad. Arkansas was the recipient of more than 2,000,000 acres, which it, in turn, transferred almost wholly to railways. Minnesota, Kansas, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa were all the recipients of large grants of land, from which these states endowed railway corporations by heavy grants of land. The territory of the United States appeared to the legislator of that period an inexhaustible fund of land, and millions of acres were given away with what now appears to be reckless extravagance. Long anterior to these munificences on the part of the general government, some of the states were called upon to aid, by actual grants of money, some of the railways which were built within their borders. The state of New York paid to the various railroad corporations within its borders about $8,000,000, of which about $5,000,000, granted to the Erie railroad company, was wholly lost, and granted about $30,000,000 in municipal and county subscriptions.

—The right of the United States to charter railway corporations was exercised under the power given to it by the constitution "to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states and the Indian tribes, to establish postoffices and post roads," and also under the general authority to execute all powers vested by the constitution in the government of the United States, and likewise under the authority given to congress to provide for organizing the army.

—The lines of the Pacific roads were constituted post roads, as they necessarily carried on the function of interstate commerce; and, as they were required to carry the army and army supplies of the United States, the establishment of these corporations as United States corporations is warranted under a liberal construction of the constitution. As these corporations have been the recipients of immense gifts of property from the general government, and as the latter is in nowise restricted by the prohibition as to impairing obligation of contracts, these beneficiaries can not possibly make any valid claim against being subjected to regulation, even if such regulation be in the nature of afterthoughts on the part of the United States government in the interest of the people of the country.

—The system of through lines, now known as trunk lines, developed between 1868 and 1872. The Lake Shore road passed under the control of the Vanderbilt interest, and there was no longer any necessity to break bulk as far as Toledo. The Michigan Southern and Michigan Central likewise passed under the same control, and through lines were established to Chicago, although the several railways remained state organizations, and were never consolidated as one company. The Pennsylvania railroad, under the name of the Pennsylvania company, leased the Fort Wayne road in June, 1869; the Erie 8 Pittsburg, in March, 1870; the Columbus, Chicago 8 Indianapolis, in February, 1870; the Little Miami road from Columbus to Cincinnati, likewise, in February, 1870, and the Cleveland 8 Pittsburg road, in 1871. These, together with the Ohio, Madison 8 Indianapolis railroad, and the Cincinnati, Wilmington 8 Zanesville railroad, gave to the Pennsylvania line practically two lines to Chicago and one to Cincinnati during the same period. The Baltimore 8 Ohio road was opened to the Ohio river in 1852; it leased the Central Ohio road in 1872, and then built an independent line to Chicago in 1874, completing its through connection to Chicago. The Grand Trunk railway, by controlling and leasing other lines and building links, pushed its connection at about the same period through to Chicago, so that there were substantially, from the seaboard to Chicago, five trunk lines vying with each other for business for the west, from the time these trunk lines pushed their connections on to Indianapolis and St. Louis.

—Prior to completing the organization of these trunk lines, freight was compelled to break bulk and suffer transshipment at the end of each state line, where a new corporation took up the traffic and carried it beyond. To prevent this breaking of bulk, and to expedite the carriage of freight, fast freight lines on separate capitalizations were organized, at first by the managers of the railways themselves owning or leasing their freight cars, and then made profitable by special arrangements with the railways readily enough secured, because of the fact that the railway officials themselves were largely interested in the fast freight lines. These lines carried a considerable proportion of the traffic in the period anterior to the organization of the trunk roads. With the completion of the trunk line west came also a change in the organization of the fast freight lines. The managers of the railways became more largely interested in the success of their trunk organizations than in the subsidiary lines that were absorbing a considerable proportion of the business of the roads. These subsidiary lines were therefore broken up, and the private corporations abandoned and each of the various railroad corporations constituting the trunk lines, in the proportion of the percentage of traffic carried over their roads, as nearly as that could be ascertained, contributed freight cars to the formation of fast freight lines intended to carry through traffic. Thus a great reduction in the cost and an increase in the speed with which goods were carried, were introduced, and it is now no longer necessary to break bulk at various points, but goods can be shipped to their terminus by either of the trunk lines through the instrumentality of fast freight lines connected with them.

—From the fact that a large portion of the business of the roads was thereupon done by these fast freight lines, and that these fast freight lines were represented by an independent organization or staff of officers and agents, it was supposed by the public that these lines were barnacles fastened upon the railway companies for the purpose of abstracting from them, to the advantage of the managers and to the detriment of the shareholders, a large proportion of their traffic.

—Although this suspicion was well founded in the early history of the fast freight lines, it ceased to be true after the organization of the trunk line system. A peculiar result, however, arose from the existence of the fast freight lines as an independent organization. In consequence of the freedom of the freight agent of the fast freight lines from the direct control of the trunk managers of the railroads, the railroad companies themselves found it almost impossible to fix a rate of freight which would not, in the intense desire to gain traffic, be immediately cut by the fast freight lines doing business over their roads. Thus, contemporaneously with agreements between the trunk line organizations to maintain rates, an active rivalry was kept up in the rates charged by the railroad corporations themselves and by the fast freight lines which ran over the roads and belonged to them.

—The pool agreement, to which reference will presently be made, removed this difficulty. The financial crisis of 1873, like that of 1857, caused the insolvency of a large number of railroad corporations, and the same proceedings which resulted in the emerging from bankruptcy of the railroad corporations that became insolvent in the preceding crisis, followed the insolvency of the railroad corporations in 1873, by which reconstruction committees were appointed. The various corporations emerged after insolvency through this process of reconstruction with capitalizations of funded debt and stock capital generally larger than that with which they entered into this condition of insolvency, and without any additional road or construction to account for the increase.

—The general depression of trade and the failure of crops succeeding the crisis of 1873, and the struggle for business between the roads, caused them to carry through traffic to the east at very low rates, for which they sought to compensate themselves by excessive charges for local traffic. This produced in the western states a very general feeling of dissatisfaction with railway methods and railway management, and gave rise to what is known as the granger movement.

—The western states were more liberal than the eastern states in grants of land and money to railroad corporations. From 1860 to 1870 these railroad corporations not only obtained large donations of land, but counties, townships, cities and villages desirous to become connected with the net-work of railways of the United States, and to be brought into active communication with the movement of commerce throughout the country, vied with each other in debt accumulation for the purpose of granting subsidies to railways. A large proportion of the whole bonded municipal indebtedness of the United States is due to what may be termed the frenzy on that subject. This recklessness of debt creation for the purpose of obtaining railway communications has some degree of justification in far western states, which it would not have had in any community otherwise situated. France, England and Germany, and also the seaboard and middle states of the United States, had, prior to the existence of the railway, good means of intercommunication by canals and highways. But, in the far western states, the railway was practically the only road. The western counties, townships and cities regarded the expenditures on railways as something analogous or equivalent to expenditures on the ordinary roads, and much of this debt creation was fostered by the influences of the railway corporations themselves, and a great part of it was doubtless fraudulently contracted through the bribing of local officers. In many cases the railways obtained subsidies of bonds, which they sold, and never built the railways. A large number of litigations, on the question of the liability of the public bodies granting such subsidy bonds, arose in the states themselves, many of which were disposed of in the United States courts. The innocent holders of these bonds sought to obtain judgment against counties or towns, which, either failing to obtain the consideration for which the bonds were issued, or discovering that the bonds were fraudulently issued, or from the mere desire to repudiate the burden imposed by the issue, sought to escape from the payment of the principal, or the levying of a tax to pay the interest. In a great number of these cases the decision of the supreme court of the United States was favorable to the bondholders, and the burden once imposed was allowed to rest, however recklessly or extravagantly the bonds were issued and the burdens assumed.

—The extent of this indebtedness, however, added fuel to the spread of the granger agitation. The heavy local taxation reminded the farmer or local tradesman of the aid which he assisted in giving and was called upon to pay to the railway; at the same time, the railway, which he supposed would confer upon him a great benefit, was placing his particular locality at a disadvantage by carrying past his door to more distant points and to the seaboard freight at rates very much lower than he was charged as local rates, the reason being simply that the more distant point was a competitive point, and he was entirely at the mercy of a single railroad corporation.

—The western farmer's efforts to seek relief from this condition of affairs would have met with very considerable obstruction had he not been aided by the wording and language of the constitutions of the several states, which enabled him to avoid any contract relation being successfully established between the state and the railroad corporation by reason of its original charter.

—In the Dartmouth College case it was decided, in 1819, by the supreme court of the United States, that, by the legislative charter to a private corporation, a contract relation was created, which, under the clause prohibiting the states from impairing the obligation of contracts, forbade the state from thereafter passing laws substantially changing property rights of such corporation. The various states of the Union took alarm at the possible consequences of that decision, and, either by general laws or by constitutional amendment, provided that the legislature shall, at all times, be at liberty to alter, amend or repeal the rights or privileges conferred upon corporations.

—The state of New York, after having had for many years a provision to that effect upon its statute books, embodied, in 1846, such a provision in its constitution; and the western states, on their organization, followed substantially the provision of the constitution of New York. In obedience to a strong public sentiment, which made itself felt during 1871-4, throughout the western territory, the legislatures of Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, Missouri, Minnesota and Michigan, passed laws, known as granger laws, by which railway commissioners were appointed, railway tariffs sought to be regulated, preferences forbidden, and railways required to carry for the inhabitants of a locality freight at a rate somewhat proportionate to that which they established for through traffic.

—This legislation was violently attacked in the courts by the railways themselves, and the bondholders of the railways also called it in question on the ground that such legislation impaired the obligation of their contract, because, though it left the rails and the cars, it substantially took away the profit of operating, and thus, in disregard of the constitutional provision that no private property shall, without compensation, be taken for public purposes, deprived them of property without compensation. These cases came before the supreme court of the United States in 1876, in the test cases of Munn vs. Illinois, and Peake vs. The Chicago, Burlington 8 Quincy Railroad. This controversy was disposed of by the supreme court of the United States adversely to the claim of the railroads and of the bondholders, by upholding the validity and right of all such state legislation.

—Panic legislation of this character was, of course, faulty. It proceeded from an insufficient examination of the whole subject. It was, in fact, treating the symptom instead of the disease. Notwithstanding the complete vindication, by the supreme court of the United States, of the right of the states to enact legislation laying down tariff rates for railways, whether remunerative or not, the majority of the states which had enacted such legislation receded from their original position and modified their tariff rates; many abrogated them, and contented themselves with the establishment of railroad commissions for the purpose of investigation and examination of grievances, and to report thereon to the legislatures, but left on the statute books, however, prohibitions against preferences, and forbade the railways from destroying the commerce and trade of a locality by rival contests for through traffic.

—In some of the eastern states, notably in Massachusetts, a different course was pursued. In that state an excellent board of railroad commissioners was appointed by the act of the legislature of 1869, composed of Charles Francis Adams. Jr., James C. Converse and Edward Appleton. The duty of these commissioners was to inspect the railway system of the state, and to inquire into accidents and the system of management, as well as the general question of railroad development, and the relation of the community to its railroad corporation. To entertain complaints of individuals or localities against discriminations or unjust treatment, and to report thereon, was also made part of their duties. Authority was also given them to hold public sessions, and to make report of their conclusions to the legislature. They had no judicial powers, but were constituted a general board for public investigation of railway management, thus to draw public attention to, and to bring to bear public opinion upon, the subject. To concentrate responsibility, to sift information, and to advise the legislature, also appertained to their functions. They were subsequently empowered to prescribe and enforce, and they did prescribe and enforce, a uniform system of accounts.

—This board has been in successful operation since its organization; and has been of great benefit to the commonwealth which appointed it, and of great service as an example, beneficially imitated by other states, of one of the most conservative modes of dealing with railroad corporations.

—Mr. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., the chairman of this commission, in an argument before a committee of the federal congress in 1880, in speaking of railroad management and its relation to the public, says: "I must ask you to dismiss all preconceptions from your minds, and to fairly consider what is the real cause of the inequality, the injustice, the discriminations of the existing railroad service, those ills of the body politic for which you are now undertaking to prescribe. I will not stop to dwell upon them or to denounce them. It is not necessary to do so, for I hold them to be proven and their existence notorious. The record is full of evidence on the subject. We all know, every one knows, that discriminations in railroad treatment and charges do exist between individuals and between places. We all know that railroad tariffs fluctuate wildly, not only in different years, but in different seasons of the same year. We know that certain large business firms, the leviathans of modern trade, can and do dictate their own terms between rival corporations, while the small concern must accept the best terms it can get. It is beyond dispute that business is carried hither and thither—to this point, away from that point, and through the other point—not because it would naturally go to, away from or through those points, but because the rates are made on an artificial basis to serve ulterior ends. In regard to these things I consider the existing system nearly as bad as any system can be. Studying its operations as I have, long and patiently, I am ready to repeat now what I have repeatedly said before, that the most surprising thing about it to me is, that the business community sustains itself under such conditions. The first principles of law governing common carriers are habitually violated. Special contracts covering long periods of time are made every day with heavy shippers, under which the common carrier, whose first duty it is to serve all equally, gives to certain parties a practical control of the markets. There is thus neither equality nor system, law nor equity, in the matter of railroad charges. A complete change in this respect is a condition precedent to any just and equitable system of railroad transportation."

—Coming as they do from a gentleman of high authority, who for ten years held the position of chairman of the railroad commission of the state of Massachusetts, and who at the time when he spoke had held for one year the position of arbitrator, selected by the great trunk lines to settle disputes and differences between them as one of a court of three arbitrators voluntarily constituted, these words are more cogent, and are to be assumed as a more correct representation of existing conditions resulting from the development of the railroad system of the United States, than any speech, either of granger suffering from his particular grievance, or of railway president anxious to retain his hold upon a monopoly interest.

—The attempt to enforce upon the railways of the state of Massachusetts the adoption of a system of accounts prepared by a set of "theorists," was vehemently opposed by the railway corporations, who called it an infringement of their chartered rights, which would prove a mere appliance for exacting blackmail, and expose details of management concerning which the public had no interest. The commissioners, on the other hand, insisted that the community had an interest in its railroad lines, and that an administration which was a mere hot-bed of abuses should be thereafter managed in full public view. To the new system of accounts prescribed, the railways quickly accommodated themselves, and, much to their surprise, they experienced no evil result from their rendering of accounts intelligible to public bodies and to the public at large, but rather found great benefit flow therefrom.

—The recent instances of the failure of the Eastern railroad company, the sudden collapse of the New Jersey Central and of the Reading railroads, show how utterly unable was the public to form, from the published accounts in annual reports, any adequate conception of the condition of railroad property. In each of these cases the annual report preceding the insolvency claimed the roads to be financially in flourishing condition. Against such abuses as these, the system of uniform accounts and thorough investigation seems to be a specific. On this subject and its success, the Massachusetts commissioners, in their report for 1879, draw a very correct line of distinction. In speaking of the spirit which called forth an investigating board such as the Massachusetts commissioners, and that which prescribed a hard and fast tariff of rates for railway companies such as granger legislation attempted, they say: "After a careful investigation, which extended through a year, and the conclusions of which are to be found in its earlier reports, this board wholly rejected the idea of attempting to regulate railroads in this country, at least through direct legislative intervention. It was said that such an attempt would result only in failure, or perhaps generate new and dangerous abuses of its own. The board, on the contrary, maintained that every desired result or needed reform could be secured by simply developing in the public mind the idea of corporate responsibility, and supplying the necessary machinery to act directly upon it. To bring this about, it was necessary to force the corporate proceedings into the full light of publicity, and to compel those responsible for railroad management, whenever an abuse was alleged, to submit to investigation, and to try to show that the abuse did not exist. Failing to do this, their only alternative was to discontinue its practice or to persist in it in open defiance of public opinion. This is the theory of railroad regulation now known as the commissioners' system, in contradistinction to the granger system. The public supervision of the accounts of the railroad corporations is an essential feature in the successful development of this theory. If that can be established, it will certainly lead to the gradual abandonment of the granger system in favor of a supervisory system. The commissioners believe that it has been established in the practical experience of the Massachusetts railroads in the last two years, and they further believe and say that the system works well." (Massachusetts Railroad Commissioners' Report, 1879, pp. 29, 30.)

—In New York state the board of trade and transportation, a body originally organized under the title of "The Cheap Transportation Association," set itself the task, in 1873, of bringing the railway corporations of the state of New York to public amenability. From 1850, down to that period, no serious attempt had been made in that state to create in railroad management any sense of public responsibility. The reports which the various railroad corporations of the state were required to file with the state surveyor and engineer, were almost wholly meaningless. No balance sheet accompanied the reports, and the railroad corporations, in conforming with the letter of the law, vied with each other in giving as little information as possible. The state surveyor had neither power nor desire to make any independent investigation. He simply published from year to year such information as the railway corporations saw fit to give him. No penalty, which had the slightest deterring influence, was imposed for giving insufficient or even false information. The state law forbade parallel lines from being leased to each other. Nevertheless, railroad corporations, by purchasing the majority of the stock of the parallel lines, ran them in the interest of their main railroads.

—In 1868 a consolidation took place between the New York Central railroad and the Hudson River railroad, by which they subsequently became one line. On the consummation of the consolidation new stock was issued, substantially doubling the capital, or, in other words, watering the stock, of both lines. This watering of stock was promptly legalized by the legislature of the following year, which conferred authority for exchanging the certificates into shares of stock. Thus, these roads in their new capitalization neutralized all the advantages that they had of easier gradient and no mountains to pass over, which had given to New York state cheaper railway construction than to Pennsylvania and Maryland. Although during the summer months, when canal competition is active, or under circumstances when the competition for through traffic with other roads creates a strife, capitalization is of little or no consequence, yet, on the local traffic, capitalization produces the result of compelling the local shipper to pay such a rate as to make it possible for the proprietors of the road to pay dividends on their stock. By the general railroad laws of the state of New York it is provided, that when the dividends of any railroad corporation shall reach 10 per cent., the state can declare how the surplus above the 10 per cent. shall be applied. This provision, however, was made quite nugatory by the trick of stock watering. It is clear, if with each increased valuation of the road the proprietors can declare stock dividends not representing construction account, that a dividend of 10 per cent. on stock will never be declared, although in point of fact the railway may be earning 20 or 39 per cent. upon its actual cost of construction.

—This bold stroke of financial policy, which laid the foundation for the colossal wealth of the Vanderbilts, drew attention to this evil, and gave to the cheap transportation association (subsequently the board of trade and transportation) an excellent ground for agitating the subject of railroad abuses. To this agitation considerable vigor was imparted about this time by the discrimination then practiced against the interest of the commerce of New York, whereby the railroad corporations chartered by the state of New York made more favorable rates to Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston in their charges for all west-bound as well as east-bound freight, than to New York.

—One of the periodical treaties of peace after a railroad war of great intensity gave to Philadelphia an advantage of two cents a hundred on freight rates from the west, to Baltimore four cents a hundred, and to Boston the same rate as was given to New York, on the lowest class of freight. On the western-bound freight the discrimination against New York in favor of Philadelphia and Baltimore amounted to from seven to ten cents a hundred on the different classifications of freight. This difference in rates was made on the theory that Philadelphia and Baltimore were relatively nearer to the western centres than New York. Boston, however, which was farther away by two hundred miles than New York, was given the same rate. On east-bound freight the theory upon which the discriminations were made against New York was, that the ship charters from and to New York were lower as compared with the other seaboard cities. This, however, on examination, proved untrue. Upon this state of affairs being made apparent, the chamber of commerce, as well as the board of trade and transportation, took up the question of railroad discriminations, and in a report published by the chamber of commerce in 1878, it appeared that during a considerable part of January of that year, the rates over the New York Central, the Erie and the Grand Trunk roads, were from Boston to Chicago from thirty-five to forty cents a hundred. From Boston to Chicago salt was shipped at fifteen cents, while forty-five cents was the lowest rate from New York. From Philadelphia to Chicago the rates during the same dates were made as low as seventy cents on first-class goods, while during the same period the rates were maintained at a dollar from New York to Chicago. The lower classes were relatively as high. The committee reported that goods stored in New York were shipped to Boston to be forwarded to the west through New York over the Erie road, or via the Boston 8 Albany over the New York Central road, at a saving of almost 50 per cent. over direct shipments from New York. Through freights from Liverpool to Chicago, fourth class, were as low as twenty to twenty-five shillings per ton, while the rates remained from Liverpool to New York forty to forty-five cents per hundred pounds, equivalent to about thirty shillings per ton. These facts were brought to the attention of the railway presidents, and their aid was solicited to remove the discriminations against New York. They made a contemptuous answer, Mr. Vanderbilt more especially drawing attention to the facilities offered by other cities to their railroad corporations, and claiming that the New York Central had not the same facilities offered to it by the municipal government, and that the merchants should use their influence upon the municipality to extend the facilities afforded the railway corporations in like manner as facilities were extended to the Pennsylvania railroad by Philadelphia, and to the Baltimore 8 Ohio railroad by Baltimore. A commissioners' bill, which had been drawn, was, for four successive years, submitted to the legislative committees of the state of New York for action, but in almost every instance it had either been reported upon adversely, or, if reported favorably, had, through the influence of the railway companies, been smothered in one or the other of the houses.

—Finding redress impossible through the voluntary action of the corporations themselves, the chamber of commerce, through its committee on transportation, therefore determined to lend its aid to procure the establishment of a railroad commission for the state of New York.

—Besides the grievances before referred to, another, of an extremely burdensome character, which affected the people of the state at large, also existed at that time. Between 1875 and 1877 the great railway corporations entered into an active railroad war, and in consequence of the resulting freight rates, cereal products and flour were frequently carried by the companies at a loss from the west to the seaboard. That loss might possibly have financially ruined the railway corporations of the state had a corresponding reduction been made in their local tariff; but to recoup this loss on through rates, they maintained, as to the local shipper, rates which under such circumstances became extortionate; thus making the people of the state bear the burden, through the exactions of the local tariff, of the trunk line war, in the same manner as though the state were at war and levied a tax upon its inhabitants to maintain it. This discrepancy between through and local tariffs led to the practical abandonment of milling at the great flouring centres of the state of New York, such as Rochester and Black Rock. It was impossible for them to maintain competition against the Minneapolis miller who had his cereals produced at his door and had the flour carried to New York at twenty cents a hundred, when they were compelled to pay more than that for the mere carriage of the wheat to their mills, and a higher absolute rate for the carriage of the product of their mills to the seaboard.

—The grazing and cattle interest of the western part of the state suffered in consequence of the low rates of carriage from the western country of cattle on the hoof, and a destruction of interests took place to such an extent that grazing and cattle raising became a non-remunerative occupation solely by reason of discriminating freight rates against the western part of the state. These subjects were taken up and agitated by the state grange organizations and the farmers' alliance, who joined hands with the chamber of commerce and board of trade and transportation in insisting upon some remedial measure against such discriminations.

—Another abuse, which, however, was carried to its extreme limit by the New York Central railroad company, gave additional ground for complaint. This abuse was the entire abandonment of any fixed schedule of tariff rates for local traffic. There was a tariff of rates which existed only for the unwary shipper who made his shipment on the assumption that all shippers were treated alike, and he was punished for his want of knowledge by being compelled to pay extortionate rates. A special rate, which was entirely personal to the particular shipper, was made almost invariably, on application, by the freight manager of the New York Central railroad exercising his discretion to make it as he saw fit. At the time when a legislative investigation was ordered, there were in existence on the line of the New York Central railroad upward of 6,000 different contracts varying in the most arbitrary manner the published schedule rate for the carriage of local freights. Underlying these special rates there was neither principle based upon car loads or train loads as contradistinguished from single packages, nor upon extent of business or readiness of handling, nor any other well-known basis of railway management. They were granted as the caprice, the whim or the interest of the railway freight agent dictated at the hour. The charge that such discriminations and special rates existed, when made to the legislative committee appointed in 1879, was at first flatly denied, but within the first few days of the investigation which followed, and to which reference will presently be made, it was overwhelmingly proved.

—Public opinion had become so agitated upon the subject that at last all the opposing influences of the railways in the assembly were overcome. An investigation of the railway system of the state of New York was ordered by the legislature of 1879, and a committee appointed to investigate the abuses alleged to exist in the management of the railroads of the state of New York. This committee was composed of A. B. Hepburn as chairman, H. L. Duguid, James Low, William L. Noyes, James W. Wadsworth, Charles S. Baker, J. W. Husted, and Thomas F. Grady. The committee invited the chamber of commerce and board of trade and transportation, which had made the charges upon the basis of which the committee was acting, to appoint counsel to conduct the examination, and stated that the committee would give to such counsel standing before it by substantially adopting him as the counsel of the committee. Under this invitation the chamber of commerce and the board of trade and transportation appointed the writer of this article as its counsel to conduct the investigation, and then during a period of eight months the investigation proceeded in the taking of testimony and the preparation of its report.

—Prior to the appointment of this committee a great change had taken place in the management of the great trunk lines in their relation to the public. Mr. Fink—who had been the vice-president of the Louisville 8 Nashville railroad, and who was commissioner or chairman of the committee of the Southern railway and steamship association, which was comprised of twenty-five railroads, and who by a pooling arrangement of freights in the organization of that association had substantially stopped railroad wars and competition among them, and the success of whose management had drawn attention to his executive ability—was invited by the railroad magnates of the east to organize, upon the plan of the Southern railway and steamship association, an organization to keep the peace and maintain rates for the trunk lines centring at New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore. Down to that period of time every attempt to create a "joint purse," as it is called in England, or a "pool," as it is termed in the United States, by which, to prevent railway wars, the proceeds of freight charges were divided between the railway companies, had proved fruitless. Scarcely was the ink dry on the contract made between the railway presidents before each particular railway company attempted, in one way or another, to break away from the contract thus made. So little under control were some of the freight agents, that even if the railway presidents desired to maintain the contract in its integrity, they found it impossible to control the various freight lines doing business over their own roads, and the contracts were broken almost as soon as made. Thereupon, in June, 1877, Mr. Fink was appointed commissioner of the four trunk lines, the Baltimore 8 Ohio, the Pennsylvania, the Erie, and the New York Central 8 Hudson River railroads. In December, 1878, he was further appointed commissioner of the combined trunk lines of the western roads. A contract was made, by which, in addition to the agreement as to regular tariffs, each railroad corporation agreed to accept a certain percentage of all the freight that was offered, and to send to the other lines which had a deficiency whatever surplus was offered to it, in consideration of which it was likewise to receive from the other line its own deficiency. Substantially it was then agreed as to west-bound freight, and subsequently as to east-bound freight, that the roads were to be operated with reference to traffic as though they were one corporation, and Mr. Fink, as a commissioner, was to see to it that this arrangement was faithfully carried out. He had supplied him a large staff of clerks to make these equalizations from time to time. A further development of this principle was the appointment of arbitrators, three in number, to determine disputed questions. The system has certainly resulted, first, in maintaining rates, and secondly, in stopping railroad wars between the contracting parties. A railroad war, while, on the one hand, great demoralization in business by the element of uncertainty in commercial transactions caused by the absence of a certain rate, vastly more expensive in its ultimate results than the higher rate for freight.

—The all but unanimous report of the investigating committee appointed in 1879 was made after an exhaustive inquiry, contained in five closely printed volumes of testimony. This committee, in summing up the condition of railroad management as they found it in the state of New York, pass in review the various abuses which have grown up under the management of these great highways by private corporations without responsibility to the state. They refer to the evil of the drawing room or sleeping car companies, which, by their contracts with the railroad companies, create a special interest that diminishes the return of the shareholders of the railroad companies. They speak of the fast freight lines and express companies as now conducted as free from evil. They condemn the methods by which the stock yards at the terminal points of the railways are let out to individuals, and speak of this as an instrumentality which is usually attended with additional taxes upon transportation. They consider the suborganizations of railways in the way of coal companies and elevator associations, which are designated as barnacles upon commerce, as organized for the purpose of tolling the commerce of that port (Buffalo) to the greatest possible extent. On alluding to watered stock the committee refers to the fact that it was proved before them, that $40,000,000 was probably the whole value of the property and equipment of the Erie Railway company, and that $25,000,000 more would cover all the additional value of the road, as represented by stock and bonds and interests in other corporations, while it was capitalized at about $155,000,000; that its construction account covered in 1873 an item of "legal expenses" of $891,000; and that the watering of the stock of the Erie railway, as well as its bonds, is estimated by them to be not less than $70,000,000. They proceeded to examine the accounts of the New York Central railway. They found that in 1853 the stocks and bonds of the roads which at that time formed the various links of the chain of consolidation thus effected, amounted to a total of $23,000,000, and that at the time when the first consolidation was effected, premiums, or, in other words, water, to the extent of almost $9,000,000, were given to the stockholders and shareholders of these various roads. From 1868 to 1870, by the consolidation of the New York Central and Hudson River railroads, over $44,000,000 was added to the combined capital of both the Hudson River and the New York Central roads, by stock dividends of 80 per cent. on the New York Central road in 1868, and 85 per cent on the Hudson River road.

—The committee pass in review local questions, which it is not necessary to enter into here, on the subject of the terminal facilities and the injustice done by the discriminations against New York by the arrangement of discriminating rates, and then they touch upon the abuse fully developed before them, connected with the Standard oil company.

—It appeared by the testimony submitted, that on Jan. 8, 1872, the Central, Erie, Lake Shore and Pennsylvania roads made an agreement with the South improvement company, a Pennsylvania corporation, giving to the improvement company, on shipment of oil to different points, rebates ranging from forty cents to $3.07 a barrel. The agreement provided that its object was to maintain the business of the South improvement company against loss or injury by competition, and that the roads would lower or raise the gross rate of transportation over their respective railways and connections, to such an extent as might be necessary to overcome all competition.

—When the agreement became public, the legislature of Pennsylvania was compelled by public opinion to vacate the charter of the corporation. A more ingenious and secret agreement, however, was subsequently made with the Standard oil company, by the railroad corporations, securing to that corporation the objects which were intended to be secured to the South improvement company. This company, originally composed of a few enterprising oil men of the western states, gradually absorbed into its management the Standard oil company of Cleveland, the Standard oil company of Pittsburg, the Acme oil company of New York, the Imperial oil company of Oil City, the Atlantic refining company of Philadelphia, Charles Pratt 8 Co. of New York, the Devoe manufacturing company of New York, J. A. Bostwick 8 Co., and Messrs. Rockfeller, Day, Flagler, Warden, Frew 8 Co., and others.

—This combination against the remainder of the trade, now banded together under the name of the Standard oil company, is characterized by the committee as a flagrant violation of every principle of railroad economy and natural justice. It resulted in driving out of business nearly all competitors, and enabled the Standard oil company to purchase, at such rates as they saw fit, the refineries distributed over the United States which they desired to control either for the purposes of manufacturing or to dismantle. This threw the production, distribution and refining of oil into the hands of a single corporation, to the extent, estimated at that time, of 95 per cent. of the whole product. In this regard the committee say, that from January to October, 1879, the total shipments from the oil regions to all points were 12,900,240 barrels, and that all shipments to the seaboard would have easily borne one dollar more per barrel than they did (the rate then being about twenty-five cents a barrel); that, tested by the charge which the roads imposed upon every other commodity, it should have borne that much more; and that all the trunk lines have grown into such relations with this oil company that they were forced to forego all these millions they might have earned, and compelled to look to the other products of the country for their revenues; thus burying their own interest in the interest of the Standard oil company, and joining in this war of rates to protect the latter against injury by competition.

—The attention of the committee had been drawn to the evils connected with the proxy system, by which railways were captured by the mere purchase of voting power from persons, mainly bankers, in whose names large amounts of stock were registered, but which had been sold and distributed to their customers, and were left on the stock books of the companies, standing in their names, simply for prudential reasons. This situation gave to such persons a large voting power in the railway without a substantial interest or stake in the result of the vote. To persons who desired to capture the road, it was a strong temptation to purchase such voting power; and, to persons who had no permanent interest in the road, it was a corresponding temptation to sell the power, the evil effects of which sale they were not called upon personally to bear. The committee, therefore, recommended the passage of a bill to remedy this abuse.

—The committee likewise condemned the system of the reports to the state engineer and surveyor, and then passed under review the system of special rates, which was founded upon no other basis than the arbitrary will of the freight agent in giving individual shippers, located in the same town, rates varying as much as thirty cents a hundred. The committee investigated the theory that had been advanced by all the railroad experts of "charging a traffic what it will bear." Of this they said, that, "as to an increase of from fifteen cents in August to forty cents in November on grain, the rate was raised simply because the condition of the market warranted it, and the product could bear it. It would be difficult to make a criticism upon that raise which public judgment would sustain, but we are distinctly told that public interest plays an insignificant rôle in the theatre of railroad management. It is at best but a service waiting upon the interest of the stockholders. The wrong consists in exercising a censorship over the business affairs of the community; secretly, arbitrarily and unequally varying rates, building up this, developing that; not only performing the proper functions of transportation, but taking into consideration the probable or possible profit of a shipment, and adjusting their rates accordingly. If the shipper is likely to make a large profit, they compel him to divide; if the margin is a close one, they determine whether the shipment shall be made or not, whether it shall result in a profit or loss. Thus, under this system of management and this method of giving rates, is every merchant, every manufacturer, every shipper, and, through them, every individual along the 5,500 miles of railroad in this state, with its five hundred millions of capital, measurably in the power of these corporations. Conciliate their good will, court their favor, and favorable rates will follow; incur their hostility, and the margin of their displeasure may be read on your freight bills."

—The committee speak of the enormous political influence which is wielded by corporations having in their employ, in 1879, upward of 30,000 voters. They speak also of the contemptuous disregard exhibited by the railroad corporations of the state to the milling interest, in April, 1879, when they answered a temperate statement of grievances by saying, "that the first condition of having them listened to was to retract their signatures from a certain circular, dated March 15, 1879," in which these grievances were stated in moderate terms, and "to withdraw their support from a pro rata freight bill, which was then before the assembly."

—The committee conclude their analysis of the testimony with the citation of the Shoelkopf 8 Matthews agreement, whereby the New York Central railroad bound itself to carry to New York, for these millers situated at Niagara Falls, at a pro rate of the through east-bound rate on grain or flour, whatever it may be, which enabled these millers to maintain their mill in full operation while their neighbors were going out of business simply because they had not as favorable a contract. The contract appeared to have been made for five years, and was to be valid on condition that it was to be kept secret. Personal discrimination could no farther go than was illustrated in that case.

—This investigation proved conclusively that every charge that had been made against the railway corporations by the commercial bodies of the state was under-stated rather than over-stated; that these great trusts had fallen into the hands of persons who exploited them for their personal benefit solely; that the public was only in so far regarded as any tyrant would regard the public; that it was dangerous to exasperate them too much; and that as freight charges are in the nature of taxes, if you want a continuous revenue from taxation, it must stop short of confiscation.

—The recommendations of the committee, therefore, were embodied in bills which embraced, in substance, the commission bill which, with some slight modifications, had been previously drafted at the request of the board of trade and transportation; a bill upon the subject of railway proxies, railway consolidations and stock waterings; a bill to regulate the transportation of freight by the railroad corporations, so as to prevent unjust discriminations; and a bill to insure a uniform system of accounts and a different system of reports.

—Of these bills, the one to create a board of commissioners became law; likewise the one, with considerable modification and amendment, upon the subject of proxy voting; also the one which prescribed a different method of rendering accounts. The other bills failed of adoption.

—During this period, the valuable reports on internal commerce, issued by Mr. Joseph Nimmo, chief of United States bureau of statistics, aided considerably in creating an enlightened public opinion on the relations of the railways to the state, and the part that they perform in the movement of the commerce and development of the industry of the nation.

—The New York commission bill was passed, and Gov. Cleveland, as one of his first acts after his installment into office, appointed Messrs. Kernan, O'Donnell and Rogers commissioners. The bill authorized the chamber of commerce, the board of trade and transportation, and the anti-monopoly league, to nominate one of the commissioners to the governor; and Mr. O'Donnell was so nominated by two of the three bodies, and the governor, under the bill, made the appointment.

—By the establishment of this commission, the long struggle between the railways of the state of New York and the people was brought to a close, favorably to the people. A body was now interposed, with power somewhat similar to that of the Massachusetts commission, between the people and the powerful railway corporations, clothed with authority for searching and continuous investigation and, in all probability, that body will prove to be a permanent one. The sense of responsibility in the performance of the task, together with the natural aptitude of intelligent men to grow to the work they have in hand, will, in time, make this commission a valuable aid to proper legislation. The important interests constantly connected with the subject committed to their care, will cause the work of the commission to be carefully watched, and the strong temptations that are placed in the way of these commissioners, in consequence of the enormous wealth and power of one of the parties constantly before it, will inevitably cause the commission to act with prudence, for the purpose of shielding themselves against suspicion.

—During the same years, other states had parallel experiences with struggles for the appointment of railroad commissioners. There are now in existence fourteen railroad commissions in the various states of the Union, whose business it is to supervise and investigate, if not control, the railroad corporations within the state; to report such amendatory laws as in their opinion are necessary for the purpose of correcting the abuses incident to railroad management; and to cause actions to be instituted to prevent either violations of charter limitations or violations of the rights of shippers or passengers, which may be brought to their notice.

—During the last five years, efforts were made in the United States congress to create a board of railroad commissioners for the United States, to exercise over all the railway corporations doing an interstate business the same kind of supervision and control as is exercised by the various state commissions over corporations chartered by the several states. Almost pari passu with this at tempted reform, an annual effort is made in congress to regulate interstate commerce, without the intervention of a commission, in the passage of a freight bill, in the nature of a pro rata bill, containing anti-discrimination clauses. Thus far, the advocates of the two measures have opposed each other, and no good results will probably be accomplished until the friends of federal legislation agree upon a commission bill, as the entering wedge to such legislation as should properly be passed by the United States, for the purpose of making this enormous interest, in the aggregate more powerful than any single state organization, amenable to the better concentrated public power, as represented in the United States congress. The railroad corporations, organized by the states, have thus far resisted, at every step, every attempt to make them amenable to federal legislation. Although many of these corporations derive their charter powers from several states, and substantially run cars over the territory of half the Union, they nevertheless insist that they are amenable only to such states as have granted them their charter privileges, and that the United States congress can not properly exercise any control over them. The necessity of the case, as well as sound logic, fights against their cause; and the time is not far distant when all the people of the United States, as represented in the general government, must take in hand the railway corporations of the United States, concentrated as they now are in power by becoming more and more under the control of a few leading minds, who can be gathered together in a single room of a private gentleman's house, and, for weal or for woe, can, and do, more materially affect the welfare of the people of the United States than can any representative body which has been organized in any of the states of the Union, or under the federal constitution. It is, therefore, not a figure of speech to say that an imperium in imperio has grown up in the community, which, by combination and concentration of power, is more powerful than the community, and that the question of making it amenable to the general powers of the government is no longer one of expediency, but one of prime necessity.

—This brings us to a consideration of some of the general questions, which are as yet unsolved problems, with reference to the government of railways, either by the state or by private management.

—The general result of investigation upon the question of railways within the past fifteen years, in the United States, and the development that has taken place, both in railway construction and in many of the evils incident to railway administration, have modified both public opinion and the opinion of experts who are not blinded by personal interest, on the subject of the extent to which competition is a regulator of the price of service in railway transportation. It went hard for the free trader to surrender his faith in competition, and to admit that it is not a universally applicable principle. It has now been ascertained that, notwithstanding the enormous progress of railway construction in the United States within the past thirty years, railways can never be multiplied to such an extent as to make them compete in the same sense that grocers, butchers, hatters and shoemakers compete. They will be at war for a time, and then comes a long period of peace, when the railways work under combination even at competitive points. It is difficult to tell whether the war is not more injurious than the peace, so far as public interests are concerned. When there is competition between rival hatters, customers are treated alike at one or the other shop in the purchase of the commodity they want, and even if they were not so treated, no great harm would be done. A railway war is generally carried on secretly for a considerable period of time before open hostilities begin. Railways, in vying with each other, seek to obtain the more important customers from each other, and make concessions to larger shippers, which they are not ready to make to the smaller men. This instantly gives to the larger shipper so great an advantage in addition to that which he already has by reason of his greater capital over the smaller man in the same line of trade, that the smaller dealer does his business at a loss; he discovers that his formidable rival can offer goods at prices with which he can not compete, and he is frequently driven out of business or into bankruptcy by reason of a secret advantage which his stronger competitor has in transportation rates. Thus monopoly breeds monopoly, and centralization of business is built up, not by greater natural aptitude, but by injustice and wrong. Even during periods of railway peace these advantages are frequently got and maintained by the more formidable shipper for the purpose of tying him to a particular railway, with the mischievous tendency to make the poor poorer and the rich richer. This personal system of tariffs produces absolutely the same effect as unequal taxation. As the beneficial results of competition are not obtained by duplicating lines such additional routes are an evil rather than a good. The large expenditure of capital in creating the duplicate line might have been saved, since but very few railway corporations in the world have their road bed taxed to their maximum capacity. The existence of the new line built for competition is in reality an investment of an enormous amount of capital to divide the traffic which the existing line is perfectly competent to carry, and results in the traffic being done at a very much greater expense for fixed charges than if the existing road had added to its rolling stock facilities and had been permitted alone to accommodate such traffic. When peace is made, rates are fixed so high as to afford a reasonable expectation of a return upon a very large amount of capital unnecessarily expended in the building of so-called rival lines. This has led to the general conviction, that, for economizing capital and producing, through these instrumentalities of commerce and of trade, the maximum result for the benefit of society, it would be better were we to start de novo; and instead of dealing with existing conditions, to transfer to a corporation a definite field for its operations, under strict supervision of its tariff rates, and to stipulate that the corporation shall not be interfered with as to the field so long as it keeps down its rate to a certain percentage of profit. At almost every western point, whether in Colorado, Utah or Arizona, we find railway corporations just constructed, and who operate upon their roads two or three trains a day all included, threatened with rival enterprises, which propose to divide between them the little traffic that there is, and to destroy the profitableness of the capital investment in the original line, so that in the end the business divided between them, at extortionate rates, is not sufficient to pay for operating expenses and fixed charges on both capitalizations. But we are not now called upon to deal with this question de novo, as railway development in the United States has proceeded to a point to make assignments of fields almost impossible of accomplishment through the instrumentality of legislation. The railway companies themselves are beginning to discuss the expediency, as a matter of self-preservation, of coming to some agreement as to fields between them. This, however, will be extremely difficult to accomplish by voluntary action. However faithfully existing railroad corporations adhere to an agreement not to invade each other's field, the absence of legislation holding the railway corporation to a strict accountability as to charges within the field with reference to which it by common consent thus obtains a monopoly, makes such an agreement one that the courts would probably declare void as against public policy, and it would, in reality, in the absence of such supervision and control, be a conspiracy against the public. That the railway corporations already discuss these questions, and begin to regard the occupation of a field as a right arising from the circumstances of the case in favor of the particular railway occupying it, is an indication that the railways themselves have abandoned all pretense of competition in the same sense in which that term is understood in private enterprises. The practical consolidations rapidly proceeding under the commissioner-ships such as that of Fink's, will tend somewhat toward the solution of this problem, because it will enable the government to deal with these corporations upon the basis of their dealing with each other, and at some day or another to practically appoint fields to conglomerate bodies of railway corporations in following out the line traced by their voluntary action.

—One of the peculiarities of railway competition is, that the unsuccessful competitor in a railway war, driven to insolvency, unlike the unsuccessful competitor in mercantile life who is driven into insolvency, is not thereby driven out of the market. The insolvent corporation becomes in many respects a menace to the solvent corporation more formidable than it was in its solvent condition. It begins, in railway parlance, to "run wild" after its insolvency, being exonerated from paying interest upon bonds, or dividends upon stock. Being required to earn simply operating expenses, it carries on a war of rates with a recklessness that threatens to break the solvent corporation fighting it into the same condition of insolvency. Therefore, during the active railway war of 1875-7, carried on between the New York Central, the Erie, the Baltimore 8 Ohio and the Pennsylvania railroads, the more favorably placed New York Central railroad did not dare to carry the war to a point which would drive its adversaries into insolvency, lest the insolvency of the Baltimore 8 Ohio railroad, and possibly of the Pennsylvania railroad, might threaten the solvency of the New York Central. The motive and the facility for combination are so great that combination will almost invariably take the place of competition; and railway managers and legislators must now recognize as a fact that the railways are not and can not, without the interference of government, be subjected, within any period of time about which we need give ourselves any concern, to the law of competition to that degree that we may look for the same results as in other departments of human activity, with any confident expectation of maximum results to society at minimum expense. The natural law of competition being inapplicable, the question of governmental interference, therefore, resolves itself simply into one of degree: how far is it expedient to regulate railways by the public? and that depends very much upon other questions to which in this country we can not shut our eyes.

—As political machinery has, by a vicious party system which by no means can find its complete corrective in the rules of civil service reform, more and more insidiously divested the people of self-government within the past generation, we are in a condition in which is presented the question when we speak of governmental control, not whether the railways shall manage themselves, or the people, through the government, shall control their management, but whether the railways, banded together in organizations, having at their head powerful, astute, intelligent and somewhat unscrupulous men, shall, in affairs in which they have a large interest and in which they must pay to public welfare some regard, varying in degree according to circumstances, manage those important trusts, or whether the politicians, equally unscrupulous and astute, but not quite equal in intelligence as banded together in party machinery, shall, in the interest of those political organizations which represent even more remotely the public interests than the railway direction represents them, manage those important trusts for them. There are many important reforms, therefore, in our governmental machinery which must proceed contemporaneously with the transfer of power from the corporation management to public control before we can hope for any great relief from public control as compared with corporate management. It is, therefore, well to proceed slowly even in a proper direction until the machinery of government in the United States shall be emancipated more from the bossism, political corruption and chicanery concomitant and attendant under existing representative and party conditions. It must be admitted that the direction must be toward governmental control, but this imposes upon the people of the United States the duty of making its governmental machinery fit to exercise such control. Neither the state nor federal machinery is as yet in that condition.

—Another important question which must be taken in hand with reference to railway management, is to find some proper-basis for railway charges. The doctrine which now prevails among railway managers, of charging the traffic all that it will bear, the basis upon which its classification as well as its tariff rates depends, is monstrously unjust, and should be radically changed. It is true that the responsibility on the part of a corporation for the carriage of a case of silks is greater than it is when it carries a bale of cotton. But the difference in the rate charged is not based upon the slight premium which would represent an indemnity fund for the losses they might possibly incur by the loss of the package, but the difference is based really upon the supposed profit that the merchant or jobber makes on a case of silk as compared with the bale of cotton, and that he can afford, therefore, to divide with the railway the larger amount in the general result. This makes this service differ from that of any other rendered under competition in society. What regulates prices ordinarily is the cost of production, not benefit to the consumer. The ounce of laudanum that is intended to cure a toothache costs at the store of the druggist the same sum as the laudanum which is to save a life. The use to which the object is to be put, or the benefit conferred upon the consumer, does not affect the price. It is said, in answer to this position, by the railway manager, that he must regard his traffic as a whole, and that, by reason of the greater value of these first-class goods and the higher charge which he can make on them, he is enabled to carry the lowest price goods at a rate at which they can be moved, and that, if he were precluded from charging the higher rate on goods as readily handled, but which are much more valuable in money, he could not carry ores, coal or stone at any such rate as would justify their transportation from place to place. There is force in this position, but not to the extent to which it is claimed, and in that respect intelligent investigation and careful governmental control will have to strike a mean which will be more just than the existing classifications, and so adjust the rates both to consumer and producer as to enable all classes of commodities to be moved without doing injustice to the railway corporation.

—The application of the doctrine of charging what the traffic will bear, substantially makes the railway corporation a special partner, without investment of capital, in every enterprise along its line. The extent to which unscrupulous traffic managers and agents can, for their private emolument, carry this power of enforced copartnership, and that this power is availed of, is exemplified in the fact that on comparatively moderate salaries these traffic managers very often do become men of great fortunes, within a very few years. It is a power to which modern society has known no parallel since the days of the farmers general of France, who, in consideration of a sum total paid into the French treasury during the corrupt regency of the duke of Orleans, and the reign of Louis XV., obtained the privilege of having a section of France farmed out to them to tax at their own will. It is therefore absolutely essential with reference to transportation lines, that without thereby fixing absolute rates, severe penalties shall by legislation be imposed for breach of the public trust for personal ends, and also stringent penalties imposed upon the making of discriminations between persons of the same locality. It is likewise the duty of the public to see to it that some unit, whether car load or train load, be established, upon the basis of which all shippers shall be treated alike, and to place the smaller shipper upon some basis of equality with the larger shipper. The smaller shipper should by law be permitted to avail himself, in combination with other people, of the car load unit.

—Maximum charges have, in the experience of England, been found to be almost universally useless. The economies in railway traffic arising from steel rails, improved roadbeds, better gradients, the greater power of engines, reduced rates of fuel, and through lines obviating breaking of bulk, have been so great within the past fifteen years that any fair rate at one period of time becomes at any other period so excessive as to cease to be a criterion. Maximum rates, therefore, when fixed, must be so arranged as to be under the supervision of some tribunal commanding public confidence and authorized to exercise such supervision, and to be from time to time registered upon a lower scale with reference to cost of traffic.

—A serious grievance in relation to American railway administration arises from railway tariffs being secret, and subject to sudden changes or modifications. No tariff of transportation rates should be permitted to be changed, except upon previous notice of a considerable period of time. Even the lowering of a tariff rate produces at the outset as much financial and commercial disturbance as the raising of it does. It is said that the knowledge obtained by the officers of the Standard Oil company in 1880, that the tariff rates on oil would be suddenly increased by the railroad corporations, gave to that combination a profit of several millions of dollars. Whether true or not, is immaterial. It is possible for special favored private interests to be informed secretly of an intended sudden change of tariff on an important commodity. In consequence of that information, which necessarily changes the price of that commodity at the point of delivery or at the point of shipment, the making of a purchase or a sale in advance, based upon that knowledge, gives absolute certainty of a large profit, which is so much wrested from those who do not know it. This is an advantage which should not be permitted to remain in the hands of railway administrators to make use of, either for personal ends or for the benefit of friends as they may see fit. A law, therefore, providing with great stringency that all tariffs shall be published for at least six months in advance, and that no modifications thereof shall be permitted during that time, is a necessity to avoid this mischief. Tariffs also should be published at every station, with classifications, so that every man doing business with the railway corporation should be permitted, at a glance, at every station either of delivery or of receipt, to compare his freight bills with the published tariff rates, and see to it that he is fairly treated. Every deviation from the tariff to a favored shipper should result in imposing upon the railway corporation that allows such a deviation the payment, to every other shipper. of a rebate based upon the lowest shipment made. This penalty would be so severe that there would be no longer any favored shippers, and it is right that it should be so, because, of all evils incident to American railway administration, that of personal favoritism has been the most shameless and the most mischievous.

—Another problem presented by the existing condition of the railways in the United States, is that which arises from secrecy of management. This evil must be dealt with radically. One of the prime motives for secrecy of management is the enormous advantage which at the present day it gives to the managers in the maintenance of their power. They alone know where the stockholders are to be found, and can therefore control votes by the knowledge of how to reach or buy them, thus perpetuating their control. Another motive is the advantage thus afforded for stock speculations. The board of managers, by keeping unto themselves the knowledge that their property is losing heavily in comparative traffic, can sell their own holdings and go short of the market, under circumstances which will yield them an absolute certainty of profit on the transaction. This gives them an enormous advantage over the community by depleting the pockets of the unwary, who find themselves saddled with stocks at high prices, bought months in advance of the public announcement that the road is in difficulties. The knowledge of rapid gains in the development of business likewise gives, so long as it can be kept secret, a like advantage in purchase of stock. This advantage has been exploited to such a degree in the United States that the investing public has become inspired with a general distrust for railroad stock investments.

—In the states of the Union and in the United States the existing condition of legislation which gives the absolute control of corporate enterprises into the hands of majorities of stock, and which gives to such stock equal weight, lends itself to this species of management, and places the stockholders' interest, as well as the public, at the mercy of this class of railway directors. The majority of the holders of record at the time of the closing of the books of a corporation, have, at the annual election, the power to elect the whole board of directors. As much of the stock of great railway lines in the United States is held abroad, and is not transferred on the books to the actual owners of the property, but remains registered in the names of the persons who had long before parted with all interest therein, there is, at the time of the closing of the books in a great many of these railroad corporations, a large fictitious holdership, ranging from one-half to one-eighth of the whole capital stock holding interest, and this fictitious holding frequently controls such election. Who are fictitious and who are true holders are, as a general rule, approximately known to the directors. The directors, therefore, can sell their real holdings at high prices, and can purchase at low prices the fictitious holdings or power to wield proxies, and thus, for the purpose of depleting the road, capture the railway, in which neither they nor the constituency that elected them, have a substantial interest. This evil also can be remedied by legislation. Severe penalties should be imposed upon any one, having no interest in the corporation, offering to vote, or voting, either personally or by giving a proxy to vote, at any election of directors of such corporation.

—The severest blow, how ever, which could be dealt to corporate mismanagement, would be the rigorous introduction of minority representation in boards of direction, which would make secrecy of management, as against the interest of shareholders, substantially impossible, and would prevent the possibility of the recurrence of some of the worst abuses which characterize their administration. Suppose twenty directors were to be elected, the reform would consist in allowing each section of one-twentieth of the stockholding interest to elect one director, by accumulating their votes upon a single name, or by distributing their votes for one or more, as they may see fit. This is the cumulative plan. Another is the preferential or list plan, in allowing each twentieth part of the constituency to elect one director, by preferences indicated on a ballot, in the order of the names as printed. When the first name has a quota sufficient to elect him, i.e., one-twentieth of the votes cast, the ballot is counted for the second name, and so forth. The result of this system of minority representation would be to make of the board of direction a reduced photograph of the whole constituent body, and make it impossible to capture an organization like a railway from the actual owners thereof. Any one of the numerous plans suggested for securing minority representation, if applied to corporate management, would successfully accomplish that result. The objection which has been urged to the adoption of minority representation in public representative bodies, has no validity to corporate elections, as in corporations neither localities nor persons are supposed to be represented, but pecuniary interests only. It would better secure fair representation than does the English system of diminished value of votes in proportion to stock holders' interests, i.e., one vote for every share up to ten, an additional vote for every five others beyond the first ten, and one vote for every ten beyond one hundred shares; or the classification plan, by which only a few directors of the whole retire each year; minority representation would give permanency in management, and prevent the swamping of the interests of the smaller shareholders.

—Pro rata tariffs are the refuge of people of little thought on the subject of railway management. It is fair that for the haul or for the car load alone there should not be permitted a higher rate for the shorter distance than for the longer, as it is manifestly unjust artificially to wholly wipe out and even to reverse the advantages of proximity to the market; but to arrive at anything like a just conclusion on this subject, it will be necessary for the railways themselves, or through legislation to be compelled, to make a distinction in their freight rates between what they charge for terminal handling and what they charge for the haul. The terminal handling at a great market is effected on so large a scale that it can be done at very much lower rates for each particular package than the terminal handling at a way station. The cars are more likely to be filled than they are at way stations, so that a perpetual difference must exist in favor of the facilities of commerce which the great centres of activity produce. This would be represented by lower terminal charges for places like New York, Buffalo and Chicago, than at the small way stations or small hamlets along the line. And the haul would be proportionately much less, and justly so, from extreme points of concentration of freights to extreme points of market, because the whole train loads would go unbroken straight through. On the other hand, it should not be permitted to be so much less as to invert the situation, and to make the more distant point more favorably situated to the seaboard than the nearer point.

—Pro rata freight rates disregard the laws of commerce in that particular, and must therefore be receded from wherever introduced. On the other hand, we must not be blind to the justification which lies at the root of the demand for pro rata rates, i.e., the unrighteousness of inverting the natural situation, which is ordinarily done under the spur of a railroad war at competitive points, under the effect of which the intermediate localities, which are at the mercy of the monopoly power of the railway, must suffer the burden of the war. This can be remedied only by legislation, but in that particular care must be taken that the legislation shall not go too far, as in doing so it defeats its own ends, because it becomes impracticable to work under it, and the repeal of the law leaves matters worse than before the law was enacted, as the unsuccessful law is used as an argument against the expediency of any law on that subject.

—A director found speculating in the stock of his own road, either by purchase on margins or sales on margins, should be severely punished. The temptation to sacrifice the interests of the road to subserve his stock operations is too great to be permitted to exist. The man who desires to speculate in the stock of his own railway should be required first to leave the board of direction; if he fails to do so, he should, on detection, be punished as a malefactor.

—The fictitious capitalization of railroads in the United States is an evil more difficult to deal with. Many motives combine to create such fictitious capitalization. Some are justifiable, others are sinister. Take the case of a mining property. A prospector discovers a silver mine; he sells it for $30,000 to a capitalist in the neighborhood. The property is not developed; the discovery may amount to nothing. It may also be worth millions of dollars. The capitalist, the first investor, spends a few thousand dollars in developing the property, and thereby ascertains that the leads open into a vein within the domain of the lines of the stakes. He has his ore analyzed, and discovers that it yields from sixty to eighty dollars a ton. He thereupon proposes to sell this property, and does sell it to a stock company, who capitalize the property at a million of dollars, pay him a hundred thousand dollars cash, and something less than half the capital stock, and with the remainder of the capital stock, they supply the treasury sufficiently to develop the property. They find some takers on the basis of a million; others on the basis of half a million; others on the basis of a quarter of a million; but, as it is possible that the mine may be worth a million of dollars by capacity to yield sufficiently to pay interest upon such a sum and to return the capital invested within a given period of time, there is no public wrong in such fictitious capitalization, unless it is accompanied by fraudulent pretenses. The injury, if any is done, is limited also. The individual has invested his money at an excessive valuation, and there is an end. Railway corporations are, however, organized upon fictitious capitalization upon a different basis. A line from one point to another, say a distance of a hundred miles, is surveyed. It is ascertained that it will cost about $15,000 a mile to build, including acquisition of land, and about $5,000 a mile to equip; a total of $20,000 a mile. Application is then made for town and county aid, which aid is generally represented by investment in the stock of the road. The first purpose is to give as little as possible in the way of value in return for such money aid, and it is, therefore, necessary to interpose between the stock and the property a sufficient number of mortgages to make the prospective value of the stock of little or no value. A construction company is then organized, which takes the town and county aid as part of its capital, and the railway corporation, instead of making its contract upon the basis of cash, issues to the construction company, say first mortgage bonds of $20,000 a mile, or possibly $25,000 a mile; second mortgage bonds of $20,000 a mile, and stock of an equal sum, making a total capitalization of $65,000 a mile, instead of the $20,000 a mile at which the road could be constructed. The construction company is composed generally, directly or indirectly, of the officers of the road and their friends, who build the road upon the basis of cash obtained by negotiating through bankers the securities represented by the bond issues of the railroad company; they acquire the stock for little or nothing, and also frequently a large proportion, if not the whole, of the second mortgage, and in prosperous times they may succeed in building and equipping the road on the issue of the bonds secured by the first mortgage alone. By this system the road comes into existence laboring under the necessity to earn, over and above operating expenses, interest on a funded debt, about double the cost of the enterprise, and, if possible, to earn dividends on the stock beyond that sum. That this rate of earnings has been accomplished in the United States to a very considerable degree is an illustration of the remarkable development which the country has experienced in every direction during the past twenty years, and is an illustration, likewise, of the enormous growth and progress of all material interests which have taken place; because this mode of stock and bond issue is the all but universal rule with reference to the construction of new lines in the United States.

—The excuse made by railway builders for this course of proceeding is, that upon the basis of an ordinary profit no one would undertake the extremely hazardous task of introducing railways into new territory. The peculiar risks incident to such an enterprise are, that if the traffic fails to come they lose their money, and if the traffic develops they are in imminent danger of being immediately compelled to divide such traffic with some other rival line; that, therefore, they must find the return of the capital and their profit, not in waiting for the development of the business, but in selling bonds and stock to the investing public upon a basis of fictitious value. So long as investors purchase without proper investigation this class of securities, it is difficult to see how they have any ground for complaint; as the mode of manufacturing these securities is sufficiently well known to be a matter of public notoriety. As to the people at large, however, the effect of this fictitious capitalization bears a different aspect. It is true that the cost of a road and its capital account have but little to do with the rate at which it is required to carry to and from a few competitive points. It has, however, very much to do with the fixing of the local rates, and is a constant incentive to increase the rates for the purpose of paying interest and return upon all the capital issues of the road. For the state to interfere and absolutely forbid any false capitalization, which is, in other words, the anticipation in the capital account of the development in time of the traffic, would probably interfere considerably with the undertaking of new railroad building, unless such interference and prohibition are accompanied with some guarantee of the field.

—The two evils, unrestricted competition in railroad building and false capitalization, hang together. Were railway projectors secure that a certain territory would be left in their possession until they could receive back the return of their capital and a reasonable percentage on the outlay, there would be no reason for continuing the incentive to railway construction of false capitalization, so that the promoters can immediately obtain by means of this quasi-fraudulent element a return and profit for the outlay of their money; they could then contentedly wait to receive an adequate return for their money upon the basis of a capitalization bearing a close relation to the actual cost of the construction and its equipment. Justified as is the opposition to stock watering, both on the part of the investor and on the part of the public, the reform of this evil can only then be safely entered upon, so as not to avoid materially checking new railway enterprises, with a concomitant change in the policy of the state governments as well as the national government, recognizing the fact that railway construction should not be left to absolute free competition, but is a trust which should be given with circumspection, and, when given, surrounded, first, with guarantees to the state and to the people that the men who undertake it will faithfully perform their trust, and secondly, with guarantees from the people and the state to the entrepreneurs that they will permit them for a given number of years undisturbedly (under limitations as to charges) to obtain the advantage of the traffic development which their enterprise has created, without incurring the danger of being compelled to divide such traffic with another organization, which takes possession of the developed field, not to render additional services to the public embraced within its line, but simply to take away from and divide the income of the existing road.

—There is no question but that the system is entirely vicious, but it is a system that has its roots in the false path which the public has traveled in relation to railway enterprises by treating them as private enterprises instead of public ones, and therefore has given a basis for the railway speculators point of view, that it is their business, and not the public's business, at what rate they see fit to capitalize their roads; and, as the public gives no care to protect the railway constructor in his enterprise, the railway builder, in his turn, imagines that he owes nothing to the public in that regard.

—Mr. Poor, in his introduction to his Manual for 1883 (and he speaks from the railroad point of view), can not but admit "that the increase of share capital and indebtedness of the railroad companies for the three years ending Dec. 31, 1882, was $2,023,646,842, the average cost per mile of the new roads being in round numbers $70,000." He estimates that the cash cost of all the railroads built in the United States in the last three years did not exceed probably $30,000 per mile, or $900,000,000 in all. He estimates, therefore, that more than half of this enormous capitalization is entirely fictitious. He says, with great frankness, "Of course such an enormous increase of liabilities over cash outlay is to be greatly regretted, and is well calculated to create a distrust of all securities, good and bad." There is an abuse connected with railway administration which requires legislative remedy—the granting of the right of way for telegraphic purposes at the same time with that for railway purposes. With every extension of an old railroad or the building of a new one, the Western Union telegraph company is ready to step in and stretch wires for the new corporation or line, under a contract that the railway company gives to the Western Union telegraph company the exclusive right to maintain the telegraph service to the towns and stations along the line, in consideration of which the railway company can, for its purposes in the management of its road and in the dispatching of its trains, use the telegraph line thus built. This gives to the telegraph line a free right of way; and, as the railway in all territory west of the Mississippi and south of the Potomac is in reality the main line of travel, along the line of which towns spring up and population congregates, it gives to that particular organization an enormous advantage over its competitors and all new organizations, inasmuch as it not only gives the free right of way along the line of the railways, but an exclusive service in connection with the railways. This abuse, which as yet has scarcely attracted public attention, came to the surface only during the recent controversies in relation to the stock waterings and acquisitions of rival properties by the Western Union telegraph company. This is also difficult of remedy without legislation recognizing the monopoly character of railroad and telegraphic enterprises, and should, if permitted hereafter, be allowed only on condition that such field may be secured in consideration either of lower charges to the community, or providing some species of sinking fund by which the community shall ultimately acquire the property.

—This brings us to the final consideration of what is the probable future of the railway question in the United States. The railways now represent an aggregate capital of something approaching $7,000,000,000. A considerable proportion of that total capitalization is in the hands, or largely under the control, of less than one hundred men, who are not the highest type of modern civilized life. After giving them credit for business capacity, shrewdness and intelligence, there are still lacking some elements of character which are created by living up fully at all times to contracts, the basis of the modern social organism. Unlike increase of capitalization in any other business, increased capitalization in railroad enterprises does not increase the number of great capitalists engaged in the business, but has a tendency to decrease them, because amalgamation and consolidation proceed with greater rapidity than extension of mileage. Compared with the power represented by this vast aggregate of capital, the power and the influence of nobility in any civilized community are small.

—One of the arguments in favor of a great national indebtedness at the time when it was in process of growth, was, that, though unfortunate for the country to be compelled to roll up so large a debt, yet it had a counterbalancing good, inasmuch as it interested vast numbers of people in the success of the government and in its stability by the pecuniary interest of the bondholders. As the indebtedness of the United States was, at its very highest, less than one-half of the aggregate capital now represented by the railway interest, it is clear that there is a larger pecuniary interest on the side of the railway to-day, arising from capital investment in its obligations, than there was at any time on the side of the government. Railway capital is now four times the amount of the public debt. In any contest, therefore, between the government and the railway enterprises, it is clear, that, so far as mere pecuniary interests are concerned, the railway enterprises largely preponderate. Adding to this the circumstance of the concentration of this great railway power in comparatively few hands, the extent to which they can corrupt the commonwealths is practically limited only by their will.

—At the time of the institution of the government of the United States and of the various states, European governments were great monopolies in the hands of the few. From the corrupting influence of a like power American statesmen sought to shield the American people. Governmental responsibility and prerogatives of executive power, instead of being centralized, were diffused and split up, and to a large extent sacrificed, for the purpose of creating a larger degree of individual freedom. The governments of the states of the Union were therefore loosely put together, so that public opinion could break through at any point and influence them. Permanent large ownerships of land; titles of nobility, special privileges and great accumulations of capital were guarded against by abolishing the right of primogeniture, of patents of nobility and of accumulations. The corporation was but little extended, because credit was but little developed at the time of the organization of the United States government. Hence it was not observed that some of the evils which were thus carefully intended to be guarded against, such as primogeniture and accumulations, were allowed to come back in more aggravated form through the perpetual existence of the corporation, making a continuous increase of capital accumulations possible through its instrumentality, with the aggravating circumstances, that, instead of those vast properties being in the hands of individuals responsible for their right conduct in their individual capacity, and distributed by the natural process of death into a greater number of portions, the great accumulations and vast possessions of modern times are under the control of boards of directors having less immediate responsibility than the individual to legal influences, and being less governed by considerations of a social character properly to administer their trusts. The United States constitution and the constitution of the states contain provisions against unjust taxation by carefully worded provisions that taxation shall be equal. The amount collected for freight and passenger traffic in the United States by the railways of the United States in 1882 was $770,000,000, an amount double that of the revenues of the United States government. Every dollar of this, as to mode and manner of expenditure, is in the hands of boards of direction, with scarcely any accountability to the public, and but a very remote one to their own shareholding interests.

—In every presidential election for the past twenty years the railway corporations took an important part. In the election of governors in the various states and in the formation of the state legislatures, in influencing appointments of committees, they play a significant rôle, and one which is scarcely any longer disguised. They do this avowedly on the theory of self-protection; but no irresponsible body ever stopped short at self protection, because the power which enables them to protect themselves against aggression is likewise a power which may be wielded in aggressing upon the rights of others.

—The mode and manner of the collection of this revenue is not yet amenable to public control in the United States, and yet the cost of transportation more closely resembles taxation in all its incidents than any other method of receiving return for services in the industrial world.

