INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION.

In considering the history of all governments heretofore established by man, the student feels disheartened to meet everywhere inadequateness and failure. From the earliest beginning of history, when, under a patriarchal form of rule, men first were led to the conception of a government of law, through all the various forms of government that have since arisen and been swept away, the common result of disappointment and failure stares him everywhere in the face, most discouragingly in the oldest organized countries of the earth, in China, Persia, Egypt, and India, — where despotism rules so absolutely, that its principal check is the dagger of the assassin. The aspect

is, nevertheless, sad enough even in the younger civilizations of Europe; and it is only in our own country that, by the establishment of a Federative republic, a hopeful state of things has finally been brought about, which is constantly threatened, however, by the growth of various forms of despotism within and around it.

It cannot but prove instructive to examine into the causes of this universal previous disappointment, and to discover the reason why all former attempts at the establishment of adequate governments of law have proved failures, and what it was in their organizations that became the elements of their destruction, or their perversion to the purposes of tyranny.

If it appears that these destroying elements were in all cases some forms of special prerogatives conferred upon a part of the people, to the exclusion of all others, - either a prerogative of caste, of hierarchy, of exclusive right to rule, or of money-monopoly, - we shall be taught to comprehend what measures we ourselves require to ward off the dangers that threaten us now and in the future, and the fate that has overtaken all other governments and peoples in the past.

Again, if it shall appear that their inadequateness had its cause always in a neglect to provide for the utmost development of all the faculties of mind and body of all citizens, thus fostering ignorance, impurity, and vice to assist the prerogative elements in their movement to crush the happiness, rights, and liberties of the people, we shall be able to realize more effectively the necessity of protecting every citizen in his threefold functions as a member of the physical world, as a member of the spiritual-intellectual world, and as a member of the social State, against all the encroachments and injuries to which he may be exposed.

Against the hierarchial-caste element, which overthrew the Mosaic fabric of government, we, under our Constitution, which recognizes no form of religion of any kind, but leaves each person to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, need not fear nor legislate; but the despotism of any part of the governmental power, be it the legislative, the executive, the judicial, or merely the despotism of a majority under unconstitutional and unjust laws, must certainly be met by the most effective checks. The deadly rule of impurity, ignorance, and vice we must abolish altogether; and we must crush the old and new tyrannies, that are growing up in our midst, and which in all free States and cities have, at all times and everywhere, in the Greek as well as in the Italian republics, been most fatal, because most insidious, the tyrannies of money-power, of monopolies, and of class legislation.

No State of ancient or modern times has ever made this its definite aim and object, and the neglect to rise to this high and truly rational view of the purpose of government sufficiently accounts for the numberless disheartening failures. If at times great thinkers, like Plato, Aristotle, and Confucius in the old world, and Fichte, Hegel, and others in the modern world, have tried to grasp this problem, at least theoretically, the result has been in the former cases simply a collection of idealistic dogmatic notions, having no connection with the actual relation between men under a government of law; and in the case of the latter, an arbitrary vindication of existing forms, without regard to their inherent justice or sufficiency. Unsuccessful as have been the great legislators of antiquity, the philosophers that should have pointed out the defects in their legislation, and the remedies, only wandered still farther astray.

The problem now submitted to American statesmen is to discover how to perfect the wise creation of our great legislators, — of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Henry, Madison, Franklin, Paine, Hamilton, and others, - by adding to it all that a strictly philosophical comprehension of their work may demand, regardless of any traditional superstition that may have influenced them in the construction of our form of government.

In the present work I purpose to make an attempt in this direction; so that, by removing existing evils and abuses, they may successfully withstand all the dangers of the future. I do this without prejudice or favor, submitting the needed reforms to the people for their examination and amendment. In the present book, having first very briefly criticized the historical forms of government of previous times, so far as they have any bearing upon ours and teach us the dangers that threaten us, I proceed to announce and justify the true fundamental principles of a State organization generally, and by their analysis to apply them to the actual legislation needed.

Extending this application to the threefold function of men, I show how a representative government that intends to realize its purpose to its full extent must establish by positive legislation, first, a complete system of sanitary laws, to protect the bodies of its citizens against all impurities and disease, the breeders of misery and crime; second, a complete system of edu

cation, extending to every function of the mind and body, to protect the intellectual culture of its citizens against the evil influences of ignorance and superstition in all forms, and against pauperism, by providing each one with the means of making a livelihood; and, third, a complete system of intercommunication between men, whereby to take from out of the despotic influence of money, and all other monopolies, the terrible power which they so long have wielded to oppress the people, and to exercise that power, through a State organization and federation, for the benefit, not for the injury, of the people. In this work I purpose to develop the application of those fundamental principles as requiring, for the purpose of securing to all men immunity from the unlawful interference of others, first, a code of laws and a constitution for each State; second, a political constitution for the federative republic of all the States; and, third, an international constitution for all the States of the world, as they may gradually, and one after another, see the wisdom of adopting such a legal international form of government, if it be practicable, as I believe it to be.

