condition that they become the servants of the poor; and it will not be found possible to reconcile democracy to the accumulation of wealth in the hands of those who refuse to become the benefactors of the people. To seek to improve the condition of working-men and working-women by all lawful means, whether the effort be made by themselves or by national and State legislatures enlightened by the wisdom of the best and fairest minds, is to do patriotic work, is to labor for one of the principal objects for which such a government as ours exists.

But will the labor organizations be able to promote the interests of working-men? He who bears the burden best knows how heavy it is, and it surely cannot lead to harm that they who contribute most to our material well-being should tell us at what cost of suffering and sorrow we have comfort and indulge in luxury. We profess to believe that men are brothers and equal, and we thereby commit ourselves to labor to make them so. As yet the masses of those who toil are Christian, and believe that obedience to law is inseparable from their own and all men's welfare; and a popular government, if it would last, must leave nothing undone that may keep such faith from becoming impossible. Since the mass of mankind are savages, barbarians, and slaves, it may be that a free and enlightened people, who have learned to look at things as they are, and not as they appear to fleshly eyes in Mammon's temple, ought to abandon once for all the project of underbidding the nations in the markets of the world. Laws beyond the reach of legislative enactments control the price of labor, but laws beyond the reach of the whole human race make intellectual, moral, and physical degradation inevitable when the working-man is not paid sufficient hire. May it not be that popular government is imperiled by the existence of manufacturing centers which supply goods to the markets of the world at less cost than they can be made by pariahs and coolies? Of the only real question which the two great parties have now to join issue upon, what leader is there in either who takes other than a financial and economic view? Might it not be well, leaving out of question for the moment whether the country shall thereby be made richer or poorer, to consider whether it is wise, in a democratic society and a popular

government, to pursue a policy which fosters centers of revolutionary turbulence, intellectual darkness, and moral degradation, the only obvious result of which is an increase of paupers and millionaires? Or must we on this vital subject, as in literature and fashion, be only servile imitators of Europe? If the English and the Chinese are willing to sell us goods cheaper than we can make them without dragging a large portion of our population into vice and misery, why prevent them by a prohibitive tariff? And if free trade should throw large numbers of factory hands out of employment, is there not other and more healthful work for them to do in a country in which hundreds of thousands of European peasants make homes for themselves every year? And if the property of millionaires should depreciate in consequence, did they not build without any pledge that protection would be eternal, or that it would endure even ten years?

The modern industrial system, in spite of the philanthropic efforts of individuals, churches, and governments, is a sacrifice of human beings to capital, "a consumption of men, which, by the wasting of the vital forces of individuals, by the weakening of whole generations, by the breaking up of families, by the ruin of morality, and the destruction of the joyousness of work, has brought civilized society into imminent peril." The evils which Henry George and others ascribe to our system of land tenure are in fact the results of modern industrialism, and hitherto human wisdom and ingenuity have failed to discover a remedy for what seems to be a vice of constitution. Capital, steam, and electricity, organized and controlled by shrewd and capable men whose one object is gain, act upon a population of operatives like a malarial poison. How else shall we account for the fact that under a popular government, in a country whose immeasurable resources we have hardly begun to explore, pauperism has become a chronic disease, while in all our great cities and manufacturing centers what seems to be an irrepressible conflict between the rich and the poor rises like a cyclonic cloud on the horizon?

A democracy where the millions own nothing and the few own millions, must fatally fall a prey to socialistic, communistic, and anarchic turbulence; and though so far there is no proper

soil here for such germs to sprout in, the policy which uses all the powers of government to build nests for paupers who, like unfledged birds, shall eat only when capitalists drop food into their mouths, will soon supply the lacking conditions. Where there is apparent danger we are timid; where there is real peril we are blindly confident. We forget that democracy is but a form of government, and a form which in the world's history has been little tried and generally tried with poor success. If we have been able to found a durable state with what elsewhere and hitherto has been the least stable kind of government, our success is to be ascribed to causes some of which have ceased to exist while others are disappearing. Our enormous growth in wealth and population blinds us to the truth that the end of popular government is not to make a country rich and populous, but to establish morality as the basis of life and law. Character, and not wealth or numbers, is our social ideal. Good government is the government of good and wise men, and where the many rule, as with us, the state ought to foster modes of life and to favor kinds of work which are most favorable to wisdom and virtue; whereas here not only the tendencies of the age, but the deliberate efforts of government, are helping to build up centers of population which neither the family nor religion nor education can preserve from physical, mental, and moral degeneracy. And worse than all, even to utter such thoughts is to speak in a desert which sends not back even an echo. All that the two great political parties now contend for is whether this or that hundred thousand men shall have the offices, which is really a matter of no concern at all to the nation; but neither of them will honestly take sides on a question which is of critical urgency and intimately related to the permanence of free institutions. Beyond the economic aspects of free trade and protective tariff there lies the great problem whether a democratic country ought to lend its influence to the building up of populous industrial centers. But policy is not shaped by principle, and politics has come to mean personal profit; and in the next presidential campaign neither party will honestly take issue on the only question of vital concern presented to them, but both of them will continue to palter in a double sense, to play fast and loose, to be protec

tionists here and free-traders there, and they will not even permit the national vote to proclaim what the people really think or desire. Hancock was beaten because he said the tariff is a local question, whereas every man knows that this is all it is or ever has been in the minds of politicians, who lost confidence in the soldier, not because he failed to see things as they are, but because he was simple enough to tell the truth.

It would inspire one with new hope, with a livelier faith in the destiny of popular government and of democratic institutions, could this great question, not in its financial aspects alone, but in its bearings on the intellectual, moral, and religious life of the people, on the character and prospects of the nation and the republic, be made an open and honest issue. But it will not be So. The working-men, in their blindness, will favor protection; the farmers, in a listless and timid manner, will lean to free trade; and the capitalists and the wire-pullers will have things their own way. Meanwhile, whatever fault we may find with our social and political life, there is no other actually existing and discernible which a wise man ought to choose in preference.

J. L. SPALDING.

THE RECOIL OF PIRACY.

THERE are two prominent reasons why the good old maxims, that are repeated by everybody, are lived up to by so few. One is, that their terms are susceptible of varying definitions; the other, that the consequences of conduct which they predicate are generally too remote to be grasped by the average imagination. All this is peculiarly true of the maxim that "Honesty is the best policy." And it is peculiarly illustrated in the attitude of America regarding literary piracy; yet much proof has accumulated that the maxim holds good even in that case, and that the piracy has recoiled to the serious injury of the nation which has supposed itself to profit by it.

As to definitions: the gentry who are accused of piracy indignantly repudiate the term, because their proceedings are within the law, that is, within the law of their own country. This identical answer, however, could have been made by the Algerines to Commodore Decatur. In Algiers piracy was within the law too. Great Britain might send a navy over here, as we sent one to Algiers, to stop proceedings which our own laws will not stop, and to collect an indemnity for the millions of which a most important class of her citizens has been despoiled by the "industry" of a certain class of ours. Yet if she were to do so, we probably should answer, with many shrieks of the eagle, that we proposed to be governed by our own laws, and not by those of Great Britain-an answer logically identical with the answers that the Dey of Algiers returned to all arguments but those he saw in the mouths of Decatur's guns.

Until some forty or fifty years ago the American publishers of foreign books did little to reconcile their competing interests. The house which got possession of a desirable foreign book first, and brought it into the market first, if other things were even, made most out of it. If any other printer thought, rightly or