cation must be kept up among these inspectors, so that the passage of any drove of cattle, etc., may be known along the road in time to provide against collisions, and for other contingencies.

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CHAPTER IV.

CANALS.

Canals are artificial water-highways, the possibility of the construction of which depends to a great extent upon the natural river-system of the State. Affording far cheaper transportation than railroads, their construction should be encouraged wherever the possibility is offered. Besides, they afford cheaper and speedier transit than the common roads. (In China, nearly all transit is conducted by means of canals; the boats, however, being built with cabins so constructed as to make travel on them a luxury.) They serve, moreover, as natural ventilators in purifying the atmosphere, for water-power, for drainage of surface-water, and, in some measure, to irrigate the adjoining country. Being the absolute creation of the government, unlike the rivers, the government necessarily keeps exclusive control of them, and allows no private monopoly to build them. How great a benefit a system of canals is to the people of a State is shown by the Erie Canal, in the State of New York, both directly as a means of transportation, and indirectly as furnishing a marvellous waterpower for mills, manufactories, etc., a power which cannot, in many instances, be replaced by any other. would their benefit appear in the Southern weather would not interfere with their continuous use; though, for that matter, when frozen over, they make an excellent means of transit by means of skates and sleighs, as is shown in Holland. Besides, as the population of our country increases, and the demand for cheap food grows more general, they might be stocked with fish, the cheapest and one of the healthiest articles of diet; a fact which, I am glad to say, has of late years also been recognized in this country, and led to the stocking of many of our rivers with various kinds of fish. In fact, canals serve so many purposes, that one can only wonder they have not been more generally introduced in this country.

In still greater measure States, where the winter

CHAPTER V.

RIVERS AND LAKES.

Rivers and lakes constitute natural highways, the right to travel on which must be secured to every citizen. For this purpose it is absolutely necessary that the State should have full control over their navigation, and not leave the travelling public at the mercy of those who make that navigation their special business. No vessel should be allowed, therefore, to enter on this business unless it has been inspected as to its condition and seaworthiness; and such inspection should take place at stated regular periods. Special rules will have to be drawn up for all steam-vessels, so as to secure safety and health to the passengers; the proper ventilation of all berths being an object especially to be looked to. For this purpose every vessel carrying passengers should register the number of passengers to which it is to be limited, and the inspectors will have to see that this rule is not infringed upon. Vessels for the cattle-trade must have special arrangements made for the health and cleanliness of the animals.

Wherever any navigable river offers obstructions to navigation, it is the duty of the State to remove them, if at all practicable. The old notions of the State holding aloof from internal improvements originated mainly from the great extent of our country, then so thinly populated, which made the vast expenses of such improvements seem too burdensome. Thus, what was merely inexpedient for the time being, was formulated into a wrong principle; and now that the inexpediency has ceased, the error in the principle has also been laid bare. It is a disgrace to human reason that such vast arteries of commerce as the Mississippi and Missouri should continue to obstruct communication and endanger the safety of navigation, when a judicious system of improvements would place that whole body of water under rational control, and make it an obedient servant, instead of being, as now, an unruly one: full of snags, sawyers, sand-reefs, and other destructive impediments. The same holds good concerning all navigable rivers and lakes, harbors, gulfs, bays, seas, and oceans, whereof surveys should designate all reefs, rocks, and other dangers to navigation.

It is by virtue of making these improvements, and of its obligation to secure to each citizen full protection against the oppressive tyranny

of monopolies, that the State exercises the power of regulating commerce and traffic upon rivers and lakes, not only by inspection of, and rules concerning the construction of their vessels, etc., but also by establishing such laws as shall prevent the levying of oppressive taxation, in the shape of extravagant rates of freight and passage. For the same tendency to monopoly, and the establishment of powerful and unscrupulous corporations, which has directed the present organization of our railroad system has manifested, and must necessarily continue to manifest itself in our system of river and lake navigation. Large, wealthy corporations are organized to build lines of steamers between certain points, and by buying up any threatened competing line that may be proposed, virtually control the whole commerce between those points, levying whatever tax they please upon commerce and the travelling public.

These rivers and lakes being natural highways, the State cannot assume exclusive control of the traffic and travel upon them. But the State is bound to protect its citizens against the oppressive despotism of monopolies, and gains further authority to exercise this protection by undertaking the improvement of these rivers and lakes.

