in irrigating the desert plains of Colorado. The same trees, that would in ordinary seasons supply the Upper Missouri with a sufficiency of water, would in times of great rains or snow-melting prevent disastrous freshets and overflows.

I have confined myself, so far, mainly to the vindication of my sanitary scheme in its application to the open country; more especially as the purification of the country must act with equal benefit upon the cities, and keep them free from the malaria which is now brought to them by the winds, and increasing the foul air which they generate themselves. But the main reason why I have spoken more minutely of sanitary legislation for the open country is, that its necessity for the cities is already pretty generally conceded, though not nearly to the extent required. Nor will a sanitary system for cities ever effect the results aimed at until my system of public parks and fountains is made a permanent part of it. Sewers will do a great deal to keep the soil of cities free from disease-spreading matter, and ventilation will do much to keep the dwellings supplied with fresh air; but without a sufficiency of trees, neither the soil nor the air can ever be thoroughly purified. I may add here what I have already suggested in referring to the forest parks of the country: that great assistance in the purification of the air can be derived from certain trees and flowers. This is of special importance to the inhabitants of cities, as every house can thus be constantly purified at scarcely any cost; while at the same time that the lungs inhale with delight the fresh and electrified atmosphere, the eye will be charmed with the beauty of the plants.

But there is still another branch of sanitary legislation, which every year becomes more important, as our railroads extend, horse-cars are introduced, and travel consumes more of the time of our people. This novel branch is the establishment of sanitary legislation for our public vehicles, railroad cars, horse-cars, etc. At the first glance this may seem to be an insignificant feature, but this it is by no means. Let it be considered, for instance, that the people of the United States spend every year over one billion hours in these cars. One thousand million of hours of human life is equal to one hundred and fourteen thousand years of that most precious of all boons; and these one hundred and fourteen thousand years are exposed every year to a condition of atmosphere far more deathly than the risks that attend railroad-travelling from other causes. Collisions and running

off the track are mere accidents; it is a pure chance whether they will occur or not, and if they do occur, whether they will kill or not. But the filthy atmosphere of the cars is not an accident. As the cars are constructed now, it is of necessity an inevitable destroyer of life, to which you voluntarily submit yourself when you enter the car. For the so-called accidents you can get accident policies; but, seeing that those accidents occur so very seldom, an accident policy is really of no use. But you cannot obtain a policy to reimburse you for the amount of vitality you lose by the foul air which you inhale in the cars during your journey.

The normal ratio of carbonic acid, which expression involves all the foulness in the atmosphere, is but 0.035 per cent in the fresh air. Whenever the percentage reaches 0.06, the air is unhealthy and begins to grow dangerous.

Compare with these figures the fact that thirty-five analyses of the atmosphere in railroad cars, which were undertaken in Massachusetts, gave as result: Ratio of carbonic acid in smoking-cars 0.228, in regular cars 0.232 per cent, or nearly forty times the amount beyond which the presence of that gas is seriously injurious to health. To reduce this 0.232 per cent of deathly gas to the minimum of 0.06 per cent, it is necessary that a car containing sixty adult passengers should be furnished every hour with at least two thousand cubic feet of fresh air.

Is not this, therefore, a proper subject for the interference of governmental legislation? It is true that the "Car-Builders' Association of the United States" has already given this subject its consideration, and at its last annual convention in New York passed resolutions in regard to the matter, urging a proper system of ventilation for railroads. But we know well what such sporadic resolutions mean. The only effective means to bring about the required reform lies with the law, which takes the subject from individual inclination to general necessity.

For if sanitary legislation is incompatible with individual freedom, then let us abolish all our sanitary boards of health, all our laws for the cleaning of streets and alleys, for the removal of dead animals, for the establishment of slaughter-houses, and for the erection of sewers; let the druggist sell poison in any quantity to any customer who asks for it; let us repeal all laws for the inspection of boilers, and all our building-acts. In short, let the

government, in carrying out its duty to protect the life of its citizens, confine itself to the primitive interpretation of that duty, as current amongst the rudest tribes of men: to protect that life simply against the direct assault of other individuals, or against murder.