—When the railway corporations, under the administration of Mr. Fink, in July, 1882, raised their rates on west-bound freight from New York to Chicago, from forty-five to sixty cents per hundred pounds on first class, from thirty-two to fifty cents on second class, from twenty-six to forty cents on third class, and from nineteen to thirty cents on fourth class, every commodity transported from New York to Chicago had this additional tax imposed upon it as part of its cost of production in Chicago, in the same manner as though the government had imposed the tax, and there was little and even less possibility of escaping from that imposition than there is from a governmental tax.

—It is, therefore, of at least as much importance to a community to be fairly and equitably dealt with in its cost of transportation as it is to be fairly and equitably dealt with as to taxation. And unfairness and injustice in the cost of transportation bring about the same disastrous consequences to individuals and to classes as unfair and unjust taxation does. It is indeed, a mild statement of the case to say that the injury inflicted by the unfair cost of transportation is as great as that inflicted by unequal taxation, because the mischievous consequences of unfair or unwise transportation rates are necessarily greater than those that arise from unequal taxation, and dry up, more rapidly than would bad taxing laws, the prosperity of a community. Therefore, by carefully worded constitutional provisions, to protect the community from the evils of oppressive and unequal taxation by government, and then to leave this great and growing power of private taxation without responsibility to government in its administration, is to guard the public against the ravages of the wolf, and to leave it unguarded from the attacks of the tiger. That already the legislative bodies of the states of the Union are as wax in the hands of the modeler under the manipulations of these great corporations, is a truth which, in all the more densely populated states, in the north and the east, the people have been made to feel. How to get back their control, and yet not change it into a control of a very dangerous character, by adding the supervision of the expenditures of the enormous revenues of the railways to the supervision of the enormous revenues of the United States, and of state and local administrations, administered as they are in the main by politicians not much, if any, above the status of the railway magnates, is probably the most serious problem which, since the abolition of slavery, has confronted the people of the United States. There is much keen perception and wisdom in the way Professor Sumner puts the relation of the government to the people in the United States, when he says that the government, in the abstract, is all of us, and, in the concrete, some of us, who, by accident or chicane, obtain control, and those some of us not the best of us, and that, therefore, it always becomes a serious question what these some of us should be permitted to do for all of us. Therefore, no heroic measures can, in the present aspect of political conditions in the United States, safely be entered upon. These very political conditions suggest a possible point of view from which we can regard this powerful imperium in imperio of the aggregated railway corporations as something other than an unmixed evil. The corruption of our political machinery has proceeded almost simultaneously with the growth of the railway corporation. As the basis of civilization, the security of capital is certainly of as much importance to a community as its form of government. Peoples have become civilized, and enjoyed a certain degree of prosperity, under forms of government other than our own. No community can enjoy prosperity, or attain any high degree of civilization, where property rights are not secured. Property protects itself best from aggression, or unjust tribute, when it is congregated under corporate management, in few hands, because it becomes, in its centralized form, capable of wielding a power which the politician is bound to respect. Under the corrupting conditions of existing administrations, it has, perhaps, been one of the modes of preserving property from the grasp of those who, in national, state and municipal governments, represented public power ostensibly, but really represented their personal interests first, and party caucus and boss interests in the second rank. In the long run, however, this condition becomes intolerable. No community can safely pursue its course of happiness and well-being where the actual highest power wielded in the community is not responsible to the people, where its government is a mere simulacrum, and all real power is moulded behind the throne by a moving power. It is just as objectionable if this moving power be a band of railroad directors who move the government, as that it should be the mayor of the palace, a church institution, a cabal of courtiers or loose women. Against such an insidious power the ballot is ineffectual, and even revolution almost hopeless.

—It is, therefore, essential, as a necessary part of the solution of the problem before us, that the people of the United States should awaken to the fact that their methods of legislation and their methods of selecting legislators, their political organization and political administration, must be reformed as well as the railway administration, and that the amenability of railways to the public is very largely dependent upon such reform in political administration. The civil service reform is already a step in the right direction, and its permanent establishment will make thoughtful investigators on current events less fearful of clothing governments, both state and national, with the additional powers necessary to cope with the railway problem. The other more important reforms, however, are those of methods of legislation and representation. (See LEGISLATION, REPRESENTATION.) The people must concede, once for all, that the line of policy as to railway management has proceeded upon a mistake. They must recognize the fact, that in all services, the supply of which is limited to a certain locality, and which, as to such locality, can practically be indefinitely increased without proportionately increasing the plant, there is a monopoly character implanted upon such service, whether it be the supply of ways and means of transportation, of gas, of water, of electricity, or of motive power on some general plan, which takes these enterprises out of the domain of competition, and compels a treatment separate and apart from that of strictly private enterprises. Some modification must be made, limiting the existence of corporations, so that from time to time something analogous to the service that death performs in the individual world shall happen to their accumulations and power. Some plan should be provided, by way of sinking fund, or gradual acquisition by the government, by which enterprises of this character shall in time become the property of the state. Such a plan of compulsory sinking fund to repay capital must, of course, in all cases be accompanied by some guarantee against invasion of the field by other organizations; and, as Mr. Fink observes, in his answer to inquiries of Mr. Nimmo, in his report for 1878, "In the consideration of this subject one important fact should always be kept in view, to-wit, that the effect of the construction of a greater number of railroads than are necessary to accommodate the traffic, is to increase to a great extent, not decrease, the cost of transportation. The interest on the cost of two roads built for the purpose of transacting the business that could be transacted by one, and the cost of maintaining the two roads, are of course twice as much as the interest and the cost of maintaining one road." The interest and cost of maintaining a road, he estimates as from 40 to 60 per cent. of the whole cost of transportation. "It follows, therefore," he continues, "that for every additional road built for the purpose of transacting the business that could be accommodated by the road already built, the cost of transportation is increased from 40 to 60 per cent." This truth borne in mind would enable the government to give practical control of the field, without thereby adding to the cost of transportation. It could at all times annex the condition that no more than a certain percentage of profit shall be earned, and that out of this surplus a sinking fund shall be provided, to repay capital outlay, and that, when the cost shall be repaid, the road shall become public property.

—We are very far yet from this solution. The course which is likely to be run in the United States in regard to the railway problem is the extension of the commissioner system by state legislation and its adoption by the federal government. A mass of light thrown through the investigations of these bodies upon the subject will make matters appertaining to railway administration more generally understood by the people of the United States. And, by the time the railways are ripe for more heroic treatment of the question, the people in all probability will also be ripe to treat it more intelligently, and will have made such progress in the moral development of the administrative machinery of the government that the additional powers to be intrusted to that machinery can safely be to it delegated by the people.

RAILWAY CLEARING HOUSE

RAILWAY CLEARING HOUSE. (See CLEARING, AND CLEARING HOUSES.)

RANDOLPH

RANDOLPH, John, was born in Chesterfield county, Va., June 2, 1773, and died at Philadelphia, May 24, 1833. From 1799 until 1813 he was a democratic congressman from Virginia. After 1801 he was for some years the administration leader in the house; but in 1805 he quarreled with his party (see QUIDS), and for some years he was a free lance, claiming to be a better democrat than the dominant party, and yet opposing the embargo and the war of 1812 in company with the federalists. He was out of congress 1813-15, having been defeated by Jefferson's son-in-law, John W. Eppes, but was again in congress 1815-17, 1819-23 and 1827-9, and in the last interval was United States senator, 1825-7. During a part of the year 1830 he was minister to Russia.

—Randolph's attenuated frame, his shrill voice, his powers of bitter sarcasm, his extraordinary eccentricities of speech, dress and manner, his pride of descent from Pocahontas, and, with it all, his real political power of thought, made him the problem of his own time. He was variously supposed to be crazy, emasculated, or guilty of some enormous secret crime; but he seems to have been only a supremely selfish spirit, loving a few others because they belonged to him, and his selfishness was concentrated into disease as they were taken from him by death.

—See Garland's Life of Randolph; F. W. Thomas' John Randolph; Parton's Famous Americans; 2.5 Harver's Monthly; 103 North American Review.

REBELLION

REBELLION. By rebellion is understood the act of resistance by one or more individuals to lawful authority acting within the limits of its power. Insurgents are those who attack the government with the intent of overturning it, and rebels those who refuse to obey it. It is true that rebellion quickly becomes insurrection. The distinction between them, consequently, exists especially at the beginning, but exact definitions are necessary in political language. Rebellion is, at bottom or in principle, a refusal of obedience, which manifests itself either by violence and assault, or by passive resistance.

—There is no rebellion unless the public force, against which the rebels rise, be acting in the execution of the laws, or of legitimate orders of the authorities or the courts. This is the essential element of rebellion. When peace officers act outside of their right, or exceed their power, resistance is not rebellion. This principle was written in the Roman law (see law 5, of the Code De jure fisci); it was even taught in French law by Jousse (Traité des mat. crim., vol. iv., p. 79). In such a case, the act of the officer is an act of brute force. But the presumption of legality is in favor of the officer, and it is for the person who believes himself to have the right to resist, to show grounds of excuse in justification. And, further, when a public officer acts within the limits of his power, an irregularity of form which clouded his title or acts would not constitute an excuse, because then the officer commits no violence, and at bottom his title and acts are legal. But if, for instance, the officer purposes to make an arrest, except in the case of flagrante delictu, or to effect an execution without a judgment, resistance is an act of lawful defense, provided that it does not go beyond the bounds of strict necessity.

—These are the least serious cases of rebellion. They are what may be said to constitute petty rebellion. Rebellion, in its greatest development, goes much farther than contesting the acts of a police officer; it calls in question the very government whose orders he executes; it raises against the government the same objections, of incompetency, or of exceeding its powers, which we have just supposed in the case of public officers. The same principle, as to the lawfulness of the resistance, must be applied here.

—Rebellion, we have said, may show itself without violence, and be entirely passive. Thus, breaches of certain legal obligations are, in our opinion, acts of rebellion. If the commander of an armed force refuse to cause it to act, though he be lawfully required to do so by the civil authority, he deserves, according to our idea, the title of rebel, quite as much as the wretch who meets a sheriff with a blow from his fist.

REBELLION, The

REBELLION, The (IN U. S. HISTORY). The name rebellion has been retained in this article for the struggle of 1861-5, in preference to that of civil war, which has latterly obtained considerable currency as a milder expression. Whether it was a rebellion or a civil war could only be decided by its result. If it had been successful, it would have decided that the United States had never been a nation in its domestic relations, and the conflict between the states of a voluntary confederacy might very properly have been termed a civil war. As it was unsuccessful, and as the nation maintained its previous and future entity, the logic of events has stamped the struggle as a rebellion by individuals, not a civil war between states. It is true that many of the enactments of congress and of the judicial decisions from 1861 to 1867 can only be explained on the theory that the war was maintained against states: these instances have been collected by Mr. Hurd, as cited below. But they are opposed by more numerous instances to the contrary, and are rather proofs of haste than of a consistent theory or policy. Legally, it may have been a civil war as well as a rebellion; politically, it was a rebellion only. Mr. A. H. Stephens, who regards the struggle as a revolution by which a voluntary confederacy was transformed into a nation, very properly entitles his history of it "A Constitutional View of the War Between the States"; but even he would be compelled to call any similar struggle in the future a rebellion. The name is retained here, therefore, not in any invidious sense, but as one which can not truthfully be avoided. (See NATION, STATE SOVEREIGNTY.)

—It is impossible to date the outbreak of the rebellion exactly. The secession of South Carolina, or of any other state, can not be taken as the date, for it might have been possible for a state to pass an ordinance of secession, refuse to take part in the government, and yet remain peacefully in the Union so long as the execution of the laws was not resisted. The seizures of federal forts, arsenals, mints and vessels in January, 1861, bear far more affinity to a rebellion; and yet these were so irregular and scattered, some of them with, others without, and others disavowed by, the authority of the state, that there seems even yet to have been a locus penitentiœ to the participants. But the organization of the new government at Montgomery (see CONFEDERATE STATES), was a different matter; this was a step which there was no retracing, and with it the rebellion takes a tangible form. From that time there were two incompatible claims to the national jurisdiction of the seceding states, and neither of the two claimants could exist except by forcibly ending the claim of the other. War was a necessity, and the rebellion a fact to be acknowledged.

—The rebellion, however, was not at first acknowledged, nor were instant measures taken for its suppression. The responsibility for this mistake has been concentrated by popular belief upon the head of President Buchanan (see his name), but it is unfair to deny a very large share of it to the politicians of all parties in and out of congress, to their complete ignorance of their constituents, of their associates, and of themselves, and to the inevitable tardiness of action in a republic. Hardly a northern man in congress felt sure of his footing, or felt certain how far his constituents, who were quietly and steadily working at the plow, or in the office, or at the mill, would support him in the hitherto unheard-of measure of "making war upon a sovereign state." And so, through the whole dreary winter of 1860-61, the air of congress was redolent with propositions for compromise; with protestations of belief that the seceding states could never mean it, and that the republic would yet go safely through this crisis; and with appeals to the erring sisters to reason together, to pause a moment, to reflect and see if something may not yet be done; but, so far as preparations to suppress the rebellion were concerned, that congress, on its final adjournment, was as if it had never existed. It is not true that northern politicians hurried the northern people into the war against the rebellion; it is rather true that the uprising of the north and west, after the capture of Fort Sumter, April 13, 1861, educated their politicians as they had never been educated before. A decade before, July 22, 1850, Clay had passionately said of Rhett in the senate, "If he pronounced the sentiment attributed to him, of raising the standard of disunion and of resistance to the common government, if he follows up that declaration by corresponding overt acts, he will be a traitor, and I hope he will meet the fate of a traitor." Unfortunately, it required a popular uprising to bring the average congressman up to Clay's level.

—It is, therefore, almost a waste of space to detail the failures of congress to act in 1860-61. The president suspiciously opened the session with a message which John P. Hale, in the senate, very fairly summed up under three heads: "first, that South Carolina has good cause to secede; second, that she has no right to secede; third, that we have no right to prevent her from seceding." Much of the time of the session was consumed in the consideration of proposed compromises (see, for the principal ones, COMPROMISES, VI.; CONGRESS, PEACE; CONSTITUTION, III., B.), the debates being occasionally interrupted by the farewells and departure of the representatives of the states which seceded without waiting to be conciliated. In the south everything was drifting straight toward war. In Charleston harbor Maj. Anderson, with his force of eighty men, had abandoned Fort Moultrie, Dec. 26, 1860, and established himself in Fort Sumter, a far stronger position, commanding the mouth of the harbor. The same day commissioners from South Carolina to the president arrived in Washington, but he refused to recognize them officially, and they went home again, Jan. 3. Thereafter the state continued to erect batteries at every advantageous point around the fort, and these were strong enough to fire upon, Jan. 9, and drive back the steamer "Star of the West," with provisions for the fort. The confederate government, immediately after its organization, appointed three commissioners to treat with the federal government. These arrived at Washington March 5, and at once opened communication with Seward, the new secretary of state. March 15, Seward refused to recognize them as diplomatic agents of any government, but his reply was not delivered to them until April 8, on which day official notification was sent to Gov. Pickens, of South Carolina, that Fort Sumter would be provisioned at once, and by force, if necessary. On this delay of twenty-three days in delivering the reply, the commissioners based a charge of bad faith against Seward, but it seems to be unjust. Seward seems to have been personally in favor of abandoning Fort Sumter, and the reply was sent only when the rest of the cabinet had persuaded the president not to yield. The notification to Pickens was effectual in one way. Before the relief expedition could reach the fort, it had been summoned and bombarded, and had surrendered.

—Some of the northern states were at least partially prepared for the struggle. In 1857 and 1858 the militia of Ohio had been thoroughly reorganized by Gov. Chase. Gov. Andrew, of Massachusetts, in his inaugural address, in January, 1861, had advised the legislature to put a part of the militia on a war footing, and immediately afterward had sent an agent to Europe to purchase arms, and invited co-operation by Maine and New Hampshire. Jan. 11, the New York legislature voted to offer the whole military force of the state to the government, and five days later the New York city militia formally offered their services to the president. But all these were exceptional instances, and as a general rule the northern and western states were quite unprepared. The president's proclamation, April 15, commanding insurgents to disperse within twenty days, and calling for 75,000 of the militia to secure the execution of the laws in the southern states, met with varying responses. In the south the proclamation was answered by the rapid secession of those states which had hitherto refused to secede, but were opposed to coercion. (See SECESSION.) In the border states, Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, and, probably most important of all, Maryland (see that state), refused to secede, and gradually came over to an acceptance of the idea of coercion. In the north the response to the call for men was instant, and the quotas of the states were filled twice over. One regiment, the Massachusetts sixth, mustered early on the morning of April 16, and reached Washington three days afterward, after the first loss of life in the rebellion, during a street fight with a mob in Baltimore, April 19. The day before, several hundred unarmed Pennsylvania troops had arrived. April 25, troops began to pour into Washington, having made their way around Baltimore, and the capital became, as it remained for four years, an entrenched camp.

—In the meantime, by alternate proclamations of Presidents Lincoln and Davis (see ALABAMA CLAIMS), open war had begun, the latter regarding it as a war declared by the United States against the confederate states, the former as the suppression of a rebellion. The two difficulties which most embarrassed President Lincoln are elsewhere detailed (see INSURRECTION, I.; HABEAS CORPUS); but, besides these, there were others, more serious, if not so annoying. The loss of Harper's Ferry, April 18, involved a loss of very much of the government machinery for making arms. The burning of Gosport navy yard, April 20, almost annihilated the little remnant of the federal navy. The wholesale resignations of southern-born and even northern-born officers in the public service had seriously crippled it, and of those who remained it was impossible to know whom to trust, or to be confident that any given officer would not resign without notice and betake himself to Montgomery. The treasury had been so nearly bankrupted in the preceding December that the robbery of about $1,000,000 from the Indian trust fund in the war department could hardly be made good. An army, navy and treasury were to be evolved out of nothing, by an administration and a people who knew nothing of war, and all was to be done without legal appropriations of money or authorization by law, for congress, by the president's summons, was not to meet until July 4. For this failure to summon the special session for an earlier date, Lincoln has been sometimes severely censured, but it was either very fortunate, or the result of a wise forecast. So late as July there were among the members of congress several, such as Breckinridge and Burnett, of Kentucky, who were with the confederacy in spirit, and were soon afterward with it in the body. The number of such would undoubtedly have been much larger if May 1 had been fixed for the meeting of congress. And, further, congress would have been divided and probably incompetent at the earlier date. A part of its members would have come only to renew the tedious attempts at compromise of the past winter, and a part animated only by the enthusiasm of the Sumter rising; and internal dissension would have had more attention than the public good. As it was, when congress met, the time for conciliation and compromise was evidently past; a sober realization of the enormous task to come had taken the place of the first inconsiderate, and sometimes foolish, excitement; and congress was a homogeneous body, well fitted for the emergency.

—When congress met, the area of the rebellion had been fairly defined. Its northern boundary was an irregular line from the Atlantic to the gulf of Mexico, following the Potomac and the southern boundary of Pennsylvania to the Blue Ridge; then trending southwest through western Virginia and west through southern Kentucky to the Mississippi; thence west through central Missouri to Kansas, and south and southwest to the gulf of Mexico, taking in the Indian territory, whose people had replaced their former treaties by new ones with the confederate states, and Texas. South of this line the whole people was in rebellion, for the sincerest Union men among the local leaders felt bound to obey the final action of the state (see ALLEGIANCE), and the new national government claimed and received the allegiance of the doubtful mass. Within this line the southern states stood in the attitude of a beleaguered fortress, covering an area of more than 700,000 square miles, with a line of investiture of 10,500 miles, and containing within it a population of 8,000,000 whites, 1,400,000 of them fighting men, and 4,000,000 blacks, most of whom remained faithful laborers to the end. The military and naval events of the rebellion need be only briefly summed up here.

—At first the rebellion was to be overthrown by the "anaconda system," if it can be called a system. The line of investiture was to be assailed at every available point, and the rebellion was to be pressed to death. In the east this idea had several important results, only one of which, the blockade, was of any use, if the captures of Port Royal and Hatteras are to be considered as an integral part of the blockading system. Outside of the blockade, without which the rebellion could never have been suppressed, it is very doubtful whether any military operations in the east were ever of any great service, beyond employing a large part of the confederate armies to counteract them. Even if they had been successful in the first years of the war, they could only have had the distinctly evil result of pushing the rebellion, with its natural energies unimpaired, into the infinitely stronger positions of its central territory. In the west the one great object of desire was at first the opening of the Mississippi to the gulf, and this was effected by the capture of New Orleans, April 24-27, 1862, by the capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, July 4 and 8, 1863, and a countless number of subordinate battles. But during this struggle the war had practically been ended, though indirectly, for the enormous wedge of highland east of the Mississippi, running south into the heart of the confederacy, and the natural citadel of the continent, was almost entirely in the hands of the western armies. In November, 1864, Sherman's army, gathered on the southern edge of the great citadel, and, assured of Thomas' ability to master the only confederate army in their rear, had only to choose the direction in which they should pour down upon the plains below and push the rebellion from the mountains to the coast. Thereafter there could be but one object for the officers and men of the confederate armies, to maintain undiminished to the end that high reputation for personal bravery which the national armies have always and cheerfully acknowledged. Lee's surrender took place April 9, 1865, and the first amnesty proclamation of President Johnson, May 29 (see AMNESTY), may be taken as the formal close of the rebellion, though isolated surrenders continued throughout the following month.

—During this long struggle, another was going on at Washington, even more difficult. In the field the general line of success was only developed when the original disadvantages of civil life had worn away, when the original leaders, who fought with one eye on the war and the other on home politics, had been eliminated or forced to subordinate positions, and when the new group of professional soldiers had been developed, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, McPherson, and others, who were for the time absolutely reckless of political and civil considerations, and who knew but one object—war. But at Washington no such development could or ought to have taken place. There politics had to have at least an equal consideration with war, and the difficulties arising from the complication of the two subjects did not cease even with the cessation of the war itself.

—The 37th congress met July 4, 1861. In the senate there were thirty-one republicans and eighteen opposition, ten of the latter being democrats, and eight "unionists," remnants of the old "American party," such as Garret Davis, of Kentucky, and Anthony Kennedy, of Maryland, supporters of the war, and opponents of every interference with slavery. In the house there were 106 republicans and seventy-two opposition, forty-two of the latter being democrats and thirty "unionists." The house voted to consider at this session only bills relating to the military, naval and financial operations of the government; and July 15, by a vote of 121 to 5, it pledged itself to vote any number of men and any amount of money necessary to put down the rebellion. Laws were passed, by heavy majorities, to authorize a loan of $250,000,000, to define and punish conspiracy, to increase the tariff, to appropriate money for the army and navy, to suppress insurrections (see INSURRECTION, I.), to authorize the president to collect the revenue in federal vessels or to close southern ports in case collection was impossible (July 13), to call out 500,000 volunteers, if the president should think so many necessary (July 22), and to confiscate property, including slaves (see ABOLITION, III.), if permitted to be employed against the government (Aug. 6). A resolution to validate and confirm the president's "extraordinary acts, proclamations and orders," his calling out men, blockading southern ports, and suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, failed to pass, but was made the third section of the act of Aug. 6, to increase the pay of the army. (See HABEAS CORPUS.) An important act of the session was the passage of a resolution that the war had been forced on the government by southern disunionists; that it was waged by the government in no spirit of oppression, and for no purpose of conquest, subjugation, or interfering with the rights or established institutions of the seceding states, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the constitution, and to preserve the Union with all the dignity, equality and rights of the several states unimpaired; and that, as soon as these objects were accomplished, the war ought to cease. It passed the house, July 22, by a vote of 117 to 2, and the senate, July 26, by a vote of 30 to 5. (See RECONSTRUCTION.) Aug. 6, congress adjourned, having voted all that the executive had asked for. When it reassembled in December (see CONGRESS, SESSIONS OF), the scattered drops of July had settled down into the heavy and steady storm of war which was to beat upon the country for more than three years to come. From the first day of meeting, it was evident that congress had very considerably changed its views as to the proper mode of dealing with slavery. In both houses a large number of resolutions were immediately introduced, looking toward emancipation, and with them began the course of legislation which ended in the general abolition of slavery. (See ABOLITION, III.; FUGITIVE SLAVE LAWS; WILMOT PROVISO.) These acts were then, and have since been, denounced as in violation of the good faith pledged in the resolution of July 22, above mentioned. That resolution undoubtedly expressed what was then the policy and intention of both congress and its constituents, when the magnitude of the war was not yet apparent, and its interdependence upon slavery was not yet plainly perceived. But a congressional resolution is certainly not a part of the organic law, but a mere piece of legislation open to change or repeal at any moment. Other governments are never reproached for vitally changing their policy as a war in which they are engaged grows more desperate. It is a tribute, though sometimes a provoking tribute, to the exceptional good faith of the American republic, to find canons of good faith laid down for it which would not be considered applicable else where. Outside of anti-slavery legislation, and the appropriation bills, the most important action of the session was the act of Feb. 25, 1862, authorizing the issue of $150,000,000 non-interest bearing notes, receivable for all dues to the United States, except duties on imports, and for all claims against the United States, except interest on the public debt, and a legal tender for all debts, public and private, within the United States, with the exceptions above noted, which were to be paid in coin. The legal tender clause was much disliked by Secretary Chase, who only finally yielded to it on the score of military necessity, and as a war measure. (See, in general, FINANCE.) This development of anti-slavery feeling and action in the dominant party, the preliminary proclamation of the president looking toward emancipation (see EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION), and the summary suppression of opposition to the war by arrest (see Arbitrary Arrests, under HABEAS CORPUS), produced almost a complete political change of relations in the north. Hitherto, democrats in and out of congress had very steadily voted for all measures designed to suppress the rebellion by arms, while they as steadily accompanied their votes with the declaration that the republicans, by abolition agitation, had been as much to blame for the war as the secessionists. They now alleged that the new anti-slavery policy had been adopted mainly for the purpose of forcing their party into an attitude of opposition to the war itself. If there was any truth in the charge, the manœuvre was successful: the democratic party gradually became a peace party (see DEMOCRATIC PARTY, VI.), and those of its members who were willing to include slavery as one of the vulnerable points of the confederacy were forced into the "union party," as the republican party was henceforth frequently termed. The first results of this bouleversement were unfavorable. In the autumn elections of 1862 the great middle and western states, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indians, Illinois, and Wisconsin, all of which had voted for Lincoln in 1860, gave democratic majorities. But, as it happened, the democrats gained and the republicans lost little by these elections: in only two of these state, New York and New Jersey, the election involved a change of state government; and in the members of the house of representatives of 1863-5, chosen this year, the republican majority was hardly impaired. The results were just sufficient to confirm the democrats in opposition to the war, and the republicans in active opposition to slavery, while it should have been evident that, as the two ideas became familiar in the future, the tide of recruits must run steadily from the democrats to the republicans, and no longer from the republicans to the democrats. The democratic party touched high-water mark in 1862-3; thereafter it could only recede.

—The session of congress which began in December, 1862, was used by the republicans mainly in securing the positions which they had already gained, and in making the necessary appropriations for the war. No great advance was made in anti-slavery legislation, except that the final thirteenth amendment was introduced and left to become familiar. The fundamental idea of final reconstruction by congress was also plainly put into form, and left to become familiar. (See RECONSTRUCTION.) In practical legislation the great features of the session were the conscription act (see DRAFTS), by which the national power to compel the military service of its citizens was for the first time declared and maintained; and the national bank act of Feb. 25, 1863. (See National Banks, under BANKING.) West Virginia was admitted (see that state); and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus was confirmed and regulated. (See HABEAS CORPUS.) The appropriation for the navy this year footed up $71,041,401.01; and for the army $729,861,898.80, with $108,807,645.20 for deficiencies.

—The wonderful tenacity with which the majority in congress held its ground during this last session, taking no step backward on the slavery question, and actually advancing in other respects, in the face of the adverse majorities of 1862, was fully justified by the event. Every day increased the number of democrats to whom the idea of emancipation as an incident of the war became less dreadful as it became more familiar. July 4, 1863, seems to have been the political as well as the military turning point of the war. From that day it was certain that the confederate armies in the east were to be so held in play as to be unable to defend successfully their vital point in the west. Nothing succeeds like success; and every mile of advance by the western armies was a new guarantee to the republicans of security for the past and for the future. Everything had been gained, and nothing lost, and it was only necessary now to pass at leisure the crowning amendment for general emancipation (see CONSTITUTION, III., A.), and to wait patiently while the armed forces worked out the already secured political future. The autumn elections of 1863 were not generally for important offices; but they indicated a strong republican gain for the first time since 1860; and in the states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, where the control of the state government was involved in the election (see those states), the republican majority was decisive.

—A new congress met in December, 1863 the republican majority being 36 to 14 in the senate, and 102 to 84 in the house. Its action was mainly confined to the routine business necessary for prosecuting the war, and to the amendment and enforcement of previous legislation. Provision was also made for the admission of Nevada, Colorado and Nebraska as states (see those states), and for the repeal of the fugitive slave laws. (See that title.) A first attempt was made to pass the thirteenth amendment; the portentous question of reconstruction was fairly introduced; and the existence of the new class of professional soldiers was recognized by the revival of the grade of lieutenant general commanding all the armies. This last grade was intended to be filled by Gen. Grant.

—With the adjournment of this session of congress, the political history of the rebellion practically ends. Little was to be done by the dominant party, beyond gathering up the fruits of victory, and drawing breath for the coming struggle of reconstruction. Lincoln's reelection, in the autumn of 1864, hardly doubtful in the event of any action by the opposition, was made certain by the democratic peace platform of that year. This was followed by the final adoption of the thirteenth amendment, abolishing slavery, the only work of the session of 1864-5 which rises above routine. During the year, it was ratified by the states. (See CONSTITUTION, III., A.)

—Throughout the political work of congress in these eventful four years, its main characteristics are its general reflection of the will of its constituency, its openness, and its determined resolution to retain the supremacy of congress over the generals and armies in the field. In the last two points it differed absolutely from its rival, the confederate congress. (See CONFEDERATE STATES.) At the opening of the war, while most of the military leaders retained the habits of civil and political life, these characteristics led to many evils; annoying interferences and conflicts by the committees on the conduct of the war, with various military leaders; needless assertions of power and dignity by the disputants; and the revelation in the debates, of things in which not only military science, but common sense, should have dictated secrecy. But these evils cured themselves. As the new class of generals grew up, habituated to regard congress as a master, not as a would-be tyrant, congress itself learned self-control by bitter experience; and the war ended with entire harmony between the civil and military agents in it.

—Nor can it be doubted now that congress generally reflected the will of its constituents. The single plausible exception is the winter of 1862-3, above referred to. But, in that instance, the majority in congress, if its members chose to risk their political existence on the supposition had a fair right to presume, 1, that the elections of 1862 were lost through their own lack of importance, and the consequent neglect of many republicans to take part in them; 2, that the coincident choice of a republican majority in the next congress was a fair popular indorsement of their own change of policy; and, 3, that every indication showed that the popular tide in their favor would inevitably be strengthened by the success of the union forces, without which any policy would, of course, have proved a failure. The result proved that in all three suppositions they were correct.

—For the special lines of work done by the congresses of 1861-5, see ABOLITION, III.; AMNESTY; BANKING; CONSTRUCTION; DISTILLED SPIRITS; DRAFTS; ELECTORS, III.; FREEDMEN'S BUREAU; FUGITIVE SLAVE LAWS; HABEAS CORPUS; INCOME TAX; INSURRECTION, I.; INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS; INTERNAL REVENUE; JUDICIARY; MONROE DOCTRINE; RECONSTRUCTION, I.; SLAVERY; TERRITORIES; WAR POWERS; WILMOT PROVISO; and the authorities cited under them. See also (GENERAL) 2, 3 Draper's History of the Civil War; 12-14 Stat. at Large; Moore's Rebellion Record; Guernsey and Alden's Pictorial History of the Rebellion; Appleton's Annual Cyclopædia (1861-5); 3 Wilson's Rise and Fall of the Slave Power; 2 Greeley's American Conflict; Victor's History of the Rebellion; 4 Bryant and Gay's History of the United States; Botts' Great Rebellion; Pollard's Lost Cause; (POLITICAL) McPherson's Political History of the Rebellion; Raymond's Life of Lincoln; Giddings' History of the Rebellion (to 1863); Wilson's Anti-Slavery Measures in Congress; Hurd's Theory of Our National Existence (index under States, status of); Boutwell's Speeches and Reports; H. W. Davis' Speeches and Addresses; Hurlburt's McClellan and the Conduct of the War; 2 A. H. Stephens' War Between the States; Harris' Political Conflict; Gilletts' Democracy in the United States; (MILITARY) Callan's Military Laws of the United States; Wilson's Military Measures in Congress; Count of Paris' History of the Civil War; Gen. U. S. Grant's Report of the Armses (1864-5); Reports of the Committees on the Conduct of the War; W. T. Sherman's Memoirs; Swinton's Twelve Decisive Battles of the War; Appleton's Campaigns of the Civil War; Ingersoll's History of the War Department; Boynton's History of the Navy During the Rebellion; Records of the Rebellion; Confederate Official Reports (1863); (FINANCIAL) Schuckers' Life of Chase, 216, 293; Von Hock's Die Finanaen der Ver-Staaten; Laws of the United States relating to Loans and Currency (to 1878); Spaulding's History of the Legal Tender Paper Money of the Rebellion; Perry's Elements of Political Economy, 459; Gibbons' Public Debt; McPherson's Index of House Bills on Banks, Currency, Public Debt, Tariff, and Direct Taxes (1875); Lamphere's United States Government, 44; John Sherman's Select Speeches on Finance; Nimmo's Customs Tariff Legislation; and, in general, Bartlett's Literature of the Rebellion (6,073 titles of books, pamphlets and magazine articles relating to the rebellion, directly or indirectly, up to 1866).

RECIPROCITY

RECIPROCITY is a relation between two independent powers, such that the citizens of each are guaranteed certain commercial privileges at the hands of the other. Up to the middle of the present century the term referred almost exclusively to the grant of privileges to foreign shipping. The earlier English policy had been very illiberal in this respect, carrying out the principles of Cromwell's navigation act, and of the colonial system of the last century. But as time went on, it became more important for England to extend her carrying trade in foreign lands than to monopolize it in her own; and in the early part of this century, under the influence of statesmen like Huskisson, reciprocity treaties were concluded with the leading maritime powers, by which each of the contracting parties admitted the other's ships in its ports to the same privileges as its own in the matter of the international carrying trade. This system aroused much opposition at different times in England; and in the United States was strongly opposed by Webster; but it soon became the prevailing one.

—The commercial treaties of earlier times aimed at securing special privileges and discriminating rates of duty. The one most commonly referred to as a type of them all is the Methuen treaty of 1703 between England and Portugal, by which England made special rates for Portuguese wines, and Portugal removed her prohibition of the import of English woolens. The same general principles, but applied with far sounder judgment of political and social needs, appear in the series of German treaties beginning with that between Prussia and Hesse in 1828, culminating with the establishment of the Zollverein, and ending with the treaty between the Zollverein and Austria in 1853.

—The treaty between England and France in 1860 was the beginning of a new order of things. Preceding treaties had been dictated by special reasons of social policy: this was intended and understood as an attempt in the direction of free trade. France had an almost prohibitive tariff; Napoleon wished to reduce it, but in the existing state of public opinion dared not do so without the appearance of international co-operation. He had in view the general development of French commerce, but he wished to be able to show definite advantages to distinct interests. The treaty with England, arranged in 1860 by Chevalier and Cobden, was the first result of this policy. The English tariff was already on a revenue basis; yet in return for the important French concessions it was still further reduced on French articles of export. But what distinguished this treaty from preceding ones was the fact that these reductions were not bargained for as special and exclusive privileges. This treaty was intended to become part of a system; it was contemplated that both England and France would make similar treaties with other nations, and in view of this it was provided, that in case either of the contracting powers should subsequently grant to a third power conditions more favorable in any respect, the other should have the benefit of such conditions. This provision constitutes what is known as the most favored nations clause; it was incorporated in subsequent treaties, as had occasionally been done in previous treaties, and soon became the important element in them; for by it a special concession made in favor of any one nation at once inured to the benefit of all who had similar treaties. It is this provision that distinguishes the modern European reciprocity system, and has caused that system to work so strongly in favor of free trade.

—The gain to the commerce of France and England was so great that other nations hastened to secure the same advantages. Similar treaties with France or England were made by Belgium in 1861, Prussia in 1862, Italy and Spain in 1863, Switzerland in 1864, and by most of the other European states in 1865 and 1866. Even Russia ultimately secured at the hands of some of the powers the benefit of the most favored nations clause, though without much reciprocity on her part. Within ten years the system seemed to be firmly established all over Europe, and to insure steady progress in the direction of free trade. (For certain special statistics, see Leone Levi in Journ. of Stat. Soc., 40, 1; for discussion of principles, a work entitled "Letters on Commercial Treaties," etc., "by a disciple of Richard Cobden.")

—But several circumstances combined to stop this progress, and to a certain extent unsettle the system. The first of these was the downfall of Napoleon III. He had not only started the system, but had by his strong influence done more to extend it than most people were aware of. It had never been really popular in the sense of calling forth general enthusiasm. It savored too much of bargaining, too little of principle. And it was rendered less popular than ever by wars like that of 1870, which intensified the opposition of national feeling, and substituted a spirit of embittered rivalry for one of mutual help. This acted against the reciprocity system in a variety of ways. Increased military expenditure demanded larger revenue; and nations chafed under treaty restrictions which hampered them in raising this revenue. The commercial treaties looked toward free trade; but national pride and the constant possibility of war led men to demand a protective system. While men's minds were in this state came the crisis of 1873; and public feeling was only too ready to attribute the hard times which followed to the one tangible grievance of foreign competition, and to seek to be rid of this grievance in all possible ways.

—The diplomatists were mainly free traders; and it was some time before they understood the strength of the feelings they had to contend against. The failure of the English negotiators in 1876 to obtain some expected concessions from France, began to reveal the true state of the case. The termination in the same year, by the action of Italy, of the French-Italian treaty, and the rejection by France of a proposed compromise treaty in 1877, were equally significant. Of still greater importance was Bismarck's change of attitude in 1878. Ever since the year 1818 the Prussian government leaned toward a free trade policy, much more so than any other great power except England. In 1862 their steps in support of the reciprocity system had been bold in the extreme. Now, such a change on the part of Prussia, as well as France and Italy, rendered the future of the system extremely doubtful.

—To understand the negotiations which followed, we must observe that in the application of these treaties of commerce, two different courses had been pursued by different states. One group of states, headed by England and Prussia, had no sooner made a concession to a single nation, than they modified their whole tariff in accordance with it, so that all nations, even those outside of the system, at once had the benefit of the change. Another group, represented by France, left their general tariff unchanged, but in the collection made a deduction of that amount in favor of nations having the benefit of a treaty. Spain went so far in this direction as to have two tariffs, the lower for "most favored nations," the higher for all others.

—As long as the statesmen on both sides were animated by common aims, this distinction made very little difference. But when it became a matter of international bickering the nations of the first group found themselves at a great disadvantage. What special privileges are you offering us under the treaty? French negotiators constantly asked of the representatives of those nations which had reduced their general tariff. To this question there was no thoroughly available reply; and it was this diplomatic helplessness that led to the "fair trade" agitation in England, and to a full discussion of certain points in the theory of reciprocity into which we can not here enter. (Westminster Rev., 112, 1; Contemp., 35, 269; Nineteenth Cent., 5, 638, 992; 6, 179; Fawcett, "Free Trade and Protection," last chapter.)

—In the year 1881 a number of French treaties were about to expire; and it was felt that a critical point had come in the history of the system. After some difficulties, particularly in connection with the Italian and Swiss treaties, they were nearly all renewed on the basis of increased duties on either side. The treaty with England was not renewed, but a special act was passed placing England on the footing of the most favored nations. On the whole, it may be said that the continuance of the system has been secured, but its efficiency in the direction of free trade destroyed.

—The United States has never been in any way connected with the system. At the time of its adoption and growth, American tendencies were all in the direction of increased duties. Our reciprocity treaties have all belonged to the earlier type of special arrangements. By far the most important of them was the one with Canada, proclaimed Sept. 11, 1854, and terminated March 17, 1866, on notice given by the United States one year previous. By the terms of this treaty food products of all kinds, nearly all raw materials, and some half-manufactured articles, were allowed to pass free from one country to the other. The dissatisfaction with the treaty arose from the owners of mines, timber, etc., in the United States, who found the price of their products kept down by Canadian competition. A memorial in favor of its renewal was presented to the United States government by the national board of trade in 1873, but without calling forth vigorous general support.

—A similar treaty was concluded with Hawaii in the summer of 1876, for the benefit of certain business interests of the Pacific states, particularly the sugar refiners. It was severely criticised by Secretary Sherman, after having been in operation about two years; but it now seems to have accomplished what was expected of it. The position of the United States government on the subject of commercial treaties is illustrated by the fact, that, when the Hawaiian authorities attempted to negotiate a similar treaty with Germany in 1879, they were checked by an intimation from the United States that the value of those privileges lay largely in their exclusiveness, and that the treaty must guarantee the United States exclusive rights.

—In, the years succeeding the exhibition of 1876, strong efforts were made by French exporters to secure reciprocity privileges from the United States. It was hoped that if France would place America on the basis of the most favored nations, America would lower its duties on French wines and silks. In spite of the repeated efforts of the French manufacturers' agent to secure public sentiment in its favor, the subject was never officially taken up.

RECOGNITION

RECOGNITION. It is customary for princes to notify the states with which they hold relations of their accession to the throne. The same is the case with all new governments. As a rule, especially in the case of a prince who succeeds regularly and peaceably, this announcement is met by congratulations and sometimes by sending ambassadors, more or less extraordinary. At other times only an official certificate of the notification is given, and the receipt of it acknowledged. There are even cases in which, at the time of a change, no formality is employed; relations with the new government are entered upon, and it is thus recognized de facto.

—International recognition was formerly of much greater import than in our day. The dogma of national sovereignty had as yet been accepted by but a few daring innovators; and right, justice and law were summed up in the will of the prince. This was the period in which a haughty king could say: l'état, c'est moi.

—It is now admitted that a people is independent by its own right, exclusive of any recognition. Let an island arise in the Atlantic to-morrow; let people land and settle there; let them form themselves into an independent political society and choose a government; and that island would form a state as lawful and regular as any other. International recognition is at bottom only the authentication of a fact, an authentication which requires no formality. In entering into relations with Japan, with Burmah, or with any country, the remoteness of which preserves it from European enterprise, it never occurs to any one to begin by recognizing the government with which they are about to treat. It is sufficient that it exists, and in treating with it recognition is implied.

—In such cases as these, there could never be any doubt; but doubt has arisen sometimes, when, in consequence of internal revolution, one government has been replaced by another. The independence of the state is not called in question, but it is hoped to authenticate or legitimatize the new government by recognizing it, though often again family motives or interested motives may prevent this being done. The principle of national sovereignty, better understood, has silenced all these scruples. Recognition no longer implies approbation, and foreign countries are not obliged to distinguish between the government de jure and the government de facto. If the government appear established, if the nation accept it, and, above all, if it has appointed it, it has all the legitimacy necessary in order to be recognized.

—Thus recognition adds nothing to the right of existence of a state; it is only a means of facilitating international relations. A state which is not recognized is regarded as not existing for those which deem it expedient to remain a stranger to it; but if any inconvenience result from this lack of intercourse, both the states suffer. The injury is greater, however, to the state which refuses recognition than to the one which is deprived of it. Spain lost nothing from the fact that the emperor of Russia would not recognize Isabella II., while Nicholas I. made it impossible to exercise an influence over Spain. Besides, it was Russia which was destined to yield in the end, and, in such a case, the longer the sulkiness has lasted, the more it costs to effect a reconciliation.

—We have just been speaking of governments established in consequence of a profound change, violent or peaceful, in the constitution of a state. But before the new public powers are well established, several cases may occur, and we must review them. In the first place, there may be a "provisional government." A diplomatic official agent, ambassador or minister is never accredited to a provisional government; but power may be given to an agent more or less official to enter into relations with it, and to treat with it on all pressing matters. In reality, such an agent is an ambassador deprived of the honorary immunities customarily enjoyed by the representatives of foreign powers. However, many shades of difference are possible here. Then, two parties may be contending for power. As long as there is a doubt as to the definitive success, foreign governments recognize only the one to which its agents have been accredited. The new government does not as yet exist; there is, consequently, no occasion for recognizing it. Besides, if relations are prematurely entered into with the chiefs of an insurrection, the government still established would have a right to consider itself offended. When there is too much haste to recognize, it is often in order to aid or intervene. The third case to consider is, when a part of the territory, a province, or colony, wishes to detach itself from the state of which it has hitherto formed a part. If this territory be victorious in the contest, to the extent that its independence is recognized even by the state from which it has separated, foreign powers can have no doubt what to do: recognition is then a simple authentication of a patent fact. If peace have not been formally concluded, each foreign state will be able to estimate, at a given moment, if the territory which claims to be independent has acquired sufficient political stability to offer a guarantee for the future. But we must not lose sight of the fact that a state threatened with the loss of a province will always see with displeasure that the separation is looked upon as accomplished, and, according to circumstances, it will protest or declare itself offended. A powerful country will pay no attention to these complaints, but a weak country will act with prudence.

—We do not need to say that to recognize the independence of a country at the moment when the insurrection begins, constitutes a real casus belli. War will not be recoiled from, unless the insult come from too powerful a state.

—In 1861 a new situation was introduced into international law, the recognition of belligerents. We have had as yet but one example of this, that which recognized as belligerents the confederate states fighting to separate themselves from the United States. It will be understood that to recognize the southern states of the American Union as belligerents, was to close the English ports to war vessels from the northern states, which was an act of indirect hostility. Sympathy was extended to the confederates, not because their cause was considered just, but because their cotton was needed. We can not foresee what use may be made one day of this semi-recognition, the only example of which we have just cited, but we instinctively regard the precedent as a thing to be regretted. It may more than once encourage malcontents to revolt, without its being deemed expedient to come to their assistance otherwise than by this indirect aid, which we can not help regarding as a sort of intervention, perhaps without danger, but more generally without honor or profit.

—When one state does not recognize a change in the constitution of another, diplomatic relations cease, as in war, and the subjects of the disaffected states are commended to the good offices of an allied state; they are thus officiously (officieusement), using the term in a good sense, instead of officially, protected.

RECONSTRUCTION

RECONSTRUCTION (IN U. S. HISTORY), the political problem of the restoration of the seceding states to their normal relations with the Union after the suppression of armed resistance therein to the constitution and the laws. Such a problem would have been easy of solution under a simple and direct acting government; in a highly complicated system like that of the United States, in which the parts and their action are so delicately adjusted, any derangement shows its effects everywhere; and a derangement so great as was introduced by secession, since it can not check the national force, is almost certain to throw all the wheels out of gear, convert the national machine into a blind and guideless power, and make a bad master out of a good servant. In the matter of reconstruction the difficulty was increased, 1. By the length and bitterness of the war. The terms of reconstruction which were possible in 1862, 1863, 1864, or 1866, were each of them impossible within a year thereafter. Every battle lost and won, every vessel sunk, every house burned, every case of mistreatment of prisoners, was in its way a factor not only in anti-slavery action, but in final reconstruction. 2. By the status of the freedmen. It was impossible that the successful party should feel no interest whatever in the fate of the beings who had been converted by its success from chattels into persons. It was natural that the disposition of the conquered toward the freedmen should be keenly and suspiciously scrutinized; and thus every act of individual violence, every appearance of organized repression, which came to light before the work of reconstruction was completed, became a silent factor in the work. 3. By the existence of a written constitution which provided for no such state of affairs. An omnipotent British parliament would have soon hit on a formal settlement, though its success in solving the Irish problem has not been so swift or sure as to make us wish for a change of régime. The American government could only engage in a series of experiments, more or less successful, and finally rest content with that solution which seemed to offer the least difficulty and the greatest advantages to the nation. "Happily for the nation," says Brownson, "few blunders are committed that with our young life and elasticity are irreparable, and that are greater than are ordinarily committed by older and more experienced nations. They are not of the most fatal character, and need excite no serious alarm for the future."

—In considering the question, it is proposed, 1, to give, as briefly as possible, the successive theories of reconstruction; 2, to detail the work as it was finally done; and 3, 4, to consider its failures and its successes. In so doing, there are certain precedents which are often referred to by all of them, and these may as well be given now, for reference. —The Guarantee Clause. The constitution (Art. IV., § 4) speaks as follows: "The United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union a republican form of government." To this was often added the following paragraph from the powers of congress (Art. I., § 8): "To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this constitution in the government of the United States or in any department or officer thereof." This, it was claimed, gave congress power to pass all laws which it should consider "necessary and proper" for carrying into effect the guarantee clause. This would have been undeniable if the language of the clause had been "congress shall guarantee," or "the government shall guarantee," or even any "department or officer shall guarantee"; but the peculiar phraseology, "the United States shall guarantee," seems to exclude all these interpretations, and give the power concurrently to all the governmental agents, executive, legislative and judicial. Even in this view, however, the case of Luther vs. Borden would seem to show that congress has the power to enact laws to carry into execution its concurrent power in the premises, and that the president is bound to execute them.

—The Resolutions of 1861. At the special session of 1861 joint resolutions were introduced to define the objects of the war. That which was pertinent to this subject was as follows: "* * That this war is not prosecuted upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor for the purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those states, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the constitution and all laws made in pursuance thereof, and to preserve the Union with all the dignity, equality and rights of the several states unimpaired; that as soon as these objects are accomplished, the war ought to cease." It passed the house, July 22, 1861, 117 to 2; and the senate, July 26, 30 to 5.

—The Law of 1861. The act of July 13, 1861, authorized the president, when he should have called out the militia against insurgents claiming, without dispute, to "act under the authority of any state or states," to proclaim the inhabitants of the insurgent states to be in insurrection against the United States; and ordered commercial intercourse with the insurgent states to cease. Accordingly the president issued a proclamation, Aug. 16, declaring the inhabitants of Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia (except those west of the Alleghanies), North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Florida, to be in insurrection.

—For the blockade of 1861 see ALABAMA CLAIMS.

—I. THEORIES OF RECONSTRUCTION. As a summary of the changes of theory, we may say that the war was begun under the theory of "restoration," and that this theory was persistently maintained by the democrats to the end; that the presidential theory was developed by Lincoln in 1863, and carried out by Johnson in 1865, but fell back under the hands of the latter into a modification of the restoration theory; that the Sumner and Stevens theories received no formal ratification from any quarter; but that congress, having advanced so far as the Davis-Wade plan of 1864, was pressed by the force of contest with the presidential theory into a plan of its own in 1867, consisting of the Davis-Wade plan, increased by the suffrage features of the Sumner theory, and the whole based on a modification of the Stevens theory of the suspension of the constitution.

—1. Restoration. The war began under the influence of the idea that there was "not one of these states in which there were not ample numbers of Union men to maintain a state government after the rebellion shall have been put down." There were some warnings to the contrary. "It may be," said Baker, of Oregon, in the senate, "that instead of finding, within a year, loyal states sending members to congress and replacing their senators upon this floor, we may have to reduce them to the condition of territories, and send from Massachusetts and Illinois governors to control them; and, if there were need to do so, I would risk even the stigma of being despotic and oppressive rather than risk the perpetuity of the union of these states." But such warnings were unheeded, and the general feeling was well represented by the resolutions of 1861. The actual shock of war, and the evidently universal transfer of allegiance in the south to the confederate states (see that title), at once worked a change. In December, 1861, the resolutions of July were again offered in the house, but were laid on the table by a vote of 71 to 65. The same result with increasing majorities met subsequent reintroductions of the resolutions. In December, 1862, these resolutions took another shape, that of a simple declaration that the war was prosecuted only to maintain the integrity of the Union and of the states as they were at the beginning of the war. In this form they were ruled out of order, or laid on the table, by majorities small at first but steadily increasing. They owed their defeat mainly to the fact that they squinted at slavery and the admission of West Virginia if confined to the question of restoration, they could as yet hardly have been defeated. Even Vallandigham's resolutions, long, cumbrous, and containing the invidious word "professedly" in reference to the original object of the war, were only defeated by a vote of 79 to 50. Generally, however, democratic members hardly felt it to be necessary to defend their position vigorously until reconstruction began to loom up plainly in 1863-4. Pendleton's statement of democratic views may then be taken as authoritative. "These acts of secession were either valid or invalid. If they are valid, they separated the state from the Union. If they are invalid, they are void; they have no effect; the state officers who act upon them are rebels to the federal government; the states are not destroyed; their constitutions are not abrogated; their officers are committing illegal acts, for which they are liable to punishment; the states have never left the Union, but so soon as their officers shall perform their duties, or other officers shall assume their places, will again perform the duties imposed, and enjoy the privileges conferred, by the federal compact, and this, not by virtue of a new ratification of the constitution, nor a new admission by the federal government, but by virtue of the original ratification, and the constant, uninterrupted maintenance of position in the federal Union since that date. Acts of secession are not invalid to destroy the Union, and yet valid to destroy the state governments and the political privileges of their citizens." This ground was held thereafter by the democratic conventions of all the states, and by the national convention of 1868, but it was unsuccessful. Indeed, it was worse. Nothing is more curious in the congressional votes on this question than the manner in which democratic consistency and persistency thwarted all propositions for mild terms to the insurrectionary states. The names of democrats and "radical" republicans, of Fernando Wood and Thaddeus Stevens, appear side by side in voting down the successive and increasingly severe propositions for reconstruction, until, after 1865, the "radical" republicans, falling back a step, united with the moderate republicans and swamped the democrats.

—Kindred to this general principle were the constant demands of the democrats for a national convention of states. They began July 15, 1861, when Benjamin Wood, of New York, offered a resolution recommending such a convention, which was tabled by a party vote of 92 to 51; and they continued until the democratic national convention of 1864 demanded "a cessation of hostilities with a view to an ultimate convention of all the states." Toward the end of the war, and particularly just before the presidential election of 1864, many southern authorities inclined to accept this scheme, if offered to the seceding states; but they still insisted that the states were not to be bound by the action of the convention.

—Another kindred proposition, offered in December, 1861, and several times thereafter, was to appoint ex-Presidents Fillmore and Pierce, Chief Justice Taney, Edward Everett, and seven other commissioners, to confer with a like number from the seceding states for the preservation of the Union. It was either left unconsidered or tabled.

—In the conference at Hampton Roads, Feb. 2, 1865, between Alex. II. Stephens, R. M. T. Hunter, John A. Campbell, President Lincoln, and Secretary Seward, Mr. Stephens says that he asked "what position the confederate states would occupy toward the others, if they were then to abandon the war? Would they be admitted to congress? Mr. Lincoln very promptly replied that his own individual opinion was that they ought to be. He also thought they would be, but he could not enter into any stipulations upon the subject. His own opinion was, that, when the resistance ceased and the national authority was recognized, the states would be immediately restored to their practical relations to the Union." This statement, however, is opposed to the known fact that the president was then fairly committed to the presidential theory of reconstruction.

—The last attempt at "restoration" was the memorandum of April 18, 1865, between Generals W. T. Sherman and Joseph E. Johnston. It provided for the disbandment of the confederate forces at their state capitals, the re-establishment of the federal courts, and "the recognition by the executive of the United States of the several state governments on their officers and legislatures taking the oath prescribed by the constitution of the United States; and, where conflicting state governments have resulted from the war, the legitimacy of all shall be submitted to the supreme court of the United States." The agreement was repudiated by President Johnson, and an unconditional surrender took its place, April 26.

—2. The Presidential Theory. President Lincoln seems to have held from the beginning, that while, as commander-in-chief, he was bound to carry the war into the heart of the seceding states, he was also bound, as civil executive, to endeavor to restore civil relations with the states themselves. His theory is detailed in his proclamation of Dec. 8, 1863, and his defense of it in his annual message of the same date. The proclamation, 1, offered amnesty to all but specified classes of leading men; 2, declared, that a state government might be reconstructed as soon as one-tenth of the voters of 1860, qualified by state laws, "excluding all others," should take the prescribed oath (see its form under AMNESTY, I.); 3, declared that, if such state government were republican in form, it should "receive the benefits" of the guarantee clause; 4, excepted states where loyal governments had always been maintained; but 5, added the caution that the admission of senators and representatives was a matter exclusively "resting with the two houses, and not to any extent with the executive." The proclamation further remarked, that "any provision which may be adopted by such state government in relation to the freed people of such state, which shall recognize and declare their permanent freedom, provide for their education, and which may yet be consistent, as a temporary arrangement, with their present condition as a laboring, landless, homeless class, will not be objected to by the national executive." The message says: "There must be a test by which to separate the opposing elements, so as to build only from the sound, and that test is a sufficiently liberal one which accepts as sound whoever will make a sworn recantation of his former unsoundness." The presidential programme thus included but four points: cessation of resistance, the appointment of a provisional governor, the taking of the oath of amnesty by at least one-tenth of the white voters, and the formation of a republican government; there was no negro suffrage or supervision by congress in it, and the only action of congress was to be the separate decision of the two houses on the admission of members. It is impossible to see any difference between this and Johnson's "policy." The features are identical. Johnson always declared that they were the same, and in his speech of Feb. 22, 1866, asserted that Lincoln had told him, a year before that time, that he was "pretty nearly or quite done with amendments to the constitution," provided the 13th amendment were ratified. Seward and other intimate friends of President Lincoln maintained the identity of the systems. Gen. Grant, in his testimony before the house judiciary committee, July 18, 1867, said that the first of Johnson's reconstruction proclamations (for North Carolina) was the same, and he thought the same verbatim, as one which had been read to him twice in a cabinet meeting before Lincoln's assassination. We may safely take the two systems as identical, as the "presidential theory."

—So long as slavery was not a point of attack, it is evident that restoration and the presidential theory were very much the same thing, the only new point in the latter being the exclusion of white voters unable or unwilling to take the oath. In this sense, Virginia (see that state) was restored or reconstructed from the beginning: the Pierpont government was recognized by the president at first as the government of all Virginia, then of the conquered portion of Virginia proper (after the separation of West Virginia), and at the close of the war it superseded the rebellious government of Virginia, without objection from any quarter. Nor did it lack congressional recognition, in both its aspects: congress admitted West Virginia by virtue of the formal assent of the "Virginia government" of Pierpont; and the separate action of the two houses, according to the presidential theory, was illustrated by the refusal of the house to admit Pierpont members after 1863, while the Pierpont senators held their seats, one until 1865, and the other until his death, in 1864, when the senate refused to admit his successor.

—A new feature came in with the president's adoption of an antislavery policy, in September, 1862. Thereafter, the presidential theory included the abolition of slavery, and a recognition of the anti-slavery laws and proclamations in the amnesty oath. In other points, it remained the same: no legislation by congress, and separate action of the houses on the admission of members. In this way, Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee (see those states) were reconstructed, in 1863-5. The legality of these governments was always stoutly maintained by President Lincoln. In his proclamation of 1864, hereafter referred to, in regard to the Davis- Wade bill, he says that he is "also unprepared to declare that the free-state constitutions and governments already adopted and installed in Arkansas and Louisiana shall be set aside and held for naught, thereby repelling and discouraging, as to further effort, the loyal citizens who have set up the same."

—The counter-proclamation of Davis and Wade alleged that an unsuccessful expedition into Florida had the same object, to organize a presidential government. However true that may be, the operation of the presidential theory, in its second aspect under Lincoln, stopped with Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee. Even these examples were fortified by the separate action of the houses upon them: the Louisiana representatives were admitted in February, 1863, while the senators were refused admission, as were the representatives also after March 4, 1863; the Arkansas senators and representatives did not apply for admission until 1864, and then the temper of congress had risen so high that they were refused; the admission of the Tennessee senators and representatives, in July, 1866, was, as is hereafter noted, the point where the congressional theory superseded its predecessor.

—Congress adjourned, March 3, 1865, until Dec. 4 following; Lincoln died April 15, 1865; and Johnson succeeded to his theory, with far inferior prospects of success. Precedents were in his favor, the admission of West Virginia, the presence of senators from Virginia 1861-5, of representatives from Virginia 1861-3, and of representatives from Louisiana in 1863; he was supported by Lincoln's name and cabinet; and, above all, he had a clear field for nine months before congress could meet. Against him were his unfortunate temper, his inability to temporize, and his controlling sympathy with non-slaveholding southerners. It was certain, that, at the first sign of failure in the presidential theory, popular opinion would strike at Johnson far more willingly than at Lincoln, and that Johnson was far less qualified than Lincoln to meet or evade the attack.

—Gen. Johnston surrendered April 26, 1865, and May 29 following, President Johnson began to put into operation the presidential theory, accompanying it with a new amnesty proclamation (see AMNESTY, II.), such a measure being an integral feature of the plan. In each state, the sequence of events was, 1, the appointment of a provisional governor; 2, the summoning of a convention, composed of, and voted for, by whites able to take the amnesty oath; 3, the adoption of a constitution, or ordinances, forbidding slavery, repealing or declaring null and void the ordinance of secession, prohibiting persons in the "excepted classes" from voting or holding office, and repudiating the rebel debt; 4, the ratification of these by popular vote; and, 5, the election of legislatures, state governments, and members of congress. There seems to have been absolutely no check upon the action of the conventions, except the president's proclamations, and telegraphic information from him that their action seemed to him satisfactory, or the reverse. Excluding the states (Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and Louisiana) already reconstructed, there remained but seven states. In each of these, provisional governors were appointed, as follows: North Carolina, Wm. W. Holden, May 29; Mississippi, William L. Sharkey, June 13; Texas, Andrew J. Hamilton, June 17; Georgia, James Johnson, June 17; Alabama, Lewis E. Parsons, June 21; South Carolina, Benj. F. Perry, June 30; Florida, William Marvin, July 13. The first proclamation of the series, as to North Carolina, may stand for all: its preamble recited that the United States guarantee to each state a republican form of government, that the president is bound to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, that the rebellion had deprived the state of all civil government, and that it was now necessary and proper to carry out the guarantee of the United States to North Carolina. In Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina, the late governors attempted to convoke the legislatures, and anticipate reconstruction, but the attempts were promptly suppressed by the military commanders. The governments of Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee were left undisturbed. In all the others the work of reconstruction was so actively carried on during the summer and autumn of 1865, that, when congress met in December, claimants for seats in the house and senate were ready from all the seceding states, except Texas. The work of reconstruction was then ended, so far as the presidential theory could carry it; and, as if to clinch and fasten it permanently, Secretary Seward issued his proclamation, Dec. 18, 1865, announcing the ratification of the 13th amendment. In its adoption, the ratifications of the legislatures of the seceding states had been essential, and it seemed as if no one could now reject the presidential theory, without impugning the validity of the amendment.

—3. The Sumner Theory. Mr. Sumner offered a series of resolutions in the senate, Feb. 11, 1862, "declaratory of the relations between the United States and the territory once occupied by certain states." The preamble recited the action of the several seceding states, through their governments, in abjuring their duties, renouncing their allegiance, levying war on the government, and forming a new confederacy. The resolutions were nine in number, as follows: 1, that an ordinance of secession is inoperative and void against the constitution, but is an abdication by the state of its rights under the constitution, and thence-forward the state, felo de se, ceases to exist, and its soil becomes a territory, under the exclusive jurisdiction of congress; 2, that secession is a usurpation, and action under it is without legal support: 3, that the suicide of a state puts an end to any peculiar institution upheld by the state's sole authority; 4, that slavery is such an institution; 5, that it is the duty of congress to put a practical as well as a legal end to slavery; 6, that any recognition of slavery is aid and comfort to the rebellion; 7, that it is also a denial of the rights of persons who have been made free; 8, that, as the allegiance of all the inhabitants of the seceding states is still due to the United States, the protection of the United States is equally due to all the inhabitants, regardless of color class, or previous condition of servitude; 9, that congress will proceed to establish republican forms of government in the "vacated territory," taking care to provide for the protection of all the inhabitants. The essence of the resolutions is the idea of "state suicide"; that no territory can be compelled to assume, and no state can be compelled to retain, the public rights and duties of a state against its will; that, as Brownson expresses it, "a territory by coming into the Union becomes a state, and a state by going out of the Union becomes a territory." The resolutions were never formally considered or adopted; but their theory remained, and undoubtedly colored to some extent the final work of reconstruction.

—4. The Stevens Theory. From the outbreak of the rebellion until the end of reconstruction but two parties consistently maintained a consistent theory, the democratic party and Thaddeus Stevens (see his name). The democratic theory has already been given. The Stevens theory may be briefly stated as the suspension of the constitution in any part of the country in which resistance to its execution was too strong to be suppressed by peaceful methods. He held that the mere fact of resistance suspended the constitution for the time; that it could not truly be said that the constitution and laws were in force where they could not be enforced; that the termination of the suspension was to be decided by the victorious party; that, if the rebellion was successful, the suspension would evidently be permanent; and that, if the rebellion was suppressed, the suspension would continue until the law-making and war-making power should decide that the resistance had been honestly abandoned. Here the theory shaded into the indefinite "was-power" (see that title). But it differed more than it agreed. Republicans generally held that armies were marching and battles were fought and states were reconstructed throughout the south by virtue of the constitution and its was power, and they were forced to strain the written instrument into the most extraordinary shapes, and to take lines of action which were radically contradictory. To cite a single example: unless the Pierpont government was the legal government of Virginia in 1861, West Virginia is not, and never has been, a state of the Union; and yet, if the Pierpont government was legal in time of war, its reconstruction by congress in a time of profound peace was unwarranted by any law. But both these contradictions were accepted. West Virginia was retained as a state, and its members even voted on the reconstruction of the parent state of Virginia. All this, and countless other contradictions, were blotted out by Stevens' all-embracing theory. From it he never swerved. At the special session of July, 1861, he declared it as follows: "These rebels, who have disregarded and set at defiance that instrument, are by every rule of law, estopped from pleading it against our action. There must be a party in court to plead it; and that party, to be entitled to plead it, must first acknowledge its supremacy, or he has no business to be in court at all. Those who bring in this plea here, in bar of our action, are in a legal sense the advocates of rebels, their counselors at law; they are speaking for them, not for us, who are the plaintiffs in the action. I deny that they have any right to plead at all. I deny that they have any standing in court." For this reason he voted for the admission of West Virginia, while he still considered the Richmond legislature the legislature of Virginia, and ridiculed unsparingly the action of "the highly respectable but very small number of the citizens of Virginia, the people of West Virginia," who had "assembled together, disapproved the acts of Virginia, and with the utmost self-complacency called themselves Virginia." In the same way he voted for every war measure without leaving any unpleasant precedents for the final work of reconstruction. Throughout the war his views were always repudiated by Colfax and other leading republicans, and he said in 1863: "I know perfectly well that I do not speak the sentiments of this side as a party. I know, that, for the last fifteen years, I have always been a step ahead of the party I have acted with in these matters; but I have never been so far ahead but that the members of the party have overtaken me and gone ahead, and they will again overtake me before this rebellion is ended. They will find that they can not execute the constitution in the seceding states; that it is a total nullity there; and that this war must be carried on upon principles wholly independent of it." Even in the final process of reconstruction he took no step backward. In his theory the guarantee clause and the other constitutional grounds of congressional action had no place. Congress had omnipotent power, because the seceding states had repudiated the constitution. If that body chose to offer mild terms, so much the better for the conquered; if harsh, no one had a right to complain. Democratic votes aided him in defeating the offer of any terms until his own party was so near him that he could rejoin it with the sacrifice of little in fact and nothing in theory. This result came about in December, 1865, when he became the leader of the joint committee of fifteen on the rebellious states; and from that time much of the work of reconstruction was his own, modified by the restraining influence of his colleagues. The fundamental condition of negro suffrage was one of his purposes, but he persistently advocated even harsher terms of peace. In a speech at Lancaster, Pa., in September, 1865, he proposed the confiscation of the estates of rebels worth more than $10,000 or 200 acres of land, forty acres of land to be given to each freedman, and the balance, estimated at $3,500,000,000, to go toward paying off the national debt. He supposed that only one-tenth of the whites would lose their property, while nearly all southern property would be confiscated. This proposition was never formally considered, but it made Stevens the incarnation of all evil in the eyes of southerners. His name and his purposes occur in the debates of all the southern conventions of 1865, and are introduced as incentives to the prompt acceptance of the presidential policy.

