tion can go on by vicarious and alternate energy of the several clusters.

In dreaming, the swiftness of thought and the rapidity of sense-perceptions are somewhat marvelous. Processions that would occupy an hour to pass in the real world go by in a few seconds, and years are curdled into moments, as in persons in instant danger of death.

Somniloquy is, probably, always an outcome of dreaming. This term does not mean the rambling word or words that bubble out in sleep, but intelligible sentences, often telling of the rude commotion that makes the night's dismay.

To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets".

the unpacking in words of a guilty conscience.

Somnambulism is an acted dream, and hallucinations are dreams of waking life.

Heermann and Dr. J. Jastrow have studied the dreams of the blind, and found that such as lose their sight before five to seven years-the critical blinding age-never dream in visual terms, whilst those who become blind after this period all have dream vision. Dr. Jastrow believes, from data furnished by the examination of two hundred blind, that they dream less than the sighted, and most in terms of hearing; next, from sensations furnished by touch, their master sense; and a few in terms of taste and smell. Reading the raised type with the finger never happens in their dreams. The boys dream of playing, running, jumping, and so on; the men of broom-making (in terms of motion and feeling, and not of sight), piano-tuning, teaching, and the like; the girls and women of sewing, fancy and household work, etc.

The dreams of the deaf-mute are still a virgin field. Prof. G. Stanley Hall has studied the dream life of Laura Bridgman. He says her sleep is constant dreaming. The tactual-motor sensations, by which she receives her mind food and communicates with her fellow beings and gets her knowledge of the external world, chiefly supply her dream food. She will suddenly talk

a few words with her fingers, too rapidly and too imperfectly to be understood, never making a sentence. All the people that enter into her dreams talk with their fingers. Sight and hearing terms are absent, or, strictly speaking, vague, and more likely to be akin impressions-heat and jar. In her journal, the terms of sight she uses show great limitations of her notion of this sense. She speaks of hearing with her feet: "I placed a little chair before me. I put the musical box on it, so I could feel it play with my feet."

MEREDITH CLYMER.

MORAL PRINCIPLE IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS.

In the vaults of the Treasury, idle and useless, lies a vast sum of money, the residue of excessive taxation. During the nine years since specie resumption the government has collected from its people eleven hundred millions of dollars more than its ordinary expenditures, including pensions and sinkingfund investments; about a thousand millions has been consumed in reducing the funded debt, and we have a surplus of a hundred millions left, with no prospect of its disbursement except by buying bonds at a constantly rising premium. During these nine years all the industries of the country have suffered from the cruel drain, yet Congress after Congress has been either unable or unwilling to reduce taxation. Neither of the great political parties ventured seriously to grapple with the difficulties of the situation, and so the people were left to suffer.

What is most striking in this episode, certainly the most extraordinary in history, is that while, in Congress and in the press, a great deal has been said about political economy, the claims of labor, free trade, protection, and even about points of party policy incidentally related to our system of taxation, there seems to have been a general neglect of ethical considerations. For nine years the Treasury has daily sucked in great sums of money which the government should not take, to which it has no just title, and which is really robbed from the people; but no sense of shame flushes the cheeks of any among the hundreds in Congress and the thousands outside who can arrest this drain and abolish this wrong, but who will not do so because of the restraints of party politics, or for fear that loss or injury may result to some investment or some enterprise in which they are interested.

Now and then some petty thief, tormented by remorse, is driven to divest himself of a few dollars or a few cents, and

these are mingled with the millions which the law is systematically stealing from the people; the newspapers chronicle "another contribution to the conscience fund;" but the incident awakes no sympathetic movement of conscience among those who profit, politically or otherwise, by the despoiling of their fellow citizens.

Perhaps if there were a law requiring all surplus revenues to be dumped into the ocean, the waste would arouse the attention of those who are unmoved by the wickedness of excessive taxation; but is there really any difference? Is it not obvious that money may be wasted without being thrown into the sea? The entire surplus revenue is wasted, so far as the individuals are concerned to whom the money rightfully belongs and from whom it has been wrongfully taken. Regarded as their money, and not, as it is not, the money of the government, every disposition of it is wasteful except its restitution, dollar for dollar, cent for cent, to the individuals from whom it came. Whether used to buy silver at a discount or bonds at a premium, whether consumed in unnecessary expenditures or locked in the crypt of the Treasury, what each man contributes through excessive taxation to the surplus is as absolutely lost to him as if it were "in the deep bosom of the ocean buried." To speak of such expenditures as "restoring the money to the people," is either a fraud or a fallacy, according to the lights of the speaker. He who knowingly and habitually pays for what he buys more than he needs to pay, is in peril of the lunatic asylum; and whoever, by fraud or by force, causes another to commit such extravagance is in peril of the law; yet the citizens of the United States as taxpayers have been for years knowingly paying for their government more than it actually costs, certain honored and trusted senators and representatives have employed the force of law to compel them to do so, and certain party leaders and newspapers have used false statements, fraudulent representations and suggestions, and insincere arguments to mislead voters and to maintain this extortion, while the people seem to "love to have it so." Hence it appears that, without violence to moral sensibility, we repress and punish in the individual what we exact of the citizen; we send extortioners to jail, and return to Congress those who maintain excessive taxation; we execrate the common

liar, and subscribe to newspapers that live upon economic falsehoods; we outlaw personal waste, and fasten profligacy upon our own government.

Plainly there is something out of joint in this condition of things, and to the serious student of social phenomena it is suggestive of a solution of continuity in moral ideas, a dislocation of principle along the line which marks the boundary between personal conduct and political thought and action. This suggestion must needs be disquieting when we consider what an obscure and variable line this is; at how many anxious points of one's own experience it is obliterated, so that even a groping conscience fails to trace it; how often, in the absorption of business or under the excitement of politics, good men, consciously or unconsciously, disregard the distinctions of which this faint line is intended to be the delimitation. The question naturally arises, Why should there be such a line at all? Why should political ethics allow purposes, methods, and actions which are forbidden by all codes of morals governing personal conduct?

The question covers too much ground for an answer to be attempted in this article; but there is a subdivision of it which may be considered within the limits now available, and which is especially timely, namely, the ethical force of economic principles, regarded from the point of view occupied by those who are responsible for legislation. Under our system of government this responsibility rests first upon State legislatures and the federal Congress; hence if, in respect to legislation, economic science creates duties, these duties devolve upon those bodies, and moral responsibility being in its nature indivisible, such duties devolve, also, upon every member of any such body. It is obvious, also, that the moral accountability of each member must be proportioned to the influence which he exerts, or is able to exert, in the consideration of measures involving economic principles and relations, and especially to the weight of his voice or example in their final decision. The responsibility here defined does not, however, rest wholly upon representatives; these are chosen by constituencies, and are more or less constrained by the views and the prejudices of voters. Even the unreasonable and unjust pretensions of local interests and the importunities of influential