LIBERTY AND LAW

OR

OUTLINES OF A NEW SYSTEM FOR THE ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION OF FEDERATIVE GOVERNMENT.

BY

BRITTON A. HILL.

SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND GREATLY ENLARGED.

ST. LOUIS :

G. I. JONES AND COMPANY.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by

BRITTON A. HILL,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

In the course of thirty-five years' practice of the law, I have had many opportunities to observe the operations of our Federative form of government, and of our different State constitutions and laws, upon the welfare, rights, and liberties of the citizens for whose benefit they were ordained and enacted.

A careful study has convinced me that the main danger to the permanence of our Federative republican institutions lies, firstly, in an originally deflcient machinery of State and Federal organization; and, secondly, in a misconception on the part of our governments, State and Federal, of their full duties under the law. To the former defects we owe the outbreak of the late war, which, under a properly constructed machinery of State and Federative governments, would never have occurred; to the latter we owe the growth of those powerful monopolies that, in conjunction with ignorance and impurity, -- alternately supporting and deriving support from these, threaten every form of liberty that has grown dear to us.

The demoralization consequent upon the late war has hastened the general recognition of this latter defect in our political organization, by developing the powers of those monopolies in our midst to an extent which makes the danger threatened by them directly perceptible to every citizen.

It would have been useless at any previous period in our history to expose these sores on our political body and prescribe their cure. But I think the time has come now when the minds of the people are ripe for a thorough reorganization of our State and Federative governments, leaving the grand idea of their founders untouched in the main, but supplying the elements that are needed in order to remove the disorders which must otherwise undermine their life.

It may be objected that it is too hold a task to sketch even the mere outlines of such an organization, and I readily concede that no higher one can engage the mind of man, than to delineate such a plan through all its features, State, Federal, and International. Nor can I say anything in deprecation, except that the thought of this work has engaged the best part of my life, and accompanied me throughout all my experience of legal practice and a careful study of civilizations, of hygiene, and past and contemporary history.

If, however, I fail in presenting such a plan in its completeness of organization under constitutional and codified systems of laws, I can only hope

that others following in the same direction, with greater ability, will accomplish this more perfectly than I have done. With a well-grounded belief in the capacity of the human race for an unlimited advance in government, morality, law, art, science, and all other means whereby the miseries, crimes, follies, and evils of life may be lessened, and its happiness increased as much as possible by wise and just systems of laws, bearing equally upon all, I send this work forth to the people, to plead the cause of the oppressed, and to break down the despotic systems and monopolies that now fortify and increase the power of the oppressors.

ST. LOUIS, August, 1873.

BRITTON A. HILL.