—5. The Davis-Wade Plan. The adoption of an anti-slavery policy during the war made necessary the imposition of some condition on reconstruction; and this condition was first stated in the presidential plan of 1863, in the form of the oath to support the anti-slavery proclamations and laws, as well as the constitution. But, if any such condition could be imposed, there was practically no limit in theory to the conditions which might be imposed: there was no middle ground between unconditional restoration and the discretion of the conquering government. The appearance of a condition in the presidential policy was therefore the signal for the appearance of a condition in congress also. In the president's policy no security was asked for the faithful execution of reconstruction, beyond the taking of the oath, the oversight of the president, and the separate action of the houses in admitting members. To fill this defect, a bill was privately drafted in 1863, reported to congress by the committee on rebellious states, of which Henry Winter Davis and Benj. F. Wade were the leaders, and came fairly before the house, March 22, 1864. By its terms the president was to appoint provisional governors, who were to enroll the white citizens through the aid of United States marshals. When a majority of these citizens in any state should take the oath of allegiance, they were to hold a state convention, excluding from voting or being delegates, all confederate officeholders and all who had voluntarily borne arms against the United States. The constitution was to repudiate the rebel debt, abolish slavery, and prohibit the higher military and civil office-holders of the state and confederacy from voting for or serving as governors or members of the legislature. When this was done, the provisional governor was to notify the president; when the assent of congress was obtained, the president was to recognize the new government by proclamation; and then senators and representatives were to be admitted. It declared forever free the slaves in seceding states, and made the holding of any such person in slavery an offense punishable by fine and imprisonment; but there was still no attempt to introduce negro suffrage. The bill was defended on the ground that "we are now engaged in suppressing a military usurpation of the authority of state governments, and our success will be the overthrow of all semblance of government in the rebel states. The government of the United States will then be in fact the only government existing in those states, and it will be charged to guarantee them republican governments. When military opposition shall have been suppressed, not merely paralyzed, driven into a corner, and pushed back, but gone, then call upon the people to reorganize in their own way a republican government in the form that the people of the United States can agree to, subject to the conditions that we think essential to our permanent peace, and to prevent the revival hereafter of the rebellion." Its basis was therefore the same as that of the final congressional plan: that of a war measure passed, if not bello flagrante, at least bellonon cessante. Its advocates objected to the president's plan for the reason that the latter "proposed no guardianship of the United States over the reorganization of state governments, no law to prescribe who shall vote, no civil functionaries to see that the law is faithfully executed, no supervising authority to control and judge of the elections." These defects the Davis-Wade bill proposed to rectify by the introduction of the local machinery of marshals, and the final authority and assent or rejection of congress. But who or what was to prevent reconstructed governments, after the admission of their senators and representatives, from amending their constitutions and eliminating the conditions of reconstruction? Here was the weak point of the bill, which congress finally endeavored to strengthen in 1867 by negro suffrage and constitutional amendment.

—The bill was passed by the house, May 4, by a vote of 73 to 59, but did not come up in the senate until July 1. On the last day of the session it was passed by the senate, but the president refused to sign it for the reason that he had not sufficient time to examine it. July 8, 1864, he issued a proclamation explaining and defending his reasons for not signing the bill. Messrs. Davis and Wade replied in a counter proclamation "to the supporters of the government." They had read the president's proclamation "without surprise, but not without indignation." They asserted, on the contrary, that the substance of this bill had been before the president for more than a year for consideration; that he himself had intrigued to delay the passage of the bill so as to obtain an excuse for refusing to sign it; that senator Doolittle, of Wisconsin, had written to the Louisiana authorities that the house bill would be held as long as possible in the senate, and finally killed by a pocket veto; that the president's persistence in his own plan, and his hostility to that of congress, were both inspired by the desire to use, if necessary, the electoral votes of Louisiana and Arkansas to secure his own election in November, and that an abortive military expedition into Florida had the same object; and they ask, "if those votes turn the balance in his favor, is it to be supposed that his competitor, defeated by such means, will acquiesce?" In conclusion they warn the president that their support "is of a cause, and not of a man; that the authority of congress is paramount and must be respected; and that, if he wishes their support, he must confine himself to his executive duties, to obey and execute, not make the laws, to suppress armed rebellion by arms, and leave political reorganization to congress." In the following session the bill was again introduced in the house, but it was already obsolete, and was laid on the table. Instead of it, the bill of 1865 (see ELECTORS, V.) forbade the counting of electoral votes from any of the seceding states, for the reason that their inhabitants had rebelled, and that the states were "in such condition" that no valid election could be held. The phrase quoted was a compromise between the views of those who wished to except Louisiana from the list of states excluded, and of those who wished to declare explicitly that all the states (including Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee and Virginia) were "still in such state of rebellion" in November, 1864. Electoral votes were sent by Louisiana and Tennessee, but were rejected under the law. Thus the whole question was still left in suspension, and the war ended with no other preparation for reconstruction than the policy which Lincoln had inaugurated, and Johnson was to carry into general effect.

—6. The Congressional Plan. The acceptance of the presidential policy by the state conventions of southern whites was so swift that northern democrats, before the end of July, 1865, generally supported the whole scheme as the best practical form of "restoration," taking the changes in state constitutions as the voluntary act of the states, not as conditions imposed by the president. The resolutions of successive state conventions of 1865 show constant change. Democratic resolutions grow steadily stronger in their approval of the presidential policy. Republican resolutions grow steadily more reserved in their approval of the president and his policy, and steadily stronger in their approval of "impartial suffrage" as a condition precedent to the reconstruction and recognition of seceding state governments. For this change in the republican position, there was undoubtedly party reason. Stevens said frankly in 1867: "White union men are in a minority in each of those states. With them the blacks would act in a body, form a majority, control the states, and protect themselves. It would insure the ascendency of the union party, for I believe, on my conscience, that on the continued ascendency of that party depends the safety of this great nation." But this reason alone, however it might have controlled the policy of the party, could never have made that policy a success: it could never have carried as it did the elections of 1866, the very crisis of congressional reconstruction. The controlling reason will be found in the constant irritation kept up by the general cast of the legislation in regard to freedmen by the reconstructed legislatures of 1865-6, supplemented by the indiscreet, unconciliating and inflammatory tone of the president himself.

—In regard to marriage and testimony or standing in court, most of the southern legislation was alike. Former slaves, who had cohabited as man and wife were to be deemed and taken as married, but marriage between the two races was forbidden under penalties. Negroes were to sue and be sued like whites. The testimony of a negro was only to be received in cases where a negro should sue a white, where a white had injured a negro, or where the rights of a negro were in question, always provided that the testimony offered was essential to the case. Contracts between blacks and whites were to be void unless put in writing and witnessed by a white man. A benevolent exception should be noticed in the law of Virginia, that contracts between blacks and whites were not to be binding upon the black unless put in writing before a magistrate and fully explained by him. The criminal laws were generally fair and equal, except that rape of a white woman by a negro was made punishable by death. In many minor points this species of legislation was no doubt objectionable. Taken as a whole, and considered as the work of men who had within a year been absolute masters of the freedmen, and who had been dispossessed of their control by war and conquest, it must be conceded that it exhibits remarkable self-control, public spirit and equity.

—The case was very different with the vagrancy and stay laws passed by most of the southern legislatures. We have already noticed that the proclamation of 1863 made "no objection" to a temporary regulation of the status of the freedmen, "as a laboring, landless, homeless class." On this subject the legislation of North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, was comparatively unobjectionable. The Virginia act declared all persons vagrants who refused to work for the wages common and usual in the place where they lived, or who broke a contract with an employer, and in the latter case authorized the employer to work the runaway an additional month, with ball and chain, if necessary. The act was revoked by Gen. Terry, Jan. 24, 1866, for the reason that combinations of employers were reducing wages below a fair rate, and then punishing as vagrants the laborers who refused to accept them. The most comprehensive system was that of Mississippi, passed at various times during the last two weeks of November, 1865. Negroes who were orphans or unsupported were to be apprenticed until the ages of twenty-one for males and eighteen for females, and the masters were to have power to inflict "moderate corporal chastisement," and to recapture fugitives. Negroes, or whites habitually associating with negroes, were declared vagrants if they had no lawful employment, or assembled themselves together unlawfully. They were to be arrested and fined, and, if unable to pay the fine, were to be hired out to the bidder who would pay the fine for the shortest term of service. The evidence of a "lawful employment" was to be the negro's written contract for labor, or his license from a mayor or police board to do job work. These, renewed annually, were to serve as a pass: without them the negro was a self-confessed vagrant. All the laws respecting crimes committed by "slaves, free negroes or mulattoes," were reenacted, and declared to be in full force and effect against "freedmen, free negroes and mulattoes." Any negro who "carried arms without a license, committed riots, routs, affrays, trespasses, malicious mischiefs or cruel treatment to animals, seditious speeches, insulting gestures, language or acts, or assaults on any person, or disturbance of the peace, or who exercised the functions of a minister of the gospel without a license from some regularly ordained church," was to be fined, and hired out if unable to pay. Any laborer who should break his contract, and leave his employer, was to be arrested and returned to his labor, and the expenses of the arrest were to be deducted from the runaway's wages. Any attempt to entice a contract laborer from his employer was made a finable misdemeanor. The fundamental features of the Mississippi code, its application of the vagrant laws to recalcitrant laborers, its hiring out of those unable to pay fines, and its prohibition of the enticing away of laborers, were adopted by Florida, Alabama and Georgia; but none of them had by any means so comprehensive a negro code. In December, 1865, South Carolina adopted a vagrant code much like that of Mississippi, but with some features of its own. Persons of color (defined as persons with more than one-eighth negro blood) were not to pursue any trade, business or occupation, other than that of husbandry or contract service, without paying a fee of $100 a year if a shopkeeper or peddler, or $10 a year if a mechanic, for a license; and they were not to sell any farm product without written license to sell any farm product without written license to sell. It was made felony for any person of color to attempt rape upon a white woman; for any person under sentence of transportation from the state to return before the end of his term; or for any person to steal a horse, a mule, or cotton packed in a bale ready for market. No negro was to enter the state to reside there without giving bonds for his good behavior and support. The whole code of laws was revoked by Gen. Sickles, Jan. 17, 1866. The Louisiana law, in December, 1865, required "agricultural laborers" to make written contracts for a year's labor before Jan. 10 in each year, and forbade the laborer to leave his place of employment before the end of his time of service, unless by consent of his employer, or on account of harsh treatment or breach of contract by the employer. Refusal to work out the time of contract was to be punished by forced labor on public works, unless the offender should consent to return to his labor. Runaways from an employer were declared vagrants, and were to be hired out for not more than twelve months, the employer having the preference, and the wages to go to the poor fund. An aggravation of the contrast between the status of the two races was presented in those states in which suits of the employer against the laborer were decided summarily by arrest and hiring out: at the same time "stay laws" operated to postpone execution of judgment in suits at law for one, two, three or more years for different fractions of the judgment debt, so that a laborer had little prospect of satisfaction from a suit against an employer.

—Such legislation as this is mainly responsible for the reconstruction of the seceding states by congress. It forced a very fair observer to conclude, in 1865, that, if they should "get the troops away and the states into congress, three-fourths of the counties in the state [Georgia] would vote for such a penal code as would practically reduce half the negroes to slavery in less than a year." In the northern states it came to be generally believed that this was the deliberate southern policy; and this belief carried with it a majority ready to support congress in any counteracting policy whatever, no matter how radical. Not that the vagrant laws worked any great harm in practice: when they were not formally suspended by the strong arm of military power, the officers of the freedmen's bureau (see that title) withheld from state courts the cognizance of cases in which freedmen were interested. They served, then, only as an irritation; and the utter futility of the irritation only makes its folly the more glaring. And it was accompanied by other irritations, smaller, indeed, but perhaps as effective. Almost the first business of the reconstructed legislatures, still existing only under military sufferance, was to pass acts laying special taxes, or setting aside portions of the state's income, for pensioning confederate soldiers, widows and orphans; to pass resolutions demanding the pardon of leading confederates; and to change the names of counties to honor their captured chieftains. In the state conventions, highly injudicious language had been used by a few of the more violent delegates; and, though few of these delegates had been warlike during the war, their utterances were quotable. Further, the peculiar action of the North Carolina. South Carolina and Georgia conventions, which "repealed" the ordinance of secession, instead of declaring it null and void, was imprudent, to say the least. If it is prudent to build a bridge of gold for a flying enemy, it is infinitely more advisable to avoid irritating a victorious enemy who is disposed to be at peace.

—Before congress met, in December, 1865, the mass of legislation above summarized had fairly taken shape; and, as it seemed to look toward the re-establishment of an imperium in imperio, it had already swung the whole republican party into opposition to the presidential policy. The elections of 1864 had given the republicans a majority of 40 to 11 in the senate, and 145 to 40 in the house; and southern vagrant laws and similar legislation had at last brought this majority abreast of Stevens and made him its leader, as he remained until his death, in 1868. The first step was taken on the opening day in the house, when the clerk, McPherson, in calling the roll, declined to call the names of any of the seceding states, even of Tennessee, Louisiana and Virginia. He refused to state his reasons, unless by desire of the house. Immediately after the election of a speaker, Stevens offered the concurrent resolution which contained the essence of reconstruction: that a joint committee of nine representatives and six senators should inquire into the condition of the seceding states, and report whether any of them were entitled to be represented in either house; that, until the committee should report and their report should be finally acted on by congress, no member should be received by either house from any of said states; and that all papers relating to the matter should be referred to the committee without debate. On this pregnant resolution he called for the previous question; debate was shut off, and the resolution was carried by a party vote. This was a declaration of war against the presidential policy, under which the two houses were only to decide separately upon admission of members; and the more cautious senate, Dec. 12, struck out the last two of its three features. The house agreed, Dec. 14, but pledged itself against any admissions until the committee should report. Jan. 8, 1866, the house further resolved that the troops should not be withdrawn from the seceding states until the two houses should direct their withdrawal. The chasm between the president and the majority in congress rapidly grew wider. Feb. 20, Stevens again brought up his fundamental idea in a "concurrent resolution concerning the insurrectionary states." It resolved, in order to close agitation and quiet the uncertainty in the south, that no senator or representative should be admitted by either house until congress should declare the state entitled to representation. This was passed at once under the previous question. March 2, the senate passed it, and the manner, though not the exact method, of reconstruction, was settled, so far as congress could then settle it.

—It was by this time an open secret that there was a very decided disagreement between President Johnson and the party which had elected him. Had Lincoln been one of the parties to the disagreement, there can be no doubt that an adjustment of ideas would have been arranged: Johnson preferred to declare war. The occasion was found, Feb. 22, two days after the passage of the definitive resolution by the house. A Washington mass meeting sent a committee to the president with resolutions approving his policy. In his reply he passed beyond the arguments to which he had hitherto confined himself in public speeches, the necessity for conciliation, the impossibility of any withdrawal from the Union, and the right of states to representation. He now proceeded to attack congress, as having transferred its powers to "an irresponsible central directory" (the leaders of the republican caucus); he named Stevens, Sumner and Wendell Phillips as the leading northern disunionists; and he even taunted his opponents with their cowardly unwillingness "to effect the removal of the presidential obstacle otherwise than through the hands of the assassin." There is no excuse for such language in the provocative speeches of several of the radical republicans in and out of congress. By replying in this fashion, the president only played into the hands of opponents who never gave away a point in the game. He aimed at the Stevens faction, but he only succeeded in alienating the whole mass of the republican representation. Thereafter, there was no possibility of co-operation between the president and this congress.

—At the beginning of the session many amendments to the constitution had been proposed, intended to void the rebel debt, and secure the rights of freedmen, that is, to counteract the southern legislation of 1865-6. One of them, afterward elaborated into section two of the 14th amendment, was passed by the house, Jan. 31, 1866, but failed to receive a two-thirds vote in the senate. The speech of Feb. 22 not only brought the senate to agree to the concurrent resolution: it made constitutional amendment possible as well. April 30, Stevens introduced an amendment to the constitution, and a bill providing, that, when this amendment should become a part of the constitution, any seceding state which had ratified the amendment, and altered its constitution in conformity therewith, should be entitled to representation at once. The amendment was that which in June became the 14th amendment. (See CONSTITUTION.) It differed from the latter in three essential points: 1, it had not the first sentence of section one, declaring who are "citizens of the United States"; 2, section three forbade all persons who had voluntarily taken part in the rebellion from voting for members of congress or for electors before July 4, 1870; and 3, it had not the first sentence of section four, declaring the validity of the national debt. But the substance of section three of the amendment, as finally adopted, disqualifying certain classes of leaders from holding office, was contained in a separate bill reported by Stevens at the same time, as an essential part of the whole plan. In the house the amendment was passed March 10, by a party vote, under the previous question. In the senate it was debated until June 8, when it was passed, having been altered into its present form, and the substance of the house disqualifying bill having been substituted for the original third section. June 13, the house concurred with the senate's alterations, and the amendment was proposed. This may be considered as closing the first stage of reconstruction by congress. The terms now offered to the seceding states were the ratification of the 14th amendment, repudiation of the rebel debt, disqualification of the specified classes of confederate leaders until they should be pardoned by congress, and a grant to congress of power to maintain the civil rights of the freedmen. There was no effort to control suffrage within the state; only an effort to induce the states to grant universal suffrage, and thus increase their representation in congress—While this perfecting of the first congressional plan was going on, the conflict between the president and congress had gradually become open and bitter. A bill to strengthen the hands of the officers of the freedmen's bureau (see that title) in resisting southern legislation, was passed and vetoed; and as the second vote upon the vetoed bill took place, in the senate, Feb. 21, before the president's declaration of war, it did not secure a two-thirds vote. The veto of the civil rights bill (see that title) in March met a different fate: the bill was passed at once in both houses by the necessary two-thirds vote, and became law. A similar result took place upon the veto of a second and still more stringent freedmen's bureau bill in July; and, when congress adjourned, it was very certain that the southern vagrant laws had as yet no chance of practical enforcement. Before the adjournment, Tennessee (see that state) was restored to representation by joint resolution, July 24, the senate so amending the preamble as to state that "said state can only be restored to its former political relations in the Union by consent of the law-making power of the United States." Evidently, the president had been so poor a strategist that he had only succeeded in putting himself, for the present, outside of the "law-making power" which was to do the work of reconstruction. Everything depended on the result of the congressional elections of the autumn, which were to decide whether the two-thirds republican majority in congress would be continued after March 3 following.

—As one of the means of preparation for the autumn campaign, the majority of the committee of fifteen presented a report, June 18, 1866, with a great mass of testimony going to show the prevalence of disloyalty in the seceding states. The report asserted that the seceding states in 1860-61 had deliberately abolished their state governments and constitutions, so far as these connected them with the Union; had repudiated the constitution, and renounced their representation; that as the constitution acted on individuals, not on states, the people were still bound to obedience to the laws, though they had abolished their state governments; that the war could not be considered as terminated when the people of the seceding states yielded "an unwilling admission of the unwelcome fact" of their inability to resist longer; and that it was an essential condition that such guarantees of future security should be given as would be satisfactory to the law-making power, which, in the law of 1861, had recognized the existence of rebellion. This, it will be seen, was not quite the theory of either Sumner or Stevens: unlike the former it considered the states as existing, though their governments were in a condition of suspended animation; unlike the latter, it maintained the continued existence and force of the constitution in the seceding states. Practically, however, it agreed with both, in that it made congress the final arbiter of the guarantees of peace.

—The president and his supporters had not spent the winter in idleness. Early in the year a "national union club" had been formed in Washington, composed mainly of republican supporters of the presidential policy. Its executive committee, June 25, issued a call for a national convention to meet at Philadelphia, Aug. 14, to be composed of northern delegates, representing the Lincoln and Johnson vote of 1864, and of southern delegates who would unite with the former in supporting the presidential policy. July 4, the democratic members of congress issued an address approving the proposed convention. A request to the members of the cabinet for their approval was followed by the resignation of three of them (see ADMINISTRATIONS, XX.) the rest were as yet a unit in support of the president. The convention met as proposed, John A. Dix, of New York, being temporary chairman, senator Doolittle, of Wisconsin, president, and Henry J. Raymond, of New York (chairman of the republican national committee), chairman of the committee on resolutions. The resolutions fully sustained the president and his policy. The somewhat theatrical entrance of the delegates to the building, headed by the delegates from Massachusetts and South Carolina, enabled its opponents to give it the nick-name of the "arm-in-arm convention." But it was certainly a well-contrived political movement, and the first prospects of its effectiveness are shown by the anger aroused against its supposed contrivers, Seward and Raymond. The latter was expelled by the republican national committee, and the former was specially denounced in almost every republican platform.

—With the first prospects of success, however, the president's public language became more indiscreet than ever. In his answer to the committee which brought him the Philadelphia resolutions he said: "We have witnessed in one department of the government every effort, as it were, to prevent the restoration of peace and harmony in the Union. We have seen hanging on the verge of the government, as it were, a body called, or which assumes to be, the congress of the United States, but in fact a congress of only part of the states. We have seen this congress assume and pretend to be for the Union, when its every step and act tended to perpetuate disunion, and make a disruption of the states inevitable." Indeed, his pugnacity had so far gained the upper hand of his discretion that he even gratified his congressional opponents by descending personally into the arena. He chose this most inopportune of all seasons for an excursion to Chicago, for the purpose of laying the corner-stone of the Douglas monument. Starting Aug. 28, with a large party, including three of his cabinet, General Grant, Admiral Farragut, and others, he made speeches at various points from New York city to Chicago, and thence to St. Louis, Sept. 8; and the matter and manner of his speeches grew worse from the beginning. It was alleged that his opponents hired men to irritate and provoke him to indiscretions; but such a political manœuvre was entirely unnecessary. An extract from his Cleveland speech of Sept. 3 will serve as evidence that the president's own temper was the source of a large part of the scandalous interchange of vituperation between himself and his audiences, which disgraced his progress: "I came here as I was passing along, and have been called upon for the purpose of exchanging views, and ascertaining, if we could, who was wrong. [Cries of 'It's you.'] Who can come and place his finger on one pledge I ever violated, or one principle I ever proved false to? [A voice, 'How about New Orleans?' Another voice, 'Hang Jeff. Davis.'] Hang Jeff. Davis, he says. [Cries of 'No,' and 'Down with him.'] Hang Jeff. Davis, he says. [A voice, 'Hang Thad. Stevens and Wendell Phillips.'] Hang Jeff. Davis. Why do n't you hang him? [Cries of 'Give us the opportunity.'] Have n't you got the court? Have n't you got the attorney general? [A voice, 'Who is your chief justice who has refused to sit upon the trial?] I am not the chief justice. I am not the prosecuting attorney. [Cheers.] I am not the jury. I will tell you what I did do. I called upon your congress that is trying to break up the government—[cheers, mingled with oaths and hisses. Great confusion. 'Do n't get mad, Andy.'] Well, I will tell you who is mad. 'Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.' Did your congress order any of them to be tried? [Three cheers for congress.] * * [A voice, 'Traitor.'] I wish I could see that man. I would bet you now, that, if the light fell on your face, cowardice and treachery would be seen in it. Show yourself. Come out here where I can see you. [Shouts of laughter.]" The colloquies between the president and his hearers grew more unpleasant as the trip went on, but, nothing daunted, the president continued speaking, and playing into the hands of his opponents to the end.

—July 30, 1866, the report of the majority of the reconstruction committee received an unexpected indorsement. An attempt was made on that day to revise the constitution of Louisiana (see that state) by reassembling the adjourned convention of 1864, in New Orleans. The convention's leaders are described by the military commander, Sheridan, as "intemperate political agitators and revolutionary men," whom be himself intended to arrest on the first overt act against the public peace. But the city authorities saved him the trouble, dispersing the convention "with firearms, clubs and knives, in a manner," says Sheridan, "so unnecessary and atrocious as to compel me to say that it was murder." About forty whites and blacks were thus killed, and 160 wounded. When the smoke of the congressional elections had cleared away, it was found that the republican majority had hardly been changed in numbers: in the next congress it would be 42 to 12 in the senate, and 143 to 49 in the house. This was more than sufficient to override the president's veto and continue to keep the president out of reckoning as part of the "law-making power." In personnel the new majority was still more pronounced and united than the old majority in opposition to the presidential policy.

—When congress met in December, 1866, the majority came as victors, not as combatants; and their first and natural impulse was to superadd punitive damages. Their first terms, of June, had been rejected: the defeated party was now to pay the penalty of the refusal in the imposition of negro suffrage upon reconstruction. This had always been an essential feature of the Sumner and Stevens programmes, but now for the first time the party majority was united by stress of conflict in support of it. An effort was at once made to impeach the president, but it at first was abortive. (See IMPEACHMENTS, VI.) The republican cancus at once took place as the practical governing body of the nation. It requested the senate to reject the appointments made by the president for political reasons during the recess. and its executive committee was directed to prepare business for congress. The committee rapidly reported several bills, which were passed under the previous question. 1. The act of Jan. 22, 1867, directed succeeding congresses to meet at noon of March 4. This was to prevent the president from enjoying any nine months interregnum in future. 2. The act of Feb. 19 directed the clerk of the house to make out the roll of representatives elected to the next congress, and to place thereon the names of only such states as were represented in the next preceding congress. This was to anticipate the possible formation of apseudo congress, composed of northern democrats and southern claimants, which might be formed and recognized by the president. 3. The tenure of office act (see TENURE OF OFFICE) limited the president's power of removal, which had been made a political weapon during the campaign. 4. The advanced feeling on the subject of suffrage was shown in the passage of acts establishing universal suffrage in the District of Columbia, Jan. 8, in the territories, Jan. 24, and in the admission of the state of Nebraska, Feb. 9, the first and third being passed over the veto. (See also COLORADO.) 5. In passing the army appropriation bill, in February, a section was added which practically took the command of the army from the president, gave it to Gen. Grant, and made him irremovable. (See RIDERS.) This step was indefensible on any theory. All these measures, however, were only adjuncts of the real business of the session, the consummation of the work of reconstruction.

—Between October, 1866, and February, 1867, the legislatures of all the seceding states, except Tennessee, rejected the 14th amendment by votes nearly or quite unanimous. This action had a double result: as a final rejection of the first terms of reconstruction, it made subsequent terms more severe; and, as it showed the absolute impossibility of obtaining the ratification of the 14th amendment by three-fourths of the (then) thirty-six states while the ten southern states remained in statu quo, it forced congress to choose between the presidential policy and negro suffrage. So evidently ready was congress to make the choice, that, in February, 1867, an official effort, indorsed by the president, was made to induce the southern legislatures to propose an amendment of their own. It was the 14th amendment without the disqualifying clause, but with a new clause forbidding a state to secede, or the federal government to eject a state or deprive it of its representation in congress. The plan also included the amendment of each state constitution by giving the right of suffrage to all male citizens who could read and write, and owned $250 worth of taxable property. The amendment was offered in the legislatures of Alabama and North Carolina, but their refusal to consider it put an end to the proposal. In the meantime, congress had gone on with its work. Dec. 13, 1866, Stevens introduced a bill to reconstruct the government of North Carolina, giving the right of suffrage to males able to read and write. Jan. 3, 1867, he called up, in place of the former, a general reconstruction bill. It was sent to the reconstruction committee, which reported, Feb. 6. the bill finally adopted. Here there was some republican hesitation. Blaine offered an amendment promising representation on the terms of June, 1866; but this was voted down by democrats and radical republicans, and the bill was passed by a vote of 109 to 55. In the senate the Blaine amendment was offered by Sherman, and carried; but the house refused to concar, the democrats and radical republicans again voting in company. The only result of this temporary republican division was that the majority now reunited, and passed the bill, given below, without the Blaine amendment, and with the far more stringent fifth and sixth sections. which were not in the original bill. The final votes, Feb. 20, were 128 to 46 in the house, and 35 to 7 in the senate.

—7. First Reconstruction Bill. The preamble of the "act to provide for the more efficient government of the rebel states," recited that no legal state governments, or adequate protection for life and property, now existed in those states, and that it was necessary that peace and good order should be enforced in them until loyal and republican state governments could be legally established. The six sections were as follows: 1. The states were to be made subject to the military authority of the United States, and divided into the following districts: I., Virginia; II., North and South Carolina: III., Georgia, Florida and Alabama; IV., Mississippi and Arkansas; V., Louisiana and Texas. 2. The president was to appoint the commanding officer of each district, not to be below the rank of brigadier general, and furnish him sufficient military force. 3. The commanding officer was "to protect all persons in their rights of person and property, to suppress insurrection, disorder and violence," either by military commission, or by allowing local courts to act; "and all interference, under color of state authority, with the exercise of military authority under this act, shall be null and void." 4. Trials were to be without unnecessary delay; punishments were not to be cruel or unusual; and sentences of military commissions were to be approved by the commanding officer, or, if they involved death, by the president. 5. The people of any state might hold a delegate convention, elected by the male citizens of the state on one year's residence, excluding only those disfranchised for participation in the rebellion, or for felony at common law; but no person excluded from holding office by the proposed 14th amendment was to vote for delegates or become a delegate. The constitution framed by the convention was to give the elective franchise to those citizens who were allowed to vote for delegates, and was to be ratified by a popular vote under the same conditions of suffrage. When these conditions were fulfilled, when congress had approved the constitution, when the new legislature had ratified the 14th amendment, and when that amendment should become part of the constitution, the state was to be entitled to representation in congress. 6. Until thus reconstructed, the civil governments of the rebel states were to be "deemed provisional only, and in all respects subject to the paramount authority of the United States at any time to abolish, modify, control or supersede the same;" and, "in all elections under such provisional governments, "the only voters or office-holders were to be those entitled by this act to vote or hold office.

—The bill was vetoed, March 2. The message denied the truth of the preamble; protested against the bill as a needless and utterly unconstitutional attempt to establish an unrestrained military despotism over part of the country in a time of profound peace; and appealed to congress to admit loyal and qualified members from all the states. The bill was passed over the veto the same day, the vote being a strictly party vote, except that Senator Reverdy Johnson voted in the affirmative. It may be considered the second stage of reconstruction. Military government was to be established, but the reconstruction was still to be done by the state, subject to the final approval of congress. In order toinduce such action by the state, its citizens were given the option of a surrender of civil government or voluntary reconstruction; for the sixth section, applying the principle of the bill to "all elections," made reconstruction ultimately inevitable, if elections were to take place. It is certain that several states were moving in the direction of voluntary reconstruction when the new congress, which met March 4, 1867, anticipated them and hastened the process.

—8. Supplementary Reconstruction Bill. March 19, the new congress passed an act in nine sections, as follows: 1. Before Sept. 1, 1867, district commanders were to register male citizens qualified to vote under the act, taking from each registered voter an oath that he was qualified by residence and age, and that he had never engaged in rebellion after taking the oath of allegiance as member of any state legislature or of congress, or as an officer, executive or judicial, of the United States or of any state. 2. The district commander was to hold an election for delegates, equal in number to the lower house of the state legislature, and apportioned according to registration. 3. The question of holding a convention was to be decided at the same election. 4. If a majority of registered voters consent to the convention, the district commander was to give the delegates sixty days' notice of the time and place of meeting; and when the constitution was framed he was to give thirty days' notice of an election to ratify or reject it. 5. When the constitution was ratified, it was to be sent to the president, and by him sent to congress. If congress approved it as in conformity with the reconstruction acts, the state was to be declared entitled to representation, and her senators and representatives were to be admitted. 6. All elections were to be by ballot, and false swearing was to be punished as perjury. 7. The expenses of the commanding officer were provided for. 8. The convention in each state was to have the power of taxation to meet its own expenses. 9. A verbal mistake in the original act was corrected.

—This may be considered the third stage of reconstruction by congress. Its essential point of difference was that the work of reconstruction was now taken out of the hands of the state, and given to the military commander. In brief, it was, so far as the state was concerned, involuntary reconstruction.

—II. THE WORK OF RECONSTRUCTION. March 11, 1867, the president appointed the district commanders; and the appointees, Generals Schofield, Sickles, Thomas, Ord and Sheridan at once took command of the five districts in the order given. March 15, Thomas was replaced by Pope. In all the districts the first order was generally an announcement of the assumption of command; and a general direction to the "officers under the existing provisional government" of the state to perform their duties as usual until otherwise directed, though the legislatures were forbidden to meet in the following autumn. Then came a notice that whipping and maiming in punishment of crime must cease, and that the militia must be disbanded. Then came the appointment of boards of registration, and the notification of the test oath; the election of delegates; the meeting of the convention; and the framing of the new state constitution. The machinery worked with comparatively little friction. The whites were in no condition for forcible resistance; and when state treasurers or other officers attempted to balk the work in any way, they were promptly removed, and replaced by civilians or military appointees. The state of Mississippi attempted to obtain from the supreme court an injunction forbidding the president and Gen. Ord from executing the reconstruction acts, but the court refused it, April 15, on the ground that it could not thus interfere with the purely political acts of another department of the government. (See EXECUTIVE, IV.) The attorney general gave an opinion, which practically bound the boards of registration to take the oath of an applicant as good evidence of his right to register. This and other impediments to reconstruction were removed by the supplementary act of July 19, 1867. It gave district commanders and Gen. Grant power to suspend, remove and replace any state officers who should hinder reconstruction; empowered boards of registration to take evidence, strike off names fraudulently entered, and add names entitled to registry; and provided that no district commander or his appointees should be "bound in his action by the opinion of any civil officer of the United States." The Alabama constitution was ratified by less than half of the registered vote. The supplementary act of March 11, 1868, therefore, provided that reconstruction elections should be decided by a majority of the votes actually cast.

—In all the states the local work of reconstruction went on rapidly. The first of the conventions, in Alabama, met Nov. 5, 1867, and the others followed at various intervals. (Their time of meeting, action, and the ratifications, will be found under the several states.) The constitutions agreed in abolishing slavery, repudiating the rebel debt, renouncing the claim of a right to secede, declaring the ordinance of secession null and void, giving the right of suffrage to all male citizens over twenty-one years of age on a residence qualification, and prohibiting the passage of laws to abridge the privileges of any class of citizens. Further, all the constitutions, except those of North Carolina, Florida and Georgia, disfranchised all who were disqualified from holding office by the (proposed) 14th amendment. This disfranchising clause caused the rejection of the constitution in Mississippi, while in Texas and Virginia the popular sentiment was so adverse that no submission to popular vote was ventured on as yet. In the other states, as rapidly as possible, legislatures and governors were elected. the former met and ratified the 14th amendment; and the latter were formally appointed military governors until reconstruction could be completed. June 22, 1868, an act of congress approved the constitution of Arkansas as republican, and admitted the state to representation on the fundamental condition that the grant of universal suffrage should never be revoked. June 25, a similar act admitted North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana. July 20, 1868, an act to exclude electoral votes from unreconstructed states was passed over the veto.

—The 14th amendment thus secured the requisite number of state ratifications, and an act of June 25, 1868, directed the president to announce the fact by proclamation. July 11, he issued a laboriously ambiguous proclamation, announcing seriatim the reception of "papers purporting to be resolutions of the legislatures" of the various states, attested by the names of various persons "who therein sign themselves" governor, president of the senate, etc.; and July 20, Secretary Seward issued an equally ambiguous proclamation, detailing the ratifications and the withdrawals of Ohio and New Jersey, and announcing that, if these withdrawals were invalid, the amendment was a part of the constitution. Subsequently (see CONSTITUTION, III.) he issued another proclamation, free from ambiguity. In the presidential election of 1868 the two parties, of course, took opposite grounds. The republican platform congratulated the country on the assured success of the reconstruction policy of congress. The democratic platform, while it recognized the questions of slavery and secession as settled by the war, declared "the reconstruction acts (so called) of congress to be usurpations and unconstitutional, revolutionary and void." This declaration was emphasized by the Brodhead letter, June 30, 1868, of the democratic nominee for vice-president, Blair: "There is but one way to restore the constitution and the government, and that is, for the president elect to declare these acts null and void, compel the army to undo its usurpations at the south, disperse the carpet-bag state governments, and allow the white people to reorganize their own governments, and elect senators and representatives." The country was not ready for such a programme, and the presidential and congressional elections of 1868 resulted in renewed republican success.

—Much suspicion had been felt by congressional leaders as to the action which the supreme court would take if the constitutionality of reconstruction should come legitimately before it. (See JUDICIARY, II.) Early in 1868 such an occasion seemed probable on an appeal from Mississippi on a writ of habeas corpus sued out by one McArdle, who had been convicted by a reconstruction military commission. To meet this danger, Stevens at first reported from the reconstruction committee a bill declaring that the jurisdiction of the supreme court should not extend to reconstruction legislation. This met little favor, and instead of it the act of March 27, 1868, passed over the veto, repealed the supreme court's statutory jurisdiction over appeals on habeas corpus. The question, however, could not be kept down, and in the December term of 1868, in the case of Texas vs. White, the court decided in favor of congress. During the rebellion Texas had sold a number of the bonds given her by the United States in 1850 (see COMPROMISES, V.), and the new state government sought an injunction to prevent payment to the purchasers. As Texas was still unreconstructed, the court agreed, that, if she was not a state, the suit must be dismissed, so that the whole suit turned on this point. The court held that the Union was "an indestructible Union of indestructible states"; that ordinances of secession were null and void, but that the states which passed them did not cease to be states of the Union; that their own act of rebellion had suspended their governmental relations to the United States; that congress must decide, as in the Rhode Island case (see DORR REBELLION), what government is established, before it can decide whether it is republican or not; that reconstruction by congress was valid; and that the governments instituted by the president were provisional only, to continue until congress could act in the premises. This was not the Sumner nor the Stevens, but the congressional, theory. It is fully summed up in an opinion of attorney general E. R. Hoar, of May 31, 1869: "The same authority which recognized the existence of the war is the only authority having the constitutional right to determine when, for all purposes, the war has ceased. The act of March 2, 1867, was a legislative declaration that the war which sprang from the rebellion was not, to all intents and purposes, ended; and that it should be held to continue until state governments, republican in form, and subordinate to the constitution and laws, should be established." It is, therefore, not correct to say that the precedents of reconstruction give congress the right to reconstruct any state government at pleasure. Such a reconstruction can only come as the result of a rebellion recognized as such by the national authority, and ending in the overthrow of the state government with the rebellion. For example, the republican state convention of Maryland, Feb. 27, 1867, denounced the proposed state convention (see MARYLAND), and threatened, if it were persisted in, to appeal to congress for a reconstruction of the state government. The threat was carried into effect, March 25, when a reconstruction memorial from the republican members of the state legislature was offered in congress; but congress very consistently declined to interfere.

—Some additional work remained to be done, for reconstruction still hung fire in Texas, Mississippi and Virginia. The act of April 10, 1869, therefore authorized the president to call elections in those states for the ratification or rejection of their new state constitutions, submitting such sections as he pleased to a separate vote; but, as punitive terms for their delay, the new legislatures were required to ratify the proposed 15th as well as the 14th amendment. This may be considered the fourth and final stage of reconstruction by congress. In the states named, the objectionable clauses were voted down, the rest of the constitution was ratified, the legislatures fulfilled the conditions required, and the states were admitted by the acts of Jan. 26 (Virginia), Feb. 23 (Mississippi), and March 30, 1870 (Texas). In the same year, however, an attempted evasion of conditions by Georgia (see that state) brought her into the same position as the three states last named; and it was not until Jan. 30, 1871, that all the states were represented in both houses of congress, for the first time since 1860. Reconstruction by congress was then completed.

—For the impeachment of President Johnson, see IMPEACHMENTS, VI.; for the 15th amendment, see SUFFRAGE.

—III. THE FAILURES OF RECONSTRUCTION. Prophets were not wanting who predicted the speedy collapse of the highly artificial governmental edifices erected by congress in the southern states. Certainly he must have been a very short-sighted person who expected from them an immediate and permanent establishment of the freedmen in all the new privileges granted to them. If the weapon of suffrage, which the white race had secured only after centuries of arduous struggle, could be safely and surely wielded by a race which had hardly ever known any condition other than slavery, we must certainly rank slavery, as an educating process, higher than we have been accustomed to place it. And, on the other hand, if the pyramid must be supported on its apex by national power, it was not to be expected that the country would allow all other business to lapse, and wage an eternal war of irritations on behalf of a helpless race. Plainly, if southern resistance should be open, the south would be reconquered every decade; and if southern resistance was guarded but persistent, negro suffrage was destined, sooner or later, to at least a temporary eclipse.

—In almost all the states the downward career of the reconstructed governments was short and swift. Until the negro legislators learned the machinery of politics, they submitted with patience to the guidance of white leaders, generally northern immigrants, or "carpet-baggers," and these endeavored with considerable success to keep up at least a semblance of the decent methods to which they had been accustomed. But the negro showed an astonishing quickness in learning the tactics of politics, in grasping the shell while ignoring the kernel. Points of order, parliamentary rulings, filibustering methods, the means of putting fraud into a fair legislative form, almost immediately became as familiar to the negroes as to any other experts in legislation; and then the state treasuries lay at the mercy of a race whose incorrigible and notorious vice, during slavery, had always been theft. No storming force ever made quicker work of a captured city. Most of the "carpetbag" leaders yielded to the current, and took a share of the spoils. The impoverished treasuries were instantly swept clean. The issue of bonds was then resorted to, except in states like Mississippi, whose bonds were unsalable through previous repudiation; and in this process the lion's share fell to the more expert white leaders. In one state, South Carolina, the debt rose from about $5,000,000 in 1868 to nearly $30,000,000 in 1872; and about $20,000,000 of this amount were issued by the governor by virtue of a legislative permission to issue $2,000,000. In almost any state, a lobby rich enough to purchase the legislators could secure the passage of an act issuing state bonds in aid of a railroad, supplemented by a subsequent act releasing the state's lien on the road, the whole making up an absolute gift of the money. But the land, which must ultimately be taxed for the payment of such gifts, remained in the hands of the whites. Under universal suffrage, made harsher by a partial white disfranchisement, the whites were helpless, so long as they observed the forms of law; and in the conflict of interests the forms of law went down.

—At first the struggle was mainly peaceful. Negro voters were paid to remain at home on election day, or were induced to do so by threats of loss of work; negro leaders were bribed to wink at false counting or registration; and when the whites had thus carried the legislature, measures were enacted to secure white control of the government in future. In this manner the government fell into white hands in Tennessee in 1869. in North Carolina in 1870, and in Texas, Georgia and Virginia from their first reconstruction in 1870-71. All these were states in which the white vote (see CONSERVATIVES) only needed union to become dominant. Alabama and Arkansas were much more difficult states, but here the reconstructed governments went down in 1874, after a struggle of some two years, in the course of which actual violence became a political factor. Four states were now left, South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana, in which the reconstructed governments held their ground. In apparent despair of other means, the "Mississippi plan" was begun in that state in 1875. It was only an amplification of the violent means which had never been left entirely out of calculation. (See INSURRECTION, II.) Much of its success was no doubt due to a change of the negro vote. H. R. Revels, the colored United States senator of the state, thus wrote to President Grant in 1876: "Since reconstruction, the masses of my people have been enslaved in mind by unprincipled adventurers. My people are naturally republicans, but, as they grow older in freedom, so do they in wisdom. A great portion of them have learned that they were being used as tools, and, as in the late election, they determined, by casting their ballots against these unprincipled adventurers, to overthrow them." On the other hand, the evidence that violence was the finally effective factor is not only overwhelming, but confessed. Bands of horsemen, armed and in uniform, attended and overawed negro meetings; and the roads were picketed to prevent the free transit of negro organizers. Actual violence to the mass of voters was unnecessary, beyond a few midnight whippings. The negro vote was helpless without its leaders and organizers, and the Mississippi plan was to strike only at the tallest. Actual murders do not seem to have been numerous, but they were tremendous in their effects from the position of the victims. There were now left but three states, and in these the Mississippi plan was put into practice in 1876 with a similar success. But in these the "returning boards" (see that title) prolonged the struggle beyond the election, and threw the whole presidential election of that year into confusion. (See ELECTORAL COMMISSION, FLORIDA, LOUISIANA. SOUTH CAROLINA.) As soon as President Hayes was seated, in 1877, the last vestige of the congressional scheme of reconstruction disappeared from the surface.

—In each state the negro vote was practically suppressed after the overthrow of the reconstructed government. The violence did not necessarily continue in active operation: the negro vote was in part cast and counted, and negro local officers and even congressmen were occasionally elected. But every one knew that the negro vote would be tolerated just far enough to insure a permanent union of the white vote. and no further. The results are seen in the significant smallness of the vote in most of the reconstructed states. In 1880, for example, the congressional districts were each supposed to contain at least 131,400 inhabitants, which should have furnished over 30,000 voters. Alabama and Wisconsin correspond very closely in population, and each has eight congressmen. In 1880 the votes in these districts were as follows: Alabama, 18,645; 22,207; 16,319; 17,644; 11,219; 10,043; 19,146; 25,573: Wisconsin, 31,167; 30,875; 29,226; 32,737; 32,926; 38,435; 35,855; 33,894. It thus appears, that, on the same census population. Wisconsin furnishes 265,115 voters, an average of 33,139 to a district, while Alabama has but 140,796 voters, an average of 17,599 to a district. It is difficult to find more than one controlling explanation for this essential difference.

—It must not be understood that the "subversion of the reconstructed governments" included any essential change in the reconstructed constitutions. These remained formally unaltered, so far as the fundamental conditions of readmission were concerned, though most of the states have revised their constitutions in non-essentials. The supreme court has decided that the state, on accepting readmission. is estopped from denying the validity of the conditions; and the federal judiciary, with the enlarged powers given to it since 1860, would undoubtedly make short work with any attempt to repudiate the conditions of reconstruction. The organic law is unchanged: the revolution has taken place beneath the surface.

—Force Bills. At the first indication of attack by violence upon the reconstructed governments, congress took steps to defeat the attempt. A bill for the enforcement of the last two amendments, commonly called the force bill, was introduced, passed by strict party votes, and became law May 31, 1870. It made punishable by fine and imprisonment, or both, with exclusive cognizance to the United States courts, the following offenses: hindering any person in the performance of registration or any other qualification for voting; refusing to give full effect to any person's vote: preventing, or confederating with others to prevent, by force, threats or bribery, any person from qualifying or voting; conspiring to go in disguise upon the highway, or upon the premises of another with intent to deprive any citizen of his constitutional rights; personating other voters, voting or registering illegally, or interfering with election officers at congressional elections or the registration therefor, violations of state or federal election laws by state or federal officials: and violations of the civil rights act (see that title) of 1866, which was expressly re-enacted. April 20, 1871, a far stronger force bill was enacted. (See INSURRECTION, II.; KU-KLUX KLAN; HABEAS CORPUS; SUFFRAGE.) It was directed particularly at conspiracies against the civil rights legislation: its second (or conspiracy) section. however, was decided to be unconstitutional by the supreme court, Jan. 22, 1883. Its fourth section, providing that such conspiracies, when connived at by the state authorities, should be "deemed a rebellion against the government of the United States," and be suppressed by the president by the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and the use of the army and navy, was to expire at the end of the next session of congress. In May, 1872, an attempt was made to extend it for another session. It passed the senate, but the house refused to consider it. The refusal seems to have been largely due to a belief in the house that the ku-klux disorders had subsided. It must be noticed that this section of the act of 1871 was really a first step toward a recognition of a new rebellion, and the result would have been, as before stated, a new reconstruction, if the casus belli had not been removed. This standing rule of American constitutional law, the necessary consequence of the reconstruction precedents, makes a singular paradox: we must repudiate state sovereignty; and yet we must hold that a state can practically declare and wage war, be warred against by the nation, and, if conquered, be subjected to the laws of war.

—IV. THE SUCCESSES OF RECONSTRUCTION. We have described the southern legislation of 1866-7. The infinitely milder and more equitable legislation which followed the successful seizure of power by the white race in the different states, in 1869-77, is of itself a proof that reconstruction was, in an essential point, a success. It gave the freedmen a status as men which, if not altogether satisfactory, is more than they could have hoped for in a century under the simple restoration policy. If the ballot is a nullity to the negro, his other rights are not; and he owes this to reconstruction. Further, the ballot itself will not always be a nullity. There stands the unchanged and unchangeable organic law of the states, waiting for the time when the negro shall be ready for the right of suffrage; and we may be sure that the recognition of his readiness will come far sooner and more easily by reason of the fact that it has nothing to fight against in the state constitutions.

—We have noticed, also, the portentous reappearance of the seceding states, after their reconstruction by the president, as an imperium in imperio. It would have been an impossibility for southern representatives under that régime, however honest their intentions, to divest themselves suddenly of the prejudices and traditions of a lifetime's training, and come back in full sympathy with the economic laws which were thenceforth to attach to their own section as well as to the rest of the country. They must, then, have returned as a compact phalanx of irreconcilables, sure of their ground at home, and a permanent source of irritation, sectional strife and positive danger to the rest of the country. All this was ended by reconstruction. This process, to speak simply, and perhaps brutally, gave the southern whites enough to attend to at home, until a new generation should grow up with more sympathy for the new, and less for the old. The energies which might have endangered the national peace were drawn off to a permanent local struggle for good government and security of property. Whatever may be alleged on humanitarian grounds against a policy which for a time converted some of the states into political hells, it must be confessed that the policy was a success, and that it secured the greatest good of the greatest number.

—See, in general, McPherson's Political History of the Rebellion, and History of the Reconstruction (see index for states, speeches, messages and legislation); 2 Williams' History of the Negro Race; Congressional Globe, 1861-72; Congressional Record, 1872-3; Hurd's Theory of our National Existence (index under Reconstruction); Appleton's Annual Cyclopœdia, 1861-77; Fisher's Trial of the Constitution, 200; Brownson's American Republic, 309; McClellan's Republicanism in America; 12 Stat. at Large, 255 (Law of 1861); International Review, Jan, 1875 (Guarantee clause); 16 Atlantic Monthly, 238, 17:237, and 18:761; (I.), Cox's Eight Years in Congress, 370; Gillet's Democracy in America, 304; Harris' Political Conflict in America, 359; Pollard's Lost Cause Regained; Taylor's Destruction and Reconstruction; 2 Stephens' War Between the States, 612 (Hampton Roads conference), 806 (Sherman-Johnston memorandum); Raymond's Life and State Papers of Lincoln, 455, 685; 37 Atlantic Monthly, 21; Welles' Lincoln and Seward; 6-12 Summer's Works; 12 Atlantic Monthly, 507; Callender's Thaddeus Stevens, Commoner; 4 Appleton's Annual Cyclopœdia, 307 (Davis-Wade manifesto): Andrews' South Since the War (1866); Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction; Report of the Select Committee on the New Orleans Riot; Boutwell's Speeches; Barnes' 39th and 40th Congresses; 100 North American Review, 540; The Case of W. H. McArdle; Pike's The Prostrate State; and authorities under articles referred to.

REFUGE

REFUGE, Right of. (See ASYLUM.)

REFUNDING OF THE PUBLIC DEBT OF THE UNITED STATES

REFUNDING OF THE PUBLIC DEBT OF THE UNITED STATES. On July 1, 1860, the national debt was $64,769,703. It consisted of a loan of $20,000,000 authorized June 14, 1858. and payable in 1874; a nearly equal sum of treasury notes, issued to meet the conditions resulting from the monetary crisis of 1857, and redeemable at pleasure; and a number of old loans issued between 1842 and 1848, all of which fell due within the next eight years. During the year 1860 a loan for $21,000,000 had been authorized, for the purpose of redeeming the outstanding treasury notes, and, bearing 5 per cent. interest, was sold at about par. The economic condition of the country was excellent. The crops were good, and the exports of domestic produce large. The federal system of taxation was extremely simple, duties on imports and sales of public lands being the two important sources of revenue, while any deficits that might occur were covered by loans. Excise, stamp, income and direct property taxes under the federal government were absolutely unknown. The outbreak of the rebellion changed all this, and the simple system then in vogue was ill-fitted to bear the strain thrown upon it. Economic questions had received but little attention, and the existing tax methods were capable of only a moderate extension, and principally in one line. The policy of the government was timid and tentative, and instead of a clear conception of the crisis the secretary of the treasury had a vague idea, which was shared by many, that the contest would be brief, and that it would not be necessary to resort to extreme measures to bridge over the severe present needs of the administration. The fall of Sumner, the suspension of the banks, and the open secession of the southern states, did not extent the influence that they should upon Mr. Chase, and it was by loans and issues of notes, instead of by a resort to taxation, that he sought to meet the enormous and continually increasing demands made upon the treasury. The debt of the nation increased from $90,867,828 on July 1, 1861, to $267,540,035 in December of that year, without any effort being made to furnish a revenue sufficient to meet at once a part of the expenditures. In order to alleviate the burden of the debt already contracted, and to pay certain of the future expenses of the war, a forced loan was taken from the people through treasury notes on which had been conferred a legal tender quality. Having made this beginning, further steps were taken in the same direction. Loans and issues of legal tenders followed one another. Some futile efforts to frame tax systems were made, but resulted only in disappointment, and what they were intended to accomplish were met with new loans. The internal revenue law of 1862 was badly framed and badly administered; the people were unaccustomed to excise duties, the machinery was complicated, and the officers inexperienced. It was modified many times before the annual revenue derived under it reached the $300,000,000 that was justly believed could be drawn from internal sources. From time to time tariff measures were passed, the duties being continually raised, until a vast and intricate customs service was formed in which all sound theory and practice had been sacrificed ostensibly to revenue, but in reality to private interests. The tariff and internal revenue laws grew up separately, and their provisions clashed with one another. Some industries were taxed out of existence, while others were benefited beyond all precedent. With every new issue of legal tenders prices rose, and the vast expenditures of government, uniting with the inflation of values and the uncertain condition of general business, created a spirit of gambling and speculation which spread to every branch of production and exchange, and wrought incalculable mischief and loss. No scheme for raising money was too wild, but the treasury department and congress were blind to the one step that would restore a certain degree of confidence and maintain in a measure the public credit. The fiscal errors enormously increased the expenditures of the government. While loans were being nominally taken at par and over, in reality they were selling at 50 and even at 34, as that marked the depreciation of the paper money. Prices of war material had increased three and four hundred per cent. Mr. Chase refused to believe that his issues were responsible for this, and could only recommend further loans and further issues. His policy was, in a measure, adopted by Mr. Fessenden, but with Mr. McCulloch a new and more just policy was inaugurated.

—The growth of the debt during the war need not be detailed here, as it is but a constant succession of loans. In June, 1862, the outstanding principal of the debt was $524,176,412; in 1863, $1,119,772,138; in 1864 $1,815,784,370; and in 1865, $2,680,647,869. On Aug. 31, 1865, the debt had attained its highest point, $2,845,907,626. Of the ordinary sources of income, customs and internal revenue were the most important, and the course of the receipts in these two branches in the years 1861-6 clearly showed how weak and futile were the first endeavors to frame adequate tax systems, and how little taxation contributed toward meeting the current expenditures of government.

—There had been no settled policy on which this vast load of debt had been created, other than the recognized necessity of meeting all requisitions made upon the treasury. In his report for 1863, Mr. Chase said that in the creation of debt he had kept four objects in view: 1, moderate interest; 2, general distribution; 3, future controllability; and 4, incidental utility. The close of the war, however, found the debt in a very unsatisfactory condition. On Aug. 31, 1865, it was made up of the following items:

Of the above items, the United States notes, the 5 per cent. notes and the compound interest notes, in all, $648,138,959, were a legal tender, and were for the most part in circulation as currency. The temporary loans were payable in thirty days from the time of deposit, after a notice of ten days. The 5 per cent. notes were payable in lawful money, in one and two years from Dec. 1, 1863. The compound interest notes were payable in three years from their respective dates, all becoming due between June, 1867, and October, 1868. The 7-30 notes were payable before July, 1808, in lawful money, or were convertible at maturity into 5-20 bonds. The certificates of indebtedness would mature between 1865 and 1867. So that, besides the United States notes, there were nearly $1,300,000,000 of debts in various forms, all of which (with the exception of the temporary loans) must be converted into bonds or paid in money before October, 1868.

—Secretary McCulloch at once entered upon the difficult task of restoring the disordered finances of the nation to a more normal condition, and of introducing some semblance of system in the management of the debt. The revenues of the government were now sufficient to meet the current expenditure, including the debt charges, so that an opportunity was afforded for dealing with the debt. The secretary announced as his policy, the contraction of the paper issued by the government, which had been in a great measure responsible for the financial disorder and almost ruin. In order to secure this contraction the secretary recommended: 1, that congress declare that the compound interest notes should not be legal tender after their maturity: and 2, that the secretary be authorized to sell 6 per cent. bonds for the purpose of retiring not only compound interest notes, but also the United States notes. As to the rest of the debt, it was shown that more than one million was already overdue; that $187,549,646 must be provided for before 1867, and that $1,021,335,732 fell due in 1867-8, no account being taken of the notes and fractional currency. The main point was to place the whole debt in such a form that only the interest could be demanded until the government was in a condition to meet the principal. It must therefore be funded. He asked authority to sell 6 per cent. bonds to pay the certificates of indebtedness as they matured, to meet any deficiencies that might occur in the current fiscal year (1866), and to take up any portion of the debt maturing prior to 1869 that could be advantageously retired. Of the debt falling due in 1867-8, $830,000,000 consisted of 7-30 notes, which were convertible into bonds at the pleasure of the holders, and the secretary believed that a part of this amount would be at once funded were an opportunity offered. The portions of the debt accruing before 1869 it was the intention of the secretary to fund into 5 per cent. stocks, and a like method could be used in 1871 when other portions fell due. Two results would be accomplished by such a policy: the treasury could be put and kept in such condition as not only to be prepared to pay all claims upon presentation, and also to take up in advance of their maturity, by payment or conversion, such portions of the temporary debt as would obviate the necessity of accumulating large currency balances in the treasury, and at the same time relieve it from the danger of being forced to a further issue of legal tender notes, or to a sale of bonds, at whatever price they might command.

—The second section of the loan act of March 3, 1865, authorized the secretary to "dispose of any of the bonds or other obligations issued under this act, either in the United States or elsewhere, in such manner, and at such races, and under such conditions, as he may think advisable, for coin, or for other lawful money of the United States, or for any treasury notes, certificates of indebtedness, or certificates of deposit, or other representatives of value, which have been or may be issued under any act of Congress." In February, 1866, a bill was reported from the committee of ways and means, which proposed to construe the law of 1865 as allowing the secretary to receive any of the issues of the government in exchange for the description of bonds contained in the first section of the act, provided there should result no increase in the amount of the public debt. This would amount to an authority to fund all outstanding obligations of the government into bonds. The debates that occurred on this bill practically covered the whole financial policy of the government, but turned particularly upon the question of retiring in this manner the United States notes, at that time below par, giving to the secretary, it was claimed, full control of the currency of the country, and, by direct inference, of the market values of every description of property. Those who believed in a depreciated paper issue, or who thought that there was a short and easy road to specie payments by which the greenback could be brought up to par, feared the results of conferring such a great power upon Mr. McCulloch, who was known to be no friend to a circulating medium that was shifting in value and constantly below par. While the necessities of the war lasted, it was well enough, they argued, to confer such unlimited powers, but not in a time of peace. It was further urged, that it would be folly to withdraw a non-interest bearing debt, such as the legal tender note was, and substitute for it an obligation that paid 5 or 6 per cent. annually. On the other hand, it was shown that the bill was no real innovation, as the secretary could then do indirectly, under existing loan acts, what it was proposed to authorize directly. He could exchange one kind of paper for another, but only with the consent of the holder. In fact, some $50,000,000 of outstanding obligations had been already funded before any doubt respecting the legality of such a proceeding had been raised. The bill was finally passed April 12, but, to limit the power of the secretary over the currency contained the provision that "of the United States notes not more than $10,000,000 may be retired and canceled within six months from the passage of this act, and thereafter not more than $4,000,000 in any one month." This measure enabled the secretary to deal with the debt as it matured by selling bonds bearing 6 per cent. interest, the principal of which was redeemable at any time after five and before the expiration of twenty years from the date of issue. Under this act the following issues were made: Consols, 1865, $332,998,950; consols, 1867, $379,618,000, consols, 1868, $42,539,350. In May, 1866 Mr. Sherman introduced a bill into the senate, providing for reducing the interest on the national debt, and for funding the same. It provided for the funding of all of the outstanding debt save the greenbacks into 5 per cent. thirty-year bonds; and in consideration of the lower rate of interest, the bonds were to be exempted from the income tax levied by the United States. The amount of interest saved by the conversion was to be applied to the payment of the principal of the national debt; and it was estimated that the debt would be extinguished by this process in about thirty-six years. The debt was composed of so many different classes of securities and obligations that no one save a skilled financier could comprehend the details; it would, therefore, be a gain to make the rate of interest and the kind of security uniform. The rate of interest paid, too, was higher than that paid by any other nation; and though, while the war lasted, there was some excuse for such rates, they ought not to be continued in peace, when the credit of the government was beyond question. Moreover, it was a very fitting time to make the change, as a large portion of the debt was then or about to be under the control of the treasury. The main business of the secretary was to provide new loans for such as were maturing. But great objection was made to the clause exempting the bonds from taxation, and following the lead of one Mr. Hayes, of the revenue commission, many believed that the federal securities should be taxed equally with other property by state authority—a foolish proposition, and one that would practically give to the states the right to nullify by taxation the power of the national government to borrow money. Besides reducing the rate of interest by funding the debt, the bill proposed to establish a sinking fund. In 1862 the loan act provided for such a fund, but so long as the expenditures of government exceeded the receipts, it would have been a clumsy and costly instrument to maintain. The bill passed the senate, but could not be considered by the house. The debate showed that while the general opinion was in favor of funding the debt at a lower rate of interest, yet objections were urged against such a measure, not only on economic but also on administrative grounds. A like measure was introduced in the next session of congress, but was not acted upon.

—The secretary of the treasury touched upon the subject of refunding when treating of the foreign debt in his annual report of 1866. "The question now to be considered is not, how shall our bonds be prevented from going abroad? for a large amount has already gone, and others will follow as long as our credit is good and we continue to buy more than we can pay for in any other way, but, how shall they be prevented from being thrown upon the home market, to thwart our efforts in restoring the specie standard? The secretary sees no practicable method of doing this at an early day, but by substituting for them bonds which, being payable principal and interest in Europe, will be less likely to be returned when their return is the least to be desired." He therefore advised the issue of a bond payable in Europe, and bearing 5 or 4½ per cent. interest, which was to be substituted for the foreign bonds. In March, 1867, he was directed to issue 3 per cent. loan certificates with which to retire the outstanding compound interest notes, but he received no authority to deal generally with the debt. In his next report (1867) he again approaches the subject, and, in discussing the exemption of national securities from state taxation, recommends that all obligations of the government be funded into bonds bearing 6 per cent. interest, and having twenty years to run; "one-sixth part of the interest at each semi-annual payment to be reserved by the government and paid over to the states, according to their population." A bill embodying the recommendations of the secretary was introduced into congress, but not taken up. A long debate occurred upon the funding of the debt, which was now largely composed of 5-20 bonds. An aggregate of $1,613,442,650, of which about $200,000,000 were in the form of seven-thirties, might be regarded as of 5-20 bonds; and including the debts that would mature in the summer of 1867, upward of $1,700,000,000 were due within a period of five years. and the larger part was redeemable in 1867 and 1868. A law had been already passed to check any further contraction of the currency as proposed by the secretary, but a measure looking to "free banking" had been drawn up, one of the provisions it contained being that when the combined issues of the national banks and government should exceed $700,000,000 the government notes in excess of this sum should be retired and canceled, until the amount of the latter outstanding should be reduced to $250,000,000. As it was, the first law interfered greatly with Mr. McCulloch's plans, for these depended in a great measure upon his proposed contraction of the currency. The time was, however, favorable for the conversion of the debt into 5 per cent. bonds, as at the prices then obtained for 6 per cents, such bonds could be negotiated at par. The republicans were adopting resolutions which demanded a reduction in the rate of interest on the public debt. so that the burdens of taxation might be lessened; while the democrats, looking upon the debt as held chiefly by capitalists and bloated bondholders, wished to tax the bonds and thus diminish the revenue obtained from them, a measure that the loan acts expressly prohibited. The lengthy debate that followed covered a large number of irrelevant topics, and came to nought. Meantime, however, the secretary had been using the power already given him, and in December, 1867, was able to report that since September, 1865, the temporary loans, the 5 per cent. notes and the certificates of indebtedness had all been paid; the compound interest notes had been reduced from $217,024,160 to $71,875,040; the 7-30 notes from $830,000,000 to $337,978,800; the United States notes, including the fractional currency, from $459,505,311.51 to $387,871,477.39; while the funded debt had been increased $686,584,800. The act suspending the further reduction of the currency was passed Feb. 4, 1868.

—There would be little interest in tracing the recommendations of the secretary and the abortive action of congress with respect to this question of funding the debt, which were annually gone through with, it would almost appear, for form's sake alone. It was admitted that the rate of interest which the government paid on the debt was higher than it ought to be, and while one party viewing the bondholders with suspicion wished to reduce their income, and the other for the purpose of removing burdens from the tax payers desired to refund the debt at a lower interest, no agreement could be reached. Some half measures were adopted, like that of July 25. 1868, which provided for a further issue of temporary loan certificates, for the purpose of redeeming and retiring the outstanding compound interest notes; and of July, 1870, which provided for the redemption of these certificates. It was in May, 1869, that the sinking fund was established, and the payment of a part of the debt each year thus insured. In December, 1869, the funded debt stood as follows: "Of the loan of Jan. 1, 1861, the sum of $7,022,000 is outstanding, and payable on Jan.1, 1871. The loan of 1858, of $20,000,000, is payable in 1873. The bonds known as 10-40's, amounting to $194,567,300, are not payable until 1874. The 6 per cent. bonds, payable in 1881, amount to $283,677,600. The 5-20 bonds, amounting in the aggregate to $1,602,671,100, are either redeemable or will soon become redeemable," and must therefore be provided for. This led up to the refunding act of July 14, 1870. It authorized the secretary to issue not more than $200,000,000 5 per cent. bonds, redeemable after ten years; also not over $300,000,000 4½ per cent. bonds, redeemable after fifteen years; also not over $1,000,000,000 4 per cent. bonds, redeemable after thirty years—all to be exempt from United States or state taxes. As the bonded debt was not to be increased, these different classes of securities were to be floated at par. In January, 1871, an amending act was passed, which increased the amount of 5 per cent. bonds authorized to $500,000,000, but the total amount of bonds to be issued under the act of 1870 was not thus increased. As was customary, the whole financial policy of the government, past and present, was reviewed in the debates on this measure, which extended over six months. As this is the most important act relating to the funded debt that had been passed up to the year 1870, it will be interesting to examine in detail the condition of the bonded debt. The following is a statement of the amount of the coin-interest-bearing debt outstanding March 1, 1871, the nearest date prior to the opening of subscriptions under the refunding act:

The 10-40's of 1864, which bore 5 per cent. interest, were then selling in the market for about 112 currency (or 93 in gold), so that it was expected that the new 4 per cent. bonds could be sold at par; and this belief was strengthened by the fact that the government was collecting a revenue greatly in excess of its expenditures for ordinary purposes, thus giving a large sum (about $100,000,000 annually) to be applied to the debt. Moreover, there had already occurred a large reduction of the principal of the debt, being more than $303,000,000 in four years, or an average annual payment of $75,000,000, thus demonstrating the ability of the nation to control its indebtedness.

