on

good credit in the money market either; and it is, moreover, purely strategical grounds, inadvisable to allow her free and full possession of what remains of Turkey in Europe, since such possession would be a constant danger to all of Western Europe, and seriously threaten the British possessions in India, as well as the Chinese Empire.

Hence there is only one great power left in Europe which can accomplish the combined purpose of properly swallowing Turkey in Europe and paying a part of Turkey's debt to the capitalists of Great Britain, and this power is the double-headed monarchy of Austria-Hungary, at present under the protection of the new German Empire. Now, as Russia wants Turkey badly, and as Austria-Hungary has been made to realize, ever since the days of Sadowa, that she must ultimately give up the German part of her dominions to the German Empire, and look for territorial compensation in an eastwardly direction, that is, towards that same Turkey which Russia has been watching, with prey-lusty eye, ever since the days of Peter the Great, it is very clear that, sooner or later, the final struggle for the possession of Turkey in Europe will result in a conflict between Austria-Hungary and Russia, in which the German Empire will, of necessity, side with the former power, and take its German territory in payment for its services; and the British Empire will lend its aid also to the same power, on condition that the new possessor of Turkey in Europe assume also a proportionate share of the Turkish indebtedness. The Russian power in Europe will be broken and crippled in this contest.

Into this mighty struggle, which is daily drawing nearer, nearly all of those four million of European soldiers will in all probability be drawn, and every nation engaged in it will be required to tax its financial strength to the utmost. The human mind shudders in contemplation of the infinite misery and suffering which this conflict is doomed to bring over a whole continent; and the only gleam of light shining through the darkness is the possibility that the shock may be so terrible, both in its military and financial aspects, as to compel, early in the struggle, a general disarmament, and thus force the era of war to come to an end by its own hand, as it were. It would be a new. illustration of the dialectic movement which pervades all finite things and phenomena. Allow anything to run to its extreme limit, and it will turn into its very opposite. When life has reached its

highest development, it begins to change into death; and from death springs up new life. And thus a time must come when war will have attained such fearful and destructive power that it must give way to a blessed era of peace, and the settlement of national controversies by an international court.

CHAPTER XII.

THE UNITED STATES.

In the political organization of our own country, the most prominent and singular feature that presents itself is the fact, that our political constitution, our form of government, was an absolute creation of reason. It was not pieced together out of an hereditary, accumulated set of laws or rules of political administration; it is not the lawless growth of ages, but a rationally considered and determined form of government, made to fit a certain contingency. The code of Moses is, in this respect, the only one that has a similar origin. The legislation of the Hebrews did not arise gradually out of circumstances, like that of other nations, but was fixed complete at once, to suit the miserable, degraded condition into which they had fallen as slaves in Egypt. The government established in Paraguay by the Jesuits, and maintained from about 1700 to 1775, when it was shamefully broken up by Spain and Portugal, upon the abrogation of the order by Clement XIV., may, however, also be classified with these à priori constructed forms of government; and in some measure, also, the Inca government of ancient Peru. Both of these political structures will be treated more at length in another chapter, in the Second Part of this book.

Philosophers of great repute have denied the possibility of such an origin for a political constitution. Looking merely at the utterly irrational organization of the European monarchies, the whole structure of which has reference only to the supreme welfare and monopoly of the ruling family, and accepting these sad memorials of human cowardice and ignorance as glorious monuments of human power and wisdom, they have denied the possibility of any other origin of political organization, and laughed to scorn the attempt of

the French revolutionists to erect a political fabric on principles of

reason.

And yet here stands history, with the purely rationally conceived government of Moses, of singular power and duration, if its small territorial dimensions are taken into consideration, and the United States, with nearly a century of history, more marvellous in its splendor and progress, despite all drawbacks, than the history of any other political organization in the world. Nor does history furnish an instance of a form of government under which the governed lived more contentedly than under the government of primitive Peru, or that of the Jesuits in Paraguay.

It is to be held one of the greatest blessings, that the founders of our republic were thus enabled, under the peculiar exigencies of the case, to erect a new government of a federative republic altogether on principles of reason; and the only thing to be regretted is, that they did not carry out this principle in full, by making rational organizations for the several separate States, by abolishing all laws for the perpetuation of slavery, by fixing the laws of money and commerce independently of traditional notions, and by establishing a complete code of laws, even as Napoleon established his code for France, without the phantom of an unknown common law, which it is absurd to presume that the people should be able to follow, since the most distinguished judges of the different courts, State and Federal, have been and still are continually announcing contradictory decisions upon the same questions of law and equity, which are commonly known in law as vexed questions.