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It is true, that since the publication of the first edition of this work something has been done by the general government towards such improvements of our rivers and lakes, but not near enough; and in one instance at least, on an utterly wrong basis. The rapids at Keokuk and the Upper Mississippi have been partially removed; dredge-boats have been built for clearing the Missouri, Mississippi, and other rivers of snags; and a regular commission working, however, on an absurdly small appropriation — has been finally established to carry on these improvements permanently.

But the most important river improvement as yet made is undoubtedly the magnificent establishment of the jetty system at the mouth of the Mississippi, by Capt. James B. Eads, which has been crowned with remarkable success.

For many years the great importance of the Mississippi River to the inhabitants of the Mississippi Valley, as affording them a direct water-communication with the Atlantic coast and foreign countries, has sunk into insignificance by reason of the mud deposits made at the mouth of its entrance into the Gulf of Mexico; so that New Orleans had almost ceased to be a shipping port for large sea-going

vessels, ana had become altogether inaccessible as a port of immigration for vessels from Europe.

When Capt. D. B. Hill, some forty years ago, proposed the general improvement of the river and its mouth, his contemporaries ridiculed the idea; and when Capt. Eads, some five years ago, suggested the removal of the mud deposits at the mouth, upon the principle of the jetty system, as for a long time successfully operated at the mouths of the Danube, the gates to the Black Sea, and when he asked governmental support for his enterprise, there arose a wild outcry-especially in the East- against the project, as involving the government in an unconstitutional measure, adverse to the spirit of our institutions.

In former times, when the Democratic party and the Whig party were fighting each other on this very subject of internal improvements, this outcry would not have been ineffective. But the doctrines advanced in "Liberty and Law" had already made themselves felt, to such an extent, that Congress was in a manner compelled by public opinion to lend government aid to the novel enterprise; and as a consequence we have now direct water-communication between the vast system of the river valleys of the West through Eads's gates to the Gulf, and thence to the whole Atlantic coast of the United States, and to all foreign countries.

But that which I condemn in the action of Congress in this matter is that Congress did not take hold of the jetty project itself, but intrusted it to an individual, or rather to a corporation, allowing that individual or corporation to bear the responsibility of the execution as well as to reap its profits. It was the same stupid blunder, or corrupt villainy, by which our lands and franchises had been squandered on scheming railroad-incorporators and thievish members of the Credit Mobilier ring. It is for the government itself to carry out such enterprises, on the coöperative principles of a federative republic, for the benefit of the people, to secure a just equality of rights.

Besides, that jetty system at the mouth of the Mississippi is of comparatively little moment, so long as the whole of that river as well as the Missouri, and, in a secondary order, the Ohio, Yellowstone, Platte, Osage, Illinois, White, Cumberland, Arkansas, and Red Rivers, from the highest point of navigation down to the jetties, have not been cleared of obstructions to navigation, so far as the highest skill of engineering can improve them. But this can thoroughly be done only by the national government, and it is a manifest absurd

ity to allow an individual or a private corporation to virtually control this whole river-improvement system, and reap most of the benefits to be derived from its execution, - besides subsidizing it, by operating the jetties at the entrance of all those rivers through the Mississippi into the ocean.

All that has here been said of navigable rivers holds good also, of course, in regard to navigable lakes.

CHAPTER VI.

RAILROADS.

That upon which the life of man hangs as on a thread is time. All that he can secure of it for his own use and enjoyment is in that proportion his own individual and free life. Hence that proportion is his real wealth, and no common-sounding saying is more strictly, philosophically true than the adage that time is money. Time is the only money, the only really enjoyable money and wealth, and that which we commonly call money and wealth is only the representative of so much enjoyable time. To secure it to the majority of men in greater proportions than was possible in the past, the invention of man has been at all times busy to gain more time by substituting machinery for labor, and for the quicker transportation of persons and property from one part of the world to another. The railway

system of communication between one part of the country and all others has thus grown to be of transcendent importance to the welfare of the human race, and the harmonious and fit development of all the faculties of the minds and bodies of the people.

The moneyed powers and monopolies, almost immediately after the discovery of this system of public intercommunication, perceived the enormous advantages it would extend to any body of men applying it in a well-populated State, and accordingly prepared to possess themselves of it; the State looking passively on, or if active at all in the matter, applying its activity in the very worst manner, - that is, by extending aid gratuitously, in the way of money, credit, lands, etc., to these monopolies, in addition to the enormous privileges conferred upon them by their governmental charters granted by the States.