—On March 6, 1871, the books were opened for subscriptions to the new loan, both in this country and in Europe; and all the national banks here, and a large number of private bankers in the United States and abroad, were authorized to receive subscriptions. On the first of August the subscriptions amounted to $65,775,550, the larger share being taken by the banks. In July certain bankers in Europe offered to take the balance of the $200,000,000 offered, and it is very likely that the whole loan could with advantage have been negotiated abroad had not the war between France and Prussia broken out. A French loan bearing 5 per cent. interest was being disposed of at about 80, and this interfered with the sale at par of a United States bond bearing the same rate of interest. The paper currency of this country also introduced an uncertainty respecting the dividend that would be received when the interest was paid, as the rate of exchange was liable to fluctuate widely. In spite of these features the whole of the loan was taken up by the last of August. From 1871 to 1877 bonds were disposed of under the act of July 14, 1870, not only for refunding purposes, but also for other charges on the government, like the purchase of coin for a resumption fund, the payment of the cost of constructing the Mississippi river improvements, etc. The amount of 5 per cent. bonds issued each year was: 1871, $59,669,150; 1872, $140,330,850; 1874, $115,800, 750; 1875, $96,505,700; 1876, $104,553,050; 1877, $1,134,850. Total, $517,994,150. No 4½ per cent. bonds were taken before August, 1876, and after this no 5 per cent. bonds could be issued. The secretary was able to negotiate these bonds bearing a lower rate of interest at par, by reason of a favorable change in the money market, and in May, 1877, the condition of the market allowed of the floating at par in coin of a 4 per cent. bond. Within a period of thirty days the subscription for this class of bonds reached more than $75,000,000. The success indicated by this auspicious beginning was, however, checked later on, when it was proposed to repeal the resumption act and to remonetize silver, measures which threw doubt upon the credit of the government, and threatened to put an end to all future refunding operations by disabling the government from borrowing. The result of any such set-back would be to throw away an opportunity to reduce the rate of interest on the $1,452,000,000 of the debt which was redeemable by May, 1881, by one-third—or a saving of $22,006,205 in yearly interest. Fortunately this attack upon the public credit failed in its object, and while the resumption law remained in force, the remonetization of silver was so accomplished as to conceal its real effects, and postpone the disastrous financial crisis that might at once have been precipitated.

—In the early part of 1879 a measure passed the house, authorizing the issue of certificates of deposit in aid of the refunding of the national debt. It proposed to authorize the issue, in exchange for lawful money, of certificates of deposit of the denomination of $10, bearing interest at the rate of 3 per cent. per annum, and convertible at any time into 4 per cent. bonds. The main object to be attained by this bill was to place these bonds within easy reach of every citizen who desired to invest his savings in these securities. It had been recommended by the president in his annual message, and also by the secretary of the treasury. It met, however, with great opposition in the house, as its result was represented to be nothing less than to convert the treasury into a savings bank. The bill passed the house, and in the senate the rate of interest was changed to 4 per cent. In order to make this form of loan as popular as possible, and to facilitate and distribute the sale of these certificates, national banks and public officers were designated depositaries. The intention of the law was, however, defeated, as the premium on the 4 per cent. bonds offered a good investment, and the certificates, while purchased in small amounts, were obtained chiefly in large blocks by speculators; the attempt to offer an investment for small savings proved a farce. The main object of these measures, the refunding of the 6 per cent. bonds, was accomplished. By April 5 all of the outstanding 5-20's had been refunded, and as no other 6 per cent. bonds remained, attention was directed to the 10-40's. On April 16, $150,000,000 4 per cents were offered at a premium of ½ per cent. On the following day subscriptions to the amount of $149,389,650 were received and accepted, and upward of $35,000,000 received and declined. By October, 1879, $40,012,750 of the refunding certificates had been sold, and all but $2,809,400 had been exchanged for 4 per cent. bonds. Between November, 1878, and November, 1879, there had been refunded $370,848,750 6 per cent. and $193,890,230 5 per cent. bonds of the United States, into bonds bearing interest at 4 per cent., making an annual saving of interest of $9,355,877.

—It will now be convenient to take a general survey of the refunding operations accomplished since 1870, as their magnitude will become more apparent. In 1870 there were outstanding of debt controllable within a short period by the government, an aggregate of $1,395,345,950, on which 5 and 6 per cent. were being paid, and more than five-sixths of the total was paying 6 per cent. The annual interest charge was $81,639,684. In place of these bonds bearing high rates of interest had been issued, up to 1880, $500,000,000 at 5 per cent., $185,000,000 at 4½ per cent., and $710,345,950 at 4 per cent., on which the annual interest charge was $61,738,838; being a saving in interest of $19,900,846. Within the same period nearly $300,000,000 of the principal of the debt had been discharged. The apparent ease with which these great financial changes were accomplished, is in a great measure to be explained by the general condition of trade and industry as shown in the money market. The bulk of the bonds were floated after 1878, and before 1873. The years 1871-3 were marked by speculative movements which gave an unnatural and in the end an evil stimulus to all forms of enterprise and investments, and the securities offered by the government were no exception to the general rule. Subscriptions were freely made both here and abroad, until the crisis of 1873, which was followed by a long period of retrenchment, the inevitable consequence of over-speculation and inflated values. The table we have last quoted makes no return of sales for 1873, and shows a decided falling off in those for 1874-5. Had the loan been offered two years later than it was, it could not have been negotiated as readily. From 1873 to 1878 commercial depression and stagnation weighed upon the trade and industry of the country, one of the most severe of such periods, if not the most severe, that the nation has ever experienced. For lack of other safe and profitable investments, capital was turned toward the government bonds, and the glut of capital seeking investment in the money centres gave an opportunity to place at par a bond bearing a low rate of interest. There was in these years an immense amount of legitimate trading being done, which, conducted on a sound basis, at least yielded average profit; and, as there was very little spent and wasted in speculation and in uncertain ventures, the country was adding to its available wealth at a very rapid rate. This prepared the way for the great operations of 1878, 1879 and 1880. Although trade had revived, and industry was fully employed, the immense amount of capital seeking for profit allowed the floating of a 4 per cent. bond when the security was so unquestioned. The government had collected from twenty to thirty millions each year in excess of its expenditure, the year 1879 forming an exception; and, as the better condition of trade was felt, the national revenues increased to such an extent that in 1880 the surplus revenue reached the sum of $65,883,653, and gave every sign of going far above that amount in the succeeding year, should the favorable conditions continue to exist. It followed, therefore, that the credit of the government was high, and the fact that the resumption of specie payments had been accomplished in 1879 with almost no friction, and without creating even a ripple in the money markets, only served to increase confidence in the ability of the government to handle its indebtedness. The only disquieting circumstance—the enforced coinage of a silver dollar that was worth much less than its face—was not sufficient to raise any question on the public faith, although notes of warning regarding the ultimate effects of this questionable policy were raised by those who had made a study of economic questions. The fact that the great refunding operations were accomplished, and that, too, without creating any financial disturbance, impressed the people with the enormous wealth-producing power of the nation, and gave promise of as great, if not greater, financial operations in the future, should the government again be compelled to draw upon the resources of the people. Every dollar of debt that the government paid, and every dollar of interest that was as much as paid by being saved through the refunding into low interest bonds, represented ten or a hundred dollars that could be borrowed in the future, when the necessities of the nation should require.

—This operation, however, did not complete the work to be done, as $273,631,350 6 per cent. bonds, issued during the years 1861 and 1863, and $508,440,350 5 per cent. bonds, issued in 1870 and 1871, were about to become due. Of these, all but $18,415,000 would mature in May, June and July, 1881. These bonds must be provided for, and under existing laws there remained available for refunding operations, $104,654,050, or less than one-seventh of the total to be refunded. The secretary of the treasury recommended that authority be conferred upon him to issue 4 per cent. bonds and refunding certificates convertible into such bonds as before, and owing to the favorable situation he believed that such a bond could be sold at a premium. Although a refunding measure was introduced in the house, and debated, no vote was reached. In his report for 1880 the secretary again called attention to the necessity of passing some measure, and recommended that this portion of the debt be provided for by treasury notes, running from one to ten years, and issued so that they may be paid as they mature. This would obviate the necessity of paying a premium on the bonds purchased by the government for the sinking fund, as had often happened, and would leave a large portion of the debt so placed that it could be easily controlled by the government. He asked authority to issue $400,000,000 of such notes, which he thought need not carry a higher rate of interest than 3 per cent., and also to issue a like amount of bonds, to bear 3.65 per cent. interest. The government fours were then selling at 113. A bill was brought into the house, which provided for a long-time bond (at first a 50-year bond, afterward modified to 20-40's), to bear 3 per cent. interest. Objection was at once made, and with reason, that such a measure would practically place this refunded portion of the debt beyond the control of the government, and at a time when large reductions in the principal were possible. While the surplus revenue in 1879 was but about seven millions, in 1880 it was nearly sixty-six millions, and it was estimated that in 1881 a surplus of more than fifty millions could be counted upon with certainty, and this amount might be greatly exceeded. That such a proceeding could not be defended, was proved by plain figures. In January, 1881, there remained $671,207,050 redeemable at the pleasure of the government before July, and the surplus revenue to be collected before that date would, by the estimate of the secretary of the treasury, reduce this sum to $640,000,000. The requirements of the sinking fund for the next ten years, or until the $250,000,000 of the 4½ per cent. bonds became due, would amount to $520,000,000, and this took no account of the surplus revenue applied to the debt in that time. So that there could be no justice in converting this $630,000,000 into a long-term debt. Yet, it was on the rate of interest and the term of the bond that the debate was centred. There was such a scarcity of sound investments that the returns were small on such as were freely bought. "Only a few years ago the French rentes yielded over 5 per cent. on the market price, and not very long since United States government bonds could be bought, to return 7 and 8 per cent. Consols are now no longer at par, but they are so little under it that practically they may be said to yield only 3 per cent.; United States fours yield about 3½ per cent., French rentes, about 4 per cent.; Indian sterling bonds, not quite 4 per cent.; and colonial government securities, generally about the same rate. Even Russian and Hungarian bonds, great as is the risk attached to them, pay an investor only 5½ or 6½ per cent., respectively. And if we pass from the securities of states to those of private companies, we find that those in good credit give usually from 3 to 4 per cent., but seldom more." It was with reason urged that the credit of the government of the United States ought to be as high as that of any other nation, and that a 3 per cent, bond could be floated at par; the only question was, how long a time such a bond ought to run. The English consol, which bore 3 per cent, was practically perpetual, but a perpetual debt was opposed to all the traditions of American policy, and not to be thought of under any circumstances. As finally passed, the bill provided for the issue of $400,000,000 of bonds, bearing 3 per cent. interest, and payable in twenty years, or redeemable in five years after the date of issue, and also treasury notes to an amount not exceeding $300,000,000, bearing interest at 3 per cent., redeemable at the pleasure of government after one year, and payable in ten years from the date of issue.

—But while passing through congress, a provision was introduced into the measure, which was not only decidedly objectionable in itself, but was opposed to the spirit of a funding act, which should be a purely voluntary transaction: the government ought not, in such a case, to attempt to force a sale. either upon the people or upon any particular class of institutions. The securities of the government had been made a basis for the circulation of the national banks, and these useful institutions had experienced a great reduction in their profits, through the previous funding operations of the government. The comptroller of the currency, in his report for 1879, said: "The refunding of the national debt commenced in 1871, at which time the national banks held nearly $400,000,000 of the 5 and 6 per cent. bonds; and from that date to the present time they have held more than one-fifth of the interest-bearing debt of the United States. This class of bonds has since been greatly reduced, and is now less than one-sixth of all the bonds pledged for circulation, while more than one-third of the amount consists of bonds bearing interest at 4 per cent." At the time that this funding bill was pending (1881) the amounts of 6 and 5 per cents had been still more reduced. It was now proposed to make the new bonds the only government securities that could in future be used by the banks as a basis for their circulation, and, as an inducement to the banks to accept this proposition, the taxes on capital, deposits and circulation were to be repealed. But these measures of compensation were not included in the bill which passed the house, and the finance committee of the senate proposed to strike out this coercive section, thus removing the objectionable feature of the bill. It had been shown by the comptroller of the currency that such a section would strike a very serious blow at the national bank system, as the $211,000,000 of bonds then deposited by the banks would mature in that year (1881), and this amount of the new 3 per cents would have to be substituted, or the notes issued on it would have to be retired, and the banks probably be compelled to go into liquidation. But the section was restored, and the bill went to the president. The result of this provision was to create great distrust among the banks, and in the short period of thirteen days they contracted their issues by $18,722,340, and nearly precipitated a panic. In fact, a crisis was averted only by the action of the secretary of the treasury, who paid out an equal amount of legal tenders in the purchase of bonds. This movement was, however, caused in a measure by other provisions of the bill, which were, that "section four, of the act of June 20, 1874, entitled 'an act fixing the amount of United States notes,' be and the same is hereby repealed; and sections 5159 and 5160 of the Revised Statutes of the United States be, and the same are hereby, re-enacted." This would deprive the banks of the right to take up by a deposit of legal tenders their bonds held by the treasurer as a security for their circulation, and would compel them to keep bonds to the amount of one-third of their capital, and this, whether they issued circulating notes or not. This panic, however uncalled for, showed that the banks believed their existence to be endangered, and the president, taking the same position, vetoed the bill, giving as a reason the inexpediency, not to say the injustice, of the coercive section. "Under this section it is obvious that no additional banks will hereafter be organized, * * and no increase of the capital of existing banks can be obtained except by the purchase and deposit of 3 per cent. bonds. No other bonds of the United States can be used for the purpose. * * This is a radical change in the banking law. It takes from the banks the right they have heretofore had under the law to purchase and deposit, as security for their circulation, any of the bonds issued by the United States, and deprives the bill holder of the best security which the banks are able to give, by requiring them to deposit bonds having the least value of any bonds issued by the government. * * In short, I can not but regard the fifth section of the bill as a step in the direction of the destruction of the national banking system." The veto message was submitted on the day before congress adjourned, so that no action could be taken on it.

—In this way was a refunding measure defeated. But the debt was maturing, and some provision for meeting it must be made. Congress had adjourned and the responsibility was thrown upon the secretary of the treasury. On March 1, 1881, or three days before the adjournment of congress, the maturing debt was.

The only resources of the government to meet these obligations were the surplus revenue, and about $104,630,000 of 4 per cent. bonds that had been authorized by the acts of 1870 and 1871, but had not been disposed of. To pay off the maturing bonds with the revenue was clearly out of the question; and to have issued the 4 per cents would have placed so much of the debt beyond the control of the government, owing to the length of time they had to run before redemption, a step that it was not expedient to take. The secretary, Mr. Windom, therefore assumed the responsibility and adopted the following plan: "On April 11 there was called for absolute payment on July 1, 1881, the small loan of $688,200, bearing 6 per cent. interest, and known as the Oregon war debt, and at the same time, for payment on the same date, the 6 per cent. loans, acts of July 17 and Aug. 5, 1861, amounting to $140,544,650, and act of March 3, 1863, amounting to $55,145,750; but to the holders of the bonds of the two latter loans permission was given to have their bonds continued at the pleasure of the government, provided they should so request." This plan proved entirely successful, and a like privilege was extended to the holders of the funded loan of 1881. The bonds were presented freely, because the new continued bonds (known as "Windoms") bore a small premium, and the amounts that were not so presented were easily met by the surplus revenue. The annual saving in interest accomplished by this simple operation was $10,473,952, and on Nov. 1 there remained outstanding of bonds bearing 3½ per cent. interest, payable at the pleasure of the government, $563,380,950. The step taken by the secretary was severely criticised as being an assumption of legislative powers by an executive officer, but he really had no alternative, and, as events proved, his expedient was better than the one proposed by congress, which would have placed it beyond the power of the government to pay a larger portion of the debt by postponing payment of it for a term of years. Although this was not, properly speaking, a refunding measure, it accomplished what such a measure proposed to accomplish, and so satisfactory was the result that Secretary Folger made "no recommendation of legislation for the refunding of the bonds now outstanding bearing interest at 3½ per centum."

—A bill to refund $200,000,000 of the continued bonds into 3 per cent. stock was debated in the senate, but failed in the house, and the whole matter would have been allowed to rest had it not been for the necessity of allowing the national banks to renew their charters. The eleventh section of this act (July 12, 1882) authorized the secretary to receive continued bonds, and to issue instead 3 per cent. securities; and provided "that the bonds herein authorized shall not be called in and paid so long as any bonds of the United States heretofore issued bearing a higher rate of interest than 3 per centum, and which shall be redeemable at the pleasure of the United States, shall be outstanding and uncalled. The last of the said bonds originally issued under this act, and their substitutes, shall be first called in, and this order of payment shall be followed, until all shall have been paid." This measure completed the funding operations of the government, and while more than $300,000,000 of the 3½ per cents were exchanged for 3 per cents, the surplus revenues were so great that, by November, 1883, the 3 per cents were being called in for payment. It was, in fact, then a question as to what should be done with the revenues of the government when all the threes were redeemed, as no other bonds became due until 1891, and the attempts to reduce the revenue had proved abortive.

—For the purpose of showing more completely the changes that have occurred in the debt, the following table, from official records, is given:

—AUTHORITIES. The Finance Reports and Congressional Globe and Record are the chief authorities, but there is much material scattered among periodicals which might be consulted with advantage, but which can not be mentioned in this place.

REICHSRATH

REICHSRATH (council of the empire) is the name of the parliament of Austria. It is divided into two chambers, the members of the lower house being elective. (See AUSTRIA-HUNGARY.)

REICHSTAG

REICHSTAG. The Reichstag is the elective chamber of the German parliament. Thus was resumed the name of the assembly of the estates of the German empire, which, from 1663, up to 1806, convened regularly at Regensburg, under the presidency of the emperor, or of the arch-chancellor of the empire, the elector-archbishop of Mayence. That assembly was divided into three chambers: 1, of electors; 2, of princes, divided into the temporal and the ecclesiastical bench (the neutral bench between them was occupied by the Protestant bishops of Lübeck and of Osnabruck); 3, of cities, subdivided into the bench of the Rhine and the Suabian bench. Each of the three chambers deliberated separately; after a separate vote had been taken, the chambers sought to come to an understanding, for the purpose of presenting to the emperor a common decision, called conclusum imperii.

REMOVAL OF DEPOSITS

REMOVAL OF DEPOSITS. (See DEPOSITS, REMOVAL OF.)

REMOVALS FROM OFFICE

REMOVALS FROM OFFICE. The subject of Appointments has been reserved, to be considered here with Removals. An appointment, in a political sense, is the designation and authorization, by the proper authority, of some person to be a public officer or agent, with the powers and duties conferred by law. A removal is an act, on the part of some competent authority, by which the holding of a public office or agency is brought to an end. Very generally the power of appointment and that of removal are vested in the same officer or body. Under enlightened governments this power, save in so far as it relates to the subordinates of the judicial and legislative departments, is, with few exceptions, treated as an executive power. Under the very defective confederacy which preceded the American constitution, the appointing power was in congress, there having been no executive branch; and in several of the states a greater or less portion of that power has been retained or usurped by the legislature. Sometimes, however, the power of appointment is divided between two authorities, as in the case of about 3,500 of the higher non-elective officers of the United States, who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the senate. (See CONFIRMATION.) The same mode of appointment generally prevails in the states; but Massachusetts gives the power of confirmation; generally, to a council of eight members elected by the people in districts, and perhaps some other states have followed her example.

—The federal constitution, the theory of which is followed by the states, confers the appointing power upon the president in these words: "He shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the senate, shall appoint, ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the supreme court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law; but the congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers as they may think proper in the president alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments." This power extends to army and navy appointments, as well as to those for the civil service. No power of removal is formally conferred, and the only provisions expressly affecting that power are these: 1. "The president, vice-president, and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for a conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors." 2. "The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behavior," and their compensation shall. not be diminished during continuance in office. 3. "The house of representatives shall elect their speaker and other officers; * * the senate shall choose their other officers, and also a president pro tempore in the absence of the vice-president." Each of these provisions plainly leaves the important authority and duty of removal of federal officials, in case they are not guilty of high crimes or misdemeanors, utterly unprovided for, and therefore to mere implication.

—The appointment has been held complete when the commission is filled out and signed by the president, even through not delivered. (Marbury vs. Madison, 1 Cranch, 137, and 19 Howard Rep., 4, 74.) But President Jefferson dissented from this view, and treated a delivery of the commission as essential to complete an appointment.

—Congress has vested in the courts of law the appointment of nearly or quite all the subordinates of those tribunals. With considerable exceptions (for which see CONFIRMATION and TERM AND TENURE OF OFFICE), it has vested in each of the heads of departments the appointment of its own subordinates. And legislative bodies in the United States, as in all other really free countries, appoint and remove their own subordinates.

—Under the federal constitution, it would seem plain, that, with the exception of officers of congress, no appointment of civil officers can be made, except, first, by the president, by and with the advice and consent of the senate; or, second, of inferior officers, 1, by the president alone. 2, by one of the heads of a department, or, 3, by a court of law.

—There seems to be no clear definition of an "inferior officer" in the sense of the constitution, and it would be very difficult to frame one of much definiteness. What, then, is the extent of the power of congress to vest appointments? It is by no means easy to determine what persons in the public service are, in any sense, officers within the purview of the constitution. There are at all times thousands in that service whom the law, with little precision, designates as employés. In legal phrase, they are employed, but not appointed, and are dismissed, or discharged, but not removed. Their selection for, and severance from, the public service, is, therefore, technically no exercise of the appointing power. Mere laborers in the navy yards, arsenals, and elsewhere, are clearly only employés. But many persons, in continuous service at custom houses and other offices, as well as the clerks of committees and commissions, and all like officials, whose relations and duties are nearly identical with those of others classed as officers, are designated and treated as if only employés. Such, too, is the case of nearly all of the tens of thousands of the subordinates of postmasters throughout the Union, they being employed and discharged by the postmasters themselves, without any action by the postmaster general; yet the subordinates of collectors, naval officers, surveyors, etc. with slight exception—though having analogous functions and authority, and being in no respect more official and permanent—are treated as officers. They are appointed and removed by the secretary of the treasury; the direct superiors of the latter "inferior officers" only making recommendations concerning them to that "head of department." On no sound principle can such discrimination be made. The clerk of the postmaster, on the basis of principle, dignity and justice, is as much an officer as the clerk of the collector. The question may well arise as to which of these two classes of public servants are now being selected and discharged in an unconstitutional manner.

—Confusion on the subject has existed from the beginning of the government. A law of 1789 (1 Stat. at Large, chap. xx., § 27), authorizes "marshals to appoint one or more deputies," and a court or judge to remove them. It has been decided (United States vs. Finkle, 3 Blatchford Rep., 425), that "these deputies are officers." But if they are officers, it is plain that they can not be appointed by a marshal, he not being an official upon whom congress can confer the appointing power. (See United States vs. Hertwell, 6 Wallace Rep., 385, for an analogous case.)

—The authority of congress, in regard to vesting the appointing power, may obviously be so exercised as to greatly affect not only the executive department itself, but the relations between it and the senate. The appointment of the vast number of subordinates now made by the heads of the departments alone might either be vested in the president alone or, on the other extreme, be made subject to the confirmation of the senate. So the appointment of all who can be classed as "inferior officers" of the about 3,500 officers now nominated by the president and confirmed by the senate, might be given to the president alone or to heads of departments. And it is by no means clear how far congress may go in regulating the power of removal. Even as early as 1826, a committee of the senate made a report in favor of requiring the president, in making nominations to that body, to fill a vacancy caused by a removal, to state the reasons for which the removal had been made. There is a statute forbidding the head of a department removing certain officers "except for cause stated in writing, which shall be submitted to congress at the session following such removal." (U. S. Rev. Stat., sec. 1705; and see CONFIRMATION, for effect of tenure of office acts.)

—The question where the right of removal was vested arose almost upon the government going into effect. Closely connected with that, was the question as to the theory and basis of removals. These questions were discussed in the house of representatives at its first session, of which Madison was a member. A considerable majority—contrary to a view expressed in the "Federalist," and approved by Mr. Webster—finally held that the power of removal was in the president alone, and that he could remove in his discretion. (Annals of Congress, vol. i., pp. 369-384.) The senate approved this view, but only by the casting vote of the vice-president, Mr. Adams. (Ex parte Hennin, 13 Peters Rep., 237, 240.) In conformity to this view, the act establishing the treasury department declares that "the secretary may be removed by the president." Ever since, this vast implied power—the greatest perhaps ever conferred by mere construction—has been accorded to the president, without its ever having been made an issue in the courts. (1 Kent's Commentaries, 311.) The debate in the house was elaborate, and disclosed great diversity of opinion. The rule for which Mr. Madison, who took a leading part, contended, was that the power of removal was an incident to or really a part of the power of appointments, and that it therefore belonged to the president alone. The senate was to have no part in its exercise. He also maintained, with unanswerable cogency, that removals can be made only for cause, and that a failure to remove for good cause and a removal without such cause, would alike be malfeasance on the part of the president, (and consequently on the part of any official having the appointing power). which would justly subject him to impeachment. It was strongly urged by others, that, as the senate had the power of confirmation (see CONFIRMATION), and hence in a sense shared the appointing power, it should also be consulted as to removals. Mr. Benson, of New York, (where the spoils system was first and most fully developed), advanced the doctrine that the president could "remove at pleasure"; and consequently that he was under no such legal or moral responsibility as Mr. Madison insisted upon. Others urged the equally radical view, on the other extreme, that appointed officers were removable only by impeachment and conviction, which would, of course, give a tenure of good behavior. The only decision reached was, that the power of removal was in the president alone, until some part of it should (with the power of appointment) be vested by congress elsewhere, as the constitution authorizes. Yet, with strange inconsistency, the first congress, in one case, by law vested the power of appointing certain officers in one subordinate official (not the head of a department), and the power of removing them in another. (1 Stat. at Large, chap. xx., § 27.)

—Despite the conflicting action of congress, the rule of the courts is, that the power of removal is an incident of the power of appointment. (Ex parte Hennin, 13 Peters Rep., 261.) It is the general rule, consequently, that when a power of appointment is conferred, the power of removal accompanies it as an incident; the conditions on which the removal may be made depending on the tenure of the office, as defined by law. (See TERM AND TENURE OF OFFICE.) Where there is a tenure of good behavior, it is plain there must be a good cause arising from the bad conduct of the official. Removal, in such a case. must be preceded by such action as is equivalent to a conviction for misbehavior; of which there must have been a charge, and upon that charge a trial and opportunity of defense. (Page vs. Hoedin, 8 B. Munroe, 672.) There are few cases of such tenure, except the judiciary. Under a power to remove "for cause" there is a limitation of the power of a mere discretionary removal, and there must be a legal cause—malfeasance, misfeasance or nonfeasance—constituting a breach of the trust of the office, of which the courts can take notice; and they will restore the officer removed without such cause. (State, etc., vs. Common Council, 9 Wisconsin Rep., 254; Ex parte King, 35 Texas Rep., 657; Field vs. Com., etc., 32 Penn. Rep., 478, 484; The People vs. Munday, 72 New York Rep.,445; The People vs. The Mayor, 79 New York Rep., 582.) If there is some evidence of cause for removal, the courts will not review that evidence, though they might in the first instance have reached a different conclusion. (The People vs. Campbell, 82 New York Rep., 247.)

—Nearly all appointed officials, save those having a fixed term, hold during the discretion of the official having the appointing power, or, in common phrase, "during his pleasure." A similar right of removal during the term exists in the case of appointed officials having a fixed term of year.

—Contrary to the general opinion until recently, the power of the president to remove (or dismiss) an officer of the army or navy is the same as his power to remove a civil officer; but congress has so regulated that authority, that, without the concurrence of the senate, the power of summarily discharging army or navy officers "in time of peace" can not be exercised "except in pursuance of the sentence of a court martial, or in commutation thereof." (Blake vs. The United States, 13 Ott Rep., 227, 237.) This liability of all officers of the army and navy, confirmed by the senate, to be removed at any time by the mere concurrent act of the president and the party majority of that body, has, unquestionably, a vicious tendency; drawing those officers into politics, and causing them to more and more dread political influence and to court the favor of parties and their leaders. This power of removal is held in partisan circles, and very generally on the part of the politician class, to mean a right to remove in order to promote the interests of the dominant party or faction, and even if not, yet in order to realize the political ambition of the appointing officer. The threat or fear of such use of it is made effective for extorting political assessments, and for compelling the officials of the government to become the henchmen of parties and chieftains. This prostitution of the power of removal, like that of the power of appointment, has been one of the most potent agencies by which the public service has been demoralized and degraded, and the spoils system has been made potential. There can be little doubt that there has been a mischievous and unwarranted suggestion drawn from the phrase "removable at pleasure," sometimes used by the courts. It has too often, ever by honest citizens, been accepted as meaning an authority under no moral obligations; when, in fact, nothing can be clearer than the duty of using it, conscientiously. for the promotion of the public interests in the broadest sense in which they may be affected. Whatever may be said of a technical, legal power, no officer can have a right to remove a worthy public servant, except for adequate public reasons, nor any right to for-bear to remove an unworthy one, unless the removal would, for peculiar reasons, be at the moment a public detriment. This was the rule laid down by Madison, and enforced during his generation.

—The moral obligations attending the exercise of the appointing power are clear enough to any candid mind, however party zeal and vicious usages may have obscured them in the minds of the mere politician. The same rules of duty which forbid the use of the people's money for private and party purposes, also forbid the exercise of any branch of the appointing power for the same purpose. The fact that the public conscience is outraged at every falsification of the public accounts and every peculation of the public moneys, yet takes but languid notice of the appointment of the friends of thieves to be constables and marshals, of ignorant politicians to be justices, or of second or third class lawyers to be judges, though abuses and disqualifications on the part of these latter officials may be ten times the most disastrous, only illustrates the lack of political education and the need of reflection upon all that pertains to one of the most vital and potential powers of government. We allow, all over the land, officers to appoint, almost without criticism, an incompetent relative, or an ignorant electioneering partisan, to official places, by reason of which the public business greatly suffers and official life is made disreputable: though we should be justly astir for a conviction, if a single dollar had been taken by a letter carrier, or a pair of gloves—on which we, perhaps, had paid no duties—had been abstracted by a baggage inspector. It will be a great advance of public education and of the public welfare iu many ways, when we shall have an intelligent public opinion which will be indignant and outspoken upon every prostitution of the high trust of the appointing power for party or selfish ends. And it may not be without use to invite special attention to the study and reflection required for comprehending how profoundly, and in what manifold ways, in federal, state and municipal affairs, the honest use of that power, for the selection of the wisest, purest and most efficient, could be made potential for the purification of politics and elevation of official life. Such teaching should find a place in our schools and colleges. It is now the accepted opinion of a great proportion of our people, if not that this power may justifiably be used to advance the personal friends of the officer, yet that it may be used to strengthen his party and his faction. Upon that theory it is now generally exercised. (See SPOILS SYSTEM, PATRONAGE, PROMOTION.)

—The abuses in connection with the power of removal are by no means all on the side of its selfish or partisan exercise. The same malign influences which cause worthy officials to be sent away, are as powerfully exerted to keep the unworthy in their places. Those who have been able to make the public service a hospital for their dependents, combine to resent all attempts to remove them. It may cost a postmaster or a head of a department his place to send away the incompetent electioneering agent of a great party chieftain, or even "the young lady" recommended "by a congressman." Offices are frequently burdened with supernumeraries, whom those having the power have not the courage to remove. President Grant, in one of his messages, referred to the fact that it was far easier to remove the unworthy who came in through competition, and were therefore without influence to keep them, than it was to remove the inefficient favorites of great politicians.

—Under despotic forms of government—or where corruption, as in Turkey, is habitually resorted to as an agency of administration—there is of course no more pretense of justice, or regard for moral obligation, in exercising the power of removal, than of that of appointment. It is, without scruple, used to reward favorites, to gain money, to suppress independence, to strengthen dynasties and hierarchies. Cromwell used it, almost as freely as did James and Charles, to uphold political and religious partisans. Even as late as George III. it was used for nearly or quite all those purposes, and in the army and navy as well as in the civil service. When liberty and justice were enough advanced to enable party majorities to rule, the dominant party began by prostituting that power for selfish ends in much the same spirit that the corrupt tyrants of earlier days had done.

—Soon after the formation of the American constitution, there arose a public opinion in Great Britain too strong for the king to confront, which condemned removals without cause, and such removals ceased. Parties, there, have long since reached the sound conclusion that even their own strength is not increased by mere partisan appointments or proscriptive removals. (See CIVIL, SERVICE REFORM, PROMOTIONS.)

—From the beginning of our national administration until Jackson came to the presidency, it was the accepted theory and the constant practice that removals were not to be made without good cause; and that, unless in the cases of the legal advisers of the president and perhaps a few-others, political opinion did not constitute such a cause. Under Jefferson and the second Adams especially, there was great pressure for removals for political reasons. But they, and each of the first six presidents, standing upon principle and a sense of public duty, nobly resisted that partisan demand; altogether making only seventy-three removals in the forty years covered by their terms. Of these, Washington made nine, and all for cause; John Adams, nine, and none on mere political grounds; Jefferson, thirty-nine, of which he said none were for party reasons; Madison, five; Monroe, nine; and John Q. Adams only two, and both for cause. It is certain that not one of these presidents made a proscription or partisan removal according to the later practice. With Jackson's accession to the presidency a new spirit triumphed. Offices were treated rather as party spoils than as public trusts. Removals were made for the treble purpose of punishing political opponents, of rewarding subservient supporters, and "of strengthening the party." In the year from March 4, 1829, to March 4, 1830, President Jackson appears to have made 734 removals. Throughout his two terms his use of the appointing power was in the same intolerant and despotic spirit. In all the lower grades of the public service, the president's example was soon followed. The theory that patronage is essential to the vitality and usefulness of parties, and that "to the victor belong the spoils," was generally enforced. The higher sentiment of the nation was outraged, and all official life was humiliated and debased. We have no space for enlarging upon the disastrous effects of the spoils system then first established in the national administration. (See SPOILS SYSTEM, PATRONAGE.)

—How thoroughly the theory enforced at Washington was also enforced in the local offices is well illustrated a few years later at the New York custom house. One collector, there, in the four years from 1858 to 1862, removed 389 of his 690 subordinates; another, of the opposite party, in the three and a half years next following, removed 525 out of 702 of those serving under him. Nearly all these removals were for partisan reasons. The duty of removing for cause was, by reason of vicious political influence, but rarely performed. And this reckless, demoralizing proscription, fatal alike to efficiency in the customs service, to purity in politics, and to all manly selfrespect in the public service, continued there, and generally prevailed in the whole civil administration, until the demand for a reform policy began to be effective soon after 1871. In the five years, or 1,565 secular days, preceding the year 1871, there were 1,678 removals, and nearly all for mere partisan reasons, in the New York custom house—or, more than at the rate of one every secular day of the five years!

—From the introduction of the reform methods, in July, 1878, (under which competitive examinations for admission to the New York custom house have been since enforced). until the 8th of September of that year, no removal was there made. From the last-named date to Feb. 20, 1881, (nearly two and a half years), only forty-four removals were made in the office, and all for cause, and hence none for political reasons. From the last-named date to this time (November, 1882), the removals have been upon the same basis and in almost the same ratio, as in the two and a half years preceding 1881.

—The effects of the new system upon removals, as enforced in the New York postoffice during the same periods, have been almost identical with those at the custom house. And at the several other offices where competitive examinations, with various defects and limitations, have been enforced, there has been a corresponding reduction in the number of proscriptive removals Like results attended the enforcement of such examination at Washington under President Grant.

—Proscriptive and partisan removals (or, in other words, removals without cause), are almost invariably made in order to furnish a vacancy for some influential or strongly backed office seeker. And if it were necessary that every such office seeker should win the first place in a competitive examination before he could be appointed, there would be few unjust removals, and the question as to a reasonably permanent tenure of office would present little difficulty, if it was not practically settled. The class of men who are being pushed, or who beg and intrigue for office, are rarely those who can win a place in an honest rivalry or competition of merit. The reasons why members of congress refused to vote money to enable President Grant to continue competitive examinations at Washington, and why congress has given no aid in support of the competitive or merit system at the New York offices, are largely. to be found in the simple facts that the new system was fatal to all arbitrary and proscriptive removals, and hence destructive of the vast congressional patronage, by the aid of which so many members secure their own elections, augment their influence and importance, and get places for their henchmen and favorites. Members of congress, whose duty it is to make laws in aid of keeping the most useful public servants in their places, have exerted a very great part of that pernicious influence which has so generally made our public servants the dependents and servile agents of scheming officials and unscrupulous chieftains.

—During the last few years there has been a rapid development of a sentiment which condemns all removals without cause. The people are beginning to take notice of the abuse which is becoming more and more an issue in the elections. If the more sagacious party leaders already see the need of arresting this form of proscription and despotism, it is yet true that very lately, and even within a few months, the most arbitrary and indefensible removals have been made. Upon each of the late changes in the party majorities in the houses of congress, mere ministerial subordinates have been changed in order to gain partisan patronage. The time of the national senate, during the past and present year, has been largely given to mere factional contentions, growing out of the attempted removals of postmasters and collectors whose political opinions all true statesmen must hold to be unimportant, if not utterly immaterial. At the last session the house was forced to a vote in order to retain a skilled and invaluable clerk against a pressure of many members who sought to put an inexperienced partisan of their own faction into his place. The speaker of the present house of representatives, merely for political reasons, has arbitrarily removed one or more of its most efficient stenographic reporters, in violation of the spirit if not the letter of its own rules and usages, which allow removals only for cause, and has appointed a successor, unequal in capacity, by reason of which the business of the house appears to have been embarrassed. (See speech of Mr. Springer, "Congressional Record," July 27, 1882.) And while we are writing, the facts are laid before the public of a removal of a female postmaster, very recently made in Virginia, only for the reason that a senator treats the sympathy of her brother with the political faction which opposes him as a sufficient cause for demanding such removal! In state and municipal administration, removals are constantly being made for no better cause; by reason of which, men of high self-respect and capacity scorn the public service; those in it are humiliated; administration is made inefficient and needlessly expensive; and the intensity, intrigue and corruption of party politics, and the strife for places, are greatly increased. It is not possible to exaggerate the discouraging, humiliating effects upon the great body of the civil servants, produced by the constant sense that no merits of their own, but an influence and interests foreign to their sphere of duties, are most potential for keeping them in their places; or to overstate the demoralizing influence upon all official and political life of so vast a power as that of appointment and removal habitually used in defiance of the highest obligations of morality, patriotism, and the official oath.

RENT

RENT. This is the term recognized in political economy, to denote the net product of the land,i.e., that portion of the total product, which, after deducting what covers the expense of production, remains, and constitutes a surplus. This surplus naturally reverts to the owners of the soil; they gather it themselves when they work their own lands; they receive it from the hands of farmers, or metayers when they leave to others the care of making them productive; in all cases. the rent forms part of the property. We must not, however, confound it with the price paid by one who hires a farm, (called sometimes farm rent), although it is one of the elements of the latter. Every case of farm rent, every leasing price, whether payable in money or in kind, includes something additional, viz., the remuneration due the land owners for expenditures made by them at various times in the past, to facilitate labor or increase its results. The buildings for farm service or for residence, the fences, ditches and plantations which the farm embraces, have often cost considerable sums, and it is just that those who enjoy the advantages connected with their existence, should pay all or a part of the interest on the capital that had to be devoted to them. On the other hand, the conditions of the lease of lands have been discussed by the contracting parties, and may have been so determined as to favor either. Nevertheless, wherever the price for the use of the farm is payable in money, there is a constant tendency for it to include the entire rent. Rent is a net product, it is only realized when active industry has been fully remunerated, and it is not less difficult for farmers to reserve any of it for themselves, than for proprietors to induce farmers to sacrifice to them a part of the profits due to their improvements. But, whatever may be the nature of the circumstances which determine the apportionment of the rent of land between the owner and farmer, they can neither permanently effect its real amount nor alter its original character.

—Among the great facts to which the attention of economists has been drawn, few have given rise to so many controversies as the rent of lands. What it is, its origin, its proportions, its effects, its legitimacy even, everything connected with its existence, has been the object of long and patient investigations, and still harmony has not yet been established between the differing opinions. This is the more to be regretted, because, in this very question of rent are involved many other problems of deep social import, and the effects of its solution naturally extend far beyond the limits which scientific investigation has attained.

—We will here commence by pointing out the order in which the opinions on the matter of rent originated; we will note their characteristic differences; then we will take up the question in its whole extent, and, in our course, we shall find occasion to show how far each of the theories before us seems to depart from or to approach the truth, so far as the best established facts permit us to discern it.

—It was the physiocratic school who first enunciated an opinion on the nature of rent. They characterized it as the net product of the land, and in this they were not in error; but soon, attributing to it an extreme and exclusive importance, they made it the only source of public and private wealth. We know how erroneous a doctrine must be, which is based on the idea that no other labor than that on land can obtain more than the equivalent of the values it consumes, a doctrine denying productive power to employments without which most things produced from the land would themselves remain unsuited to use, and not admitting that men could realize any other riches than that which the natural fertility of the soil put at their disposal. However, in spite of this fundamental error which vitiated all their conclusions, we can not deny the physiocrates the merit of having apprehended well the character of rent and having given a pretty accurate definition of it. Among their observations on the natural increase of rent, there are also some which are both just and important. The net product, rent, in the excess which is left from the crops after the expenses of cultivation are reimbursed; it is the portion of the fruits of the earth from which the non-agricultural classes subsist; and, doubtless, in the normal and regular order of things, the greater or less amount of this excess has a strong influence on the degree of power and prosperity in reserve for nations.

—With and by the illustrious Adam Smith, began what may rightfully be called true economic science. The opinion of Smith on the subject of rent is much like that of the physiocrates. It is substantially as follows. In labor on land, nature acts conjointly with man, and rent is the product of its co-operative power. It is this co-operative power of the earth, the enjoyment of which landholders grant in consideration of a price for the lease based upon a proportional share of the sum at which it figures in the results of production.

—The opinion of Adam Smith has obtained the assent of most economists. J B. Say, Storch, Rossi and Rau adopted it, or varied little from it. Dr. Anderson, however, had previously presented a harmonious series of ideas on the subject, which were at the same time more complex and better developed. 68 But his system did not attract attention until after having been reproduced again in the writings of Malthus and Ricardo, and it is under the name of the latter that he has taken a place in economic science.

—The starting point of Ricardo is in reality the same as that of Adam Smith. What the latter calls the co-operative power of land, Ricardo calls natural fertility, or original powers; but what he has added to the fundamental notion is, an exposition of the rules which, in his opinion. govern the formation and progressive increase of rent. According to Ricardo, rent is not solely the result of a natural fertility which permits the land to return, to those who cultivate it, harvests superior to their needs; it arises from the unequal distribution of this fertility. So long as the population, having plenty of room, can work only the best lands at their disposal, there is no rent: but just as soon as, on account of their increase in numbers, the same population are compelled, in order to procure means of subsistence, to attack lands of inferior quality, rent arises and becomes the share of the proprietors of the portions of the soil that were first cultivated. And the following is his explanation. Being less fertile than the others, the lands on which the labor is expended can not return, for a like expenditure in cultivation, as great a product. The crops they yield require additional expense and labor. and as it has become impossible for society to do without its complement of supplies, it is compelled to pay for provisions whatever price is necessary to insure production on land that has just been cleared. In this inevitable movement. it is the net cost of the produce on the worst land to which recourse must be had, which fixes the general price, and consequently determines the profits of the proprietors of the land first cultivated, the realization of which secures them a rent. They sell at a higher price what they obtain without increased cost or advances, and find themselves masters of a greater surplus than they had before prices had risen. A like effect is again produced whenever the necessity of increasing the arable domain is felt. Worse lands are continually being brought under cultivation; the price of produce rises because of the increased outlay they require; and, at each advance in prices which takes place, rent is seen to arise where it did not previously exist, and to increase where it had already arisen. Such are the ideas on which the theory is based which is called by Ricardo's name. This theory affirms, or at least appears to affirm, that rent has no other source than the difference in the degree of fertility between different portions of the soil: it attributes its origin and development to no other principle than the continual rise in the market price of food, and it makes the difference between a general price current, regulated by the expenses connected with production in localities where these expenses are greatest, and the particular net cost in the other portions of the soil, the measure of the rent that each of the latter affords or is adapted to afford.

—Ricardo's theory was of course widely taken into consideration by the economic world. It gave, or seemed to give, the explanation of a certain number of facts. which, at the time when it originated, were receiving much attention from the public. Moreover, many writers accepted it fully; and it was not until our day that it found decided opponents. Attacked first in England by Prof. Jones, of Hailebury, it was afterward assailed by adversaries whose denials extended even to the principle to which Smith had given his adhesion.

—A very distinguished American economist, Mr. Carey, has denied that the natural fertility of the soil is among the causes productive of rent. In his view, rent has no other source than the expenses successively incurred in the interest of production. And among these expenses he includes, besides those of which the lands under cultivation have been the direct object, the construction of roads, canals, and any means of communication designed to facilitate transportation and to render the markets accessible to products which, if they could not have reached them, would not have been demanded of the soil. Mr. Carey, moreover, has endeavored to demonstrate that Ricardo was entirely wrong in regard to the order in which cultivation has taken place, and that it has not begun with the most fertile lands, but with those most easily cleared, or the nearest to centres of consumption. Taking Mr. Carey's opinions in their plain signification, they consist in denying to the land itself any participation in the formation of rent, in attempting to prove that all this rent represents only the remuneration for advances made to render the soil amenable to culture; in a word, that rent is and can be only a simple creation of human industry.

—Such is also the point of view from which rent was regarded by a man whose premature loss science can not too deeply deplore. M. Bastiat, dreading the consequences of any doctrine which seemed to authorize the admission that wealth could exist which was not exclusively the product of services or of human efforts, started with the same idea as Mr. Carey. According to him, rent is and can be only the interest on the capital invested in clearing the soil and preparing it for production. Only M. Bastiat recognizes that rent may occur without the proprietor having to make any sacrifice to reap the benefit of an unexpected increase: and this case he explains by remarking that there is nothing peculiar in landed property; that what creates the value of the services rendered by every employment of human industry, whatever agent it may use, is not alone the efforts made by the producer, but also the efforts spared to the consumer; and that the latter, whenever his wants increase, pays more for the service rendered him in saving him the more costly efforts he would have to make to provide for himself without such aid. It is much to be regretted that M. Bastiat did not have time to make a precise and well-arranged statement of his ideas before his death. It was in connection with the treatment of real estate that he announced them, in the clever book he published under the title of "Economic Harmonies." The special chapter that he proposed to devote to rent was scarcely outlined. and what has been preserved of it consists only of incomplete fragments, in which the author's ideas are not clearly discernible.

—Such are the principal opinions to which the existence of rent has given rise. Their antagonism is very marked. While some attribute the formation of rent to the co-operative action of nature in agricultural labor, others, denying all influence to this action. consider rent only as the remuneration for the expenses and efforts by which mankind have succeeded in transforming the earth into an instrument of production. We will review the whole subject, and attempt to ascertain the truth amid the obscurities and complications which have hitherto hindered its successful investigation.

—Origin of Rent. There are, in the first place, two things which it seems to us impossible to contest. One is, that the earth is endowed with fertility; the other, that it is not equally so in all parts. It is a fact no less evident, that this fertility does not even need the co-operation of man in order to manifest itself. In the most uncultivated condition the land never fails to be covered with vegetable growths, some of which can supply food and support animals whose flesh may be eaten; and it is the land which, by insuring to the human race at the beginning harvests already produced, has permitted it to escape the destructive effects of famine. Of course, men had to be at the trouble of gathering the fruit, pulling up the roots, and catching the game and the fish on which they subsisted; but if such efforts had alone the power of conferring value on the products which the earth of itself put within their reach, it is none the less true that where these products were more abundant or more easily obtainable, less effort was needed to appropriate them, to adapt them to use; in a word, to convert them into exchangeable wealth. Well, it is to this natural fertility of the earth, which has from the beginning put its inhabitants in the way of obtaining means of subsistence which were not wholly the fruit of their labor even, that rent owes its origin. Rent is the surplus realized over the expense of production, and wherever it was possible to those who, in any way whatever, labored to gather the fruits of the earth, to amass more of them than their personal necessities required, there was a surplus to their advantage, which was rent, and rent very evidently due to the fertility of the portion of the soil on which their industry had been employed.

—The most savage tribes have nothing to learn in this regard. They contest with each other the occupation of places where the waters most abound in fish, or where the land furnishes the most game or fruit; and this is because they well know that as long as they keep exclusive possession of it, they will derive from a given amount of effort, time and fatigue, a quantity of the means of subsistence superior to what they would obtain on less favored portions of the soil; in a word, an actual excess over the expenses of production, which would be everywhere else less amply repaid.

—We will say more. From the first, the earth must, in certain places, have conferred a rent on those who as yet knew only how to gather its spontaneous productions, as otherwise civilization could not have arisen and commenced to advance. While most of the savage tribes were exhausting themselves in efforts to find enough to prevent them from dying of starvation, others, more favored, obtained, without any more skill or effort, resources more than sufficient to supply their necessities; and the latter were not long in bettering their condition. Free to provide in advance for future consumption, it became possible for them to devote leisure to occupations other than the mere search for food. They could make weapons, the implements needed in fishing and hunting, and the means of deriving more profit from their labor; and in the end, they could amass the provisions or capital whose possession would enable them to undertake the breaking up and cultivating the land. We may safely assert, that, if Providence had not so disposed things that the earth offered in some places, to its earliest inhabitants, products which it did not take all their time and care to obtain, the savage manner of life would never have come to an end: men would to-day be still wandering naked and hungry, a prey to invincible poverty, distinguished in no respect from the animals called into existence at the same time with themselves.

—The invention of the art of agriculture did not alter the nature of the primordial fact. There had been, during previous periods, lands which had yielded to those who sought their products, more than they needed for subsistence: there were, under the new order of things, lands which yielded to those who cultivated them, more than was necessary to compensate them for their trouble and expense. Wherever, after deducting the amount of the advances they required, lands left a surplus, this surplus constituted a rent. Wherever, for example, two workmen succeeded in realizing, beyond the returns due to capital immobilized with a view to production, products in a quantity sufficient to provide for the consumption of three, the rent was equivalent to the part of the resources necessary for the subsistence of a man and to pay for his services; and this rent was the result of the fertility of the soil; for, at points less favored, the same amount of work would not have obtained a like surplus; and at certain points it would not, had it been employed, have even obtained enough to indemnify those who had made the expenditure.

—The reader will see, that, like Adam Smith, we attribute the origin of rent to the existence in the soil itself of forces or properties naturally productive. Thanks to the assistance these forces give men whenever they require it, their efforts obtain, besides the remuneration which is their due, an excess which may be so disposed of as to favor other kinds of consumption than that of agricultural laborers. Never has this aid been lacking to those who have sought it. It was this which, even before agriculture was commonly resorted to, supplied unfortunate savage tribes, in possession of good fishing and hunting districts, with means of subsistence sufficiently abundant for them not to be compelled to sacrifice all the time at their disposal in search for food: this it was, too, which, in ages more advanced, by permitting proprietors of cultivated land to harvest more products than they expended in production, gave them the power to remunerate labors other than those expended on the soil, and to call into existence manufacturing and commercial classes and give them a position of continually increasing importance in the ranks of the population.

—Before examining the systems which are not in harmony with this opinion, or which differ from it, there is one assertion in reference to which we must enter into some explanation; for if it were well founded, rent could be regarded as having no other original cause than the power of the earth co-operating with the labor devoted to obtaining its products. This assertion is, that there is no rent in countries where land is so abundant that every one is free to appropriate to himself such a portion as he likes without compensation, or for a trifle. Rossi and some other economists have freely admitted the fact, and M. Bastiat has found in it a point of support for his system. Let us see where the truth lies. It is certain, that, where land is abundant, its products have little sale value, because they have few consumers and lack a market; but does it follow, that, on the few portions where cultivation exists, those who employ it do not find in the original properties of the soil an aid eminently profitable, and do not obtain crops out of proportion to their efforts for subsistence? Suppose a country where all the people cultivated land, and where they could not sell provisions to neighbors because the latter were as well provided for as themselves: the beneficent effects resulting from the co-operative action of the soil would still be felt. In such a country, no one would try to realize a surplus which could find no purchasers: every one would only demand of the soil the means of subsistence required for his own family: but, as little labor would be necessary to obtain this, the husbandman would enjoy long periods of leisure; and leisure is always, to those who know how to employ it, a source of wealth. The time not required in cultivating land, they would employ in making articles adapted to satisfy other demands than those of hunger. They would make clothing, furniture and dwellings; and these are products whose acquisition would be due to the co-operation of the land with their efforts. A relief from incessant labor, and leisure that can be employed in reproductive occupations, are what the earth gives those who cultivate it, whenever they do not know what to do with the surplus it yields. This is, in reality, rent, under a form sufficiently characterized.

—But, let us observe, things have never occurred altogether in this manner. Wherever cultivation of the soil has become established, it has never alone attracted all persons, and it has always found consumers who did not share in its labors. So far back as we can trace in history, we find no social aggregation without magistrates, priests, soldiers and artisans, all supported from the portion of the crops which the agricultural population could spare; and this portion was no other than the excess produced by the land. It has often been affirmed that rent long was, and still is, unknown in some parts of North America. "But lately," says M. Rossi, in speaking of the ideas of the physiocrates on the net product of the land, "there was no rent or scarcely any rent in America, and yet there was a great abundance of all the necessaries of life, and the course of society was toward great prosperity and rapid development." It is true that the conditions under which the colonization of North America has been effected, differ in all respects from those which governed the formation of social bodies in the old world; but the opinion of M. Rossi is, nevertheless, incorrect. One thing which does not exist in America, or exists there only in a very few localities, is the practice of hiring farms, and the reason for it is simply this: As land there costs very little, those who wish to till it, buy the ground on which they settle; and the acquisition counts but little in the list of expenses incurred in their industry; but there is in America a town population, who buy, either for consumption or export, the surplus which the local circumstances bring into market, and the agriculturists retain, by their right as proprietors, an actual rent. It is also true that nowhere in America does the surplus bear a definite relation to the expense of production; nowhere in that country does the agricultural class, after having recovered its advances, offer the other classes as much of the means of subsistence and remunerate as well their services; and it is just this which causes such an abundance and so many elements of life and prosperity in the Union. Some writers have thought that the surplus which American cultivators have to dispose of should not be considered as the result of the natural fertility of the soil, but simply a return for the capital invested in their operations. One need but examine the matter closely to see that it is quite otherwise. It is not because the general rate of profit is very high in America, that the land there brings in a good return to those who take advantage of its fertility: it is, on the contrary, because the land cultivated, which is still wholly choice land, returns much, that the rate of profits is high. Capital goes where it brings most. In America, as everywhere else, it is not invested in manufactures or commerce, except when it will yield as much as if employed in agriculture; and it is the amount of the net income from the soil which largely repays cultivation, that secures to all investments of savings, and to every employment of human activity, the ample remuneration they receive. Assuredly, if the vast territory of America were only composed of lands of a low degree of fertility, the expense necessarily incurred to obtain subsistence from them, would be more considerable, agricultural capital would produce less, and neither the general rate of profits nor that of wages would be maintained at the height they have now attained and are continuing to keep.

—Europe does not lack countries where land is abundant, and has only a low sale value. It is incontestable that rent exists in these places; and as the facts which give it a distinguishing characteristic are of a nature to throw much light on the question, we will say a few words in regard to them. In Hungary, Russia, and many parts of the original Poland and the principalities of the Danube, the rural population, held in servitude, or but recently having ceased to be so held, are, in general, too poor and too ignorant to purchase the land and subject themselves to the risks and perils consequent upon settlement. What is the result? It is that the proprietors, like American agriculturists, cultivate and harvest on their own account. Ordinarily, they leave the laborers, as their wages, the use of a piece of land, which the latter cultivate for the support of their families, and for which they are bound to give two or three days' labor per week to the rest of the estate. This arrangement clearly shows wherein consists the rent of the proprietor. It is the result of the employment, on his land, of the time which the laborers can spare from that which gives them their own subsistence. And let it be observed, that this time can be attributed by the laborers to nothing else than the natural fertility of the soil whose cultivation furnishes them their whole living. Whenever the laborers devote to other fields than those which they are permitted to enjoy, two days' work per week, the surplus over the general expenses of production, the rent is but little inferior to two-thirds of the total product.

—Now, there are, in these same countries, some places where reside either colonists of foreign origin, or peasants in full possession of the lands they cultivate, who often have more land than they can till. This is the case in America. Does any one think that rent does not exist in such places, as well as in the rest of the country? If so, he is greatly mistaken. The part which reverts to the proprietors, in cases where the laborers give their fields two days' labor every week, the cultivators retain for themselves when they are absolute masters of the soil, and if they do not harvest it, it is because they find they can more profitably employ the time which they refrain from devoting to agriculture.

—In whatever way we look at the question, on whatever side we take hold of it, we must always end by recognizing that the earth gives rise to rent, and that, even where the conditions of society are such as to prevent all being derived from land which it might produce, there is a compensation for this in the leisure it affords that can be employed in other avocations.

—Let us come to the theory adopted by both Carey and Bastiat. They deny that the earth can add anything of its own to the results of labor. In their view, land is only an instrument, an agent, of production, which man employs, and not a single element can be found in rent which is not wholly the product of the expense incurred to render the land fertile. M. Bastiat thought, that to admit the co-operative action of the soil in the benefits connected with production, would be to recognize that wealth might exist which was not due to labor, and that the earth had the power to create such wealth. Let us look at this point. No one, surely, of any repute among economists, has maintained that anything which nature has prepared for the use of human beings, has value before having been the object of some kind of labor;69 but, positing this principle, is it the less true that the earth, if it does not furnish things which already have value, does afford those adapted to receive it, and that, whenever it furnishes these things in such abundance or so easily obtainable that the labor employed in communicating value70 to them costs less than it produces, there results an excess over the expense incurred, which is not found when the efforts of man are otherwise exerted? Here is the fundamental point of the discussion, the point of fact. To affirm that this surplus would not be realized without taking the trouble to obtain it, is to say little; for that is not contested. What should be proved is, that it would be possible without the co-operation of the earth, and that there are industries not agricultural or extractive which have also the power to produce rent.71 Now, this proof is wanting, and surely never will be given. As to the objection that it is demand, which, by assuring a value to the agricultural surplus, has alone the power to create it and to convert it into wealth, and that demand constitutes an action purely human, it has its response72 in what has just been said in reference to the assertion, that there is no rent in regions where the land, while waiting for a more complete private appropriation. has as yet little or no exchange value.

—It is in vain for one to seek to delude himself. The land alone returns more than is needed to pay wages, interest and profit on the capital required to cultivate it; and as there is no other way in which labor can be applied to obtain a like surplus, we must recognize in the existence of rent the result of a co-operative action exercised by the earth itself. It would be wrong that the fear of having to admit that there is a gift from God, new the exclusive share of a certain number of his creatures, should influence our opinions; for this gift is an evident fact; and besides, without it, it would have been utterly impossible for humanity to fulfill its destiny in this world; and, if this gift has not continued the common domain, it is because it has pleased its author that it should produce its beneficent effect only on condition of becoming an object of private appropriation. All this it would be very easy to demonstrate, were this the place to do so.

—It remains for us to make a few observations on the particular points which characterize the theory called Ricardo's. This theory fully admits the existence of productive properties in the soil, which belong to it; but it accords to it the power of creating rent only in virtue of the fact that these qualities are not equally distributed through it. This is taking one of the circumstances which concur in producing the differences in the price of rents for the cause which gives rise to them. The origin of rent, as we have said, is the power of the land to return to those who cultivate it more products than they need for their subsistence and the recovery of the amount of their advances; and wherever the lands are adapted to do that, any one who desires can obtain from them this excess that is to say, a rent. Nor is there any need, as Ricardo supposes, of a rise in prices in order for rent to begin; rent appears the moment when the gathered crops leave a part disposable, and it is realized when those who harvest, finding consumers for that part, devote more time to their work than they would have to sacrifice if they limited their efforts to gathering only for themselves. Finally, it is a very simple matter to state how far Ricardo's theory conforms to the reality. One has only to examine what would happen in a country where the lands were all of the same quality, all adopted to remunerate labor liberally, and all so situated as to enjoy the same advantages for the sale of their products. Well, in this case, see what would happen! As everywhere else, the population would obey the laws which urged them to multiply, and as everywhere else, they would rise to the level of the subsistence that agricultural labor could procure for them. There would be an increasing demand, and the cultivators, certain of a market for that portion of the harvest which they would not themselves need, would devote enough time to their labors to gather it, enough time to obtain a rent. The more the town population or industrial classes increase in number, the more would be demanded of the soil by cultivation, the wider would be the extent cultivated, and the more would rent increase. In such a country leasing of farms would appear; there would be found at the same time proprietors possessing more lands than they could themselves cultivate, or desirous of ridding themselves of the whole or some part of their burden of personal labor, and workmen disposed to take their place or to offer prices for a lease, proportioned to the amount of net income which they judged the soil capable of furnishing. The principal error of Ricardo's theory consisted in ascribing a decisive influence to the rise in the exchange value of the means of subsistence, which he thought inevitable.

—Causes which influence the Value of Rent. It is an incontestable fact that the price of rent has risen in proportion as civilization and the comforts of life have increased in human society. It is essential to state clearly the causes under the influence of which this has been effected.

—There are three causes of which account has been taken. One is the incorporation into the soil of the capital necessary to render it more and more productive; the second is the gradual extension of cultivation, over lands either less fertile or more difficult to bring under cultivation than those which had already been applied to for crops; the third is the continual improvements in the application of agricultural labor and skill. We will point out their effects. and, as far as possible, estimate the extent of each.

—As we have said, rent is the portion of the fruits of the earth obtained over the expenses of production or quantities necessary to satisfy the demands of those who work the land, and, in the savage state, the most fertile lands leave some surplus at the disposal of their masters. But as soon as a population, in stead of confining itself to gathering the spontaneous productions of the soil, undertook to direct its active forces, to the primitive profit were added other portions of the product, these latter being due to the immobilization of capital or advances made in the interest of production. Before sowing seed, it was necessary to break and clear the land, and the work, almost always long and toilsome, cost much. This done, they had to level and prepare a soil full of hollows and humps, in consequence of the extraction of the roots; and then, to execute numerous works, some of which were designed to facilitate labor, others to insure the preservation of the crops; and, by degrees, a considerable amount of capital was incorporated into the fields brought under cultivation. What is to be remarked, is, that this capital, for the most part, returned not only the amount of the interest and profits acquired by its employment, but, thanks to the impulse it gave to the co-operative power of the earth, it made to spring up, besides, a new surplus, to increase that which existed previous to its consumption. Consequently, in the present condition of rents, the latter combine three elements having a distinct origin. It would be idle, moreover, to attempt to state exactly the proportionate part of any one of these elements, or even to decide what is only a suitable return for outlays embodied in material improvements all that can be affirmed is, that what holds the least place is the primitive element and it is very easy for any one to assure himself of this if he will merely notice wherein consists that which uncultivated lands yield to the wild tribes who live on their natural products. The two others, on their natural products. The two others, on the contrary, are by far the more powerful. Clearing of land, in our day, is very costly, and certainly must have been far more so originally, because of the coarseness and imperfection of the processes and the instruments in use. On the other hand, there are farms and metairies [i.e., small farms in France let on halves to the cultivator.

—Trans.] where the value expended in constructions and buildings for use, fences, ditches, and permanent works, is equivalent to from a third to a half of that of the land cultivated. This explains why there are economists who. impressed by the great and constant sacrifices made with a view to production, will not see in rent anything but the amount of the indemnity to which these sacrifices entitle those who make them.

—The necessity for a people who are increasing in numbers, to extend cultivation over lands lying fallow, has been ranked among the causes which exert a decisive influence on the price of rent. The reader has seen. in what we have said of Ricardo's theory, what consequences that writer attributes to it. In his opinion, prices rise gradually as labor has to take up with lands less adapted to recompense its efforts it is the expense incurred where it is least remunerated, which fixes the exchange value of the means of subsistence, and hence the rise and progressive increase of rent.

—People certainly consult, in the choice of lands to bring under cultivation, the degree of productiveness which these lands present at the time; and, in the natural order of the development of labor, they only attack the poorer lands when the others have ceased to provide sufficiently for the exigencies of consumption. It is an evil that all lands are not at the same time better and of like quality. Humanity would be better off for a different distribution of the natural fertility of the soil from which it is fed: but has this evil all the effects attributed to it? Does the upward movement which it tends to give the prices of products really take place as people suppose? Are there not causes of decline at work, which on their side are sufficient to maintain such relations between the expense and the results of production, as to prevent suffering in the community? This is a question of the utmost importance, and demands a serious examination.

—We have not thus far taken sufficient account of the influence on rent and prices, of the progressive development of knowledge of agricultural affairs. Of all causes this acts most energetically and constantly, and its effects are the most decisive. Sometimes it reduces the expenses of production by a given quantity of provisions. Sometimes it increases the quantity harvested at the same outlay; and, in both cases, it raises the rent by increasing the surplus obtained after deducting expenses; and, at the same time, it arrests the rise in price while multiplying the amount of provisions destined to meet the demands of consumption.

—One single thing might take away, from progress in the art of agriculture, the power of raising the rent. This would be if the sale value of the products diminished in proportion as labor, having become more enlightened and more powerful, succeeded in deriving more produce from the lands. But, as we know, the means of subsistence have the privilege of never waiting long for a demand. As soon as they become more abundant, the population is not long in multiplying, and soon wants rise to the level of the supply. And is there not also a saving realized in the expense of cultivation, an improvement in the application of the efforts of labor, which does not increase the part of the product which remains net after expenses are deducted, and which consequently does not add to the rent of the proprietors?

—In what measure has the diminution in the expense of production due to the improved application of labor, served to raise rent, and to preserve the higher prices which the extension of cultivation to new lands tended to produce? It would be impossible to state positively; but there is no doubt that this double effect has been fully produced.

—See, in the first place, what an economy in manual labor the gradual improvement of the instruments of production has brought about. Not only good modern plowshares perform in one day twice as much work at least as the best plows of the ancients, but they break lands formerly impenetrable to the share, and they plow the others more deeply. To reaping-hooks of brass or beaten iron have succeeded scythes highly tempered, under the blade of which crops fall rapidly and without loss, which, before their invention, required a much larger number of hands. All the tools and machines which were known in the middle ages have been improved, and, thanks to new inventions, there is no country even but little advanced in agriculture, which does not contain a good number of others of quite superior efficiency.

—This is, however, but the smallest part of the improvements realized. For the productions originally demanded of the earth, similar ones, which are both more hardy and of better yield, have been gradually substituted. By the side of the vegetables then cultivated, or in their place, have come new species from the most distant parts of the globe, which have been admitted in the rotations of crops, because of the increase of product they give on a like surface. This is not all: science has not ceased to reveal new means of fertilization. Materials whose power was unknown have added to the effect of fertilizers; substances that had been left unused have been mixed with arable beds, and have communicated to them the productive qualities which were lacking; and cultivation has been more widely developed and made increasingly productive. In consequence, lands that were despised at the close of the last century, for want of knowledge how to utilize them, have, with small outlay, taken rank among the most fertile, and some, like those characterized in England as poor lands, and in France as lean and dry, are to-day considered the most easily worked, and are farmed out at the highest price. And as to the other lands, we might show some in France, which, sixty years ago, yielded scarcely ten or eleven hectolitres to a hectare (i.e., less than twelve bushels to an acre), which now yield eighteen to twenty hectolitres. This is an addition of about 140 francs (about $27); and it is important to observe that this addition has only involved an increase of less than 70 francs in expense. Also, farm rents which did not reach 35 francs have risen to 70 or 80 francs, while yielding to those who paid them larger and surer profits. Certainly this is a case where the increased power of art has done more, of itself alone, to raise rent, than all other causes combined.