So far, therefore, as those great men followed purely the dictates of reason, their labors have been successful beyond precedent. So far as they followed the vagaries of tradition, on the other hand, they left the door open to the growth of moneyed monopolies and other forms of despotism, that are showing their corrupting influence more and more every day, as well in class legislation as in the growth of ignorance and physical disease, and to root out which this book has been written. It is easy to see how it chanced that they thus neglected to carry out the supreme rule of their political conduct in the details of law administration. Our form of government being a double one, the more extensive Federal form naturally attracted their chief attention, and the separate State organizations, with their exclusive management of "domestic affairs," engaged but to a local and

limited extent the consideration of statesmen; and the anomaly of uniting these States under a purely rational form of government, while allowing them to retain most of their historical and traditional legislation, escaped notice. These traditional features, it must be remembered, had been engrafted upon the several States that entered the Union while they were under monarchical rule, and thus their legislation partook in some States more and in some less of the English feudal character. They became members of the Union with these feudal features and these English monarchical laws, with the barbarism of an unknown common law, of colonial slavery, and other elements of prerogative power, judicial despotism, and money-monopoly worship, that still taint their political systems, and which they in their turn engrafted more or less upon the new States that organized subsequently under the Union. All these feudal chains were incompatible with the idea of the new republic. It is amazing that this should have excited no attention or discussion, and that the people should have voluntarily saddled themselves with that huge body of legal despotism, the common law of England, of the true nature of which they were necessarily utterly ignorant. And yet, they continued to put these shackles on their own young limbs, as one after another new States, with their constitutions, laws, municipal charters and ordinances, county and township regulations, organized themselves upon the old colonial foundations instead of the foundations of their own new federative republic.

Hence have naturally arisen constant conflicts and collisions between municipal and State laws, colonial laws and new State constitutions, State laws and Federal laws, and Federal laws and the United States Constitution; conflicts that have been a permanent source of uncertainty to the citizens as to the nature and extent of their rights, and to their local officials as to the extent of the powers conferred upon them. Hence all kinds of usurpations and monopolies have grown up, as a natural result of the want of proper checks and balances and well-adjusted State constitutions.

The Federal and State constitutions do not contain any practical limitations to the sovereign power of Congress and the State legislatures as law-makers. Within fifty years past, the public lands and the public moneys of the people have been given away by their servants, the law-makers, to railways, banking, navigation, and other

corporate despotisms that now control all branches of our government.

It is evident that unless our form of government is to result in a failure, this state of things must be remedied by the amendment of our State and Federal constitutions. We must invent and determine

for our separate State organizations, organic laws that shall not interfere with the general form of our government, and yet meet all the demands of a well-regulated State; that shall not merely afford security to persons and to property against direct violence and fraud, but protect men also from illegal monopolies, from legislative usurpations, from fraud, impurity, and ignorance; that shall not merely in negative apathy permit the individual reformers and laborers in the fields of science and knowledge to prosecute their investigations, experiments, and researches, but shall extend to them proper aid, whereby all their labors may be joined in one common effort for the advancement of mankind, under a true and proper form of representative government. The unexpectedly rapid development of our States and the sudden growth of cities press with resistless force for the establishment of such a perfected system of State governments adapted to their own support. This is what the labor organizations mean. when they clamor for changes which shall secure to them healthier dwelling-places and more time for self-culture; this is what outraged communities mean when they protest against the corrupt monopolies of the age, and the overshadowing despotism of railroad, banking, and telegraphic corporations that have neither local nor political connection with them, and yet place themselves beyond all regulations of order, safety, and economy from the communities to which their roads or their other monopolies have become a necessity; and herein also lies the solution of the dangers threatened by the increase of the ignorant classes, which always accompanies the increase of monopolies and aristocracies.

At the same time we must amend our Federal organization in such a way that it shall at once allow the separate States to make these additional laws, and itself assist in enforcing them. Thus, it is necessary for a true system of federative government to protect all citizens in their common rights of intercommunication by land, seas, oceans, rivers, and all highways. The railways, roadways, telegraphic lines, and all other channels of intercommunication and commerce