But if our government has passed beyond that primitive state, and if it has any authority to exercise the functions which I have just mentioned, then let us not stop at the patchwork of sanitary legislation which we have in fragmentary efforts for several disconnected parts of our country, but contrive a complete system of such legislation for the whole United States.

I may add, in conclusion, that my system of Public Hygiene rests on the principle, that the State and Federal governments alone have the power to enforce laws to preserve the public health, and that nearly all diseases to which the human body is subject are preventable. I will close this chapter with some quotations:

Dr. Simon, the most distinguished of all European sanitarians, says, for instance, that "the preventive power which we possess over disease is among the happiest possessions of science. Scientific and professional men are studying the sickness and death rates of communities, and are applying the results of inquiries to discover or lessen preventable diseases. Diseases induced by some specific body, or by anomalies in the quantity or quality of food, or as the products of vegetable and animal decomposition, or specific emanations from the body in a state of disease, are preventable." Another, almost equally as high in rank in sanitary science, Dr. Tanner, says that disease and untimely death result not from necessity, or from chance or accident, but really from the infringement of those laws. and conditions on the due observance of which the Creator has decreed that the health and welfare of the various organs of the body depend.

Dr. Rush writes that the means of preventing pestilential fevers is as much under the power of human reason and industry as the means of preventing the evils of lightning or common fire. So satisfied was he of the truth of his opinion, that he looked for the time when our courts of law should punish cities and villages for permitting any of the sources of bilious or malignant fever to exist within their jurisdiction. Florence Nightingale truly says there can be no stronger condemnation of any town than the outbreak of fatal epidemics in it.

PUBLIC EDUCATION.

CHAPTER I.

RELATION OF MORALITY AND LAW.

The conception of law has a twofold peculiarity. It is that of a power and knowledge that lies whólly beyond nature; for nature has made no provision against the interference of one man's freedom and activity with the freedom and activity of the other, but leaves to man every possibility of killing, injuring, and checking the freedom of his fellow-man.

Nor is the conception of law that of a moral force; for the moral law, manifesting itself as a command to realize the highest good and happiness, addresses itself to each member of the moral world with categorical necessity and in perfect harmony. All men have the same common moral, as they have the same common physical world, so that the moral acts of all necessarily and of themselves harmonize into one. The moral law, therefore, does not need the conception of right or wrong to enforce itself, and were its rule established, the power of law would be no longer necessary.

But the moral law cannot manifest and enforce itself except in beings that have already developed. themselves into freedom and morality; and it is this that gives rise to the conception of right and law as the intermediate force whereby men are to be enabled to develop their freedom, under the law, to a degree that shall make possible the supreme rules of morality.

It is this moral law, this world of an absolute and universal good, that each individual should aspire to realize in his own person, and in the subduing of all evil, with its consequent physical ailments; and it is only in thus subjecting himself to the greatest good that the

individual first becomes truly free, giving highest form of expression through his works to the inspirations drawn from it and the intuitions of its grandeur, truth, and beauty. It is thus, through a system of individual moral beings, that the highest good is reflected in an infinite manner from different stand-points of beauty, and that within His one world of unlimited glory God has created infinite universes through the different mirrorings, translations, and intuitions of each individual: every monad reflecting in a new, beautiful way the glory of the highest. It is thus from the divine fountain of love and goodness endless inspirations of beauty and truth ripple forth with circles of wondrous perspectives, evermore extending the power of ⚫the human mind for the attainment of its highest destination and its greatest good and happiness.

CHAPTER II.

THE RIGHT TO REST.

It is through law that man is to rise to this state; the law is to be the intermediate agency between man's primitive natural condition and his ideal as a fitly and harmoniously developed exponent of the highest good, or as a completely free being; for in complete freedom this highest good finds its expression. This freedom he aspires to attain; to secure it, and for no other purpose, does man establish law and a State organization, and no State organization has any claim to be tolerated which does not provide for securing this freedom. No man to whom the means of realizing this, his destination, are denied by a State, is bound to obey it; the State not having respected his rights, he cannot respect it.

In wisest forethought, the great legislator of antiquity, Moses, set apart one out of every seven days for the purpose of securing time to worship God and to attain moral culture to even the meanest of slave-laborers; and it is a disgrace to our age that we are not yet further advanced, and that countless men and women are still forced to work at all hours, so that night brings no leisure for the development