—Such facts (and it would not be difficult to cite many others) attest sufficiently the effects of the successive conquests of human intelligence, and how, by gradually reducing both the toil and the outlay appropriated to production, they must have increased the net product of the land, and consequently the rent. That they have sufficed at the same time, to prevent the price of provisions from rising, and to restrain the effect of the inconveniences connected with the extension of cultivation to lands of inferior quality, is so much the more certain because there has been effected in Europe another improvement, which, by itself alone, would have permitted the population to double, without recourse being had to new portions of the soil. and without any increasing demand for grain. This improvement is in the grinding of grain. the quantity of grain, which during the sixteenth century, only yielded 100 lbs. of flour at the mill, now yields more than 190, owing to the successive improvements in the processes employed.

—It should also be remarked, that, during the middle ages, the improvements in agriculture were both slow and little marked: the agricultural classes were ignorant, and their occupations were regarded with contempt. In our day, on the contrary, they are more enlightened; and on the other side, the natural sciences have put within their reach a multitude of inventions which it has become possible for them to utilize. Moreover, for the last fifty years especially, two well-attested facts have been noticeable: one is the stability or the decline in the price of cereals in most of the advanced countries; the other is a rise in rent and the leasing price of farms with a rapidity unknown at previous periods.

—There is, however, one fact of considerable consequence, which seems irreconcilable with the statement we have just given, and which, on that account, calls for an explanation. This fact is the decline in the price of wheat in the least populous countries of Europe. Thus, wheat is worth only 10 to 11 francs a hectolitre in Hungary, and only 9 to 15 in Russia and Poland, according to the provinces. On the contrary, it has been worth, on an average, for the last ten years, 16 francs 40 centimes in Prussia, 16 fr. 60 c. in Spain, 18 fr. 74 c. in France, and a little more than 22 francs in England. Surely, these figures differ enough to attest that abundance of land permits wheat to be produced on conditions which cease to be as advantageous in proportion as the land becomes limited. Doubtless it is indeed so. A thinly scattered population are free to sow only the better portions of the soil they occupy, and to leave each of the parts which have just furnished a harvest, to rest; and it is certain, that, owing to this mode of changing the localities cultivated, wheat is obtained at less expense than if they were obliged, in order to supply the more urgent necessities, to confine their labors more persistently and continuously to the same arable fields. But it is essential to remark that western Europe has passed through ages during which this mode of culture sufficed for the exigencies of consumption, and yet everything combines to strengthen the belief that it was not then provided with food in the same abundance nor at as low a price as it now is. The following reasons support this assertion. Doubtless it would be impossible to prove exactly what was the price of wheat in France five or six centuries ago. The measures of capacity, notwithstanding the identity of name, differed enormously in their contents, not only in different provinces, but even in different parishes in the same province. In the second place, the average prices, when obtained, confounded, under the designation of wheat, cereals of all sorts: finally, the purchasing power of money was greatly in excess of what it is in our day, when the coin and paper in circulation are abundant; but it is sufficient to read, in the authentic acts which have escaped destruction, the figures relative to the price of days' work, as well as of provisions, as they were at the same times and in the same places, to recognize that the exchange value of wheat was at least equal to what it is at present. Thus, in Normandy, agricultural wages at the end of the twelfth century, were equivalent to less than six litres (about 5¼ qts.) of wheat. From that time, we see them rise by degrees to seven; and only within thirty years have they exceeded eight. We are forced to conclude, from these facts, that the real price of wheat, i.e., its exchange value, has not increased in that part of France.

—Now, this is what facts attest since it has been possible to ascertain them. Fifty years ago the current rates of cereals in France began to be quoted with all the accuracy desirable. During this long space of time the population has not ceased to increase in number and in comfort, and nevertheless the price of wheat is far from having risen. Thus, starting at 1800, the five decennial averages succeeded each other in the following order 19 fr. 87 c., 24 fr. 79 c., 18 fr. 36c., 19 fr. 4 c., 18 fr. 74 c. The particularly high average of the years 1810-20 is attributable to the wars of the empire, the invasion of 1814 and of 1815, and the scarcity of 1816 and 1817: but after 1820, prices fell below the figures previous to 1810 and 1800; and it is a matter well worth attention that never has rent, in the advanced portions of France, increased so much as since 1820, when the sale price of grain diminished or remained stationary.

—In England also, prices, within thirty years, have not ceased to decline. Inconsiderate legislation, monetary circumstances, and the effects of war, had combined to render them exorbitant; and, during the ten years from 1810 to 1820, the average per hectolitre rose to a little more than 38 francs; but from that time they declined, first to 30 francs for the decennial average, then to 25, and finally, before the reform in the corn laws, to a little less than 22; that is to say, below their figure between 1790 and 1800.

—Why is it that the price of wheat has not risen in the most populous part of Europe to-day in proportion as more land has had to be brought under cultivation, and that we find it as low in that the least populous? It is because, in past centuries, art was still in its infancy. for lack of intelligence and knowledge, as well as for lack of properly conditioned working material, the laborers could gather their harvests only by the strength of their arms, and the expenses of labor, compared with its results, were much greater than they are to-day. If, in the United States of North America, or in the regions beyond the Oder, the abundance of land has, on the contrary, its effect, it is because the people derive an advantage from it by means of implements, methods and processes, of which communities in former times learned the use only when they had already begun to press upon one another in the territory at their disposal. American agriculturists, aided by implements which were lacking to the people in the middle ages, can turn to profit their natural advantages of space. Those of the north of Europe are still too ignorant or too poor to be able to make as general use of these improved implements; but they nevertheless do use them; and to be convinced of it, one has but to observe that there exist in Poland, Hungary, and even Russia, a goodly number of large seigniorial estates, under the management of men educated in the best agricultural schools of Germany, who carry into the details of the work the most recent acquisitions of their science and arts.

—Finally, it is wrong to adopt the practice of considering the price of wheat as giving the measure of the difference in the expense of agricultural production in the various countries. What we should examine is, the general price of provisions, and not that of particular articles which do not figure equally everywhere in consumption. Wheat is cheap in the half-untilled countries of Europe; and yet it is much too dear for the poor people who harvest it. They subsist almost wholly on rye; and, while in France rye does not occupy more than a third as much arable surface as wheat, and in England not more than a fourth, in Russia, Poland and Hungary, it takes from seven- to nine-tenths as much. What is the result? In these countries, wheat, for which a small number of particularly fertile lands are reserved, is not worth, relatively to rye, as much as in more advanced countries, and the price of the common means of subsistence there is really higher than the price of wheat, considered by itself, would indicate. On the other hand, it should be observed, that, by the side of the products the extension of whose cultivation tends to increase the price, man continually manures the soil, which, at less outlay, insures him the complement of his subsistence. In France, at the time when the average harvest was 80,100,000 hectolitres of wheat, 12,260,000 hectolitres of meslin (a mixture of wheat and rye), or 30,700,000 hectolitres of rye, there were also gathered 89,580,000 hectolitres of potatoes, more than 21,000,000 hectolitres of maize, buckwheat and millet, nearly 10,000,000 hectolitres of small grain and dry vegetables, and, besides, an immense quantity of garden products. Evidently, if the price of wheat had tended to rise, there would have been found, in the increasing abundance of other means of subsistence, a supplement which would have prevented living becoming more dear.

—These considerations and these facts authorize us to affirm that there is in the natural progress of the applications of labor a power equal or superior to that of the causes which tend to augment the charges of production. It is this power which, notwithstanding the necessity of extending the clearing to lands less adapted to produce, has prevented the price of products from rising, and which, by continually increasing the proportion in which the surplus is realized, has contributed most to the rise in rent.

—It is well to pay serious attention to this point. If such had not been the present course of things, everything would be inexplicable in the least contestable results of the progressive movement of the arts and of civilization. It is a fact beyond doubt, that the more enlightened any population is, the more they increase in number and comfort, and the more the means of subsistence at their disposal become abundant and improve in quality. No fact is better attested. The day laborers of England, France, Holland and Switzerland, are not only better lodged and clothed than they were in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, or than those of Russia, Hungary and Poland as yet are, they are also much better fed. Their bread is now composed in part of wheat, and not alone of rye. They eat meal and vegetables; they use less coarse and more varied food. Now, how could it be thus, if it were true that the necessity of increasing the area of cultivated land had resulted in rendering production more and more difficult and expensive? Under the fatal control of the law to which Ricardo's school accord an invincible predominance, we should have seen the remuneration of the efforts of labor gradually diminish; every addition to the quantity harvested would have been obtained only by means of sacrifices comparatively greater; the agricultural class would have increased its ranks as it became necessary to require more of the land; and the time would have come when the other classes, restrained by the obligation to surrender too large a portion of the fruit of their industry, in return for their usual subsistence, would have been arrested in their development. Well, quite the contrary of all that has happened. Starting with the centuries of ignorance and poverty, those centuries when land was so plenty that only the best was cultivated, it has been the manufacturing and commercial classes which have multiplied the most in proportion, and which have at the same time amassed the most capital and wealth. Surely, nothing like it would have been possible if the continual progress in agricultural knowledge had not put the laborers in the rural districts in the way of deriving more ample resources from the soil, and of supplying the rest of the community with food without having to demand prices continually higher.

—One other erroneous supposition is, that the market price of provisions must necessarily tend to rise, in order that the area of cultivation be enlarged. The entire history of agriculture attests, on the contrary, that everything in that regard has been only the fruit of happy discoveries. Thus, it was the invention of a plow with a broad share which determined the breaking up of many aluminous and compact lands previously refractory to the efforts of labor. The employment of lime and marl in places where they were unknown, has permitted the land to be sown to wheat; and it was the discovery of the fertilizing properties of animal charcoal, pulverized bones, and a good number of other substances belonging to the various kingdoms of nature, which revealed the possibility of obtaining rich crops from ground reputed too poor to repay the efforts of continued culture. Similarly, it was the introduction of sainfoin on chalky lands that rendered them productive; and it was an idea which occurred to a sutler in the Spanish army, during the long siege of Antwerp, of attempting to adapt the barren sand of the country to the cultivation of a few fresh vegetables, by burying in it the old, cast-off clothing of the soldiers, which revealed the secret of converting this sand into a soil which now ripens the best crops of Belgium. We have one more fine example of the manner in which discoveries and inventions operate. It is drainage. Is it the high price of food which led to its application? Assuredly not; for it came to take its place among the agricultural agencies and expenditures in England, at the very time when proprietors and farmers thought they had before them only a prospect of a decline. Thus have things happened, and thus will they continue to happen. Man has been cast upon this world, endowed with a faculty for improving his condition here. He has arrived armed, so as to be able gradually to extend the success of his struggles against nature, and the earth, very far from having been given to him as ground on which he would have to expend toil with constantly increasing ingratitude, has been given to him as an agent of production, for the direct assistance of which, when it should come to grow less, it would be easy for him to supply its place advantageously by the acquisition of intelligence destined to add more and more to the results of the application of his labor.

—Some Opinions originating in Accredited Theories on the Subject of Rent. The existence of the rent of the soil, and the rise it has gradually taken, have given birth to some assertions, of which we must here say a few words. Adam Smith, after having shown that rent was a natural result of the co-operative action of the earth in agricultural labor, refrained from pushing farther the analysis of facts, and the examination of their consequences. Taking the principle as he presented it, its result, nevertheless, seemed to be, that the entire rent proceeded wholly from the presence in the soil of productive qualities, which would at all times have operated equally, and created from the beginning a wealth which some had taken possession of, without leaving anything to the others. This opinion was not long, in fact, in acquiring some consistency, and several writers, through embarrassments and ambiguities of language, which betrayed the indecision of their mind, did not fail to conclude that the existence of rent emanated from an exclusive fact of nature. and constituted a sort of monopoly, having no other claim to duration than its utility. The system of Dr Anderson, taken up, commented upon, and formulated mathematically by Ricardo, came to add new motives to those which had given currency to these assertions. In this system, rent, besides originating in an evil, had the disadvantage of increasing only in consequence of a real public misfortune It was the inevitable rise in the price of provisions which almost alone decided the progressive increase. The more the necessity of extending cultivation over lands as yet untilled contributed to change the pre-existing proportion between the expenditure and the results of production, the larger the incomes of the proprietors became, and it was, in fact, by the impoverishment of consumers that they had the privilege of increasing their wealth. Most of the English economists received these ideas admiringly, and promulgated them. To some, rent was a monopoly, which forced those who did not possess land to pay those who possessed it more for provisions than their cost; to others, it was, to use the expression of Scrope, a restriction on the usufruct of the gifts which the Creator has bestowed on men for the satisfaction of their wants. From this position to that implied in the celebrated saying, Property is robbery, is but a step; and this step was speedily taken. Now, it is for us to bring within the limits of truth, conclusions that are either extremely exaggerated or palpably false. If we had to treat here of the question of the right of property, it would be easy for us to demonstrate that this right is based no less upon justice than upon social utility, and to prove afterward, that without its application to land, all the human race, condemned to a pitiless servitude to hunger, would never, in any part of the globe. have succeeded in escaping from the miseries of a savage life; but, to keep to what especially concerns rent, there are several points which it will be sufficient to mention. The first is, that those who first began to cultivate, did not in reality receive for themselves any other rent than the raw product which it was possible to obtain from the little portion of untilled soil they had cleared, that is to say, a product so small that its withdrawal from the common domain could injure no one; the second is, that by obtaining their subsistence by cultivation, they restored to their fellow human beings infinitely more than they took from them. A family of savages require not less than four square kilometres to succeed in obtaining their support; and those who first devoted themselves to agriculture, being incapable of extending their labor over the one-hundredth part of such a space, added in reality to the resources of the community, by leaving it the product of the rest. The third is, that at the time when agriculture began, there were so many vacant lands that it was optional for each to appropriate to his own use such a part as he chose, and that, if there were families who refrained from doing so, it was because they preferred either to live by hunting. fishing and gathering fruits, or to devote themselves to some manufacturing business. Such were the circumstances which controlled the agricultural regime. Certainly, nothing in what tools place was prejudicial to the rights of any one whatever; everything, on the contrary, in the ancient memorials of human races, attests, that, far from considering as despoilers those who first taught them agriculture, they regarded them as benefactors.

—What has caused an illusion in a matter of this kind, is want of knowledge wherein rent consisted, at the time when agriculture began. Looking at the income which land secures for those who possess it, wherever civilization is advanced, people assume that it has always given such returns, and forget the labor and sacrifice it has cost a long succession of generations to make its income what it is. Certainly, if it were possible to decompose rent, and to separate its constituent elements in a rich and flourishing country, one would be surprised at the little the portion derived from the soil would count for in the whole; it would be scarcely perceptible beside what the capital expended in the interest of production, and the savings of labor due to the progress of agricultural science, have added to it. On another side, the errors propagated by the school of Ricardo have not ceased to exercise an unfortunate influence on many minds. Without doubt, the necessity of having recourse to lands less fertile than those which had been first brought under cultivation, would have enhanced the price of food, if the better application of human activity had not come in to restrain or overcome its effects; but. as we have shown, such was the course of things; and, if that necessity acted as an obstacle to the best which might have been realized, never was it a cause of diminishing the wealth already acquired.

—Everything, after all, in the part of the question which occupies us, may be reduced to a knowledge whether the existence and development of rent imposes on the consumers of the fruits of the earth sacrifices which might be spared them. Now, this would be true only in case the rate of rent exercised some influence on prices; and this case, as we know, can not occur. Admit, for example, in its whole extent, the theory which shows rent under the most unfavorable light, viz., the theory of Ricardo. Whither will you be led? To recognize that rent, arising from the necessity of extending cultivation to ground of less fertility, is only an inevitable result of the enhanced price of products whose attainment becomes more and more difficult. In this theory, it is not because rent arises and increases that prices rise; it is, on the contrary, because prices rise, that rent is created and increases. Society is obliged, under penalty of dearth, to pay a price for the necessities of life which secures the producers remuneration for the charge imposed upon them by the cultivation of the worst lands whose culture is indispensable; and hence arise benefits to the possessors of the other portions of the soil, which secure to them a rent so much the larger as their expenses of production are relatively less. Admit the doctrine contained in this article, which is in our opinion much more simple and true, and you will arrive at conclusions still more decisive. It is the peculiar fitness of the earth for production, which, by permitting it to return to those who cultivate it more products than they need in order to subsist and receive a return for their advances, which brings about rent. The more perfect labor becomes, the more is the amount of the expenses incurred in it, in proportion to the quantities harvested. reduced, and the more the excess which is converted into rent increases. If it is true that the necessity of enlarging the arable domain tends to increase the price of production, this tendency encounters, in the advantages connected with the successive improvements due to human ingenuity and skill, a counterbalancing power more than sufficient to restrain it, and this is why the consumption of provisions becomes at the same time extended and improved in all countries when the people become more advanced and enlightened Thus, rent is nothing else than the product of a gift of nature which men are permitted to turn to more and more profit, and whose increase is only an effect of the general development of prosperity. And this is so true, that if it had pleased Providence to increase the fertility of the soil a few degrees more, the price of provisions would have been less, and of rent, more. In the beginning it must have required less labor to obtain subsistence, and, after defraying expenses, there would have remained a surplus, a net product, much greater than that which is now realized under the name of rent.

—The reader will now see how little foundation there is for the charges brought and lamentations made against the existence of rent. Under whatever aspect the question is viewed, whatever theory we adopt, rent appears only as the result of circumstances which it is not in the power of man to change, and not as a portion deducted, to the exclusive advantage of some, from the resources acquired by others. Monopoly is then a very singularly chosen word when applied to the existence of rent. To be sure, the earth is limited in extent, and men can neither increase its surface nor extend to all its parts labor equally productive; but does it follow from this that there is anything in common between the appropriation of land and the concurrence of circumstances which constitutes a monopoly? All have not a lot of land, it is true; but have all a share in the possession of things which, like the earth, own their sale value and the possibility of producing a revenue, to the development of the productive capacity of human society? Land, unless iniquitous and hurtful laws immobilize it in the hands of privileged classes, is transmitted and exchanged like houses, manufactories, contracts for stated payments, or stock in any industrial enterprise. Whoever has savings at his disposal, is free to acquire a greater or less portion of it, and those who possess it are so far from deriving exclusive advantages from it, that some among them may always be found who are ready to give up what they have, for capital from which they hope for a better revenue. The possession of land or of any other sort of wealth, is so simply a matter of taste or convenience, that there are times when, even with a like product, it is not the kind of investment most sought after. To go to the essence of things, there is nothing in the assertions we have just examined, which might not apply to the inequality of fortunes even; for property in land is only one of the forms under which exists this inequality, which, born with society itself, will assuredly last as long as society.

—Besides the questions treated of in the above article, there is one which has been mentioned in the articles COST OF PRODUCTION and DEMAND AND SUPPLY: it is, whether rent constitutes a part of the cost of production. We think we can not do better than to quote the opinion so clearly stated by Mill. (Principles of Polit. Econ., book iii., chap. v.): "Rent, therefore, forms no part of the cost of production which determines the value of agricultural produce. Circumstances no doubt may be conceived in which it might do so, and very largely, too. We can imagine a country so fully peopled, and with all its cultivable soil so completely occupied, that to produce any additional quantity would require more labor than the produce would feed: and if we suppose this to be the condition of the whole world, or of a country debarred from foreign supply, then, if population continued increasing, both the land and its produce would really rise to a monopoly or scarcity price. But this state of things never can have really existed anywhere, unless possibly in some small island cut off from the rest of the world; nor is there any danger whatever that it should exist. It certainly exists in no known region at present. Monopoly, we have seen, can take effect on value only through limitation of supply. In all countries of any extent, there is more cultivable land than is yet cultivated; and, while there is any such surplus, it is the same thing, so far as that quality of land is concerned, as if there were an infinite quantity. What is practically limited in supply is only the better qualities; and even for those, so much rent can not be demanded as would bring in the competition of the lands not yet in cultivation; the rent of a piece of land must be somewhat less than the whole excess of its productiveness over that of the best land which it is not yet profitable to cultivate; that is, must be about equal to the excess above the worst land which it is profitable to cultivate. The land or the capital most unfavorably circumstanced among those actually employed, pays no rent; and that land or capital determines the cost of production which regulates the value of the whole produce. Thus, rent is, as we have already seen, no cause of value, but the price of the privilege which the inequality of the returns to different portions of agricultural produce confers on all except the least favored portion. Rent, in short, merely equalizes the profits of different farming capitals, by enabling the landlord to appropriate all extra gains occasioned by superiority of natural advantages. If all landlords were unanimously to forego their rent, they would but transfer it to the farmers, without benefiting the consumer; for the existing price of corn would still be an indispensable condition of the production of part of the existing supply, and if a part obtained that price the whole would obtain it. Rent, therefore, unless artificially increased by restrictive laws, is no burden on the consumer: it does not raise the price of corn, and is no otherwise a detriment to the public, than inasmuch as if the state had retained it, or imposed an equivalent in the shape of a land tax, it would then have been a fund applicable to general instead of private advantage."

REPRESENTATION

REPRESENTATION. In the political sense of the term, representation is the deputing of the political rights of the many into the hands of a few, who, in the name of the commonwealth, enact and oftentimes execute the laws which are to govern the community. It has also in practice grown to be a recognition of localities independent of population, which are supposed to be a necessary part in law making, so as to make the governing body a reduced picture of all the varied interests of society, geographical and personal, the political rights of which have been recognized.

—The act of voting is not a necessary element of representation. It is a mere proof that the representative is the deputed authority for those who elect him. Judges who are not elected, administrators who are not elected, are in many respects as truly representative in the power they wield as the members of the legislative body who are directly deputed by the people. Even in monarchies the king may represent, and in most instances does represent, as to his right to reign, the actual will of the people, although the existing generation may have had no instrumentality to express its will on his right to rule.

—The developed modern state everywhere, where civilized conditions exist, acts in a representative capacity. Only in the case of governments which are still in an undeveloped condition is the will of the monarch the ostensible rule of action on his part. In the constitutional state the will of the monarch, as expressed in the laws and in administrative decrees, acts in the name of the people, and he bases his justification of conduct on the assumption that it is expressive of that will, and that his kingly office is representative of the whole people. In that sense the history of representation is part and parcel of the history and development of the idea of the state as contradistinguished from personal government. Even Louis XIV., when he said l'état c'est moi, recognized the fact, that the state and the person of the king were two different things, but expressed his conviction that he represented both in one.

—In a narrower sense, and the sense in which the term is used in this article, representation is confined to the consideration of that form of the developed modern state which gives to electors in the community the right directly to depute persons, in whom they have confidence and trust, to represent them in a legislative body, and to give, in advance, their sanction to the laws they may enact. In this sense representation is quite a modern idea. The ancients knew it not. Although Aristotle, in his "Politics," speaks of a certain census, who shall elect a council intrusted with deliberative power, who shall be bound to exercise this power agreeably to established laws, he speaks of a hypothetical state, and not of any which down to his period of time he had any knowledge of. Freeman says, in speaking of the Amphictyonic council, the Achaian league, and the Lycian league, in which the cities had a certain proportion of votes in accordance with their size, "that the ancient world trampled on the very verge of representative government without actually crossing the boundary, and that in ancient Greece the assembly which acted upon proposed laws and gave them their sanction was composed of the freemen themselves meeting in their personal capacity, and representation was in the adoption and passage of laws unknown." The votes that were taken in Rome were, as a general rule, votes for executive officers. The tribunes and ædiles of the Roman republic were not law makers, but they had the power to call assemblies of the people, who assumed to vote exceptional laws known as plebiscite. The ædiles were judges, and even comitia curiata were assemblies of people, not representatives, for the election of magistrates, and laws were enacted by the senate and by the centuries who were patricians or noblemen, men bound to military service, and had nothing of the representative character in the narrower acceptation of the term.

—Montesquieu was right when he found the germ of modern representative systems in the forests of Germany. The Teutons, who became the conquerors of Rome, were the originators of the thought "no taxation without representation"; they had their volkmote, where the wisest among the tribes, by a process of natural selection, instead of by ballot, sat to determine on the more important measures which were to govern the tribe. They had constant popular assemblies, where the popular will was expressed, and the spirit of personal freedom was so strong among them that they elected their eldermen, heretogs and kings.

—The witenagemote of early English history was not a strictly representative body in the modern sense. Langmead, in his "History of the English Constitution," says that it was an aristocratic body. Its members were the king, the ealdormen, or governors of shires, the king's thegns, the bishops, abbots, and generally the principes sapientes of the kingdom. Sapientes witan, wise men, was the common title of those who attended it. Its size showed that it was not a popular assembly, as the largest amount of signatures which have been observed was not above 106. The powers of the witenagemote were as supreme and even of wider scope than those of parliament. It had the power of deposing the king for misgovernment, and English history gives several instances of the exercise of that power. It had the power of electing the king. It took a direct share in every act of government. With the Norman conquest came a period of obscuration of the power of this early representative body, if so it may be called, and thenceforth, down to 1265, no body that might be termed representative was in existence in England. During the contest between John and the barons a parliament was convoked, wherein sat four knights from each shire, to be returned by the sheriff. There is no evidence that these knights were elected, but as there was already machinery for election in existence in the various shires, of knights to nominate recognitors in civil suits and a grand jury for the presentment of criminals, we may reasonably conclude, says Langmead, that the accustomed machinery was now made use of for the first time for the novel purpose of country representation in the general assembly. The next instance, is in 1254, when two knights of the shire were to be called to the king's council at Westminster. These were directed to be chosen by the country.

—The next great step in advance in representative institutions was made by Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, and although he probably was not the founder of representative government in England, he certainly was, says the same authority, "the founder of the house of commons," because it was the first parliament which was convoked in England in which sat the burgher class, which, together with the freeholders of the counties, constituted the newly developed third estates of the realm. The writs were issued Dec. 14, 1264, whereby the sheriffs were directed to return two knights from each shire, two citizens from each city, and two burgesses from each borough. From that period until 1295, was what may be termed a transitionary period, parliament being summoned with and without burgesses; but in that year, the 23d of Edward I., the king summoned a parliament to meet at Westminster in November following, so constituted as to represent the whole nation. The writs which summoned this parliament were directed, as in 1264, to the sheriff, ordering an election and return of two knights from each county, two citizens from each city, and two burgesses from each borough. The inferior clergy were also required to attend, so as to make this assembly, whereby the king's necessities for money were to be relieved, the most general one that had yet been convoked.

—The division of parliament into two houses was effected early in the fourteenth century. The commons was composed of two elements, the commons of the shires and the burgesses. The knights voted with the barons. Representatives of the boroughs formed a distinct assembly, deliberating and voting apart. These were strictly called the commons. The knights joined with the commons, and this fusion, says the authority last quoted, was the result of the existence in the English constitution of a condition which distinguished it from every kindred constitution in Europe, the absence of an exclusive noble caste.

—In the continental states the nobles formed a distinct class, distinguished, by privileges inherent in their blood, from ordinary freemen, and transmitting their privileges, and in some countries their titles also, to all their descendants in perpetuity. In England, on the contrary, the privileges of nobility were confined to one only of the family, the actual possessor of the peerage. Sons of peers from the time of the Norman conquest were commoners, and on a perfect equality, as regards legal and political privileges, with the humblest citizen. Even the heir to the peerage, though he might bear a title by courtesy, was still, so long as his father was alive, a commoner like his younger brothers. No restraint was laid upon free intermarriage in all ranks, and the highest offices of state were always legally open to all freemen. "This made the knight the connecting link between the baron and the shopkeeper." The oldest son even of the earl of Bedford, one of the proudest titles of nobility in England, offered himself, in the reign of Henry VIII., for a seat in the house of commons. The house of commons in that way became the representative not only of a single order in the state, says Langmead, but, with the exception of the peerage titles, represented the whole nation, and, as a natural consequence, has drawn to itself the predominant authority in the state.

—During the reign of Edward III. the commons established these three great rights: first, that all taxation without the consent of parliament was illegal; second, the necessity for the concurrence of both houses in legislation; and third, the right of the commons to inquire into and amend abuses of the administration.

—The Tudor sovereigns, arbitrary rulers that they were, did not feel strong enough to dispense with the representative body, but they sought to obtain control over it by creating a large number of insignificant boroughs for the purpose of increasing the influence of the crown in the house of commons. The same authority says, that between the reigns of Henry VII. and Charles II. no less than 180 members were added to the house of commons by royal charter alone. The last instance of this abuse of prerogative was the creation of the borough of Newark by Charles II. Thenceforth the house of commons took the issue of writs into its own hands, and no new borough was created in England and Wales until the reform act of 1832.

—At the date of the union with Scotland the number of members was 513, this act of union having added 45 Scottish representatives. and the act of union with Ireland added 100 Irish members. Since that time Scotland has added to its contingent fifteen members, and Ireland five. The house of commons has now about 656 members.

—To England the world owes the development of representative institutions, as it did, at an earlier period than any other modern government, confer upon its representative body the sovereign power of the state. The development of the principle of representation proceeded with less continuity and upon different lines in other countries.

—A representative system is the only one by which large communities can enjoy the advantages of self-government. The ancient system of direct participation in law-making was possible only in a very circumscribed domain. The moment the domain became larger than that of a single city, representation necessarily had to take the place of direct participation, and the alternative was representation or despotism. Every fructifying institution of a social character takes unto itself different forms, in conformity with the habits and nature of the people. Even the Christian religion produced very different results in Spain from that which it produced in England, and so it is with representative government. The habits and genius of the people in continental Europe produced from representation a very different result from that which was achieved in England. The cities of the middle ages were governed by a form of representation materially different from the modern manifestation of the same political development. The nobles of the city generally composed its senate, in imitation of the Roman system, and councils were chosen in the main by the guilds, of which in Florence there were twenty-one; but at a later period only twelve of these possessed governmental powers. What corresponds to the mayor of the city was in Florence the gonfalonier. So jealous was Florence of its magistrates that it selected them by lot, and gave them power but for two months. The citizens met in the great square and voted directly upon measures. The selfishness of the nobility and the turbulence of the guilds' train bands, the jealousies of the guilds of each other, the corrupting influence of the wealth of the great merchants, all conspired to undermine this form of government. The great wars between the powerful monarchies, which trained their soldiers to feats of arms, of which the militia of free cities were utterly incapable, gradually made it impossible for the independent mediæval cities to put a force into the field to contend against the warriors of the great monarchs. Charles V. and Philip II., and, before them, the rulers of the Roman empire and the popes, gradually destroyed the freedom of such Lombardian cities as still had the vestiges of self-government left.

—The constitutions of these municipal states are, however, interesting studies to the investigator of representative government, as they present a form of representation which has a merit ignored in the modern representative system. and which, in one way or another, should be sought to be re-established, and that is, the representation of the community in conformity with its actual natural affinities when acting independently of governmental interference. Society classifies itself even under its most democratic form, and these classes have to the community and commonwealth different values. A complete representation would take some note of such natural classifications of society. and seek to incorporate them as natural constituencies for representation. In the Florentine republic, and, indeed, in all the cities in the Lombardian and Hanseatic league, the representation of the trade guilds, in proportion to their numerical strength and their importance to the common-wealth, was conforming the theory of representation to the natural classification of the community, and therefore, in that particular, representation was more thorough in those cities than it is in the modern state. Creating artificial entities by drawing geographical lines around them, and giving to a majority in such entities the sole right of representation, is utterly to disregard these natural affinities of a community, and to base representation upon geographical lines instead of the interests of the community, and makes a representative body so constituted far from being what Mirabeau says it should be, a reduced photograph of the whole community.

—In Switzerland and in France representation took unto itself again a different form. From the time of the overthrow of the Roman empire the mountain cantons of Switzerland maintained forms of self-government, and without the intervention of chiefs, these mountaineers assembled in the open air, voted their own laws, and elected their own magistrates to execute them. The larger towns of Switzerland, being favored more especially by Count Rudolph of Hapsburg, were made municipalities early in the thirteenth century. On his death, the apprehension that his successors might attempt to impair the liberty of the cantons and the self-government of the towns, caused an alliance to be entered into by them for the freedom of Switzerland. The Swiss confederation was formed in 1351, and from that time the Swiss uninterruptedly maintained a republic, with a considerably developed system of representation. In the rural and mountain cantons there was but little representation. The town meeting was assembled whenever occasion required. Every inhabitant above sixteen years of age was permitted to vote, and they acted directly upon the laws which were to govern them. The federal constitution of the Swiss government down to 1848 was that of a confederation but loosely banded together. The Sonderbund revolution, which sought to dismember the Swiss confederation in the interest of the Jesuits, was the means to strengthen it, and it caused the adoption of a new constitution wherein the supreme legislative power was intrusted to a federal assembly consisting of two deliberative bodies, the national council and the council of state, the one representing the entire Swiss nation, and the other the sovereign bodies of the Swiss cantons. No federal law could be made without the concurrence of both of these chambers. These bodies nominate the federal authorities; they declare peace and war; they regulate the postoffice and the coinage. The executive power was confided to a federal council of several members elected by the assembly, its president being the president of the confederation. Every man aged twenty not expressly deprived of the rights of a voter by the laws of his own canton, was entitled to vote, and was himself eligible to the national council. (May's "Democracy in Europe," vol ii., p. 410.) The Swiss do not fully confide matters of legislation to their representatives, but, by the instrumentality of the referendum, reserve a veto power in the following form. Whenever 30,000 qualified voters demand it, any law passed by the Swiss congress must be submitted for ratification or rejection to the people, and many instances have occurred in the recent history of that republic where the people rejected laws which the legislature had adopted. In the several cantons the referendum has also been made part of the organic law, so that upon all the more important measures affecting the cantons the people have repeatedly vetoed the measures enacted by the representative bodies of the cantons. This system of referendum has its inconveniences, but so long as representation is limited to majorities only, and those of arbitrary geographical divisions, which makes of modern representative bodies an artificial and unnatural representative body, the referendum is perhaps the only corrective of so faulty a method of representation.

—In France the estates of the realm of the middle ages were councils of barons and prelates. In 1302 Philip the Fair summoned the third estate, who were delegates from the towns, to meet the nobles and prelates of Notre Dame. This was the first convention of the states general. They were afterward assembled irregularly in times of national difficulty and danger, or when the necessities of the kings drove them to demand extraordinary subsidies. (May, vol. i., p. 95.) Again, in 1484 the states general were convoked so as to insure a national representation, and embraced delegates from the country as well as from the towns. These deliberations were conducted, not by orders, but in six bureaus, which comprised the representatives of all the orders according to their territorial divisions. (May, vol. i., p. 96.) The municipalities of France could not long survive the centralizing spirit of the French monarchy. So little of the spirit of self government existed in France that when, in 1692, Louis XIV. abolished all municipal elections and sold the right of governing towns to the rich citizens, there was scarcely a murmur heard. The states general, although from time to time convoked, never had and never asserted any rights as against the crown. They laid their complaints at the foot of the throne, which were treated as the throne saw fit, to be spurned, or to be enacted into law. The states general had no rights which they could maintain against the crown. The French parliaments were not representative bodies. They were nominated by the crown, and were really high courts of justice. For several hundred years representative government was unknown in France; when, by the reforms under Turgot, at the time of Louis XVI., the provincial assemblies were once more revived, and local self-government was again endowed with life and vigor. At the suggestion of the parliament of Paris the states general were again convoked, which was the beginning of the French revolution, and led to the national assembly; the national assembly led to the convention, which was elected by universal suffrage; the convention led to a directory, and the directory again to an empire.

—The theory of representation became, however, formally established from the period of the French revolution in the constitutions of France, and, under one form of government or another, representative bodies were thenceforth permanent institutions of the nation. Under the first empire the citizens of each arrondissement designated a tenth of them as electors. These were the communal notabilities. From this list the public functionaries of the arrondissement were chosen. These, in turn, selected a tenth of their number for the purpose of furnishing the functionaries of the departments. These new tenths selected on their part again a tenth, which formed a list of the national notabilities, from which the public functionaries for the nation were taken. The presidents of all electoral colleges, all grand officers, commanders, and officers of the legion of honor, and all heads of departments, the emperor selected without reference to an election.

—Under the restoration a chamber of deputies of 430 members was constituted, of which 258 were elected by the colleges of arrondissement, and 172 by the colleges of departments. A census of a very high order limited the voting power to a small proportion of the French people. This was all swept away by the July (1830) government. The electoral system under the republic of 1848 suppressed all property qualification, and every Frenchman twenty-one years of age, subject only to the condition of a residence of six months, was invested with the right of voting. The vote was taken by ballot. Subsequently, modifications were made in this universal suffrage by raising the time of residence to three years, and imposing again a property qualification. It was the combination between President Napoleon and the class of citizens who were disfranchised by the act of the republic, which made Napoleon at first dictator and then placed him upon the throne of France as Napoleon III.

—In The Netherlands, ever since 1815, the laws have been enacted by representative bodies, who are elected by the inhabitants above twenty-three years of age, and who pay some small direct tax.

—In Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain and Portugal the representative bodies were mainly representative of special interests, such as nobles, clergy, towns, etc., and were not true representatives until a very recent period, when, by the amended constitutions of those countries, some approximation was made to representation upon the English and American model.

—Representative institutions are everywhere gaining ground. England has been the pattern, and America the most prominent example, of the successful operation of representative government. The organization of the people for purposes of representation, adopted by these two nations, forms the model on which reforms in representation in other countries are gradually introduced. Government by representatives is much more than a makeshift, adopted, in consequence of the extent of modern communities, to secure power to the people and yet not take their direct votes on the laws which are to govern them, inasmuch as this method is obviously impracticable where the community is larger than that of a single town.

—It has been observed by Lieber, that representation for the state at large constitutes one of the essential differences between the deputative mediæval estates and the modern representation by legislatures. The representative is not substituted for something which would be better were it practicable, but has its own substantive value. It is a bar against absolutism of the executive on the one hand, and of the domination of the demos on the other. It is the only contrivance by which it is possible to introduce at the same time an essentially popular government and the supremacy of the law, or the union of liberty and order. It is an invaluable high school to teach the handling of the instruments of free institutions. It is the one most efficacious preventive of the growth of centralization and bureaucratic government, without which no clear division of the functions of government can exist. Many examples may be cited from Grecian history to show how little the sense of responsibility was connected with the direct voting, and how easily the general populace could be misled by the demagogues, and at the assembly at the agora be cheated or cajoled out of their votes in favor of measures which they regretted almost as soon as enacted. The representative system checks and prevents such hasty action, and is, therefore, an institution which in itself secures good government. The representation makes the fact of government being a trust a vital and realizable truth. It is, however, of vital importance that a representative organization of the community be properly made, and that the representative body should be truly the best exponent of the popular will, because otherwise the majority of the people would not possess the reins of government, and the administration would fall into the hands of cabals, juntas or political organizations, which misrepresent it.

—The American model of representation is twofold. I. National. The president of the United States under the American system is elected by a supposed electoral college, constituted in a manner to be designated by the legislatures of the various states. It meets in the several states, and is composed of the same number that the state has representatives in congress, who determine in these several states upon their choice for president of the United States. These electoral colleges have in time become mere registering machines of party will, and are not deliberative bodies in any sense. Immediately after the electoral colleges are constituted at the general election with reference to which they are to perform their function, the election is practically determined in advance of their meeting. There is but a single instance in the history of the United States of an elector refusing to cast his vote in conformity with the party dictate which elected him.

—The senators of the United States are elected by the legislatures of the states. Members of congress of the United States are elected by the voters in contiguous representative districts artificially created, one from each district, each district containing, as nearly as possible, about 131,000 inhabitants. The apportionment of these districts is left to the legislature of the state, to be fixed after each decennial census. The state representative bodies are generally a senate and an assembly or house of representatives. The senate, the smaller body, is elected by larger districts, also geographically contiguous, and the house of representatives by smaller districts. In different states different provisions exist, making the term of service of senators a longer period than that of the members of the lower house. With the exception of Illinois, which has adopted the plan of the three-cornered constituencies, electing three members from each district—as a rule, but one member is elected from each district—the majority or plurality, as the case may be, of the district elects a member. Local representative bodies, like town or city councils, are elected by smaller districts, composed of contiguous territory equal in population, one from each district; and the majority or plurality, as the case may be, in the district elects such representative. Where executive officers are to be elected, whether municipal or state, they are elected by the whole city or by the whole state, and the majority of the voters, or a plurality, if there be more than two candidates, secures the election of its candidate. The French system of double election has never taken root either in England or America, and seems to be but ill adapted to the genius of our people. The only instance attempted is the one of the electoral college, which has proved abortive, and has become a mere simulacrum.

—The qualifications for a voter in the United States are, as a general rule, that he must be twenty-one years of age; if not born in this country he must have resided therein five years, within the state one year, and within the district about thirty days. Such as have come to this country during minority are admitted to the suffrage in a shorter period. The few qualifications that survive from colonial times, either of education or of property, have been and are being to a considerable extent gradually swept away. This, in theory, places the elective franchise in the United States, for all officers whose actions affect the commonwealth either as lawmakers or executors of the law, into the hands of all the male population above twenty-one years of age. Universal manhood suffrage has been the rule in this country.

—Even the selection of judges (who, in the history of the United States, were, down to 1846, as a general rule, appointed by the governor of the state, in order to secure more intelligent officers and more direct responsibility in such selection) has, by the growth of the democratic spirit, been taken out of the hands of the governor, and their elevation to the bench, except United States judges, given to the people, and their terms of service shortened from life tenure to a few years. Elective officers have been unduly multiplied, to such a degree that it becomes almost impossible for the voter busily occupied with the demands upon him of his business, to determine intelligently upon the merits of the numerous candidates presented for different offices by political organizations. This highly artificial system of arbitrary districts for purposes of political activity which wholly disregard the natural affiliations of the people arising from their vocations, their political convictions or their status in society, has resulted in giving to the political organization an abnormally strong power in determining the personnel of the government of the United States.

—In a very intelligent arraignment of existing political conditions in the United States, written by Mr. Charles C. P. Clark, in a work entitled. "The Commonwealth Reconstructed," the author says that the plan of direct popular election in large constituencies results in three frauds: first, that the elector knows whom he is voting for; second, that he comprehends what he is voting about; and third, that his vote will have its proper weight without preliminary consultation and arrangement with other voters; each of which assumptions, he says, in the vast majority of cases is absolutely false. The present actual fact is, that at the dictate of leaders whom we have not chosen, we vote for candidates whom we do not know, to discharge duties that we do not understand. And as the law pays no heed to natural political organization, and gives it no direct encouragement nor recognition, the consequence has been that the political organization has taken possession of the machinery of legislation and is substantially the only thing that is represented. Unless he is the member of a caucus, has a seat in the convention. or takes an active part in the nominating committee, the individual voter is a cipher in politics, and the only function he has to perform is to register his aye or nay as to the individuals who have been put forward by the political organizations.

—When this system was originally constituted, in a community of farmers, both the caucus and the conventions were voluntary forms of gathering the public will to make an intelligent choice of candidates. They were unrecognized, informal meetings of citizens to discuss public affairs and to select their neighbors for public office. In the early history of the United States public office was a burden which men accepted in consequence of the honor and dignity of the station, for which honor and dignity they were willing to sacrifice the more material advantages of private life. The division of employments, the growth of wealth. the great tide of emigration and consequent existence of a proletariat class, and the diversified interests and intensity of occupation which have been evoked by the modern industrial system. have made of the homogeneous community of a century ago one of the most diversified peoples in industrial employment and occupation, as well as disparity of means, that exist on the face of the earth. By the testimony of every close observer. it is a community of which the more intelligent elements are more intently occupied and have less hours of leisure than that which exists anywhere on the face of the earth. The consequence is, that the men who are most deeply interested in the welfare of society no longer have time to meet and discuss the political situation with their neighbors, and to talk over and determine which of their neighbors they desire to select for public office. The division of employments has created a politician class to attend to that business for them, as it has a class of lawyers and divines to expound the law and look after the spiritual welfare of the community. The caucus and the convention, therefore, have, from being the mere aids to political organization, grown in time to be the organization itself.

—The law which secures the political rights of the citizens is still the same that it was in the early history of the United States; indeed it has become more liberal in admitting a larger circle of human beings within the domain of political enfranchisement than in the early history of the United States. The power, however, has become so centralized in political organizations that a development has taken place in that function similar to that which has taken place in the railway interests by amalgamations and consolidations, so that, notwithstanding the rapid increase of population in the United States, fewer and fewer men, in both political organizations, determine who shall be elected by the people, precisely as, in railway transportation, fewer and fewer men determine, notwithstanding increased mileage, what rates shall prevail. The amount of time which must be given, and the money it requires successfully to establish a political machine, are both so great that, in the absence of a large leisure class in the United States which is emancipated from the necessity of daily toil by the inheritance of ancestral wealth, it has become practically impossible for the industrial and commercial classes in the community to give that time or money. In municipalities and in states the owners of property therein feel that there is a constant increase of the ratio of taxation without an equivalent in better service performed by the government for the individual in return for such taxation. The increase of municipal taxes has been within a generation upward of 200 per cent., and yet the tax payer prefers to submit to the exactions of the tax gatherer rather than to impose upon himself the greater immediate tax, which would be involved in the devotion of the necessary time and money to emancipate himself from the control of the political organization which he knows to be tyrannous and feels to be mischievous. Political patronage is the reward in the business of creating a political machine, and the politician finds in the control of the public office a return for the labor and money investment which he is compelled to make in establishing and perfecting his machine. As this system of political organization has grown, within the past thirty years, to gigantic proportions, it becomes a serious question whether the representative institutions of this country do not contain in themselves a fatal defect by reason of their not being adapted to the present organization of society in the United States. Independent political action is still possible where conditions prevail such as they did prevail in the early history of the United States, in such centres of population as may be termed strictly agricultural communities. In great cities, however, where the division of employment has been carried to its extreme development, representative institutions have become mere shams. The governments of those cities are in the hands of officers selected from the various political organizations which for the time being obtain control. The political organizations form a very small minority of the whole people, but the members thereof have devoted themselves to the building up of a political organization as a matter of business, as others of their fellow-citizens devote themselves to the business of banking. to manufacturing boots or shoes or hats. This situation becomes aggravated with increased population, and its mischief increased by the large criminal and pauper classes which exist in every densely populated centre. They are the camp followers of political organizations, precisely as they would have been the camp followers of a mediæval army for purposes of plunder only, and assume the name of the political organization, not because of any belief in principles, but because of their conviction that that particular organization will take care of them in the distribution of office.

—As the United States look forward with much confidence to the early attaining of a population of a hundred million of souls, it will readily be seen that some change must be made adapting representative government to the needs of a community wherein the division of employment will be still further developed with every increase of population, and wherein life is not likely, within any short period of time, to be less onerous and exacting in its demands upon the whole attention of the person who devotes himself to a particular vocation. It must be quite clear, therefore, that evils which have already made themselves apparent, arising from the inadaptiveness of the existing political organizations to the natural development of the community, must become intensified and intolerable if the cause which has produced them not only continues but is increased in activity, so that there must come a greater and wider divergence between the people who supply the taxes and those who have control of the governmental machinery to expend the taxes. These evils have been recognized by every thoughtful writer upon the more recent manifestations of American institutions. They have by some been regarded as an evil attending the influx of emigration; by such it is claimed that the community has taken in more of the foreign element than it can comfortably absorb, and that, therefore, there is a large voting constituency in every community in the United States not thoroughly trained on the American model as to the rights and duties of citizenship, and who are, therefore, a hindrance to good government. Others have supposed the evil to result from excluding one-half of the population—women—from the exercise of political suffrage, and have supposed that the cure of malrepresentation will lie in the direction of the adoption of woman suffrage. Others have recommended a return to smaller constituencies resembling some-what the old Saxon hundred, as units of political power, so as to give an instrumentality for interchange of opinion in artificial entities sufficiently small to allow of meeting and deliberation. Others, at the head of whom stands Mr. Clark, have proposed the remedy of primary representative electoral colleges for the purpose of selecting electors simply, who, in their turn, shall elect other electors, so as to produce a condition of graded representation, or, in other words, double or treble elections. Again, others have sought refuge from the existing evils by recommending limitation of the suffrage upon a property basis. Another class of thinkers have advocated the rigorous adoption of a high qualification for voters, of intelligence and even of actual learning. Another class of reformers have sought a refuge from existing evils by advocating the extension of the term of residence in the community as a condition of citizenship, so as to exclude the emigrant from all participation in the political affairs of the nation until he shall have been substantially a lifetime on American soil. This idea captured, a generation ago, a sufficient number of adherents to create a formidable party, which obtained a phenomenal success in several states. Another class of reformers have recommended the legalizing and methodizing by law of primary meetings, so as to give a legal status and recognition to the caucus and primary nominations, and thus to make frauds practiced in these bodies amenable to legal redress and subject to legal punishment. Others, and notably Robert von Mohl, have recommended the re-establishment, in modern form, of the representation of the guild, by giving to each organization of the community, be it a trade, profession or voluntary association of political opinion, and also to all large classes, such as agriculturists, manufacturers, merchants and the professions, special delegates to represent their special interests, and general delegates to be elected at large or appointed by the crown, such special delegates to be chosen by them, in certain proportions corresponding to the importance of such interests to the commonwealth. Lastly, there is a class of publicists and political economists who have suggested minority or totality representation as the means best adapted to redress the evils of the existing political conditions in relation to representative government. Thus they would, indirectly but naturally, introduce into the modern state something analogous to the guild or trade representation which existed in the mediæval communities, by recognizing as units of representation voluntary constituencies framed to represent electoral quotas. These units are to be substituted for existing arbitrary geographical divisions, and, by enfranchising the minority and giving each man his due proportion of political power in representation, reconstitute political organizations, acting as a solvent of existing machines, so that there shall no longer be majorities and minorities, but an entire reformation of political entities for purposes of representation.

—We shall now pass in review these several methods of reform of an undoubted existing evil, to see which will answer best the purpose to meet the exigencies of a modern democratic community.

—The objection to the foreign vote is one that increases in intensity as we descend in the scale of the dignity of the legislative or representative body, from the national to the municipal organization. The federal legislature has no distinctive foreign element in it, and the opinions of congress have been so little tinged with the emigration influences, that with the exception of a few demagogues who desire to curry favor with the Fenian element, by inveighing against the English government, there is no danger, which requires the enforcement of reformatory measures, of bad national legislation arising from the ignorance or prejudices of the naturalized voter. In state governments the foreign element makes itself more strongly felt. On questions affecting temperance legislation and excise laws. in matters relating to taxation and in labor legislation, the German and the Irish voters have exercised influences which may be deemed by some pernicious. On the relation of labor to capital, the employment of convicts in competition with the trades, in the regulation of the hours of labor, and in the authority given to municipalities to contract for labor, ideas have been transplanted from the trades-unionism of other countries upon our statute books directly traceable to foreign ideas. In municipal administration the evil of the foreign vote has been more strongly felt. It so happens that the foreign elements of large cities also comprise a very large proportion of the poorest inhabitants of the cities, and there is, therefore, not an unnatural association of ideas in coupling the foreign element with the lowest class of voters. As a city administration deals almost wholly with property interests, the application of universal suffrage to administrations of that character has resulted in throwing the power to levy taxes into the hands of the men who are the largest consumers of taxes and the smallest direct contributors to the city treasury. Consequently, the objection to what is called the foreign vote has been strongest felt and most strongly expressed in municipalities wherein it is coupled with the vote of the poor, who have so managed that in less than a generation the city debts of the United States have been trebled and their taxes doubled.

—The advocacy of female suffrage as a remedy for the evils of representation, arises from an entire misconception of the nature and character of the suffrage and of representation. It is treated by these advocates as an inborn right instead of a trust. They regard the refusal to allow an individual to vote, as a deprivation of something which is in the nature of his property, and the denial of representation, therefore, as an injustice. All institutions of government are practical establishments for the purpose of securing the well-being of society. To secure the well-being of society, it is necessary that the most intelligent and best instructed members of it should, in so far as regulation is necessary, regulate those affairs. If universal, including female, suffrage secures that end, then it is wholesome. If it fails to secure that end, it is mischievous. The difficulty with universal suffrage and majority representation is, that it enables the least instructed, who are the most numerous, to swamp and silence the better instructed, who are in every community the fewest. Doubling the number of voters by adding voters of precisely the same class, individual for individual, can not, by any possibility, remove that difficulty, but inevitably will have the tendency to strengthen it. Assuming, what is open to debate, that women are intellectually as strong as men, and assuming also, contrary to the fact, that they have as large an experience as men have in affairs with which legislation has to deal. the adding of all the women of the United States to the poll lists, is simply adding to the enormous numerical preponderance of the lower-class vote, intellectually considered, over the better-class vote, intellectually considered. The laborer's wife, sharing the laborer's household and the laborer's interests, will inevitably share his prejudices and his influences. She is also sure to be driven to the polls, or will voluntarily go there, under the pressure of some supposed personal benefit to be derived from the exercise of the vote, particularly in cities where large expenditures directly interest so large a proportion of the working classes. As a matter of fact for many years to come, were female suffrage introduced, the most refined women would, for stronger reasons than those which influence the men of the household and cause them to abstain from going to the polls, also induce the women to refrain from going to the polls, and compulsion would not be exercised upon them to overcome their disinclination. Therefore, as to this class of voters, the proportion of the lower-class votes would be even larger than it is among the men; and in a community which simply counts votes without weighing them, all the evils that arise from an absence of discrimination as to who casts the votes, will be very naturally intensified by the adoption of the suggestions of the female suffragists.

—The reform which seeks to make the nominating convention and the caucus amenable to the restraining influence of the criminal law, is one which is wholesome and necessary, so far as it goes. It is only not sufficiently far reaching successfully to cope with the deeper-seated ills of the body politic. It is not only the exclusive devotion to the business of politics which gives to the politician his great advantage over the average citizen, but also that he is willing to resort to trick, device and fraud for the purpose of perpetuating his power. Primary meetings, therefore, where each citizen is supposed to enact the initiative steps for the calling of a convention, and the appointing of representatives to a convention which shall express the party will, both as to platforms and as to individuals for office, have become mere hotbeds of fraud and intimidation. It is a melancholy truth, which is attested by the history of party organizations in every densely crowded centre of the United States, that the primaries are called simply to register foregone conclusions, and to delegate as the so-called representatives of certain districts, men who have been previously agreed upon by a junta of politicians. These politicians call the primaries and appoint inspectors of elections, and the few people who are not deterred from attendance by the disreputable character of the place where the primary is held, or by the character of those who are expected to do the work of the primary, may vote as they see fit; the counting is done by inspectors previously appointed, who will inevitably return the names that were given them to be returned, whether such names receive a majority or minority of the votes. To protect, therefore, these actions of citizens, or the supposed actions of citizens, exercising their capacity as freemen, to set in motion the necessary machinery to secure the selection of candidates, is a duty which is imposed upon the law, and which has been hitherto neglected by the ignoring of these meetings as necessary elements of constitutional government. If it is necessary to protect a citizen from having his name forged to a piece of paper jeoparding a hundred dollars of his property, it is as clearly the duty of the law maker to prevent falsification or forgery of his will in the expression of political opinion or preference when he has been invited to attend a meeting, and his opinion or preference is likely to produce tangible practical results. Already in the state of New York a law, with limited application, has been made to protect primaries in certain localities, in the same manner as the voter's preferences are protected at the polls, and this principle is likely to prevail until there is spread upon the statute books of all the states of the Union, and of the nation, laws protecting the citizen's exercise of rights in that regard.

—The ideas of Robert von Mohl, on re-establishing, in modern democratic society. the forms of representation which prevailed in the middle ages, in which interests and not persons were represented, are worthy of more regard and attention than has been given to them. The English parliament has grown up in so incongruous a fashion, that, down to a very recent period, when the rotten boroughs were disfranchised and some towns given a fair representation, Chief Justice Story's description was literally and exactly true. He says: "It might be urged that it is far from being secure, upon reason of experience, that uniformity in the composition of a representative body is either desirable or expedient, founded in sounder policy, or more promotive of the general good, than a mixed system embracing and representing and combining distinct interests, classes and opinions. In England the house of commons is a representative body founded upon no uniform principle either of numbers or classes or places. The representation is made up of persons chosen by electors having very different and sometimes very discordant qualifications. In some cases property is exclusively represented; in others, particular trades and pursuits; in others, inhabitancy and corporate privileges; in others, the reverse." (The universities have representatives.) "In some cases the representatives are chosen by very numerous voters; in others, by very few. In some cases a single patron possesses the single power of choosing representatives, as in nomination boroughs; in others, very populous cities have no right to choose, and have no representatives at all. In some cases a select body forming but a very small part of the inhabitants has the exclusive right of choice; in others, non-residents can control the whole election. In some places half a million of inhabitants possess the right to choose no more representatives than are assigned to the most insignificant borough with scarcely an inhabitant to point out its local limits. Yet this inequality has never, of itself, been deemed an exclusive evil in Great Britain. And in every system of reform which has found public favor in that country, many of these diversities have been embodied from choice, as important checks upon undue legislation, as facilitating the representation of different interests and different opinions, and as thus securing, by a well-balanced and intelligent representation of all the various classes of society, a permanent protection of the public liberties of the people, and a firm security of the private rights of persons and of property." (Story on the Constitution, sec. 585.) Now, what is done in this prescriptive and crude fashion by the gradual growth of the English constitution, and which is embodied in the house of commons, which not merely represents geographical districts, but represents all the various interests of society in Great Britain, Robert von Mohl proposes to do in a community in a systematic and logical form. Taking the classifications of society as they exist, as landowners, as agriculturists, as merchants, shippers and manufacturers, he would give to each class, representation in proportion, first, to their numerical strength, and secondly, to their importance to the state. To the religious organizations, to the political organizations, he would assign representation. To the association or organization of the manufacturer, as well as to the trades union of his employés, representation would be given according to his plan in certain qualitative proportions. He would have these organizations, like the guilds of the middle ages, depute their delegates to a central body. Speaking, as he does, in a community in which the crown was to his mind an integral part of the state, he would give to the crown the appointment of general delegates in a certain proportion to represent the commonwealth. Eliminating this royal intervention from his plan, as not a necessary part of it, general delegates might be elected by general ticket on the part of the whole community to sit with these delegates of the special trades combinations and industries of the community. Indeed, he himself is in doubt whether general delegates are at all necessary, because, he says, all these special delegates have an interest in the general public weal, but are to be considered as more truly representative, than geographical divisions constitute them, of the actual living interests of the whole community. He draws attention to the fact that whenever a trade or special organization places at its head its representative man by an election for president or director, it is generally the strongest man among them; and that in no community in which geographical subdivisions and majority votes are taken, is such a result brought about. He, therefore, would have these special interests recognized by law. When these deputed spokesmen are gathered together into a general assembly, in due proportions, they would together represent all the interests as they exist outside of the representative chamber, and thereby be, in point of fact, a reduced photograph of the whole community. The professions would be represented by their ablest men; the trades by their ablest men; and upon every question affecting any special interests, the highest technical skill would, within the representative body, be instantly available for information as to how proposed legislation will affect such interests.

—Those who have recommended reverting to the smaller constituencies, like the old Saxon hundred, so as to give opportunity for deliberation, and to place this deliberative community of a hundred under the protection of the law, so that its will as expressed in conventions or meetings shall not be fraudulently falsified, are working in the same direction with those who seek to legalize the nominating conventions. The adherents of this plan are yet too feeble in numbers, and their scheme is too remote from the practical habits of the people, to be thought of as a scheme likely to prove acceptable, and hence it can be dismissed for the present from this discussion.

—The double-election scheme has very much to commend it. Of this view Mr. Clark, whose work has already been cited, is the ablest exponent. He says, that the difficulty is, first, the actual and necessary ignorance of the great majority of voters, both as to whom they are voting for and what they are voting about; second, their utter inability to unite of and among themselves upon representative candidates for office and third political organizations, which started to help the people in this embarrassment have, by the logic of the situation, become their corrupt and corrupting masters. To remedy this, be proposes that in every town ward or other civil division that exceeds two thousand in population, the registered votes be divided by lot into five, nine, or any other number, of equal sections or squads. that they shall be drawn as jurors are drawn, and that each of these lists or squads shall constitute a primary electoral constituency; that the respective squads shall vote for a representation of electors for their own constituency; that these representative electors shall appoint the ward officers: that these electoral colleges of the ward shall again designate one or more electors to represent them and the people for whom they act in a higher rank of colleges for the appointment of mayors, county officers, members of the state legislature and the house of representatives. He thus calls out the voter; he compels the performance of the duty of voting on pain of disfranchisement, and compels the performance of services as elector by heavy penalties. The experience of France is strongly in favor of double voting. Mr. Taine, in his book "On the Suffrage," has expressed his preference for this form of election over that of any other, and supports it with cogent philosophical and logical reasoning. The failure of the electoral college is in itself no cogent reason against double elections, because it can easily be shown that it was so defectively organized as to take from it at the outset all character as a deliberative body.

—Those who favor a property qualification are mainly reformers of municipal organizations. The few qualifications in the way of ownership of property which existed under the constitutions of the various states of the Union as conditions for the vote for state officers, have gradually been swept away, and the question seems to be on subjects relating to state and national administration no longer open to debate. With reference to municipal administration, however, a different question is presented. Upon that point even Mr. Mill, than whom no stronger advocate for the extension of the suffrage and for the liberty of the people existed, says, on page 176 of his "Considerations on Representative Government," that, "it is important that the assembly which votes the taxes, either general or local, should be elected exclusively by those who pay something toward the tax imposed. Those who pay no taxes, disposing by their votes of other people's money, have every motive to be lavish and none to economize. As far as money matters are concerned, any power of voting possessed by them is a violation of the fundamental principle of free government, a severance of the power of control from the interest in its beneficial exercise. It amounts to allowing them to put their hands into other people's pockets for any purpose which they think fit to call a public one. which in great towns of the United States is known to have produced a scale of local taxation onerous beyond example, and wholly borne by the wealthier classes. That representation should be coextensive with taxation, not stopping short of it, but also not going beyond it, is in accordance with the theory of British institutions." It is generally forgotten that municipal administration is but to a very limited degree a governmental, and to a very large extent the mere co-operative management of property; that the suffrage is a sword as well as a shield, and that the power which enables the holder of the suffrage to protect himself from the aggressions of others is likewise a power by which he may aggress upon the rights of others, the two being inseparable; that, therefore, giving, under the forms of universal suffrage, the vast mass of people in a densely populated city the power to place mortgages upon the properties of its wealthier class, the proceeds of which are to be expended for the personal enjoyment of the masses who have not saved property, is, under the guise of law, to organize communism and confiscation. So jealous, however, are the American people of the right of universal suffrage in all matters relating to government, that they will not make the distinction which in the nature of things is proper to be made, by withdrawing in part, at least, municipal administration from the widest application of universal suffrage, lest, by such a precedent, danger may creep in and the people gradually become accustomed to the withdrawal of political power, in matters in which all have a like interest, to wit, their state and national administrations.

—Those who found their hope of reform upon the limitation of the suffrage arising from the application of a standard of qualifications of an intellectual or an educational character, are fighting against the tendencies of the times, and are but little likely to prevail. They also can base their well-grounded objections to counting instead of weighing votes upon the authority of Mr. Mill, who, in the work already cited, says: "In all human affairs every person directly interested, and not under positive tutelage, has an admitted claim to a voice, and, when his exercise of it is not inconsistent with the safety of the whole, can not justly be excluded from it. But (though every one ought to have a voice) that every one should have an equal voice is a totally different proposition. When two persons who have a joint interest in any business differ in opinion, does justice require that both opinions shall be held of exactly equal value? The opinion, the judgment of the higher moral or intellectual being is worth more than that of the inferior, and if the institutions of the country virtually assert that they are of the same value, they assert the thing which is not." He therefore says, that "two or more votes might be allowed to every person who exercises any superior function. The liberal professions imply a still higher degree of instruction, and whenever a sufficient examination or any serious conditions of education are required before entering upon a profession, its members could be admitted at once to a plurality of votes. The same rule might be applied to graduates of universities. All these suggestions," he says, "are open to discussion as to details, but," he concludes, "it is to me evident that in this direction lies the true ideal of representative government, and that to work toward it by the best practical contrivances which can be found, is the path of real political improvement." The extent to which he would carry this plurality of votes he does not commit himself to, but insists that it should not be carried to any point which would enable a few to outnumber the great mass of the community, but that it shall be carried far enough to prevent the more intelligent from being overs laughed at the polls by the less instructed.

—We now come to treat of the most radical, while at the same time the most natural, reform of the evils of representative government—that which is known as totality or minority representation. When a single person is to appoint an agent, there is no difficulty except as to a wise selection. When two people are to appoint an agent, there may be divergence of opinion as to the agent to be appointed, and except by agreement there is no possibility to make an appointment. When three people are to appoint an agent, if there is but one agent to be appointed, then must necessarily be given to the majority of the three the right to appoint. It is true that the minority might as well have no voice at all after the agent is appointed against his wishes, because his views are not likely to prevail with the agent. If a hundred men are to appoint a single agent, again must be given to the majority of fifty-one or more the right to appoint that agent, as the only practical solution for the difficulty of the situation. But if the hundred men have five agents to appoint, to give to fifty-one the power to appoint all five, and to leave the forty-nine wholly and completely unrepresented in the agency, is an injustice which is gratuitous, and not in the least justified by the necessity of the situation. It is just as easy to take the vote of the constituency of a hundred upon a plan which shall secure to each quota, of twenty men each, the right to a representative, as to take the vote upon the existing plan of majorities and minorities. The result, however, in one case is to make the representation of five, when elected by squads of twenty each, an actual reduced photograph of the wishes and will of the hundred as far as practically ascertainable, and in the other case the representation will merely represent the wishes and will of the majority, and probably, from the excitement of the election in which the minority were beaten, oppose the views of such minority with vehemence and bitterness. Therefore the minority are not only not represented, but are frequently maliciously pursued by the representatives of their constituency for their effort to defeat the representatives; and as their constant agitation to become the majority endangers the representatives' seats, they will attempt in every way to thwart the minority of their own constituency. A perpetual antagonism is, therefore, created in constituencies, and between constituencies and their representatives, which ought not in the nature of things to exist, and for which there is no necessity. Dividing the number of voters by the number of representatives to be elected, and giving to the quotient an absolute right to return one member, is it is true, a great revolution in modern political practice, but is, nevertheless, absolutely the only means by which some of the most flagrant evils incident to representative institutions can be cured.

—Whoever may be entitled to the merit of first devising this great improvement in the machinery of representative institutions, whether it be Earl Gray, Mr. Craig of England, or Mr. Fisher of Pennsylvania, its ablest and foremost exponent, who has devoted a lifetime to its explanation and exposition, is Mr. Thomas Hare, of England. The draft of a new law of parliamentary representation contained in his work, "On Representation," is commented on by John Stuart Mill as having "the unparalleled merit of carrying out a great principle of government in a manner approaching to ideal perfection as regards the special object in view, while it attains incidentally several other ends of scarcely inferior importance" His plan is, through the instrumentality of the voter's own choice as expressed upon an election ticket, to secure the transfer of his votes, whenever the voter's first choice has already been elected, or in the event of the voter's first choice not securing enough votes for an election; so that no votes are wasted. In a constituency which is to return say, eight members of congress, the voters declare, in the order in which they prefer to be represented, their preference for eight or as many more persons as they see fit to put upon their tickets. When the election officers come to count the votes, they will find a certain number of persons as first choices, whose election is secured by obtaining the requisite quota—the quota to be ascertained by dividing the number of seats to be filled, plus one, by the number of votes cast at the election. The object of making the divisor larger by one than the actual number of seats to be filled, is to diminish the chances of an equal number of votes or ties, and to increase the chances of filling seats without resorting to approximate or transferred quotas. The votes are thereupon transferred to the other choices in the manner designated by Mr. Hare. To this plan it is not necessary further to advert in this article.