While the code of laws will point out the civil and criminal legislation needed, the constitution will be shown to demand a synthetical form, wherein alone the double requirement of all government (1) that it should have absolute power to carry out all its purposes and laws for the good and happiness of all, and (2) that it should be absolutely checked in the exercise of that power whenever attempted to be wielded in an unjust and improper way- can (3) be united in its character of a federative republic. This triune characteristic, entering all the functions of the State organization, will necessarily also be applied to them, separating the.whole organization primarily into legislative, judicial, and executive departments.

Thus, each person may become the architect of his own fortunes, under the wise universal protection and aid of a government of law, having one common object: the permanent good and happiness of each citizen; and the people may come to regard the State as a friend, and the rule of law as the only safeguard for the preservation of liberty under the forms of representative federative systems of government.

In the organization of the judicial department of the Federal republic, I propose to prevent future wars between the States, and restore all the States to a just and equal sovereignty under the law, by organizing as a permanent safeguard an interstate national judicial tribunal, whose functions shall be to determine all controversies between the federative States, between one or more States and the Federal government, and between the citizens of any State and Federal or State governments; in which court any State or the Federal government may be sued, and suffer judgment by due course of law or equity.

Two other Federal judicial tribunals, of separate, distinct jurisdictions over all other causes and proceedings provided for in the code of the Federative government, should be organized, with an appeal in important causes to the Supreme Interstate National Court.

I shall, finally, recommend the organization, by the consent of several or all

of the civilized nations of the world, of an international judicial tribunal for the legal settlement of all controversies between States, nations, kingdoms, and empires; providing for the selection of a judicial officer from each nation that enters this international federation, and to form a court to settle all disputes and controversies between nations; to render judgment on trial before this international court; and to regulate and adjust all cases of controversies between the same parties in the interchange of moneyed values, and the settlement of balances between all parts of the said international federation, by the organization of an international clearing-house under the jurisdiction and control of such court.

Thus, from the lowest function of government, — to provide for the direct security and sanitary welfare of each citizen, — my work will trace its duties to the highest in the creation of an international court, which may remove all just causes of war between the federated nations, and realize the common wish of all good men by the maintenance of universal peace.

In this age, when the forces of heat and electricity, manifested in the telegraph and the steam-power, have brought the people of the world into such near contact and communication with each other that the welfare of each individual is more intimately connected with that of his fellow-men than ever before; when even the locked-up civilization of Japan opens itself to the influence of our own, and seeks to establish our own imperfect systems of law, of education, and of money of divers kinds: it is clearly our duty to raise our energies to a level with the spirit of the age, and discover, if we can, a truly universal system of federative government, under wise, equal, just, harmonious, and all-embracing laws, that shall be applicable to all races, nations, castes, and men, that may be subjected to its influence, and which may effectually secure to one and all, for all time to come, the greatest good, happiness, morality, wisdom, and perfection that humanity is capable of attaining.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

It is now seven years since the First Edition of "Liberty and Law under Federative Government was published; and so generous has been its reception by the public, as evidenced by numerous changes in our governmental policy since its publication, changes which I had therein suggested as reforms. required for the purification and perpetuation of our republican form of government, - that I have been encouraged to give to the public a Second Edition, greatly enlarged, and more fully carrying out the purpose which I had in view when I first undertook the work.

It must now have become far more clearly and generally manifest than it was even seven years ago, that the entire organization of our legislative, executive, and judicial departments of government must be radically remodelled and reformed, if we would save for ourselves and our posterity the rights and liberties which our forefathers sought to secure for us, but which unchecked corruption in every branch of the State and Federal governments, rapacious corporations, fostering and fostered by that corruption, have already swallowed up in great part, and now threaten to devour altogether.

Our Federal Constitution was adopted, and, indeed, our whole form of government was organized for the purpose of securing to each citizen life, liberty, property, and equality of rights, through a representative republic. The people were no longer to be plundered, down-trodden, and enslaved for the benefit of a king and a few nobles; but were to govern themselves, by themselves, and for themselves.

This object, it must be confessed, has been realized beyond the most sanguine expectation, and to the astonishment especially of the outside world, which had prophesied that a republic was a chimera, that only kings, or at the best, an aristocracy, could govern the masses of mankind, and that those masses could never be brought to govern themselves.

But a new form of despotism has arisen since the beginning of this century, a despotism of which the founders of our government had not, and could not have had any adequate conception, and against which they therefore did not make any provision. This is the despotism of chartered corporations and other forms of money-monopolies, by which the people have since been as insidiously plundered as they were publicly plundered in former times by the claimants of God-given and hereditary prerogatives. And here I may as well revert to the legal power claimed by corporations. It is held, and perhaps justly held, that a "State" granting a perpetual charter to a corpo