—A still greater simplification to secure minority representation is to allow voters to vote but for single names in large districts, and to give to the representative in the representative body one vote for every hundred or thousand or ten thousand votes cast for him. To prevent the representative body from being too large an organization, a minimum must be established, that no one shall be considered elected who has not received 5,000 votes. To prevent too small a body, a maximum must be fixed beyond which a representative's additional votes shall not give him additional votes in the house. If 5,000 votes is the minimum, the representative might be regarded as having one vote for the first 5,000, and an additional vote for every 5,000 that have been cast in addition for him. This would enable communities to select popular men in whom they have confidence, and give to them a plurality of votes, and yet prevent the minority from being excluded from the representative chamber. Many other plans have been suggested by other writers. The list plan of Geneva, elaborated mainly by Ernst Naville; the minority representation plan of Mr. Andrac; the plans of Messrs. Droop, Bailey and Dobbs, and the cumulative plan, all seek to attain the same object in different ways, and each has its special merit and defects; but the great object to be attained by minority representation is the breaking up of the existing political machinery, the tyranny and the power of which exists simply because machinery of some kind is a necessity to organize a majority in the district, by making bargains and dickers and arrangements to capture votes here and votes there, so as to secure representation. To be in the minority is to be disfranchised. With minority representation all this elaborate machinery becomes needless. Citizens will be represented in proportion to their numerical strength, through the instrumentality of the very slightest organization, and they are encouraged to organize, as the task set before them is not an almost hopeless one, as it is made under existing conditions to the non-political class, whereby it is compelled to put forth a powerful effort, which may result in no success at all, which is extremely costly in time and money, and which is wholly lost unless a majority of all the votes is secured. Giving political power in proportion to the effort put forth, is one of the first beneficial results arising from minority representation.

—The second advantageous result arising from this system of election, is the facility it will afford to the intellectual part of the community to secure a representation in town councils, legislative chambers and the halls of congress, which is now absolutely denied to them. Every form of public opinion, as it grows in strength, would have its strength actually measured and its growth watched by the increase of representatives, and the representatives would, under those circumstances, always be the strongest and ablest men holding such opinions. Had such a system, by any fortunate accident, existed prior to the civil war, the south would have discovered the growth of the anti-slavery sentiment in the north before it was overwhelmed by it, and even a hopeless minority in the south who were opposed to slavery, and the minority in the south who were in favor of the Union at all hazards, would have had their representatives in Congress, and the controversy on slavery would have been less sectional than, under a false system of taking votes, it was made to appear to be. Free traders would have their representatives in congress; the antimonopolist's voice would be heard long before it became that of a majority, and parties would again become standard bearers of principle, instead of, as now, mere followers of political principles, in the expectation of catching votes—a demoralized condition, created by the false importance in a majority system of the floating vote, which induces parties quite as often to deny their own cherished political principles from the fear of losing votes by the advocacy of what for the time the leaders suppose to be obnoxious to the popular will, just as they frequently insincerely adopt political principles in the expectation of catching small sections of voters. "Nothing but habit and old associations," says Mr. Mill, "can reconcile any reasonable being to the needless injustice of this mere majority representation. In a really equal democracy every order in the section would be represented, not disproportionately but proportionately. A majority of the electors would always have a majority of the representatives, but a minority of the electors would always have a minority of the representatives. Unless this be so, there is no equal government, but a government of inequality and privilege. One part of the people rule over the rest. There is a part whose fair and equal share of influence in representation is withheld from them, contrary to all just government, but above all, contrary to the principle of democracy, which professes equality as its very root and foundation." Incidentally be it mentioned that this plan would secure to a capable man a career in political life as secure as in any profession. as he would not be dependent on the accidental majority of his district, but could always rely upon obtaining a quota vote.

—The cowardice of modern political parties is best indicated by the fact that no party in the United States dares, in modern days, ever present its strongest man for the presidency, because, having been long in the public eye, he is sure to have offended a great number of voters whose adhesion is necessary to make a majority. Availability, therefore, takes the place of true ability. The adoption of minority representation also solves, in advance, all the objections to the extension of the suffrage, and would secure to the tax payer by combination, what it is impossible for him to secure now in relation to municipal administration—a strong contingent of representatives of the tax payer in the city councils, to act as a check and brake on extravagant expenditures. If the scheme of minority representation is extended, by making large districts and numerous representatives from such districts, it would also give within party lines such independent action as to create a balance-of-power party within the party, and would thus forever destroy the supremacy of halls and juntas, who hold their power simply because the alternative presented to the voter is to accept their candidate or the candidate of a hall or organization equally bad but belonging to the opposing political organization.

—To the objection that may be urged, that minority representation would secure to the sinister elements of a community a representation if they saw fit to combine, the answer is, that it is better that the representative of the sinister elements should be known as such, than that a private arrangement be made with the sinister elements of a community by which they secure surreptitiously and secretly several representatives on condition of their support, and thus obtain by bargain a very much larger share than they could obtain by right.

—The one formidable objection to the whole scheme of minority representation, and which is really the price that the community must pay for the total representation of the community, is, that it has a tendency to prevent the spirit of compromise and mutual forbearance, which party has a tendency to create. The community would possibly split up into too many segments. Opportunity of representation being afforded to small quotas, the Catholic, the Jew, the infidel, might secure separate representation, and thus intensify religious feeling. Workingmen and capitalists might secure separate representation; and thus the same reason which would make minority representation act as a solvent of political parties, might result in its acting as a solvent on constituencies which ought to be held together in the bands of party, thereby cultivating mutual good will, which probably would not exist were their parts to be exclusively committed to their own class for political action. The only answer to this position is the universal experience of mankind, that the instant men are clothed with the responsibility of government, acerbity is lessened, and the intolerance which characterizes them as sectaries or partisans without political power is diminished. To give to minorities, therefore, who now have no chance of representation, an opportunity to have their voices heard, coupled with the responsibility that their recommendations must be put in practicable shape for legislation, and that the responsibility of such legislation rests upon their shoulders if adopted by the majority, has in itself a very sobering influence on all violent and extreme opinions, and subjects them to the severest tests to which opinions can be subjected, that of discussion with well-trained adverse opinions, and that of practicability to frame statutes to enforce such opinions.

—Admitting Catholics and Jews to parliament was opposed, on the ground that, in the one case, a superior allegiance was considered due from the Catholic to the pope, and in the other case, that the Jew regarded every country in which he lived as but a mere resting place, that his true home was in Palestine, and that these convictions made both sects unpatriotic. Their admission, however, has proved how utterly groundless was this objection; that there are no more patriotic members of parliament than the Catholics and the Jews, is now past controversy. Indeed, in all matters of legislation the religious conviction scarcely ever comes to the surface, except where it is necessary for the purpose of preventing some act of intolerance to formulate itself into law.

—In boards of direction of corporations the adoption of a minority scheme of representation would be the most absolute security to insure continuity of direction and purpose in a less objectionable form than the adoption of a classification scheme, by which only a few of the directors go out each year, and would also prevent the possibility of a capture of a corporation through the instrumentality of proxies representing fictitious holdings, borrowings of stock, etc., by which great corporations have been depleted and the interests of the stockholders wholly disregarded. Even if the majority of the board of direction would truly represent the majority of the stockholding interest, a watchful and alert minority would prevent the diverting of the property and management of the road to sinister purposes, and be a check more efficacious than are courts or laws to prevent corporate mismanagement.

—Finally, we must recognize, with reference to governmental machinery, that it, like all machinery devised by men, must be progressively improved to adapt it to the varying needs of society. The devices to prevent tyranny and oppression which answered the purposes of the people against the kingly power of a John, a Charles or a George are as little adapted to modern society as is the crude machinery of those periods to the necessities of man in civilized life at the present day. For the satisfaction of all physical wants immense progress has been made in every direction. The art of government, however, has not been so progressive. The safe maker has kept pace with, and is a little in advance of, the skill of the burglar. The art of government has not kept pace with the skill, and ingenuity of those who require its restraining influences. The oppression which in former periods exhibited itself on the banks of the Rhine, by a robber baron sweeping down upon a rich neighboring community and depleting it of its movable property, or by his kin in spirit, locking up in his dungeon keep some rich Jew, and drawing his teeth until he disgorged his wealth, now manifests itself in corporate management in stock waterings, and in confiscation under the guise of taxation, in river and harbor bills, in protective tariffs, and thousands of other forms which are tyranny and exaction disguised under specious names to hide their nature, and clothed with the machinery of government itself to make the imposture complete. To destroy these malignant abuses of governmental machinery, effort must be made to give the government back to the people, freed from the organization which assumes to act for the people, but which misrepresents and abuses them. There is, therefore, no art or science to which the human intellect can devote itself of a more practical and immediately beneficial nature than reforms in representation, which lie at the bottom and root of modern government, so as to make representative bodies the true exponents of popular interests instead of fraudulent representatives of the popular will. "Representation should effect for the nation," says Mirabeau, "what a chart does for the physical configuration of the soil—producing not only a reduced picture of the whole of the people, but also representing their classes, their aspirations, wishes and opinions." The body of representatives should produce on the mind of the student of a nation's social constituencies an effect similar to that produced on its territory, in representing its mountains and dales, its rivers and lakes, forests and plains, cities and towns. The finer should not be crushed out by the more massive substances, and the latter not be excluded. The proportions are organic, the scale is national.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY. (See DEMOCRACY, REPRESENTATIVE.)

REPUBLIC.

REPUBLIC. This form of government is no more independent than the monarchical of the historical, geographical, ethnographical, and, above all, moral conditions, which seem to predestine a people to one or the other, by not leaving it the liberty of choice between them except within rather restricted limits. From this point of view, all abstract comparison of the intrinsic merits of monarchies and republics might seem superfluous, and there would be occasion to ask one's self whether the platonic love of a monarchy in countries with republican manners and customs, or of the republican enthusiasm which possesses some young minds or some generous imaginations in countries called by their inmost nature and their past to hereditary monarchy, are not chimeras which should be dispelled, and dangers which we should endeavor to avert.

—Without contesting whatever truth there may be in such a conclusion, we think that the forms of government may and should be compared with each other and considered in themselves, and that it is the task of the publicist, all due reservation being made in consideration of what is possible in time and place, to investigate their value, and to point out that which constitutes their merits and their defects. Thus the publicist, the least likely to be misled by deceptive appearances, and the most determined to settle, in the choice of his political opinions, upon what he judges to be actually practicable, will not scorn the enthusiasm which a republic awakens in noble minds, and he will examine whether it does not partake of an ideal beauty for which he should have some regard both as one of the elements of the judgment which he passes on the republic, and of the influence which it exercises. He will thus discover that elevated thought, lofty and powerful sentiments, are connected with the idea of a republic. In monarchies the devotion of man to man occupies a large place, and far be it from us to deny what it presents of the touching, and sometimes of the heroic, or to question what it has in it compatible with a love of the public welfare; but it is less pure and less sublime than that devotion which is directed to something superior to man himself, that is, to the fatherland, to the law, to the state. All selfish prejudice, all personal calculation, every fancy foreign to the general interest, seems to disappear in this generous sacrifice of each to all, and of the littleness of the individual to the greatness of justice. To the idea of devotedness, to that of an entirely stoical disinterestedness, is added another idea not less severe, and more attractive because it is more natural, that of equality united to liberty. Equality is to such an extent the passion of republican minds that the most aristocratic republics are no exception to it; only the practice and the worship of equality are concentrated within a limited circle, instead of extending to all the citizens. It is to equality that all, in a republican aristocracy, sacrifice themselves; it is to it that they do not hesitate to sacrifice the most illustrious heads; it is equality which impels, in spite of himself, in a manner, a Brutus to arm himself against a Cæsar. This shows us the nature and the end of the republic; it is a government founded upon general interest and equality, the motive power of which are disinterestedness, devotedness, and, let us add, popularity, with the honors which it confers. If all think they find their advantage in this form of government, it is on the supreme condition of defending, at the cost of the greatest struggles, a good, precious from the double point of view of individual dignity and of utility. This is why the most generous dreamers as well as the most rigorous logicians come, by some sort of instinct, to the idea of a republic. This is why it has produced so many virtues, of the sublimest kind, offered by history to the admiration of future generations.

—But what constitutes the greatness of this form of government is also the source of its difficulties and dangers, which no clearsighted republican can deny. Equality, which is the soul of republics, encounters two formidable enemies: ambition, which conspires against it, and envy, which exaggerates it. The former can not be resigned to accept the yoke of a law, the same for all; the latter rebels against the superiority of fortune and of merit; it tries to level the one, and devotes itself to railing at the other. Taxation directed against the rich, schemes of agrarian law, privileges in favor of the poor, suspicions of the well-to-do and enlightened part of the population—all these spring up in republics. "For," says the old publicist, Jean Bodin, with a severity which is not exaggerated if applied to the past, "the real natural disposition of a people is to have full liberty without any restraint or curb whatever, to have all equal in goods, in honors, in punishments, in rewards, without any regard to rank, or knowledge, or virtue." Who does not know that, up to the present time, great citizens in republics have always had to defend themselves (and sometimes without success) against calumny? If favor has its vicissitudes in a monarchy, how few reputations in republics withstand the exercise of power for however short a time. To what contumely in the most irreproachable of republics. the United States, so often cited as a model, were their Washingtons, Hamiltons and Madisons not exposed? What accusations against their generals in the ancient republics of Greece! What terrible changes of popularity and what bloody sacrifices to that capricious power, in the short and stormy attempt at a republic made by France in 1793; The moderate republic of 1848 did not sully herself with blood; she spilt it only in the arena of civil war, when that of the best citizens flowed voluntarily in the service of public order. But did any one's popularity last longer than three months? Was this the fault solely of the men who governed? Be that as it may, there is not a historian, not an enlightened publicist, who has not declared that jealousy, suspicion, and the spirit of change, are the especial dangers of republics, as favoritism and intrigue are those of monarchies. But the first-named vices are those of the majority; the second belong to only a small number. Thence comes the expression which is never applied to a monarchy, that a people is not ripe for a republic. In fact, equality requires customs and manners, a character and an education suited to it. The same may be said of liberty which every republic proclaims as being of its very essence, and without which there would be no equality but the sad and shameful equality of servitude. No doubt a form of government which constantly involves individual responsibility, and often subjects it to severe tests, presents especial difficulties. To govern one's self and to take part in public affairs, an amount of intelligence and a mixture of firmness and moderation are needed which are not everywhere distributed in sufficient quantity to establish a regular and stable state of affairs. Number being, in the name of equality, one of the essential elements of republican institutions, if the corrupt, the incapable, those who are easily reduced and led away, get the ascendency, all is lost. There must then be either anarchy or a master; there is no middle path. These are so fully understood to be the dangers of a republic that there is no republican constitution which does not undertake, to a greater or less degree, to foresee and in some measure guard against them. But republican constitutions do not always do this sufficiently, or else they are themselves but powerless dikes, swept away by the impetuous current of human passions.

—It is of the essence of a democratic republic to fill by election a portion of the offices which monarchy fills by hereditary transmission. It is reason alone which is regarded as governing in a republic. Now, reason excludes chance and those artificial privileges instituted in the interest of conservation. Monarchies, even constitutional monarchies, are full of fictions and conventions. A republic judges them unworthy of men arrived at political maturity, and useless to preserve society from revolution. Consequently it eliminates them, being replete with confidence in the upright will and enlightened capacity of the people. If this confidence is justified, the republican form is maintained and prospers. If not, the republican form is impaired and destroyed, either by slow dissolution or by a violent downfall.

—Says Montesquieu, "Government is like all other things in the world: to preserve it, it must be loved. No one has ever heard it said that kings do not love monarchy, or that despots hate despotism." A republic can be no exception; to establish it in a country, it does not suffice that a minority desire it, or even wish to impose it; there must be a nation of republicans as willing to receive it as capable of upholding it.

—It has been sometimes said that the difficulty consists in reconciling a monarchy with liberty and a republic with order. There would be at least as much truth in the reverse proposition. A non-absolute monarchy, giving satisfaction by lifelong and hereditary power to the want of conservation, is less fearful of liberty, if liberty enters into and keeps its pledge to respect the royal establishment. That establishment has no interest to threaten liberty; it has, on the contrary, every interest to take care of it. This care is the price of the force of public opinion which sustains it. In republics, liberty, recognized as sovereign in principle, runs serious risks. The power, under the form which best represents order in the eyes of the nation, is temporary. Hence the necessity of arming it in an exceptional way, or of arming one's self against its possible encroachments, or by precautions which are embarrassing to all. The majority oppresses the minority, or else the minority governs through terror. If we can not see in this a fatal and inevitable law, it has at least been, up to the present time, the history of the greater number of republics. Another cause threatens liberty: its own excesses. Too frequently have we seen republics knowing no alternative but excessive or suspended liberty. Happy were they when this suspension of liberty did not end in its suppression, and when temporary dictatorships were not changed into a lasting tyranny!

—The error of the greater part of the republican schools has until now consisted in believing that a republic had not to solve the problem of equilibrium; that it is a government of absolute simplicity, and has no need of being tempered. This thought has led some to the idea of a direct government of the people, excluding even a representative government; an idea which caused the author of L' Esprit des lois to say: "There was one great defect in most of the ancient republics; that in them the people believed they had the right to make active resolutions requiring some sort of execution, a thing of which the people is utterly incapable. The people should not enter into the government except to choose their representatives, which is quite within their power. For, if there are but few people who know the precise degree of men's capacity each one is nevertheless capable of knowing in general if the one whom he choose is more enlightened than most others." The same opinion as to absolute simplicity has led other politicians to the idea of a civic assembly. Experience, as well as reason, teaches that republics can not, save at the risk of death, abandon themselves to the descending plane or declivity of a civic principle or element. There is no society which does not contain natural aristocracies of experience, learning, age, etc., within it. And, on the other hand, there is no society, however strongly organized its privileges may be, in which the masses are not important, and do not count for something in the state. Notwithstanding their inclination to exaggerate simplicity and to crush out whatever obstructed the full expansion of their principle, the constitutions of antiquity felt this. Aristocratic as was the Roman republic, it modified the power of the senate by means of the tribunes and popular suffrage. Democratic as was Athens, it had the Areopagus. It is true that the wise precautions taken by Solon did not prevent the country of Aristides and Socrates from succumbing to the propensities which hurried it on. The more and more exclusive predominance of the popular element produced disorders there, the undying remembrance of which is preserved by history, as a lesson to democracies, present or future, which choose not to recognize any restraint.

—The United States itself has endeavored to combine the different powers in such a manner as to secure respect for the law against the changeable will of the multitude. The president possesses extensive powers, and, in spite of pure ultra-republican theory, there is a moderating senate side by side with the popular assembly, or house of representatives. Any constitution, monarchical, republican, aristocratic or democratic, which does not distrust its own principle, at the same time that it does all it can to establish it on a solid basis, is a bad constitution.

—The excessively unitarian and centralizing propensities which govern in some countries, make this observation especially opportune. A republic which should have only a very centralized power, with no independent powers to act as a counterpoise, would run the risk of becoming more oppressive than a monarchy. If to this cause of oppression should be added the necessity of being on the defensive in order to resist either hostile parties within, or menaces from without, it is clear that liberty would be exposed to painful disappointment. Every liberal republic involves a certain amount of administration. What were the republics of Greece and the Italian republics of the middle ages? Brilliant municipalities. American federalism is not necessarily the form of a free republic, but a certain amount of decentralization seems to us to be an indispensable condition for such a republic. A free republic can be understood only where much is left to individuals and to associations. Otherwise, what result would have been obtained by so many revolutions? A change of name! But of what consequence is it to the world whether an omnipotent government call itself a monarchy or a republic?

REPUBLICAN PARTY

REPUBLICAN PARTY (IN U. S. HISTORY), the name, 1, of the original democratic party (see DEMOCRATIC PARTY, I.), and, 2, of the most powerful opponent of the democratic party, 1854-82. In the latter case, it seems to have been assumed, in great measure, for the purpose of making use of the still lingering reverence for the name in the northern states; and yet it seems far more appropriate to its modern than to its original claimant. The original republicans looked upon the Union as a democracy, whose constituent units were not persons, but states; and, hence, the name democratic party, which they finally accepted almost to the exclusion of the name republican, was their proper title. The modern republicans looked upon the Union as a republic of itself, apart from all the states, and able to assert the integrity of its territory against any of the states; and though, like every other American minority, they were ready upon occasion to assert the sovereignty of the states (see STATE SOVEREIGNTY, PERSONAL LIBERTY LAWS), their essential characteristic was that belief in the political existence of the nation which has controlled their whole party history, and given them their claim to the name republican. (See NATION.) From 1854 until 1861 the party was engaged in opposing the extension of slavery to the territories. Since 1861 it has controlled the national government, and has been successful in maintaining the power of the nation to suppress resistance to the laws, even when marshaled under state authority; to establish and control a system of national banks; to compel individuals to contribute money and military service to national defense in time of war, the former by the issue of legal-tender paper money, the latter by drafts; to abolish slavery; to reconstruct the governments of seceding states; to maintain and defend the security of the emancipated race against state laws; to regulate those state elections which directly influence the national government; and to suppress polygamy in the territories. No other political party has, therefore, exerted so enormous an influence upon the essential nature of the government in so short a time.

—I.: 1854-61. But one party, the democratic, emerged unbroken, and even increased, from the storm which was settled by the compromise of 1850. For the next five years there were only feeble and discordant efforts to oppose it, by the free-soilers on the slavery question, by the whigs on economic issues, and by the know-nothings on the question of suffrage. The dominant party itself struck the sudden and sharp blow which, in 1854, crystallized the jarring elements of opposition into a single party. The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill (see that title), not imperatively demanded by the southern democracy, a quixotic adherence to party dogma by the northern democracy, only served to rouse a general alarm throughout the north. The summer and autumn of 1854 became an era of coalitions in most of the northern states; and the result of the congressional elections of that year was that the "anti-Nebraska men," as the coalitionists were called, obtained a plurality in the house over the democrats and the distinct know-nothings, and elected the speaker. A few members, elected as anti-Nebraska men, turned out to be consistent know-nothings; the remainder, however, still controlled the house.

—The elements which went to make up the new party were very various and numerous. 1. Its immediate ancestor was the free-soil party which joined it bodily. Of its first leaders, Hale, Julian, Chase, C. F. Adams, Sumner, Wilmot, F. P. Blair, and Preston King of New York, were of this class. Many of these like Chase, were naturally democrats, but had been forced into opposition to their party by its unnecessary deference to the feelings of its southern wing. 2. But these alone could not have formed the basis of a new party. This was supplied by former whigs, either originally antislavery, or forced into that attitude by the compromise of 1850. Of this class, Lincoln, Seward, Greeley, Fessenden, Thaddeus Stevens, Sherman, Dayton, Corwin of Ohio, and Collamer of Vermont, were fair examples. This element, being much the more numerous and influential, controlled the policy of the new party on other points than slavery, and made it a broad-construction party, inclined toward a protective tariff, internal improvements, and government control over banking. 3. Much less numerous was the class, which, originally whig or democratic, had at first entered the know-nothing organization, but drifted into the new party as the struggle against slavery grew hotter. Of this class, Wilson, Banks, Burlingame, Colfax, and Henry Winter Davis, were examples, though some of them had been free-soilers as well as know-nothings. 4. In, but not of, the new party, were the original abolitionists, led by Giddings and Lovejoy in congress, and Garrison and Wendell Phillips out of congress. These were the guerrillas of the party, for whose utterances it did not hold itself responsible, and who were yet always leading it into a stronger opposition to slavery. 5. A fifth class, not so numerous as the second, but fully as important from a party point of view, came directly from the democratic party, Hamlin, Cameron of Pennsylvania, Trumbull of Illinois, Doolittle of Wisconsin, Montgomery Blair, Wm. C. Bryant of New York, and Gideon Wells of Connecticut, being examples. These, and the rank and file represented by them, brought into the new party that feeling of dependence upon the people, and of consideration for the feelings, and even the prejudices, of the people, which the whig party had always lacked. They made the new party a popular party, as the original democrats had made the original republicans a popular party. 6. Last, and generally temporary in their connection, were the "war democrats," who united with the republicans during the war of the rebellion, such as Andrew Johnson, B. F. Butler, Stanton, Holt of Kentucky, McClernand and Logan of Illinois, and Dix, Dickinson, Lyman Tremain, Cochrane and Sickles of New York. Many of these dropped out again after the end of the rebellion; though some, as Butler, Stanton and Logan, were more permanent in their connection.

—The unification of all these elements was evidently a difficult and delicate operation, and was only made possible by the transcendent interest in the restriction of slavery; but the fortunate adoption of the name republican, endeared by tradition to former democrats, and not at all objectionable to former whigs, aided materially in the work. Wilson states that this name was settled upon by a meeting of some thirty members of the house, on the day after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, that is, May 23, 1854; and that the leader of the meeting, Israel Washburn, of Maine, began using the term immediately as a party name. Another contemporaneous movement was in Ripon, Wisconsin, where the name was suggested at a coalition meeting, March 20, 1854, and formally adopted at the state convention in July. The first official adoption of the name is believed to have been at the convention at Jackson, Michigan, July 6, 1854. During this and the next month it was also adopted by state conventions in Maine Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, and may be considered as fairly established, though it was not recognized in congress until the beginning of the next year.

—In its first year of existence the new party obtained popular majorities in fifteen of the thirty-one states, and elected eleven United States senators and a plurality of the house of representatives. But these successes were mainly in the west; the eastern states, and particularly New England, resisted the entrance of the new party with tenacity, and kept up the whig and know-nothing organizations through the presidential election of 1856. In December, 1855, the state committees of Ohio, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Wisconsin and Michigan issued a call for a convention at Pittsburg, Feb. 22, 1856, to complete a national organization. This step was sufficient to show that the new party contained an element which distinguished it from the whig party. This convention selected a national committee, and called a national convention at Philadelphia, June 17. When this convention met, it was found to be a free-state body, with the exception of delegations from Delaware, Maryland and Kentucky. The platform adopted declared the party opposed to the repeal of the Missouri compromise, to the extension of slavery to free territory, and to the refusal to admit Kansas as a free state; it declared that the power of congress over the national territory was sovereign, and should be exerted "to prohibit in the territories those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery"; it denounced the Ostend manifesto (see that title); and declared in favor of a Pacific railroad, and of "appropriations by congress for the improvement of rivers and harbors of a national character" Nothing was said of the tariff. On the first ballot for a candidate for president, Fremont had 359 votes, McLean 196, Sumner 2, and Seward 1; and on the second ballot Fremont was nominated unanimously. On the informal ballot for a candidate for vice-president, Dayton received 259 votes. Lincoln 110, Banks 46, Wilmot 43; Sumner 35, and 53 were scattering; and on the formal ballot Dayton was unanimously nominated. Fremont's nomination was intended to gratify the free-soil and democratic elements of the party, to provide a popular rallying cry, "free soil, free speech, free men, and Fremont," to present a candidate free from antagonisms on the slavery question, and thus to win votes on all sides. Dayton's nomination was the whig share of the result. Fremont was defeated (see ELECTORAL VOTES, XVIII), but his defeat was a narrow one, and the votes of Illinois and Pennsylvania would have made him president. It is noteworthy that in 1860 provision was made for both these states, for the former by Lincoln's nomination, and for the latter by a protective tariff clause in the platform.

—The election of 1856 ended the party's first flood tide. The congressional elections of that year were so far unfavorable that there were but 92 republicans out of 237 members in the congress of 1857-9. In the development of a separate organization the coalition had sloughed off all its doubtful members, and had become fairly compacted and complete. Before the next congressional elections the disruption of the know-nothing organization in the northern states, the decision in the Dred Scott case (see that title), and the Lecompton bill (see KANSAS), gave it recruits enough to more than balance its losses. When the congress of 1859 met, the "black republican party" had become, to southern politicians, a portentous cloud covering all the northern sky. In the senate it now had twenty-five members to thirty-eight democrats; and not only were the re-elections of the few northern democratic senators very doubtful, but new republican states were almost ready to demand admission. In the house all the northern members were republicans, except two from California, five from Illinois, three from Indiana, one from Michigan, four from New York, six from Ohio, three from Pennsylvania, and one each from Oregon and Wisconsin, and eight anti-Lecompton democrats, who were certain to vote against the southern claims to the territories. Party contest in congress at once assumed a virulence which it had not before been subject to. In both houses the republicans were charged with complicity in the Harper's Ferry rising, and in the publication of Helper's "Impending Crisis," a recently published abolitionist book. In the house, candidates for speaker were nominated by the republicans (113 in number), the democrats (93), the anti-Lecompton democrats (8), and the "Americans," or know-nothings (23). For eight weeks no candidate could command a majority. The opposition to the republicans could not be completely united in voting for any candidate, or in voting that any member who had indorsed Helper's book, as most of the republican members had done, was "not fit to be speaker of this house." Finally, the original republican candidate, Sherman, having been withdrawn, and Pennington of New Jersey, having been substituted, he was elected, Feb. 1, 1860, by the aid of a few "American" votes. But, despite the speaker's election, the republicans had no control of legislation, with the exception of the passage of a homestead bill, which was vetoed by the president.

—When the national convention met at Chicago, May 16, 1860, the hopes of the party were high. its organization complete, and its character for the future determined. Its elements had been so welded together that the division lines had almost disappeared; but so far as it remained, it was certain that the old whig element would now take the leading nomination and control the general policy of the party, while the old democratic element would be content with the second nomination and the comfortable consciousness of familiar methods in party management. The delegates were from the free states, with the exception of the delegates from Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky, and a fraudulent delegation from Texas. The platform was much like that of 1856, except that the conjunction of polygamy and slavery, peculiarly exasperating to the south, was dropped; a homestead law, and protection for domestic manufactures in arranging the tariff, were demanded; and democratic threats of secession and disunion were denounced. For the first place on the ticket, Seward was strongly supported, and he was as strongly opposed, for the assigned reason that his anti-slavery struggle had made him an unavailable candidate; but much of the opposition to him came from the mysterious ramifications of factions in New York. On the first ballot, Seward had 173½ votes, Lincoln 102, Cameron 50½, Chase 49, Bates 48, and 42 were scattering; on the second, Seward 184½, Lincoln 181, Chase 42½, Bates 35, and 22 were scattering; and on the third, Lincoln 231½, Seward 180, and 53½ were scattering. Before another ballot could be taken, votes were so changed as to give Lincoln 354 votes, and he was nominated. For vice-president, on the first ballot, Hamlin had 194 votes, C. M. Clay 101½, and 165½ were scattering; on the second, Hamlin had 367 votes to 99 for others, and was nominated.

—In the campaign which followed, the party employed popular methods still more effectively than in 1856. With the exception of the ignominious success of 1840, no previous party had met the democratic party on its own ground. No appeal that could be made to the attention of the people was neglected; monster wigwams, and long processions of "wide awakes" with torches, transparencies and music, attracted listeners to the political speeches; and for these the party could now command at least as high an order of ability as its opponents. Its candidates obtained the votes of all the free states, except three from New Jersey, and were elected. (See ELECTORAL VOTES. XIX.) From this time the work of the party for the next four years is told elsewhere. (See articles referred to under REBELLION.)

—II.: 1861-9. No dominant party ever passed through such a trying experience as did the republican party during the rebellion. Its majority in congress was only due to the absence of southern representatives; and, even with this aid, its majority in the house was hardly preserved in the congress of 1863-5. Nevertheless the management of the party was generally wise and successful. The extreme anti-slavery element was held in check; and, to secure the co-operation of the small but essential percentage of "war democrats," the name "Union party" was adopted, and other measures of conciliation were contrived. Lincoln, in particular, was obnoxious both to the extreme radicals, who disliked his temporizing policy, and to the more timid members of the party, who feared the effects of his emancipation proclamation. Efforts were made to obtain the nomination of Chase, partly as a vindication of the "one-term policy," partly as a rebuke of "presidential patronage," and partly to secure a more careful management of the currency; but the republican members of the Ohio legislature declared for Lincoln's renomination, and this seems to have ended the Chase movement. A more turbulent but less formidable reaction was a convention of "radical men" at Cleveland, May 31, 1864, which nominated Fremont and John Cochrane of New York, and demanded a more vigorous prosecution of the war, the confiscation of the estates of rebels, and their distribution among soldiers and actual settlers. The candidates accepted the nominations, but withdrew before the election.

—In the mass of the party there was no hesitation. When the "Union national convention" met at Baltimore, June 7, 1864, Lincoln was renominated by acclamation after an informal ballot of 492 votes for him and 22 for Grant. To conciliate the war democrats, one of their number was to be nominated for vice-president, and the choice lay between Andrew Johnson and Daniel S. Dickinson of New York. On the first ballot Johnson had 200 votes, Hamlin 145, and Dickinson 113; but votes were at once changed to Johnson, and his nomination was made unanimous. The platform approved the unconditional prosecution of the war, the acts and proclamations aimed at slavery, the proposed 13th amendment abolishing slavery, the policy of President Lincoln, the construction of the Pacific railroad, the redemption of the public debt, and the enforcement of the Monroe doctrine in Mexico. For a little space during the summer the constant slight checks to the national armies threw a cloud over the prospects of republican success; but before the election a general and triumphant forward movement of the army and navy made Lincoln's election a certainty (see ELECTORAL VOTES, XX.), and the war closed with the republican party at its very high tide of success, triumphant and united.

—And yet, immediately after the close of the rebellion, the party was to undergo a more severe, because more insidious, test of its steadiness. A succession of exciting events, the assassination of President Lincoln, the offer of rewards for the chiefs of the confederacy and their hurried flight toward the seacoast, the long funeral of the dead president, and the trial of the conspirators in the assassination, appealed directly to the wild justice of revenge; and the appeal was to be resisted, if at all, by republican equilibrium of mind, for the opposition was almost silenced for the time. It is fair to say that the test was endured successfully, and that there was no general desire for sweeping vengeance upon the conquered. Men rather felt a strong sense of relief when the excitement subsided, business was allowed to take its wonted course again, and political problems were remanded to the federal government for consideration.

—This sense of relief was not to be permanent. Congress was not in session until December, 1865, and in the meantime the president actively began his policy of reconstruction. (See RECONSTRUCTION, I.) Every new expression of southern satisfaction with "the president's policy" was a fresh stimulus to suspicion in the minds of men who had for four years been engaged in suppressing a southern rebellion; but it was not until after the meeting of congress that the republicans were fully aroused to the disadvantages, and the opposition to the advantages, of the succession of a war democrat to President Lincoln's place. There were no important elections in 1865, and in those which were held the republicans were everywhere successful. The resolutions of their state conventions were evidently guarded in language, expressed approval of the president's policy so far as it had been developed; but demanded "the most substantial guarantees by congress" of the safety and rights of the southern negroes before the seceding states should be admitted to representation. In other words, the party was not disposed to a conflict with the president, but would keep its goods as a strong man armed: it would not object to his reconstruction of the state governments, if he would not object to the passage by congress of such acts as the civil rights bill and the freedmen's bureau bill (see those titles); but, at the first sign of bad faith in the president, it would strike at him and his policy with all its energy, through congress.

—It is evident now that this was the universal and deliberately formed programme of the party, and that the party was not forced into it by ultra leaders. These, on the contrary, were steadily held in check during the session of 1865-6, until the veto of the civil rights bill showed the president's intention to insist on the admission of the seceding states to representation without "substantial guarantees." Even then the party majority in congress were content with the passage over the veto of the two bills named above, and the passage of the 14th amendment, as a base of future operations; they then adjourned and left the issue between themselves and the president to the decision of the party.

—The decision was promptly given. The republican state conventions in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania pronounced against the president's policy, and declared that reconstruction must be effected by "the law-making power of the government." The other republican states were mainly silent because no state conventions were held; in not one of them was the president's policy approved. On the contrary, the approval came from the democratic party, whose leaders united with the president's republican and war democratic supporters in a national convention at Philadelphia, Aug. 14, 1866, commonly called the "arm-in-arm convention," from the manner in which the Massachusetts and South Carolina delegates entered it. In some states, as in Connecticut, the federal office-holders openly supported the democratic candidates, with the formal approval of the president, but the intact and vigorous republican organizations were successful. The result of the elections of 1866 left every state north of Mason and Dixon's line with a strong republican majority in the legislature, and a republican governor. Still more important, they gave the republicans in the next congress an unequivocal majority of all its members: 42 to 11 in the senate, and 143 to 49 in the house. If all the southern states had been represented by democrats, the republican majority would still have been 42 to 33 in the senate, and 143 to 99 in the house; until the southern states were represented, the republican majority was sufficient to override the president's veto in every case, and congress could shape legislation at its will for two years to come.

—The republican national committee expelled its president, Henry J. Raymond of New York, and two of its members, who had taken sides with the president, and war was fairly declared. The president's utter want of tact and discretion undoubtedly made the republican victory over him easier, but it would probably have been nearly as complete in any event. His obstinate refusal to make any terms only resulted in making the terms accorded to the seceding states more severe, and the work of reconstruction was carried out by congress with hardly any thought of the president, except as an obstructive. (See RECONSTRUCTION, I.)

—It has been said that the party forced its congressional majority into reconstruction, and was not forced into it by its ultra leaders. Nevertheless, it is certain that these leaders, during the struggle, used the president's denunciations of congress to carry counteraction unnecessarily far. The president had used without scruple his powers of appointment and removal to reward his friends and punish his enemies; and the civil service was thus made an instrument of offense against the dominant party. The course of events is elsewhere detailed. (See TENURE OF OFFICE; IMPEACHMENTS, VI.) How far the impeachment was desired by the mass of the party can hardly be known. The ensuing national convention pronounced the president to have "been justly impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and properly pronounced guilty thereof by the votes of thirty-five senators"; but it is still a question whether the party generally felt more regret or relief at the failure of the impeachment.

—The national convention at Chicago, May 20, 1868, fully approved the reconstruction policy of congress; declared that the public faith should be kept as to the national debt, not only according to the letter, but according to the spirit of the laws by which it was contracted, but that the rate of interest should be reduced whenever it could be done honestly; and condemned the acts of President Johnson in detail. Nothing was said of the tariff. For president, Grant was unanimously nominated on the first ballot. For vice-president, the struggle was mainly between Wade, Colfax, Wilson, and Fenton of New York. On the first ballot, Wade had 149 votes, Fenton 132, Wilson 119, Colfax 118, and all others 132. On the fifth ballot, Colfax had 224 votes, Wade 196, Fenton 137, Wilson 61, and all others 32. So many votes were then changed to Colfax that he had 541 to 109 for all others, and was nominated. The candidates were elected without special difficulty. (See ELECTORAL VOTES, XXI.)

—III.: 1869-83. With Grant's election the party may at last be considered homogeneous and self-existent, with no trace of borrowed traditions. Distinctions within the party, arising from former political affiliations, had disappeared. Those who still felt their influence, like Seward, Chase, Welles, Trumbull and Doolittle, had generally dropped out during the reconstruction and impeachment struggles; and a new generation, not only of voters, but of leaders, had arisen, who knew only the tenets of the party, and were not embarrassed by former whig, democratic, free-soil or know-nothing bias. Among these new men were Morton, Blaine, Garfield, Conkling, Sherman, Schurz, Edmunds of Vermont, Dawes and Hoar of Massachusetts, Morgan of New York, Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, Kelley of Pennsylvania, Bingham, Shellabarger, Ashley and Schenck of Ohio, Chandler and Ferry of Michigan, Carpenter of Wisconsin, and Yates and Washburne of Illinois. These, and a host of others, while they had practically ousted the original leaders, retained the peculiar combination of whig principles and democratic methods which had resulted from the original amalgamation, and were now to show whether they could make the party a popular broad-construction party in internal administration, as well as in the suppression of slavery.

—The first problem which they were to meet was the condition of the southern states. The grant of the right of suffrage to the recently enfranchised negroes had been completed by the process of reconstruction. If it was to be maintained, it must be by the vigor of the negroes themselves in defending it, by federal support to the reconstructed state governments in defending it, or by a constitutional amendment authorizing negroes to defend it. The first method was impracticable; if it had been otherwise, it would itself have been a full vindication of the educating influences of the system of slavery. The second method was adopted by legislation and executive action (see INSURRECTION, II.; Ku-Klux Klan); and the third by the passage of the 15th amendment. (See CONSTITUTION, III., A.) In both these methods the party was practically unanimous at first; but, as the difficulties of their execution increased, those who still retained anything of former party bias were the first to grow weary of them. In addition to this, there was very much of the natural repugnance to the control of the party machinery by new leaders. The result was the "liberal republican bolt" of 1870-72 (see LIBERAL REPUBLICAN PARTY), in which the singular spectacle was presented of the party contending against an opposition led by the two great towers of its strength in 1854-5, Sumner and Greeley. Indeed, the contest may almost be described as one between the mass of the party, under its new leaders, and the remnants of those who had entered the party from former organizations; and the result was decisive of the party's integral consolidation.

—The national convention met at Philadelphia, June 5, 1872. Its platform reviewed the past achievements of the party; demanded the maintenance of "complete liberty and exact equality in the enjoyment of all civil, political and public rights throughout the Union"; commended congress and the president for their suppression of ku-klux disorders; and promised to adjust the tariff duties so as "to aid in securing remunerative wages to labor, and promote the growth, industries and prosperity of the whole country." This latter paragraph was the first official announcement of protectionist doctrines since 1860, but its place had always been effectually filled by the resolutions of state conventions, and by the consistent policy of the party in congress. For president, Grant was renominated by acclamation. For vice-president, Wilson was nominated by 364½ votes to 321½ for Colfax. The candidates were elected with even less difficulty than in 1868. (See ELECTORAL VOTES, XXII.)

—Nevertheless, there was still considerable dissatisfaction in the party. The close of Grant's first term and the beginning of his second were marked by a succession of public scandals, arising mainly from his own inexperience in civil administration and the derelictions of many of his appointees. (See CREDIT MOBILIER; LOUISIANA; CAPITAL, NATIONAL; SUMNER, CHARLES; WHISKY RING; IMPEACHMENTS, VII.) The consequent dissatisfaction was shown by a general defeat of the party in the state and congressional elections of 1874-5. (See DEMOCRATIC PARTY, VI.) It was checked, however, immediately, and the check has often been ascribed to the political skill of the leaders in "waving the bloody shirt," that is, in stimulating a desire for the formation of a solid north to counterbalance the solid south formed by the violent suppression of the colored vote. But a more rational commendation of their political skill may be found in the manner in which they committed their party to the payment of the public debt in coin. The issue of legal-tender paper money had been a republican war measure, but the idea had since grown up that at least a part of the public debt should be paid in paper money. (See GREENBACK-LABOR PARTY.) In most of the western states this idea had completely gained control of the democratic party; it had made a smaller, but very considerable, progress in the republican party; and many of the subordinate republican politicians were inclined to look upon it as inevitable, and yield to it. So prominent a leader as Morton publicly yielded, and fathered the "ragbaby," as the paper money idea was popularly called. To disown that which seemed at first sight their own progeny, to hazard the party's supremacy in its original habitat, the northwest, certainly required no small amount of political foresight, nerve and skill in the republican leaders. Ohio was made the battle ground (see that state), and the gauntlet was thrown down in 1875. Success there was followed by the nomination of the successful candidate for president in 1876, and the committal of the party to specie resumption in 1879. A conflict of this nature did more to bring back the liberals of 1872, and the dissatisfied voters of 1874, than even the "bloody shirt" could do in repelling them.

—The national convent on met at Cincinnati, June 14, 1876. The platform differed from that of 1872 mainly in its stronger indorsement of civil service reform; in its demand for "a continuous and steady progress to specie payments": in its denunciation of polygamy in the territories, of "a united south," and of the democratic party in general; and in its declaration in favor of "the immediate and vigorous exercise of all the constitutional powers of the president and congress for removing any just causes of discontent on the part of any class, and for securing to every American citizen complete liberty and exact equality." Much apprehension had been expressed as to President Grant's supposed intention to use the party machinery to compass his own nomination for a third term, but when the convention met he was not a candidate. The leading candidates were Conkling and Morton, representing the adherents of the administration; Bristow, representing the opposition to the administration; and Blaine, with a positive strength of his own, independent of all southern questions. On the first ballot, Blaine had 285 votes, Morton 124, Bristow 113, Conkling 99, Hayes 61, and all others 72. On the sixth ballot, Blaine had 308 votes, Hayes 113, Bristow 111, Morton 85, Conkling 81, and all others 56. On the seventh ballot, there was a general break. Of Bristow's votes, 21 adhered to him; Blaine's vote rose to 351; the adherents of all the other candidates transferred their votes to Hayes, and he was nominated by 384 votes out of 756. For vice-president, Wheeler had hardly any opposition. The candidates were elected, but only after a struggle which is elsewhere detailed. (See DISPUTED ELECTIONS, IV.; ELECTORAL COMMISSION; ELECTORAL VOTES, XXIII.)

—The discovery of the "cipher telegrams" (see TILDEN, S. J.) helped very materially to reconcile the party to the irregularities of the election of 1876. Nevertheless, the new president was left with very little party support until the extra session of 1879. (See HAYES, R. B.; RIDERS.) During this administration, for the first time in the party's history, the leaders failed to control its representatives in congress. Resumption of specie payments had been fixed for Jan. 1, 1879. But, since 1870, silver had been steadily falling, in relative value to gold, throughout the civilized world. The act of Feb. 12, 1873, had demonetized silver, and had made gold the only specie of the country, except for subsidiary coinage. The public debt would thus have been payable in gold alone. The idea at once spread that this action was a fraudulent effort to pay bondholders more than they were entitled to by law. Both of the great parties yielded to the storm. After several unsuccessful efforts, the Bland bill, to make the silver dollar (then worth about 92 cents) a legal tender for public and private debts, and to direct its coinage at the rate of not less than $2,000,000, nor more than $4,000,000, per month, passed both houses. It was vetoed, and passed over the veto by heavy majorities, Feb. 28, 1878. In both houses the leaders of the party voted in the negative, but the mass were either absent or in the affirmative.

—The national convention met at Chicago, June 10, 1880. As Grant had been out of office for four years, his nomination was now considered unexceptionable by many, and a plurality of the delegates came to the convention pledged to vote for him. (See NOMINATING CONVENTIONS) Blaine was next to him in strength, and Sherman, the secretary of the treasury, next. On the first ballot, Grant had 304 votes, Blaine 284, Sherman 93, Edmunds 34, Washburne of Illinois 30, and Windom of Minnesota 10. For thirty-five ballots this proportionate vote was hardly changed, except that on the thirty-fifth ballot, Grant's vote rose to 313, and Blaine's fell to 257. Garfield, a Sherman delegate from Ohio, had been steadily voted for by one or two delegates, since the second ballot. On the thirty-fourth ballot the Wisconsin delegation, against his protest, gave him 17 votes; on the thirty-fifth his vote rose to 50; and on the thirty-sixth, by a sudden stampede of all the anti-Grant elements, he was nominated by a vote of 399, to 307 for Grant, 42 for Blaine, 5 for Washburne, and 3 for Sherman. Arthur, to placate the Grant delegates, was nominated for vice-president on the first ballot, by 468 votes, to 193 for Washburne, and 90 for all others.

—The result of the election seems to show a very considerable party advantage in a policy of devotion to economic principles. In 1876, after eight years of a vigorous repressive policy in southern disorders, the republican candidates were only successful by a single electoral vote, and the honesty of the success was denied by the whole opposition party. In 1880, after four years of simple endeavor to settle the economic problems which pressed for settlement, the party's candidates were elected beyond cavil, by 214 electoral votes to 155. And, further, a forged letter (the so-called Morey letter) appeared just before the election, purporting to come from Garfield, and advising the encouragement of Chinese immigration in order to bring American servants and mechanics to a more manageable condition. This forgery undoubtedly cost Garfield the five votes of California, the three votes of Nevada, and probably the nine votes of New Jersey. Without it, the result would have been 231 to 135, and the party would have had the entire northern and western vote, for the first time in its history. It is also noteworthy that the prospects of possible republican success in southern states, without federal coercion, date wholly from Hayes' administration. (See TENNESSEE, VIRGINIA, NORTH CAROLINA.)

—Before and after President Garfield's assassination, (see GARFIELD, J. A.), the terms "stalwart" and "anti-stalwart" came into common use. They can hardly be considered as designations of the Grant and anti-Grant factions, respectively, for one of the anti-Grant leaders claims the parentage of the term stalwart in politics; nor as representing the friends and opponents of the abandoned policy of repression in southern affairs. If a conjecture may be hazarded, the stalwarts represent the leaders of the party organization, as it stands in 1882, who have reached that position during the policy of repression, though they do not propose to attempt it any longer; and the anti-stalwarts, the coming leaders who will succeed gradually and naturally to the party leadership on altogether economic grounds. Neither name as yet indicates any disintegration in the party. It is, therefore, very proper to give the present, and probably permanent, basis of the party's existence. It is nowhere stated so clearly as in the second and fifth sections of the platform of 1880, as follows: "2. The constitution of the United States is a supreme law, and not a mere contract. Out of confederated states it made a sovereign nation. Some powers are denied the nation, while others are denied the states; but the boundary between powers delegated and those reserved is to be determined by the national and not the state tribunals." "5. We reaffirm the belief that the duties levied for the purpose of revenue should so discriminate as to favor American labor; that no further grant of the public domain should be made to any railroad or other corporation; that, slavery having perished in the states, its twin barbarity, polygamy, must die in the territories; that everywhere the protection accorded to a citizen of American birth must be secured to citizens by American adoption; that we esteem it the duty of congress to develop and improve our watercourses and harbors, but insist that further subsidies to private persons or corporations must cease." With a programme of this nature, developed as further occasion may require, there seems to be no reason to anticipate that dissolution of the party which was so confidently predicted in 1874.

—Authorities will generally be found under the articles referred to. See also, 2 Wilson's Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, 406; 1 Greeley's American Conflict, 246; McClellan's Republicanism in America (to 1869); Giddings' History of the Rebellion, 382; Smalley's History of the Republican Party (to 1882); Johnston's History of American Politics, 162; Tribune Almanac, 1855-83; Greeley's Political Text Book of 1860; McPherson's Political History of the Rebellion, and Political Manuals; Moore's Rebellion Record; Schuckers' Life of Chase; Raymond's Life of Lincoln, and other authorities under names referred to; Spofford's American Almanac, 1868-83; Appleton's Annual Cyclopœdia, 1861-83; The Nation, 1865-83; and current newspapers.

REPUDIATION.

REPUDIATION. The history of the bonded indebtedness of the various states of the Union goes back to the period 1830-40. At the beginning of that decade the aggregate debt of the states amounted to about $13,000,000 only. Then began an era of extravagance, in which certain states entered upon a series of reckless undertakings that crippled the resources and ruined the credit of more than one commonwealth, whose name had formerly ranked high for commercial prudence and honesty. Two causes united to foster this spirit of prodigal expenditure: a natural demand for necessary internal improvements; and an easy means of raising large sums on long loans. By the act of congress of June 13, 1836, the surplus above $5,000,000 arising from the sale of government lands was allowed to remain on deposit to the credit of, or loaned to, the different states. In this way nearly $30,000,000 was put out, in three installments, a fourth, after some $28,000,000 had been paid, being postponed by the act of October, 1847, because of a reduction in revenue, owing to the requirement that land payments be made in specie and not in notes of the state banks. The great incentive to incur a heavy state debt, the demand for internal improvements, sprang from a natural and healthy cause. The annually increasing tide of immigration began to pour over the vast and fertile areas of virgin soil, in the development of which lay prosperity and fortune. But as yet the means of communication between the granaries of the west and northwest, the rice and cotton plantations of the south and southwest, and the markets of trade, were wholly inadequate to meet the needs of the cultivators. Rich in the natural products of the soil, money was so scanty with them that, even for the purposes of ordinary trade between themselves, they had to resort to barter. To the active and industrious farmer, or the keen and ambitious planter, an opening to the markets of the world, by new means of transportation which should insure quick delivery on reasonable terms, meant individual success and the commercial prosperity of his state. Private ambition and public spirit were skillfully played upon to induce voters to ratify with eagerness what doubtless seemed to many a public duty as well as a private gain. Railways and canals were begun, turnpikes constructed, river beds widened and "improved," and every scheme which bore on its face the slightest resemblance to a public work claimed the aid of the public credit, and, in the absence of constitutional safeguards, generally got what it claimed. Our national credit abroad stood high. The affairs of government had been economically administered, the interest on our foreign commercial debt promptly paid, and state securities found an easy sale in foreign markets. Good credit, great natural advantages of soil and climate, offering unmistakable promise of limitless development, and, above all, a pay day far ahead in the dim future, with only the interest account to provide for from time to time, proved temptations too strong for the young and growing communities. Within the twelve years succeeding 1830 the aggregate debt of the states had risen to over $200,000,000, an increment of more than 1600 per cent! It was distributed as follows:73

—In May, 1838, after the passage of the general banking law, authorizing the United States comptroller to issue bank notes on a pledge of the evidences of public debt of the several states, a circular was issued by the comptroller, Mr. Flagg, requesting the financial officer of each state to return its indebtedness under authorized loans. According to their replies, it appeared that even then the aggregate debt, inclusive of the sums deposited with the several states by the United States ($28,101,644.97), amounted to $198,907,824,32. This indebtedness had been incurred for the benefit of railroads, canals, banks, turnpike companies, and kindred speculations. "The operations of the states have been so extensive and varied," said Hunt's "Merchants' Magazine," in 1839 (vol. i., p. 174), "that it is not an easy matter to get at the precise amount of stock issued and authorized to be issued. It is probable, however, that the aggregate amount of stock authorized by all the states is even greater than the amount stated in the tables."

—By 1836 the state of Indiana had already loaned a large portion of the surplus revenue derived from the United States, and in that year an act was passed appropriating the sum of $10,000,000 for a gigantic internal improvement scheme, covering no less than seven different enterprises, including canals, banks and railways. When we find that there were only 100,000 voters in the state at this time, the outlay, even if kept within the proposed limit, seems stupendous. Yet the expenditure was far beyond the expectations of the promoters. "The original plan of internal improvement was, as a matter of course, considerably extended, and it very soon became evident that $20,000,000 would not more than half suffice to complete any portion, in consequence of the necessity of spending all the money that could be got in all parts of the state at once. The negotiation of the bonds was also a source of most fearful jobbing which resulted in serious losses to the state." ("Merchants' Magazine," 1847, p. 577.) One of the bond commissioners, a Dr. Coe, was also one of the largest stockholders in the Morris Canal bank, the heaviest customer for the state bonds. According to the report of a legislative investigating committee, Dr. Coe received from his own company over $100,000 in commissions and profits; one item of which was 398 bonds, received by the company at par, when they were worth about fifteen cents on the dollar—a difference of about $33,680! Within a very short time the pressure began to be felt. Depression in foreign commercial centres caused a tightness of the money market all over the world. By 1841 Indiana found herself without the means of defraying the running expenses of government. The money for the civil list had to be raised, and the state was again forced to go upon the market as a borrower, pledging her bonds at ruinously low rates. "The majority of the 100,000 voters then occupying Indiana," says a writer, six years later, "were small farmers living in log huts, depending on the sale of surplus pork and grain for the purchase of their necessaries; and the expectation of drawing $1,000,000 per annum from such sources, to pay the interest or principal of debts contracted for legislative purposes, was not realized. The capital employed in trade in Indiana was scarcely $3,000,000, and it was proposed to draw 50 per cent. of that every year to pay interest!" In 1841 the interest account fell behind, and an attempt was made to settle by an issue of 7 per cent. five-year bonds, but these the creditors, who had already begun to distrust the state's pledges, refused to accept in exchange for their interest coupons, to any appreciable amount. The distress spread so that it seemed to affect every department of government. The assessment for tax purposes was wretchedly conducted on a wholly erroneous system of valuation, until finally the people became convinced that the taxes could not be paid. From this to hopeless and acknowledged insolvency the plunge was rapid. In June, 1839, the tax of thirty cents, levied in 1838 to meet the internal improvement interest, was reduced to fifteen cents, and by 1840, after various fruitless attempts at settlement and compromise, all effort to pay the state interest had been abandoned.

—Ohio began her borrowing in 1825, by pledging all the canal profits as security for loans authorized for the benefit of internal improvement schemes. Under the law of 1836-7 she had gone on increasing her expenditures, loaning the state credit to turnpike and other companies, subscribing for their stock and running into debt with contractors. Her credit fell, and yet it was impossible either to go ahead or to give up the work without money. In 1841 the legislature passed an appropriation bill of $2,301,625. The commissioners of the canal fund were authorized to raise $981,000 of this amount, with which to meet the demands of the contractors, at any rate of interest, and the remainder on 6 per cent. bonds, payable in 1860. The bankers of London and New York would not touch the loan, and it was finally proposed, at an extra session of the legislature convened for the purpose, to raise the rate of interest to 10 per cent. and go into the foreign market on the best procurable terms! Under this provision the state was squeezed like a sponge. Fortunately her immense resources proved equal to the terrible strain. The people were honest, the sophisms of repudiation gained little ground, and the legislature by various enactments provided for the interest and a sinking fund with which to meet the principal.

—Even the eastern states were affected by the universal mania for reckless expenditure which obtained throughout the country during the years 1834-6. Massachusetts pledged her credit without taking care to provide sure means of payment, and found herself in 1847 with over $6,000,000 outstanding indebtedness on loans and subscriptions to railroads alone. The enterprises proved successful, however, and she was never heavily pressed to make good her guarantee.

—Maine, a lumber and fishing state, with a soil for the most part unadapted to raising grain, acting upon an absurd theory of encouragement to home producers, actually went into debt at the rate of $3 per head of her population, to pay bounties for the cultivation of wheat and corn, and distributed in one year over $150,000 in premiums on the production of less than three million bushels of grain!

—By 1840 the state debt of Pennsylvania had increased to $31,000,000, about $90,000,000 of which had been assumed in behalf of railroads and canals. Within two years the bank of Pennsylvania went down with a crash that echoed throughout the commercial world, and in August of that year the state failed to pay its interest. So bitter was the feeling abroad against the people of the defaulting commonwealth, that the Rev. Sydney Smith declared he felt inclined, if he met a Pennsylvanian at dinner, to strip him of his clothes and boots for division among the guests, most of whom had probably suffered by his state's dishonor!

—It was during this period that the word "repudiation," in its present commercial and political signification, came into use. There was a default in the interest on the bonds which the state of Mississippi had issued in aid of the Union bank, and after the authorities had in vain cast about for various expedients to meet the difficulty, the governor of the state, in a message to the legislature, broached the now familiar doctrine of repudiation, and suggested, in undisguised terms, his state's dishonor. "The bank," he declared, "has hypothecated these bonds, and borrowed money upon them of the Baron Rothschild; the blood of Judas and Shylock flows in his veins, and he unites the qualities of both his countrymen. He has mortgages upon the silver mines of Mexico and the quicksilver mines of Spain. He has advanced money to the sublime porte and taken as security a mortgage upon the holy city of Jerusalem and the sepulchre of our Saviour. It is for this people to say whether he shall have a mortgage upon our cotton fields and make serfs of our children"! To the honor of the state legislature, be it said, they rejected, with scornful emphasis, the disgraceful suggestion, and declared that the governor's insinuation that Mississippi would violate her solemn pledge was "a calumny upon the justice, honor and dignity of the state." Subsequent Mississippi legislatures show no traces of the honest spirit of this session. Post bellum repudiators have no more shameless example of flagrant dishonesty than that afforded by the successors of the very men who, thirty years before, declared that the mere suggestion of repudiation was an insult to the state (vide infra).

—One after another the spendthrift commonwealths felt the pinch of want, and when the public debt became, from the taxation which it necessitated, a private burden, repudiation followed as a matter of course. Numerous plans for compromise were canvassed; legislative committees were appointed, bills reported and conferences held with the representatives of the bondholders at home and abroad, but from year to year the bankrupt states drifted along, plunging, at intervals, more and more hopelessly in debt. Finally, the civil war swept away for the time all vitality from the bond question as an issue. Its revival as a political question, and its historical development in certain communities, where it divided parties and became the most potent factor in state politics, is given under the headings of the different states below.

—Georgia. Under the rule of the "carpet-baggers" the state was plunged into debt for all sorts of alleged public improvements. When the "conservatives," as the democrats were fond of proclaiming themselves, regained control, they at once set to work to devise pretexts for avoiding the obligations by which the state had been burdened by their opponents. A committee appointed by the first legislature at which the conservatives found themselves in the majority, reported in favor of invalidating, on the ground of fraud at their issue, six million of state bonds. The suggestion was at once acted upon, and the securities promptly repudiated. A constitutional amendment was then adopted, wiping out the bonds altogether. At the constitutional convention the bondholders offered to submit their claims for adjudication to the supreme court of the state, but the proposition was rejected by an overwhelming vote at the May election of 1877. To provide against any possible qualms of conscience on the part of succeeding legislators, a clause was inserted in the new constitution (sec. 11) prohibiting the general assembly from making any appropriation to meet interest or principal on the dishonored securities, with which were included all the war debts of the state. A sweeping majority carried this amendment at the election of December, 1877. The act of Feb. 25, 1874, had already deprived the governor of the power to lend the credit of the state by indorsement, except where the right to such had already vested. Soon after the passage of the repudiating amendments (in January, 1878), Gov. Colquitt was applied to for his official indorsement upon the debentures of the Northeastern railroad. After consulting the most eminent legal authorities in the state, who advised him that the right to such guarantee had vested in the company before the passage of the repealing act, he granted the application of the railroad authorities and indorsed their bonds to the amount of $260,000. His act caused widespread complaints, which his political opponents took pains to fan into a burst of popular indignation, by representing that he had willfully transcended his authority, and deliberately nullified the will of the people in favor of the corporation. He at once demanded a legislative investigation, and a committee, which examined the question with great care, reported in the only way that it was possible for them to conclude, that the governor had no option in the matter, but had simply done what he was legally bound to do. Much the same treatment was given to the $3,000,000 of bonds of the Brunswick 8 Albany railroad company, guaranteed by the state before the war, and disposed of mainly to capitalists at the north. The secession convention had granted immunity from confiscation to all public works. But in spite of this the road was seized upon as the property of alien foes. After the war the owners came forward to claim their property, and a compromise was effected upon their agreeing to complete the road, in return for which the state was to pay a subsidy of $15,000 per mile. This compromise was ratified by a democratic legislature in 1869; yet in 1871 Gov. Bullock took possession of the road, though the state had failed to pay the subsidy, claiming that the agreement had not been fulfilled by the owners. Henry Clews, Esq., of New York, who represented a majority of the bondholders, sold the bonds to German bankers at Frankfort-on-the-Main. In August, 1872, the general assembly declared these bonds null and void, and a constitutional amendment forbidding the payment of either principal or interest was carried in 1874.

—Louisiana. At the constitutional convention of 1879 a committee appointed to examine and report upon the bond question, recommended the acknowledgment of about $4,000,000 of these securities and the repudiation of nearly $20,000,000. The report declared that it was a matter of history that the state house had been seized by United States soldiers in December and January, 1872-3, and the legal legislature overthrown. That, therefore, the body of men alleged to have passed the funding act of 1874 was not a constitutional legislature, and had no power to bind a free people. That there was no evidence on file of any ratification of the so-called amendments of 1874, except the mutilated copy of what purported to be a certificate to that effect, signed by J. Madison Wells and others. "They are unable to concede," reported the committee, "that the funding of any portion of the debt has given it any greater validity than it originally possessed, and, on the other hand, they do not admit that the absolute repudiation of 40 per cent. of the debt detracts in the least from the validity of that which was honest and legal." The report concludes by a reference to the fact that the bondholders are mainly northern capitalists, and dismisses their claims in these remarkable words: "But may it not be in the order of the eternal fitness of things that those who directly or indirectly (unwittingly, it may be) aided to tear down the basis of our former prosperity, should share some of the ills that have so long and so powerfully borne down upon the once proud and wealthy people of Louisiana?" A minority report, protesting against the attempt to dishonor the state, was vainly offered, to stem the rising and angry tide of repudiation. "Every sentiment of honor and justice," said this paper, "demands that he who receives what does not belong to him should restore it. If the bonds are void, the state has received something for nothing. Law and justice concur in the enforcement of the duty on the part of the state to surrender that something to its true owner." This report declared that the state had received in cash $6,893,507.31 for securities funded at $7,294,744, all but $500,000 of which was to be wiped out. The wanton bad faith of the legislators who agreed to the majority report, is the more strongly emphasized by a reference to the opinion of the supreme court of the state, delivered only a few months before: "We regard the faith of the state as irrevocably pledged to the payment of her consolidated bonds issued under the authority of that act (the funding act of 1874). * * The contract with the holders of these bonds is one which, in the language of the constitutional amendment, the state can by no means and in no wise impair." This act, the court held, was approved Jan. 24, 1874, and settled beyond possibility of question by a constitutional amendment upon the same day: "This amendment has become a part of the constitution by its subsequent ratification at the polls." (State ex rel. Pacific R. R. Co. vs. Nichols, Governor, 30 La. Ann. Rep., 980.) A reiteration of what the court had already declared in 1875, when it said: "This amendment was adopted, and it now forms part of the organic law of the state." (State ex rel. Forstall vs. Board of Liquidation, 27 La. Ann. Rep., 577.) Moreover, the declarations of the repudiating committee regarding the condition of the state's resources and its inability to meet its honest debts are flatly contradicted by the words of the governor in his message of 1881: "The outlook for the state is most hopeful. The advantages of soil and climate are nowhere else equaled. * * The future for Louisiana is a grand one. It does not seem chimerical, when we look at our extraordinary advantages, to anticipate a future maximum production of $500,000,000 per annum. There is no reason for the continued cry of 'Poor Louisiana and her impoverished people'. We must realize the fact that she is rich, and force her to the front rank of states. * * Confidence will be restored; our bonds will be on the market at a reasonable interest, commanding a premium; capital will readily find its way here; and we will no longer be humiliated at the low credit of our state." Both reports were supported with vigor, but the repudiating element was too strong to be successfully combated, and after a hot debate an act, known as the debt ordinance, was adopted for submission to popular vote. This ordinance provided for retiring the bonds in exchange for a new issue, upon which the interest was scaled to 2 per cent. for five years, 3 per cent. for fifteen years, and 4 per cent. thereafter; with an option to the holders to exchange their bonds at seventy-five cents on the dollar for 4 per cent. semi-annual interest bonds. The consolidated bonds issued under the act of 1874, to be retired by this forced exchange, were pledged to pay 7 per cent. interest! The act was simply highway robbery by legislative sanction. The constitutionality of the debt ordinance was at once put to the test in two actions brought by John Elliott and others against the board of liquidation. The first was to enjoin the board from recognizing the ordinance and disregarding the funding act of 1874 and the constitutional enactment of the same year; the other, to compel by mandamus the payment of the interest on the consolidated bonds, and the levy and collection of a tax for that purpose. The recent decision (March, 1883) of the United States supreme court, upon the points at issue, held that the state had entered upon a voluntary contract in 1874, which had been violated by the act of 1880. But that there were no means of compelling the state's officers to carry out this contract, for the reason that the state as a sovereign commonwealth could not be sued without its permission. Upon this point the opinion of Chief Justice Waite reads as follows: "Neither was there when the bonds were issued, nor is there now, any statute or judicial decision giving the bondholders a remedy in the state courts or elsewhere, either by mandamus or injunction against the state in its political capacity, to compel it to do what it has agreed should be done, but what it refuses to do." A proceeding suggested by a correspondent of the "New York Nation," in February, 1878, (No. 660), was the last effort made to coerce the defaulting commonwealth. Before the adoption of the 11th amendment to the constitution of the United States, the supreme court had rejected the doctrine that a state could not be sued upon its own contracts. In the case of Chisholm vs. State of Georgia, 2 Dall., decided in 1792, Chief Justice Jay said. "It would be strange indeed that the joint and equal sovereigns of this country should in the very constitution by which they professed to 'establish justice' so far deviate from the plain path of equality and impartiality as to give to the collective citizens of one state a right of suing individual citizens of another state, and yet deny to those citizens a right of suing them." To nullify the principle which this decision established, the 11th amendment was passed in 1794, declaring that "The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of another state or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state." To avoid this constitutional bar the legislatures of New York and New Hampshire authorized the transfer to them by their citizens of the defaulted securities, and actions were then begun in the name of each of these states against the state of Louisiana. The supreme court, however, held that to allow such suits would be simply to permit the practice of a palpable absurdity, and the evasion of the 11th amendment. In other words, the court very properly refused to countenance a mere subterfuge by which private individuals, the real parties in interest, might dodge a plain provision of the federal constitution, and practically sue a sovereign state. Such is the history of the vain attempts to induce the state of Louisiana to keep its solemn pledges. That public dishonor entails a loss of private credit may be inferred from what follows; the words are those of a writer treating of the financial condition of the state in 1882. "The unsettled condition of the finances of the state for several years past has seriously impaired her growth and prosperity, causing a universal distrust which has not merely affected the credit and honor of the commonwealth, but has also, to a great extent, affected injuriously individual credit, prevented investment of foreign capital, and excluded immigration." (Ann. Cyc., 1882, p. 480.)

—Minnesota. A legislative committee in 1876 attempted to show that the state was under no obligation, legal or moral, to pay the railroad bonds guaranteed by her in 1858. Public opinion, however, was opposed to wholesale repudiation. In his message to the legislature, Gov. Pillsbury, after referring to various decisions upon the bond question in the courts of the state and of the United States, said: "With such unmistakable and imperative commands from the voice of law and equity and honesty, is the question not reduced to the simple one of our willingness to pay our honest debts?" There was at this time over two and a quarter millions of outstanding indebtedness of the $5,000,000 bonds issued in aid of certain railroads, the validity of which was disputed on the ground that the railroads had failed to comply with the conditions of the issue. The amendment of 1858, under which the issue was made, had been wiped out by another amendment in 1860; which also declared that the legislature should make no provision for payment of the principal or interest without submitting the proposition to the people for ratification. A compromise proposed in 1871, and agreed to by the legislature, was rejected by a vote of 21,499 to 9,293, not half the average vote being cast. The "Grangers," or "Patrons of Husbandry," had taken up the bond issue, and protested against their acknowledgment by the state, threatening to "scratch" all candidates for judicial office who would not pledge themselves against the validity of the bonds. One representative of grangerism testified before a senate committee of the United States that his notion was to elect judges pledged to "wipe out the bonds." When asked what he would do if the supreme court of the United States sustained their validity, he replied, "Wipe out the supreme court"! In pursuance of Gov. Pillsbury's suggestion the legislature, on March 1, 1877, created a board of commissioners of the public debt, and authorized the issue of new bonds to holders of defaulted securities on terms of compromise. The act was subject to amendment, to be submitted to popular vote. It provided for the sale of a portion of the "internal improvement lands" in aid of the proposed settlement. The amendment and the compromise depending upon it were rejected by a large popular majority. Again the governor, with commendable spirit, declared that although the result "indicates that they are not prepared to make settlement of this vexed question, my convictions as heretofore expressed upon this subject have undergone no change, and I earnestly hope that in the near future the people of our state will take a different view of the matter." By this time the repudiators had secured a firm grip upon the politics of the state. The national greenback-labor party, at a convention held June 10, 1879, after declaring in favor of the unrestricted coinage of silver, and the immediate repeal of the resumption act, "believing that its passage at the time was an infamous sin and crime against the debtor classes," made the following declaration in regard to the state debt: "We regard the old Minnesota railroad bonds as dishonest and illegal in their whole origin and history; a measure conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity, and one that is not morally binding on the people of this state." Once more, in 1880, the governor urged settlement, insisting that it was possible without commercial distress. "The discharge of this debt," said he, "is demanded as a simple act of justice, which would be none the less imperative were it to involve serious sacrifices. But these are not required. The task is plain and easy, and level to the simplest comprehension. The exhibit of the state auditor shows that with a wise use of the internal improvement ands (which cost the state nothing, being a grant from congress) this can be accomplished at the present rate of taxation, without any increase of taxation." For the fifth time an attempt at settlement was made. An act was passed providing for the submission of certain questions to the supreme court of the state. The court pronounced the act void, but declared, at the same time, the invalidity of the constitutional amendment of 1860, on the ground that it impaired the validity of the contract made with the bondholders of 1858. This left the responsibility upon the legislature to act without appealing for ratification to the popular vote. An extra session was at once convened, which passed an act in accordance with the governor's suggestion. Under this act the bonds were scaled at 50 per cent. of their nominal value, with accrued interest, and exchanged for thirty-year 4½ per cent. "adjustment bonds." By the end of 1881, almost all the old bonds had been taken up. The people, at the general election of 1882, approved the proposition to apply a portion of the proceeds of the internal improvement lands sale to the bond sinking fund. These lands are said to be so valuable that only about $1,250,000 will have to be provided for by taxation.

—Mississippi. In 1875 $7,000,000 of "Union" and other bonds, issued before the war, were outstanding. No interest had been paid since 1842 (vide ante). The state made short work of the bondholders' rights. A republican legislature adopted and submitted an amendment, which was subsequently engrafted upon the constitution by a democratic legislature, and which read as follows: "Nor shall the state assume, redeem, secure or pay any indebtedness or pretended indebtedness claimed to be due by the state of Mississippi to any person, association or corporation whatsoever, claiming the same as owners, holders or assignees of any bond or bonds now generally known as Union railroad bonds or Planters bank bonds."

—Tennessee. At the close of the war the bonded indebtedness of the state amounted to about $43,000,000, which was subsequently reduced by sales of railroad property to about $23,000,000. Upon this amount the state found itself, in 1875, greatly in arrears for interest, and without provision for meeting the principal on those bonds which were already beginning to fall due. The heaviest creditors of the state proposed to the governor that he should suggest to the legislature the propriety of appointing commissioners to agree with them upon terms of settlement. In accordance with the governor's suggestion, a committee of five was appointed from the legislature, which, with five New York bankers, made up an arbitration board. A meeting held at the clearing house in New York, "to consider the embarrassment of the several southern states which are in default, and to devise a plan for the readjustment of their debts," appointed, as arbitrators on the part of the bondholders, Messrs. Geo. S. Coc, Jacob D. Vermilye, B. B. Sherman, B. B. Comegys, and Enoch Pratt. At the conference with the committee from the Tennessee legislature, the latter took pains to disclaim any power beyond that of conferring with the bondholders' representatives, and reporting such compromise as might be agreed upon to their legislature for ratification. The settlement adopted for recommendation was as follows: The debt, with arrears of interest to Jan. 1, 1877, should be readjusted at 60 per cent., and settled by a new issue of 6 per cent. bonds. In the meantime, on May 17, 1876, in response to an urgent appeal from Ex-Gov. Brownlow, the republican state convention at Nashville had passed resolutions denouncing repudiation in every form. The democrats, however, fought shy of the question, for the repudiators had already won some of their followers by urging the doctrine that the abolition of slavery amounted to a destruction of taxable property for which those who were responsible—meaning thereby the bondholders at the north—should suffer the loss. It was remarked at the time that this argument "wholly ignored the continued existence of the negroes and their production as making part of the resources of the state." (N. Y. "Nation," 1877, No. 636.) On Dec. 5, 1877, a special session was convened to consider the award of the arbitrators. A bill finally passed the senate, providing for an adjustment scheme by which the old bonds were retired at 40 per cent. of their face value, in exchange for thirty-year bonds, with interest at 4 per cent. for five years, 5 per cent. for five years, and 6 per cent. thereafter. This act was rejected by the house, on the ground that any plan which contemplated scaling the old bonds at less than 60 per cent. would not be accepted by the creditors. The legislature adjourned, after a three weeks' session, without coming to any definite results. A year later, Gov. Porter, in his message, stated that there were over $20,000,000 bonds outstanding, of which $11,000,000 had been declared invalid.

—The bond question had now become a distinct political issue. Although the party lines were not strictly drawn on the question, the republicans were generally in favor of meeting the debt in one way or another. The parties or factions were divided into four distinct groups: 1, wholesale repudiators; 2, those who favored retiring the old bonds at 50 per cent. of their face in exchange for 6 per cent. bonds, 3, those who favored scaling the bonds, principal and interest, to a third of their nominal value, and, 4, a party which approved the settlement urged by the arbitration committee. On these issues party lines wavered, ordinary majorities were shaken, and members of the assembly were elected because of their known standing on one or the other of these four schemes of adjustment. The finance committee reported a bill retiring different classes of bonds at different rates: some at "60 and 4," i.e., scaled to 60 per cent. of their nominal value, and exchanged for 4 per cent. bonds; some at "50 and 4," and some at "33 1/3 and 4." About $2,250,000 (mineral house bonds) were absolutely repudiated. Another class were to be scaled at 33½ per cent., and exchanged for non-interest-bearing tax warrants, receivable for state taxes and other dues to the state. After a long debate, during which every scheme was modified in one way or another, an act was passed by a close vote, March 28, 1879, providing for the retirement of most of the bonds at 50 per cent. in exchange for state fours. The provisions of this bill were supported by the railroad companies, which agreed to waive immunity from taxation and to pay taxes to such an amount as would leave about 40 per cent. of the burden to be borne by the people at 4 per cent. interest. The committee went to New York in April, 1879, where the compromise was agreed to by the representatives of the creditors, and the state seemed on the verge of a final settlement. But repudiating sentiments had made too strong headway with the people, who refused to ratify the compromise by a large majority at the popular election on Aug. 7, 1879. At their convention in the year following, May 6, the republicans declared once more in favor of the validity of the debt, insisting that any attempt to avoid it would be "downright repudiation, and an act of high-handed dishonor," and that any voluntary proposition from the creditors to take less than their claim demanded ought to be accepted as a favor. On the other hand, the green backers showed plainly enough that the taint of their financial heresies had affected their regard for a question of common honesty. Their platform contained these planks: "Resolution 1. That neither the state of Tennessee nor its citizens are bound in law or morals to pay the bonds issued in aid of the railroads, amounting to $25,000,000, and that such bonds are no part of the state debt. Resolution 2. That we are opposed to scaling the railroad bonds, and to any other act recognizing them, because the people of Tennessee do not owe them." The democrats, at their convention, June 8, 1880, recognized the liberal disposition of the state's creditors, and favored a settlement on the best terms possible for the state. Two minority reports, however, were so earnestly pushed as to show how large a portion of the party had succumbed to repudiating theories. One (the "Johnson Report") favored a settlement after canvassing among the people to learn the terms to which the majority would agree; the other (the "Garner Report") urged out-and-out repudiation, as follows: "§ 4. We are unalterably opposed to any settlement of the state debt by the legislature." After the adoption of the majority report, so amended, however, as to provide that the new coupons should not be made receivable for taxes, etc., 160 delegates left the hall, organized a separate convention, nominated S. F. Wilson for governor, and adopted a resolution declaring against the railroad bonds, the war-interest bonds, and the receivability of coupons for taxes and other state dues. The result of this split was, that the republicans carried the election of Mr. Hawkins, their nominee for governor, by a large vote. In 1881 a funding act, which had been carried through the house, passed the senate by a bare majority of one. But popular opposition to the recognition of the debt was still strong. Henry J. Lynn and others, claiming to be citizens and tax payers, applied to the court of chancery for an injunction, on the ground that the funding act was procured by bribery and fraud. The bill was dismissed, and, on appeal, the supreme court decided that the act which provided for funding the entire debt at par by 3 per cent. 99-year bonds, redeemable at any time after five years, was legal, except as to the provision which made coupons receivable for taxes, etc.; on the ground that the legislature could not "contract away" the revenue or enter upon an agreement which a subsequent legislature might not repeal. On May 19 the "60 and 6" act was passed, providing for the issue of new bonds at 3 per cent. interest for two years, 4 per cent. for two years, 5 per cent. for two years, and 6 per cent. thereafter, to be given in exchange for the old bonds scaled at 60 per cent. This was in accordance with a proposition from Eugene Kelly, Esq., of New York, chairman of the bondholders' committee. On Jan. 1. following, the comptroller reported that less than half of the old bonds had been funded. The bond question remained, therefore, unsettled, the democrats having split into "state credit" and "low tax" factions, with the republicans, for the most part, favoring a settlement on the best possible terms. The democrats, owing to these dissensions in their ranks were forced to hold the bond issue in abeyance. At their convention, June 20, they resolved, "2. While we accord to all an honest difference of opinion, we regard the enactment of the '60 and 3, 4, 5, 6' as unwise, because it is, in our opinion, not in accordance with the views of the people." Their third plank recommended funding the "state debt proper," the validity of which had not been disputed, at par, less war interest; and their fourth urged a tender to the creditors of a settlement of the remaining debt by ten-year bonds on the "50 and 3, 4" plan. Their nominee was Gen. W. B. Bate. One hundred and fifty delegates promptly bolted, approved the "60 and 3, 4, 5, 6" settlement, and nominated Jos. H. Fussell on the "state credit" ticket. The greenbackers, after repudiating the railroad bonds, and all but a small portion of the state debt, declared against the settlement even of that portion until ratified by popular vote, and nominated Jno. R. Beasley. Gen. Bate, the nominee of the "low tax" democrats, was elected. The "60 and 3, 4, 5, 6" plan is therefore stamped with popular disapproval, and the politicians will hardly venture upon the consideration of as favorable terms for the state's creditors in the teeth of the popular feeling. It is believed that the "readjusters" will consent to a settlement of the "state debt proper," less war interest, in full; with a provision for compromising the remainder by funding it in 3 per cent. thirty-year bonds, scaled at 50 per cent.; and the swindled creditors will have to make the best of a very bad bargain. The federal government loses by Tennessee's repudiation. At various times, from 1836 to 1851, the United States invested moneys held in trust for certain Indian tribes by the secretary of the interior, in Tennessee bonds. Up to Jan. 1, 1883, the amount due the government, with accrued interest, was $493,270. As the United States held the money in trust, the interest has been paid to the beneficiaries from time to time by congressional appropriation. As the debt has been repudiated by Tennessee, the tax payers of the nation have been, and will be called upon periodically to settle the debt of that state. It is claimed by ex-congressman William R. Moore, (vide letter to "N. Y. Herald," March 13, 1883), that both political parties in the state have again and again, through their governors and legislators, recognized the validity of the bonds which United States senator Harris declared void in the campaign of 1882. "Propositions," said Secretary Teller, in a letter to Mr. Moore, March 3, 1883, "have been made by the state of Tennessee, to issue new bonds for accrued interest on the bonds held in trust by this department, but the records do not show that any offer has been made by said state to pay said interest."

—Virginia. At the close of the war the public debt of Virginia amounted to about $41,000,000. In 1866 the auditor of the state reported that the interest account, to the amount of about $2,250,000, could not be promptly met. In the session 1870-71 the funding scheme was passed, by which the coupons of the new issue were made receivable for taxes, etc. The next legislature repealed the act, as containing provisions too favorable for the creditors, but the repealing act was not sustained by the courts, so the legislature adopted the expedient of taxing the funded bonds, evidence of the state's own indebtedness, ½ per cent. In 1874-5 "these measures had reduced the interest account from $2,500,000 to $1,417,000, but the taste for repudiation, or 'adjustment,' as it is called in Virginia, had set in and was growing, so that, after several years of cheating, the question is still a prominent one in the politics of the state, and it was only after a vigorous and excited canvass that the nomination of an open repudiator for governor was prevented. His successful opponent is now obliged to treat the subject with great caution, and there is every prospect that in the end 'readjustment' will carry the day." ("N. Y. Nation," 1877, No. 636.) In 1875 the interest account was nearly $3,000,000 in arrears, and the outstanding bonds in 1876 amounted to $29,489,326.38. On March 11, 1878, the legislature passed the refunding act, providing for the issue of eighteen-year and thirty-two-year 3 per cent. and 4 per cent. non-taxable bonds. In his message to the legislature, Dec. 4, 1878, the governor said: "As long as the state debt continues unsettled, there is an incubus upon the spirit and a clog upon the movements of Virginia. When it is settled honorably and finally, she will start upon a career that will not be unworthy of her history." One of the bondholders, a citizen of the state, published a statement at this time to the effect that the only possible remedy for the financial condition of the commonwealth was readjustment, i.e., scaling the old issue, and reducing the interest to 4 per cent. A bill was passed in February, 1878, but vetoed by the governor on the ground that it failed to meet the requirements of the situation, and was vague, unjust and unconstitutional. In the following December he urged a further attempt at adjustment with the creditors. By this time the issue was fairly before the people, and the state divided into "debt payers" and "readjusters"—a euphemism for repudiators. Early in 1879 the McCulloch bill, which provided for refunding $8,491,961 by a new issue, to be dated Jan. 1, 1879, payable in 1919, with interest at 3 per cent. for ten years, 4 per cent. for twenty years, and 5 per cent. for ten years, was passed. The state was to have the privilege of redeeming the new issue at any time after the first ten years, and the coupons were made receivable for taxes and other state dues. The readjusters, under the leadership of Gen. William Mahone, assembled in convention at Richmond on Feb. 25, 1879. After adopting a resolution professing adherence to democratic principles, they declared themselves formally separated from the democratic party, and resolved as follows: "3. That in any settlement with the state's creditors the annual interest of the recognized indebtedness must be brought within her revenues under the present rate of taxation. * * 6. That a settlement within the limitation designated is the utmost stretch of the people's ability to pay, and should be satisfactory to the creditor as the furthest exaction he can fairly insist on. * * 16. That full recognition of these principles and declarations by the people of Virginia and her creditors, is absolutely essential to any amicable readjustment, and no readjustment in which they, or any of them, shall have been neglected, can be final, certain and satisfactory." Gov. Holliday declared in his message that he did not believe a higher rate of taxation could not be borne when the object was to preserve the credit of the state. "Whatever may be the views of some," said he, "I feel that should the present funding bill be stopped in its execution, it would be a great misfortune. It has been regarded by the world as a fair and honest settlement between the commonwealth and her creditors. * * We have every reason to believe that, had no opposition been manifested and its repeal not been mooted, the bonds by this time would have been well nigh all brought in to be funded under its operation." The vote at the election of November, 1879, stood as follows: debt payers, 69,736; readjusters 77,070. 7,689 republicans voted with the debt payers, and 18,426 with the readjusters; a result which showed a large defection from the ranks of the regular republican party, and pointed unmistakably to the coming union. So-called republicans, who cared more for victory than principle, made haste to join in a coalition which insured them a place on the side of the successful faction, and their defection swelled the readjuster ranks to the dimensions of a working majority in the state. At the ensuing session of 1879-80 the notorious senate bill No. 176, impudently entitled "An act to restore the public credit," and known as the Riddleburger bill, was passed, repudiating over $13,000,000 of the state debt. It was promptly vetoed by Gov. Holliday. "I can not put my signature in approval to this bill," said he, in his memorandum. "I respectfully return it to your honorable body in which it originated, because I believe it to be in violation of the constitution of the state, in violation of the constitution of the United States, in violation of the spirit which has ever moved and inspired the traditions of the commonwealth and made her name so honored among men." After referring to the credit of the state, pledged as far back as 1838, the governor added: "no sooner was peace proclaimed than a general assembly, composed of her best citizens, men of the old régime, unanimously reaffirmed that obligation. This was repeated, in one form or another, not less than four times." The readjuster convention met July 7, 1880, with the issues and prizes of a national campaign before them. They indorsed the vetoed bill "as constituting the extreme limit of legal and moral obligations upon the part of this commonwealth to the holders of her bonds." Both readjusters and democrats favored the national nominees of the democratic party, and were careful to declare their belief that in national politics only national issues should be regarded. An attempt at fusion was made but failed, because, it is alleged, the readjusters were too grasping in their claims for the lion's share of the spoils in event of success. The futile negotiations only widened the breach, and finally the national democratic committee, seeing that a union was out of the question, and perceiving that this dickering with the repudiators was likely to lose the party votes elsewhere throughout the country, issued an address late in October, 1880, urging the democratic voters of Virginia to support the ticket of the regulars. Whereupon the chairman of the readjusters brought out a counter address, declaring that his faction were striving for a higher prize than "any abstract title to democracy," viz., the right of the people to govern their own state in their own way. The election resulted as follows: conservative democrats ("regulars"), 96,912; readjusters, 31,679; republicans, 84,020. Meanwhile the readjuster coalition had elected Gen. Mahone to succeed R. E. Withers as United States senator for the six years beginning March 4, 1881. In the national senate the parties were equally divided, thirty-seven republicans, thirty-seven democrats, and two independents, Mahone of Virginia, and Davis of Illinois. Gen. Mahone did not appear until the second day of the session, when the debate on the organization of the committees was at its height. The fact that he had taken no part in the democratic caucus, and proclaimed himself an independent, aroused the suspicions of the democratic senators who had counted upon him to give them a bare majority entitling their party to the rights of a majority in making up the senate committees, and upon his appearance he was at once attacked by Mr. Hill of Georgia, who accused him of treachery and bad faith. Gen. Mahone took the floor in his own defense and began a statement of his position. He declared himself a democrat in principle, but insisted that he did not owe his seat to the democratic party, and announced his intention of voting with the republicans in organizing the senate. Mr. Davis voting with the democrats, a tie was the result. Where-upon Vice-President Arthur cast the deciding vote in favor of his party and against the protest of the democratic senators, who endeavored to show that the vice-president had no vote upon a question of organization, even in a tie. Gorham was chosen secretary of the senate, and Riddleburger, the readjuster, sergeant-at-arms; a selection which gave rise to renewed charges of a "deal" between Mahone and the republicans. Their opponents made desperate efforts to stave off the election of officers by all sorts of dilatory measures, motions to adjourn, etc.; but Senator Davis then declared, that, having voted for the existing organization as he had felt bound to do, now that the majority, though a majority of but one, had changed, he would no longer stand in the way to block the business of the senate. This decided the matter, and the new organization was completed. Soon after the fall election of 1880 the United States supreme court decided, in January, 1881, in the case of Hartmann vs. Greenhow, Treas, etc., 102 U. S. Rep., that the Virginia act of 1873-6, which provided that the state treasurer should retain as a state tax 50 per cent. of the market value of the interest coupons on the bonds, funded and unfunded, could not be applied to coupons separated from bonds and in the hands of different owners, with out impairing the obligation with such bondholders, contained in the funding act of 1871, and the contract with the holders of the coupons. At the readjuster convention, June 2 and 3, 1881, the Riddleburger bill was again indorsed, and Mr. Cameron nominated for governor. The second place on the ticket was given to Jno. F. Lewis, who at the time was chairman of the republican state central committee. The republican committee at once convened, deposed Lewis by a vote of 15 to 2, and elected Gen. W. C. Wickham in his stead. Lewis protested, and a struggle at once began between those who favored the coalition with the readjusters and the "straight out" republicans. Both factions adopted platforms, the former declaring their reasons for allying themselves to the readjuster, or, as they called it, the "liberal" party, in opposition to the conservative democrats whom they dubbed "bourbons." Their manifesto upon the bond issue was as follows. "4. * * Abating no part of our determination to deal justly with all the creditors of Virginia, and to labor to pay every dollar she honestly owes her creditors, we deem it inexpedient and unwise to make separate nominations for state officers, and we declare in favor of hearty co-operation with all other citizens who support the candidates nominated by the anti-bourbon or liberal convention of June 2 and 3, 1881." The regular republicans, or "straight outs," also held a convention and put in nomination a separate ticket, with Gen. Wickham at the head. This was their bond plank: "3. That the republican party of Virginia hereby pledges itself to redeem the state from the discredit that now hangs over her in regard to her just obligations." On Aug. 4 the conservative democrats convened, denounced repudiation, and nominated for governor Jno. W. Daniel. The readjusters' fusion elected their candidates, Cameron and Lewis, and a majority of the state legislature. At the election for United States senator to succeed Gen. Johnson in 1883, the readjusters carried their candidate, H. H. Riddleburger, the author of the repudiation act, and with a working majority of six in each branch of the legislature, proceeded to carry out their schemes for repudiating the state debt by enacting the measures commonly known as "coupon-killers." The first of these laws, entitled "An act to prevent frauds upon the commonwealth and the holders of her securities," (passed Jan. 14, 1882), provided, under the plea of protecting the state against forged and spurious coupons, that no coupons should be received by the tax collectors in payment for dues to the state until tested by a legal tribunal. In other words, it required the receiving officer to whom coupons should be tendered under the act of 1871, for taxes or dues to the state, to give a receipt for the same as "held for identification," and then to collect the taxes in legal tender, coin, or national bank notes. He was then to mark the coupons so surrendered and deliver them to the court, with which the tax payer might file a petition to prove the genuineness of his securities, and if successful in his law suit have his money refunded! The other act practically refused mandamus in tax cases. The constitutionality of these enactments was at once put to the test. In March, 1882, Andrew Antoni tendered for taxes a coupon of 1871, and on the collectors' refusal to accept it as payment, applied to the state court for a mandamus. The court divided equally on the law of 1882; and, on appeal, the United States supreme court, Chief Justice Waite delivering the majority opinion, held (March, 1883) that the state was bound to accept these coupons as already laid down in Hartmann vs. Greenhow, (supra), but declared, as the supreme court had also held in Hoffman vs. Quincy, 4 Wall., 553, that so long as the state legislature did not impair any substantial contract it could change the form of the remedy, and that the right to appeal to the state court for adjudication upon the validity of the coupon left to the creditor an adequate remedy. "No attempt has been made," said Chief Justice Waite, "to fix definitely the line between alterations of the remedy which are deemed to be legitimate, and those which, under the form of modifying the remedy, impair substantial rights. * * In all such cases the question becomes, therefore, one of reasonableness, and of that the legislature is primarily the judge." After rehearsing the provisions of the act of 1882, and the steps which a tax payer had to take to enforce his rights, the chief justice said: "It matters not whether the coupons have been refused for the taxes, if full payment of the amount that they call for is actually made in money. A remedy, therefore, which is ample for the enforcement of the payment of the money, is ample for all the purposes of the contract. That we think is given by the act of 1882 in both forms of proceeding." The court took especial pains to say that the question was not, whether the collector might not be held responsible in damages if he attempted to collect after refusing to accept the coupons. "We decide only the question which is actually before us,"—plainly intimating that an attempt on the part of the collector to levy after such tender and refusal would render him liable. This reasoning, which to many seems rather specious, was not concurred in by Justices Harlan and Field. "No greater calamity," said the former in his dissenting opinion, "could, in my judgment, befall the country than the general adoption of the doctrine that it is not a constitutional impairment of the obligation of contracts to embarrass their enforcement with onerous and destructive conditions, and thus to evade the performance of them."

—The people of the defaulting states have not always relied solely upon an appeal to popular vote, legislative enactment or judicial decision for aid in their efforts to avoid payment of their honest debts. Voters have been coerced, by threats of heavy taxation, to lend their countenance to the schemes of the readjuster and the repudiator. In more than one state judges have lost their seats upon the bench because their decisions in favor of state honesty have given offense to the popular demand; and even force has been resorted to in some communities where the heavy interest tax has threatened a serious burden. In one county of Missouri, against which an interest judgment had been obtained, and mandamus to compel the levy and collection of a tax secured, an organized mob seized the books and expunged the levy. As may be seen from the decisions already noted, pronounced by the highest tribunal of the land, the defaulting commonwealths have matters entirely in their own hands. Under the 11th amendment no power can legally coerce a state to keep its solemn pledge. Whether a sense of national dishonor will ever prove strong enough to demand and secure the repeal of that provision, is a thing of doubtful surmise. But while that inhibition stands, a sovereign state possesses the royal right of snapping its fingers in its creditor's face. To the creditor no remedy is left save to rely upon the innate honesty of the people, and to wait for the slow revival of a healthy and honest public opinion. Hope of such in some communities rests, it must be admitted, upon but slight foundation.

RESIGNATION.

RESIGNATION. Applied to an office in the American system of government, the proper meaning to be attached to this term is, the relinquishment—and the return by a formal act—of all claim to the position of honor or trust which had been conferred upon the individual to the power which originally bestowed it, or to its agent accredited by law to receive such formal surrender. The highest office known to the American system is that of president. The selection of president is by the ballots of electors (electoral college), who are themselves chosen by ballot by the people of the various states of the Union. The next highest office is that of vice-president, chosen in the same manner and at the same time as the president, and who, in case of the removal, death, resignation or inability of the president to perform the duties of the office, becomes president.

—Now, with respect to the resignation of these two important offices, the laws of the United States provide (Rev. Stat., sec. 151) that the only evidence of a refusal to accept or of a resignation of the office of president or vice-president shall be an instrument in writing declaring the same, and subscribed by the person refusing to accept or resigning, as the case may be, and delivered into the office of the secretary of state. In case of the removal, death, resignation or inability of both the president and vice-president, the president of the senate, or, if there be none, then the speaker of the house of representatives for the time being, shall act as president until the disability is removed or a president is elected in accordance with the forms of law.

—Each state is entitled to a representation of two senators in the senate of the United States, who are chosen by the legislature of the state in accordance with the provisions of the constitution, the laws of congress, and those of the state enacted for that purpose. In case of the resignation of a United States senator during the recess of the legislature of a state, the executive of such state is empowered by the constitution to fill the vacancy thus occurring, by making a temporary appointment until the next meeting of the legislature, which shall then fill such vacancy by the election of a successor.

—As it is the duty of the executive of a state from which a senator has been chosen, to certify his election, under the seal of the state, to the president of the senate of the United States; and as it is likewise the duty of the executive when vacancies happen in the representation of his state in the senate of the United States, that he shall notify the legislature that such vacancy exists, it is therefore incumbent that the resignation of a senator should be transmitted to the executive of such state as he has represented in the United States senate.

—The constitution also provides that when vacancies occur in the representation of any state, the executive authority thereof shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies; therefore when a representative in congress from any state resigns his seat in that body, his resignation must be forwarded to the governor of his state, who will thereupon issue his writ ordering an election in such district to fill the vacancy created by the resignation. But the governor of a state has no authority to appoint a member temporarily to fill the vacancy in the state's representation in the house of representatives, as he is empowered by the constitution to do when, under certain circumstances, a vacancy exists in the senate.

—Should a member of the cabinet resign his position as head of the department to which he was called by the president, the resignation of such officer must be addressed to the president of the United States from whom he received the appointment, and who at his early convenience, will appoint his successor by and with the advice and consent of the senate. Until his successor is appointed, the duties of the office are performed by the assistant secretary or assistant head of the department.

—Sometimes a president calls for the resignation of a single member of his cabinet when displeased with his course, or, upon a change of policy or for other cause, he may require the resignation of all the members of his cabinet; and it is usual for each member of the cabinet to tender his resignation to the president, to take effect at the expiration of his term of office; and likewise all members of the cabinet of a deceased president tender their resignations as such to the vice-president on his assuming the duties of president.

—Whenever the heads of bureaus or the subordinates of any of the heads of the departments resign their offices, if they have been appointed by the heads of such departments, their letters of resignation will be addressed to such heads of departments; but if their appointment proceeds from the president of the United States, the letter of resignation must be addressed to the president of the United States. The resignation of persons in the various branches of the diplomatic service come under this rule.

—Whenever the governor of a state resigns his position as such, the powers, duties and emoluments of the office for the residue of the term devolve upon the lieutenant governor. In case the lieutenant governor should resign also, or become incapable, from any other cause, of performing the duties of the office, the president of the state senate will act as governor until the vacancy is filled or the disability removed. And if the president of the senate, from any of the above-named causes, becomes incapable of performing the duties of governor, the same will then devolve upon the speaker of the house of representatives.

—If the office of auditor, treasurer, secretary of state, attorney general, superintendent of public instruction, or other state officer, becomes vacant by reason of resignation or otherwise, the laws of the states generally authorize the governor to fill the same temporarily until successors are elected in such manner as may be provided by law.

—Whenever members of either branch of the state legislature resign their positions as such, the executive of the state will immediately issue writs of election to fill the vacancies thus created, and the person thus resigning must direct his letter of resignation to the governor of the state, who will, upon this notification, proceed as directed by law.

—Whenever a vacancy occurs in the office of chief justice of the supreme court of the United States by reason of resignation or otherwise, the duties and powers of his office will devolve upon the associate justice who is first in precedence, until another chief justice is appointed and duly qualified. This provision applies to every associate justice who succeeds to the office of chief justice.

—Should a judge of a United States circuit court resign his position as such, the court for that circuit may be held by the circuit justice or by the district judge of that district, sitting alone, or by the two sitting together; but a district judge thus sitting can not give a vote in any case of appeal or error from his own decision: Provided, That such a cause may, by the consent of parties, be heard and disposed of by him when holding a circuit court, sitting alone. When sitting with the justice of the circuit, the judgment or decree in such cases must be rendered in conformity with the opinion of the presiding justice.

—If, by reason of resignation or otherwise, no justice is allotted to a circuit, the chief justice of the supreme court may request the justice of another circuit to preside at the court to be held therein, and exercise all the powers connected therewith, until a justice is allotted to such circuit.

—When the office of judge of any district court becomes vacant, by reason of resignation or otherwise, all process, pleadings and proceedings pending before such court must be continued until the next stated term after the appointment and qualification of his successor. But when the office is vacant in any district of a state containing two or more districts, the judge of the other or of either of the other districts may hold the said district court, and all proceedings before him will have the same effect and validity as if done by or before a judge appointed by such district.

—Section 714 of the Revised Statutes provides that, whenever any judge of any court of the United States resigns his office, after having held his commission as such at least ten years, and having attained the age of seventy years, he shall, during the residue of his natural life, receive the same salary which was by law payable to him at the time of his resignation.

—Whenever vacancies occur in the office of judges of state courts by resignation or otherwise, and such offices are elective, such vacancies must be filled by an election; but generally, when the unexpired term does not exceed one year, the vacancy is filled by an appointment by the governor of the state, to whom the letter of resignation is addressed, and by whom all judicial officers are commissioned.

—With respect to the resignation of officers of the army, the law provides that whenever a vacancy occurs, by resignation or otherwise, in the office of general or lieutenant general, such office shall cease, and all enactments creating or regulating such offices shall, respectively, be held to be repealed.

—The laws further provide that no officer of the army shall hold any civil office, whether by election or appointment, and every such officer who accepts or exercises the functions of a civil office, shall thereby cease to be an officer of the army, and his commission shall be vacated, the same as if he had resigned from the service. Also, that any officer of the army who accepts or holds any appointment in the diplomatic or consular service of the government, shall be considered as having resigned his place in the army, and it shall be filled as a vacancy.

—Article 49, of the Articles of War, provides that any officer who, having tendered his resignation, quits his post or proper duties without leave, and with intent to remain permanently absent therefrom, prior to due notice of the acceptance of the same, shall be deemed and punished as a deserter.

—With respect to the resignation of officers in the naval service of the United States, the law provides that vacancies occurring in the grades of admiral and vice-admiral shall not be filled by promotion or in any other manner; and that when the offices of said grade shall become vacant, either by resignation or otherwise, the grade itself shall cease to exist.

—The laws further provide, that if any officer of the navy accepts or holds an appointment in the diplomatic or consular service of the United States, he shall be considered as having resigned his place in the navy, and it shall be filled as a vacancy. Also, that no officer of the navy who has been dismissed by the sentence of a court martial, or suffered to resign in order to escape such dismissal, shall ever again become an officer of the navy.

—Article 10, of section 1624, Rev. Stat., relating to the government of the navy, provides that any commissioned officer of the navy or marine corps, who, having tendered his resignation, quits his post or proper duties without leave, and with intent to remain permanently absent therefrom, prior to due notice of the acceptance of such resignation, shall be deemed and punished as a deserter.

RESTRICTIVE SYSTEM.

RESTRICTIVE SYSTEM. (See EMBARGO, in U. S. History.)

RETURNING BOARDS

RETURNING BOARDS (IN U. S. HISTORY). There is an infinite diversity in the laws of the different states which regulate the declaration of the results of popular elections; but they may be very roughly grouped under three classes. 1. The returns of elections for governor and other state officers are generally sent to the secretary of state. In some states they are sent by him to the presiding officers of the legislature, to be opened and canvassed in the presence of the two houses; in others they are canvassed and declared by the persons holding certain designated state offices. These latter are canvassing boards; and their powers are thus summed up by Cooley, as cited below: they "act for the most part ministerially only, and are not vested with judicial powers to correct errors and mistakes that may have occurred with any officer who preceded them in the performance of any duty connected with the election, or to pass upon any disputed fact which may decide the result." Nevertheless, some correction is always done, the extent and importance of it varying in different states, and sometimes according to party necessity. Indeed, much of the difficulty of 1879 in Maine (see that state) arose from the partisan application by the canvassing board of varying state precedents in the correction of errors or the refusal to correct them. 2. In the case of members of the legislature, the returns usually go at first to the secretary of state, though sometimes to a canvassing board or directly to the presiding officers of the two houses. Contests, however, are decided by the houses themselves. 3. In the case of other state and local officers, contested returns are generally settled by the courts, either by statute or by the issue and decision of common law writs in the nature of quo warranto. 4. In the mixed case of presidential electors, appointed "in such manner as the legislature of the state may direct," but acting in a national capacity, the final and absolute decision of contests properly belongs to the state also (see PENNSYLVANIA), with a general power in congress to make rules for the authentication of the state's decision. Congress, however, has never done its duty in the premises, but has reserved to itself a special power to decide arbitrarily upon special cases of contested elections of electors. (See ELECTORS.)

—The circumstances of the reconstructed state governments of the southern states after the rebellion (see RECONSTRUCTION, III.) were peculiar. The voting majority had been made ignorant, timid, poor and debased by a system of hereditary slavery; the minority, whether voting or disfranchised, was embittered by defeat, by a rankling sense of injustice, and by a hatred of negro rule. What was to prevent the minority, by organized or spontaneous fraud or violence, from ousting the majority as soon as the strong hand which had reversed their positions should be withdrawn? The first effort to solve this problem by the interposition of returning boards may be found in the Arkansas constitution of 1868. Hitherto the returns of elections to ratify or reject a state constitution had always been made to one or more of the old state officers, with only ministerial power, that is, power to compile, count and declare the results sent them by election officers. The Arkansas constitution designated three private persons by name as returning officers, with judicial powers. They were to receive returns from the judges of election, to compile and count them, to reject all fraudulent or illegal votes, and in case of fraud, fear, violence, improper influence or restraint, to set aside the whole election and order a new one, or to reject or correct the result in any county or precinct. On the contrary, the constitution of the same state in 1874, while naming three returning officers, gave them no judicial powers.

—In Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana, returning boards with judicial powers were established by the reconstructed state governments by statute. In all three states the power to do so was claimed under very similar clauses in the state constitution: in Florida, that "laws shall be passed regulating elections, and prohibiting undue influence thereon from power, bribery, tumult, or other improper practice"; in Louisiana, that "the privilege of free suffrage shall be supported by laws regulating elections, and prohibiting, under adequate penalties, all undue influence thereon from bribery, tumult, or other improper practice"; in South Carolina, that "the right of suffrage shall be protected by laws regulating elections, and prohibiting, under adequate penalties, all undue influences from power, bribery, tumult, or improper conduct." Outside of these clauses there is absolutely no provision by which the powers given to the returning boards can be defended; and the clauses specified seem to be plainly intended for the regulation of the elections themselves, and not to empower the legislative or executive departments to assume judicial functions in counting the results of the elections. And, as one of the members of the electoral commission commented on the Louisiana provision as a novelty in state constitutions, it may be well to note that in Florida since 1838, and in Louisiana since 1812, these same provisions, ipsissimis verbis, had been inserted in all their state constitutions; but no one, until 1868-72, supposed that they authorized the creation of returning boards, with judicial powers, by the state legislatures. Indeed, such assumption is impliedly forbidden by the constitution of every state, and expressly forbidden in most of them, as it is in Florida and South Carolina: "The legislative, executive and judicial powers shall be separate and distinct from each other, and no person or persons exercising the functions of one of said departments shall assume or discharge the duties of any other." In Louisiana, also, it is provided that "no judicial powers, except as committing magistrates in criminal cases, shall be conferred on any officers other than those mentioned in this title [judges of various grades]." The powers given to a returning board, in state elections, seem to have been absolute usurpations by the legislature: a violent revolution, to be resisted by the individual just so far as he should choose to risk his personal safety. But, in the matter of presidential electors, in which the country at large was most interested in 1876-7, the power of the legislature to constitute returning boards with judicial powers rests on an entirely different basis, distinct from and higher than the state constitution itself. The national constitution directs the appointment of the electors of a state to be "in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct." The power of the legislature over the manner of appointment is thus absolute, and can not be restrained or abridged either by the state constitution or by congress. If the state constitution should expressly prohibit returning boards in the case of presidential electors, the prohibition would have no effect whatever on the legislature. The distinction is essential. It will explain why the Hayes administration in 1877 abandoned the defense of the state governments which were the creatures of the returning boards; and will show the sophistry of the plausible assertion that the administration had thereby impeached its own title.

—The Florida act of Feb. 27, 1872, constituted the secretary of state, the attorney general, and the comptroller, or any two of them with any other member of the state cabinet designated by them, a board to canvass returns of state elections, and elections for presidential electors, and to determine and declare who have been elected. "If any returns are so irregular, false or fraudulent that the board can not determine the true vote, they shall so certify, and shall not include such returns in their determination and declaration." In Louisiana (see that state) there was a continuous difficulty in ascertaining the true returning board; but the final act of Nov. 20, 1872, constituted "five persons, to be elected by the senate from all political parties," a board with power "to make the returns of all elections." A majority of the board was to be a quorum; and in case of any vacancy by death, resignation or otherwise, the vacancy was to be filled by the residue of the board. In case of any violence or bribery in any precinct, the local election commissioners were to certify the facts to the returning board through the secretary of state or the supervisors of registration, annexing their certificate to the returns, which were to be sent within twenty-four hours after the election. Within ten days after the election the returning board was to meet in New Orleans; canvass and compile those returns which had no certificates of bribery or violence annexed; then investigate the certificates which had been annexed, taking evidence thereon, and sending for persons and papers; and finally exclude the returns from any voting place, if satisfied that the commissioners' certificate was correct, and announce the result. Their determination was to be prima facie evidence of the right to hold office, "until set aside after contest according to law." If the constitutionality of the law be granted, its provisions, honestly executed, would seem to be very fair. The twenty-four hours' limitation on the sending of certificates by local commissioners would preclude any general collusion; open trial of evidence would ascertain the truth or falsity of the certificates of violence; and the power of setting aside their decisions, to be exercised by the legislature in the case of its own members and by the courts in the case of other officers, would have been a sufficient safeguard. Unfortunately, we can know little of the possible results of a righteous execution of the law; for the board systematically disobeyed most of its provisions, and perverted the rest. The essential point of the twenty-four hours' limitation was disregarded; the secret sessions of the board made the taking of "evidence" a farce; and by these two perversions it made both the courts and the legislature so entirely its creatures as to practically destroy any right of appeal.

—The South Carolina statute was a combination of both the preceding. Local canvassers sent their returns to the county canvassers, and these to the state returning board, composed of the secretary of state, the treasurer, the comptroller, the attorney general, and the adjutant general. These had judicial powers over the canvass, except as to the returns for governor and lieutenant governor, which they were to transmit to the speaker of the house, to be counted in the presence of both houses.

—Bitter complaints had often been made of the partisan and unfair action of the returning boards, particularly in Louisiana, but little attention was paid to them in northern states, where the boards were generally considered in some sense an antidote to southern lawlessness at elections. Immediately after the presidential election of 1876 it was found that the whole result hinged on the decision of the returning boards. (Oregon is not regarded here, since in that state the canvassing officer, the secretary of state, had been given no judicial powers, either by the constitution or by the legislature.) In Florida the returning board consisted of Samuel B. McLin, secretary of state, Clayton A. Cowgill, comptroller, and Wm. A. Cocke, attorney general in Louisiana, of J. Madison Wells, T. C. Anderson, L. M. Kenner, and G. Casanave, all private citizens except Wells, who was federal naval officer at New Orleans; in South Carolina, of Henry E. Hayne, secretary of state, F. L. Cardozo, treasurer, Thos. C. Dunn, comptroller, Wm. H. Stone, attorney general, and H. W. Purvis, adjutant general, all colored except Dunn and Stone. Nov. 10, a large number of republican and democratic leaders in northern states, on the invitation of President Grant and the democratic national committee respectively, went to the three disputed states to watch the canvass; but they had no concert of action, and can not really be said to have acted at all. The boards met and organized in South Carolina Nov. 10, in Louisiana Nov. 16, and in Florida Nov. 27. In Louisiana the fifth member of the board, Oscar Arroyo, a democrat, had, for some unexplained reason, resigned immediately after the election, and the remaining four, all republicans, refused to fill his place. When the board, by its tenth rule, resolved to decide contests in secret session, the democrats protested, but without success. The board also refused to allow United States supervisors to be present at their secret sessions; to allow counsel for contestants to inspect the counting of the returns; or to count the ballots of four republican parishes, on which the names of five of the eight Hayes electors had been forgotten, only for the three electors specified on them. It is impossible to give the board's defense of its action in these cases, for it assigned no reasons. Dec. 6, it declared elected the republican candidates for state officers, 4 republican and 2 democratic congressmen, 19 republicans and 17 democrats in the state senate, and 71 republicans, 43 democrats, and 3 independents in the state lower house. Its principal changes had been made by counting for all the eight Hayes electors some 1,200 ballots bearing the names of only three; and by throwing out about 13,000 democratic and 2,000 republican votes, mainly in the parishes of East Baton Rouge, De Soto, East and West Feliciana, Grant, Iberia, Lafayette, Lafourche, More-house, and Ouachita. No attempt was made to control the board by the state courts.

—In Florida the state circuit court for Leon county, before the meeting of the board, had ordered it to canvass the votes forthwith. Dec. 5, the board declared the popular vote on presidential electors to be 23,849 republican, and 22,923 democratic, a republican majority of 926; all of Manatee county, and parts of several other counties had been rejected for violation of election laws. Dec. 22, the state supreme court ordered the board to canvass the votes for state officers only from the face of the returns. What the "face of the returns" was, is doubtful. Both parties agree that, taking all the counties but one (Baker), the vote in the state was almost an exact tie. From Baker county two returns had been sent: one, made up Nov. 10, by the county clerk and a justice of the peace, giving the vote as 143 republican, and 238 democratic, a democratic majority of 95; and another, made up Nov. 13, by the county judge, sheriff, and a justice of the peace, excluding two precincts, and giving the vote as 130 republican, and 89 democratic, a republican majority of 41. The gist of the difficulty was thus in the double return from Baker county. Taking the second return from Baker county, and throwing out Clay county (164 democratic majority), the board reported, Dec. 27, a republican majority of 206 for electors, and a democratic majority of 195 for governor. This report the court refused to receive; and, Jan. 1, 1877, the board at last made return in accordance with the democratic claims, and the democratic state officers were inaugurated. But in the case of the electors it was too late. The Hayes electors had received the governor's certificate on the board's first return, had met and voted, Dec. 6, and were now dead in law. The Tilden electors had met and voted the same day, on a certificate given by a single member of the board. Jan. 17, 1877, the new legislature passed an act requiring the new state officers to canvass the returns for 1876. This they did, and declared the Tilden electors successful; but the electoral commission decided this action to be entirely ex post facto, and void.

—In South Carolina the state supreme court ordered the board to exercise no judicial functions in the state count, Nov. 17, and in the presidential count, Nov. 22; but on the same day that the latter action was taken, the board gave certificates to the republican electors and state officers, and adjourned sine die. They were arrested for contempt, but released by the federal circuit court on habeas corpus.

—In Louisiana and South Carolina new election laws were at once passed by the new democratic legislatures, under which the judicial functions of the returning boards were almost entirely cut off. The same result had almost been reached in Florida by the supreme court's construction of the board's powers; but in 1878 the board (now democratic) again threw out two counties for informality. The state supreme court again decided against the board. It may be taken for granted in future that Judge Cooley's definition of the powers of a canvassing board, heretofore cited, will be followed by all American courts; and that any attempt by a state legislature to give such a board judicial functions, without a plain authorization of the act by the state constitution, will be held by the courts to be unconstitutional and void.

—For further proceedings in regard to the votes of the presidential electors, see ELECTORAL COMMISSION; DISPUTED ELECTIONS, IV. See constitutions of the states referred to in Poore's Federal and State Constitutions; summary of provisions for election returns in the various states, 2 Hough's American Constitutions, 758; authorities under ELECTORAL COMMISSION; Cooley's Constitutional Limitations, 3d edit., 734, and law authorities there cited; Louisiana Rev. Stat., 96 (act of Nov. 20, 1872); 25 Louisiana Annual Rep., 14, 263, 267; 16 Florida Reports, 17; and later authorities under LOUISIANA.

REVENUE

REVENUE, Public. Finance is declared by Bentham to be "an append and inseparable accompaniment of political economy." Economists are, however, divided in their opinions regarding the closeness and the legitimacy of this connection. Joseph Garnier remarks, that certain writers of general treatises on political economy have not even touched the subject: Malthus, Skarbek, Senior, and James Mill. Others have only dealt with it in a highly summary manner: Sismondi, Rossi, Storch, Cherbuliez, Courcelle-Seneuil and Stuart Mill, while treating the subject very briefly, have yet pointed out and discussed the fundamental questions of finance. Adam Smith, continues M. Garnier, devoted to this subject a fourth of his "Wealth of Nations." J. B. Say has given a like proportion of his "Treatise" and of his "Course" in political economy to the causes and effects of the public consumption of wealth. He did not, however, examine, as Smith had done, the different kinds of taxes. Ricardo has entitled his chief work, "The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation"; but that which relates to finance, proper, occupies no more than a fourth of his work. McCulloch has not treated of financial questions in his political economy, but has discussed them in a separate treatise, giving to them a very full consideration. Rau has, likewise, treated separately that which M. Garnier calls "this important branch of political economy."

—The causes which have thus led to the exclusion of finance from formal treatises on political economy, or to its very slight and partial recognition therein, may be stated as follows: First, According to the most frequent classification of the subject, the revenue of the state falls into that one of the old-fashioned "departments" of political economy, which is known as "consumption." The tendency of the writers of the present and of the last generation has been to omit all consideration of the consumption of wealth, whether as to its objects or as to its effects. Secondly, The revenue of the state falls outside the sphere of contract, which would be a sufficient reason for omitting to take note of it, in the case of the school of writers who make political economy to be purely "the science of exchanges." As Dr. Sturtevant remarks, "The wages of government are not determined by economic laws; it receives whatever it demands. In some cases it takes the position of a partner, and accepts for its compensation a certain percentage of the profits; but that share is not determined by an agreement between the partners, but by the will of this one partner." Thirdly, and chiefly, considerations purely political always enter in a great degree, and often in a controlling degree, into the decision of questions relating to the collection of public revenue. The statesman, as financier, may legitimately ask, not which is the best tax, or the most economical mode of assessment, but which is the most politic. He not only may, he must, consult the temper and habits of his people. He must consider the times and the circumstances, quite as heedfully as he does the normal operation of economic laws. Even the special race-quality imparted by descent must be respected in the collection of public revenue. "A land tax," wrote Sir James Steuart, in the last century, "excites the indignation of a Frenchman; an excise that of an Englishman." Thomas Jefferson observed a corresponding difference in the susceptibilities of the northern and the southern portions of this country, in his day. "In most of the middle and southern states," he says, "some land tax is now paid into the state treasury; and, for this purpose, the lands have been classed and valued, and the tax is assessed according to that valuation. In these, an excise is most odious. In the eastern states land taxes are odious; excises, less unpopular."

—M. de Parieu, in his monumental work on "Taxation," thus expresses a striking characteristic difference between the Teutonic and the Latin nations in enduring taxes on property and income: "While countries inhabited by the pure Germanic race, or by its principal branches, Germany, Scandinavia, Great Britain and North America, support almost universally taxes of this kind, the financial history of the Neo-Latin peoples has made us acquainted with but a small number of isolated applications, temporary or abortive, of such a rule of contribution. Even in Switzerland, a country of mixed race, the field of general taxes upon property and income appears, with the exception of Geneva, to be confined within the frontiers which circumscribe the German race and language. This difference of moral aptitude in relation to the taxes under discussion, which appears in comparison of the Germanic and the Latin races, whether from history or from contemporary statistics, long since attracted the attention of certain Italian publicists. Machiavelli, Botero and Braggia have mentioned German customs in this regard as exceptional. * * That which characterizes the methods of applying general taxes to property and income, is the necessity of a certain degree of loyalty,74 patience, and even of spontaneity,75 among the tax payers. "Is it not," continues M. de Parieu, "easy to understand that, following the analogy of individuals, some nations may present, relatively to others, the character of greater sincerity, of a greater disposition spontaneously to burden themselves, and of a greater patience when in contemplation of a right object? Is it inconsistent with our observation of manners and morals to acknowledge that certain populations possess, with a temperament more cold, a stronger infusion of that natural sense of justice, so necessary in the application of an income tax equally among the contributors summoned to declare their fortunes, and among the assessors charged with supervising and correcting these declarations? I could not," he concludes, "assert that there is among the Germanic peoples more of authority or of liberty than among the Neo-Latin peoples. What seems certain is, that authority and liberty are there distributed and understood in a different manner. The Germanic peoples appear to accept more easily than do the Neo-Latins, authority coming close to the individual, at the hearth of the family, in the town or near at hand."

—It will readily appear that differences in race aptitudes for taxation, such as those indicated by M. de Parieu, may not only control the forms of assessment or contribution, as between one community and another, but may have power to appreciably affect the proportion of the aggregate income of a community which the treasury can command, whether for ordinary public purposes or in the great exigencies of state. Of two nations of equal wealth, one may, through the stronger sense of justice native in its people, through an excess of loyalty and spontaneity in the support of the government, possess a fiscal force twice or thrice that of the other.

—It is not, however, alone differences of a moral nature which affect the relative fiscal force of communities. Differences in the prevailing occupations of the people, in the rapidity of circulation, and in the distribution of wealth, irrespective of its aggregate amount, may have important effects upon the power of the treasury to secure contributions to public uses. In a commercial or manufacturing nation, where capitals are concentrated, and where nearly the whole body of the annual product becomes the subject of exchange, perhaps is even exchanged several successive times between the hands of the producer and those of the consumer, the government can command a far higher proportion of the aggregate income of the people than can be done in a purely agricultural state.

—But while considerations like the foregoing may properly enter to influence the views of the financier, in matters which can hardly be termed matters of detail, the essential subjection of the fiscal interests of the treasury to the economic interests of the community,76 can never safely be disregarded. Mr. R. H. Patterson, in his "Science of Finance," justly says, paraphrasing in his final sentence Burke's remark about justice as the great standing policy of nations, that "the statesman may, for reasons such as have been intimated, deal with the collection and disbursement of revenue on methods somewhat different from those which the strict application of economical principles would require; but it must always be as a conscious deviation from a right rule. He must never go very far from principles, or remain long away. Else, his policy will prove no policy at all." Mr. Patterson adds, as justly as piquantly, "there are many things in the world which have the knack of being as broad as they are long; and this is peculiarly the case with state finance."

—Taxes and public revenue are commonly used as interconvertible terms, and in popular speech, or for the purposes of approximate statement, this is well enough. Yet for scientific purposes, or in any careful survey of the fiscal history of a country, or in a comparative statement of the fiscal resources of two or more nations, the public revenue may include something more than, perhaps something very far in excess of, the aggregate of all sums received into the treasury as the result of official assessment and of compulsory collection. Among these may be named the sums received by gift or voluntary contribution of citizens, the value, known or estimated, of all prerogatives or privileges of requisition or of purveyance, respecting services or supplies, together with a fair rental of all domains, buildings or other property occupied or used for public purposes.

—The revenue of France, for instance, during the present year, when properly stated, will include, in addition to the actual receipts into the treasury, the market value of the services rendered by some hundreds of thousands of citizens of the republic, as soldiers under the conscription act, over and above that which the state actually pays as wages to these involuntary servants. This last item is of enormous consequence in all countries having a compulsory military system. Indeed, this, which by some has been called "the blood tax," is by far the greatest of all the taxes of modern times. Were it necessary for France, Germany or Russia to go into the market for labor, and pay wages sufficient to induce men, to the number of its present soldiery, to enter its service voluntarily, the expenses of the government would be enormously increased, probably to the result of early fiscal bankruptcy. It is fairly matter of question whether any one of the countries named could, by the utmost exertion of the power of taxation, short of producing universal revolt, raise money enough to hire the services of its existing army. Yet the market value of these services clearly belongs to the revenue of the state, whether those services are obtained by payments out of the treasury, or through an exertion of legal authority in the form of conscription; while it is certain that the cost of those services to the people, obtained as they are by abruptly and violently withdrawing from industry and trade that number of workers, many of them of the higher grades of intelligence, and occupying positions of responsibility, is vastly greater than would be involved in obtaining an equal number of equally good soldiers through solicitation and voluntary enlistment. In like manner, if the government of France exercises rights of requisition or purveyance through officials, high or low, as to supplies, whether for peace or war, the amount saved to the treasury thereby, through avoiding purchase in an open market, is properly to be included in an account of the public revenue. In a word, the revenue of any state, for any given year, is constituted of each and every valuable thing which is, in that year, applied to governmental purposes.

—A classification of the several principal sources of public revenue has long been a desideratum. No such scheme could be free from objection, and many a scheme may, in some one respect, possess an advantage over that scheme which is, as a whole, the best. The following classification will be observed in this article: Sources of Public Revenue. I. Voluntary contributions. II. Public property, lucrative prerogatives and state enterprise. 1, rent charges in favor of the state, as the proprietor of all lands; 2, escheat; 3, fines and forfeitures for criminality and delinquency; 4, tributes from colonies, dependencies and conquered nations, including war fines, requisitions and indemnities; 5, sale of offices, honors and titles; 6, domains (L'état capitaliste); 7, state enterprise (L'état entrepreneur). III. Quasi taxes. 1, monopolies; 2, lotteries; 3, purveyance of supplies, and requisition of services; 4, fees; 5, seigniorage on coin; 6, paper money. IV. Taxation, in its various forms. Taxes may be assessed, 1, on the basis of realized wealth, commonly spoken of as capital; 2, on the basis of annual income or revenue; 3, on the basis of faculty, or native and acquired power of production; 4, on the basis of expenditure, or the individual consumption of wealth. Exemption from taxation may be claimed, 1, for noble and privileged classes; 2, for clerical persons and religious orders; 3, for charitable and educational institutions; 4, for the poorer classes of the community, either through the omission from assessment of a certain minimum income, or through an ascending scale of taxation upon higher incomes (progressivity in taxation). Taxes may be collected, 1, in services, 2, in products; 3, in money. Taxes are commonly, in discussion, divided as, 1, direct; 2, indirect. This distinction, however, is of only very general use, it being impossible to distribute the taxes actually levied in any state, under these two heads, without great confusion and much manifest error. The French writers further divide direct taxes into, 1, taxes de répartition, of which the produce is certain and known in advance; 2, taxes de quotité, of which the produce can not be known in advance, and varies with external conditions.

—The following classification of taxes, made by M. De Parieu, according to the objects they reach, or at least upon which they are assessed, is believed to be the most convenient and useful: 1. Les impóts sur les personnes, ou capitations—Taxes upon persons, or poll taxes; 2. Les impóts sur la richesse, ou sur la possession des capitaux et revenues—Taxes upon wealth, or upon the possession of capital or income; 3. Les impóts sur les jouissances—Taxes upon use or occupation [corresponding very closely to the English assessed taxes on carriages, horses, windows, lodgings, etc.]; 4. Les impóts sur les consommations—Taxes upon consumption; 5. Les impóts sur les actes —Taxes upon transactions [sales, etc.] Of these five classes, M. de Parieu remarks, that the first three approximately conform to the general definition of direct taxes, the last two being indirect. Of the first group, taxes upon wealth, and of the second group, taxes upon consumption, are at once most characteristic and the most important. These constitute "the two poles of the general system of taxation."

—Having offered the foregoing classification of the sources of public revenue, we will proceed to speak briefly of each.

—I. Voluntary Contributions. It is difficult for the man of the present age to conceive of the state as supported by voluntary contributions; yet not only were these once, in theory, almost the sole resource of the ruler, except through personal services; but they, in fact, survive to this day, in a few isolated communities, in the form of the self-assessment of the citizen. To go no farther back than the feudal days, in England, while the chief military support of the kingdom was afforded by the muster of the vassals, it was the fiction of the law, that, so far as aids and subsidies were concerned, the tax payer made a voluntary offering to relieve the wants of the prince; and that the promise of a tax bound only the individual who made it. It was the practice of bringing personal property and income under contribution, which gave rise to the idea that taxation and representation must go together, and caused the formal grant of money. At the beginning of the system of poor relief, in the early years of Elizabeth, collections were taken in churches, and each person was left to be the judge of what for him constituted "a reasonable contribution."

—The papal revenues, also, may perhaps be brought under this head. The pope was by far the greatest capitalist of the middle ages. The British parliament at one time declared that the contributions made by their people to the pope were five times as great as those made to the sovereign.

—Adam Smith cites Hamburgh, Basle, Zurich, Unterwald and Holland, among the communities where the self-valuation of the citizen was still, in his day, accepted. Riesbeck, in his "Travels in Germany," says of the first named city, "some taxes are voluntary, and the burghers have the right to put what they think their quota into the purse, which is shut, and the deputies dare not open it in their presence." Even within a few years there have remained free cities in Germany and cantons in Switzerland, where the rule of voluntary contribution still subsisted in all its purity.

—II. Public Property, Lucrative Prerogatives and State Enterprise. 1. Rent charges in favor of the state, as the proprietor of all lands. Throughout considerable portions of Asia and in Turkey in Europe, the rent of land, paid to the state, furnishes by far the greater part of the public revenues. That the soil originally belonged to the community or nation, private property in land being, indeed, a comparatively modern institution, and finding its justification only in political expediency, is admitted by nearly all publicists of authority. By vesting the title to the soil in individuals, the state sacrifices that large revenue resulting from the progressive enhancement of the value of land, which would otherwise have accrued to the treasury. It is equally beyond question that all the advantages of the private ownership of land might have been obtained, while yet the state imposed fiscal charges and military or political obligations which would have secured for the community a considerable share of that progressive enhancement of values.

—The proposition to reassert the right and interest of the state in all the land which has become the subject of individual ownership, was made by Mr. John Stuart Mill, in the later days of his life, and the programme for this substitution of rent for taxation, with the arguments in its favor, will be found in his later speeches and essays. Mr. Mill pointed to the commutation of the feudal obligations of the English landowners, for the altogether insufficient consideration of a tax of four shillings in the pound upon the valuation of 1692, and also to the sacrifice of the interests of the crown in the lands of a portion of British India, by which the "unearned increment" was allowed to pass into the hands of individual proprietors, instead of being reserved to the public treasury. Mr. Mill's practical proposition was to appraise all estates according to their present market value, and thereafter to assess them to the full amount of all enhanced value which could not be shown to be due to applications of labor and capital. To this he looked as a fiscal resource which should relieve the community from the greater part if not all of the burden of taxation. More recently Mr. Henry George has proposed, in his "Progress and Poverty," to assert the right of the state, not only to all future increase of value in the land, but to its present value, asserting that all grants of exclusive property in land are and have always been void, and that the proprietors of land are not even entitled to reserve the value of their improvements.

—2. Escheat, the principle, viz., that the state is the proprietor of all estates, real or personal, to which individual titles or claims are lost. It will at once appear that the scope of this principle, from the point of view of revenue, will widen or contract in correspondence with the laws which regulate the descent and bequest of property, and prescribe the times and modes of proving claims, in which respect some countries are far more liberal than others. Under the feudal system, escheat constituted a most important source of revenue. In England the right of devising real property did not exist, after the conquest, until the time of Henry VIII.; and no small proportion of the lands of the kingdom passed to the crown under the operation of this principle. Modern society, however, whether out of sympathy with the instincts of property right,77 or from a politic desire to promote the spirit of accumulation, has given continually wider and wider extension to the power of bequest and to the principle of inheritance, until escheat, as a source of revenue, has ceased to be of much importance.

—In 1795 Jeremy Bentham published a notable tract entitled "Escheat vs. Taxation," in which that daring reformer proposed an extension of the existing law of escheat, "a law coeval with the very first elements of the constitution," with a corresponding limitation of the power of bequest. The intended effect was "the appropriating to the use of the public all vacant successions, property of every denomination included, on the failure of near relatives, will or no will, subject only to the power of bequest, as hereinafter limited." By "near relatives" Bentham intends "such relatives as stand within the degrees termed prohibited, with reference to marriage." Furthermore, in the case of "such relatives" within the pale as are not only childless, but without prospect of children, he proposes that, instead of taking their share in ready money, they should take only the interest of it, in the shape of an annuity for life. As to the latitude to be left to the power of bequest, he says, "I should propose that it be continued in respect to the half of whatsoever property would be at present subject to that power." Bentham argues that the scheme he proposes for dispensing with taxation by limiting the power of bequest and restricting succession to near relatives, would work no wrong. Hardship, in the distribution of property, is in proportion to disappointment: expectation thwarted. If distant relatives were taught by the general provisions of the law that they could not succeed, no expectations would be excited, and such persons would suffer no wrong, being simply put into the case of others who have no rich distant relatives. Bentham's proposal received no special attention at the time; and, except in the way of taxes upon successions and bequests,78 little progress has since been made in the direction indicated; but it is probable that among the earliest of the measures of a militant and triumphant democracy would be the limitation of the power of bequest and the restriction of succession, each in the interest of the state, as the proprietor of all estates to which individual titles or claims may be lost.

—3. Fines and forfeitures for criminality and delinquency. It might be supposed, that, since government exists largely for the protection of property and life, and for the punishment of offenses against society, the cost of maintaining government and administering justice might largely be thrown upon delinquents and criminals. In feudal times, fines and forfeitures constituted a very important source of revenue to the crown. This was the result of two causes. First, the relation of the tenant to the lord was a personal one, and failures in personal loyalty, although not rising to what in the present day would be deemed crimes against society, were punished by heavy fines or total forfeiture. Second, the crimes of those days were largely political, and great offenders were likely to be men of wealth and position who would be fat subjects for amercement.79 The wars of the roses, for example, were so fruitful of forfeitures that a large proportion of the land of the realm became the property of the crown. In the present age, political crimes have become comparatively infrequent, and the criminal class are mainly drawn from the poor. Hence, this branch of the public revenue has shrunk to comparative insignificance. Fines and forfeitures still pay a part of the expenses of strictly judicial establishments, especially in the lower or police courts, but they add little to the general revenues of the state. Even the labor of condemned criminals is seldom found to be sufficiently remunerative to pay the cost of their maintenance under ward.

—4. Tributes from colonies, dependencies and conquered nations, including war fines, requisitions and indemnities. "In all ages," says Sir Erskine May, "taxes and tribute have been characteristic incidents of a dependency. The subject powers of Asiatic monarchies, in ancient and modern times, were despoiled by the rapacity of satraps and pashas, and the greed of the central government. The Greek colonies, which resembled those of England more than any other dependencies of antiquity, were forced to send contributions to the treasury of the parent state. Carthage exacted tribute from her subject towns and territories.80 The Roman provinces 'paid tribute to Cæsar.' In modern times Spain received tribute from her European dependencies, and a revenue from the gold and silver mines of her American colonies. It was also the policy of France, Holland and Portugal to derive a tribute from their settlements." In our own day, Holland has drawn a net revenue of £3,000,000 from the island of Java, the natives being required to cultivate defined portions of land in specified crops. That compulsory cultivation used to include many crops; subsequently, it was for a long time confined to sugar and coffee; since 1880, as I understand it, coffee has remained the sole crop so cultivated.

—I have quoted a passage from Sir E. May, relative to the forced contributions of colonies and dependencies: let me complete the sentence. "But England, satisfied with its colonial trade, by which her subjects at home were enriched, imposed upon them alone all the burdens of the state." This sentence expresses the essential characteristic of the English system of dealing with colonies. It must not be supposed, however, that the system was necessarily lighter in the burdens it imposed than would have been a system of taxation. The constraints which the navigation acts of England81 —designed to give to British shippers and British merchants the profits of the colonial trade—placed upon the energies of those young and growing communities, were frequently more galling and depressing than heavy taxation would have been. Another incident of the British colonial system in the past was patronage, affording, as that system did, a wide field for the employment of the friends, connections and political partisans of the home government. Until the reform of the civil service this was of a real and great fiscal value, being worth more to the administration than an addition of millions to the revenue would have been. Even now it is asserted82 that the Indian army is maintained and employed quite as much for the imperial interests of Great Britain as for the preservation of the peace and unity of India; that the salaries of British officials are there vastly greater than necessary or desirable; and that the construction of immense systems of public improvements, railways, canals and irrigating works, at the expense of India, has been controlled largely by the interests of British capitalists or by the demands of British cotton spinners.

—The Danish Sound dues, "the most important transit duties in the world," until 1857, constituted a striking example of this class of contributions. In the year named, these duties were finally abolished, Denmark receiving 30,476,325 rix dollars in final commutation, of which sum Great Britain paid a full third. The United States subsequently joined in this purchase of the rights of Denmark over the navigation of the Baltic, having, at a much earlier period of its national history, made successive contributions to the revenues of the piratical Barbary states, for the privilege of sailing the Mediterranean.

—The principle of making the enemy, as far as possible, pay the cost of war while in progress, and exacting an indemnity subsequently for such expenses as could not be met by requisitions and billeting, is of too wide historical usage to require mention here. The application of that principle is only limited by the power of belligerents. After the treaty of 1842, the Chinese government was compelled to pay England sums approaching thirty millions of dollars on account of opium seized, and for the expenses of the expedition. It was reserved for Germany, after the war with France in 1870-71, to exact the most gigantic war indemnity ever paid in the history of mankind.

—5. Still another source of revenue is found in the sale of offices, honors and titles. The accounts of such sales under the Roman empire, in the days of its decline; by the popes throughout the middle ages; by the kings of France, especially from Louis XII. to the time of the revolution; and in England, under the Stuarts; form a very interesting chapter in the history of finance;83 but space will not allow us to enter upon it here. At times these sales were mere acts of extortion by the sovereign; at others they amounted to little else than the sales of annuities under the name of salaries attached to the offices conferred; at times these offices carried privileges and opportunities by which the purchaser might reimburse himself for his outlay, whether through a monopoly, or through the right to collect or disburse the public revenues, which was a very common incident of these sales.

—6. Domains (L'état capitaliste.) Even under the modern European principle of the private ownership of lands, the state is, in all countries, the possessor of larger or smaller domains, from which a revenue, in money or produce, may be derived, or which, while yielding no revenue in form, serve public uses which would otherwise require expenditures out of the treasury. M. Leroy-Beaulieu, the editor of the Economiste Français, author of an excellent work on "Finance," expresses the distinction between the property of the state which is left to the enjoyment of individuals, yielding no revenue, and that which is productive: the former he calls domains public, and the latter domaine privé de l'état. The former, he says, is almost everywhere vastly greater than the latter, and tends continually to increase; and he makes this striking statement regarding the extent of the property thus belonging to the state, given up to public uses, without yielding a revenue to the treasury: "In a country like France, it appears to us difficult to appraise at less than 300 millions of francs per annum, that which is so employed by the central government, the departments and the communes."

—The domains of the state from which money or produce is derived, make, of course, a much larger figure in the history of finance, though no mere truly, as we said at the beginning, constituting a part of the public revenue.

—In England the royal domains were, at first, very ample. Even in the time of Edward the Confessor it was said that the crown was possessed of 1,422 manors, besides other lands and quit rents. The Norman conquest largely increased the landed wealth of the sovereign. In the reign of Henry V. this was augmented by the appropriation of the alien priories, 110 in number. Yet notwithstanding this large endowment, successive alienations, sometimes in real exigencies of the state, but more commonly wasteful and often shameful in their origin, so reduced the crown lands that the income of Henry VI. was stated at but £5,000. In this impoverishment of the crown, several general resumptions of grants were authorized by parliament. The breach with Rome, and the plunder of the religious establishments by Henry VIII., placed vast wealth at the disposal of that disinterested reformer; but a similar course of improvident and wasteful alienations soon brought the income of the sovereign again below his urgent necessities. In the seventh year of James I. the entire land revenue of the crown and of the duchy of Lancaster amounted to only £66,870. James sold lands to the value of £775,000, and left debts to an equal amount.

—Prodigal, however, as had been the alienation of the crown lands under the Tudors and the Stuarts, it was William III., the author of the modern scheme of public finance, who did most to dissipate the hereditary property of the crown; nor is it likely that the two facts were without a vital connection. William, foreseeing the vast fiscal power of government, under the commercial as contrasted with the feudal organization of society, would seem to have regarded the traditional revenues of England with contempt. At the end of his reign, parliament, says Sir Erskine May, "having obtained accounts of the state of the land revenues, found that they had been reduced by grants, alienations, incumbrances, reversions and pensions, until they scarcely exceeded the rent roll of a squire."

—Whatever William may have thought of landed revenues, as compared with the proceeds of excises and customs, his immediate successors were not content with the situation, and an act was passed in the first year of Anne's reign, whereby all future grants or leases from the crown, for any longer term than thirty-one years, or three lives, were declared void, except with regard to houses, which may be granted for fifty years. "The misfortune is," says Blackstone, "that this act was made too late, after almost every valuable inheritance in possession of the crown had been granted away." "There are very few estates in the kingdom that have not, at some period or other since the Norman conquest, been vested in the hands of the king by forfeiture, escheat or otherwise. Fortunately for the liberty of the subject, this hereditary landed revenue, by a series of improvident mismanagement, is sunk almost to nothing."

—It was especially the contemplation of English experience in this respect, which drew from Adam Smith that strong assertion of the impolicy of seeking to derive revenue from public domains, which is so often quoted in discussion of this subject: "The servants of the most negligent master are better superintended than the servants of the most vigilant sovereign." "The crown lands of Great Britain do not at present afford the fourth part of the rent which could probably be drawn from them if they were the property of private persons. If the crown lands were more extensive, it is probable they would be still worse managed. * * In the present state of the greater part of the civilized monarchies of Europe, the rent of all the lands in the country, managed as they probably would be, would scarce, perhaps, amount to the ordinary revenue which they levy upon the people even in peaceful times." Perhaps had Dr. Smith the opportunity to observe the able, comprehensive, frugal and solicitous Prussian administration of public estates to-day, he might find reason to qualify the judgment expressed above.

—M. Cherbuliez, in his Science Economique, takes strong ground against making public domains an important element in the fiscal system. One remark is especially notable. Domains do not, he says, furnish an available resource in time of emergency. On the whole, this remark is both true and important; yet the recent examples of Chili and Peru, with their guano deposits,84 Egypt, with the large sugar plantations of the khedive, Honduras, with her precious forests of mahogany, have shown that a tangible property of this kind may sometimes afford a certain advantage for quickly placing a large loan, for a state of small credit.

—We have seen how the crown lands of England were wasted by improvident alienations. Everywhere much the same story is told by the shrunken domains of the state. What was once the chief fiscal resource of many states, now remains even an important item in the budgets of but a few states. Russia, says M. Cherbuliez, is almost the only state of modern Europe which draws from its fiscal domain a notable share of its revenue. Yet Prussia, Bavaria, Würtemberg and Sweden still retain extensive and profitable domains. The same might be said of the crown lands of Hanover, if any one could find out to whom they belong.

—In the United States the possession of vast areas of fertile territory by the new government, was, at the beginning of our fiscal history, looked upon by almost all the statesmen of the republic as a resource to be cherished and improved. Gradually, however, as told under other titles of this work, the project of drawing revenue from the public lands was abandoned; and for the past two generations it has been the object of the government to promote the appropriation of the public lands by individual citizens, on the payment of a merely nominal price, or of merely the fees of registration. This policy was announced by President Jackson, in his message of 1832, in which he said, "It seems to me to be our true policy that the public lands shall cease, as soon as practicable, to be a source of revenue: and that they be sold to settlers, in limited parcels, at a price barely sufficient to reimburse the United States the expense of the present system, and the cost arising under our Indian contracts."

—In the respect of the proportion of revenue drawn from state domains and state enterprise, M. Leroy Beaulieu offers the following contrast between England and Prussia: "The one has, so to speak, no revenues from domains; what remains of such revenues constitutes but an infinitesimal part of its vast budget. Moreover, it does not appear desirous of creating such a revenue. The other nation, on the contrary, while relying upon taxation for the greater part of its revenue, nevertheless draws sums relatively enormous, in part from the private estates of the crown, in part from industries which it carries on subject to competition, and in part even from floating capital which it has placed at home or abroad. This nation, moreover, appears not the least in the world desirous of abandoning this system; it seems, on the contrary, to wish to extend it." Prussia, remarks this excellent writer on finance, is agriculteur, industriel, entrepreneur de transports. The following is his summary of the revenue of Prussia from this general class of resources, during the year under discussion:

Extending this comparison to the countries of Europe generally, M. Maurice Block presents the following instructive table:

—III. We reach, now, the class of public revenues which are derived from sources which we have indicated by the term quasi taxes. The distinction between these sources of revenue and taxes proper, on the one hand, or certain lucrative prerogatives, on the other, is not always clearly marked; yet, in general, it is believed that the classification adopted is a convenient one. Under this general title we note the following: 1. Monopolies. These have played a most important part in the history of public revenues, and, in spite of the spirit of the age, which is strongly opposed to exclusive privileges of production or of sale, still form a prominent feature in the budget of many of the most progressive nations of Europe. Monopolies may be commercial, industrial or financial. The distinction between the monopolies of the past and those of the present day is very marked. Formerly, monopolies were granted, for the profit of the government, to persons or corporations, to carry on a vast variety of operations, great and small alike,85 most of which were susceptible of individual management.

—The study, not of finance but of political economy (for the distinction is one important to be observed), has freed industry and trade from monopolies of the order of those of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The monopolies of to-day rest upon a few great industries, carefully selected for their fiscal capabilities; and these, by preference, such as naturally tend toward monopoly, for example, banking or railway traffic. A few articles of manufacture of exceptional "richness" as the subjects of monopoly, such as opium, tobacco, salt and matches, have been hit upon by the governments of several European countries. The manufacture of tobacco is a state monopoly in France, Italy, Spain and Austria. Even the imperious will of Prince Bismarck has, however, failed to introduce this monopoly into the fiscal system of the German empire. The government monopoly of this article was established in France in 1674. During the revolution, under the powerful impulse experienced toward the removal of all restrictions upon industry and society, the constituent assembly abolished the monopoly, and threw open the manufacture to competition; but sought still to retain the revenue previously derived from this source, by imposing a requirement of licenses for the manufacture. This measure was followed by the rapid diminution of receipts; and in 1810 Napoleon restored the monopoly, conferring upon the régie the combined rights of the purchase of tobacco in the leaf, and of the manufacture and sale of the article for consumption. In 1864 the gross receipts were, in francs, 220,000,000, and the expenses of administration, 66,000,000; net receipts, 154,000,000 francs. In 1877 the gross receipts had risen to 312,000,000 francs.

—A most instructive lesson in finance is furnished by the recent experience of the government of France in enforcing the monopoly of the manufacture of matches, the government having been completely baffled, in its earlier efforts, through the ease of illicit manufacture in the case of this article, nothing being required for the purpose but "a small quantity of phosphorous paste and a bundle of wood." The student of fiscal science will be well repaid by reading the Paris correspondence of the "London Economist" on this subject, extending through 1874, 1875 and 1876.

—2. Lotteries. These only require to be mentioned, as a source of revenue largely made use of in the past by nearly all governments, and still constituting a not unimportant feature of the budgets of many countries. "The profit which the public draws from lotteries," wrote Hamilton, "may be considered as a tax on the spirit of gaming, and added to the amount of other taxes." While lotteries afford a most effective means of securing revenue in the immediate instance, there can be no question that, in their ultimate effect, they reduce the fiscal capabilities of a people, by discouraging patient and steady industry, and by weakening the instincts of frugality and abstinence.

—3. Another quasi tax, once widely in exercise, but now restrained and confined, and in almost all civilized states wholly discontinued, except in the event of warlike operations, is purveyance, defined by Blackstone as the "right enjoyed by the crown, of buying up provisions and other necessaries, by the intervention of the king's purveyors, for the use of his royal household, at an appraised valuation, in preference to all others, and even without consent of the owner; and also of forcibly impressing the carriages and horses of the subject to do the king's business on the public roads, in the conveyance of timber, baggage and the like, however inconvenient to the proprietor, upon paying him a fixed price." "A prerogative," adds the commentator, "which prevailed pretty generally throughout Europe during the scarcity of gold and silver, and the high valuation of money consequential thereupon."

—4. Another mode of raising a revenue, which partakes largely of the nature of a tax, without bearing its form, is through the exaction of fees for stated or occasional services, performed by the agents of the state. The mention of fees brings up an illustration of what was said at the beginning of this article regarding the difficulty of comparing the revenues of different states. Take the matter of tolls upon bridges and roads. In one community, travel is free; the great cost of maintaining this service goes into the budget of expenditures; and the amount to be collected in taxes is by just so much increased. In another, perhaps an adjacent, community, transport and transit pay tolls, which are employed to maintain the bridges and roads in repair, to pay interest on the cost of construction, and perhaps also to accumulate a sinking fund for the final discharge of the principal sum; and the tolls so paid do not enter at all into the budget. In the same way the expenses of judicial proceedings and of the administration of justice may be met out of the general treasury, in monthly or quarterly salaries, or may be paid, in minuter portions, by individual suitors. According as the one or the other method prevails, the apparent receipts and expenditures of the state will be increased or diminished, without regard to the real burden resting upon the community. The earlier abolition of tolls in the northern than in the southern states of the American Union, in England than in Ireland, for example, is a fact which no student of comparative revenue could safely leave out of account.

—The question of the equity or expediency of judicial fees may be studied with amusement and profit, in the vigorous writings of Jeremy Bentham. Almost in the degree in which communities advance in civilization, are roads and bridges made free to travel; and the expenses of their construction and maintenance assumed by the state, instead of being charged upon the individuals using them.

—5. Coinage.86 Coinage has always been one of the most cherished attributes of sovereignty the world over. Of India, Dr. Hunter says: "Little potentates, who, in every other respect, acknowledged allegiance to Delhi, maintained their independent right of coining. As it was the last privilege to which fallen dynasties clung, so it was the first to which adventurers, rising into power, aspired. While the Mahrattas were still mountain robbers, they set up a mint; and in 1685 the East India company, at a period when it had only a few houses and gardens in Bengal, intrigued for the dignity of striking its own coin."

—But it was not only the right of striking the coin which kings asserted for themselves. The right of debasing the coin, was, says Hallam, "a flower of the crown." The imposition known as moneyage, after the Norman conquest of England, was a tax of one shilling paid every three years by each hearth in the kingdom specifically to induce the king not to use his prerogative in debasing the coin. By the charter of Henry I. this imposition was abolished, but not with any impeachment of the right of the crown to debase the coin at its pleasure. The antiquarian, Ruding, states that, at one period in the reign of Edward IV. the seigniorage on gold money was above 13 per cent. In France the debasement of the coin, under the royal prerogative, was carried to a far greater extent. The seigniorage exacted by John II. rose at times, it is stated, to three-fifths, changing, says Le Blanc, almost every week, and sometimes oftener. Seigniorage, to the extent of the cost of rendering bullion into coin, has received the approval of almost all economists, from Adam Smith down; yet the English government has, since 1666, coined gold of full value free of charge. That government has, however, since 1816, exacted a heavy seigniorage on its silver coin, which is legal tender in only a limited amount. Such a seigniorage on the smaller coin of a country affords a proper source of revenue, either to cover the expense of minting the principal coin, wherever the English system of gratuitous coinage is adopted, or to be brought into the treasury, for the general purposes of government.

—6. The issue of paper money. Paper money is money in respect to which seigniorage is carried out to the full nominal value of the piece. Instead of taking out, say 1 per cent., to cover the cost of coinage; instead of taking out, say, 10 per cent., as tribute to the sovereign, the entire amount of bullion is abstracted, and a paper sign, token or promise is substituted.

—The issue of paper money having legal-tender power, offers a resource to government which has always been found most tempting in periods of great national exigency. Provided the circulation at the outbreak of a war, for instance, consisted of metal money, it would be possible for the government to issue paper to the same denominative amount, replacing the gold or silver in the circulation, whereupon the metal could be exported to buy goods and supplies abroad. According to Ricardo's doctrine of money, the paper, so issued, would not, so long as it did not exceed the full denominative amount of the metal money replaced, necessarily become subject to depreciation. Thereafter, the advantage to government would be limited to the profit of a forced loan, without interest. During the war of the revolution the continental congress had recourse to this expedient. "The United States," says Dr. Ramsey, "for a considerable time derived as much benefit from this paper creation of their own, though without any fixed funds for its support or redemption, as would have resulted to them from the gift of as many Mexican dollars." In 1862-4 the United States issued several hundred millions of dollars, in payment for services or supplies, of which it enjoyed the use without payment of interest until 1879. The value of the use of that amount of capital, for that term of years, was, in effect, levied upon the people of the United States, by a species of irregular and doubtless very mischievous taxation.

—The issue of paper money without legal-tender power, its circulation to be secured by the offer of government to receive it in payment of taxes, and to redeem it on demand, is quite a different thing. This is not open to any grave economical objections. Under the title of treasury notes, such issues frequently took place in the fiscal history of the United States, long before the exigencies of the war of secession caused the issue of the legal-tender "greenbacks."

—IV. Taxation, in its Various Forms. Public contributions may be exacted in three ways: in service, in products, or in money. 1. By services. This was the original form of taxation, and corresponds closely to the ideal tax upon faculty, as distinguished from the tax upon income, upon realized wealth or capital, or upon expenditure. In the early history of Greece and Rome the citizen served his country in the army, as a matter of direct personal obligation, irrespective of payment. The custom of paying the soldiery was not introduced into Athens until the age of Pericles; and did not become general throughout Greece for more than a generation afterward. It was not until the siege of Veji that the practice was introduced into the Roman armies. After the downfall of the Roman empire, the institution of the feudal system created a national militia which was adequate to wars carried on with the lance, the sword, the pike and the crossbow. The introduction of gunpowder was soon followed by the creation of mercenary armies, and by the conversion of the military obligation of the mass of citizens into a fiscal obligation for the support of those armies. The historian Robertson attributes this general change in Europe to the long wars waged by the powers which disputed the mastery of Italy.

—Curiously enough, within the present century, and especially within the last half of the century, we have seen the obligation of personal service revived and enforced upon a scale which dwarfs all precedent instances in history. The legions of Rome were but a handful to the hosts which are now kept permanently under arms or hourly subject to call from headquarters. Almost universally, the great powers which are prepared to dispute the supremacy of Europe, and the smaller nations that live in apprehension of being overwhelmed by their gigantic neighbors, have abandoned, as too costly and too dilatory, the attempt to keep up armies by a system of voluntary enlistment, and have resorted to the rule of universal personal obligation. England stands almost alone, to-day, in maintaining the system of mercenary soldiership. Within the past eighteen years the "blood tax" has grown to be the greatest tax levied in the world. "It is computed," wrote Mr. Hume, a century ago, "that in all European nations the proportion between soldiers and people does not exceed 1: 100." According to M. le Faure, the armies of Europe, on a war footing, amounted, in 1875, to 9,333,000, the immediately disposable forces of the German empire, alone, being 2,800,000.

—The difference between the cost of armies maintained on the compulsory principle and those kept up by recruiting, is a tax which makes no figure in the budget, and does not enter into the accounts of receipts and expenditure. Yet it is a tax often of the most distressing character. Indeed, the opinion was expressed in the beginning of the present article, that not one of the great military nations of Europe could, by the utmost exertion of its fiscal powers, support its existing army if it were compelled to go into the market for labor and hire the services it now commands. This element is rapidly increasing the difficulty of ascertaining the comparative cost of government, for it is eminently characteristic of taxes by personal service that their real value can never be ascertained. M. Garnier speaks of impôts lout à fait latents; qui ne rapportent rien au fisc et qui n'en pèsent pas moins sur les populations. Such, eminently, is the obligation of military service. Of course the weight of it, measured by the loss it inflicts, will vary greatly according to the occupations of the people, whether engaged in manufactures and commerce, or in agriculture; according to the severity with which military requirements are enforced, and penalties for delinquency exacted; according to the spirit which presides over headquarters, and passes down to animate commanders and staff. Even in a purely agricultural community how great a difference will be made by a call to field manœuvres ten days before, or ten days after, harvest;87 or by the requirement of brigade and division evolutions, instead of company drill!

—While, thus, one primitive form of tax by personal service has recently sprung into unexampled importance, another, once of vast extent, has sunk almost out of the fiscal system of Europe. This is the road tax. "Up to the reign of Louis XV.," says De Tocqueville, "the highroads were not repaired at all, or were kept in repair at the cost of the state and of the roadside landowners; it was at that period that the plan of keeping them in repair at the expense of the peasantry was commenced. It seemed so excellent a mode of securing good roads without paying for them, that in 1737 a circular of the comptroller general applied it to the whole of France. Thenceforth, proportionately to the extension of trade and the increased desire for good roads, corvées were extended and increased. In ceasing to be seigniorial and becoming royal, corvées were gradually applied to all public works. In 1719 they were exacted for the construction of barracks. 'The parishes must send their best workmen,' said the ordinance, 'and give up all other work for this.' Corvées were also exacted for the conveyance of convicts to the galleys, and of beggars to charitable institutions, and for the transport of military baggage when troops were to be moved from station to station."

—Turgot gives a pitiful account of the burden of this exaction in connection with the removal of troops. "The distance to be traversed is," he says, "often five, six and sometimes ten or fifteen leagues. Three days are consumed for the journey and the return. The sum allowed is not one-fifth the value of the labor. These corvées are almost invariably required in the summer, during harvest time. The oxen are almost always overdriven, and often come home sick. The work is done in the most disorderly manner; the peasantry are continually a prey to the violence of the soldiery. Officers habitually exact more than the law allows; they sometimes compel farmers to yoke saddle horses to carts, whereby the animals may be seriously lamed. Soldiers will insist on riding in the carts which are already heavily laden; and, in their impatience at the slow gait of the oxen, will prick them with their swords, while, if the farmer complains, he is roughly handled."

—The above affords an excellent illustration of the remark already made, that the weight of taxes by personal service can never be truly estimated. Were the requisition, in an agricultural region, to fall upon a time when men and teams would otherwise be idle, the actual net sacrifice would be small. If at an inconvenient season, the greatest waste and confusion may ensue; while in a manufacturing or commercial community, it is wholly impossible to compute the mischief that may be effected by the slightest requirement of personal attendance and personal service.

—In the United States the road tax is still "worked out" to a certain extent, with the general result of bad roads; but in all the more prosperous communities the change to labor hired and paid out of the general treasury has been effected.

—2. The second mode of paying taxes is in produce, or, as we say, "in kind." Mr. Merivale thus describes the Roman system of revenue, in this respect. "In many parts of the empire it was most convenient to make the payment in kind, and the government was long in the habit of accepting large consignments of corn and other raw produce, in place of current coin. These abundant stocks of provisions never wanted consumers while the armies of the republic were maintained on Roman soil; and the urban population, we may believe, were always ready to receive the overflowings of the fiscal granaries, whether government chose to dole them out at a cheaper rate, or to dispense them gratuitously. We may conjecture that the fatal institution of regular distributions of grain originated in this source. The revenues of the state could only be paid in kind; and the ample stocks thus received must sometimes either be given away or thrown away."

—On this system Gibbon remarks: "In the primitive simplicity of small communities, this method may be well adapted to collect the almost voluntary offerings of the people; but it is at once susceptible of the utmost latitude and of the utmost strictness, which, in a corrupt and absolute monarchy, must introduce a perpetual contest between the power of oppression and the arts of fraud."

—In all the English-American colonies this form of contribution to public uses was largely employed. In Massachusetts and Connecticut, for example, taxes might be paid in corn or rye, at fixed rates, or in cattle or beaver; in Maryland and Virginia, tobacco was received. During the war of the revolution, congress, for a brief period, upon the failure of the continental paper money, instituted the system of contribution in kind. On Feb. 25, 1780, it was resolved that the states should be called upon for specific supplies, beef, pork, flour, corn, hay, tobacco, salt, rum, and rice, to be credited at certain fixed rates to the states by which they were furnished. By March, 1781, the scheme of specific supplies had been found so unmanageable that it was abandoned.

—Throughout eastern Europe, in Russia, Hungary, and even in Germany, down to a very recent date, if not to the present time, payments in kind, especially for the support of the army and the church, have formed no inconsiderable portion of the contributions of the peasantry. Mr. Banfield, in his excellent work on the "Organization of Industry," remarks that in Sweden the number of barrels of meal paid away as salaries still "figure in the budget." Mr. Banfield calls attention to the consideration that the system of contributions in kind presupposes an absence of all means of easy and effective communication. "So long as society remains in this state, in which, as all produce is consumed at home, a produce tax is identical with a tax on consumption, there is no choice but to draw directly on this fund for taxation."

—In Turkey, today, the onerous taxes of the government, which are, in reality, rent charges by the state as the proprietor of all lands, are largely collected in kind; and administered as the Turkish system is, with despotic brutality, over a helpless population, it constitutes one of the most important causes of the misery which there prevails. The peasant, forbidden to remove the produce from the soil until the officers of the government have made their inspection, and satisfied themselves of the amount to which the state is entitled, may see his whole harvest rot in the fields while the agents of the treasury are making their leisurely rounds.

—The true view of the economical relations of contributions in kind seems to be that intimated by Gibbon. When such a system grows naturally up among a people in a somewhat primitive condition of society and industry, and is maintained and administered, in good faith and good feeling, by officers coming from the people and responsible to the people, it may be, not only unobjectionable, but positively beneficial, as, under similar circumstances, the payment of taxes in personal service, and indeed, for that matter, as the use of truck payments between master and workmen, may be. But, on the other hand, the truck system, the system of contribution by personal service, and the system of taxes in kind, may, under different conditions, be made the means of the most monstrous exactions, far transcending the capabilities of money taxes, in the respects of hardship and injustice.

—3. The third and now usual mode of paying taxes is in money, the contributor of each individual being determined according to some mode of assessment. In its ultimate effect, however, it should never be forgotten that every tax is a requisition by the state upon the services of its citizens. If money is taken, it is only as the most convenient form (convenient to the state, or to the citizen, or to both) of obtaining services and products; and products are, in the last analysis, embodied services. And in the same connection we may add the remark of M. Garnier, that it is an error, which is at once gross and widely spread, to suppose that the state, the moral personification of the body of citizens, acting through men charged to perform public functions and to minister to public-needs, can possess resources transcendental, inexhaustible, or, indeed, any resources whatsoever, other than those of its citizens, any resources beyond the share it takes of their fortunes and of the products of their industry and labor.

—Inasmuch as Mr. Wells discusses, under its appropriate title, the principle of TAXATION, this paper on PUBLIC REVENUE properly comes here to a close.

REVOLUTION.

REVOLUTION. The word revolution is, in its political signification, so peculiar to the French language, that other languages adopt it without any modification, in default of being able to find a suitable equivalent. The Latin term, which it reproduces phonetically, has never had the same meaning; and the course of things subject to an order of successive changes, as the revolution of the stars, implies a regularity and a kind of predisposition which do not appear to be a necessary condition of political revolutions. The latter, or the changes which take place in public affairs, differ considerably in importance, in extent and in duration, as in their form, their object and their result; but they have generally the characteristic of carrying a certain disturbance into the established order of things, and in our day this disturbance has become a trait sufficiently prominent and grave, for the name of revolution to be applied almost exclusively to political changes in which violence has played a part.

—We must then almost always, in speaking of revolutions, make a distinction between the times preceding and following the French revolution. Before that event, which has become, so to speak, the type with which all others called by the same name are compared, people understood indistinctively by revolutions, either accidental and partial changes in the course of affairs, which all more especially depend on the will of individuals, or the profound and general changes which are brought about by time and the inclinations of the public, and which resemble the dénouement or at least the catastrophe of a long drama, in which neither incidents nor characters have been lacking. It is in the former sense that Montesquieu speaks when he says: "Revolutions occur every ten years in France." He evidently designates by these words the capricious changes caused by individual influences and temporary embarrassment in a government in which neither institutions nor characters have any stability. These frequent changes are more particularly met with in absolute monarchies and pure democracies. Montesquieu adopted the second meaning, and expressed a different thought, when he wrote these lines: "Many centuries are sometimes necessary to pave the way for changes. Events ripen, and lo! the revolution breaks forth. Such are the revolutions of empires upon which great minds love to meditate, and which are the principal subject of the political part of Bossuet's "Discourse on Universal History." When we consider them methodically, connecting them with each other, we cause to enter into the general idea of a revolution the idea of a certain order which popular language seems to exclude from it. However contingent may be the events in which human activity plays the chief part, there are in nature and in the destiny of man general causes, unceasingly renewed, which in the long run, combine to produce general effects susceptible of being foreseen in their aggregate, or at least of being explained by the sagacity of the statesman, of the publicist and of the historian; and these real facts appear, after they have been accomplished, impressed with a stamp of a relative necessity which is nothing but the force of things, that is to say, the natural bond between causes and their effects. But among these causes it must never be forgotten that the principal one, on this earth of ours, will always be that free cause called man.

—But it is hard to give a date in history to revolutions as thus understood. For their origin is in the depths of the past, and in this sense one might say that they are always preparing and never finished, However, a distinction has been made, and rightly so, between the, so to speak, perpetual revolution which is the slow work of ages, and the distinct manifestations, the special crises which occur in the history of peoples, and which attest in a palpable manner the work of time and the condition to which the course of ages carries powers, laws and customs, or minds and things. Then, events having ripened, some incident, a personal mistake, a fortuitous fancy, a profound scheme, in short, a determination of the will of individuals or of the masses, provokes a serious change in the state which concerns either the government or society, and transforms one or the other in a lasting manner. It was outbursts of this kind which men have in mind when they speak of the Dutch, English or American revolution. These names designate various limited series of facts sufficiently connected with each other easily to form a harmony, and which can be connected with direct causes, the date of which is assignable. We can scarcely conceive of this sort of revolution without the intervention of force, acting outside the law. The news so often received in our time of a revolution accomplished at a given moment upon a point of the inhabited globe, suggests immediately the idea of a more or less rapid change, effected either in the government, or in society, and in which violence, or the threat of it, has not been wanting, The same change, lawfully effected, would be called a reform.

—It is this intervention of force, almost inevitable in a trial of this kind, this character of illegality and violence, which makes all revolution a very grave matter for both the conscience and the reason. Even when arising from serious causes, a revolution is always a formidable and extreme measure, which should be neither lightly undertaken, easily accepted, nor blindly amnestied, no matter what the object of it, were it even the restoration of order or that of liberty. These coups d'état, even when the work of a nation, are, in internal politics, what war is in international law; and the citizens or the powers who hazard a revolution without necessity or justice, incur the same responsibility as the authors of a war which is neither just nor necessary. Independently, then, of the lawfulness of the end, the first and absolute condition of every political undertaking, the use of force, constitutes the dubious point in all questions of war or of revolution. The nature, the duration, the intensity, the success of a means odious in itself and only exceptionally licit, should be well weighed before solving the problem which is imposed upon whomsoever intends to decide the fate of men by arms.

—The part played by force in all revolutions has made its name suspicious to a large number of upright and dispassionate minds, of whose scruples and weaknesses parties and powers often take advantage. It is thus that a certain school has striven to use this abstract expression of revolution in a bad sense. We often read that such or such a cause, such or such an enterprise, would succeed if revolution does not meddle with it. This designedly equivocal form of speech tends to decry with good citizens a certain aggregate of ideas and sentiments which brought about the liberal revolutions of which this age has afforded so many examples. At bottom it is intended, under the name of revolution to proscribe the so-called principles of 1789, that is to say, of the revolution of July 14th, in France. This language is a mask which must be torn away. If, on the contrary, the only object be to put people on their guard against violence in the passions and the acts which is too frequently the accompaniment and the ruin of revolutions, it is not these latter principles which are to be condemned en masse, but the revolutionary spirit. This last epithet, invented by the English and the Americans, and which is used among them in a neutral sense as the adjective of the noun revolution, has, with the French, hardly any but an odious sense. The revolutionary spirit may thus continue to be understood as a spirit which seeks revolutions without scruple, without measure and without choice. As the dictatorial spirit differs from the governmental spirit, and the soldierly spirit from the warlike, so should the liberal spirit be distinguished from the revolutionary spirit. The first dreads revolutions, labors to avoid them, and has recourse to them only in the last extremity; the second seeks them, paves the way for them; it commences with them, and offers to itself as an end what is only a last resort. These distinctions, always ignored, should be always insisted on and constantly called to mind. Thus, in political history, we must distinguish the revolution of the ages, or that long life of humanity, sown with innumerable events which conduct it, as it were, from station to station toward an unknown goal; then, the changes in the divisions of universal society, or in the civil and moral constitution of special political societies, changes which are brought about in the course of centuries, and which are called revolutions; then again we must distinguish those revolutions which are but the crises of the chronic condition which gives a new aspect to affairs, or those abrupt changes, the work of an accidental will or of a fortuitous circumstance. In short, for nearly ninety years, since the era opened by the French revolution, the word revolution designates more especially such of these reformatory changes as have for their object the progress of liberty and equality. The reactions of which they are often the cause are revolutions in an inverse sense, and are often, for this reason, called counter-revolutions. A revolution lawful in its aim, just in its principles, moderate in its acts, happy in its results, and durable in its work, is the political ideal which the nineteenth century seems to be pursuing.

REVOLUTION, The

REVOLUTION, The (IN U. S. HISTORY), the name commonly given in the United States to that which is elsewhere called the American revolution, 1775-83.

—I.: UNTIL 1760. The imperial development of the British constitution was for centuries very steady. The first strain upon it came from the conquest of Ireland. Wales and Scotland were tacitly or formally absorbed in the kingdom of Great Britain, in which the parliament had fairly defined rights: Ireland remained a foreign and allied or subject kingdom, in which the British parliament had all the rights which it could succeed in maintaining. The result was the genesis of the idea that the British parliament was in some sense an imperial parliament, with undefined power to legislate for those portions of the empire which were outside of its original jurisdiction.

—English colonization in America brought with it a far more severe strain, for which the British constitution was totally unprepared. A new order of things, the indefinite extension of the empire, was to be provided for; and unfortunately the task of providing for it was assumed by a legislative body whose constituents and members were equally purchasable in open market, and were equally indifferent to any consideration except present interest. To these the grand idea of an imperial parliament, clothed by the lofty patriotism of Burke and Chatham in language well worthy of it, meant only the opportunity to escape part of the burden of present taxation by transferring it to the colonies. They undertook to make an every-day matter of that which Burke and Chatham would have reserved to meet some overmastering emergency; and they lost the colonies.

—The English colonists in America always insisted that they had lost none of their hereditary rights by migrating from the king's British to the king's American dominions (see UNITED STATES, I.); and that they were still entitled to the "free privileges of free-born Englishmen," which the king's word had confirmed to their fathers and to them, the right to personal liberty, to private property, and to representation in the taxing body. They acknowledged that distance made it practically impossible for them to be represented in parliament; and they therefore insisted that their taxes must be levied by their own parliaments, the colonial assemblies. Two irreconcilable theories of the constitution were thus gradually developed in Great Britain and in America; and, after 1760, circumstances brought them face to face, and compelled a settlement by force.

—The American Theory. The American theory really made the empire a confederation, the king being the bond of union. In his kingdom of Great Britain the king had certain prerogatives, such as the power to make peace, war and treaties; while parliament alone had the power to grant or withhold supplies and to levy taxes to provide them. In his other kingdoms, Ireland, New York, Massachusetts, or South Carolina, the respective parliaments had just as much power, and the king just the same prerogatives, as in Great Britain. But in each kingdom the jurisdiction of the parliament was territorially limited: the parliament of Great Britain had no more rightful jurisdiction in Ireland or in Massachusetts than the parliaments of Ireland or Massachusetts had in Great Britain. Franklin formulates the theory as follows: "Our kings have ever had dominions not subject to the English parliament. At first the provinces of France, of which Jersey and Guernsey remain, always governed by their own laws, appealing to the king in council only, and not to our courts or the house of lords. Scotland was in the same situation before the union. It had the same king, but a separate parliament, and the parliament of England had no jurisdiction over it. Ireland the same in truth, though the British parliament has usurped a dominion over it. The colonies were originally settled in the idea of such extrinsic dominions of the king, and of the king only. Hanover is now such a dominion." "America is not part of the dominions of England, but of the king's dominions. England is a dominion itself, and has no dominions." "Their only bond of union is the king." "The British legislature are undoubtedly the only proper judges of what concerns the welfare of that state; the Irish legislature are the proper judges of what concerns the Irish state; and the American legislatures of what concerns the American states respectively." The Americans felt that the words "colony" and "colonist" were themselves misleading, as importing some superiority of privileges in the Englishmen who had remained at home; and they maintained that every charter granted by the king was a compact between him and the people of a new kingdom.

—The British Theory. On the contrary, the whole feeling of Great Britain spoke in Grenville's pithy statement that "colonies are only settlements made in distant parts of the world for the improvement of trade, and that they would be intolerable except on the conditions contained in the acts of navigation." The colonists, then, did not escape from the jurisdiction of parliament by migrating. Parliament might allow them a temporary latitude of self-government; but its absolute power, though latent, could be called forth at any moment, and the colonists, in the view of the law, were still Englishmen and under control of the British parliament. This theory was maintained on the grounds, 1, that the omnipotence of parliament was not limited by the four seas which bounded Great Britain; but that, by the extension of the empire, parliament had acquired a nobler position as an imperial body, with, as Burke expresses it, "a reserved power in the empire to supply any deficiency that may weaken, divide and dissipate the whole"; 2, that the colonies were "virtually represented" in parliament, since each member of that body represented not a particular constituency, but the whole empire and all its interests; 3, that the colonists had no more claim to a more direct representation than Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, and other unrepresented cities, but must be content with the constitution as it was, 4, that it was patently unjust that the expensive duty of maintaining fleets and armies for the defense of the whole empire should be imposed upon the imperial parliament without the corresponding right to insure proportional contributions from the parts of the empire; and 5, that the colonists themselves had always acknowledged the right of parliament to levy American customs duties, from which the right to levy internal taxes could not logically be distinguished. This last assertion could not be disputed, and when it was seriously advanced as an argument it put an end to the tacit compromise which will next be considered.

—Compromise. I will readily be perceived that these two theories were irreconcilable, and that both were equally impracticable. On the American theory it would have required superhuman tact and discretion in the king to avoid constant and ultimately fatal conflicts with his twenty different parliaments; on the British theory, the parliament would have become, under the guise of imperialism, an exasperating instrument of British selfishness. The American Union has solved its similar territorial problem by giving congress the imperial power over the territories, while holding out to the latter the promise of admission to the national government as soon as they shall develop the necessary powers and interests. (See ORDINANCE of 1787, TERRITORIES.) Until 1760 the colonies and the mother country lived under a tacit compromise of a far clumsier sort. The home government made no attempt to assert any power to levy taxes within the limits of the colonies; these were levied by the colonial assemblies, on a requisition, or request, from the king, through one of his secretaries or the governor. The supplies voted were always liberal, and sometimes so lavish that parliament voted to return a part of them. On the other hand, the colonies made no objection to the exercise by parliament of complete control over foreign trade, and in many cases over domestic trade also; and no resistance was made to the abrogation or alteration of the Massachusetts charter in 1685, 1691 and 1724. The navigation act of 1651 confined the colonial export trade to Great Britain in English-built ships; and in 1663 this was extended to the import trade also, so that the colonies could legally trade only to and from Great Britain. (See NAVIGATION LAWS.) In the commercial colonies, however, these laws were felt but little before 1760; smuggling and bribery of custom house officers opened the free foreign trade which the laws forbade. In 1672 duties were imposed on the trade from one colony to another. In 1699 the colonists were prohibited from exporting their wool, yarn or woolen manufactures to any place whatever. In 1719 the house of commons formally condemned all American manufactures as tending to independence. In 1732 the export of American hats was prohibited. In 1750, rolling mills, iron furnaces and forges in the colonies were declared public nuisances, to be suppressed by the governors. At first all these restrictions were submitted to, partly from indifference, as they were not extensively felt, and partly from inability to resist; but for some years after 1760 the right of parliament to impose them was still acknowledged, this being the last point which the colonists were prepared to yield. So late as 1774, congress, in its declaration of rights, "cheerfully consented" to such parliamentary restrictions on commerce as should be intended in good faith to benefit the whole empire. When it was at last found that this concession was only accepted as a basis for further demands, it was withdrawn, and all the colonists were ready to echo Franklin's language: "That is a wicked guardian and a shameless one, who first takes advantage of the weakness incident to minority, cheats and imposes on his pupil, and, when the pupil comes of age, urges those very impositions as precedents to justify continuing them and adding others." This language, though natural, was to a great extent unjust. The fault really lay in that narrow colonial system which was then and long afterward the law of every European nation, and is still a part of the English theory, though it is very seldom enforced in practice.

—II.: 1760-66. The open struggle between the two theories, which began in 1760-63, came from an unlucky combination of causes: the accession of a king who was determined to "reign"; the influence of the old whig notion of the omnipotence of parliament; the high feeling of a nation flushed with successful foreign war; the increase of the national debt, and the consequent necessity of an increase in the revenue; the increase of wealth in the American colonies; and the comparative meagreness of receipts from that quarter of the empire. The initiation of the struggle was facilitated by the fact that there was practically no denial in Great Britain of the abstract right to tax the colonies. Even when the stamp act was introduced in parliament, the opposition was publicly challenged to make such denial, and not a voice was raised to make it, though many, like Burke, considered it highly impolitic to exercise the right, and wished to restrain the controlling power of parliament to commercial regulations and to cases of supreme necessity. This, indeed, was the original ground of the colonists themselves, but it was a poor barrier to the usurpations of a hungry parliament.

—In 1760 the first effort was made to enforce the navigation act. Instructions were sent to the American custom house officers to spare nothing of the revenue laws, and to obtain from the courts "writs of assistance" in order to enter houses and stores, and search for goods which had not paid duty or were forbidden to be imported. The first application for such writs was at Salem in November, 1760, and their issue and enforcement at once brought a few radical men, like Otis, to deny parliament's right to levy the duties. In the great commercial colony, Massachusetts, colonial and loyalist parties were at once formed. The former was headed by James Otis, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Oxenbridge Thacher, James Bowdoin (afterward governor), and Thomas Cushing. The latter was headed by Francis Bernard, the governor; Thomas Hutchinson, the lieutenant governor, a native and the best historian of Massachusetts, the ablest royalist leader, but unscrupulous in method; Andrew Oliver, Hutchinson's brother-in-law; Jeremiah Gridley, attorney general; and Timothy Ruggles. Behind these stood the great mass of royal officeholders in the colonies; much of the subsequent action of the ministries must be attributed to their persistent advice to establish a regular army in the colonies, and tax the colonies for its support.

—Feb. 23, 1763, Charles Townshend became first lord of trade, with the administration of the colonies, and he inaugurated, with the support of the ministry, the new system of colonial government. It was announced by authority that there were to be no more requisitions from the king to the colonial assemblies for supplies, but that the colonies were to be taxed by act of parliament. Colonial governors and judges were to be paid by the crown; they were to be supported by a standing army of twenty regiments; and all the expenses of this force were to be paid by parliamentary taxation. It is unnecessary to follow all the windings of British politics for the next few years: the above programme was the chart of all the ministries, which each followed as closely as it dared. Gov. Hutchinson tells us that the American use of the terms whig and tory dates from this step. (See AMERICAN WHIGS.)

—In March the naval officers on the American coast were given the duties and fees of custom house officers, in order to enforce the navigation acts. In April the head of the ministry, Bute, retired, and George Grenville took his place under pledge to the programme above. May 5, the lords of trade were requested to sketch for the ministry a safe and easy method of parliamentary taxation of the colonies, but Shelburne, the head of the board of trade, declined to commit himself to any plan. Sept. 23, by direction of Grenville and North, the first secretary of the treasury (Jenkinson) wrote to the commissioners of stamp duties to draft a bill for extending the stamp duties to the colonies. Close investigation has failed to fix the real authorship of the stamp act, but the responsibility for it rests most probably on Jenkinson. March 9, 1764, Grenville announced that he intended to introduce the stamp act at the next session; and in the meantime he suggested to the colonial agents in London that their assemblies should formally approve it, in order to make a precedent for their being consulted in future taxation, or that they should propose some more palatable mode of parliamentary taxation. But the principle was carefully asserted: a bill of April 5 purported, for the first time, to "grant duties in the colonies and plantations of America."

—The stamp duty was not objected to in itself: it was a convenient mode of making a tax collect itself, and for that reason was employed in 1759 by the Massachusetts assembly, and in subsequent years by the new federal government. The objection lay wholly to parliament's power to tax, which was thus forced into the foreground of discussion. In June the Massachusetts assembly sent a circular letter asking the "united assistance" of the other colonies; and during the year nearly all the colonial assemblies petitioned against the new scheme. But the idea of forcible resistance does not seem to have occurred to the king, to the ministry, to parliament, to the colonial agents, or to the colonial assemblies. All believed that the tax would execute itself. The act was framed, imposing stamp duties on legal documents, marriage licenses, and publications of every description, and making offenses against it cognizable in the admiralty courts, without a jury. Petitions against it were refused a hearing, on account of an ancient and convenient rule forbidding the reception of petitions against a money bill. The bill was passed with hardly any opposition in either house; the king was by this time a lunatic, and his signature was attached by a commission; and with this evil augury the stamp act became law, March 22, 1765. With it went a suggestive act to authorize the quartering of troops in the colonies, and to require the assemblies to furnish them with subsistence.

—The first answer came from the Virginia assembly, which adopted a series of resolutions offered by Patrick Henry, May 30. These declared that the colony had never forfeited and had always enjoyed the right to be taxed by their own representatives; but the assembly rejected two further resolutions, declaring that the people of the colony were not bound to obey the stamp act, and that he who should obey it would be an enemy to the colony. June 8, the Massachusetts assembly took the more important step of calling a congress of all the colonies. (See STAMP ACT CONGRESS.) Through the summer the resistance took the form of an inchoate revolution. Associations, the "Sons of Liberty," were formed; stamp agents were compelled to resign, either by ostracism, or, in some few cases, by actual violence; and the inflammatory resolutions of public meetings were steadily carrying the assemblies to the point of resistance. Nov. 1, 1765, was the day fixed for the operations of the act to begin; but there were by that time neither stamps nor stamp agents in the colonies, and the judges, like the merchants, were compelled to ignore the absence of stamps upon documents. Hutchinson wrote home that the people were "absolutely without the use of reason."

—In the meantime the opponents of the policy of taxing the colonies had come into power, under the Rockingham ministry, in July, 1765. Their first design was not to repeal, but to modify the act, and make it more acceptable. But when parliament met, its right to tax the colonies was at last denied by some of its own members, though even these still asserted its power to lay duties and regulate trade. Said Pitt: "In an American tax, what do we do? We, your majesty's commons of Great Britain, give and grant to your majesty—what? Our own property? No! We give and grant to your majesty the property of your majesty's commons in America. It is an absurdity in terms"; and he "rejoiced that America had resisted." The majority, however, followed the ministerial programme. The reception of the petitions of the American congress was evaded. A declaratory house resolution was passed, Feb. 10, 1766, by almost unanimous vote, that the king, with the advice and consent of parliament, "had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever." This was followed up by four others: that there had been tumults and insurrections in the colonies; that these had been encouraged by the colonial assemblies; that the assemblies must make recompense for property destroyed; and that the house would sustain the lawful authority of the crown and the rights of parliament, and would favor and protect the loyal people of the colonies. Under cover of this hot fire of resolutions the stamp act was repealed, March 18. The repeal was wholly on the ground of policy, and was accompanied by a declaratory act in two clauses: 1, containing the first resolution above named; and 2, declaring null and void the votes and resolutions of the colonial assemblies in regard to taxation. One of the most valuable incidents in the repeal was the examination of Franklin before the house of commons, Feb. 13. The questions put to him numbered 174; and his answers sum up calmly, but fully, the American theory of the connection between Great Britain and the colonies, and the compromise to which the Americans were willing to agree.

—III.: 1766-70. Hutchinson dates the revolt of the colonies from the repeal of the stamp act. As soon as the rejoicings over that event had subsided, premonitory symptoms of trouble again began to appear. The Massachusetts assembly refused to make recompense for the losses in the riots without an accompanying bill of indemnity. Other assemblies refused to comply with the act of 1765 for billeting and subsisting the army. In November, 1766, the first declaration that parliament had no right to "legislate" for the colonies was made in the Massachusetts assembly; and there was a growing party everywhere which held to the advanced doctrine of "no legislation without representation." And all this time political events in Great Britain were tending against the colonies. In July, 1766, Chatham had formed a ministry composed mainly of friends of America; but Chatham's continued illness was steadily throwing the real leadership into the hands of the chancellor of the exchequer, Charles Townshend. His political creed he summed up as follows: "I would govern the Americans as subjects of Great Britain. These our children, must not make themselves our allies in time of war, and our rivals in peace." In March, 1767, Chatham really, though not formally, retired from public affairs, and Townshend was master of the situation. He made use now of the parliamentary control over commerce, which colonial assemblies had so often expressly acknowledged: and in July a bill was passed granting duties in America on glass, lead, paints, paper and tea. But the insidiously perilous feature of the act was, that the proceeds were to go into the exchequer, and were to be distributed at the king's pleasure in paying the salaries of governors, judges, and other civil officers. These would thus be, as they had never been before, completely independent of the American assemblies, and not only able but willing to make political war upon them. By other acts, writs of assistance were legalized, and the New York assembly was suspended altogether, until it should obey the billeting act. In September, Townshend died but his mantle fell on Lord North, his successor.

—It was difficult, at first, to find any means of opposition to the new revenue laws. Isolated agreements were indeed made by the people of various districts, to abstain from the use of any of the articles taxed, but these depending on the persistence of individuals, were no safe reliance. Jan. 12, 1768, the Massachusetts assembly formally protested against the new system; and Feb. 11, it sent a circular letter to the other colonies, asking advice. April 21, the colonial office sent a mandate to each of the governors to prorogue the assembly of his colony rather than allow the circular letter to be discussed. To Massachusetts further orders were sent to prorogue the assembly if it should not recant the letter, and to continue the process indefinitely until submission should be made; and in June this penalty was enforced. June 8, four regiments under Gage were ordered to Boston permanently; five vessels took possession of the harbor; and the fort was repaired and occupied. Every petty disturbance, every expression of popular indignation, had been magnified and distorted by colonial officers, until the ministry really believed a rebellion imminent, and took this sure means to provoke it. Even then, it required seven years' wrangling to break the bond of union.

—Massachusetts, however, was now very close to rebellion. Her assembly, like that of several other colonies, had been dissolved; and a convention of town delegates met, Sept. 22, protested against the revenue laws, and petitioned the king. "I doubt whether they have been guilty of an overt act of treason," said the British attorney general, "but I am sure they have come within a hair's breadth of it." In February, 1769, parliament requested the king to have the ring-leaders in Massachusetts sent to England to be tried for treason, under an old statute of Henry VIII. One step further, an attempt to arrest for that purpose, and the rebellion would have begun; but the step was not taken. Nevertheless the troops were left in Boston, a firebrand near a powder magazine; and the next six years are one long record of bickerings between the townspeople and the military, arrests of soldiers for violations of town laws, indictments of officers, even of the commander-in-chief, for "slandering the town of Boston," and similar legal proceedings, blotted by the Boston massacre of March 5, 1770, in which five lives were lost.

—The whole of the year 1769 was taken up by the full development of the colonial claim of rights. The Virginia assembly, May 16, passed a series of resolutions, declaring its right of taxation, of petition, and of concurrence with other colonies, and the right of its people to a trial by a jury of the vicinage; and these, for which the assembly was dissolved, were copied by other assemblies, and the fault met the same punishment. The Massachusetts assembly absolutely refused to make provision for the troops, and was, for that reason, dissolved. Whenever an assembly was dissolved, its members at once formed a non-importation league, so that the agreement not to use taxed articles had become much more general than was to be expected. It was effective enough to extort from the ministry a circular letter, in May, 1769, promising to impose no more such duties, and to abandon all those already imposed, except that of three pence per pound on tea, which yielded about $1,500 per annum of revenue. The repeal, in these terms and to this extent, was formally enacted, April 12, 1770. But there remained the preamble, the declaration of the right and expediency of taxation of the colonies by parliament. This was still to be resisted; and the revolution, as Webster afterward remarked, was fought upon this preamble. The only result of the repeal was the dissolution of the non-importation associations, and the renewal of trade with Great Britain, except in the matter of tea.

—IV.: 1770-83. The first few years of this period are mainly occupied by apparent efforts on the part of the king and the ministry to put the colonists so far in the wrong as to excuse the use of force. The struggle against the carefully guarded and almost pedantically legal methods of the colonies was growing vexatious. In July and September, 1770, the king made preparations to declare martial law in Massachusetts, filled Boston harbor with war vessels, and even seized the castle guarding the harbor, though this had been built by the colony, and the control of it was reserved to the governor by the charter. Still the colonists avoided any open provocation, and there was no fighting except in North Carolina, where the governor, Tryon, provoked and suppressed an "insurrection," and in Rhode Island, where the "Gasper," a revenue cutter, was burned, June 9, 1772, by a boat party from the shore, after she had run aground. The whole period was marked by exasperating legal battles between the governors, under royal instructions, and the various assemblies. In most of the colonies the upper house, or council, was selected by the lower house, with a power of veto by the governor. Whenever persons were selected who had taken part against the parliament, their nominations were vetoed, and the war of retaliation, thus begun, kept the continent in a ferment. In Massachusetts the higher step was taken of paying the salaries of the governor and principal officials directly from the royal treasury, thus not only violating the charter by making them independent of the colony, but provoking a conflict, for it should have been evident that the assembly would never recognize or act with a governor or judges salaried by the crown. This step, like others equally ruinous, was the fruit of constant pressure by the office-holders in America. In December, 1772, Franklin obtained and sent from London to the assembly the treacherous letters of Massachusetts officers, advising these coercive measures, and these did much to undermine all public confidence in the royal civil service. Every one lived in an atmosphere of distrust, more destructive to loyalty than the open excitement produced by the stamp act.

—Nov. 2, 1772, in Boston town meeting, Samuel Adams obtained the appointment of a committee of correspondence with other towns. This was the real opening of the revolution, the installation of the first of those revolutionary bodies which within three years had practically superseded the legitimate governments in the conduct of the struggle. (See NOMINATING CONVENTIONS.) Other towns followed the example; and Virginia laid the basis of the Union, March 12, 1773, by appointing a committee of correspondence with the other colonies.

—All this time the tax on tea had been collected, though it had shrunk to $400 per year. In April, 1773, the East India company applied for permission to export free of duty the ruinously large stock of tea which it had accumulated. This offered a fair opportunity to settle discontent, but Lord North induced parliament to vote the company a drawback of the duties, the repayment of the duties, after May 10, to the company after collection. The duties would thus be collected, the principle maintained, and yet the price of the tea would not be increased. After all, the meanness of this evasion, and of the trap which it attempted to set, seems to have had much to do with the result. It early led to the appointment of revolutionary committees by other colonies, and thus to a union antecedent to the meeting of congress. Consignments of tea were sent to Charleston, Philadelphia, New York and Boston. At Charleston it was stored in damp cellars, and destroyed; at Philadelphia and New York the ships were forced to return; but at Boston the officers would not permit the ships to return without discharging. Dec. 16, the revolutionary committee took further discussion out of the hands of the town meeting, sent a body of men, and threw the tea into the harbor.

—Boston at once became the focus of interest. It had placed itself in the forefront of resistance, and behind it were the revolutionary committees of all the thirteen colonies. Its conduct was noticed severely in the king's speech, March 7, 1774; and on the 31st the Boston port bill became law. It forbade the landing or shipping of goods in Boston after June 1, until the owners of the tea should be recompensed, and the king should be satisfied of the town's future obedience. Lord North also declared in debate that the act would be enforced by the use of the army and navy. Salem was made the capital of the colony, and Marblehead a port of entry. Gage, the commander in-chief for North America, was made civil governor of Massachusetts, with instructions to bring the ring-leaders to punishment.

—The Boston port bill was followed. May 20, by a bill for the government of Massachusetts, which abrogated a large part of the charter. It took away the choice of the council by the lower house; forbade town meetings, except for elections or on the governor's permission; and gave the appointment of sheriffs to the governor, and the selection of juries to the sheriffs. This might have been fairly termed a bill to transfer the de facto government of Massachusetts to revolutionary committees. With it went a supplementary act "for the impartial administration of justice in Massachusetts" by transferring to Nova Scotia or Great Britain the trial of officers or soldiers indicted for murder. Another act legalized the quartering of soldiers in Boston; and another, the "Quebec act," extended the jurisdiction of that province over the whole of that which was afterward called the "Northwest Territory," (see ORDINANCE OF 1787), and to which various colonies laid claim by charter. These were unretraceable steps. The first four called for united resistance by all the colonies which had charters, and by all the colonies which desired charters; the last called for united resistance by all, for this territory was already blindly felt to be the common property of the whole, and the basis of future union.

—Gage arrived May 17. The revolutionary committees all over the country had already begun to obtain a popular suspension of commerce with Great Britain; and the New York committee had proposed a general congress. This last measure met with general approval; and the Massachusetts assembly, June 17, formally proposed it for Sept. 1, at Philadelphia, having first locked the doors to prevent the governor from proroguing them. Two days before, the Rhode Island assembly had chosen delegates to the congress; five days after, Maryland took the still more ultra step of electing delegates by a popular convention or provincial congress. This last step was even more decisive than the calling of a congress. It was imitated in the other colonies during the summer; and though these "provincial congresses" ventured at first no further than the preparation of non-importation agreements, promises of support to the general, or continental, congress, or contributions for the assistance of the people of Boston, they were evidently the germ of rebellion, and within a year were to assume the practical government of their colonies.

—The congress met in Carpenter's hall, Philadelphia, Sept. 5, 1774. (See CONGRESS, CONTINENTAL, for its further history.) Gage had already begun to fortify himself in Boston, and had seized the colony's stores, as if in an enemy's country. False alarms had already led to more than one mustering of the militia of Massachusetts and the neighboring colonies. Nevertheless, the only measure of active resistance adopted by the congress was the preparation of an "American association," Oct. 20, 1774, which was signed by the delegates and then circulated for general signature. It not only bound the signers to non-importation, non-exportation and non consumption of British goods, and to prohibition of the slave trade (see SLAVERY, III.), but it provided for local committees, chosen by popular vote, to enforce the provisions of the association. This was the first effective step toward national union and preparation for war (see EMBARGO), and it is noteworthy that it was taken by general popular action, not by state action; and yet that state lines, and even town boundaries, were carefully observed in its execution. The peculiar combination of national and local government in the United States could hardly be better illustrated. (See NATION, STATE SOVEREIGNTY.)

—From this time revolution in British North America was a certainty. It proceeded steadily at first as a mere protest against, and passive resistance to, the unconstitutional measures of the ministry; then, after April 19, 1775, as a scission of the British empire and the formation of an American nation, George III. being still recognized as its king; then, after July 4, 1776, as the establishment of a self-governing republic under the revolutionary congress, to be succeeded by the articles of confederation and the constitution. (See CONGRESS, CONTINENTAL; FLAG; DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE; CONFEDERATION, ARTICLES OF; WARS; CONSTITUTION; UNITED STATES.)

—See 7-10 Bancroft's United States; 1-3 Hildreth's United States; 1 Pitkin's United States; 1 Tucker's United States; 1-3 Spencer's United States; 1-3 Bryant and Fay's United States; Holmes' Annals of America; 1 Adolphus' History of England; 5 Mahon's History of England; 2, 6 Burke's Works; J. M. Ludlow's War of American Independence; Grahame's History of the United States; Gordon's History of the Independence of the United States; Force's Tracts, and American Archives; Chalmer's Introduction to the Revolt of the American Colonies; Walsh's Appeal; 1 Story's Commentaries; Doyle's American Colonies; Marshall's American Colonies; Lodge's English Colonies in America; Greene's Historical View of the American Revolution; Botta's American Revolution (Otis' trans.); Ramsay's History of the Revolution; Frothingham's Rise of the Republic; Stedman's History of the American War; Niles' Principles and Acts of the Revolution; Moore's Diary of the Revolution; E. Abbott's Revolutionary,Times; Dillon's Historical Evidence; Journals of Congress, 1774-88; 1 Elliot's Debates; 4 Franklin's Works, 162 (his examination), 223, 270, 281, 406; Sparks' Writings of Washington, Correspondence of the Revolution, and Diplomatic Correspondence of the Revolution; Trescot's Diplomacy of the Revolution; Lyman's Diplomatic History of the United States; 1 Bishop's History of American Manufactures; Wells' Life of Samuel Adams; 2, 3, 5 John Adams' Works; for authorities on special topics see Winsor's Reader's Handbook of the Revolution, and C. K. Adams' Manual of Historical Literature, 605; authorities under articles referred to MASSACHUSETTS, and the other original states.

RHODE ISLAND

RHODE ISLAND, one of the original thirteen states of the American Union. Its settlement was begun at Providence in 1636 by Roger Williams, as a place of refuge for persons banished from Massachusetts. In 1637 a band of antinomians, also banished from Massachusetts, made a settlement on Rhode Island; and the traces of this double settlement are still seen in the official title, "the state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations," and in the two capitals, Providence and Newport, in which the legislature meets alternately. The title to these and other settlements was at first derived from the Indians by purchase. Parliament was then the ruling power in Great Britain, and its lord high admiral of the colonies, Warwick, granted Williams a patent, March 14, 1643, which was renewed by Charles II. in 1663, as stated below.

—BOUNDARIES. The patent of 1643 assigned as limits the ocean on the south, the Plymouth and Massachusetts patents on the east and north, and the Narragansett Indian territory on the west. The charter of 1663 was more definite. The southern and northern boundaries remained as before. The western boundary was to be the Pawcatuck river to its head, and thence due north to the Massachusetts line. Originally the eastern boundary of Connecticut (see that state) was to have been the Narragansett river or bay; but this charter stipulated, with the consent of the Connecticut agents, that the Pawcatuck river should be "taken and deemed to be" the Narragansett river mentioned in the Connecticut boundary. Connecticut repudiated the action of her agent, claimed jurisdiction over the Narragansett country, east of the Pawcatuck, both by her charter and by conquest from the Indians, and pressed her claim by all legal means, by appeal to the New England union, and by preparations for force. Rhode Island's threat to appeal to the king brought about an agreement May 12, 1703, to run the boundary from the head of the Pawcatuck to the southwest corner of the Warwick purchase, and thence due north to the Massachusetts line. This was confirmed by the crown in 1727, and after sixty-five years of quarreling the line was settled, Sept. 27, 1728, and confirmed by both colonies in 1742. A new survey was made in 1840.

—The eastern boundary assigned was a line from the ocean three miles to the east of Narragansett bay and Seacunck, Blackstone, or Seekonk, river "to the falls called Patuckett falls," and thence due north to the Massachusetts line. But Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies claimed a large part of Rhode Island as lying within their patents; the former claimed Pawtuxet and Warwick; the latter, Aquidneck and the islands. Had these and the Connecticut claims on the west been allowed, very little would have been left of Rhode Island. Only the colony's stubborn resistance carried it safely through a struggle of more than a century, during which feeling ran so high as to exclude Rhode Island from political association with her neighbors. (See NEW ENGLAND UNION.) In 1703 the western boundary was fixed in favor of Rhode Island by royal commissioners, and in 1726 their award was confirmed by the crown. In 1741 the disputed eastern boundary was decided in the same way very nearly in accordance with Rhode Island's claim; and in 1746-7 the award was confirmed by the crown. Rhode Island thus gained its present northeast township, and five others on the southeast. The boundary between the two states was not finally settled until March 1, 1862, when it was so run as to throw Fall River into Massachusetts and Pawtucket into Rhode Island.

—CONSTITUTIONS. The provisions of the charter of 1663 gave the colony a "democratical" form of government. No appeal or veto power was reserved to the crown; and even the clause which forbade the making of laws contrary to the laws of England was only to extend so far as the nature and constitution of the colony would permit. The governor and general assembly were to be chosen by the people, and their statutes were final. Rhode Island was thus from the beginning a self-governing community. At first the legislature had but one house, but in 1696 a law was passed forming two houses: the council, or governor's assistants, as the upper house, and the delegates as the lower house. In 1724 a property qualification was established for the right of suffrage. It was subsequently modified, until in 1762 it was settled at £40 ($134) freehold, or 40 shillings ($7.50) annual rent. Only freemen with this qualification could vote or hold office, except that the eldest son of a freeman needed no qualification.

—This charter was the organic law of the colony and state until 1843. It was suspended by common consent during James II.'s quo warranto warfare upon the colony charters, but was quietly resumed after his abdication. It was not altered at the revolution, except by a law of the legislature in May, 1776, substituting allegiance to the colony for allegiance to the king.

—A very simple and excellent constitution was framed by a state convention at Newport and East Greenwich, Sept. 12-Nov. 5, 1842. It was ratified, Nov. 21-23, by a popular vote of 7,032 to 59, and went into force in May, 1843. It gave the right of suffrage to males over twenty-one, on the old property qualification of $134, or on the annual payment of a state tax of one dollar. The governor, a house of representatives of not more than seventy-two members, and a senate of one member from each town or city, were all to be elected annually, and there were few restraints on their action. In 1864 an amendment was made, to allow the state's volunteer soldiers to vote for presidential electors, congressmen and state officers.

—GOVERNORS. Nicholas Cooke, 1775-8; William Greene, 1778-86; John Collins, 1786-90; Arthur Fenner, 1790-1805; Isaac Wilbour, 1805-7; James Fenner, 1807-11; William Jones, 1811-17; N. R. Knight, 1817-21; Wm. C. Gibbs, 1821-4; James Fenner, 1824-31; Lemuel H. Arnold, 1831-3; John B. Francis, 1833-8; William Sprague, 1838-9; Samuel W. King, 1840-43; James Fenner, 1843-5; Charles Jackson, 1845-6; Byron Diman, 1846-7; Elisha Harris, 1847-9; H. B. Anthony, 1849-51; Philip Allen, 1851-3; William W. Hoppin, 1853-7; Elisha Dyer, 1857-9; Thos. G. Turner, 1859-60; William Sprague, 1860-63; James Y. Smith, 1863-6; Ambrose E. Burnside, 1866-9; Seth Padelford, 1869-73; Henry Howard, 1873-5; Henry Lippitt, 1875-7; C. C. Van Zandt, 1877-80; Alfred H. Littlefield, 1880-83; Augustus O. Bourn, 1883-4.

—POLITICAL HISTORY. The natural conformation, by which Narragansett bay penetrates almost every part of the state, had from an early period developed a large commercial interest; but the apportionment of representation in the legislature among the towns gave the agricultural interest complete control of legislation. For twenty years before the outbreak of the revolution there had been a constant struggle between the town and country, hard money and paper money, parties, led by Samuel Ward and Stephen Hopkins, respectively. The steady and successful struggle of a century against the encroachments of two powerful neighbors had kept up a strong state feeling, which, combined with the rivalry of the state's two great interests, made Rhode Island the brake on every effort at a closer union among the states. On every grant of additional-power for which congress asked (see CONFEDERATION, ARTICLES OF) Rhode Island put a veto which was final, since any change in the articles required the approval of every state. The agricultural representatives were determined, 1, to retain the power of laying duties on imports, in order to lighten state taxes; 2, to retain the power of compelling the commercial classes to accept as a legal tender the depreciated paper currency of the state; and 3, to resist any change in the national constitution which should curtail these privileges. Hence, though the urban population was warmly federalist, the state was not represented in the convention of 1787, and the legislature refused even to call a state convention to consider the new constitution, remitting it to the town meetings, when it was overwhelmingly defeated. The new question increased the division of feeling so much that the legislature passed a bill to compel holders of state securities to accept five shillings in the pound for them, and removed the state judges who